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Posted

Harvey's one of the best. Very rereadable. His book Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges is my favorite, but Movie Love is excellent as well. I hope he has another in the pipeline.

Yeah, for years I've thought that that particular book is one of my all-time favorite "Screwball Comedy" books because it's one of the very few to get the subject RIGHT. (Arguably the only one.)

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Easily the most powerful book I've read in many a year - a doorstop I read in two rapid chunks during 2007. A harrowing read - Fisk presents horror after horror and then piles on another.

What amazed me were the things I'd completely forgotten - the shooting down of the Iranian airliner in the 80s, for example.

Fisk is amazing. Two things particularly stick in mind - his flying into Baghdad in 2003 just before the attack! And the amazing story of an Israeli rocket attack on a vehicle - Fisk got a bit of the casing of the missile with the serial number on, smuggled it to the States, booked a meeting at the missile manufacturers under a pretext, listened to the execs talking in sanitised jargon about their 'product'...and then produced the fragment out of his bag and told them what it had done to people!

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A fine novel about a young lad growing up in the States in the 50s and 60s trying to reconstruct what happened to his parents in Czechoslovakia during WWII - centred round the Heydrich assassination:

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Really enjoying this - it's had me exploring in all sorts of places from the 20s to the 50s. Not so interested in the Miles/Coltrane/Mingus chapters I've got to at present, simply because I've read so much else about this period. The last few chapters will be interesting, seeing his interpretation of more recent music.

Posted

the_great_war.jpg

Easily the most powerful book I've read in many a year - a doorstop I read in two rapid chunks during 2007. A harrowing read - Fisk presents horror after horror and then piles on another.

What amazed me were the things I'd completely forgotten - the shooting down of the Iranian airliner in the 80s, for example.

Fisk is amazing. Two things particularly stick in mind - his flying into Baghdad in 2003 just before the attack! And the amazing story of an Israeli rocket attack on a vehicle - Fisk got a bit of the casing of the missile with the serial number on, smuggled it to the States, booked a meeting at the missile manufacturers under a pretext, listened to the execs talking in sanitised jargon about their 'product'...and then produced the fragment out of his bag and told them what it had done to people!

*********

I am on my third chunk of that right now, I get to a point where I start getting angry and have to put it down.

During the break I started and finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.

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Currently reading Jack Kerouac - On The Road before I finish the Fisk while also flipping through:

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I am a lot happier when I stick to fiction.

Posted

On the not at all serious side, Florida Road Kill by Tim Dorsey. I can't recall reading a book that's made me laugh out loud at least a half a dozen times, and that's in just the first 60 pages. If you didn't know you could be killed by a pair of Levis 501's, a Barbie Doll or the Space Shuttle, then this is the book for you. As one of the back-of-the-jacket reviews says, "Imagine Hunter Thompson and Groucho Marx sharing a by-line." I couldn't say it any better.

After reading this post in an attempt to find something good to read, I went to the library and picked up Cadillac Dreams (will get to FR eventually). This one is hilarious as well. Thanks for recommending this guy, Dave! :tup

Posted

I am on my third chunk of that right now, I get to a point where I start getting angry and have to put it down.

It does make you angry. And Fisk is not afraid to show his anger, especially about the way politicians and the media gloss over complexities.

Two other sections of the book really unnerved me - the description of the carnage on the road out of Kuwait as the Iraqi army retreated in 1991; and his lengthy account of the impact of the 1990s sanctions on Iraq.

And I really knew very little about what has been happening in Algeria.

Posted

The Pillars of The Earth. Highly enjoyable mind candy, laid in the Middle Ages.

Night-Elie Weisel. Still one of the most horrifying, powerful memoirs ever written.

High Times, Hard Times-Anita O'Day. So far an engrossing read...

Posted

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Really enjoying this - built from a series of interviews with Konitz + short interviews with other musicians about him.

He comes across as someone with a clear vision of what he wants to do, is not afraid to express his disinterest in things he does not like, even criticises...yet always does it humbly and with a sense that the music he does not care for is seeking different goals rather than being 'wrong'. Very open about his own initial hostility to music which he later came to understand.

Posted

Working on reading this (per a recommendation from seeline):

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Fascinating stuff so far, although this book is going to end up costing me a fortune with all the music I need to buy to understand what they're talking about!

:)

Posted

Richard Ford: The Lay Of The Land

A fine book, although a glossary of current Americanisms would help the British reader! :) Seriously, it inspired me to go on to read the other books in his trilogy.

Posted

Richard Bausch's Thanksgiving Night - A novel with a plot that touches on trust, understanding and acceptance, forgiveness, family, and faith, and with characters I found myself identifying with because I found a part of myself in almost every one of them.

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Posted

Picked this up from the library last week.

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Lightweight on history, heavy on illustrations, but a decent overview, which is all I wanted.

Now started reading this

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It's my wife's book. But she gave up on page 55, so I'm having a go. I suspect it's rather too full of foot by foot accounts of the battles and, if that's the case, I'll probably give up, too :)

MG

Posted

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A page turner supreme.

I'll get to this one day. Have you read The Night Watch, also by Waters? I enjoyed it, though I admit it left me wanting more (perhaps an epilogue that returned to "the present" after WWII and explained a few more details). But on the whole very interesting.

Posted

Fingersmithcover.jpg

A page turner supreme.

I'll get to this one day. Have you read The Night Watch, also by Waters? I enjoyed it, though I admit it left me wanting more (perhaps an epilogue that returned to "the present" after WWII and explained a few more details). But on the whole very interesting.

No, this is the first book I've read by her. I might try Affinity next.

Posted

"Pharaohs of the Sun" Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Excellent catalog and scholarly compilation (okay, some of the essays are excellent) of the Amarna Period.

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