Now reading...

[Tim McG]

I just finished reading Wild at Heart by John Eldridge.

It's a kind of "coming of age" novel for middle aged men, er...like me.

[king ubu]

Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" - great one so far, but I'm only into it by 150 pages or so...

[Stefan Wood]

Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell."

[jazzbo]

[etherbored]

the revolution will be accessorized. a compilation of writings from BlackBook magazine.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

the revolution will be accessorized. a compilation of writings from BlackBook magazine.

Past the post. Title should be "The revolution has been accessorised".

MG

[ghost of miles]

Along with Will Friedwald's STARDUST MELODIES, in an F. Scott rereading mode--picked up GATSBY again last weekend. I pretty much reread that one every couple of years. Going out tomorrow on the prowl for a copy of his Pat Hobby stories, which I read as a teenager... very short, satirical short stories about a failed screenwriter in Hollywood that Fitzgerald wrote near the end of his career.

[Harold_Z]

For some reason I think musicians and music people would dig this.....I LOVED it !

The Magician And The Card Sharp by Karl Johnson

From a blurb:

Dai Vernon, considered among the most influential magicians of the 20th century, could do just about any trick that called for sleight of hand. He was obsessed with learning the secrets of crooked card dealers. But there was one move he couldn't master.

In the The Magician and the Cardsharp, author Karl Johnson documents Vernon's quest to find the one man who was able to perform the holy grail of card tricks -- the so-called "center deal," dealing a specific card from anywhere in the deck, undetected.

Vernon's search took him from one sleazy dive to another: bars, nightclubs, pool halls, and smoke-filled back rooms. In 1932, the trail finally led him to a little white house in Pleasant Hill, Mo., where Allen Kennedy lived.

Kennedy didn't disappoint Vernon, showing him exactly how to perform the trick great gamblers had assumed was a fairytale.

Vernon died in 1992 at the age of 98. But at the Magic Castle, a Los Angeles club for magicians, there's a seat permanently reserved in his honor.

[ghost of miles]

I found a copy of Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby stories and spent much of last night reading them. Wonderful, short, incisive and funny takes on the Hollywood of the late 1930s--highly recommend them for any fans of FSF or of cynical fiction about Lotus Land. I'm not sure how many precedents there were for such writing when Fitzgerald wrote these stories; he was surely aware of his friend Nathanael West's DAY OF THE LOCUST, which had come out in 1939, but I'm hard-pressed to think of other examples before 1940.

[Kalo]

More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts, by James Naremore

Hey, that's the guy I interviewed for this show. He teaches here at IU; quite a jazz fan.

Wow, I'm liking this guy more all the time.

I just finished his The Magic World of Orson Welles, which is excellent, despite the off-putting title, which was foisted on him by the publisher.

[BruceH]

More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts, by James Naremore

Hey, that's the guy I interviewed for this show. He teaches here at IU; quite a jazz fan.

Wow, I'm liking this guy more all the time.

I just finished his The Magic World of Orson Welles, which is excellent, despite the off-putting title, which was foisted on him by the publisher.

You mean, you don't think it's a magic world???

[Kalo]

Maybe a magic act.

[medjuck]

I'm past the half way mark on Against the Day. Only 500 pages to go.

[Van Basten II]

The truce by Mario Benedetti, a major book that was written in 1959 that still rings true today.

Edited April 11, 2007 by Van Basten II

[paul secor]

Read a couple of short (but fine) pieces before going to sleep last night:

Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the P.O."

and

Steve Voce's "Don't Shoot - We're American!" from Reading Jazz

[brownie]

Enjoying the first volume of 'Chroniques de la Montagne' by Alexandre Vialatte an excellent French writer who probably is unknown in non-French reading countries. Vialatte wrote almost daily chronicles for the central France newspaper 'La Montagne'. Love his style and his humor. An author for the 'happy few'!

Vialatte also is known for translating Franz Kafka into French from 1933 on.

[paul secor]

Percival Everett's story: "The Fix"

[BruceH]

James Naremore also has a book on acting that I found in a local library. Titled "Acting In the Cinema" it has some very good chapters on Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant.

[ghost of miles]

Thomas Merton, LEARNING TO LOVE: V. 6 OF THE JOURNALS, 1966-67

[porcy62]

Putting some order in my library I stumbled in this book:

David Bordwell "The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960", a ponderous, but absolutely essential, reading for everybody seriously interested in Cinema. It was one of the texts at my History of Cinema courses at University.

Warmly reccomended to every patient cinephile.

Edited April 16, 2007 by porcy62

[Matthew]

Finished, for like the one hundredth time, my all-time favorite coffee table book: George T. Simon's Simon Says: The Sights And Sounds Of The Swing Era 1933 - 1955. It's a collection of a lot of his articles, interviews and reviews that he wrote for Metronome magazine. It really is a journey back in time and quite interesting. Of course, it's long OOP, but it comes up on Ebay every now and then, a couple of years ago I was able to get a copy in mint condition and it's traveled with me ever since. If you like the big band era, and kind of corny writing, this book is a goldmine. Just some excerpts from the book to give you a flavor:

The famous 1938 Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall concert is headlined with this. Benny and cats make Carnegie debut real howling success. Shorthairs Shag, Longhairs Wag, Walls sag, as Goodman's gang transforms ancient hall into modern swing emporium.

Love this from a review about Ellington at the Cotton Club: The Cotton Club draws many ickies who pester Ellington to play pop tunes that were hardly intended from him to attack. He plays them, and the fact that he plays them well enough to satisfy those ickies, and to draw there applause, should be added to the plus rather than to minus side when computing Duke's final score.

Just very interesting to read these "you are there" accounts of historic jazz bands and figures. Highly recommended.

[paul secor]

Joe Boyd: White Bicycles

[paul secor]

Ross Feld's Shapes Mistaken

[Van Basten II]

Anybody read le Tombeau de Marot by Douglas R. Hofstadter, as i was doing some clean up, i found it and remembered the pleasure i had reading it.

On another matter, currently reading Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team that Gave Birth to Modern Baseball

By Burt Solomon.

Edited May 1, 2007 by Van Basten II

[ejp626]

The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz. I am sort of marking the recent death of Geertz by rereading some of his classic essays. I read about 1/3 of this book in grad school and decided to read all of it. I have to admit it is more of a slog now than it was then. I am sure this is partly because reading it on the train is hardly ideal for concentration, but I am just in a different place now and am not nearly as interested in grand or even middle-range social theory compared to where I was 5 or so years ago. I'm down to the last two chapters. Fortunately, these are some of the best in the book, dealing with thick description of Balinese customs.

I'll be glad to get back to some light entertainment after this.