What Are You Reading

[Lincsong]

The Political Zoo by Dr. Michael Weiner.

 

[Feraud]

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
by Elijah Wald.
The author does a service to blues history as he puts the performers in their deserved place as progressive musical professionals and not archaic stereotypes.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago's 1933-34 World's Fair


In the richly illustrated Building a Century of Progress, Lisa D. Schrenk explores the pivotal role of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair in modern American architecture. She recounts how the exposition’s architectural commission promoted a broad definition of modern architecture, not relying on purely aesthetic characteristics but instead focusing on new design solutions. The fair’s pavilions incorporated recently introduced building materials such as masonite and gypsum board; structural innovations (for example, the first thin-shell concrete roof and the first suspended roof structures built in the United States); and new construction processes, most notably the use of prefabrication. They also featured curiosities like the giant, constantly operating mayonnaise maker and the glass-walled House of Tomorrow, which had no operable windows. Schrenk shows how the halls’ designs reflected cultural and political developments of the period, including the expanding relationships between science, industry, and government; the rise of a corporate consumer culture; and the impact of the Great Depression.

 

[DeaconKC]

To "the Librarian", I must agree with you on his stand alone works, like Tom Clancy, much better on his own. The Chase was one of those "one more chapter, THEN I'll go to bed....." books.

 

[Harp]

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
by Elijah Wald.
The author does a service to blues history as he puts the performers in their deserved place as progressive musical professionals and not archaic stereotypes.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[AmateisGal]

I just finished reading Jenna Blum's Those Who Save Us last night and am just blown away. Her writing is absolutely amazing and the story is completely mesmerizing. Blum worked with Steven Spielberg's Shoah foundation for four years and interviewed Holocaust survivors.

Here's the back cover copy from the paperback:

"For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Germany's WWII-era leadership officer. Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame."

I highly recommend this book.

 

[imoldfashioned]

Lisa Fonssagrives. A book about Irving Penn's wife and muse. Wonderful pictures but the essays are great too, especially the one by David Seidner (I love his work; he died way too soon).

 

[b17sam@hotmail.]

A Real Good War

Check the rave reviews and read a full chapter of the great WW2 novel, A Real Good War. Click on to http://b17sam.com/samplepage.html

 

[imported_the_librarian]

To "the Librarian", I must agree with you on his stand alone works, like Tom Clancy, much better on his own. The Chase was one of those "one more chapter, THEN I'll go to bed....." books.

Hi all!

I appreciate the good info. on the Cussler stuff, especially the Chase. I've got it sitting on reserve at our library...so tomorrow night, I'd better fill the percolator up with coffee....cause I'll be up reading!

So I'm not the only one who says one more chapter, huh? I thought it was just me!

But golly, sometimes, just can't stop reading....next day feel like mud! lol lol

 

[Vintage Betty]

Just finished reading Brooke Astor's Patchwork Child.

An amazing childhood and a great book. Highly recommended.

Vintage Betty

 

[Patrick Murtha]

One of the joys of reading many great novelists is the sheer quality of their observations, generalizations, aphorisms, and authorial asides. As I get deeper into F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, I am reminded that FSF is a master of this. Within just a few pages one gets this remark from Nicole Diver:

Most people think everybody feels about them much more violently than they actually do--they think other people's opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval.

And this moving observation from the consciousness of Rosemary Hoyt:

Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.

And this famous passage about Nicole Diver (the contemporary leftist critics who felt that Fitzgerald was insensitive to socio-economic realities must have skipped over this entirely):

Nicole was the product of much ingenuity and toil. For her sake trains began their run at Chicago and traversed the round belly of the continent to California; chicle factories fumed and link belts grew link by link in factories; men mixed toothpaste in vats and drew mouthwash out of copper hogsheads; girls canned tomatoes quickly in August or worked rudely at the Five-and-Tens on Christmas Eve; half-breed Indians toiled on Brazilian coffee plantations and dreamers were muscled out of patent rights in new tractors—these were some of the people who gave a tithe to Nicole...

What a profound author Fitzgerald truly was.

 

[DeaconKC]

The amazing thing to me, is that the ability to create a character crosses over into every great literary area of novels. Whether Tom Clancy, Rex Stout, Louis Lamour, etc. we see unforgettable characters who are often more lifelike because of their foibles and failures than the people we deal with on a daily basis.

 

[Justdog]

Reading

The Professional W.C Heintz
History of the 21st century Gilbert

 

[Nick D]

For pleasure reading, I just finished the 50th anniversary single volume edition of the Lord of the Rings, and am now reading the 70th anniversary edition of the Hobbit. Backwards, but I got LOTR for Christmas, and the Hobbit for my birthday, which is in January, and I started LOTR on Dec. 25.

 

[katiemakeup]

I am finishing one book to race to my next: Washington Irving's Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York. I am very excited! I have only read his short stories duriing school (years ago) so I am curious to tackle a novel. From what I have heard, it is one of his more humorous works.

 

[CanadaDoll]

I spent a weeklong break from school reading Irene Nemirovsky's, Suite Francaise, and I just loooooooved it, she had a beautiful quality in her writing, I've since gone back and bought two others of hers

 

[Patrick Murtha]

I realized today that I had eight novels and one non-fiction narrative in progress (stop the insanity!) -- so of course my immediate thought was, I've got to add more non-fiction.

Which I may do in a day or two. In the meantime, here's the roster.

1. Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit -- I've been reading this mainly on weekends, when I can give it the attention it deserves. What a great novel. I'm getting quite close to the end.

2. Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope -- Book 10 of 13 in A Series of Unfortunate Events, one of the drollest productions in the language. This is a big "payoff" volume -- a lot of the mysteries of the series become more clear.

3. Dorothy B. Hughes, The Blackbirder -- Very interesting 1940s thriller that takes its beleaguered female protagonist-on-the-run through a wide geographic range (Paris to New York to Santa Fe).

4. Rex Stout, The Rubber Band -- I'm reading the Nero Wolfe series in order; this is the third. I just began it the other day, and was immediately re-hooked by Archie Goodwin's narration. Archie is my hero, attitudinally, sartorially, and otherwise. If I could be anyone...

5. Joe Gores, Interface -- Also just started this, my first Gores, on the basis of its reputation as a brutally tough piece of hard-boiled fiction.

6. James Blish, They Shall Have Stars -- First in Blish's Cities in Flight quartet, important vintage science fiction.

7. Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End -- Recent acclaimed novel of the advertising world, uniquely written in the first person plural. Very funny so far.

8. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night -- I'm enjoying this more and more as I go along.

9. Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City -- The non-fiction title; I've been meaning to get to this one for a long time.

 

[SamMarlowPI]

1984 for a soc. class...ugh...v for vendetta has spoiled me...i didn't care for it at all even though it is the leading book for futuristic societies...could have honestly summed up the whole thing in like 10 pages...

 

[CharlesB]

1984 for a soc. class...ugh...v for vendetta has spoiled me...i didn't care for it at all even though it is the leading book for futuristic societies...could have honestly summed up the whole thing in like 10 pages...

When i think of dystopian futures I think of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep

 

[Byron]

I'm currently reading "Hemingway on Hunting". This is a compulation of various Hemingway stories on his favorite subject. Since the subject is reading, what's the latest on Classic Style magazine? I'm hoping for one fantastic comeback.