Summer 2021 Reading List

Probably some Larry McMurtry and Wallace Stegner.

A long time ago I read that on Inauguration Day, 1977, Carter's team met in the Oval Office and one of his senior advisors asked "now what?"

20 years ago, I dated an FBI agent who answered directly to the director, at that time Louis Freeh. All he said about UFOs was "there's no proof." No proof because it's been hidden or destroyed?

Sorry for #3, wrong thread!

r3 is there book based on it? I'm curious lol

boring

I watched the movie adaptation of Running with Scissors last night. On one hand, the soundtrack does not fit the movie at all. Some of the things I didn't like, but overall it was just okay.

On the other, Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh, and Brian Cox give excellent performances.

OP, I read The English Patient years ago. I am one who found the movie life changing. They were truly in love. I was dating a guy who I didn't like very much and didn't find attractive (it just happened), and he didn't like the movie. I finally stopped trying, because I knew he wasn't for me. Of course the book and the movie are very different, but the book helped me to understand parts of the movie I didn't "get" at first. I don't know what I would have thought of it if I hadn't seen the movie.

R8 Sorry it didn't work out. Hopefully you are happy though. I saw the movie years ago and loved it. I tried the Audible version, but it was not for me.

I read Running with Scissors years ago. My recollection was that I found it worthwhile, if not a wild success.

James Baldwin's GIOVANNI'S ROOM is on my TBR, after reading SWIMMING IN THE DARK earlier this year, where it is almost another "character" in the story. Another I might read this summer would be INTERIOR CHINATOWN (audio).

Bumping this to update that I found Interior Chinatown a bust, I'm afraid.

If you're looking for humor, try THE PARROTS by Filippo Bologna, a terrific satire on the book awards game.

R11 Thanks, but I have decided to change course and read the classics. I can't keep up with lists.

R10 Have you read Giovinni's room? I've had it for months but I've never read it.

This summer I want to read Edward Said's Orientalism and Gerard Reve's The Evenings (I have the audiobook version).

I'm most of the way through it now, R13. Not what I thought it'd be early on; I can how it "informs" SWIMMING IN THE DARK. I felt it had a slow start that later snowballs, best way I can put it. Baldwin's writing is outstanding!

Who the fuck is “William Makespear Thackery?” If you can’t spell the author’s name, you probably shouldn’t waste your time reading his work. It would be lost on you.

Voracious reader here so I've read my way through the work of numerous writers (not a brag, just a fact). This summer I've read Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, St. Aubyn's Double Blind, Millet's The Children's Bible. But I am hoping to finally read Jose Lezama Lima's Paradiso. The opening line reads "Baldovina's hand separated the edges of the mosquito netting and felt around, squeezing softly as if a sponge were there and not a five-year-old boy."