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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?

Reading The Hobbit, up to Chapter 8: Flies and Spiders. It's simply wonderful!

Beorn's honey farm was the best, a pure sense of wonder, although I can't guarantee that everyone will feel that way! Now the party has ventured into Mirkwood and the description is delicious! Bilbo becomes the Hobbit warrior. Imagine my trepidation at how they are going to slaughter this in the movie. :p

hobbit-mirkwood.jpg


Note: In the book description, the woods canopy became so thick, that no sunlight shone through.
 
Just finished Stefan Zweig's novella Fear. Brilliant wordsmith and strongly influenced by his friend Freud and Schnitzler. If you like Schnitzler's Dream Story, this will be worth a look.

Now on to Hannah Arendt by Alois Prinz.
 
twietee said:
Just finished Stefan Zweig's novella Fear. Brilliant wordsmith and strongly influenced by his friend Freud and Schnitzler. If you like Schnitzler's Dream Story, this will be worth a look.

Now on to Hannah Arendt by Alois Prinz.
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I'd be interested to read what you think of the Hannah Arendt biography; she was one of the philosophers I studied as an undergrad, and I've always rather liked her writing. My then prof regarded her very highly and made a point of acquainting us with her writing.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
I'd be interested to read what you think of the Hannah Arendt biography; she was one of the philosophers I studied as an undergrad, and I've always rather liked her writing. My then prof regarded her very highly and made a point of acquainting us with her writing.
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Sure, I'd be happy to do so. :)

Since you studied her so closely, I don't think I can contribute anything worthwhile, though. The book lies around here for some time now, but not being mine I first thought it was her autobiography. I've really no clue if it is anything canonical or far from it.
One thing mentioned and I didn't know was that the director Elia Kazan was involved in the Hollywood Blacklist (just because we talk about movies every now and then).
 
twietee said:
Sure, I'd be happy to do so. :)

Since you studied her so closely, I don't think I can contribute anything worthwhile, though. The book lies around here for some time now, but not being mine I first thought it was her autobiography. I've really no clue if it is anything canonical or far from it.
One thing mentioned and I didn't know was that the director Elia Kazan was involved in the Hollywood Blacklist (just because we talk about movies every now and then).
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A well written (and researched) biography can tell you what made a person tick, and why they made the choices (and thought the thoughts) they did. In any case, while I've always liked her writing, I actually don't know an awful lot about her as a person, and would be interested in reading a good biography.
 
42

just finished 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency', and now about to start 'The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul'.

i read everything he wrote about once a year just to keep the good bits in memory. i keep getting older and his books keep getting better. strange that.

rip Mr Gently.
 
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I have just finished reading Richard Lloyd George's quite scathing biography of his father, David Lloyd George. I had read it many years ago, and it is even more damning than I had remembered.
 
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Started Night Film by Marisha Pessl. The multi-media content is a wild and inventive way to lend a very realistic vibe to the story. Pessl did her cult horror film director research (so far I see Lynch, Argento, Polanski in her antagonist.)

Update:

I'm done. Irked but understood the fake out resolution. It did not piss me off as much as the ending of Son of Rosemary did, but I was disappointed. Wasn't scary or suspenseful (the first person narration kind of killed that beyond the prologue) and at least 100 pages too long.

That said, the lead seemingly "stuck inside the cinematic world of Cordova" chapter was fun because you finally got an idea of the kinds of films Cordova created (Kind of meh sadistic gialli - more like Polanski, Fulci (when he made giallis) and Lynch.)

Pessl makes New York City come alive and she's a good writer. She has a good handle on cinema and actors (and their stereotypes), but I did not care about most of the characters. When that happens the book is pretty much dead in the water for me.
 
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Huntn said:
Reading The Hobbit, up to Chapter 8: Flies and Spiders. It's simply wonderful!

Beorn's honey farm was the best, a pure sense of wonder, although I can't guarantee that everyone will feel that way! Now the party has ventured into Mirkwood and the description is delicious! Bilbo becomes the Hobbit warrior. Imagine my trepidation at how they are going to slaughter this in the movie. :p

Image

Note: In the book description, the woods canopy became so thick, that no sunlight shone through.
Click to expand...

it looks as though to me they are just entering Mirkwood...
 
...

Read Kenobi in a few hours. Can't believe Ben was only in about a third of the book with the rest taken over by annoying characters floating around Tattooine. Kenobi's relations with the Tusken Raiders was a neat touch, but it wasn't what I was expecting at all.

Zipped through D.B. Jackson's The Thiefmaker. I liked the magical system employed by the title character, but you can tell Jackson has a PhD in American History, the amount of detail took me right out of the story rather than making it vivid. Like Pessl, he's a fine writer, but this didn't grab me the way I thought it would.

So I'm back to reading the Pacific Rim novelization which I'm enjoying (puts you right into the world the same way the film did.)
 
Ian Banks

Surface Detail by Ian Banks. He has written an series called the Culture Novels.

One of the best Sci-FI writers of our age. He recently died. A great loss.
 
Just started reading The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 by Eric Hobsbawm. Not sure why I chose to start with the last one of the series, but that's the way it's going to be!
 
Good book so far. The writing is easy for me to follow and get into. I am not a huge basketball fan, but have much respect for Phil Jackson.
 

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