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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 27, 2015 14:32:00 GMT
What, no Alotta Fagina? I've never read Fleming. I think there's a copy of Casino Royale floating around somewhere at home. More likely I'll stick to my Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Chandler kicks the legs out of the English mystery writers in "The Simple Art of Murder." It's kind of funny. I know that his comments don't mean there's not something enjoyable about them; it's more that they aren't ... art. Just entertainment. Which is sometimes all you need.
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Post by badhabitude on Aug 28, 2015 3:02:01 GMT
What, no Alotta Fagina? I've never read Fleming. I think there's a copy of Casino Royale floating around somewhere at home. More likely I'll stick to my Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Chandler kicks the legs out of the English mystery writers in "The Simple Art of Murder." It's kind of funny. I know that his comments don't mean there's not something enjoyable about them; it's more that they aren't ... art. Just entertainment. Which is sometimes all you need. Agreed. What bugs me the most about Doyle and Christie is that in general the murderers go to such elaborate lengths to kill someone and/or hide the body... it's just too ridiculous, like the Sherlock Holmes one with the poisonous snake trained to wriggle up the rope into the next room and blah blah blah... Oh come on. You want someone dead you find a reputable professional (with at least 3 references) who busts a few caps into the back of their head as they leave their girl friend's house, done and done.
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Post by walktheline on Aug 28, 2015 12:02:33 GMT
What, no Alotta Fagina? I've never read Fleming. I think there's a copy of Casino Royale floating around somewhere at home. More likely I'll stick to my Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Chandler kicks the legs out of the English mystery writers in "The Simple Art of Murder." It's kind of funny. I know that his comments don't mean there's not something enjoyable about them; it's more that they aren't ... art. Just entertainment. Which is sometimes all you need. I read his criticisms back in college and I think you're correct. But he struck me as a prick who thought that hard boiled detective novels were the pinnacle and everything else fell short. He also struck me as anti-British, or perhaps anti anything not in the American voice. He liked Hammett but I'm sure if he were a Brit and his dialogue was more ale-infused cockney than whiskey slugging American slang he'd of hated him too. I felt like his dislike of Doyle, Christie, Bentley, etc. was founded more in subjective, personal taste than in unbiased literary criticism. He found them boring, I don't.
While some of the Sherlock stories and e few of old Aggie's stuff ask the reader to suspend belief in exchange for entertainment (nothing wrong with that) some of their work have marvelously developed characters, more plausible plots and qualify as somewhat better than just entertainment for me. No, not art on the level of Gatsby or anything like that but somewhere on the lower register of the art of literature. I think Chandler would put them on the same level as Edgar Rice Burrows and that's completely unfair.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2015 14:25:16 GMT
Just got done reading "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I loved it. Not a big Bill O'Reilly fan, but I do enjoy some history & "Hitler's Last Days" Is a novel that I think kids should be forced to read in schools. Very well written
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 28, 2015 14:31:04 GMT
Oh, Chandler was a prick. There's no doubt about that. Alcoholic, philandering depressive who lived off of older women. He grew up and was educated in England, so his being anti-British might have some legs in his childhood. It's true of his writing that the novels where he escapes the realm of "genre fiction" and moves toward art are the ones where the crime is just the way in to a social and cultural context that he's very good at flensing. You don't often care much who dunnit. Same thing with the better Hammett (it's really surprising to read some of Hammett's short stories and realize that they are actually just 5-minute mysteries where Spade or the Continental Op "see through" the mystery based on one or two clues). In the Maltese Falcon, you almost forget the murder of Archer in the interplay of the various searchers for the Falcon, the police, and even Spade's surfing the oddities.
If that's what you want, then I can see why Doyle and Christie would bore you. It's the negative print of first year university students reading Waiting for Godot or the Dubliners and getting angry because nothing happens. I don't mind Doyle (love how bizarre Holmes is in the books rather than the Victorian Spock he sometimes comes off as in modern adaptations); I haven't read Christie since I read 10 Little Indians 30 years ago....
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2015 18:37:43 GMT
Just got done reading "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I loved it. Not a big Bill O'Reilly fan, but I do enjoy some history & "Hitler's Last Days" Is a novel that I think kids should be forced to read in schools. Very well written The shit O'Reilly gets is because of his viewpoints. I love how people pontificate about the value of Fox News and only include the shows that are 100% about opinions. Rachael Maddow is just as bad, but her views are perceived as being more intelligent because they are bookish ideas from academia based on philosophy and not the realities of every day life. She's also smug and as entertaining as a picnic umbrella.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2015 23:18:08 GMT
Just got done reading "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I loved it. Not a big Bill O'Reilly fan, but I do enjoy some history & "Hitler's Last Days" Is a novel that I think kids should be forced to read in schools. Very well written The shit O'Reilly gets is because of his viewpoints. I love how people pontificate about the value of Fox News and only include the shows that are 100% about opinions. Rachael Maddow is just as bad, but her views are perceived as being more intelligent because they are bookish ideas from academia based on philosophy and not the realities of every day life. She's also smug and as entertaining as a picnic umbrella.You don't get any more smug then O'Reilly! He's the American version of Pierce Morgan!
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on Sept 1, 2015 14:19:21 GMT
Just got done reading "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I loved it. Not a big Bill O'Reilly fan, but I do enjoy some history & "Hitler's Last Days" Is a novel that I think kids should be forced to read in schools. Very well written The shit O'Reilly gets is because of his viewpoints. I love how people pontificate about the value of Fox News and only include the shows that are 100% about opinions. Rachael Maddow is just as bad, but her views are perceived as being more intelligent because they are bookish ideas from academia based on philosophy and not the realities of every day life. She's also smug and as entertaining as a picnic umbrella. If you watch Faux News at all you have no perception whatsoever. O'Reilly's viewpoints are made up lies. His book on Lincoln was a complete joke.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2015 0:32:09 GMT
The shit O'Reilly gets is because of his viewpoints. I love how people pontificate about the value of Fox News and only include the shows that are 100% about opinions. Rachael Maddow is just as bad, but her views are perceived as being more intelligent because they are bookish ideas from academia based on philosophy and not the realities of every day life. She's also smug and as entertaining as a picnic umbrella. If you watch Faux News at all you have no perception whatsoever. O'Reilly's viewpoints are made up lies. His book on Lincoln was a complete joke. I'm not talking about his books, which like anything from Michael Moore or Al Franken, barely pass for non-fiction. I'm talking about his political opinion show, which is supposed to be entertainment.
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on Sept 2, 2015 20:07:36 GMT
It's entertaining rubbish.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2015 0:22:29 GMT
It's entertaining rubbish. [br
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2015 0:23:29 GMT
It's entertaining rubbish. That's the way politics have been heading for the past fifteen years. There are no good guys, it's like watching the WWE with 100% heels.
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Post by bookboy007 on Sept 3, 2015 2:36:30 GMT
It's entertaining rubbish. That's the way politics have been heading for the past fifteen years. There are no good guys, it's like watching the WWE with 100% heels. Parallel elections are killing me. Our MP was out bootstrapping the other day and if I wasn't late for hockey I would have pulled over to yell at him. Our fucking election seems to be hinging on which party can get better suction on the balls of middle class families by offering them more money. I wanted to tell the guy I make plenty of fucking money, and if you want to fucking tax me, tax me, but don't fucking tax me so the fucker down the road can buy an X-Box one for the upstairs TV room for his kids. Our election, your election, have about as much to do with the real domestic issues as SanDog has to do with Kate Upton.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2015 22:15:15 GMT
That's the way politics have been heading for the past fifteen years. There are no good guys, it's like watching the WWE with 100% heels. Parallel elections are killing me. Our MP was out bootstrapping the other day and if I wasn't late for hockey I would have pulled over to yell at him. Our fucking election seems to be hinging on which party can get better suction on the balls of middle class families by offering them more money. I wanted to tell the guy I make plenty of fucking money, and if you want to fucking tax me, tax me, but don't fucking tax me so the fucker down the road can buy an X-Box one for the upstairs TV room for his kids. Our election, your election, have about as much to do with the real domestic issues as SanDog has to do with Kate Upton. Kanye has hinted at a possible 2020 run. That's great news, no fundraiser will back him, so there's the possibility he might go broke.
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Post by badhabitude on Sept 9, 2015 2:47:53 GMT
Parallel elections are killing me. Our MP was out bootstrapping the other day and if I wasn't late for hockey I would have pulled over to yell at him. Our fucking election seems to be hinging on which party can get better suction on the balls of middle class families by offering them more money. I wanted to tell the guy I make plenty of fucking money, and if you want to fucking tax me, tax me, but don't fucking tax me so the fucker down the road can buy an X-Box one for the upstairs TV room for his kids. Our election, your election, have about as much to do with the real domestic issues as SanDog has to do with Kate Upton. Kanye has hinted at a possible 2020 run. That's great news, no fundraiser will back him, so there's the possibility he might go broke. Just finished a Vonnegut short story "Confido", 2 main characters are Ellen and Henry Bowers. Any relation?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2015 0:08:16 GMT
Kanye has hinted at a possible 2020 run. That's great news, no fundraiser will back him, so there's the possibility he might go broke. Just finished a Vonnegut short story "Confido", 2 main characters are Ellen and Henry Bowers. Any relation? I haven't read that one. I read a collection from him "Bagombo Snuff Box" it might have been in there. But Henry Bowers was a character in Stephen King's IT. Stephen King probably ripped it off from Vonnegut.
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Post by badhabitude on Sept 10, 2015 2:39:29 GMT
Just finished a Vonnegut short story "Confido", 2 main characters are Ellen and Henry Bowers. Any relation? I haven't read that one. I read a collection from him "Bagombo Snuff Box" it might have been in there. But Henry Bowers was a character in Stephen King's IT. Stephen King probably ripped it off from Vonnegut. Hm, Confido sounds very vaguely like IT. The theme of appealing to one's darker nature is common. Instead of a rip off, it might be a nod in Vonnegut's direction.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2015 12:15:35 GMT
I haven't read that one. I read a collection from him "Bagombo Snuff Box" it might have been in there. But Henry Bowers was a character in Stephen King's IT. Stephen King probably ripped it off from Vonnegut. Hm, Confido sounds very vaguely like IT. The theme of appealing to one's darker nature is common. Instead of a rip off, it might be a nod in Vonnegut's direction. Yeah, it could be. I'm sure Stephen King's read some Vonnegut here or there.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2015 1:28:26 GMT
I finished "Get Shorty," it was pretty slow in the middle, leading to a mid book slump, but the dialogue was the best in the business, and the story/plot were top notch. I'll read the sequel for sure. Chili Palmer is one cool character.
I'm almost halfway through "All the King's Men." I'd recommend this book for anybody that likes "House of Cards." Penn Warren is the only writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for both poetry and fiction, no small feat, it's always one or the other; with some writers having a really lousy go at poetry. (Bookboy brought up Raymond Carver as a good example).
Shorts-
"Sweethearts" by Richard Ford - *** 1/2 stars "The Cheaters Guide to Love" - Junot Diaz **** "Rock Springs" - Ford ****** stars, maybe the best modern short story I've read.
Next up-Mavis Gallant on the short story side and "Independence Day" or one of the Master and Commander novels I've been meaning to read for novels. Maybe Irvine Welsh's two new ones I haven't read. Who knows?
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Post by bookboy007 on Sept 26, 2015 16:34:29 GMT
There are poets who've had a really lousy go at the novel, too, but nobody really knows "famous" poets, so nobody really recognizes their names enough to say "really? Murray wrote this? I thought he had a better feel for language than that...".
I'm still reading through the collected Bond books. At first it was funny - not deliberately so - and more than a little dated in terms of the open prejudices, but the core was still worth it. Not marvellous, but interesting in part because of the way the movies heightened some things and downplayed others. Now I'm into hit and miss territory in the middle (Rankin's Rebus novels are like this a bit, too). Now I'm into The Spy Who Loved Me, and all I can say is that it's a novel about a lovely young French Canadian girl trying to make her way in London.... Seriously. It's like something out of "books for girls" in the young adult section of an old-style WH Smith. Why did anyone let the guy responsible for the Bond girl write a novel in the voice of a woman?
From Russia with Love was the other break with formula to date, with the first half of the book focussing on the Russians and their plot to deal a major blow to the British Secret Service by having Bond die in a very public, shocking and scandalous way. That, at least, had its Monster Horror Chiller Theatre aspect to it to make it worthwhile.
I'm going to have to read a Henry James novel or something after this just to get my brain working again.
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on Sept 26, 2015 16:44:07 GMT
Parallel elections are killing me. Our MP was out bootstrapping the other day and if I wasn't late for hockey I would have pulled over to yell at him. Our fucking election seems to be hinging on which party can get better suction on the balls of middle class families by offering them more money. I wanted to tell the guy I make plenty of fucking money, and if you want to fucking tax me, tax me, but don't fucking tax me so the fucker down the road can buy an X-Box one for the upstairs TV room for his kids. Our election, your election, have about as much to do with the real domestic issues as SanDog has to do with Kate Upton. Kanye has hinted at a possible 2020 run. That's great news, no fundraiser will back him, so there's the possibility he might go broke. I'd rather he follow through with his threat to just leave the US. However watching him go broke would a lot of fun.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2015 19:27:44 GMT
There are poets who've had a really lousy go at the novel, too, but nobody really knows "famous" poets, so nobody really recognizes their names enough to say "really? Murray wrote this? I thought he had a better feel for language than that...". I'm still reading through the collected Bond books. At first it was funny - not deliberately so - and more than a little dated in terms of the open prejudices, but the core was still worth it. Not marvellous, but interesting in part because of the way the movies heightened some things and downplayed others. Now I'm into hit and miss territory in the middle (Rankin's Rebus novels are like this a bit, too). Now I'm into The Spy Who Loved Me, and all I can say is that it's a novel about a lovely young French Canadian girl trying to make her way in London.... Seriously. It's like something out of "books for girls" in the young adult section of an old-style WH Smith. Why did anyone let the guy responsible for the Bond girl write a novel in the voice of a woman?From Russia with Love was the other break with formula to date, with the first half of the book focussing on the Russians and their plot to deal a major blow to the British Secret Service by having Bond die in a very public, shocking and scandalous way. That, at least, had its Monster Horror Chiller Theatre aspect to it to make it worthwhile. I'm going to have to read a Henry James novel or something after this just to get my brain working again. Irvine Welsh has this problem. He's writing books from a first person, female POV, and doing about as well as you think he would. His writing really grew up from the transgressive type writing in "Glue" but he's lost all perpective, imo. His newest one "The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins" is about a 40 something woman with a lesbian crush on a fitness instructor. Now, who the hell wants to read that?!
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Post by bookboy007 on Sept 28, 2015 16:50:57 GMT
There are poets who've had a really lousy go at the novel, too, but nobody really knows "famous" poets, so nobody really recognizes their names enough to say "really? Murray wrote this? I thought he had a better feel for language than that...". I'm still reading through the collected Bond books. At first it was funny - not deliberately so - and more than a little dated in terms of the open prejudices, but the core was still worth it. Not marvellous, but interesting in part because of the way the movies heightened some things and downplayed others. Now I'm into hit and miss territory in the middle (Rankin's Rebus novels are like this a bit, too). Now I'm into The Spy Who Loved Me, and all I can say is that it's a novel about a lovely young French Canadian girl trying to make her way in London.... Seriously. It's like something out of "books for girls" in the young adult section of an old-style WH Smith. Why did anyone let the guy responsible for the Bond girl write a novel in the voice of a woman?From Russia with Love was the other break with formula to date, with the first half of the book focussing on the Russians and their plot to deal a major blow to the British Secret Service by having Bond die in a very public, shocking and scandalous way. That, at least, had its Monster Horror Chiller Theatre aspect to it to make it worthwhile. I'm going to have to read a Henry James novel or something after this just to get my brain working again. Irvine Welsh has this problem. He's writing books from a first person, female POV, and doing about as well as you think he would. His writing really grew up from the transgressive type writing in "Glue" but he's lost all perpective, imo. His newest one "The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins" is about a 40 something woman with a lesbian crush on a fitness instructor. Now, who the hell wants to read that?! I like that - "grew up from" transgressive writing. A lot of quote-unquote transgressive writing makes me think simultaneously of two pop culture touchstones. The first is the creepy man-child character Stuart Michael McDonald played over and over again on MadTV - his catch phrase was "Look what I can do!" followed by some weird myoclonic jerk. The second is Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm in Jurrasic Park saying "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." So much of that transgressive and experimental writing is like that: look what I can do! Why did I do it? I don't know! That's why this sounds like the same impulse that led to Glue. Look what I can do! Sure you can Irvine, but you really shouldn't. I do like some transgressive or experimental writing. Alain Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy was agonizing to get through until you hit a point where you're immersed in what he's doing - the tracking of minutia and assigning it infinite significance, the losing track of sequence of events and mashing up moments to change how they're interpreted, is perfect for entering the mind of a man living through his jealousy and paranoia about his wife potentially having an affair. But for a long time, all you're really reading is very meticulous descriptions of a banana plantation. So there's actually a valid artistic reason to "transgress" the expectations of a novel. The other thing marker that experimental writing was worth doing is that others end up adopting some or all of the technique for different novelistic or poetic purposes. Free, indirect discourse, for example, or the epistolary novels of the 18th C - once "transgressive" techniques we now take for granted.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2015 23:56:43 GMT
Irvine Welsh has this problem. He's writing books from a first person, female POV, and doing about as well as you think he would. His writing really grew up from the transgressive type writing in "Glue" but he's lost all perpective, imo. His newest one "The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins" is about a 40 something woman with a lesbian crush on a fitness instructor. Now, who the hell wants to read that?! I like that - "grew up from" transgressive writing. A lot of quote-unquote transgressive writing makes me think simultaneously of two pop culture touchstones. The first is the creepy man-child character Stuart Michael McDonald played over and over again on MadTV - his catch phrase was "Look what I can do!" followed by some weird myoclonic jerk. The second is Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm in Jurrasic Park saying "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." So much of that transgressive and experimental writing is like that: look what I can do! Why did I do it? I don't know! That's why this sounds like the same impulse that led to Glue. Look what I can do! Sure you can Irvine, but you really shouldn't. I do like some transgressive or experimental writing. Alain Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy was agonizing to get through until you hit a point where you're immersed in what he's doing - the tracking of minutia and assigning it infinite significance, the losing track of sequence of events and mashing up moments to change how they're interpreted, is perfect for entering the mind of a man living through his jealousy and paranoia about his wife potentially having an affair. But for a long time, all you're really reading is very meticulous descriptions of a banana plantation. So there's actually a valid artistic reason to "transgress" the expectations of a novel. The other thing marker that experimental writing was worth doing is that others end up adopting some or all of the technique for different novelistic or poetic purposes. Free, indirect discourse, for example, or the epistolary novels of the 18th C - once "transgressive" techniques we now take for granted. "Marabou Stork Nightmares" was a good example of his experimental writing. Some of his prose is shaped like an EE Cumming's poem, notably when there's a POV shift. Very odd book, first POV is the narrator in a coma with the people and events that unfold around him, and the second is 3rd person (I believe) flashback that threads that entire book. Oh...and the third POV is the coma victim in a dream/fantasy of being in South Africa hunting the Marabou Stork with a real estate developer. I think it might be my favorite book of his, but the stuff above is a big barrier for most readers; when you through in the phonetic Scot's brogue, forget a spot on Oprah's book club. The 90's transgressive writers like Welsh and Palahniuk remind me of the New Journalism guys like Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson. Their writings are entertaining, engage readers fully, and are popular, but I don't see them standing up to posterity in the same way as conventional novels.
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Post by jmwalters on Oct 6, 2015 2:38:02 GMT
just finished the 50 Shades trilogy...gonna use it for a class I am designing.
Weird, read the whole shot in a day, they just don't write em like they used to. Dickens must be spinning in his grave
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