mmexis
Sophomore
@mmexis
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Post by mmexis on Feb 21, 2020 2:10:18 GMT
I see you're still slogging through the Neapolitan quartet. How do you like them? Yes, I've almost finished the final one. I'd watched the first season of the TV series and that interested me enough that I wanted to check out the books series from which it was adapted. I liked the first book (and was pleased to see the first season had followed the first book pretty closely). I liked the second book a little less so (but am anxiously awaiting the second season of the TV series - I have no idea when it'll be out on DVD here. Probably not for a year or so, and by then I'll have probably forgotten what I read). I haven't been as into books #3 & #4, but was determined to finish reading the story. Everyone is so INTENSE in the books. They're all constantly threatening to kill each other over everything. I do find Lila an intriguing character, though, and the actress who portrayed her in the first season of the show impressed me in particular. I think she perfectly captured the complexity of the character. I'm just happy/relieved to find a book series that I've been able to stick with and haven't given up on partway through (which has happened in the past with other book series that I've started). I'm glad I checked out the show, as it introduced me to this book series. I really liked the first one too. Their adventures reminded me of stories my mother said about her childhood after the war - especially all the school stuff and the way that society was always keeping tabs on them and what they were doing. The "riding in cars with boys" just made me howl with laughter. Like you, I found the second and third books tedious. The fourth one is better. I didn't know they have a TV series. I haven't seen it because I refuse to pay for any of the streaming services and I find enough to watch on regular TV. If it's on Netflix, I'll piggyback onto my sister's account to watch it. I think there's another book that's come out after the fourth, but I'm not sure and I'm not sure if it's part of the whole neapolitan scene. I would love to read some adult literature, but I'm on a selection committee for young adult readers and am stuck in the YA pool. Unfortunately, they publish a lot of dreck for children.
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Post by CrepedCrusader on Feb 22, 2020 15:47:17 GMT
A re-read:
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Post by jackspicer on Feb 22, 2020 21:18:41 GMT
I’ve been reading a lot of horror recently—not at all sure why. I’m in a Halloween-y mood in the middle of February! I know what you mean. I read 16 horror novels last year, including the ones you just mentioned. I like making myself afraid of the dark.
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Post by CrepedCrusader on Feb 24, 2020 0:49:27 GMT
On to one of only three King novels I've yet to read:
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 24, 2020 12:50:40 GMT
Just finished a good palate-cleanser after the 500-pg. Stephen King—Agatha Christie’s Remembered Death, which has a much better British title of Sparkling Cyanide. The first 60 pages or so are too twee and hysterical (Christie! Uses! So! Many! Exclamation Points! I don’t remember that from her other books), but after that it gets much better, though the exclamation points don’t go away. The characters are mostly stock, but two—coldly efficient secretary Ruth Lessing and stoic, “medieval” Sandra Farraday, who another character says would have made for a great inquisitor—are among AC’s best. Unfortunately, neither is in the book all that much. After the murder, we get routine police interviews, usually the bane of the detective story, but here it’s kept short, and the police are continually learning new things, so it’s not boring. Unfortunately, the non-series detectives (two amateur, one professional) are stolid and competent but not interesting. (At least they’re not annoying like early Poirot.) I guessed the killer and how he (no spoiler, “he” used for convenience) committed the crime without much difficulty, but some points came as a complete surprise, particularly the killer’s accomplice. While Christie’s prose seemed weaker than usual at first, it got better as the book went on. This is the first “new” Christie I’ve read in a long time, so I was delighted I liked it so much. All in all, good fun.
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Post by wickedkittiesmom on Feb 24, 2020 15:06:32 GMT
Above the Bay of Angels by Rhys Bowen
p.s. The final Hamish Macbeth novel by the late M.C. Beaton will still be published but not until 2021, the title has been changed from The Death of Love to The Death of the Green eyed Monster, also her final Agatha Raisin (Hot to Trot) will still be published this Fall.
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Post by Vassaggo on Feb 24, 2020 17:10:39 GMT
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mmexis
Sophomore
@mmexis
Posts: 860
Likes: 731
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Post by mmexis on Feb 25, 2020 3:38:52 GMT
A re-read: I got this free from collecting cereal box tops. I read it some years ago. It wasn't bad if I remember correctly. And different for Stephen King.
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Post by gspdude on Feb 26, 2020 20:15:31 GMT
Picked this up at my library, it will be my 1st Gaiman.
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 29, 2020 16:23:17 GMT
^^^Enjoy! If you like it (and Gaiman), I highly recommend American Gods, though that has a completely different feel. I’m currently reading Steven Millhauser’s short-story collection We Others. Does anyone here know Millhauser? Critics have compared him to Stephen King, Roald Dahl, and Borges (an odd trio if there ever was one), but the only one of those authors to whom I think he’s similar is Borges. Even then, Millhauser, who won a Pulitzer for his 1996 novel Martin Dressler, has more of a sense of story than Borges; if Borges had written Millhauser’s “The Eighth Voyage of Aladdin,” for example, he probably would have dropped the adventure-story parts and concentrated on the critical review of the Aladdin stories. Or he would have turned the story into an outline with commentary on the plot, as in, e.g., “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero.” Especially Borgesesque, though, is Millhauser’s play with genre: he makes you think you’re reading in a specific genre (usually horror, mystery, or science-fiction), only to turn the tables on you and totally subvert the very genre you think you’re reading. Borges does this in his magnificent “Death and the Compass,” a Chestertonian mystery with an Ellery Queen-esque hero that ends up criticizing the whole concept of detective work, the idea that mankind can ever know anything for certain. Millhauser forever ends with our not knowing, or with the protagonist who took the wrong path and didn’t find the magical wardrobe into fairyland. That his stories are so beautiful and so captivating regardless (or exactly because of that fact?) is a tribute to his art. The author of whom Millhauser most reminds me is Robert Aickman; my only explanation for why the literary critics don’t pick up on the parallels is that they’ve never heard of Aickman. Aickman, like Millhauser, can’t really be called a “genre writer” (whatever that means) but also can’t quite be called “literary” (whatever that means) either. His plots, like Millhauser’s, go in the “wrong” directions and often end without any kind of elucidation. We’re forever left with a feeling that we should know what’s going on—but don’t—as if we saw the move that let the magician do the trick but don’t know what the trick was. It’s the same feeling in Millhauser, as the narrator obliquely comments on in “The White Glove.” Millhauser’s “The Next Thing,” one of the best stories in the collection, is particularly Aickmanesque. It feels like a horror story, but the “threat” is so ordinary, even dull. We get no answers, no explanations; we just see events unfold. There are no scares, just a sense of uneasiness throughout. Always for Millhauser, more is going on than what we get to see. My favorite of these tales is “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” which was adapted into the 2006 film The Illusionist, a longtime favorite of mine. That’s largely because of my love for magic, but also because I think it best sums up Millhauser’s views on life and art: As Phyllis McGinley put it, “…‘Letters longer are than art,/But vita is extremely brevis!’” Millhauser’s prose style is hypnotic—seemingly effortless (which means it took a huge amount of work) and beautiful, each word in its place. A highly recommended collection, and I’ll definitely be seeking out more Millhauser in the future.
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Post by politicidal on Feb 29, 2020 23:57:21 GMT
A biography on the black WW1 pilot Eugene Bullard called All Blood Runs Red.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2020 3:48:11 GMT
One of my all-time favourite books.
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Post by CrepedCrusader on Mar 2, 2020 2:44:35 GMT
My first Dickens novel:
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Mar 5, 2020 8:30:28 GMT
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Post by Zos on Mar 5, 2020 13:15:03 GMT
Rereading it, one of my all time favourite music books....
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Post by gspdude on Mar 5, 2020 15:35:22 GMT
Picked this up at the library today. I've enjoyed all 5 Simmons books I've read, particularly The Terror which, like this, is horror, so I'm optimistic.
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Post by CrepedCrusader on Mar 5, 2020 19:37:59 GMT
Picked this up at the library today. I've enjoyed all 5 Simmons books I've read, particularly The Terror which, like this, is horror, so I'm optimistic. I read it years ago. I enjoyed it.
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Post by dirtypillows on Mar 8, 2020 2:29:26 GMT
I had been reading "High Fidelity" back in January and got a little over half way through. It wasn't bad or overly boring, but I just couldn't get into mindset of the self-proclaimed record geek who cannot handle his lady woes. I can see why some straight guys might get into it, but it just wasn't good enough for me to care to read another page.
A couple days ago I picked up Shirley Jackson's perceptive, warm and hysterically astute memoirs on raising four young children and just keeping it from falling apart, "Life Among the Savages". I read this book probably 15 years ago. Shirley Jackson is not capable of a misstep in judgment or fallible intuition. She is a master story weaver and her humorous pieces are every bit as absorbing and entertaining and impressive as her horror pieces.
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Post by Captain Spencer on Mar 8, 2020 15:47:48 GMT
I've been reading the Bill Hodges trilogy by Stephen King, and I'll eventually be reading the final one; End Of Watch. But before I get started on that, I'll be reading the autobiography of horror movie director Dario Argento called Fear.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Mar 9, 2020 22:26:37 GMT
Graham Greene - The End of the Affair
Love Graham Greene, Carl, and this is one of my favorites of his novels. What did you think of it? I haven't liked any film version yet.
I’m afraid I’ve been neglecting it for a few weeks. Still only on page 46. I was getting a bit confused by the many changes in the timeline.
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