Last Book That You Read- Fiction

Yep. And wasn't Keating's daughter connected with Prince Andrew, too?

Yup, it's nice that the Keatings finally found a member of the Royal family they like.

Phew, just got through Moby dick...Herman melville, a challenging read by any stretch of the imagination, and not as rewarding as i had hoped. Much of the dialogue is almost incomprehensible due to the use of Melvilles dialect...Ahhhh Jim larrrrd, that it be!

That's reminded me ... I recently read Dracula and in all honesty found it a bit of a slog. The story being told through journal entries, telegrams etc is fine but the characters taking 2 pages plus to say something that could've been said in a paragraph or two if they weren't so bloody (pardon the pun) floridly verbose (I'm looking at YOU, Van Helsing) is a drag.

The one book that is a slog but not bad is War & Peace.

Always puts me in mind of Cheers when Sam reads it to impress Diane, goes mad, up every hour of the day, unshaven and as they leave the office, their love reignited, Diane infuriates him by saying there was a movie.

The '58, '79 and '92 big-screen Draculas run for 82, 109 and 128 minutes respectively ... that's the way, trim the waffle!

I finally got around to reading Edgar Rice Burrough's original Tarzan of the Apes and Johnston McCulley's Curse of Capristrano. Both are so indispensably iconic, foundational and impossible to put down.

I've taken the plunge and gotten a lot more of the other Zorro pulp adventures and am trying to get the other (23!) Tarzan novels whilst diving into the vast world of Burroughs.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gorgeous prose that explores the timeless theme of finding one's vocation. It delves deep into the psyche of twenty-somethings, drawing multi-faceted characters that on the surface seem superficial, but highlights the psychological struggles when on adulthood's doorstep. And Fitzgerald captures it so realistically, reserving judgement, that it sings to this reader 100 years on.

Currently reading John Le Carré's The Russia House. Liked the movie, so I decided to take a shot at the novel.

How is it? I want to start tackling some Le Carré myself, having enjoyed a good many of his film adaptations.

Speaking of The Russia House film, I've been listening to its score again. It's definitely in my top 5 scores. Gorgeous work as always from Jerry Goldsmith.

Well, for today, we had to read some Raymond Chandler, specifically The High Window.

Shocks me to think I've never read any of his work until now. However, in class, I managed to mention his connection to Fleming (as well as bring in James Ellroy). We were tasked with writing a small bit of noir ourselves.

However, Chandler is the benchmark for all noir or PI fiction.

I can only wish I was there in Belgravia sixty-odd years ago as Ian Fleming turned up to Chandler's dinner party. Can you imagine!?

Reading Raymond Chandler, eh? Not bad! I figured you be all covered up in Toni Morrison and clit-crit.

Chandler is my hero and the only writer I can place above Fleming. I still find myself thinking of and quoting Marlowe and the novels on practically a daily basis. All of his novels are ESSENTIAL and The Long Goodbye is my stock answer for best book I've ever read.

I should've thought there'd be a thread for this!

I just finished up The Man Who Was Thursday. First time reading Chesterton's fiction (read many of his essays). Maybe the most impressive thing about the book was how it had such a strong narrative drive while also being so surreal. A trait in this spy fiction that seems to forerun Fleming. Outside of that, lots of good typical Chesterton folding ideas over themselves:

Quote :

Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.

Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left—sanity."

Before that I read Michael Crichton's Rising Sun. Saw an interview with Crichton on Charlie Rose (there's a ton of them from over the years), and he said he wrote one of the characters with Sean Connery in mind (they were apparently pretty good friends -- I think from when they made The Great Train Robbery). Still have yet to see the film but Connery comes through on the page. Couldn't picture anyone else. Book was good but not top tier in terms of Crichton's body of work. Crichton was prescient in his way but his main idea here, his take on the Japanese economy, falls flat thirty years on. He turns out to have been more on the ball discussing ideas on credibility of video evidence.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Reading Raymond Chandler, eh? Not bad! I figured you be all covered up in Toni Morrison and clit-crit.

Not yet. We have poetry next week (Hughes/Betjeman/Larkin). But before long I need to work on my first submission (due Nov12). Inching to do a non-fiction piece of prose on the summer of 1940 (Churchill, Dunkirk)

But, a task we had Friday was the portrait Nighthawks and write something inspired by it. I started doodling and ended up with the start of a Hitchcock-esque piece.

When I did the High Window I decided to rent The Long Goodbye. If anything I love Chandler's style. Every line seems to hit, is imaginative etc.

I found myself wishing Fleming and Chandler, when they met in Belgravia, did a crossover story.

But either way, I believe RC to be a genius

Hilly wrote:

When I did the High Window I decided to rent The Long Goodbye. If anything I love Chandler's style. Every line seems to hit, is imaginative etc.

I found myself wishing Fleming and Chandler, when they met in Belgravia, did a crossover story.

But either way, I believe RC to be a genius

I wish I could have sat down to dinner with Fleming and Chandler. Would have made for a fascinating evening, wot.

I had a look last read and apparently there's some sort of interview where one of them asked the other questions. I'll post it one day.

Both had tremendous admiration for the other. Quite what both would think of today I dread to think. I can have an idea but dare we?

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Hilly wrote:

When I did the High Window I decided to rent The Long Goodbye. If anything I love Chandler's style. Every line seems to hit, is imaginative etc.

I found myself wishing Fleming and Chandler, when they met in Belgravia, did a crossover story.

But either way, I believe RC to be a genius

I wish I could have sat down to dinner with Fleming and Chandler. Would have made for a fascinating evening, wot.

Chances are remembering it could be a struggle. If there was ever a night on which the drink was guaranteed to be flowing ...

Fleming was a giant Chandler fan as were most in the UK where he became critically accepted far earlier than he did in the US. You can feel the Chandler influence all throughout the Bond novels mixed in with the adventure styles of the Fu Manchu and Bulldog Drummond books (two series I've always meant to read) along with Buchan's Richard Hannay stories and many others. Funnily enough Chandler said that he preferred it when Bond would be more adventure driven which we can now point to as the earlier Fleming novels before he started having literary aspirations and the like.

The big three of American hardboiled fiction I came to in high school and they never quite left me: Chandler, Hammett and Cain.

I’m reading STORMING INTREPID (1989).
With their own shuttle program a failure (and hiding it from The Americans), The Soviets jump at the chance to hijack The Space Shuttle Intrepid out of its orbit and its top secret cargo and bring it down on Soviet soil. In the best tradition of Tom Clancy, this is a page- turning thriller of cat and mouse moves and brilliant action.This is my 3rd time reading it.

Shades of the film, Moonraker?

Payne Harrison...never heard of him but that book seems up my alley. I’m starting to think about summer reading. I usually like this time of year for going heavy on the pot boilers, thrillers, page turners, adventure yarns, mysteries and so on — think I’ll throw that one into the mix.

Second rec I’ve picked up on here (already picked up a copy of Summer of Katya, courtesy PK and trev discussion some months ago).

silvertoe wrote:

Phew, just got through Moby dick...Herman melville, a challenging read by any stretch of the imagination, and not as rewarding as i had hoped. Much of the dialogue is almost incomprehensible due to the use of Melvilles dialect...Ahhhh Jim larrrrd, that it be!

Just came across this and it reminded me of an old movie called ONE ON ONE with Annette O'Toole where she is tutoring jock Robbie Benson. He actually enjoys and 'gets' MOBY DICK sufficiently that she falls into bed with him. Maybe it is superficial on my part, but I've never met any jock (and damned few people in general) who got through MOBY DICK and/or enjoyed it -- most seem to have just watched the movie version or seen it referenced on STAR TREK.

Back on track, reread SHIBUMI recently. Was trying to decide whether to risk reading the Winslow continuation novel about Hel, but decided to just stay happy with what we got originally instead.