What Are You Reading? (6 Viewers)

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This pictures made nationwide headlines and imprinted the image of Bonnie and Clyde forever in the heads of the people, so the biography tells me.

Bonnie and Clyde had to leave their camera when the police raided their home. Among many weapons, these pictures were found by the officers.

Up until then the public had not known what "those robbing outlaws" looked like, didn't even know that a woman was among them, I believe. And they could not believe their eyes when they saw this :D ... but Bonnie Parker hated the photo. It was meant as a joke and went viral, a kind of proto-meme.

Once when they kept a hostage and let him out on the road somewhere (they never harmed any hostages) he asked them, if they had a message for the public and Bonnie said: "Tell them I don't smoke cigars. It was a joke."
 
I just finished Rebel Yell, a biography of Stonewell Jackson..Great biographies lead you down path you didn't think you cared about. This is an amazingly well written book. Every victory was for the glory of God. The ISIS parallel wasn't lost on me. I'm not religious but I have to admit there is something invincible about a guy who is convinced god is on his side and I don't know, from a purely strategic perspective, how atheists combat that effectively without killing them all.
 
Well, I guess you could say the Soviet Union was an atheist country, at least officially. That probably goes for other (former) commie countries too.
 
Officially, yeah, but officially doesn't change the people. Atheism, or non-affiliation, in Russia is low (this says 18%). As that graph clearly shows, the people were just waiting to get back to their religion(s).

The Russians I've known - which is not a statistical sample, I understand - have all been religious, and maybe not coincidentally, extremely superstitious and prone to believe in the supernatural (ghosts, psychics and everything paranormal).
 
The Russians I've known - which is not a statistical sample, I understand - have all been religious, and maybe not coincidentally, extremely superstitious and prone to believe in the supernatural (ghosts, psychics and everything paranormal).
Confirmed. My wife and her family are from the former Soviet republics and ALL of their friends and relatives are religious and extremely superstitious. No matter if they come from Kazakhstan, Russia or Armenia. As if somebody punched a hole into their brains. And there's nothing you can do about it. It's a kind of lifetime infection, I guess.
 
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True, Russians are in general very religious. The Soviet Union did´nt manage to stamp out religion although they sure did try by tearing down churches or using them for other purposes. Funny, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 Stalin revived religion so that it could help boosting patriotism in the fight against the invaders.
 
Am trying to read short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald right now. But I can't read them, F. Scott Fitzgerald bores me to death. Always has. Even Gatsby.

Any F. Scott Fitzgerald fans around here? Recommendations?
 
Just read Living with Picasso
by Françoise Gilot, also a painter and one of his wives.
Now, just started Picasso, Creator and Destroyer
by Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington.

A genius, for sure and a totally self centered pr...

The first one is in French and very well written. Many observations by Picasso that were right on about art and also discussing other painter's style and writers of the time. His sense of observation was truly outstanding. I don't know if he was ever a friend to anyone around him. :(

Worth reading!
 
I finally got hold of the legend that is ...

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Read the first 25 pages or so today at my lunch break at work. It's a fat novel, I can tell you that much already.

Anybody read it around here? Opinions?
 
I use it to stand on to reach the top shelf in my kitchen. I'm short. In my opinion, that's all it's good for. ;)
 
I just finished Philip K Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". Beyond Ballard I don't usually read science fiction, but I quite enjoyed this in the same way I've enjoyed Huxley when I've read him. It was also a bit of an easier read after Martin Amis's "Money" (which for me was brilliantly original, but required a greater level of concentration).

I'm just starting "The Ginger Man" by J.P. Don Leavy, which I'm looking forward to. Apparently it was banned in Ireland for obscentiy; mind you, it didn't used to take much to get banned in Ireland.
 
I thought "The Ginger Man" would kick ass in a sort of Henry-Miller-way, but was bored by it. Couldn't read it through.

"Atlas Shrugged" I'm not sure of, yet. About 120 pages in.
 
Finished Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! by Dennis Dunaway on his years with The Alice Cooper Band. Quite enjoyable.

Now working on Night Train by Nick Tosches, the biography of boxer Sonny Liston.
 
Any F. Scott Fitzgerald fans around here? Recommendations?
Years ago I read Tender is the Night, Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned. Your assessment isn't inaccurate. The book I enjoyed the most was Six Tales of the Jazz Age and Other Stories. You might give the short stories a shot. The good news is, if you're still bored, you''ll be bored for a shorter period of time than with the novels. :D
 
Any F. Scott Fitzgerald fans around here? Recommendations?

Four Fists and Bernice Bobs Her Hair are decent but as much for historical insight and technical prowess as for entertainment value. Most of the stories fell flat to me but I like his writing, I just didn't think he was able to take it anywhere. He was just too Princeton. But, he's writing about a world that we seldom really see and tries to say things about the problems of the upper class in a subtle and funny way. No idea whether that helps anything - just my take. I like Joyces early shorts better than Fitzgeralds but the power elite in the jazz age is a good and difficult subject and Fitzgerald is the only one who really tried to tackle em as far as I know.
 
It's a bit difficult to be sympathetic to problems akin to the Bentley not starting and having to take the Bugatti to the Club, or having to play canasta tonight at the Carnegie estate despite having a paper cut on one's taint. I agree that Joyce's portrayal of a similar era, albeit a few years removed and from a very different vantage point and perspective, is far superior.

For some reason, I get a kick out of the trailer for Ted 2, where Ted says: You just said F. Scott Fitzgerald. What did Scott Fitzgerald ever do to you?
 
Recently finished "Visceral Bukowski" by Ben Pleasants. This is one of the good books about Buk, The amazing realization about this book is that Buk was actually into all things German. He didn't have a passing "just kidding" interest in the Nazi's. As far as Pleasants is concerned Buk was actually into the vibe of the Nazi's big time. It seemed like a home sick kind of deal. I highly doubt that Buk would have signed off on all of the plans that the H-guy and his evil cohorts had in mind.

Pleasants claims that our beloved Buk was actually kind of on the run from the FBI after the FBI busted and shut down the German-American Bund. Buk used to go there all the time. This was heavy shit for me to process.

Also finished "The Holy Grail" by A.D. Winans. AD was friends with the Buk-Meister much longer than most people. This book doesn't reveal that much about Buk but A.D. has a pretty good amount of direct quotes from Buk from the many letters they wrote to each other. This was a good book. It covered almost all of Buk's life as AD's friend and a lot about the San Franciso scene.
 
The amazing realization about this book is that Buk was actually into all things German. He didn't have a passing "just kidding" interest in the Nazi's.
It is not at all amazing that he was into all things German.
Germans did accomplish a lot of great things, especially in the field of arts and sciences. Bukowski was proud of being from Germany, wasn't he. But to make him appear as a Nazi, or a fellow traveler, this idea is so weird, so out of place, that it never occurred to me.
 
Pleasants claims that our beloved Buk was actually kind of on the run from the FBI after the FBI busted and shut down the German-American Bund. Buk used to go there all the time. This was heavy shit for me to process.

Can you imagine if Ben Pleasants and James Franco made a movie about this? Depression-era Bukowski flees from the FBI. He's drifting from one city to another working dead-end jobs and shacking up with women whose husbands are fighting in the Pacific. J. Edgar Hoover has his top G-men hunting for America's No.1 Nazi poet in this thrilling game of cat and mouse. But who is the cat and who is the mouse?

rated pg-13 for partial nudity.
 
It's a bit difficult to be sympathetic to problems akin to the Bentley not starting ...
Well the thing is is that the rich guys are the ones who own everything, so airing their dirty laundry can be a compromising task to say the least. I like him more than most folks nowadays, its safe to say. Certainly more than Hemingway or Celine for example.

But I can see how to most people, he's sort of a literary equivalent to the Dire Straits :hmh:
 
Anyone read East Bay Grease by Eric Miles Williamson? I'm close to finishing it, and have enjoyed it.
 
I'm currently reading Patrick Wensink's Broken Piano for President (Lazy Fascist, 2012), a copy of the First Printing featuring the Jack Daniel's-style cover art that prompted an attorney for Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc., to send a cease-and-desist letter direct to the Kentucky author, not the Oregon publisher.

I recently revisited George Orwell's 1984 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1949; Commemorative 1984 Edition with a Preface by Walter Cronkite). Followed it up with a first-time viewing of the movie, 1984 (1984).

Also read Thomas More's Utopia (1516; Paul Turner translation published by Penguin Classics in 1965), Mykle Hansen's I, Slutbot (Eraserhead Press, 2014), Joseph Campbell's The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (Harper & Row, 1986), and Paul Strathern's Descartes in 90 Minutes (Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1996).
 
[...] I recently revisited George Orwell's 1984 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1949; Commemorative 1984 Edition with a Preface by Walter Cronkite). Followed it up with a first-time viewing of the movie, 1984 (1984).

Same here, I went to Jura earlier this year ( Orwell wrote 1984 there in 1947/48) it's pretty desolate to be honest (unless you like birdwatching or Whisky), he rented a house from a London friend.

I should have done more research, because it was impossible for me to get near the house, my car would only go so far, it's single track road on the island, then it gets so bad you need a 4x4 for about 4 more miles.I didn't have enough time to walk it without missing the last ferry.
I could understand his need for isolation and privacy, but in 1948 it must have been truly grim with real hardship, why he didn't go to some equally private but lovely french or Italian place especially with his tuberculosis. But then it wouldn't have been the great, dark masterpiece of a book it is perhaps. :)
 
Interesting that you made that pilgrimage. I found 1984 to be transportive on the revisitation. Suspension of disbelief was the natural setting. Terrifying, tender-hearted, truespeak stuff. Jura around Orwell's rented house sounds like an I. Bergman film. How adventurous of you, Skygazer. "I didn't have enough time to walk it without missing the last ferry." Intriguing.
 
Well, adventures sounds a lot better than mishaps, thank you.:)
Finishing 1984 was Orwell's driving passion, for a lot of the time he was seriously ill, being on Jura wasn't a good idea, no electricity, calour gas for the stove and peat for the fire, but he loved it there. He had lived in much worse conditions previously though.

1984 was a nightmare for him, he spent a lot of time in Hairmyers hospital being lifted off the island, carried on smoking throughout (but stopping wasn't usually first on the list in those days even in hospitals) he did receive treatment with Streptomycin there by special consent, he reacted badly to it. (it was still at the trial stage in the UK) it had massive success in the States and ushered in chemotherapy for the treatment of TB, (instead of fresh air and sanatoriums) but Orwell was just too late to benefit. He did live to see the success of the book by a few months before he died. aged 46.
 
Just finished the collection of John Fante Letters, some of which are dull but others that show his genius. The entirety gives great frame of reference to his novels, and it was interesting to re read Wait until Spring Bandini, and Dreams from Bunker Hill just now after the letters.
 
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the story is a bit boring and slow
near the end now
hoping the effort pays off
kind of like a boring fuck
just hoping the orgasm will be good

regardless...very well written

It's well written and a good story, slow all the time, and you feel like your waiting waiting waiting, and then nothing. Hard to say if it was a waste of time or not, because its enthralling while you're reading but when it's over its just... what? that's it? OK I guess...
 
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I read Love goes to buildings on fire.

My memory for-a books though, she ain't-a so good (read that like a cartoon Italian pizza maker might talk), but I seem to remember some interesting connections were made in there. You can't go wrong with anything NYC in the 1970s.
 
I found it charming.

But then I could leave. If I'd been stuck there I may have felt differently.

But really, the awful conditions of the city are part of what kept rents low enough so broke young people could afford to live there. And that inspired a lot of new music, so there's that. Same thing was happening in London at the same time.
 

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