What are you reading?

[leew3]

it was time for some review, can't wait to see how it ends! https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wbcgy...j6kdmu5s2&dl=0

[Joe Beamish]

Originally Posted by catdaddy

This is my first Updike novel. Won't be my last. Love his incredibly descriptive style, even if his morally muddy protagonist isn't so lovable.

I think each book in this tetralogy is better than the last. Ian McEwan once recommended reading them in reverse order, which is what I did years ago. Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest seemed particularly good.

Goodness knows what I would think of them now. I do still love some of Updike’s short stories. He was such a visual dude.

[rdeane]

Texas by Michener. I've read a number of his books and like his writing style. His books are usually pretty long, though.

[frankmcr]

The Long Goodbye (1953) Raymond Chandler. (A reread). It doesn't get much better, if at all.

[Bix-B]

Just finished "My Family And Other Animals" by Gerald Durrell. Easily the
funnies book I have ever read.

[Joe Beamish]

Originally Posted by frankmcr

The Long Goodbye (1953) Raymond Chandler. (A reread). It doesn't get much better, if at all.

This is of my most dependable re-reads especially if I’m feeling blue.

[frankmcr]

Originally Posted by Bix-B

Just finished "My Family And Other Animals" by Gerald Durrell. Easily the
funnies book I have ever read.

I read through all of his books long long ago. For anyone who likes reading about animals.

Also recommend his brother Lawrence's travel books/memoirs:

Prospero's Cell (1945)
Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953)
Bitter Lemons (1957)

[donlyn]

What are you reading?

To start with, Glenwillow mentioned "The Boys in the Boat" a few posts back, which I can wholeheartedly recommend. Read it pre-pandemic when I was member of the local library book club.

I have a habit of reading a few books at a time. Kind of like learning a few songs at a time. Keeps things interesting.

Last week I finished 3.

"Senso" by Stan Sakai, a hard-cover graphic-novel stand-alone story in the many tales of Usagi Yojimbo. It is a re-telling of the "War of the Worlds" set in feudal Japan. Gave it to my older son and granddaughter for a read. Sakai also writes a fantastic series of feudal Japan stories populated by animal characters like the lead character, the ronin Usagi Yojimbo (rabbit bodyguard). Many of the stories are re-telling of historical and movie story lines and people, for example, Lone Goat and Kid. Sakai is an outstanding artist too.

"The Summer of 1876" by Chris Wimmer. Focusing on events happening west of the Mississippi, and features an easy reading under-300 page tale of events that happened that year, from the Custer Little Bighorn campaign/battle, to the James-Younger gang attempted bank robbery in Northfield, the Deadwood Gold Rush, and many items in-between about western town lawmen and native American back stories.

"The Bullet Garden" by Stephen Hunter. I've read a good many of his books, and like them a lot. He has a three generational series of gun-toting lawmen and shooters. This one takes place in WWII in the Normandie Bocage, and features the middle generation character Earl Swagger as a tough-as-nails marine seconded to the army because of his successful Pacific campaigns as a sniper. Seems they have some enemy sniper issues, and he lends a hand and brain.

One of his previous books, "Point of Impact" featured the third generation, Viet-nam marine sniper Earl Swagger. I think it is his best book, and was later made into the movie "Shooter", and a 3-season TV show also called "Shooter". But the book is better the movie, of course, and the TV show had a different story line. Hunter's career includes being a movie critic, and his books read like you are watching a movie. And sometimes real characters are in the books, including WWII era film stars on occasion, like Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in the latest effort, Bullet Garden. In "Hot Springs" there was an encounter with mobster Bugsy Siegel.

He also wrote a true-life story, American Gunfight, about a plot to assassinate President Truman.

Sorry to run long, but this all brings to mind a book (Knebel and Bailey from 1962) and movie called "Seven Days in May" (Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster heading a great cast) which I read and saw many years ago, but re-read last year. It is about a military coup to take over the United States, and it is quite chilling and topical considering events of the last few years, and the 1963 Kennedy assassination too, of course.

Be well all.

Don
.

[Tahitijack]

EAST OF EDEN
Just finished one of John Steinbeck's classics. A few months ago I read Grapes of Wrath. Great story line obviously but my Kendle version had way too many typos and needed serious proofreading.

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Started one of Hemingway classic short stories.

[DCCougar]

Blue Skies by T.C. Boyle.

This is a new one by Boyle, and he's still the best.

In Understanding T. C. Boyle, Paul William Gleason writes, "Boyle's stories and novels take the best elements of Carver's minimalism, Barth's postmodern extravaganzas, García Márquez's magical realism, O'Connor's dark comedy and moral seriousness, and Dickens' entertaining and strange plots and brings them to bear on American life in an accessible, subversive, and inventive way."

[Jeff Scott]

[frankmcr]

Alternating The Long Goodbye with The Dharma Bums. Two different views of California early '50s. Interesting.

[GCWaters]

Finishing up “Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the '70s”, by Alan Paul

[eyesore]

Reading the Greg Lake bio. It's fast and interesting.

[jseth]

I'm over halfway through Jeffrey Dever's book, "The Never Game" - I've enjoyed a few episodes of a new TV show called "Tracker' - and in the credits, it mentions that it's based on the book, "The Never Game', so I thought I'd give it a go... it's really good so far!