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What Books Are You Reading In 2024? Part 2

From the old thread re: Simon Winder, I liked Germania and Danuba, but found Lotharingia a weak afterthought.

Finished [italic]Sub Rosa[/italic], which I can recommend if you're a fan of Roman-era fiction such as the Falco series. I know ... a woman writing MM, ugh! Here, I think she did okay, although a bit awkward at times. Audio narrator has very pronounced "gay voice" which I think is his own, not for effect.

Finishing up a second book by Vendela Vita. Didn't like it any more than the other one, reads like a self-published un-edited work. I'm left wondering if she's published because she's married to successful Dave Eggers?

by Anonymousreply 545December 4, 2024 10:27 PM

Thanks for starting a new thread, OP.

by Anonymousreply 1June 16, 2024 3:00 PM

Thank you too, OP. I started the previous thread and as it filled I couldn’t post.

by Anonymousreply 2June 16, 2024 3:17 PM

Flea of RHCP recently read and recommended There There and Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange, The Great Gatsby, The Bluest Eye and The Age Of Innocence.

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by Anonymousreply 3June 17, 2024 8:59 PM

Shadow Men by James Polchin - it's about gay blackmail case in the 1920s that led to murder!

by Anonymousreply 4June 17, 2024 10:20 PM

What is everyone’s favourite novel published this year/since Christmas? I want to use my Audible credit on something current.

by Anonymousreply 5June 18, 2024 8:27 PM

I Have Seen It And It Is Large

by Anonymousreply 6June 18, 2024 8:55 PM

Finished [italic]Au Reservoir[/italic] yesterday. Not a fan of the ending, didn't need the epilogue for sure!

by Anonymousreply 7June 21, 2024 6:51 PM

The House of Doors. A bit simple-minded thus far.

by Anonymousreply 8June 21, 2024 10:12 PM

Finished the audio of Griffin Dunne's Friday Afternoon Club. Loved. It's funny, intelligent, gossipy, and of course deeply moving in the sad account of his sister's murder. Not surprisingly, he reads it flawlessly.

by Anonymousreply 9June 23, 2024 10:37 PM

r5, haven;t read JAMES, but I bet it'll receive a lot of votes.

by Anonymousreply 10June 23, 2024 10:38 PM

I just finished reading Griffin Dunne's memoir as well, and I completely concurr with R9. It was the best memoir I've read in a while. I'd love to read more from him, especially focusing on his career.

by Anonymousreply 11June 24, 2024 4:53 PM

Agree. He takes us up to the birth of his daughter with Carey Lowell. Since he divorced Lowell and she went on to be with Richard Gere, there has to be a story there!

by Anonymousreply 12June 24, 2024 6:14 PM

Dickens' Sketches by Boz, the only DIckens I hadn't read before.

by Anonymousreply 13June 24, 2024 6:45 PM

"And Their Children After Them" (Leurs enfants après eux).

I stopped reading 50 pages from the end, as I had gotten very invested and didn't want to read the inevitable depressing ending.

by Anonymousreply 14June 24, 2024 6:59 PM

Finally reading [bold]The Vampire Lestat[/bold] by Anne Rice, now that I can picture him as Sam Reid instead of Tom Cruise.

by Anonymousreply 15June 25, 2024 12:21 AM

R15 It's been years, but I thoroughly enjoyed that book.

by Anonymousreply 16June 25, 2024 12:49 AM

I’m still wading through The Politics Of Resentment. The poor author. She tries monumentally to be unbiased but it all confirms what we already know.

by Anonymousreply 17June 25, 2024 2:18 AM

After years of having The Memoirs of Hadrian on the shelves (starting it and finding it too dense, too stolid), I finally read it and suddenly it was very easy to read, Hadrian's voice very authentic... and his love for his young companion and his grief at his death is beautiful prose.

by Anonymousreply 18June 25, 2024 2:29 AM

I’m starting The Fourth Wing; I think it’s a romance though.

by Anonymousreply 19June 25, 2024 1:17 PM

I don’t get the appeal of Tom Lake.

by Anonymousreply 20June 25, 2024 5:08 PM

I thought Tom Lake was sweet and smart, but not the classic some think it is. Many who love it probably listen to the audio version, which is excellent.

by Anonymousreply 21June 25, 2024 5:12 PM

Just finished an 1879 book about the recollections of the Boston Police Department"by Daylight and Gaslight" - about to start Griffin Dunne's book.

by Anonymousreply 22June 25, 2024 5:30 PM

R21 do you recommend Streep’s narration?

by Anonymousreply 23June 25, 2024 9:33 PM

Another happy reader of Griffin Dunne's autobiography. I'm about halfway through. Griffin, his father, and his brother are all in New York, about to travel to Connecticut to get his brother the help he needs. It's the best book of any type I've read in a while. It's hard to imagine Griffin playing Milo Ventimiglia's sad sack brother in This Is Us.

by Anonymousreply 24June 25, 2024 9:54 PM

Absolutely, r23. She elevates the material, which is pretty high already.

by Anonymousreply 25June 25, 2024 11:26 PM

Tom Crewe’s THE NEW LIFE is the best book I’ve read in the past 2-3 years. It’s a historical novel set in the mid-1890s in London. It deals in a fictional way with real writers — John Eddington and Henry (Havelock) Ellis. Eddington is married to a woman and has children but is gay and tired of the closet and falls in love with a man. Ellis loves and is married to a woman but they don’t seem able or even willing to consummate their marriage.

Both men get together to write a serious treatise on male homosexuality and manage to get it published just as Oscar Wilde is going to trial for gross indecency, which blows up their book and their lives.

It’s a serious literary novel, gorgeously written and the gay sex scenes are really erotic and arousing. A terrific book, I’ve given it to three different friends already. Would make a great miniseries.

by Anonymousreply 26June 25, 2024 11:27 PM

I loved Tom Lake, the novel. I did not listen to the audio book.

My favorite book of the last few years is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

by Anonymousreply 27June 25, 2024 11:30 PM

The Dunne book makes me want to rewatch his doc on his aunt, Joan Didion. She's a bit of a shadowy figure in his account, although it's clear he was angry with her and her husband during his sister's trial.

by Anonymousreply 28June 25, 2024 11:31 PM

Yes yes yes! to THE BEE STING. Another book with a great audio version. Four different actors reading the four narrators.

by Anonymousreply 29June 25, 2024 11:33 PM

I read JAMES, I liked it but didn’t love, love, love it. You should have read and be able to remember HUCKLEBERRY FINN to get the most out of it.

by Anonymousreply 30June 25, 2024 11:34 PM

I posted it on the Summer Reading thread, LOVED Colm Toibin's latest LONG ISLAND, which is a sequel to BROOKLYN. Absolutely loved it, want to read all the Toibin's I've missed over the years.

I'm the OP of the other thread but may I suggest we all just post and focus on this one?

by Anonymousreply 31June 25, 2024 11:39 PM

R28, I agree, though I thought Joan came off a bit better than her husband John did during that time.

I was glad to read of the way John and Dominick made up before it was too late, and it was kind of cool how it happened by chance/fate.

by Anonymousreply 32June 25, 2024 11:42 PM

Just started Unruly, David Mitchell's history of early English kings. It's something I know nothing about but I love his brand of humor.

by Anonymousreply 33June 25, 2024 11:43 PM

r31, I can recommend The Master (Henry James) and especially The Testament of Mary, one of the lesser known, but floored me when I read it.

by Anonymousreply 34June 26, 2024 2:19 AM

r31, my favorite Colm Toibin novel is Norah Webster.

by Anonymousreply 35June 26, 2024 2:23 AM

I read The Master when it first came out but thinking of a reread (still haven't read much Henry James though, lol). Never read Norah Webster and will definitely give it a go. Thank you both!

by Anonymousreply 36June 26, 2024 2:34 AM

Do I need to read Brooklyn before reading Long Island? I only saw the film, thought it was fine but didn’t get the hype.

by Anonymousreply 37June 26, 2024 1:35 PM

You don't need to read Brooklyn but rewatching the film will only enhance your experience of reading Long Island. I was really surprised by how much I'd forgotten of Brooklyn. Eilis' hometown friends Jim and Nancy become major characters in the sequel as does Eilis' mother and brothers.

by Anonymousreply 38June 26, 2024 3:01 PM

Anyone a fan of the audio narrator Julia Whelan? She recorded GONE GIRL.

by Anonymousreply 39June 26, 2024 3:21 PM

I am fairly knowledgeable about the audiobook scene, she's a big name. The Gone Girl narrators were an excellent team, indeed.

by Anonymousreply 40June 26, 2024 9:45 PM

R40, I’m a huge fan of hers. She’s recording “At Danceteria” co-narrating with the author. I know that book has been mentioned on these threads.

by Anonymousreply 41June 26, 2024 10:13 PM

I’m really enjoying Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. He’s an excellent writer and the characters feel like real people.

by Anonymousreply 42June 26, 2024 11:07 PM

Colm Toibin's "The Magician" after finishing Toibin's "The Master." Thomas Mann and Henry James, respectively.

I'm saving the Dunne book to read on vacation along with "Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs" about Reality Winner.

by Anonymousreply 43June 26, 2024 11:24 PM

I’m going to listen to Griffin Dunne’s book on Audible.

I am reading, God help me, The Rape Of Nanking by Irish Chang. The descriptions of the atrocities are more chilling than I could have possibly imagined.

And I have to attend a funeral on Tuesday. Quick, someone recommend me something fun.

by Anonymousreply 44June 29, 2024 4:46 PM

I'm reading "The Ministry of Time." I usually avoid time-travel books like the plague, but this one features a person from the Franklin Expedition, so I feel obliged it read it.

by Anonymousreply 45June 29, 2024 5:46 PM

R44. Try “A Little Life”—it’s a laugh riot!

by Anonymousreply 46June 29, 2024 7:45 PM

R46 I’ve read it you cheeky sod!

by Anonymousreply 47June 30, 2024 12:20 PM

I'm about 3/4 of the way through and really enjoying a 2023 novel called SPARROW about a young orphan boy living in Cartagena, Hispania in the last years of the Roman Empire, who becomes a prostitute in a brothel.

Wonderfully imaginative and historically informed writing by James Hynes, who wrote 2 of my favorite novels THE LECTURER'S TALE, a hilarious parody about college academic competition, and NEXT!, a serio-comic novel about a shlumpy guy who travels out of town for a big job interview (that's really hard to talk about without spoilers). But his newest book is such a departure, so impressively different. A great immersive chunk of fiction for a summer read.

by Anonymousreply 48July 2, 2024 3:28 AM

We’ve now entered the second half of 2024. I’m happy to say that I have read 8 books during the first half of 2024 - 7 of them new reads, 1 of them a re-read. They are:

1. The Maltese Falcon (1930) (Dashiell Hammett) 2. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935) (Horace McCoy) 3. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) (Erich Maria Remarque) (This year marked my third time reading it.) 4. Under the Skin (2000) (Michel Faber) 5. The Zone of Interest (2014) (Martin Amis) 6. Poor Things (1992) (Alasdair Gray) 7. The Hunger (1981) (Whitley Strieber) 8. The Reader (1995) (Bernhard Schlink)

by Anonymousreply 49July 2, 2024 3:52 AM

I have started Watership Down.

by Anonymousreply 50July 4, 2024 6:31 PM

I've been listening to Bruce Springsteen's autobiography [bold]Born to Run[/bold], narrated by the Boss himself.

It's terrific so far. Frequently, the "early days" sections of bios aren't the most interesting, but not in this case. Bruce is a wonderful storyteller and one helluva writer. He really paints vivid pictures of his family & his friends and of growing up in Jersey in the 50s-60s.

by Anonymousreply 51July 4, 2024 7:10 PM

Do you only read novels that have been turned into well-known movies R49?

by Anonymousreply 52July 4, 2024 8:42 PM

Yeah, pretty much! That’s what I have been doing recently. I try to read the occasional classic or two as well. For example, I read both “Les Miserables” and “Pride and Prejudice” last year.

by Anonymousreply 53July 4, 2024 10:55 PM

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon. Two Irish blokes in 412 BC decide to put on a Euripides play using Athenian slaves as actors. Oddball concept that works like a dream (at least the 2/3 I've listened to.) Funny, touching, smart. And the audiobook (read by the author) is a treasure.

by Anonymousreply 54July 4, 2024 10:58 PM

Sally Rooney has been recommended to me by as many people who seem to loathe her. work. Please share your opinions.

by Anonymousreply 55July 5, 2024 7:19 PM

Joy may look better at 81 than Biden, but she isn't running the free world. Thank god.

by Anonymousreply 56July 9, 2024 11:08 PM

R55, I read the first two books, and enjoyed them mildly. Didn’t bother with the third. I can’t understand the overwhelming acclaim.

by Anonymousreply 57July 9, 2024 11:53 PM

Stephen McCauley's "You Only Call When You're in Trouble" is quite enjoyable. Not as rich as some of his others (IMHO) but he is a wonderful writer able to craft a good tale with memorable characters.

by Anonymousreply 58July 9, 2024 11:55 PM

I'm sitting on a gold plated toilet in Mar-O-Lago reading the voluminous stolen binder containing the US top secret highly classified documents that I never returned.

by Anonymousreply 59July 10, 2024 1:10 AM

[quote] Sally Rooney has been recommended to me by as many people who seem to loathe her. work. Please share your opinions.

I had been hearing the same things you had, and so I had put her off for a long time.

I started with Normal People last month and found it hard to put down because the characters were compelling and I wanted to find out what happened to them. The weird thing is that right after I finished the novel i watched the miniseries, which is very faithful to the book but which points out a lot of its flaws in drawing characters that are less apparent on the page: the two main characters are ridiculously self-absorbed and win every damned award and honor they try for, and never ever have bad sex with one another and who also have a deep and abiding intellectual and emotional connection, yet they keep breaking up for no clear reason after the first time they break up and get back together.

Then I tried Conversations with Friends, which is much funnier but also not as compelling. I never felt the adult couple the heroine and her best friend become emotionally and sexually involved with were very interesting.

I would definitely recommend either novel, but I see why some people don't like them. Rooney (like Elif Batuman, who is very funny) is obsessed with college-age gifted and beautiful young women who have lots and lots of sex and think almost entirely about themselves. It gets kind of airless after a while.

It also gets tedious with both writers being fascinated by masochism.

by Anonymousreply 60July 10, 2024 1:22 AM

Just for my sanity, I'm re-reading Colm Toibin's brilliant fictional bio of Henry James, THE MASTER. Loving it all over again (and I'm not even a fan of Henry James).

by Anonymousreply 61July 10, 2024 3:57 AM

"Dancer from the Dance" is $1.99 on Kindle right now.

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by Anonymousreply 62July 10, 2024 2:10 PM

Thanks, r62. I've been waiting for Dancer to come out on Kindle. And only $1.99!

by Anonymousreply 63July 10, 2024 2:34 PM

I'm reading Tom Crewe's The New Life to be followed by the new bio of Thom Gunn, A Cool Queer Life.

In June: Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces; D.H. Lawrence's St. Mawr and The Man Who Died; Justin Torres's Blackouts; Sarry Perry's Enlightenment

Happy Summer Reading!

by Anonymousreply 64July 10, 2024 3:05 PM

“I’d Do It All Again”, Helen Lawson’s third memoir.

by Anonymousreply 65July 10, 2024 3:08 PM

GLORIOUS EXPLOITS a joy throughout, especially effective on audio.. Hear it's being dramatized on BBC radio.

by Anonymousreply 66July 10, 2024 3:44 PM

Let us know how you liked The New Life, R64! There are several of us on here who loved it, me included.

by Anonymousreply 67July 10, 2024 11:32 PM

Just for my sanity I’m reading Night Clit again.

by Anonymousreply 68July 10, 2024 11:41 PM

The New Life.... worst book I've ever read. Cynical manipulation.

On another matter - Dhalgren, Samuel Delany. I thought I'd seen it discussed on DL before but could not find it. 800 pages of hippie science fiction with a "all sexual orientations allowed" thread. I have a hard time with magical realism, though I've been a big fan of science fiction in the past. I am about 100 pages in... much of it is like a college student on acid in 1970 trying to write like James Joyce = it's a struggle.

Is it worth the effort to finish all 800 pages? (c.f. my frustration with The New Life).

by Anonymousreply 69July 11, 2024 12:03 AM

In Memoriam by Alice Winn -- "worst book I've read" this year. "Cynical manipulation." (I won't say Fixed for it ya! because to each their own.)

by Anonymousreply 70July 11, 2024 12:13 AM

Let’s us know how you like “The New Pussy”.

by Anonymousreply 71July 11, 2024 12:32 AM

I liked both IN MEMORIAM and THE NEW LIFE, but I'm just a shallow gay who likes to read about British men having sex.

by Anonymousreply 72July 11, 2024 1:24 AM

I just read Liz Moore’s THE UNSEEN WORLD. I keep thinking about it.

by Anonymousreply 73July 11, 2024 2:20 AM

It seems the Comic Book Guy has cloned himself and is all over this thread.

"Worst. Book. Ever!"

by Anonymousreply 74July 11, 2024 2:32 AM

I'm relishing LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, which will surely prove to be THE book of the summer. Hilarious and unput-downable. Kind of a Jonathan Franzen-like family saga but with a more wicked sense of humor.

by Anonymousreply 75July 11, 2024 2:36 PM

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is one of the most awkward monikers I've ever heard. And does anyone ever name a child Taffy?

by Anonymousreply 76July 11, 2024 2:59 PM

R45 Did it turn out to be a good read? It sounded interesting but I was on the fence.

by Anonymousreply 77July 11, 2024 6:17 PM

Just finished Tom Lake, which exceeded my low expectations. 🍒

by Anonymousreply 78July 12, 2024 4:28 AM

Well, "The Ministry of Time," despite the big PR push praising it as an instant classic piece of literary sci-fi, was actually just expensive Tumblr-level self-insert fanfic. What a waste of potential. Cringe, as the kids say.

Now reading "All Our Yesterdays," a novel about the MacBeths. Pretty decent so far.

by Anonymousreply 79July 13, 2024 2:34 AM

The Importance of Being Furnished: Four Bachelors at Home by R. Tripp Evans. Non-fiction. A fun read if you're into design, houses, and piss-elegant queens from the Edwardian era.

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by Anonymousreply 80July 13, 2024 7:19 AM

I just finished the new biography of Elaine May by Carrie Courogen, "Miss May Does Not Exist." Courogen clearly did a great deal of research and many interviews, but she did not talk to May herself, her daughter, stepdaughters. or, with one exception, her husbands or partners. She ends up speculating a lot about May's personal life and relationships, and I never felt a full picture of May emerged. Her career is covered in more depth, and I enjoyed the chapters on her early theatrical work in Chicago and St. Louis, and then her overnight success in New York as a comic performer with Mike Nichols, which is, for me, by far her most interesting (and funniest) work. To her credit, Courogen is not a fangirl, and she is bluntly critical about some of May's movies and plays, but her writing style and insights are fairly routine. Overall, this was a disappointment, and it's hard for me to understand the reviews that are saying it is "revelatory" and "utterly extraordinary."

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by Anonymousreply 81July 13, 2024 8:08 AM

You're not the target audience, r81. It was an excellent overview of May for neophytes, but it was disappointing that Courogen pandered to the Diane Sawyer types and sanitised Mike Nichols's backstory.

by Anonymousreply 82July 13, 2024 8:16 AM

Also, I think you're a bit unfair to Courogen, who acknowledges May's trademark elusiveness , Courogen's careful attempts to get in May's orbit, and how it handicaps her as a biographer in the first few pages.

by Anonymousreply 83July 13, 2024 8:20 AM

I agree with R60's analysis of Normal People, though I thought Connell's journey of being Small Town Big Deal to College Kid lost in the shuffle was very relatable. The Marianne Character was more inscrutable - what exactly is her problem? Why is she so fucked up? I guess it's not necessarily bad that the book didn't really explain all that - that's real life - but at the same time, Marianne is kind of cypher where you as a reader, you understand and can related to Connell's journey.

[quote][R31], I can recommend The Master (Henry James) and especially The Testament of Mary, one of the lesser known, but floored me when I read it.

Agreed, I loved these books, particularly ToM, in which Mary (as I recall) views her son as a zealot that surrounded himself with losers and had no business doing the things he did to call attention to himself. I like the Master & how that evolved, though I walked away with the impression of James as a sort of cold observer of life rather than an actual participant. Finally, I'm reading Long Island now. It's a good book, but kind of said - all the previously young characters full of hope are now grappling with their own sense of disappointments and hurt. Maybe that hits too close to home, but whatever the case, it's not the kind of book that you just can't put down like the other books mentioned on this thread.

by Anonymousreply 84July 13, 2024 10:34 AM

I disagree about LONG ISLAND. I read it in 2 days, never wanting to put it down. I found it remarkable how Toibin keeps the tension up with such unadorned simple prose. But to each his own.

by Anonymousreply 85July 13, 2024 2:04 PM

^I didn't think LI was bad - it just seems a bit more of a drudge. And while it was I suppose it was unusual for the times, the extent to which Eilis was bullied by her in-laws & her crazy mother was kind of depressing.

by Anonymousreply 86July 13, 2024 8:16 PM

They tried to bully Eilis but she knew her own mind and went home in charge of herself.

by Anonymousreply 87July 13, 2024 11:14 PM

I love Toibin but couldn’t end The Master. I loved The Magician, this is making me wanting to give it another go.

by Anonymousreply 88July 13, 2024 11:23 PM

The NYT list of the Best Books of the 21st Century puts an Elana Ferrante novel as #1. Really? I've not rad her, but still find that hard to believe.

by Anonymousreply 89July 14, 2024 12:20 AM

I hated Sub Rosa. The thought of Beverly Crusher shagging a ghost was just dumber than shit.

by Anonymousreply 90July 14, 2024 12:54 AM

R90 needs to cut back on whatever he's using.

by Anonymousreply 91July 14, 2024 12:56 AM

R79. It’s Macbeth not MacBeth—one of my pet peeves.

by Anonymousreply 92July 14, 2024 1:23 AM

R89 It's a good list, I think. But also the "order" seemed pretty haphazard. Books in the last 50 were better (in my view) than several books in the top 20. I think it seemed to be a "balanced and inclusive" list... fiction and non-fiction, marginalized voices etc. Not a bad thing, but....

Also if Ferrante's is the best book of the century so far... a book written in Italian and translated into English... there were very few other books in translation. Really? In all the world's languages only Ferrante gets on the list?

by Anonymousreply 93July 14, 2024 2:57 AM

That list is shit. Useless, IMHO.

by Anonymousreply 94July 14, 2024 4:19 AM

Not many books by gay men.

by Anonymousreply 95July 14, 2024 4:50 AM

R39

I too like Julia Whelan. I never saw Once And Again so I never saw her act as a teen actor. I tend to choose unknown books by narrator - and she is one of my go-to narrators l. He and Kirby Heybourne who read Gone Girl with her are like the reigning millennial generation superstar narrators.

A poor reading can kill my enjoyment of an audiobook. And there a bunch of quirks I can’t stand. There are British mystery series which I can’t listen to because the female narrators have a foghorn quality.

by Anonymousreply 96July 14, 2024 9:43 AM

Moreover, R96, on occasion a talented narrator can be the wrong choice for the contracted book.

by Anonymousreply 97July 14, 2024 1:08 PM

I am bewildered by the rap toward Tom Crewe’s THE NEW LIFE where someone above dismissed it as “cynical manipulation.”

It’s a fantastic book, beautifully written and imaginative. About queer people grappling with their lives, hoping for a better future, trying to live honeslty in a way that we are lucky enough to do.

Unless Republicans get in, of course, it which case it will be the 1890s for gay people all over again..

by Anonymousreply 98July 14, 2024 1:37 PM

Wayward, by Dana Spiotta (a novel). She threads the plot around the 2016 election of Trump. (Hint: the character does not like Trump.)

Great so far. Spiotta is a first-rate writer.

by Anonymousreply 99July 14, 2024 2:01 PM

Gavin Lambert’s “The Slide Area,” a collection of interrelated essays about Hollywood in the ‘50s and Guy Trebay’s “In the Place to Be,” a collection of his columns about New York, largely in the ‘80s.

As well as Tom Dardis’ “Some Time in the Sun” chronicling five novelist’s (Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Agee, West, and Huxley) work in Hollywood in the ‘30s and ‘40s and focusing on what they did to Hollywood as much as what Hollywood did to them.

by Anonymousreply 100July 14, 2024 2:36 PM

My 'To Be Read' list grows exponentially every time I open this thread! Not a complaint, I love it!

by Anonymousreply 101July 15, 2024 7:57 PM

Just finished Toíbín’s LONG ISLAND and loved it. It’s astonishing how such a quiet book can wreak so much emotional havoc.

I’m with the poster above who called it a page-turner. It is that, and during the last 100 pages when you are in the heads of three characters whose trajectories are going to crash into each other with catastrophic effect, you can only keep compulsively reading, hoping for the best and guessing what might happen..

Of course it depends on accepting (as an Irish thing) people whose fantasies of how their lives will go remain their own are not really shared with others, a reticence which can only lead to heartbreak. I was never sure how it would resolve, but more than that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to happen.

A much denser, more layered read than BROOKLYN, but read ( or reread) that lovely book first.

by Anonymousreply 102July 16, 2024 11:18 PM

[quote] The NYT list of the Best Books of the 21st Century puts an Elana Ferrante novel as #1. Really? I've not rad her, but still find that hard to believe

Then read her you dumb cluck! She is rather good.

by Anonymousreply 103July 17, 2024 2:26 AM

“Strange Sisters”

by Anonymousreply 104July 17, 2024 3:24 AM

A lot of George Pelecanos and Donald E. Westlake.

by Anonymousreply 105July 17, 2024 3:27 AM

"Rather good" is a lot different than the best of the century so far.

by Anonymousreply 106July 17, 2024 3:41 AM

"Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed." Maureen Callahan.

Brief portraits of various women---daughters, wives, paramours, neighbors, others---who had the misfortune to be involved with the family of Joseph P. Kennedy, patriarch.

by Anonymousreply 107July 17, 2024 3:47 AM

Chapter XIV: Jackie on Assistance

by Anonymousreply 108July 17, 2024 3:50 AM

If the extent of my Henry James knowledge is reading Turn Of The Screw and The Golden Bowl in high school during the distant mists of the 1990s, and having watched The Heiress and Portrait Of A Lady, can I follow The Master? I recall zero biographical information about James.

by Anonymousreply 109July 17, 2024 10:16 AM

Yes R109, you’ll be fine.

by Anonymousreply 110July 17, 2024 12:57 PM

Edith Wharton drops tea about James in her autobiography, A BACKWARD GLANCE. It’s a very enjoyable read and Wharton is surprisingly funny throughout. The section where she recounts how utterly baffled she is by the success of a book on interior design she co-wrote is hysterical. A great wit and a wonderful writer.

by Anonymousreply 111July 17, 2024 1:21 PM

I mostly agree with r109, but there are many allusions to Henry James' various novels and stories that are seemingly inspired by his daily activity in The Master. For example, a young girl who is left unchaperoned at a ball that Henry attends sems to become the inspiration for What Maisie Saw. His charismatic cousin Minny Temple seems to become the inspiration for Portrait of a Lady. Etc. etc.

Lots more, I think, but I'm not really that well-versed in James' oeuvre. You don't necessarily have to get those references, but your reading pleasure would certainly be improved by it.

by Anonymousreply 112July 17, 2024 2:32 PM

Has anyone read or heard good things about 2 new well-reviewed thrillers THE GOD OF THE WOODS by Liz Moore and ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK by Chris Whitaker? I think both deal with abducted children but apparently go beyond mere thriller genre.

I've also heard amazing things about ALL FOURS by Miranda July and am awaiting my Amazon delivery (my local indie bookstore was sold out!).

by Anonymousreply 113July 18, 2024 1:17 AM

Just started reading “Cue the Sun!” by the New Yorker’s z Emily Nussbaum.

by Anonymousreply 114July 18, 2024 1:35 AM

For one, I'm rereading "Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of trump."

Also "Hitler's First One Hundred Days."

by Anonymousreply 115July 18, 2024 1:50 AM

I’m really enjoying The God of the Woods. I recommended the same author’s The Unseen World on the last thread.

by Anonymousreply 116July 18, 2024 2:23 AM

Reading Whitaker's We Begin at the End and enjoying it quite a bit. He's a fine writer.

by Anonymousreply 117July 18, 2024 4:01 AM

Currently enjoying Mark Doty's "What is the Grass," as I'm a Walt fanboy myself.

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by Anonymousreply 118July 18, 2024 8:05 PM

Anyone read the very, very long [italic]Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell[/italic]? Interested in feedback before buying a copy - thanks!

by Anonymousreply 119July 19, 2024 1:33 PM

Funny you mention that, r119. I went to charity book fair this weekend and JSAMN was on one of the tables. I didn’t buy it because I have a copy (also unread).

I thought of this thread when I left among others, with a copy of The Magician by Colm Toibin. Also of DL in general when I nabbed a vinyl of Barbara Streisand’s Guilty for $5.

by Anonymousreply 120July 21, 2024 7:56 AM

British author and journalist Jon Savage is one of my favo(u)rite non-fiction writers (especially his histories of youth culture and The Sex Pistols), and he recently released "The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture." It's near the top of my summer reading list, and I will report back if it's good.

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by Anonymousreply 121July 21, 2024 9:02 AM

Anyone here read Michel Faber's "The Crimson Petal and the Red"?

by Anonymousreply 122July 21, 2024 9:08 AM

R60: perfect summary of Rooney's novels.

I'm not a fan of hers but do like the essay she wrote before she published her famous books, about competing with her team in the World Universities Debating Championship, in India. The piece is available online:

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by Anonymousreply 123July 21, 2024 9:25 AM

The juicy new JFK, Jr. biography.

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by Anonymousreply 124July 21, 2024 9:37 AM

Is there a more phallic portait? ^^^

by Anonymousreply 125July 21, 2024 10:29 AM

I just embarked on my lifelong goal to read War and Peace. It only took me 40 years!

Anna Karenina is my favorite novel, and I am interested to see how it compares.

by Anonymousreply 126July 21, 2024 10:40 AM

Just finished Claire Kilroy's award-winning [italic]Soldier, Sailor [/italic], which was a good empathy and patience builder for struggling young mothers with post-partum issues in mental health. Not sure there's much interest around here for that, but I appreciated the widening of my perspective. It was a slog and frustrating at times, but the prose is top-notch and it was worth the bother and I'm better off having read it.

by Anonymousreply 127July 21, 2024 12:56 PM

Started Paul Murray's The Bee Sting on a flight from Portland, OR, to SFO yesterday. Made me wish the flight went to Santiago, Chile. A deliciously funny airplane read.

by Anonymousreply 128July 23, 2024 6:59 PM

What We Kept To Ourselves by Nancy Jooyoun Kim was awesome. I highly recommend it.

by Anonymousreply 129July 23, 2024 7:22 PM

Just finished Long Island by Colm Toibin, which was similar to Brooklyn but even better. The sheer stubbornness of Irish women in sticking to big choices they make when confronted with complex ethical problems is a fascinating continuing theme of Toibin's.

by Anonymousreply 130July 23, 2024 7:36 PM

r128, quite a large weight to read on an airplane. I'm glad i did the audio version.

by Anonymousreply 131July 23, 2024 7:40 PM

I didn’t like Liz Moore’s God of the Woods nearly as much as Long Bright River, her first novel.

GOTW is entertaining though and now on the best seller list so good for her. Shows what a Barack Obama’s “best of the year” list can do for a writer.

by Anonymousreply 132July 23, 2024 7:42 PM

LONG BRIGHT RIVER is not Liz Moore's first novel, it was written in 2020.

A NYer review of GOD OF THE WOODS piqued my interest in Moore, who I'd never heard of. But I didn't want to spend money on the hardcover, so I thought I'd check what my library had and came up with one of her first books HEFT. Didn't seem that intriguing but I still thought for free, I'd give it a try. Well, I LOVED it. One of the best, most emotional reads I've experienced this year. Why isn't this book more well-known? A seemingly simple story of two lonely people of different generations and backgrounds who are brought together by a third. And not maudlin or manipulative at all.

Anyway, I immediately ordered the paperback of LONG BRIGHT RIVER as soon as I finished it a couple of days ago. Can't wait! She is a young writer worth watching even if her newest might be disappointing.

by Anonymousreply 133July 23, 2024 10:12 PM

[quote]I mostly agree with [R109], but there are many allusions to Henry James' various novels and stories that are seemingly inspired by his daily activity in The Master. For example, a young girl who is left unchaperoned at a ball that Henry attends sems to become the inspiration for What Maisie Saw. His charismatic cousin Minny Temple seems to become the inspiration for Portrait of a Lady. Etc. etc.

I thought his sister as a model for Flora in Turn of the Screw was quite interesting. I also liked the extended discussion of how he viewed horror/ghost stories as something for which there could be a logic explanation. I thought James pattern of befriending and later dropping these charismatic but troubled women was kind of interesting, as if he used them for material (like Cousin Minny) but then once he got what he needed, he was done with them.

by Anonymousreply 134July 24, 2024 1:04 AM

So, I started Miranda July's much lauded ALL FOURS but I'm quickly finding it a bit mean-spirited without much humor. Admittedly, I may be too old for it.

by Anonymousreply 135July 25, 2024 3:07 AM

Have you read her other work r135? I have assumed Miranda July is too hip for me.

by Anonymousreply 136July 25, 2024 6:26 AM

Just finished [italic]A Month In The Country[/italic], which was a evocative, quick retrospective pastoral observation. It has a gay minor character that seems to be a signifier of a changing world, but I wonder if there was more to it.

by Anonymousreply 137July 25, 2024 6:31 AM

A lovely boo,k and a terrific, faithful movie starring Colin Firth, with Kenneth Branagh as the gay man.

by Anonymousreply 138July 25, 2024 1:17 PM

I great y enjoyed “The Crimson Petal andcthe White, “ until the ending, which I found in redibly disappointing.

And don’t watch the TV adaptation, Romola Garai is not my idea of the lead character AT ALL.

by Anonymousreply 139July 26, 2024 6:43 PM

In the middle of SEEING THROUGH, Ricky Ian Gordon's memoir that just got a favorable review in The Times. Subtitled "Sex, Drugs, and Opera," it's a lotta lotta of all three. Listening to the audio version narrated by himself. What a life! What a family! (already chronicled in the nonfiction book HOME FIRES.) Gordon is sex-obsessed (can't get enough semen), self-loving, wildly pretentious, but nonetheless compelling and articulate. It must be exhausting to be his friend, but I can't stop listening. Anyone know him?

by Anonymousreply 140July 29, 2024 9:06 PM

Wow, R140--"Home Fires"! I read that when it first came out (I was in my late teens) and it made a big impression on me. Have never forgotten it, and I even made my dad read it. Ricky was the standout 'character' in that book. It was clear early on that he was 1) extremely precocious 2) wildly talented and 3) unabashedly gay. I'll have to google the other family members to find out what became of them. Thanks for the memoir recommendation, and sorry that I have nothing else to offer on the man himself.

by Anonymousreply 141July 29, 2024 9:26 PM

Another "Homes Fires" fan; I hadn't heard about Gordon's memoir and will read it for sure. A year after "Home Fires" was published, one of Ricky's sisters, the journalist Susan Gordon Lydon, published her memoir, "Take The Long Way Home: Memoirs Of A Survivor." She was a good writer, and it's a very honest and powerful account of her life and addiction. She was only 61 when she died of cancer, but, after reading the book, it's seems almost incredible that she made it to that age.

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by Anonymousreply 142July 29, 2024 9:45 PM

Having loved LONG ISLAND recently I wanted to read more Toibin that I'd missed in the past so went for NORA WEBSTER, which some call his masterpiece. But I'm finding it a bit hard to get into after 130 pages. Don't hate it, just find it a bit tedious.

Can someone who's read it and loved it please give me some encouragement to continue?

by Anonymousreply 143July 29, 2024 9:50 PM

A friend of mine is a successful novelist and whose taste is impeccable told me Nora Webster is her favorites Toibin.

by Anonymousreply 144July 30, 2024 1:00 AM

Does [italic]My Brilliant Friend[/italic] take some time to get going? I'm bored and nearing the end of the childhood section.

by Anonymousreply 145July 30, 2024 1:05 AM

R112 I believe the title is What Maisie Knew.

by Anonymousreply 146July 30, 2024 1:23 AM

Also tried to read My Brilliant Friend but gave up after about 100 pages. I don't get why it's so popular.

by Anonymousreply 147July 30, 2024 2:58 AM

I'm finishing My Brilliant Friend right now. It's interesting (although it takes a while to get started--I really didn't care about the grades the narrator received on her elementary school tests, which is what the first 75 pages are about), but the hardest part of it is that Lila/Lina, the narrator's friend, is less interesting than the narrator thinks.

by Anonymousreply 148July 30, 2024 3:06 AM

R153 — I finished ”Nora Webster” recently, and though I admired it, I thought it sort of ended in mid-air, making we wonder if he planned a sequel at some point. But I didn’t love it as much as I did “Brooklyn” and especially “Long Island,” which I thought was great.

Am reading “The Magician” now, about Thomas Mann, and I’m enjoying it but I’m not sure where he’s going with it yet.

by Anonymousreply 149July 30, 2024 4:01 AM

Thanks to r149 and r144 on Nora Webster. For now, I'll continue to read it.......

by Anonymousreply 150July 30, 2024 1:36 PM

I really enjoyed Nora Webster, although it is a quieter novel than many of Toibin's other books.

by Anonymousreply 151July 30, 2024 5:10 PM

“Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts. How To Save Democracy By Beating Republicans At Their Own Game” by Rachel Bitecofer and Aaron Murphy.

When they go low, we should be kicking them in the balls. Repeatedly.

by Anonymousreply 152July 30, 2024 7:18 PM

I liked Nora Webster, but it was quieter, slower than Brooklyn. But thematically, it's similar to LI in that you have this (now middle aged) irish woman that's sort of been shit by those around, finally taking some agency over her life and trying to connect with her (somewhat distant) children.

by Anonymousreply 153July 30, 2024 7:53 PM

While I didn't hate My Brilliant Friend I was put off by the translation. Mind you, I do not speak Italian (other than some Opera Italian and a big handful of food words), but reading MBF was so clanky to me. Lots of using big words when smaller ones would do. (I borrowed and returned a copy from a friend and so cannot give a good example.) Of course, since I don't know Italian, the English translation could have been largely directly from Ferrante's Italian. But somehow it rubbed me wrong, and I was editing the English translation in my head to make it smoother (to me). Needless to say, I didn't read the other three books. But I *very* much enjoyed the HBO filmed version. All the actresses playing Lina and Lila were fantastic. Looking forward to final installment airing.

by Anonymousreply 154July 30, 2024 8:05 PM

Has anyone heard of a new book called THE WINNER by Teddy Wayne? About a young broke tennis pro who's seduced by an older woman, only to fall in love with her precocious daughter? Shades of The Graduate but more of a thriller, I think. Some great reviews out there.

by Anonymousreply 155July 30, 2024 8:57 PM

No, but I've heard good things about his earlier books.

by Anonymousreply 156July 31, 2024 3:12 AM

I loved Teddy Wayne’s novel APARTMENT. It’s excellent. I didn’t know he had a new book out. Will definitely check it out.

by Anonymousreply 157July 31, 2024 6:34 AM

[r113] I just finished All The Colors of the Dark and loved it. Loved the writing style, and it was emotional and suspenseful. Highly recommend

by Anonymousreply 158July 31, 2024 7:35 AM

Getting close to the end of My Brilliant Friend. It got a little better, but I think think the TV version will more engaging. Also suspect the translation is what made the prose so beige.

by Anonymousreply 159July 31, 2024 7:40 AM

I am reading a biography of John Singer Sargent called The Grand Affair by Paul Fisher. I’m enjoying it but it’s a bit of a slog because Sargent traveled across Europe for years and met many artists who are hard to keep track of. I’m only halfway through, but Fisher is also heavily focused in Sargent’s sexuality.

by Anonymousreply 160July 31, 2024 12:56 PM

[italic]Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X [/italic] may be a good companion to this, r160. The author gets into Sargent's gay dalliances while and also goes into detail about the extremely sexy Dr. Pozzi. Take a look at [italic]The Man in The Red Coat[italic] for a fairly recent deep dive on him.

by Anonymousreply 161July 31, 2024 1:09 PM

I have finally gotten around to reading 'Kathy Grffin's Celebrity Run-Ins'. I'm finding the details of some of these people very interesting and very different that what I always assumed.

by Anonymousreply 162July 31, 2024 1:13 PM

Has anyone else seen their reading fall off a cliff this year? I feel like the iPhone has finally rendered me a total idiot. As voracious a book reader as I used to be, no book seems to compete with the idiotic, yet oh so seductive, apps that now demand my full attention. I’m depressed about this yet can’t seem to stop. Anyone else experiencing this?

by Anonymousreply 163July 31, 2024 1:14 PM

Audiobooks help me transition out of times like that.

by Anonymousreply 164July 31, 2024 1:20 PM

No, r163. I've been reading more than ever to avoid the real world. Though, I must say, Kamala is luring me back more and more to MSNBC.

by Anonymousreply 165July 31, 2024 1:35 PM

R163, I'm finding it hard to concentrate these days, so books are taking longer. Also, I've tackled a few that have been on my TBR pile for a while that have proved a slog.

by Anonymousreply 166July 31, 2024 1:42 PM

A librarian told me once to read guilty pleasures when I was in reading droughts, and I read celeb memoirs between all the more serious pursuits for drought prevention.

by Anonymousreply 167July 31, 2024 2:14 PM

R167- I wasn’t exactly reading Faulkner before my drought!

by Anonymousreply 168July 31, 2024 5:45 PM

I'm curious about Craig Willse's "Providence"--it looks like a good gay thriller. Has anyone here read it?

by Anonymousreply 169July 31, 2024 6:50 PM

R169 The "Screens" have turned my mind to mush. It's not pretty. 47% of my journal entries include, "I need to read more. I need to spend less time on social media."

by Anonymousreply 170August 1, 2024 3:15 AM

"Smut" and "The Laying On of Hands," both by Alan Bennett.

by Anonymousreply 171August 1, 2024 3:57 AM

"Jill," by Philip Larkin, the English poet, who only ever wrote two novels. A shy, withdrawn, insecure young man from a working-class family in the north of England who happens to have an excellent mind wins a scholarship to Oxford in 1940, at the start of WW2, thereby being exempt from the draft. To impress his non-studious, rich and privileged roommate, he invents a younger sister, "Jill." Fantasy and reality start to blue. Larkin was only 21 when he wrote the novel, as an Oxford undergraduate himself. Amazingly mature psychological insight.

by Anonymousreply 172August 1, 2024 4:16 AM

*blur, sorry

by Anonymousreply 173August 1, 2024 4:17 AM

Sounds interesting, r172. I believe Larkin was an enthusiastic proponent of Barbara Pym and was responsible for her rediscovery.

by Anonymousreply 174August 1, 2024 1:40 PM

Toweors of Trebizond by Rose Macauley

by Anonymousreply 175August 1, 2024 3:26 PM

I read OUTLINE by Rachel Cusk recently. Very interesting, sometimes beautiful and dark (and even odd) “novel.” I feel committed to reading the two other books in her trilogy now. There’s oftentimes no real plot, just a series of character sketches of people the main character encounters on an academic trip to Athens to teach a writing course, some with quite deep insight.

by Anonymousreply 176August 1, 2024 3:41 PM

I got Booker-nominee [italic]The Safekeep[/italic] from the library yesterday. Am assuming it'll be a relatively quick read, as I'm planning to skip the lesbian sex scenes.

by Anonymousreply 177August 1, 2024 3:45 PM

I couldn't stand that woman in the Cusk novel, so it was an uncomfortable read for me.

by Anonymousreply 178August 1, 2024 3:51 PM

Cusk is a true Marmite writer. Love her or hate her, not many readers are indifferent.

by Anonymousreply 179August 1, 2024 6:02 PM

R178, I agree with you about the main character (whose name is mentioned once and it’s “Faye” - I’ve seen several reviews refer to her as an “unnamed narrator” which I don’t believe is true unless I completely made that moment up in my head).

The fact that so much of the narrative description is about other people and not herself, somehow made it more readable to me. But she is not a likable vessel with whom to take this journey.

by Anonymousreply 180August 1, 2024 6:08 PM

[quote]I'm planning to skip the lesbian sex scenes.

I'm a gay man but found her sex scenes genuinely erotic. You can appreciate the subtlety of her language even if you're not aroused. The build-up of psychological and sexual tension in her story is very well done. Alan Hollinghurst can write a passage describing a sexual encounter between two people with just a few well-chosen words and leave you in no doubt as to who did what to whom, without ever getting explicit. Van der Wouden has that same talent.

This is what The Guardian had to say in its review:

[quote]The middle chapters of the novel contain a series of intense and brilliantly written sex scenes, unafraid of the sneering faux-worldliness that often greets attempts to write about sex even now that the Literary Review’s Bad Sex award has been suspended.

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by Anonymousreply 181August 1, 2024 6:30 PM

Has anyone read Deborah Levy?

by Anonymousreply 182August 1, 2024 6:33 PM

UK DL readers: How is Alan Bennett these days? (Not his books, essays and plays, but his health.)

by Anonymousreply 183August 1, 2024 8:28 PM

I finished [italic]Brooklyn[/italic] last week and thought it very good. I'm 100 pages into [italic]Long Island[/bold] and agree that the simple prose is elegantly dense in its simplicity, but I have never seen a literary universe so plagued by people who suppress themselves in order to prevent scenes from being caused. Don't these people drink so they have an excuse to tell the truth?

by Anonymousreply 184August 5, 2024 9:57 AM

Finished Paul Murray's The Bee Sting in four or five long sittings. Definitely the Best Book That Wasn't a ReRead in a long time for me. Hilarious and horrifying at the same time. I hope someone with taste and skill turns it into a limited series. Staying in Ireland/Dublin and reading Strumpet City by James Plunkett next.

by Anonymousreply 185August 5, 2024 10:14 PM

That's impressive, r185. Those must have been long sittings indeed. I did the audio version on many dog walks. That version was terrific. So satisfying.

by Anonymousreply 186August 6, 2024 12:09 AM

r185, thanks for the rec on Strumpet City. Looked it up and added it to my Wish List. Sounds great.

by Anonymousreply 187August 6, 2024 12:46 AM

Thanks, R75. Taffy’s Long Island Compromise was a good read.

by Anonymousreply 188August 7, 2024 4:41 AM

I just finished The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. There was no denouement so I’m not quite satisfied.

by Anonymousreply 189August 8, 2024 2:17 AM

R189 I read it when it came out and found the whole thing pointless for this very reason. I didn’t even “enjoy the journey” of reading it.

by Anonymousreply 190August 8, 2024 8:20 AM

Well,. fuck that ending to Long Island!

by Anonymousreply 191August 8, 2024 6:51 PM

Lorna's Me and My Shadows is on sale on Kindle for $2.99.

by Anonymousreply 192August 9, 2024 1:07 AM

[quote]I greatly enjoyed “The Crimson Petal and the White, “ until the ending, which I found incredibly disappointing.

I saw many reviews complain about the ending but I thought it was fine. I loved the book, I think it was the last one that made me cry.

by Anonymousreply 193August 9, 2024 1:41 AM

[quote]Well,. fuck that ending to Long Island!

Fuck even calling it Long Island. She spent what, 20% of the book there, the rest in Ireland.

5

by Anonymousreply 194August 9, 2024 3:10 AM

Well, Enniscorthy doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

by Anonymousreply 195August 9, 2024 6:46 AM

Well, you could interpret it as Long Island loomed throughout the story as the place she was missing and knew she belonged.

by Anonymousreply 196August 9, 2024 1:52 PM

Currently reading THE ALTERNATIVES by Irish novelist Caoilinn Hughes, about 3 middle aged sisters who reunite to find their eldest 4th sister when she goes missing, apparently of her own free will. But it's also very much about climate change and the destruction of the earth's resources.

So damn smart and witty, but I constantly fear I'm not intelligent enough to be getting all of it. If you thought THE BEE STING was too hard...........

Though I'm not looking for it, I seem to be drawn to a lot of modern Irish lit these days.

by Anonymousreply 197August 9, 2024 9:27 PM

See you in the book stalls.

by Anonymousreply 198August 9, 2024 9:34 PM

Finished [italic]The Safekeep[/italic] this afternoon. Great writing, and no, the graphic lesbian scenes weren't as intense as I'd feared. Author wildly succeeded in bringing to light the post-war Dutch attitude toward the Holocaust. Definitely interested in more from this debut author!

by Anonymousreply 199August 9, 2024 11:04 PM

R191, I know, right? Lots to talk about in book group about it. And I guess the third in the series must be in the planning stages.

by Anonymousreply 200August 10, 2024 4:19 AM

Reading Erik Larson's latest, "Demon of Unrest." The US has always been 40% hardline sociopaths.

by Anonymousreply 201August 10, 2024 1:05 PM

The Mad Sculptor by Harold Schechter. It's true crime, about some brutal 1930s murders. Really engrossing and well-researched

by Anonymousreply 202August 10, 2024 5:42 PM

I'll always remember how we spent our Friday nights banging on the radiator and yelling "Fuck! Shit!"out the windows.

by Anonymousreply 203August 10, 2024 6:09 PM

Enjoying Greta & Valdin, the New Zealand charmer about a gay man and his lesbian sister. Lots of references out of reach to those who don't live there, but not much of an impediment. Makes me smile.

by Anonymousreply 204August 10, 2024 7:37 PM

I’m listening to the audiobook of The Thursday Murder Club and it’s not working for me.

by Anonymousreply 205August 10, 2024 7:40 PM

I just finished that myself and loved it, but the references are very much my side of the Atlantic. I can see Americans not going well for Americans.

by Anonymousreply 206August 10, 2024 7:43 PM

(r205) Because they replaced Lesley Manville with Fiona Shaw. Bad move. Manville's narration was sublime. Shaw's is very sterile and stiff

by Anonymousreply 207August 10, 2024 7:45 PM

Ah, I listened to Manville.

by Anonymousreply 208August 10, 2024 7:48 PM

R201 Then and now particularly concentrated in South Carolina.

by Anonymousreply 209August 10, 2024 8:02 PM

About to start Before The Coffee Gets Cold, which seems to get universal praise. I'll report back.

by Anonymousreply 210August 12, 2024 9:35 AM

r210 please do!!

by Anonymousreply 211August 12, 2024 11:13 AM

"The Towers of Trebizond" by Rose Macauley.

by Anonymousreply 212August 12, 2024 11:23 AM

Don't know if there are any Graham Swift fans here, I've loved most of this Brit writer's novels over the years (HERE WE ARE and MOTHERING SUNDAY are particular favorites) but I came across a used copy of an early book of his called OUT OF THIS WORLD (1988) and I'm really loving it right now.

by Anonymousreply 213August 16, 2024 3:37 AM

Finished Before The Coffee Gets Cold yesterday, and it lived up to the repute. It's thought-provoking more than it is earth-shattering. Knowing Japanese culture a bit enriches the experience but is by no means required. Reminded me of The Midnight Library with its time travel, but more cozy and moving. It would make a great movie.

by Anonymousreply 214August 16, 2024 4:39 AM

R213, I'll have to check it out. I loved Mothering Sunday

by Anonymousreply 215August 16, 2024 5:48 AM

Unruly, by David Mitchell, was very good. Funny but not unserious. You learn a lot about England's rulers up to Elizabeth I.

In the afterword he mentioned being inspired by Germania by Simon Winder, so that's next for me, right after I read The Pairing by Casey McQuiston of Red White and Royal Blue fame.

by Anonymousreply 216August 16, 2024 7:10 PM

I just read the new JFK, Jr. book by Rosemarie Terenzio and I have to say I was disappointed. Just everyone giving their opinions and one upmanship of who was closest to him and knew him best. Terenzio only worked with him for 5 years and she's making a career out of his death.

I'm halfway through Ed Zwick's Hits, Flops, And Other Illusions, and it's pretty good. Not as juicy as I would like it to be, but he does dish some dirt.

Also on my night stand is Griffin Dunne's The Friday Afternoon Club and Home And Alone by Daniel Stern, which I haven't gotten to yet.

I'm forced to read Hollywood biographies for good gossip since DL has been lacking in this area for quite some time.

by Anonymousreply 217August 16, 2024 10:09 PM

I worked on a play with Daniel Stern about 2 dozen years ago and he was insane. Very unpleasant.

So, I'd be curious to read his bio.

by Anonymousreply 218August 17, 2024 12:02 AM

Just started, but I'm feeling cheated by The Pairing, which seemed to be about two male exes, Theo and Kit, accidentally ending up on a European food and wine tour together and betting which could bed the hot Italian (male) tour guide first.

I'm not super far into it yet, but just as Theo gets to the tour bus (after helping change a keg in a London pub) we find out that Theo is Theodora. WTF?

Obviously still a gay/bi element if her ex Kit is also vying to bed the tour guide, but I feel let down, especially since I'd already been building my mental image of Theo.

Still going to read it, of course, and I'll probably like it.

by Anonymousreply 219August 17, 2024 3:17 AM

Barack Obama's summer reading list:

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by Anonymousreply 220August 17, 2024 9:36 PM

I was looking for a novel matching my mood so I googled "books about loneliness." It recommended "Good Morning, Midnight" by Jean Rhys. It is a stream-of-conciousness novel about a semi-self-exiled English woman in Paris at the end of the 1930s. It brutally describes her mental state as she floats aimlessly from hotel room, to cafe, and to bar in a drunken state. it is highly unsentimental and at times humorous. It's a story about a woman's internal progression toward nothingness and death.

The miserable feeling and setting remind me of Jean Genet. You really get an impression of Paris at that moment; many of the well-know cafes and Paris locales are mentioned- even the 1937 Paris International Exposition.

by Anonymousreply 221August 19, 2024 1:20 AM

Jean Rhys is wonderful, R221. I also recommend the recent biography of her by Miranda Seymour.

A male counterpart to "Good Morning, Midnight" is Coetzee's "Youth," a semi-autobiographical novel(la) (fictionalized memoir) about a shy, impoverished 18-year-old South African student living in 1960s London.

by Anonymousreply 222August 19, 2024 1:27 AM

I read Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea" a couple of months ago. After a slow start, it becomes quite daring and dramatic. It's a prequel to "Jane Eyre," but in some ways reminded me more of my favorite Bronte novel, "Villette."

by Anonymousreply 223August 19, 2024 2:30 AM

Just started our gay book club's choice, Robert Grattan's IN TONGUES, and loving it. Very dry, funny and sexy, about a young gay guy who's moved to NYC from Minneapolis in the late 1990s and becomes a dog walker to the rich and famous.

Only about 40 pages in so that could all change.

by Anonymousreply 224August 19, 2024 2:40 AM

I loved Wide Sargasso Sea

by Anonymousreply 225August 19, 2024 2:40 AM

I'm reading [italic]Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes,[/italic] a fascinating forgotten gay novel from 1966 by a Black author, Henry van Dyke, recently reissued by McNally Editions.

It centers around a young Black man the summer before he goes to Cornell, who has not yet figured out he's gay. He comes to stay with his Aunt Harriet, who is a housekeeper for a wealthy Jewish woman in a small town in Michigan. The Jewish woman constantly mourns for her dead son--and then suddenly a warlock appears who claims he can get in touch with her son's ghost.

It's very campy and funny.

by Anonymousreply 226August 19, 2024 2:48 AM

Read that a few months ago, R226, and loved it. I also recommend the re-issue of "The Girls" by McNally Editions, by the gay author John Bowen.

by Anonymousreply 227August 19, 2024 2:52 AM

I just finished Opposable Thumbs, about Siskel and Ebert. It was very entertaining, and quite touching at the end. God, it made me so nostalgic!

by Anonymousreply 228August 19, 2024 3:16 AM

Apologies, it's Thomas Grattan (not Robert) who wrote IN TONGUES.

Also, I loved THE GIRLS by John Bowen, r227. I think I posted a rave here several months ago.

by Anonymousreply 229August 19, 2024 12:28 PM

Reading "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jeanette McCurdy

by Anonymousreply 230August 19, 2024 12:55 PM

‘We all read like hell!’ How Ireland became the world’s literary powerhouse

‘The Irish just chat about everything. We love telling tales and yarning. There’s no other country where you could talk for an hour about the weather,” says Aisling Cunningham, 57, the owner of Ulysses Rare Books on Duke Street in Dublin.

Sure enough, I have been here for 50 minutes and we have talked at length about everything from the biblical rains of Donegal to why more people who stop into her antiquarian bookshop end up leaving with a copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners than Ulysses itself. (Cunningham reckons it’s because the former is more accessible – although there is also the small matter of the Shakespeare and Company first edition of the latter costing just short of €30,000, about £25,500.)

I am in Dublin to find out why Ireland, a country that you can drive the length of in a few hours, punches so far above its weight when it comes to literature. It has contributed four Nobel literature laureates and six Booker prize winners; its capital was the fourth Unesco City of Literature in 2010; and it’s home to a booming network of magazines, publishers, bookshops, festivals and (whisper it) decently funded libraries. But Ireland’s outsize output of brilliant writing is less of a surprise to the people who live and work here than it is to those across the water who are trying to parse its overrepresentation on prize lists or the cultural dominance of Sally Rooney.

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by Anonymousreply 231August 20, 2024 9:38 PM

Just finished 'Tiepolo Blue' by James Cahill. Don't know if it has yet had any mentions on DL, it was published in '22. It's the sort of novel I imagine could provoke the same amount of discussion as did Tom Crewe's 'The New Life', which I enjoyed and admired greatly.

'Tiepolo Blue' (also a first novel) is set in 1990s Cambridge and London, exploring academia and the art world with acuity and scepticism. A gay sensibility pervades and deepens. For all its sharp recognisable realism, the story can slip often into the dreamlike.

I returned to the novel keenly, intrigued as to how Cahill's vividly evoked characters would fare. 'Tiepolo Blue' is a clever, fascinating, unsettling read.

by Anonymousreply 232August 22, 2024 9:16 AM

Went to my independent bookstore today and took a chance on a new paperback edition of TWO SERIOUS WOMEN by Jane Bowles, with a blurb on the cover by Tennessee Williams calling it his favorite book and a new foreword by Claire Messud.

I'd never heard of it before. Anyone know it?

by Anonymousreply 233August 27, 2024 1:00 AM

Murder City by Michael Lesy. It's about murders in Chicago in the 1920s

by Anonymousreply 234August 27, 2024 1:51 AM

I loved "In Tongues". The ending is a heartbreaker.

by Anonymousreply 235August 27, 2024 2:09 AM

Reading "The Devil at His Elbow" by Valerie Bauerlain about the Murdaugh true crime saga. It's really, really good, compulsively readable, and full of details that were new to me even though I followed the whole sordid mess closely as it was happening. Plus she devotes several chapters to the earlier generations of Murdaughs and the nefarious shit they got up to. Alex's behaviors were part of a 100 year old pattern.

by Anonymousreply 236August 27, 2024 2:33 AM

Recently read Howard Norman's Come to the Window; he is one of my favorite writers. Have just finished Elizabeth Knox's first novel After Z-Hour (quite the ghost story). Knox wrote The Vintner's Luck in the late 1990s, which some of you may remember: Xas the angel and Sobran the Vinter. Got a kick out of Tim Mason's The Nightingale Affair.

Now I turn to Anne Michael's Held, which is on this year's Booker prize long list. And don't hate me for this one: Virtue Ethics edited by Crisp and Slote (Oxford Readings in Philosophy).

Middle brow to low brow to high brow; that's my reading life.

by Anonymousreply 237August 27, 2024 2:40 AM

Hernan Diaz’s TRUST, which I’m loving.

by Anonymousreply 238August 27, 2024 3:01 AM

r224 here, who posted upthread about IN TONGUES. I did indeed love it at first but rather quickly became disenchanted with the young gay narrator who seemed so aimless, artless and self-absorbed.

But it's a short-ish book so I kept reading, wanting to finish it, and lo and behold, the last 40 or so pages were just sort of breath-taking. It's our gay book club pick so I'll be very interested in hearing everyone else's opinions.

r235, I wonder if you had a similar experience?

by Anonymousreply 239August 27, 2024 4:39 AM

"The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray - loving it!!

by Anonymousreply 240August 27, 2024 4:42 AM

r223, I re-read TWO SERIOUS WOMEN this summer. It's very quirky but extremely charming.

by Anonymousreply 241August 27, 2024 4:46 AM

Grover Dale's memoir A BOY LIKE THAT. Should have written it 20 years ago. It's frustratingly simplistic (and self-published it seems), without much insight into his private life. His great love seems to have been Anita Morris, but it was pretty much men before and after (including of course Tony Perkins and Larry Kert.) Still. his career was a lot more crowded with achievement than I realized and he has a lot of good stories about Jerome Robbins, whom he revered.

by Anonymousreply 242August 27, 2024 8:54 PM

My god, if anyone has Broadway Gossip it's Grover Dale, even if it may be 40 or 50 years old. I wonder why he hasn't been more forthcoming at this point in his life? I imagine most of the stories would be of celebs long dead.

by Anonymousreply 243August 27, 2024 8:59 PM

I'm looking forward to Alan Hollinghurst's new book, "Our Evenings," to be released in October.

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by Anonymousreply 244August 27, 2024 9:00 PM

**Sorry, I realize I sounded like a shill there, but I know Hollinghurst has his fans here on "Book DL."

by Anonymousreply 245August 27, 2024 9:04 PM

Hollinhurst is gay, gay, gay, and then some more gay. (Silly gay in many ways.) But damn, the boy can write a sentence. I am looking forward to Our Evenings.

by Anonymousreply 246August 27, 2024 9:51 PM

Has anyone here read the recent Candy Darling bio?

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by Anonymousreply 247August 28, 2024 12:12 AM

Hollinghurst is important because he is a superb novelist, one of the great stylists of our era. We're lucky that he's gay.

by Anonymousreply 248August 28, 2024 1:07 AM

One of Grover's anecdotes has him and Perkins living cozily in La with their respective wives, when Tony—only once, mind you—suggests the two guys go off and do it, like in the old days. Grover declines, saying he doesn't believe in cheating. I rolled my eyes. Dale's sunny optimism throughout gets more than a little schmaltzy; Maybe he holds back on the hot stuff so as not to embarrass his son Badge.

by Anonymousreply 249August 28, 2024 1:19 AM

R248. I agree.

by Anonymousreply 250August 28, 2024 2:59 PM

I just finished "The Stories of John Cheever", the collection from the late 1970s. I was a fan before, but this time I was really struck by his use of language and what a pleasure it was to stop reading and look up the definition of some of his word choices. I am impressed by his sense of humor- is it kind of an American (New England) understatement?

Previously I was blown away by "The Swimmer", but this time rereading it and having seen the movie adaptation from the 1960s, I marveled at how, by adding characters not in the original story, it made something equally valid and new. I loved rereading the last story in the collection "The Jewels of the Cabots". There is a strong and wonderful sense he is able to conjure of the past, filtered through memories flinging back and forth in the brain.

by Anonymousreply 251August 29, 2024 2:02 AM

R251. The short story is his true metier, but I think his Wapshot books and his late novel, “Falconer,” in which he actually does include gay material, are superbly written.

Just received the new Christopher Isherwood biography. Reviews are all over the place, but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.

by Anonymousreply 252August 29, 2024 5:09 AM

[quote]Just received the new Christopher Isherwood biography.

There’s a new one? What’s left to be said? He left a mound of diaries.

by Anonymousreply 253August 29, 2024 8:28 AM

Just around around to the classic THE LEOPARD by Lampadusa — fantastic book, I can’t put it down.

by Anonymousreply 254August 29, 2024 3:14 PM

Coincidentally, I just read a memoir by an American woman who was Claudia Cardinale's assistant for a couple of years and she writes about being on the set of Visconti's film of "The Leopard." The book is "Chasing the Panther: Adventures and Misadventures in a Cinematic Life" by Carolyn Pfeiffer, and it's much better than its title (and cover) suggest. She's well into her 80s now, and published the book last year. She grew up in North Carolina and started college there, but dropped out in the late 1950s and moved to New York, where she worked for Helena Rubinstein and as an artist's model, and had a lot of fun. In 1960, after a couple of her New York friends moved to Europe, she followed and spent the next 16 years living and working in Rome, Paris, and London. She worked for Cardinale, Alain Delon, and Omar Sharif, and the Italian screenwriter Suso Checchi d'Amico became like a second mother to her (she was engaged to Suso's son for two years). She has an interesting perspective on celebrity, and (with her co-author) writes thoughtfully about her encounters with the famous, particularly Sharif, who was a genuinely lovely and loyal employer and friend, in spite of his addictions to gambling and womanizing. After she and a friend set up a successful public relations firm in Swinging London. there is too much name dropping, but I loved the chapters about growing up in a small town, exploring art and culture in Manhattan, and her love affairs (with the non-famous). When Sharif is filming "Genghis Khan" in Yugoslavia, she has an intense affair with a member of the crew in Belgrade, and then when "Doctor Zhivago" is being shot in Spain, she meets the married crew member who becomes an on-and-off addiction for the next 10 years; both of these relationships are recalled in a way I could relate to and found very moving. She also writes about a harrowing abortion in Italy performed by a sadistic doctor, and being brutally raped by one of Delon's sadistic bodyguards. In London, she faces another personal tragedy, but perseveres. Interesting life, good book.

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by Anonymousreply 255August 30, 2024 7:49 PM

I recall there being some fans of first-rate audio narrator Julia Whelan (The New Yorker called her “the Adele of Audiobooks”) on this or an earlier thread. She has created her own audiobooks app called Audiobrary and recently released Philip Dean Walker’s AT DANCETERIA which I know has some fans here as well. Julia is second to none in the industry and shines in her narrations here (loved her Liza Minnelli and Andy Warhol voices). The author also narrates two of the stories including my favorite in the collection (“The Boy Who Lived Nect to the Boy Next Door”). Walker was one of Andrew Holleran’s mentees.

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by Anonymousreply 256August 30, 2024 9:16 PM

‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ sweeps Japan after a 50-year delay

The 1967 novel by Gabriel García Márquez has become the publishing phenomenon of the summer in Japan, largely due to the upcoming release of the Netflix series based on the book

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by Anonymousreply 257August 31, 2024 9:21 PM

John Meachem's bio of Lincoln, "And There Was Light".

Meticulously researched and so instructive on the evolution of AL's views.

by Anonymousreply 258August 31, 2024 10:41 PM

I don't suppose Prof. Meacham delves into Abe's affair with Joshua Speed when they were both young'uns sharing a bed, r258?

Or does he?

by Anonymousreply 259August 31, 2024 10:46 PM

Well, he doesn't call it an affair -- but he does mention that Speed offered to share his bed with Lincoln when he first arrived in Springfield -- and Lincoln accepted.

by Anonymousreply 260September 1, 2024 12:15 PM

No omention of a bundling board either.

by Anonymousreply 261September 1, 2024 12:19 PM

But it isn't "meticulously researched" if they don't mention his love letters to Speed.

by Anonymousreply 262September 1, 2024 12:26 PM

Just re-read Philip Roth's American Pastoral trilogy -- masterful writing, characterizations of human beings, lots of stuff about New Jersey. Prescient in its political message. Yeah, he ruminates a LOT and he could have trimmed The Human Stain substantially, but .... I love the way he writes.

by Anonymousreply 263September 1, 2024 12:36 PM

Loved The Human Stain, my favorite in the trilogy. Eventually, I want to re-read that one.

There were parts of the other two that were spectacular, but a lot was a chore to get through, like medicine that good for you.

r263, have you ever read Roth's Letting Go, his first? A relatively light read and quite wonderful.

by Anonymousreply 264September 1, 2024 2:25 PM

I'm not r263, but Letting Go was my favorite book for years. Only when good gay fiction began appearing was it knocked out of first place.

by Anonymousreply 265September 1, 2024 2:41 PM

Recommended: Sidney Blumenthal’s books on Lincoln are very dense but the analysis of the politics of Lincoln’s time is very interesting. You get a real flavor and texture of the times, and realize there was never a time in Loncoln’t life when slavery was THE issie that divided Americans — that division was always there and the tension only grew throughout the 1840s and 1850s. And there is much on the origin of the Republican party of the time, and the dying out of the Whigs.

by Anonymousreply 266September 1, 2024 2:52 PM

[quote]it isn't "meticulously researched" if they don't mention his love letters to Speed

That does not follow, logically. It could be a detail he chose to omit.

by Anonymousreply 267September 1, 2024 4:58 PM

It'snot a detail R267, but you have internalized homophobia.

by Anonymousreply 268September 1, 2024 5:45 PM

What would be a reason for omitting that detail, r267?

Meacham may not believe Lincoln was gay but there'd be no reason not to write in detail about his companion Josua Speed, include their letters to each other and allow the reader to make up their own mind about their relationship.

by Anonymousreply 269September 1, 2024 7:30 PM

R269 You may the novel "Courting Mr. Lincoln," by Louis Bayard, about the Lincoln/Speed/Todd throuple.

by Anonymousreply 270September 1, 2024 7:47 PM

I read it and loved it, r270. Eagerly awaiting Bayard's latest book, THE WILDES about Oscar Wilde, his wife Constance and their two sons. HIs historical novels are fabulous.

by Anonymousreply 271September 2, 2024 12:16 AM

How to make a meal out of my husbands delicious ass

by Anonymousreply 272September 2, 2024 1:35 AM

[quote]It'snot a detail [R267], but you have internalized homophobia.

Would you please post a link to said 'love letters'? All I can find are L's disquisitions about politics.

And this is all Wiki says about the relationship (no mention of 'love letters'):

[quote]Although bed-sharing between same sexes was a reasonably common practice in this period, it is unusual for it to have occurred over such a prolonged time. This has led to speculation regarding Lincoln's sexuality, although this evidence is circumstantial.

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by Anonymousreply 273September 2, 2024 11:53 AM

It would also be helpful it you could excerpt / highlight the passages clearly indicative of a sexual / romantic relationship.

by Anonymousreply 274September 2, 2024 12:00 PM

Lover of Men, a documentary of Lincoln and his relationship with Speed (and also a bodyguard) will be released on Sept 6. Google it - a bunch of articles explaining the academics who are part of the film, the rationale, the "evidence"...

It's not something that will be resolved.... there are few "smoking guns" from the past that satisfies/proves what we who have lived in the past 100 years define as "gay identity or orientation"

by Anonymousreply 275September 2, 2024 4:49 PM

Jeff Sharlett "The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War" He really understands Trumpists. He also understands other. I got hooked on the opening essay on Harry Belafonte because I experienced something similar. Anytime gay rights advanced in the 90s and early 00's, some Christian right nutter was sure to launch a personal attack on me.

by Anonymousreply 276September 2, 2024 5:16 PM

Bed haring was common because sex was common. Human nature hasn't changed and if it has the burden of proof lies on those who would claim it, not on us.

by Anonymousreply 277September 2, 2024 5:17 PM

I don't have a link to share on the Lincoln/Speed letters, but I do remember reading some that were published and to a modern ear, they come off as achingly passionate, if not exactly sexual. Of course, there will always be those scholars who insist: "Oh that's just the way everybody talked back then."

Jane Austen might disagree. Hell, even Mark Twain would disagree.

by Anonymousreply 278September 2, 2024 6:50 PM

I just finished Requiem for A Dream. Dear God how depressing. I inordinately pick bad news books on kindle. I’m not sure why. I guess I think I will learn something. It was One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest depressing. I’m gonna try to find something more cheerful in my next bunch.

by Anonymousreply 279September 2, 2024 7:17 PM

What about Mike Nichols past needs to be sanitized?

by Anonymousreply 280September 2, 2024 7:26 PM

His cocksucking, for one, R280.

by Anonymousreply 281September 2, 2024 7:59 PM

[quote]Bed haring was common because sex was common. Human nature hasn't changed and if it has the burden of proof lies on those who would claim it, not on us.

Melville in Moby Dick has Queequeg sharing a bed with Ishmael. Don't remember any sex in that scene. I read one of the 'passionate' Speed letters, and the 'affair' that AL refers to seems to be his nervous breakdown after the death of Ann Rutledge, whom he was going to marry. His friends thought him suicidal. He soon moved from New Salem to Springfield, where he met Speed. Rutledge's death was still very heavy on his mind.

The 'evidence' is indeed circumstantial. There is nothing proving a sexual relationship with Speed.

by Anonymousreply 282September 3, 2024 12:05 PM

Take the Lincoln shit to another thread, toots. Y'all are rude.

by Anonymousreply 283September 3, 2024 2:57 PM

He was not going to marry Rutledge. Hay made that one up.

by Anonymousreply 284September 3, 2024 3:02 PM

I'm enjoying Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy, some light fun reading for me, for a change. It's about a nerdy female comedy writer on a TV show (clearly based on SNL), who seems like she'll be having an affair with the guest rock star host. I'm about 60 pages in.

Chick lit but quite smart and funny, I think.

by Anonymousreply 285September 3, 2024 3:09 PM

JFK Jr by his secretary compiled oral history by his closest friends.. After Mummy left the scence the clock was ticking for this himbo.

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by Anonymousreply 286September 3, 2024 3:10 PM

Another vote on how well Bayard maneuvered the Lincoln/Speed relationship i his book by using fact, imagination, and speculation to describe it. It's a strong attraction that may or may not be physical.

by Anonymousreply 287September 3, 2024 4:29 PM

R286 Takeaway : John John enjoyed wrestling with his bros in the steamroom.

by Anonymousreply 288September 3, 2024 4:33 PM

R280 Nichols was a voracious bisexual. JBKO and Carly Simon's dream man. He luved the D as in Dick and LSD. Bedded Jackie,Diane Sawyer and Richard Avedon. All this despite being totally hairless due to alopecia. "Jaks hand me my hair. Di are my eyebrows on? "Powder must have had schlong to die for.

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by Anonymousreply 289September 3, 2024 6:51 PM

Has anyone read a 2015 thrilled called DISCLAIMER by Renee Knight?

Hearing amazing things about it as it's the basis of a new Cate Blanchette/Alphonse Cuaron film. Fortunately, just found it in my library and will devour it next weekend. I'll report back if it's any good.

by Anonymousreply 290September 3, 2024 8:15 PM

The year I fucked em all

by Anonymousreply 291September 3, 2024 11:17 PM

[quote]Has anyone read a 2015 thrilled called DISCLAIMER by Renee Knight?

I read it back in 2017. According to my review on Goodreads, I enjoyed it -- I called it a "good, twisty, domestic noir" -- but I can't for the life of me remember anything about it today.

by Anonymousreply 292September 4, 2024 6:47 AM

I just finished The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne. It was really good, but very sad. He's got some great stories but his sister's murder and trial were heartbreaking.

I'm now going to start Earth To Moon, by Moon Zappa. I'm not a fan of Frank but I'm sure she has some good stories.

by Anonymousreply 293September 4, 2024 7:20 AM

Composer Ricky Ian Gordon’s memoir, “Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera,” is quite extraordinary.

by Anonymousreply 294September 4, 2024 4:46 PM

^^^ Agree that it is very compelling and well-written, even when there is often TMI about nearly everything he writes about. But his passion is impressive and the book gave me a new appreciation of his nusical work, which has sometimes left me cold.

by Anonymousreply 295September 4, 2024 5:02 PM

Has anyone managed to finish The Fourth Wing? I’m stalled at Chapter 9. The author’s husband is military, and you can tell. Look, I liked the Hunger Games, I like a good formulaic dystopia.

But this is like Divergent, but shitter. Does it get better?

by Anonymousreply 296September 4, 2024 5:25 PM

See you in the book stalls.

by Anonymousreply 297September 4, 2024 5:38 PM

I just wanted to thank the several people who recommended “The Covenant of Water.” It’s not the type of novel I’d ordinarily read, but I’m so glad I did.

by Anonymousreply 298September 6, 2024 1:58 PM

I thought someone upthread recommended Howard Sherman's THE MUSEUM GUIDE, but a quick search as not led me to their post.

Anyway, started it last night and just loving it. Reminds me a bit of A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW and a couple of John Irving's best novels though I really have no idea where it's going. Which, for me, is a very good thing.

by Anonymousreply 299September 9, 2024 2:25 PM

Finally started Demon Copperhead and, 100 pages in, I'm a little skeptical. As a big fan of David Copperfield, I keep comparing the two and being thrown back to Dickens and how Kingsolver echoes him. So in a sense I'm reading both books at once and not appreciating her work as I should be, Any thoughts from those who have read it?

by Anonymousreply 300September 9, 2024 3:08 PM

I gave up on Demon Copperhead after about 50 pages. It all seemed like a pointless academic assignment to me. A gimmick.

by Anonymousreply 301September 9, 2024 3:41 PM

I like cosmic horror so on a recommendation I’m reading The Fisherman, by John Langan. It’s set in upstate NY near the Ashokan reservoir, where I’ve spent some time in a previous life, and it’s been well received so I thought I’d try it. It’s about an older man who befriends a younger guy at work (IBM) because they’re both recent widowers, and they bond through a shared love of freshwater fishing. They fish the various creeks and streams in the Kingston/poughkeepsie area but have an horrific, Cthulhu-esque experience.

The book turned into an incredible slog for me.

It’s genre fiction, so is full of cringey homespun folksy writing. Every other sentence contains a metaphor, and Langan doesn’t seem to know how to convey thoughts and emotions without drubbing you over the head. For instance, at one point his narrator (the older widower) says “if this were a movie, this would be the part where something happens and the ominous music plays.” Gee, thanks John. I love being treated like I’m ten years old.

Langan is the kind of author who writes things like “He cut right through it, like a hot knife through soft butter.”

But I could hold my nose and swallow all that, if he didn’t completely derail his story after the first this has been told. The horrific encounter the two guys endure ultimately derives from the Esopus area, which was later flooded and turned into the Ashokan reservoir. Now, that’s an interesting idea for horror — areas that used to contain villages but later get flooded are always a bit creepy — but he dwells on this, not for thirty sentences, or thirty pages, but seemingly for THIRTY YEARS.

It’s excruciating. The flashback goes on for chapter after chapter after chapter. What we get of these late nineteenth century people is that a collection of trite stereotypes about immigrants with old timey names like “Lottie.”

The flashback is supposedly an account of the reservoirs dark history, told to our two protagonists at a diner by an old cook as a warning about fishing in a certain area. But we get ENDLESS and intricate descriptions of every single thing the characters are saying and doing — things the old cook at the diner could not possibly know because he wasn’t there. And even if he were, we don’t care.

I’m going to keep reading it because I’m a completist. But I’m into over a hundred pages of the flashback and I feel like it will never end.

by Anonymousreply 302September 9, 2024 3:46 PM

Correction — it’s very early 20th century, not late nineteenth. Lagan doesn’t give dates. I just looked it up and the reservoir was created 1907-15.

by Anonymousreply 303September 9, 2024 3:53 PM

Just started reading [italic]Bury Your Gays[/italic] by Chuck Tingle. I'm only a few chapters in but am liking it so far.

by Anonymousreply 304September 9, 2024 4:14 PM

Listened to The Master which I thoroughly enjoyed, it’s been on my list for a while. Didn’t expect to see so many mentions of it here. I was absolutely fascinated by the character of Burgess Noakes and kept hoping with every mention of his name that the narrative would open out to include a Jamesian obsession with him. Didn’t happen but I still love the possibility of it.

Also, finally listened to The Great Believers which, being a former Chicagoan primarily during the 1980s, I did enjoy. Brought back a lot of memories of people, places, love and loss. Nobody really talks about the AIDS crisis - which, in the U.S. was at least 15 long years - so I always feel a sense of gratification and appreciation for these works. It feels like confirmation that it all really did happen. Could’ve done without the subplot about the daughter and the cult though.

Just finished listening to Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall, I am familiar with the subject matter. This is probably better in print as the female narrator was monotonous to the point of sounding like AI and the book apparently doesn’t have much in the way of transitions or even just signposting as it offers potted histories of Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochot, Gaddafi, Berlusconi, Bolsonaro, Putin, some other South American dictators and Trump. It ends up reading like an endless litany of their atrocities and crimes against humanity and at certain points, I questioned if the audience for this was actually sadists looking for validation and inspiration. There was little in the way of actual analysis. Given the author’s public speaking, I found it a bit of a disappointment though it is clear that EVERYTHING Trump does is right out of the authoritarian playbook including the allegedly staged assassination attempt. Listening to Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy Inc. now, which is well written and read by the author and does connect the dots in a compelling way; I did really like and recommend her book, Twilight of Democracy. As I enjoyed Kurt Anderson’s Fantasyland, I think I’m going to try his Evil Geniuses next.

Have actually been re-reading, in print, Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” quartet (Gilead, Home, Lila, Jack), which I love and has been in my nightstand stack for many years because I regularly cycle through them. I’m not a person of faith but I find her skill as a writer so impressive, and the ever present state of grace and humanity in her novels so compelling.

by Anonymousreply 305September 9, 2024 4:20 PM

R305, have you read At Danceteria or Better Davis? Both books explore the early days of the AIDS epidemic through a lens of celebrity. The author is friends with Rebecca Makkai (The Great Believers).

I would also recommend Tim Murphy’s Christdora which covers similar ground as Makkai’s novel.

by Anonymousreply 306September 9, 2024 4:31 PM

Books like Demon Copperhead and the erosion of brain and attention span that the digital miasma has created have made me start to give up on novels. Colin Whitehead as case in point... "his reputation" makes me read him, but it feels like work.

Demon Copperhead felt like work.

by Anonymousreply 307September 9, 2024 7:15 PM

Is there an ISBN for Museum Guide, R299? I can't seem to find mention of it anywhere by searching.

by Anonymousreply 308September 9, 2024 8:31 PM

I loved The Great Believers, and actually felt the missing daughter subplot and the old lady and her paintings subplot only added more to the entire epic story. I'm waiting a couple more years to reread it.

Also really enjoyed Makkai's follow-up I Have Some Questions for You and look forward to hearing about her next one.

by Anonymousreply 309September 9, 2024 9:41 PM

Lick it

by Anonymousreply 310September 9, 2024 10:05 PM

R300- I cut bait halfway through. It started off strong for me, but then it increasingly felt like a slog until I just couldn’t handle reading another page. It was annoying because it’s a big book and even reading half of it is a time suck.

by Anonymousreply 311September 10, 2024 2:03 AM

Just 100 pages into TRUST, the Pulitzer prize winner from 2022. It’s okay except the characters feel two-dimensional and the situations exaggerated. I get a sort of John Irving vibe from the writing, and while I loved Irving 100 years ago, the whimsy here is kind of tedious.

Still, it’s an easy read, and I gather it doesn’t come together until Diaz starts retelling the narrative from other points of view, so I’ll stick with it for now..

As a palate-cleanser, I’m reading the recently re-issued SKINFLICK, an entry in Joseph Hansen’s hard-boiled detective series featuring gay insurance claims investigator Dave Brandstetter. They’re quite good if you like that sort of thing and I do.

by Anonymousreply 312September 10, 2024 4:29 AM

"When the United States Spoke French" by Francois Furstenberg. Better than I thought it was going to be.

by Anonymousreply 313September 10, 2024 5:30 AM

Recommended for ladies of eloquence.

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by Anonymousreply 314September 10, 2024 10:20 AM

R312. I loved the Dave Brandstetter novels when I was just coming. They were wonderful versions of the hard-boiled detective genre with an admirable, “everyday Joe” gay people.

by Anonymousreply 315September 10, 2024 10:50 AM

I will never understand the praise and awards for TRUST. I figured out what the big revelation was in the last part half-way through reading the book. Frankly, there wasn't any other way it could end.

by Anonymousreply 316September 10, 2024 1:57 PM

R300, I gave up after around 100 pages. Usually, 50 pages are my cutoff point, but because I had heard such rave reviews I thought I’d stick with the book a bit more and then regretted it.

by Anonymousreply 317September 12, 2024 10:44 PM

All I can think is Demon Copperhead fans are people who never read David Copperfield.

by Anonymousreply 318September 12, 2024 11:36 PM

Long Island Comprise by Taffy Broedeser-Ackner. One family’s rise and fall to and from being the richest family in a fictional Great Neck.

by Anonymousreply 319September 13, 2024 12:20 AM

R319- I’m reading this too and LOVING it. She is a great writer. I find the entire novel so engrossing.

by Anonymousreply 320September 13, 2024 12:28 AM

Yet r318, the reviews from major critics were largely positive. And I doubt if the Pulitzer judges were unaware of Copperfield.

by Anonymousreply 321September 13, 2024 12:30 AM

Garth Greenwell’s new novel, Small Rain, was panned by the NYT.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 322September 15, 2024 11:00 PM

I hated Small Clit

by Anonymousreply 323September 15, 2024 11:14 PM

Garth is a very boring writer. Anyone read the review in WSJ? It's behind a paywall.

by Anonymousreply 324September 16, 2024 1:56 AM

Booker shortlist: JAMES, ORBITAL, HELD, SAFE KEEP, CREATION LAKE, STONE COLD DEVOTIONAL. Anyone read any of these?

by Anonymousreply 325September 16, 2024 7:41 PM

Reading the new Kate Atkinson book, Death at the Sign of the Rook, after having re-read the entire Jackson Bridge series this summer. Liking it so far!

by Anonymousreply 326September 16, 2024 10:47 PM

Stupid spell check. Jackson Brodie.

by Anonymousreply 327September 16, 2024 10:48 PM

Call me a prude, but it was the early scene in Cleanness, Greenwell’s last novel, when a trick pissed in his narrator's mouth that turned me off him for good.

by Anonymousreply 328September 16, 2024 10:56 PM

I drink piss

by Anonymousreply 329September 16, 2024 10:58 PM

^^^^ MARY!

by Anonymousreply 330September 16, 2024 11:07 PM

I liked Demon Copperhead but agree that it is too long, specially the last part. The addition narrative goes on and on. I heard an interview with Kingsolver where she tell that she cut and cut and cut, that the original was much longer. Also, i was expecting that the story would movie beyond his teenager years, like David Copperfield.

Just read The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’farrell, based on an episode from Renaissance history (the marriage of Lucrezia di Medici with Alfonso Ii of Ferrara, which ends with her suspicious death at 16. It’s entertaining but has some very irritating inventions.

by Anonymousreply 331September 16, 2024 11:24 PM

At Swim, Two Boys suddenly became available in Kindle Unlimited. I'm going to give it another shot, though I've tried twice without making it to thirty pages.

by Anonymousreply 332September 19, 2024 2:18 AM

Moon Zappa's book is worth your time. Good observations on people having different experiences of parents, the consequences of bowing to so-called genius, how people heal from shitty parenting, and general zeitgeist name dropping fun.

Also zoomed through Conclave, so I could get that read before seeing the movie. I knew there was a good chance it was, but it was a Boomer airport paperback that didn't tell me anything I didn't know.

by Anonymousreply 333September 19, 2024 12:14 PM

Good luck, r332. It's worth the effort. The language can be difficult, but if you just plow through you'll find it starts to clarify, even if you don't get every detail. I'm guessing an audible version would be helpful, but I'm not sure there is one.

by Anonymousreply 334September 19, 2024 1:07 PM

R332 R334 Yep, I've tried a couple times - At Swim Two Birds is one of my favorite novels, and the story of the two kids is compelling, but I get in about 30 pages, see how long the book is and how SLOWLY I am making progress, my have this "life is too short to finish this" result.

Long books: it's curious to me how some long books, whether I like them a lot or not, I can finish (Like: War and Peace, Underworld, 2666. Dislike: A Little Life. Overwhelmed: Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses) - but some I just can't stay with: The Recognitions, IQ84, Against the Day, In Search of Lost Time, Bleak House etc... all sitting on the shelf with bookmarks stuck in them.

by Anonymousreply 335September 19, 2024 3:50 PM

Taste in fiction is extremely subjective and often not related to intelligence or one's education and upbringing or even patience. Reading any book is a commitment, it's not the same as sitting through a film or play. Some of my best and smartest friends have very different tastes in fiction than I do and I respect that.

So, I always say, don't be hard on yourself if you're not enjoying a book and want to just move on.

by Anonymousreply 336September 19, 2024 4:11 PM

R336 reminds me of what might have been Martin Amis's last interview on camera. In that he said, with some animation, If a book isn't working for you, just toss it aside. This from one of the best-read men then alive, who had for a time been a Professor of literature. Probably he was acutely aware of time slipping away, and had no patience with the notion of dutiful reading.

by Anonymousreply 337September 19, 2024 4:28 PM

I just discovered BookTube on YouTube, specifically Steve Donoghue, who I am binge watching. Many of the others come across as dull but Steve has such zest, he's very entertaining to watch and so well read.

I believe he is gay, does anyone know? He's always joking about shirtless skyping with other, younger booktubers, and about his 'surly houseboy' and how he used to be surrounded by a pack of teen to twenty something weightlifters, one of whom belonged to him. His friend David Murphy who visits periodically, is cute in a nerdy way.

He makes me want to fly to Boston and visit The Brattle Bookshop, that's for sure.

by Anonymousreply 338September 19, 2024 8:07 PM

Steve is very entertaining and most certainly gay. But he is also narcissistic and a blowhard. Hard to believe he's read as much as he says he has. And that he is as much of a dig whisperer. He seems to be luring David Murphy out of the closet (if Murphy is indeed gay). Look out for Steve's Best and Worst Books of the year. It's quite a lot of fun.

by Anonymousreply 339September 19, 2024 9:33 PM

I've read At Swim, Two Boys three times, if not four (and am often tempted to read it yet again). For me -- and those are the operative words -- it gets better every time I read it. I'll admit that the first time was a bit heavy going early on, but once your mental ear adjusts to the novel's innate Irishness you'll enjoy it more. Or maybe not -- perhaps it's Just Not For You, and there's nothing wrong with that. It also helps if you know even a little bit about early 20th-century Irish political history (that history is somehow clearer in the re-reads). Maybe it would help if you picture a teenage Colin Farrell as Doyler? It worked for me. (An audible version could be fantastic with the right actors. If I had more money than I knew what to do with I'd produce a limited series TV version.)

by Anonymousreply 340September 19, 2024 9:41 PM

The Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux.

Interesting look into India and into human nature by an American writer.

by Anonymousreply 341September 19, 2024 10:37 PM

r339-- dig=dog

by Anonymousreply 342September 20, 2024 12:11 AM

You migth enjoy Joseph Campbell's book on India R341

by Anonymousreply 343September 20, 2024 1:13 PM

"A Very Irregular Head," a biography of Syd Barrett.

by Anonymousreply 344September 20, 2024 1:46 PM

Finished the new Kate Atkinson novel in the Jackson Brodie series, Death at the Sign of the Rook. I really enjoyed it, sort of a deconstruction of a golden era country house mystery.

by Anonymousreply 345September 20, 2024 7:08 PM

The Joseph Campbell book I was thinking of was "Baksheesh and Brahman;" Of course India only had about 400 million people back then.

by Anonymousreply 346September 21, 2024 3:49 AM

I've been hearing very disparaging things about the new Atkinson Brodie book so it's good to read your rave, r345. Used to love her but I've been very disappointed in her last three efforts.

by Anonymousreply 347September 21, 2024 4:17 AM

R344 Pink Floyd's song Wish You Were Here was written about/for him.

by Anonymousreply 348September 21, 2024 4:36 AM

I’ve entered the hockey phase of my M/M romances and, honestly, it’s not bad.

by Anonymousreply 349September 21, 2024 3:08 PM

I'm reading Call for the Dead (the earliest George SMiley book) and The Epic of Gilgamesh. How's that for variety?

by Anonymousreply 350September 21, 2024 3:34 PM

r349 any suggestions?

by Anonymousreply 351September 21, 2024 3:38 PM

[quote] I loved The Great Believers

On my list. I think I tried to read 15 or so pages (I usually give a book 50-100 before giving up) and hadn't quite got into the story yet and set it aside, so I need to pick it back up and give it another go.

by Anonymousreply 352September 21, 2024 3:40 PM

I read "Unpopular Essays" by Bertrand Russell. Wonderful curmudgeon and writes very clearly for a philosopher.

by Anonymousreply 353September 21, 2024 4:27 PM

Finally getting to Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy. It's entertaining, but it's giving sibling to Dr. Who.

by Anonymousreply 354September 21, 2024 4:39 PM

R351, listened to a few by Sarina Bowen and they were fun.

by Anonymousreply 355September 21, 2024 5:27 PM

Thanks R346.

I just started "Shantaram", which is a project. I do love Joseph Campbell, tho, so I hope I get to that.

by Anonymousreply 356September 21, 2024 11:18 PM

[R347], In the lead up to the new Jackson Brodie being released, I re-read the entire series. I read them as they originally came out, so it had been many years on the older ones. I remembered anew why I love Atkinson's writing so much. I discovered her before this series came along, when she'd only published her first three novels (which I now need to re-read).

While I do think the earliest books in the series are the best, I still enjoyed the entire series and didn't feel there had been any great decline in quality.

Overall, I still think Life After Life is my favorite thing she's written.

The only thing I haven't read is Shrines of Gaiety. I have a copy, but I just couldn't get into it when I tried to read it. I will try again one of these days.

by Anonymousreply 357September 21, 2024 11:18 PM

I was also a huge fan of Atkinson going back to HUMAN CROQUET and BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM, I think her 2 earliest books. But she hit a wall with TRANSCRIPTION and hasn't recovered yet. SHRINES OF GAIETY has great period atmosphere and characters but no plot.

by Anonymousreply 358September 22, 2024 4:14 AM

Prepare for disappointment with the second half of Shantaram.

by Anonymousreply 359September 22, 2024 8:26 AM

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr Suess

by Anonymousreply 360September 22, 2024 7:36 PM

Any Sally Rooney fans? I've been warned away from her, but her popularity intrigues me.

by Anonymousreply 361September 24, 2024 11:52 PM

Therese Raquin. It was putrid filth.

by Anonymousreply 362September 24, 2024 11:53 PM

"One hundred fifty years of Harper's Magazine" probably the best one volume survey of American literature out there.

by Anonymousreply 363September 25, 2024 4:23 AM

I've started LIKE A LOVE STORY. What LGBTQ novels in the YA category do you recommend?

by Anonymousreply 364September 25, 2024 8:56 PM

Looks like the new Hollinghurst is a winner.

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by Anonymousreply 365September 27, 2024 5:09 AM

Really looking forward to reading the new Hollinghurst, and seeing him in conversation at a book event. Autumn offers its pleasures.

by Anonymousreply 366September 27, 2024 8:36 AM

Can't wait to read the new Hollinghurst, but I'm absolutely loving Louis Bayard's THE WILDES about Oscar Wilde, his wife and two sons. Utterly delicious writing, can't put it down and don't want it to end. Of course, Bosie and hid dad are also major characters.

by Anonymousreply 367September 27, 2024 1:55 PM

Bayard is terrific.

by Anonymousreply 368September 27, 2024 6:05 PM

Has anyone read Richard Osman's latest mystery WE SOLVE MURDERS featuring a new duo of detectives? The reviews have been stellar but friends who've read were somewhat disappointed.

by Anonymousreply 369October 1, 2024 3:25 AM

The Murder Club books were so full of deep British references that I was surprised the series did so well.

by Anonymousreply 370October 1, 2024 4:51 PM

R369: As a lover of the Thursday Murder Club books, I resisted We Solve Murders, and wasn’t grabbed after the first two or three short chapters, so I put in aside.

But a friend who loved it urged me to stick with it, and he was right. Once I broke the indifference wall I was hooked. Osman has developed a new eccentric merry band and manages to keep a shocking number of complicated balls spinning in the air, all of which by the end fall perfectly into place. It’s ingenious and thoroughly enjoyable.

But I can understand the disappointment of readers who hoped for another installment of the Thursday Murder Club by this time. There will be one next year. Also the miniseries, which wrapped in September and will be on Netflix.

by Anonymousreply 371October 1, 2024 4:56 PM

I find the Thursday Murder books a bit slow going and I like cosy mysteries.

by Anonymousreply 372October 1, 2024 7:19 PM

Just finished Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan. Debating which of the lesser Vonnegut works to start next

by Anonymousreply 373October 1, 2024 7:30 PM

Just got Mr. Ballen's graphic novel. Whoopde doo.

by Anonymousreply 374October 2, 2024 5:37 AM

We've been discussing the upcoming movie version of Queer by William S. Burroughs so I decided to check out the book. Only just started it but it's good so far!

by Anonymousreply 375October 3, 2024 7:01 AM

Just finished The Bee Sting, which gave me Big Little Lies vibes. Great prose. I'm thinking it's a little overpraised, but I need to meditate on that for a bit.

by Anonymousreply 376October 5, 2024 11:33 PM

I liked the Ballen book. Well done.

by Anonymousreply 377October 6, 2024 1:21 AM

I meditated on it. Lack of denouement was lazy given the strong points-of-view throughout the 645 pages of prose.

by Anonymousreply 378October 6, 2024 8:00 AM

Absence of denouement seemed to me on of Bee Sting's strengths. Loved the book.

by Anonymousreply 379October 6, 2024 2:53 PM

No, it's a copout when you spend 645 pages with strong narrator opinions about every tiny little bit of my Noosa that these characters encounter, then has no opinion about how they end. Fuck off.

by Anonymousreply 380October 6, 2024 2:55 PM

My Noosa = what my mobile thinks minutia is

by Anonymousreply 381October 6, 2024 2:56 PM

I like the minutia Noosa’s. Blood orange was the best, but they dropped that flavor. Key lime is good, too as is the coconut.

They’re $1.09. The big ones are $2.00

by Anonymousreply 382October 6, 2024 4:50 PM

A dissertation on the positives and negatives of piss

by Anonymousreply 383October 6, 2024 10:33 PM

I just fired Ferdia Lennon's GLORIOUS EXPLOITS about halfway through. It was too gimmicky.

by Anonymousreply 384October 8, 2024 8:35 AM

Finished Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys for the fourth (maybe fifth?) time yesterday. I get more out of it every time, marvel at O'Neill's construction and research, and it can still "strike the heart of out you," as one character says.

by Anonymousreply 385October 8, 2024 6:31 PM

I love At Swim, Two Boys

by Anonymousreply 386October 8, 2024 7:27 PM

Just finished Richard Osman's latest book WE SOLVE MURDERS, which is the first in a new series and not a sequel to his THURSDAY MURDER CLUB mysteries. I went in with low expectations so quite enjoyed it though I found it shallower and less satisfying (and more than a little too frivolous) than the other books.

I imagine as we get to know the main characters more in the sequels, this series could improve, not unlike his earlier series.

by Anonymousreply 387October 10, 2024 10:47 PM

“The Abortionist of Howard Street” imaginative - by necessity - biography of Josephine McCarthy, a female medical student in the 1850’s, perhaps a Confederate spy, certainly an abortionist, and mother of six.

by Anonymousreply 388October 11, 2024 12:54 AM

I just finished reading volume 1 of Simon Schama’s “A History of Britain.” It’s sort of what I expected. There are some fun flourishes but it’s very surfacy and glossy.

Leave it to a gay historian to cover the Wars of the Roses in about a page (!!!) but to go on and on about the more gossipy melodramatic stuff like Becket vs. Henry II.

Likewise if you blink you’ll miss, well, the Hundred Years War. I can’t really recommend it as a serious history, but he does have a way with words and snark.

by Anonymousreply 389October 11, 2024 1:10 AM

His Landscape and Memory got bogged down in conceptual stuff. He needcs to stay on the surface.

by Anonymousreply 390October 11, 2024 3:12 AM

Schama lands for me as so pretentious and self-indulgent. I just can't.

by Anonymousreply 391October 11, 2024 4:41 AM

Schama's book "Citizens" about the French Revolution irritated me to no end. The entire bloated length of it came across as smug and condescending towards his subject.

by Anonymousreply 392October 11, 2024 11:13 AM

To link two big names hovering in this thread: Schama just gave Hollinghurst's 'Our Evenings' a lukewarm review in the FT.

by Anonymousreply 393October 11, 2024 11:35 AM

Is Schama the guy who does the art shows?

by Anonymousreply 394October 11, 2024 11:51 AM

He did ages ago. They’re pretty good actually.

He first became well known in the USA for his series about the history of Britain. I have to say once again it’s not bad, and fun to watch. He’s better on tv than in print.

by Anonymousreply 395October 11, 2024 5:51 PM

JFK Junior: an Intimate Oral Biography

It’s been 25 years since his death. His friends talk about him. Written by his former PA @ George Magazine.

Mrs. Bessette did not like him.

by Anonymousreply 396October 11, 2024 6:02 PM

Just finished Alan Hollinghurst's OUR EVENINGS, which is really excellent. My favorite of his novel's is probably SWIMMING POOL LIBRARY, anD EVENINGS surpasses that. It follows a young Brit (half-Burmese, half-English) from his time at public school through his career as an actor. Hollinghurst's depiction of "alternative theatre" is soooo right on. It's my field (academically) and he spot on. I still have PTSD from sitting through a performance of Arabal's THE ARCHITECT AND THE EMPEROR OF ASSYRIA, directed by Arabal himself in some truly dingey storefront theatre. It began with the actor playing the Emperor smashing a brain (an actual flesh and blood brain) with an ax. Actual gray matter (sheep? cow? who knows) spattered the first two row of the audience. And THAT was the highlight of the evening. Also sat through a performance of THE IK directed by Peter Brook which was completely performed in Ambo, or some other obscure African language. Ah....good times. I'll just go ahead and "Oh Mary" myself and own up to the fact that I'm older than the crust of the earth.

Anyway, back at the Hollinghurst. It's brilliantly structured in that several of the incidents in the book occur and then we are left yearning for finding out how they turned out. At first, I thought it frustrating, but it's really effective as a literary device because you keep plunging ahead, assuming you'll encounter some resolution. His prose is so...(as Strunk and White would say)....so muscular. A very compelling read, which I recommend highly.

by Anonymousreply 397October 15, 2024 4:37 AM

[quote]Leave it to a gay historian to cover the Wars of the Roses in about a page (!!!) but to go on and on about the more gossipy melodramatic stuff like Becket vs. Henry II.

Do you know something about Simon Schama that is not publicly known...?

by Anonymousreply 398October 15, 2024 4:46 AM

[quote] I hated Sub Rosa. The thought of Beverly Crusher shagging a ghost was just dumber than shit.

I could have you EJECTED into SPACE!

Is that CLEAR, Subcommander??

by Anonymousreply 399October 15, 2024 5:05 AM

r397, I'm actually halfway through OUR EVENINGS now and yearning for more resolution to some of the incidents that didn't seem to go anywhere. And I so hope there'll be a return of Madame Pleynet!

So, I take your words as encouragement. I'm only at the beginning of the lead's theatrical career with the Oxford production of Volpone. I'm enjoying the book but wish it had a bit more edge, a bit more bite.

by Anonymousreply 400October 15, 2024 1:55 PM

[400] I know what you mean about yearming for more resolution. Sitting exams at Oxford? The beginnings of the relationship between Mum and Esme? Yes...equally frustrating and intriguing. But then, isn't that a lot like the lives we lead? You see the beginnings of something and then spend days, weeks, months wondering ..."I wonder what ever happened with X?"

And yes....Volpone? Bajazet? The only reason I know Bajazet is because Adriana Lecouvreur is rehearsing a scene from it in Act One of the opera. And Thucydides is one of only seven plays extant by Sophocles. But the book is spot on in terms of theatres like the one David performs in. London in the 70s was rife with them--Shepherd's Bush, Almeida, Upstairs at the Royal Court--so it's entirely possible that David would have worked in them, and been able to piece together what passed for a living in London back then.

by Anonymousreply 401October 15, 2024 4:49 PM

Are you from the UK, r401?

I've spent a lot of time in London in the last 20 years, working on projects there twice, as well as numerous vacations going back to the late 1990s.

Haven't gotten to Bajazet yet. Oy, at least I've heard of Volpone.

by Anonymousreply 402October 15, 2024 6:02 PM

Also in the middle of OUR EVENINGS, when David meets Chris at the Blue Bridge. I agree that this is right up there with THE SWIMMING POOL LIBRARY and THE LINE OF BEAUTY. David seems to be more romantic than either Will in LIBRARY or Nick in LINE. Or at least he's not as ribald as those two.

Once again Hollinghurst subtly and deftly sends up the upper class, among others.

by Anonymousreply 403October 15, 2024 11:06 PM

I read Hollinghurst's "The Stranger's Child" and "The Sparsholt Affair" back to back earlier this year (yes, extremely late to "the party," but that's me). I wanted so badly to like both and was looking forward to reading them, but was ultimately disappointed in both novels. "The Sparsholt Affair," in particular, tried my patience, though "The Stranger's Child" has a single scene of two people walking and talking around the grounds of an estate at a summer party that must cover around 35 pages. The writing is mostly sublime, of course, but not compelling enough for such meandering. The "skipping forward in time" (to the next generation) literary device is clever, but I tired of it after these two novels. "The Sparsholt Affair" has a chapter towards the end where the eldergay character (forgot his name, apologies) has discovered Grindr and semi-regularly hooks up with an American college student in London. Hollinghurst somewhat lazily incorporates so many U.S. Millennial (the book was published in 2017)/Gen Z clichés: the gnat-like attention span, the unerotic, pornified sex, the constant, vapid texting with other people while in bed with Eldergay; the flippancy, the lack of focus, the entitlement. You can tell Hollinghurst was having a chuckle writing those scenes.

I'm glad Hollinghurst is so admired as a stylist by some many (straight) writers and is considered a mainstream (rather than strictly a gay) author, and I will still give "My Evenings" a try, based on the reviews here and elsewhere.

by Anonymousreply 404October 16, 2024 12:53 AM

*so many, sorry

by Anonymousreply 405October 16, 2024 12:55 AM

[R401] here...No, not British but both Master's and PhD were on topics that gave me the opportunity to spend extended lengths of time in London for research. So I've spent some time there, and have seen A LOT of both good and bad theatre. Lucky enough to have seen Maggie Smith and Roger Stephens in PRIVATE LIVES and Claire Bloom in STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Both those performances were breathtaking and are seared into my memory.

Students could get rush tickets for next to nothing, so....without knowing what I was going to be seeing, I got a rush ticket for one of the first previews of AMADEUS. And for EQUUS. I wept when the RSC left the glorious old Aldwych and moved to the Barbican. It was like seeing theatre in a freaking bunker.

Anyway, back at the Hollinghurst. One of the things that left me gobsmacked is there is no actual sex in the book, yet I felt like we were always right on the verge of it. That was one of the things that kept me reading, reading, reading.

by Anonymousreply 406October 16, 2024 1:04 AM

Chris and David, breaking in the bright yellow Cortina going down toward Foxleigh, might have passed that verge, R406.

by Anonymousreply 407October 16, 2024 1:45 AM

David? Or Daniel, r407?

by Anonymousreply 408October 16, 2024 2:23 AM

David, on his way with Chris to Crackers.

by Anonymousreply 409October 16, 2024 3:35 AM

Yesterday, I finished Josephine Tey's [italic]Brat Farrar[/italic], definitely recommended. One of those books I found a bit frustrating during the read itself, but made sense afterwards. Spent an Audible credit for the edition read by Carole Boyd rather than the free library audiobook, great decision.

by Anonymousreply 410October 16, 2024 7:46 PM

Just finished Liz Moore's bestselling THE GOD OF THE WOODS.

What an engaging and entertaining read, couldn't put it down, great tension and plotting, from the first to the last page (literally!). And at 475 pages, I was never bored. A big cast of unforgettable characters. Don't know if this is what she intended but the young woman investigator (who doesn't even enter the story until page 150 or so) could easily be the star of a new mystery series.

I hope a film or mini-series is in the planning.

by Anonymousreply 411October 22, 2024 1:22 AM

I loved both Liz Moore’s books I’ve read, God of the Woods and The Unseen World.

by Anonymousreply 412October 22, 2024 3:56 PM

The Undertow by Jeff Sharet

The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli

They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer

by Anonymousreply 413October 22, 2024 4:55 PM

Just at the tall end of the Lesley Manville audiobook version. If the second Osman Murder Club books, The Man Who Died twice, and it's just as charming as the first. Yes, I am behind. I did like how telegenic the prose was in a way that wasn't tipping over into being a film treatment.

by Anonymousreply 414October 22, 2024 5:34 PM

Yes, The Unseen World by Liz Moore is another great read as is her earlier novel Heft. She's definitely become one of my favorite authors this year.

Though oddly enough, I was less enchanted with Long Bright River which was considered her big breakout novel into the world of popular commercial fiction. It was a little too movie of the week for me.

by Anonymousreply 415October 23, 2024 1:43 AM

I just finished “Tell Me Everything,” by Elizabeth Strout. I’m a big fan of her earlier novels and was quite disappointed with her latest. The different story lines seemed to be tacked together awkwardly and, unlike her previous works, I couldn’t wait for this one to end.

by Anonymousreply 416October 23, 2024 7:34 PM

R416 I'm a big Elizabeth Strout fan, and what I'd read about this didn't make me rush out and buy it.

by Anonymousreply 417October 23, 2024 9:39 PM

I've always thought Strout was a mediocre writer. I don't get the praise for Olive Kittredge or any of her books.

by Anonymousreply 418October 23, 2024 10:28 PM

R418 Stories... clear, approachable characters. She is the Mary Oliver of fiction.

by Anonymousreply 419October 23, 2024 10:38 PM

If by "clear, approachable..." you mean cliched and unsurprising then I'm all with you, r419.

by Anonymousreply 420October 23, 2024 10:40 PM

R420 Yeah. like stupid authors like Dickens.

by Anonymousreply 421October 23, 2024 10:48 PM

I'm all in for Dickens. But Strout is no Dickens.

by Anonymousreply 422October 23, 2024 11:03 PM

At a loss for a new book I decided to reread THE CORRECTIONS and it's even funnier and smarter than I remembered. I can't put it down. Especially fun are the 2001 references to things like a character's resistance to cell phones as unnecessary indulgences.

Supposedly there's a new miniseries of it in the works and Meryl Streep is cast as the long-suffering 70-something mother Enid. Miscast if you ask me, but if she can pull off this role, very far from her sophisticated alpha persona, it'll be a tour de force. Kathy Bates would be perfect.

In an earlier attempt at the miniseries pre-Scott Rudin's downfall, Dianne Wiest was cast and I'd love to see her play her, too. Chris cooper was going to play the dad and Ewan McGregor the younger son.

by Anonymousreply 423October 28, 2024 2:00 AM

Is no one here reading any good books this fall?

by Anonymousreply 424October 31, 2024 2:52 AM

^ I bought Some Men in London by Peter Parker, about gay life in Britain in the 40s and 50s and I'm about to start it tonight

by Anonymousreply 425October 31, 2024 2:57 AM

On my TBR pile:

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

Paper Moon (formerly titled Addie Pray) by Joe David Brown. I guess I'm on sort of a Peter Bogdanovich thing.

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sheriff, a British novel about a family seaside vacation, written in 1931. A couple of different friends, avid readers happened to recommend it separately.

by Anonymousreply 426October 31, 2024 3:06 AM

I just read Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte.

by Anonymousreply 427October 31, 2024 3:19 AM

Did you like it, r427?

by Anonymousreply 428October 31, 2024 3:28 AM

I read "Tropical Night Falling," the last novel by Manuel Puig ("Kiss of the Spider Woman"). Although death was clearly on his mind when he wrote it, the tone is mostly comic and the unexpected ending made me laugh out loud. Apparently, the novel was successfully adapted for the stage in Argentina; it could make a great movie if someone like the young Pedro Almodovar directed. Highly recommended.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 429October 31, 2024 3:45 AM

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. Historical fiction whodunnit set in American colonial times, Hooked me from the start. Loosely based on The Midwife’s Tale. Finally got around to reading Lonesome Dove since I have always seen it on these kinds of lists. Lived up to the hype, and then some. Incredible book with memorable characters.

by Anonymousreply 430October 31, 2024 4:08 AM

Pacino's memoir, Sonny Boy.

by Anonymousreply 431October 31, 2024 5:35 AM

Thinking about Douglas Stuart's [italic]Young Mungo[/italic] a couple of years after I read it. I don't think he stuck the ending and it's a rather brutal story, but it was a damned insightful book about gay men. Worth picking up if you haven't yet.

by Anonymousreply 432October 31, 2024 8:56 AM

I assume you've read Shuggie Bain, r432. Also terrific.

by Anonymousreply 433October 31, 2024 12:15 PM

I haven't read anything worth posting about in a while. I'm currently reading, "Lincoln in the World," a book that claims to focus on Abe's foreign policies but is mediocre so far and wastes too much time retreading info from every other Lincoln bio. I'm thinking of quitting it.

by Anonymousreply 434October 31, 2024 12:58 PM

“White Rural Rage - The Threat to American Democracy”

The problem isn’t Trump, it’s the Trump voters.

by Anonymousreply 435October 31, 2024 1:25 PM

Got halfway through James McBride's The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story and put it down. It just wasn't doing it for me. I realize it's a fable of sorts, but, oy, so many long-winded digressions.

by Anonymousreply 436October 31, 2024 9:02 PM

Oh, sorry to hear that, r436. It really is worth finishing it if you ever can.

by Anonymousreply 437November 1, 2024 12:43 AM

Finished "American Ramble" by Neil King, Jr. recently. Nonfiction folks here should like it. Sadly, King died recently.

by Anonymousreply 438November 1, 2024 1:05 AM

Just finished and loved Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. It was basically what i wanted The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon to be, but that Chabon book was (like so much of his work) both depressed and depressing.

The Spufford book is a hard-bolied mystery set in an alternative history in 1922, where smallpox did not mostly entirely devastate the Native American population. In this version, there's a large US city called Cahokia on the ruins of the ancient native American city of Cahokia in real-life, where whites, blacks, and Native Americans all live. The city's richest man is the man who would be the city's hereditary native American ruler, the Sun, and his family (his brother is the cardinal, his son in a senator, his nephew is a movie star). It begins with a gruesome murder, and broadens to involve a conspiracy that involves nearly everyone. It is intensely cinematic and would make an amazing movie someday. It's a real page turner.

by Anonymousreply 439November 1, 2024 1:52 AM

r439, as a Francis Spufford fan I tried so hard to get into that book, gave it about 150 pages, but just couldn't continue. I found the plotting too convoluted and just didn't care about the characters.

While I love much of Michael Chabon, I couldn't get through The Yiddish Policeman's Union, for much the same reasons. Apt comparison for me.

by Anonymousreply 440November 1, 2024 2:10 AM

[quote]While I love much of Michael Chabon, I couldn't get through The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

It's the only one of his books I didn't finish. I love his writing most of the time.

by Anonymousreply 441November 1, 2024 2:24 AM

I just finished Apollo 13. It was good.

by Anonymousreply 442November 1, 2024 5:07 AM

Good Times/Bad Times by James Kirkwood was great. I couldn’t put it down and ended up loving it. Loved the main character’s voice throughout.

by Anonymousreply 443November 1, 2024 6:19 AM

Loved Spufford's Golden Hill.

by Anonymousreply 444November 1, 2024 4:01 PM

Also loved Spufford's LIGHT PERPETUAL, a more humane, sentimental book than usual from him.

by Anonymousreply 445November 1, 2024 5:58 PM

I never learned to read or write.

by Anonymousreply 446November 1, 2024 10:32 PM

R446 Se te nota...

by Anonymousreply 447November 2, 2024 12:07 AM

I am trying to make it through "EMMA" by Jane Austen. In the original, old-timey English of the late 18th century.

It's not great.

by Anonymousreply 448November 2, 2024 12:57 AM

Is The Road by Cormac McCarthy depressing?

by Anonymousreply 449November 4, 2024 7:28 PM

R449 HAHAHAAAHAHAAAAAA.

by Anonymousreply 450November 4, 2024 7:41 PM

[quote] I am trying to make it through "EMMA" by Jane Austen. In the original, old-timey English of the late 18th century.

[quote]It's not great.

[quote]—Dutchie

It's one of the greatest novels ever written.

The problem is absolutely not with Jane Austen--the problem is with you.

by Anonymousreply 451November 4, 2024 7:45 PM

The first time I read Emma I hated Emma herself, which tainted the rest of the novel for me (I enjoyed several other characters, though). I think I've only reread Emma once. I've reread P&P, Mansfield Park and Persuasion (my favorite) several times.

by Anonymousreply 452November 4, 2024 8:46 PM

The Wonder Garden, Unbreakable Child, The Trading Game, Invasion of The Body Snatchers, George Harrison The Reluctant Beatle (I don’t think he was a reluctant Beatle; maybe a reluctant celebrity), House Of Lies (the Bush family), Peter Lawford Story, Annie’s Ghost, Someting Blue (British mystery).

by Anonymousreply 453November 4, 2024 10:05 PM

I’m starting to attempt Hollinghurst thanks to his mention here. The Stranger’s Child has been heavy going but I plod through it. An extra hour to read at night has helped.

by Anonymousreply 454November 4, 2024 11:24 PM

The Stranger's Child is probably the stodgiest of Hollinghurst's novels. I found The Swimming Pool Library and The Line of Beauty to be much more worthwhile. Our Evenings is nearly up there with TSPL and TLOB.

by Anonymousreply 455November 5, 2024 12:13 AM

I loved The Swimming Pool Library

by Anonymousreply 456November 5, 2024 12:18 AM

I, for one, was very disappointed with Our Evenings. So many interesting characters were introduced and then never given a proper story line. It seemed to be intentional on Hollinghurst's part, but I couldn't fathom why.

by Anonymousreply 457November 5, 2024 2:54 AM

I never got into Hollinghurst because I hated smug Hayley Atwell and needy Dan Stevens in TLOB.

by Anonymousreply 458November 5, 2024 4:41 PM

I had a similar problem with Hollinghurst's The Sparsholt Affair, R457. One of the most (potentially) interesting characters, David Sparsholt ("handsome, athletic, charismatic, unaware of his powerful effect on others," per the jacket blurb), is lusted over by several of his Oxford classmates early in the book and is maybe bisexual, but he then disappears for nearly the entirety of the novel, leaving his gay son to drive the meandering plot. I enjoyed the book but wanted more. I, however, did not write it.

by Anonymousreply 459November 5, 2024 8:42 PM

r459, I, however, loved The Sparsholt Affair and was in awe of how the elder Sparsholt character loomed over the entire book without being physically present after the first chapters. Admittedly, it was jolt when the time moves rather abrasively forward. But once I saw what was happening, I was riveted to the end.

It's my favorite Hollinghurst book.

by Anonymousreply 460November 5, 2024 11:07 PM

James Pope-Hennessy"s biography of Queen Mary, which is very enjoyable so far, despite being an official biography.

by Anonymousreply 461November 6, 2024 9:18 PM

Reading "The Spear Cuts Through Water" by Simon Jimenez. It was recommended to me in my never-ending quest for a fantasy novel that has some literary merit and isn't part of a series.

It started off strong with an engaging opening and the quality of an ancient folktale. But the constant narrative point of view shifts are starting to grate on me and the novel is far too long for its plot. Now I'm bogged down about 1/3 of the way through as the characters travel on a tedious road trip. There's supposed to be a gay romance at some point as well, but I'm not sure if I can power through the rest of this book.

The most sympathetic character is a psychic tortoise.

by Anonymousreply 462November 9, 2024 7:28 PM
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by Anonymousreply 463November 9, 2024 8:27 PM

The Language of Love and Loss, by Bart Yates. Loved it. Best novel I've read in ages.

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by Anonymousreply 464November 9, 2024 8:34 PM

I read a new memoir by the novelist Francine Prose, "!974: A Personal History." In spite of the title, it's as much about the 60s as about 1974. She left her husband and graduate school in Boston to escape to San Francisco, where she meets Tony Russo, who, along with Daniel Ellsberg, leaked the Pentagon Papers. Prose write very well about her relationship with Russo, who is (understandably) very paranoid and very depressed. If you have read other books from or about this period, much of this one will seem familiar (sex, drugs, Vietnam, the I Ching, and trips to India), but, looking back 50 years later on herself and the era, Prose does offer some interesting insights and entertaining passages.

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by Anonymousreply 465November 10, 2024 4:38 AM

I find Francine Prose's prose uneven. I've loved a few of her novels, BLUE ANGEL and A CHANGED MAN in particular, and found all the others fairly unreadable.

by Anonymousreply 466November 10, 2024 5:32 AM

Don't Stop Believin'- Olivia Newton-John

by Anonymousreply 467November 11, 2024 11:35 AM

R76. The name Taffy is a shortened form of the Welsh name Dafydd, which is a variation of the Hebrew name David. Dafydd means "beloved" or "friend".

by Anonymousreply 468November 11, 2024 1:27 PM

I bought a copy of Kingmaker. I enjoyed both of the earlier Pamela Harriman bios, Reflected Glory by Sally Bedell Smith and Life of the Party by Christopher Ogden. I preferred the Bedell Smith. It will be interesting to see how the new bio compares.

by Anonymousreply 469November 11, 2024 6:26 PM

Down at The Old Shithouse

by Anonymousreply 470November 12, 2024 12:30 AM

War by Carl Bernstein, Autocracy Inc by Anne Applebaum. The Boys from Biloxi by Grisham and Trees The Yearbook of Agriculture 1949

by Anonymousreply 471November 12, 2024 2:08 AM

Piss Fountain by Annie Sprinkle

by Anonymousreply 472November 12, 2024 2:28 AM

I thought it was as good a time as any to finally read Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935) just to see how this next Trump horror show could potentially play out. I’m only 45 pages in so far and it’s reading remarkably like it was written just yesterday about today.

by Anonymousreply 473November 12, 2024 1:44 PM

When is Lewis' book set, r473? Who was the President?

by Anonymousreply 474November 12, 2024 1:56 PM

R474, it’s set in the “present day” which, in this case, is 1936. The Trump character is named Senator Buzz Windrip (assuming he gets elected - again, I only just started the novel).

by Anonymousreply 475November 12, 2024 1:59 PM

I'm on the third Thursday Murder Club book, whose charms I resisted until recently. It's just the right escape.

by Anonymousreply 476November 12, 2024 2:02 PM

The Thursday Murder Club books just get better with each one as we learn more about the pasts of the 4 of them. The 4th installment is even better than the third.

by Anonymousreply 477November 12, 2024 2:05 PM

I thought the second was better than the first, so this is excellent news. I mistakenly wrote off Richard Osman as just another one of those talking heads on the British media circuit, but I am so glad to be horribly wrong.

by Anonymousreply 478November 12, 2024 2:09 PM

Booker Prize 2024 livestream from London:

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by Anonymousreply 479November 12, 2024 9:52 PM

Winner is Samantha Harvey for "Orbital"

by Anonymousreply 480November 12, 2024 9:54 PM

I started reading "Our Evenings" by Alan Hollinghurst, one of my favorite authors, and then Nov. 5 (the U.S. election) happened. I was just getting into the novel but now I have no interest in reading more about a character enamored with the British elite. I think I'll have to put the book away for now and try again to read it sometime in the future when I'm in the mood for it.

by Anonymousreply 481November 14, 2024 1:30 PM

R481 I've had real attention span problems since the election. Eventually it will be the healthiest escape from the dystopia, but for now reading fiction ... isn't possible.

by Anonymousreply 482November 14, 2024 2:59 PM

I'm in the same boat, r482, but audiobooks are saving the day.

by Anonymousreply 483November 14, 2024 3:04 PM

"The Bitch Twins" is what it should be called but the real title is: "Double Exposure: A Twin Autobiography by Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt. Gloria Sr. and her twin Thelma Morgan penned this one back in 1958, long after their heyday as Reggie Vanderbilt's teenaged wife (and mother of Gloria Jr.) and the Duke of Wales' lady friend (before she asked Wallis Simpson to look after "the little man" during a trip back to the States). The identical twins are actually a couple of vain braggarts who had no use for anyone, even Gloria's daughter who after decades of neglect cut her mother off, forcing them to (gasp) work for a living, hence this book.

by Anonymousreply 484November 14, 2024 3:40 PM

Speaking of which, are Anderson Cooper’s books about the Vanderbilts and the Astors easy, digestible reading?

by Anonymousreply 485November 14, 2024 4:16 PM

I've lately been finding it difficult to find novels I like after reading a few spectacular ones.

So, last night, I binged on Amazon and bought: All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, a mystery/thriller about a missing girl; Endpapers by Alexander Wolff about a Jewish family in Nazi Germany; and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, about a white and a black family unexpectedly sharing a house (during a plague, I think).

Hoping they'll all click for me.

by Anonymousreply 486November 14, 2024 5:34 PM

I read the one written by Anderson and his mother R485. I found it interesting. Gloria had a hell of a life. I love that he and his mother had the same giggle. His book" Dispatches from the Edge" I haven't read but it's free on Kindle Unlimited. I did read "Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty." It was OK. He did that one with a co-author. It's also free on Kindle Unlimited. "Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune" (all this rising and falling...) is going for $14.99 on Kindle, also with the same co-author. Haven't read it.

by Anonymousreply 487November 14, 2024 10:46 PM

^Thanks, I’ll check out the one written with his mother.

by Anonymousreply 488November 15, 2024 6:28 AM

R486: would you share the titles of the novels you loved?

by Anonymousreply 489November 15, 2024 6:32 AM

r489, a few of my recent faves include: Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Midnight News by Jo Baker, The Wildes by Louis Bayard, Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters, Long Island by Colm Toibin, Honey by Victor Lodato, In Tongues by Thomas Grattan and several books by Liz Moore (who I've just discovered) Heft, The Unseen World and The God of the Woods. Also, a rereading of Franzen's The Corrections. I've probably posted about all of them upthread.

by Anonymousreply 490November 16, 2024 2:23 PM

I read "Runaway Train," Eric Roberts' memoir. It's an easy read, and, at least in the first half, has some moving memories about growing up in a very dysfunctional family, and some entertaining anecdotes about making his early (good) movies. Predictably, he doesn't hold much back and has some wild stories to tell. When he was studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts:

[quote]One of my teachers was Manu Tupou, who’d played a young Indian chief in a Richard Harris movie, A Man Called Horse, and a Hawaiian prince alongside Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews in Hawaii. We sometimes ran scenes at Manu’s apartment at 11 West Sixty-Ninth Street in Manhattan, and I stayed there occasionally. One night, the work went very late, and because I was living in Brooklyn, I crashed at his apartment. I woke up to Manu sucking my cock. I said, “Excuse me, Manu, this is not cool. I gotta go.”

When his mother remarried, Eric said everyone, including his mother, knew that her new husband (Michael Motes) was "basically gay," and shortly before the wedding when Motes and Eric are alone at his mother's house:

[quote]Michael suddenly backed me up against the front door, put his hand on my throat, and grabbed my balls. He goes, “I’m gonna marry your mother, then I’m gonna fuck you, too.” I broke away and ran to my dad’s apartment. I told him what happened, and we actually called the cops.

The second part of the book was mostly a litany of Roberts' bad behavior: drug abuse, tantrums on and off the set, and cheating on his partners. The book really needed a good final editing before publication. There are mistakes (e.g., saying he was nominated for an Academy Award for "Star 80" and an Emmy Award for "In Cold Blood" - neither is true); and there are way too many exclamation points, and too much repetition of superlative adjectives in close proximity. There are also strange contradictions in the text and very confusing gaps in the timeline (Roberts says his memory, after a serious car accident and decades of drug addiction, is not good, but the editor should have helped him more). Near the start he says he has been "mostly friendless" through most of his life (except for Eliza, his second wife, and Christopher Walken), but throughout the rest of the book there are continual references to a seemingly endless roster of friends. Similarly, he recounts constant and horrific physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his mother, Betty, until he finally tells his father and the beatings stop (when he is 11), except for one, where she hit him so hard with a pointer that his kneecap split and he needed a cast; but then he writes, "From the ages of six to twelve, I can say that I was happy."

He tries to make amends to those he has hurt (including his sisters and daughter), but Eliza tells him (after over 30 years of marriage) that he is a "borderline narcissist," and it is hard not to agree with her assessment. To be fair, considering his mother was (drunk or sober) so abusive and his father was a borderline sociopath, he did remarkably well to make it to the age of 68 with the part of his heart intact that truly loves animals and at least a few people.

by Anonymousreply 491November 23, 2024 3:15 AM

Any mention of Sandy Dennis? I heard from a friend of hers that he liked to rough her up.

by Anonymousreply 492November 23, 2024 2:38 PM

A Boy Like That, Grover Dale's autobiography. He was somewhat famous, and rather successful as a choreographer, under the tutelage of Jerome Robbins and other, less famous names in the theater. He was Tony Perkins' live in lover until they each found, and married, women. Actor James Badge Dale is Grover Dale and Anita Morris' only child.

It was a compelling read. I hadn't been as familiar with Grover Dale as I might have been. And then I read, and enjoyed, his autobiography.

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by Anonymousreply 493November 23, 2024 3:23 PM

R591-Does he make any mention of the slick waiter/hustler, Anton, who showed up regularly at Manhattan Theatre Club on East 73rd Street while Eric was appearing in Mass Appeal? He would suck Eric's dick, then Eric would fuck him senseless. They were both coke whores.

by Anonymousreply 494November 23, 2024 3:54 PM

R443 I loved Good Times/Bad Times as well. Read it many years ago. Might be time for a reread.

by Anonymousreply 495November 23, 2024 5:28 PM

You can't go home again, r495.

It was also one of my favorite books of my 1970s youth, even read it a few times way back then. But found a used paperback a few years ago and eagerly tried another reread and it was very disappointing, very YA and not as "gay" as I initially perceived it way back when.

by Anonymousreply 496November 23, 2024 5:41 PM

"Live Fast Die Young: Remembering the Short Life of James Dean" by Jonathan Gilmore (pic).

This is the book where he describes what it was like to have sex with Jimmy:

"Can you be fucked?" he asked. "Jesus!" I said. "I don't think so." He said, "I want to try to fuck you. We can try it if you want to." He wanted me to put my arms around him -- which I felt funny doing -- and to hold him. He wanted me to kiss him while he moved his lower body against me, and to keep kissing him. He wanted to suck my nipples. We tried to experience something more, some physical sort of thing. Again, he bit me, and this time it felt sharp. He was holding himself and he said, "Am I going to fuck you?" I said I guess we could try. "I don't know how successful it will be. . . " "We have to use something," he said. "You know what I mean -- what've you got?" Some skin lotion was all I had. I replaced his hand with my hand. I tried to go down on him but his cock was big and made me gag and choke. We tried to fuck but it didn't work exactly as we wanted it to. I lay on my side, sort of, and he lay against my back, one leg on mine that lay behind me. With the stuff, the body lotion, it was possible for him to enter into me a little ways, and as long as he didn't push hard into me it was okay. He said he wanted to go into me farther, but I didn't think I could take it like that. He asked me to use the cream and to put it on his cock and rub it back and forth, but light, he said, until I could feel the heat of the friction. So what I was doing was jacking him off with lotion. I kept pouring it on and working up and down and then he just sort of began to jerk and the stuff came up out of him -- jumping kind of. But we kept trying. He'd do the same, squatted on his knees between my legs and taking my lower body up to his mouth -- my thighs at the sides of his ribs. For me, the physical thing was still awkward, but it was exciting and had a kind of burning up sensation to it.

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by Anonymousreply 497November 23, 2024 7:03 PM

I don't think there's any doubt that had James Dean lived, he would have been one of the first out gay American movie stars.

by Anonymousreply 498November 23, 2024 9:16 PM

Talk about an inexperienced bottom!

by Anonymousreply 499November 23, 2024 9:19 PM

Thanks for that one R493. Just downloaded it and love it already!

by Anonymousreply 500November 23, 2024 10:02 PM

R496 Ah, also read it during my 1970s youth. Perhaps I'll pass on the reread.

by Anonymousreply 501November 23, 2024 10:30 PM

I finished and absolutely love A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez, Very original and dark.

Started Nothing To See Here, by Kevin Wilson. The premise is preposterous, a woman is asked by a childhood friend to take care of her stepchildren, a couple of ten year old twin who spontaneous catch on fire when upset. Other than is main issue is is told straight face. Very funny so far, but also serious and strange.

by Anonymousreply 502November 24, 2024 2:40 AM

I was wildly disappointed in Dale's book. There was so much dirt he could have reported, but most everything is G-rated. Should have written it years ago.

by Anonymousreply 503November 24, 2024 3:53 AM

[quote]Any mention of Sandy Dennis? I heard from a friend of hers that he liked to rough her up.

Yes, he writes a lot about Sandy - they were together about 5 years. He describes some fighting and admits that, "I was increasingly into cocaine, which Sandy hated," but doesn't mention physical violence. He says his coke addiction and Sandy's cat addiction were what finally drove them apart. He claims he learned after Sandy died that she had been pregnant with his child, and, without telling him, had an abortion in London.

[quote]Does he make any mention of the slick waiter/hustler, Anton, who showed up regularly at Manhattan Theatre Club on East 73rd Street while Eric was appearing in Mass Appeal? He would suck Eric's dick, then Eric would fuck him senseless. They were both coke whores.

No mention of Anton, but he claims the director of "Mass Appeal" (the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald) "almost sabotaged my career" because she told people he wasn't fully healed from his car accident and "for a while the phone calls stopped." He says after the successful off-Broadway run of "Mass Appeal," Fitzgerald wanted him to change the interpretation of his character before the Broadway opening; they butted heads, he refused to modify his performance (which had been well reviewed), then quit. Michael O'Keefe replaced him.

by Anonymousreply 504November 24, 2024 6:46 AM

[quote]I was wildly disappointed in Dale's book. There was so much dirt he could have reported, but most everything is G-rated. Should have written it years ago.

Child of an alcoholic. He wants everyone to like him. Personally, I like his optimistic attitude towards what life has thrown at him. I'm just finishing the book. I found it full of heart. For a dancer/choreographer who was not well-known, he had a very successful career and actually managed to make (and save) some real money. Putting up with characters like Tony Perkins and Jerry Robbins was admirable.

by Anonymousreply 505November 24, 2024 1:48 PM

Where/how did Grover Dale make any real money? Though he was a super-talented Broadway dancer and occasionally choreographed on Broadway, I don't think he was ever associated with any big money-making hits.

by Anonymousreply 506November 24, 2024 3:15 PM

No, but he seemed to be always working—lots of TV shows as a dancer and choreographer and director. And he choreographed and directed The Magic Show, which ran fo almost 2000 performances.

by Anonymousreply 507November 24, 2024 3:28 PM

I'm reading "A Look Over my SHoulder" by Richard Helms, former CIA direcctor memoir. What a bureaucratic blame-shifter and weasel he was. Everything was Bissell's fault. He even claims he stood up against assassinations while admitting he sent the infamous order to remove Patrice Lumumba.

by Anonymousreply 508November 24, 2024 4:38 PM

[quote]Where/how did Grover Dale make any real money?

He made money by doing things other than Broadway choreography, though he eventually was a top earner in that genre. He did a lot of TV commercials that gave him some extra cash (with residuals) and channeled that into buying his first house in upstate New York, as well as his own apartments in New York back when they were reasonable. He made big money, though, in California real estate, owning a house on Mulholland Drive in between Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, eventually selling it to Nicholson and moving to the flats of Beverly Hills where he bought a fixer upper which he eventually sold for a fortune before coming back to NYC just in time to get in on the RE market there.

by Anonymousreply 509November 24, 2024 4:46 PM

Just finished "Love In the Time of Cholera " and almost half way with " The 7 Husbands of Evelyn Hugo"

by Anonymousreply 510November 24, 2024 11:50 PM

Grover Dale and Marc Elliott bought in the "Jenga" building in Tribeca. Love it.

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by Anonymousreply 511November 25, 2024 12:07 AM

Thanks to all the posters who filled me in how Grover Dale got rich. Most ex-chorus boys become florists, yoga instructors or realtors so, clearly, he knew what he was doing.

by Anonymousreply 512November 25, 2024 1:02 AM

I am working my way through George Saunders' Liberation Day (stories), and although I definitely see why he is a favorite of the critics (imaginative, artful prose and truly funny sense of humor), I'm struggling a bit with his fabulist approach. He makes you work a bit, which is not bad at all, but I'm a bit lazy, so....

by Anonymousreply 513November 25, 2024 1:09 AM

I could barely get through Lincoln in the Bardo and that was adored by the critics.

by Anonymousreply 514November 25, 2024 1:40 AM

Thank you for saying that, R514. He's just not doing it for me so far.

by Anonymousreply 515November 25, 2024 2:00 AM

Lincoln in the Bardo is my favorite novel of the era. Highly recommend the audio version as the best entry into the book.

by Anonymousreply 516November 25, 2024 1:14 PM

R513 Magical realism and all of its relatives just seems a waste of time to me now, no matter how artful the prose ... I don't think this was always the case. And I used to love science fiction, which certainly is a kind of magical realism. I tried but could not finish Lincoln in the Bardo.

by Anonymousreply 517November 25, 2024 3:55 PM

I wanted Lincoln in the Bardo to be more about Lincoln, not all those silly ghosts.

by Anonymousreply 518November 25, 2024 4:53 PM

R518 I agree with that, though I came to love Lincoln in the Bardo by the end.

I just finished Frozen River and hated it.

by Anonymousreply 519November 25, 2024 6:08 PM

Hmm. I just had a "revelation" as to why I've stopped having any patience with magical realism. A.I. Everything appears to be real but so little is - all is manufactured by technologies that replace reality with what manipulates and controls us to "other" interests and purposes. Sudden interjection of ghosts or events that defy physics,,, yeah, that's what we "see" all the time now. Something rawer, truer, more natural... is the physic needed.

by Anonymousreply 520November 25, 2024 6:22 PM

R517 have you read Marquez-? There's some magical realism which works

by Anonymousreply 521November 25, 2024 11:03 PM

Just finished Rumaan Alam's latest novel ENTITLEMENT which I rushed to buy because I so enjoyed his last book LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND. Sadly, the new one is rather disappointing and very different in tone than the first. There are some wonderfully drawn characters that are not really developed and an intense situation but hardly any plot. Then, finally after 270 pages a shocking conclusion that almost makes the read worth it. But in the end, I wasn't really sure what he was trying to say.

by Anonymousreply 522November 29, 2024 3:43 AM

At a friend's recommendation I just started The Island of Missing Trees which I'm quite liking after just 40 pages. Kind of in the Anthony Doerr style of Cloud Cuckooland and All the Light There Is to See. Great reviews.

I'll report back when I finish it.

by Anonymousreply 523November 29, 2024 3:45 AM

R522, I thought Leave The World Behind was an interesting book but terribly overwritten.

Am Reading Holinghurst’s Our Evenings, am enjoying it as usually but am on page 200 and the main character is still 18 and there is too much about his lesbian suburban mother. Which was, i confess, i surprising choice.

Also, am getting so fed up about the elite schools gay theme. But still 300 pages to go.

by Anonymousreply 524November 29, 2024 11:48 PM

I found Our Evenings very disappointing. Too many interesting characters and situations that are left behind and never developed. So many times, I thought, aha! now the story is finally going to get going, but no......

It seemed a very strange choice on Hollinghurst's part. I was content to have read it, certainly not a waste of time, but felt the book could have been so much more.

OTOH most of the reviews have been quite stellar.

by Anonymousreply 525November 30, 2024 2:02 AM

I’m trying to read Louise Penny’s latest Gamache mystery but it’s all over the place. Enjoying, much to my surprise, the Lev Grossman King Arthur novel (I don’t have much patience for fantasy OR Lev Grossman, generally).

by Anonymousreply 526November 30, 2024 2:26 AM

Just finished "Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America" by Christopher Bram. He manages to cover a lot of ground in a very readable and fascinating narrative by supplying fascinating background bits that are quite humorous, mixed with piercing insights.

by Anonymousreply 527November 30, 2024 2:39 AM

I like Christopher Bram, I'll have to check that one out

by Anonymousreply 528November 30, 2024 5:08 AM

I just finished "What We Talk About When We Talk About Crime" by the British criminologist and academic Jennifer Fleetwood, published this year. It's a short (125 pages) collection of essays on how "crime narratives" and media reporting on crime have evolved over the years. It focuses on relatively recent stories such as the 2019 BBC interview with Prince Andrew following the whole Jeffrey Epstein debacle; Olympic athlete Mo Farah and his personal history as a victim of child trafficking; the Brock Turner/Chanel Miller rape case in the U.S. and victim impact statements in general; the influence of recent true-crime podcasts; and Moors Murderer Myra Hindley and how she is and was perceived by the British public before and since her death in 2002.

I also recently read "Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality" (published 2020) by the academic Rachel Hope Cleves, which is both a biography of notorious Scottish-Austrian pedophile Norman Douglas (now almost forgotten, but once a very popular and successful author) and a reflection on changing cultural attitudes towards "intergenerational sex." Parts of the book are hard to stomach, but the author is very even-handed and extremely level-headed about the topic and honest about her own ambivalence about Douglas (who was a monster and a predator but also, by all accounts, very charming and adored by his friends, and even beloved by his former teenage "lovers", often inspiring life-long friendship and loyalty). It is written meticulously and with great sensitivity.

by Anonymousreply 529November 30, 2024 5:55 AM

I'm listening to the Clara Vale (cozy-ish) mystery series set in 1929 England: [italic]The Picture House Murders[/italic], etc. by Fiona Veitch Smith. Normally, I wouldn't mention them here, but one reviewer said she found four gay male characters in the book a bit PC-ish. So, thought my DL pals might see that as a plus. One was her recently deceased uncle, who left her his detective agency.

On a weird note, there's a secondary character called Juju Levine, which is cringeworthy enough, not sure I could deal with it being "Jew Jew" on a print page if that's the case!

by Anonymousreply 530November 30, 2024 1:41 PM

Is Clara Vale the author, or Fiona Veitch Smith?

by Anonymousreply 531November 30, 2024 3:11 PM

Smith is the author, Vale is the sleuth, R531.

by Anonymousreply 532November 30, 2024 3:56 PM

I used to like Jean-Chrostphe Ruffin. His "Asmara et les causes perdues" was perfection, but now he's even tried science fiction and every new genre he picks up is worse. There's a dog book, a travelogue, a book about an Ethohpian ambassador to Cario, a book pretending the French colony in Rio "mattered".... It's all just too much. He needs to lay off the cocaine and get back to what he knows.

by Anonymousreply 533November 30, 2024 4:24 PM

I'm quite enjoying RC Sherriff's 1931 novel The Fortnight in September, a small but beautifully observed story of a middle-class family on their annual seashore holiday in Bognor, England. Very slice-of-life and relatable to anyone who ever took a family summer vacation, but devastatingly existential, too, whether intentionally or not. I think this is a recent paperback edition.

Sherriff wrote the play Journey's End and eventually moved to Hollywood where he wrote the screenplays for The Invisible Man, Mrs. Miniver and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

by Anonymousreply 534December 2, 2024 3:14 AM

"Season of the Witch" by David Talbot about how San Francisco became the progressive capital of the country (confrontation and fighting). It's a useful lesson for our times.

by Anonymousreply 535December 2, 2024 5:18 AM

I read Al Pacino's "Sonny Boy." He's one of my favorite actors, and he's a pretty good writer, especially when he's looking back almost 80 years on his childhood in the South Bronx and then on his hardscrabble 20s in Manhattan. He was a born actor, memorizing scenes from the many movies his mom would take him to and then acting them out at home for his extended family. When he was 5 his specialty was Ray Milland's DT scene from "The Lost Weekend." He dropped out of the High School of Performing Arts to help support his mom, who had serious mental health issues. He honed his craft by reading plays and acting wherever he got a chance to, often in tiny theatres in the Village. When success came, with a Tony Award for his first Broadway play, he and his mentors weren't surprised, but he wasn't prepared for the level of fame that came with "The Godfather," and he struggled with anxiety and alcoholism, although he rarely drank while working. He's very self-analytical, having been in therapy for decades, and open about having made many mistakes in his life and career. He has never married and never wanted to, which was a factor in the break up of his long-term relationships with Jill Clayburgh and Kathleen Quinlan, but he often remained close friends with his (many) exes, like Quinlan, Diane Keaton, and Marthe Keller. Some of his movie directors, like Harold Becker, Hugh Hudson, and Barry Levinson, also became his good friends, but he didn't get along with Norman Jewison, William Friedkin, or Arthur Hiller. He says he anonymously donated all of his salary from "Cruising" to charities because he thought the final cut of the movie was exploitative in a way the original script was not. He never had a publicist until he hired Pat Kingsley after he made "Scent of a Woman"; she told him, "Al, go on Barbara Walters and they'll give you an Oscar." Why didn't that work for Glenn Close?

by Anonymousreply 536December 2, 2024 8:52 AM

Sonny Boy is now on my list r536!

by Anonymousreply 537December 3, 2024 6:47 AM

r534 Finished reading a FORTNIGHT IN SEPTEMBER back in September. Lovely book! Rich characters, quiet pace - Merchant Ivory in a book. Highly recommend it.

by Anonymousreply 538December 3, 2024 12:51 PM

Thanks, R534. I bought it from Audible a while ago, but haven't listened to it yet.

by Anonymousreply 539December 3, 2024 4:20 PM

Just finished "The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray. Compulsively readable, a great narrative and a fun take on stream-of-consciousness narration among various characters. I loved it. And I love how he left the end open.

Just got "Skippy Dies" from the library and can't wait to start it.

by Anonymousreply 540December 3, 2024 11:59 PM

Loved Bee Sting. Also read Skippy but felt it wasn't as effective. A bit too long, but still worthwhile.

by Anonymousreply 541December 4, 2024 12:08 AM

Skippy Dies was great fun, but The Bee Sting was extraordinary. Even its flaws made it more interesting to me. Someday I'll reread both of them.

I also read Paul Murray's in-between novel The Mark and the Void, and while some of it was good, I found it mostly dull. Too much plot centered around UK finances and the investment bankers who work in it.

I remember ordering a copy of an earlier Murray novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes, but the paperback Amazon sent me was printed backwards so I never read it. I must check it out again.

by Anonymousreply 542December 4, 2024 1:01 AM

The Bee Sting was far and away the best book I read this year (excluding re-reads of old favorites). I read it in great gulps and finished it with my hands over my eyes (yikes!).

by Anonymousreply 543December 4, 2024 6:03 PM

For those who like Audiobooks, the Bee Sting was great. Four different narrators and the Irish lilts are lovely.

by Anonymousreply 544December 4, 2024 6:18 PM

I too loved The Bee Sting and bought all his other books.

That said, i found it too long and the excavation part boring. Didn’t like the last chapter as well, it seemed lime he didn’t know how to get the characters out of where he put them, was way to contrived.

Conversely, the Imelda chapter which i was fearing from some coments here was perfectly fine.

by Anonymousreply 545December 4, 2024 10:27 PM
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