What Are You Reading

[DNO]

"Flyboys" by James Bradley. Having a hard time putting this one down.

 

[Touchofevil]

I have been a huge fan of Simenon for many a year. Fortunately, he was quite prolific and left us with many tales of Maigret. Enjoy!

 

[Ronowell]

I have bought some new books for an online store and i am enjoying them to read.

 

[Stray Cat]

Thanks Stray Cat. I have heard of the books but not have gotten around to reading them. I will have to check them out.

Kirk H.

I hope you don't get disappointed..

 

[Derek Cavin]

"Flyboys" by James Bradley. Having a hard time putting this one down.

Good to see this. I've been wanting to read this one, and now I will.

 

[Derek Cavin]

Into the Fire by Dennis McKiernan. I love McKiernan but this one is draaaaging.

 

[VitaminG]

Hemingway's Chair by Michael Palin. Picked it up for a buck at the markets a few months back and just now getting to it

 

[Black Dahlia]

Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer (1914)
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[LizzieMaine]

Immersed in Neal Gabler's fascinating biography of Walter Winchell, the most influential newspaperman of the 20th Century. I meant to read this when it first came out several years ago, but am only now getting to it. An absolutely fascinating examination of Winchell's life, career, and lasting influence.

Why Winchell should be completely forgotten today is baffling -- he singlehandedly created "infotainment," a negative achievement if there ever was one, and one which lingers down to the present day, and his career and influence dissolved into incoherent red-baiting during the fifties. But during the thirties, he was actually a heroic figure -- the first American newspaperman with the guts to denounce Germany's WWII-era leader, by name, over and over and over again, with a great deal of vitriol, at a time when the mainstream press didn't want to hear the truth. Gabler doesn't whitewash Winchell's negatives -- of which there were many, nor does he overlook his positives. The result is an extremely well-balanced look at an extremely polarizing but fascinating figure, who embodied much, for good and ill, of what defined the Era. Highly recommended.

 

[Harp]

The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville.

Irish noir focus on an IRA hitman's guilt-plagued haunting.
Not my cuppa, but a lovely colleen offered it and I could not refuse.:love:

 

[WH1]

Reread Agatha Christie, "Murder on the Orient Express"

 

[Derek Cavin]

The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie and the Detection Club (each member, including Christie, writes one chapter of the book).

 

[Black Dahlia]

Agatha Christie is a favourite of mine. ;0
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[djd]

Agatha Christie is a favourite of mine. ;0
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Oh mine too!

 

[Black Dahlia]

Oh mine too!

I'm a sucker for crime, mystery and detective novels, especially British ones.
;0
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[Smithy]

I'm a sucker for crime, mystery and detective novels, especially British ones.
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If you are a fan of Christie and haven't already read her, Dame Ngaio Marsh is a must. She was writing at roughly the same time as AC but IMHO Marsh pips the Queen of Crime with her characterisation. Worth hunting down.

A modern find which has thrilled me is Barbara Cleverly who writes traditional British Crime set in the inter-war period. Her Joe Sandilands novels are hugely enjoyable and the first few were set in British India of the 20s which are hugely evocative. Her style and pacing reminds me greatly of AC.

 

[Gregg Axley]

So I'm at the inlaws, staying in the backroom (has the washer and dryer in it!), keeping away from screaming kids and family.
I brought several books, a cooler to keep my wine cold (a 5 day cooler and honestly the wine is still cool without adding too much ice), and a portable A/C to keep me comfy in the TX heat. I brought a book I'm finishing on Laurel and Hardy, kind of a look at their works listing what went into each film, and why they were so funny. But I brought one out of storage, that I had forgotten about. It's a collection of all Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, as they appeared in the Strand. I got it 20yrs ago at Sams! The book is in a leather bound cover, with gold on the page edges. It's really nice. If I can find one online and find a link, I'll add it later.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sat up half the night finishing "Time On My Hands," an obscure 1997 novel by one Peter Delacorte -- a nifty bit of time-travel fiction about a rather self-absorbed 1990s fellow who is sent back to 1938 by an eccentric scientist on a mission: to influence Ronald Reagan in such a way that he never becomes President. The time traveler is kind of a ****, however, and keeps botching the job -- he accidentally kills Reagan, twice, and keeps going back to try and reverse his actions. Along the way he becomes a screenwriter at Warner Bros, achieving great success by plagiarizing film ideas from the fifties and sixties, and falls in love with a B-picture actress who is destined to die before 1938 is over.

I can't help but think that Delacorte had seen "Goodnight Sweetheart" at least once or twice, because his protagonist is very much an amoral Gary Sparrow type of fellow. But the period depiction is very well done, and the depiction of the young "Dutch" Reagan himself as a likable innocent hayseed is well-realized. There was supposed to be a sequel to the book, but as far as I know it never appeared.

 

[AmateisGal]

Agatha Christie's The 4:50 from Paddington.

 

[Edward]

Just finished reading Angelology, a novel I picked up in the supermarket a while ago. Reviewers compared it to Dan Brown, which is, I suppose, not surprising as it deals with the overlap between myth and theology in the form of a thriller, but unfair all the same in that it is actually rather well written. Brown can spin a likeable enough yarn, but his prose is, IMO, truly appalling. The novel centres on the conceit that the Biblical story of the Nephilim is literally true, and tells of the adventures of a band of angelologists as they race the Nephilim to find and possess a celestial artefact that can stop the latter's evil machinations. Fun stuff. It sets up perfectly for a sequel, though I don't know if that is planned. The book is primarily set in 1999 or thereabouts, although several chunks are told in flashback to the 1940s. Following on from this, I have begun reading the latest Sookie Stackhouse, Dead Reckoning. Teantalising me from the shelf is an alternative-history novel I picked up in Ford's Theatre, DC, last week - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I may have to read a decent biography of ole beardy first, though, to fully appreciate that one.