Now reading...

[Kalo]

Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss by Ken Silverman

[ghost of miles]

Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss by Ken Silverman

Kalo, I just got that book a couple weeks ago--ordered it after my wife & I saw a segment related to Houdini on a PBS program. Looks to be a good read.

[BruceH]

Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss by Ken Silverman

Kalo, I just got that book a couple weeks ago--ordered it after my wife & I saw a segment related to Houdini on a PBS program. Looks to be a good read.

I used to have a copy, but it made an amazing escape from my collection.

Edited August 15, 2006 by BruceH

[etherbored]

haruki murakami: afterdark

[JohnJ]

Am rereading The Pickwick Papers slowly.

I'm also going to take Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland with me on my trip to Japan. I only read one Murakami from early in his career, and want to see how he developed.

Murakami seems to be more popular than ever. I have been a big fan since reading 'A Wild Sheep Chase' in the early 90's and just started 'Kafka on the Shore'.

'Hard Boiled Wonderland' is actually my least favorite Murakami, I found it a difficult read.

[etherbored]

I'm also going to take Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland with me on my trip to Japan. I only read one Murakami from early in his career, and want to see how he developed.

Murakami seems to be more popular than ever. I have been a big fan since reading 'A Wild Sheep Chase' in the early 90's and just started 'Kafka on the Shore'.

'Hard Boiled Wonderland' is actually my least favorite Murakami, I found it a difficult read.

'kafka...' is a great read. long, like 'the wind up bird chronicle', but more satisfying.

'pinball 1973' and 'hear the wind sing', his first novellas, are very short and evocative. these two introduce and establish characters that seem to visit most of his work.

have you read either 'dance, dance, dance' or the non-fiction work 'underground'?

there's also an anthology of short stories (in english) coming on august 29th.

one of, if not my favorite contemporary writers,

-e-

ps: 'hard boiled wonderland' is so odd because the writer attempts to create a complete subterranean world that just loses the reader (IMHO).

[JohnJ]

I'm also going to take Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland with me on my trip to Japan. I only read one Murakami from early in his career, and want to see how he developed.

Murakami seems to be more popular than ever. I have been a big fan since reading 'A Wild Sheep Chase' in the early 90's and just started 'Kafka on the Shore'.

'Hard Boiled Wonderland' is actually my least favorite Murakami, I found it a difficult read.

'kafka...' is a great read. long, like 'the wind up bird chronicle', but more satisfying.

'pinball 1973' and 'hear the wind sing', his first novellas, are very short and evocative. these two introduce and establish characters that seem to visit most of his work.

have you read either 'dance, dance, dance' or the non-fiction work 'underground'?

there's also an anthology of short stories (in english) coming on august 29th.

one of, if not my favorite contemporary writers,

-e-

ps: 'hard boiled wonderland' is so odd because the writer attempts to create a complete subterranean world that just loses the reader (IMHO).

etherbored, I bought and read 'Pinball 1973' and 'Hear the Wind Sing' when I first heard about Murakami and agree with your assessment. Really enoyed both of them and they would indeed make a good introduction to Murakami along with 'Norwegian Wood'. I have read 'Dance, Dance, Dance', which as I remember is a kind of sequel to 'Wild Sheep Chase' largely set in Hawaii. Loved that too, actually 'Hard Boiled Wonderland' remains the only Murakami I am less than enthusiastic about. Have not read 'Underground' though.

Readers of this board might enjoy 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon' where the main protaganist owns a jazz club. Wonderful novel.

Anyway, Murakami is probably my favorite contemporary novelist too.

[Kalo]

Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss by Ken Silverman

Kalo, I just got that book a couple weeks ago--ordered it after my wife & I saw a segment related to Houdini on a PBS program. Looks to be a good read.

Been meaning to read this for a while. Houdini was one of my childhood heroes. I'm more than halfway through the book and am finding it to be a very good, scrupulous biography.

[ghost of miles]

John Cavanagh's Piper at the Gates of Dawn entry in the intriguing 33 1/3 series.

Edited August 21, 2006 by ghost of miles

[jlhoots]

T.C. Boyle: Talk, Talk

BTW if you haven't read Drop City, get on it right now.

[etherbored]

Anyway, Murakami is probably my favorite contemporary novelist too.

salute,

-e-

[Uncle Skid]

The Origins of the Urban Crisis : Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit - Thomas Sugrue. An eye-opener, to say the least.

That's on my reading list--what do you think?

Excellent. Highly recommended. "Academic", yet very readable; a thorough but not overwhelming discussion of the historical events that contributed to the "urban crisis". What sticks with me the most is the sometimes very subtle ways in which discrimination created (and still creates) situations that made it very difficult for huge numbers of people to find work, decent housing, etc. The complex interaction of seemingly unrelated events was especially illuminating.

On a personal note, I was raised in Detroit, and (as a kid, anyway) witnessed many of the events described in the book. The "white flight" of the 1970's was something that has always puzzled me, and the book does a very good job of explaining what led up to the exodus of so many people to the suburbs.

***

Just finished The Catcher in the Rye. I've been re-reading that one every 5 years or so for about 25 years now, and I get more out of it each time. This time especially...

[MartyJazz]

David Foster Wallace: "Consider the Lobster". Entertaining and informative book of essays by a challenging writer.

[paul secor]

Just finished Radio Activity by Bill Fitzhugh. FM rock radio jock turns detective - pure entertainment, nothing more, nothing less.

Edited August 24, 2006 by paul secor

[ghost of miles]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

[Van Basten II]

Decided that it's to read the classics, right now i'm reading Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

[Kalo]

Just finished A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Times of Bernard Herrmann by Steven C. Smith (University of California Press)

Very good book. Smith writes well, is judicious in his critical evaluations, and wisely quotes Herrmann's own eloquent published writing and letters at length.

[montg]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Ghost, you and I appear to have similar reading interests. I've been reading a ton of Hammet, Raymond Chandler etc this summer. I can hardly get enough of it! Lately, I've been reading Ross MacDonald (the Lew Archer stuff). I just finished the Galton Case.

Have you read Paul Elie's biography of Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor? Really enjoyable and interesting to see the intersections among those great lives.

[ejp626]

Just finished Anthony Powell's Temporary Kings, the 11th book in A Dance to the Music of Time. One more to go. I think the first half didn't work quite as well as the second. Sometimes Powell seems to dwell too much on some legend and then show how it illuminates contemporary events. It's also a little strange how most of the non-artistic characters are fading out, so that the only ones who interact with the main character are novelists, editors, painters and musicians (and Widmerpool of course). Maybe this is somewhat overstated, and maybe it simply reflects how upper class people from that era were educated -- heavy exposure to the arts.

[medjuck]

"This is Your Brain On Music". Great book.

[medjuck]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Is this a new book? I thought I had all of Hammett. (Includng a book of comic strips he wrote.)

[ghost of miles]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Ghost, you and I appear to have similar reading interests. I've been reading a ton of Hammet, Raymond Chandler etc this summer. I can hardly get enough of it! Lately, I've been reading Ross MacDonald (the Lew Archer stuff). I just finished the Galton Case.

Have you read Paul Elie's biography of Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor? Really enjoyable and interesting to see the intersections among those great lives.

No, I haven't, but that sounds really good--I'll take a look for it when I go down to Caveat Emptor today, coincidentally enough to look for some Ross MacDonald! This a.m. I was reading Lorrie Moore's review of a new Eudora Welty bio in the new NY Review of Books... she mentioned Welty's liking for MacDonald (real name Ken Millar), which got me interested in reading him again. I have two paperbacks, THE DROWNING POOL and FIND A VICTIM--neither of which I've read yet--but the other day I'd come across a quote from a 1953 novel of MacDonald's... so I'm going to go downtown and see if I can find it. In the meantime, Moore's review drove me to start reading Welty's THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER--more of a novella than a novel, so I think I might be able to get through all of it today.

Edited September 11, 2006 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Is this a new book? I thought I had all of Hammett. (Includng a book of comic strips he wrote.)

Yes--I have that SECRET AGENT X-9 book as well. LOST STORIES came out just last year; I stumbled across it at our local Borders last week. It's not "complete," as far as I can tell; it doesn't contain the very last Continental Op story, "Death and Company" (which I've been searching for for some time), or several early 1930s stories I still can't find ("On the Way," "Albert Pastor at Home," and "His Brother's Keeper"). It does have "Night Shade" and "This Little Pig," plus a # of 1920s stories I've never read, so I bought it. The book is rather padded with biographical commentary.

[Kalo]

Welty was right: Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar) was the man. I read all of his novels over the course of a year about a decade ago and have returned to several of them a few times since.

Other big Macdonald fans were hard-boiled singer/songwriter Warren Zevon and one of my favorite living writers, Thomas Berger (Little Big Man, Killing Time, Neighbors, The Feud etc.).

The Galton Case is one of Macdonald's best, a watershed for him, but all of the Archer novels are worthwhile. Anything from the '60s is highly recommended, especially The Wycherly Woman, The Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Chill, The Far Side of the Dollar, and The Goodbye Look.

[ghost of miles]

Thanks for the recs. I started THE DROWNING POOL this afternoon; it's an earlier Archer, I take it (1950?) and seems a bit under the spell of Marlowe/Chandler at times, but I'm still really enjoying it.