Joe, have you read
You Can't Win by Jack Black. Hell of a book. Very entertaining. I tried to get some of the people on this site to read it on an earlier post but they mostly ignored me. You're my last hope, Joe. Don't let me down.
You Can't Win
I'm trying to work up a short list for my vacation reading. I've got my silly book - a newish Maeve Binchy, a book that will just bring me joy (I've listened to it on the radio already) -
*** Kingfisher Days *** click, by Susan Coyne, and the book I thought was going to be my history book, but now I think I'm going to go back to the bookstore (always dangerous) to get God's Secretaries.
Gus, I believe you are the second person to recommend You can't Win to me, unless you are that same person. Of course, the first one was a literature professor at the University of Tulsa who published a quarterly about the beat writers and artists about thirty years ago so the likelihood that you are one and the same person is small, especially since I think Tom is dead.
I'll get back to you when I'm finished reading.
Joe
ehBeth: Let us know what you think about
God's Secretaries., please.
PS
I'm not allowed in bookstores when I have my monthly lunch allowance with me. Or when carrying any credit card. Or with a friend who might be compliant with a loan.
I'm not allowed to look at the other shoppers carrying their bags of books to the door. There's a drooling problem that's unsightly.
Actual conversation between my wife and a friend:
"Your husband is ogling that woman next to him."
"It only looks like he's trying to look down her dress, he probably trying to see what she's reading."
Joe
Iaian Pears has another book out which I have purchased, but not yet read - but which looks very good called "Dream of Scipio". Looking for the name at B&N - which was easier than going hunting in my bookshelves - rewarded me with other books by this author - yummmmmmmmmmmy!
I must confess I have not finished the Fingerpost - I lent it to a quarantined friend halfway through (greater love hath no woman etc) and, since I did not tell her I had not finished it (she would not have accepted it if I had - and she reads verrry fast, and is verrry fussy, so I thought it would be a good one to put in the pile) and she happily discussed the end with me! I have laid it aside until I have forgotten all the details. Such is a reader's life.
I am deeply immersed in "The Crimson Petal and the White" which I am loving - and I am now wickedly looking at the selection of historical literature at B&N to get ideas. I seem to be on a history binge, since reading "The Year of Wonders" last year. (Don't worry - if I buy and if I buy online, it will be through our Amazon link!)
I'm reading Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle. It's very good so far - set in a California commune in the 60s.
Boyle is one of my favorite authors. Loved Totrilla Curtain.
Gus: you were right about Da Vinci Code although I bet it makes a great two weekend number one movie seeing as how it was written as a script and not a novel.
Now, who should play the dead eskimo?
==
In other literary news: Anne Rice is holding a garage sale at St. Elizabeth's in New Orleans. It's going condo. NPR report she is selling everything from plant stands to jean skirts and flannel pyjamas.
Joe
Are Anne Rice fans so committed that they'd buy her old pjs? Wow. I really dig Don DeLillo, but I don't think I'd want to own his old Dr. Dentons...
I'm reading a complete collection of Marcel Proust's short stories (and he wasn't known for brevity in his novels!)
I forgot to mention I'm slogging through What Liberal Media?, a title that is meaningless to those outside the USA.
Joe
Rereading "Last of the Mohicans"
Just finished "A theory on Practically Everything" a new one by Bill Bryson. He writes as one who is totally clueless and yet amazed at the sciences . So hes able to take some of the really idiotic theories and rebuttals by some, otherwise very brilliant people. It reinforces my own theory that
! If one is capable of thinking really great thoughts
2 One is also capable of thinking the stupidest of thoughts every so often
3 its hard to wiegh in on the ratios
I go back and forth on Bryson, but that one sounds interesting, farmerman...
dys had suggested Kafka's The Penal Colony, but there wasn't copy at the library, so I got Amerika--had a Vonnegut in hand, but chose Julian (Gore) instead.
Going to start Amerika tonight.
I've read a lot of Vidal, mostly essays and historical novels, but not yet Julian...and I mean to do that. A friend of mine is a friend of his, but so what, I don't know him myself. I always mix him up in my mind with a mentor of my exhusband's; the mentor of my ex was also a friend of mine. To put it chronologically, I was in the middle; my ex was eleven years younger than me, and our friend, his teacher, was twelve years older than me.
Lots of good conversation there, and good restaurant hunting, but....his teacher and G.Vidal are a little intertwined in my mind, especially since we have a friend who knows him too. All that is vicarious and I read him myself before any of this who knows who hoohah.
But, despite all this namedropping, or not namedropping as the case may be, I have not read Julian and mean to...
Hmmm. I had enjoyed the forward, and was into a few pages of Amerika, all the while eyeing Julian, sitting there tauntingly on the table...
So, I just picked it up.... Looks like Julian won the face off. I'll take care not to spoil it for you, osso. Neat story about the Gore tie in. There was an in-depth biography on Gore, with neat, current and dated interviews on the tube recently. A fascinating life.
Yes, I think so, from what I know. I feel like I know him, but then I don't know him at all. Maybe one of these days I can natter my friend who does know him to join a2k. She is very interesting herself, tres articulate, ne'er mind that she knows GV.
But on to Julian, you have inspired me to look for it, Sofia.
i'm reading our new auto insurance legislation. hundreds of pages of not fascinating.
drier than stale melba toast.
