Book 'em, Danno
HarveyCanal
"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Whatcha reading?
Me as of late...
Got this on deck...
Me as of late...
Got this on deck...
Comments
And for the sake fo the thread I just started reading One Police Plaza, good sort of trashy summer book:
Finished Killing Yourself to Live, Tapping the Source, and Saltwater Buddha within the past few weeks. I'm in the middle of Asphalt Gods and I read the Maravich jammy in random pieces on the side.
If I like a book, it usually takes me maybe 4-5 days to plow through it. If I don't like a book, I typically don't get past about 40 pages before tossing it. All of those I listed I like(d) alright.
I have serious surfer envy.
can anyone recommend some good page-turning "true crime" novels a la "helter skelter", "serpico" or "the "valachi papers"? thinking of checking "tough jews"; anyone read that one?
Edit: Okay, so it's not actually a "true crime" novel, just a novel.
http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Numbers-Gambling-Harlem-between/dp/0674051076/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279134599&sr=1-1
read this one a few months ago. i thouroughly enjoyed it, and it made me want to read more crime/detective fiction and non-fiction. everybody who has seen it around my house has--after reading the back--picked it up and started reading. my brother, who hasn't read a book since he read "the outsiders" 20 years ago is currently tearing his way through it.
recent reads include
which i didn't care for. adinolfi didn't do a very good job tying together all the genres he lumped under "exotica," and spent significant portions of the book discussing "exotica" without being clear about whether or not he was writing about the genre as it existed in the 50s-60s, the genre as it existed filtered through the "cocktail generation"--a term he never bother to define in a useful/meaningful way--or some combination of both.
great stuff. it feels real. it feels accurate. the grimness can be a bit overwhelming.
still haven't made up my mind about this. i had a few reservations throughout the book--his "this is your future" claim is is troublesome and seems to ignore all the conditions that, by bowden's own claims, make life the city what it is--but over all i enjoyed it until i got to the appendix, which is baffling. i'm not sure what purpose the articles are supposed to serve. are they supposed to get to a truth that the book couldn't, are they supposed to be an accurate reflection of 6 months in the city? after he spends 200+ page detailing the depth of corruption in the city, are we supposed to take the stories at face-value?
awesome. too bad the cover sucks. does the kid who represents jim really need to be wearing jordan-esque shoes on the cover to appeal to a contemporary audience?
based on reviews i've read, i seem to be in the growing minority of people who like this book. it is entertaining and captures it's time well. yeah, it's slight. yeah, it's a bit silly. yeah, it's not exactly necessary. but it fares better than a slight, silly, unnecessary sequel can be expected to.
Dress
Great book.
Currently reading
Lay The Favorite by Beth Raymer, really great memoir
and recently found a few volumes of this series on clearance at Borders
great modernist eye candy if you enjoy architechture
Homocide and The French Connection if you have not read them already.
The Corner is true and it has crime, but it is not page-turning in a suspence/thriller way.
I just finished Herbert Simmons' Corner Boy.
I just started Ballard's Crash but am going to put it down - I can't stand his writing style.
This is great, as are Sublette's two other books: its companion, The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans, and his first book, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo.
haven't read the former, but the latter i always highly, highly recommend.
i've read all of Chandler many times. Great stuff. if you haven't read Hammett, read him when you are done.
Now readng ths.
The topic is fascinating. History and science. But the writing sucks.
is this any good?
I'm enjoying it, some essays more than others. It's a lot more intimate than most of his past writing -- He reveals more of his personal history (including one very shocking and tragic incident) than I remember him doing in previous works. He also engages some of his glib previous writing (esp. re: the Manson family) from an interestingly repentant perspective.
I like it better than his last three films.
At the moment:
Read "Dharma Bums" last summer and and loved it, this is promising thus far.
Struggling with this, but the style is amazing.
Surprisingly bad.
Recently finished:
Probably one of the greatest books I've ever read. Absolutely perfect.
Very, very good. I'm reading "Beneath the Wheel" as soon as I get the chance.
Also just finished a collection of HP Lovecraft stories.
I remember when Kellogs, in all of their wisdom, thought that the UK version of Cocoa Puffs should be homogenised and re-branded to the same name as the US.
That lasted about two months, probably cost them more money than they thought they'd save using the same name.
I enjoyed Tricks of the Mind. I had this NLP phase a couple of years ago when I read an introduction book, also the classic Frogs into princes and The Hypnotic patterns of Milton Erickson. It's interesting stuff but you have to take it with more than a few grains of salt. Derren Brown explains it pretty well actually, as he says he's not a "true believer", and is a bit skeptical to some of the outlandish claims of the NLP community...
Oh yeah ??? I've read all the Hammett stuff. The archetype, really. I just finished a couple of David Markson's early novels. Before he got into experimental stuff, he wrote some great pulp-type stuff. I'd recommend this:
Two of his detective novels set in late-50s/early 60s Manhattan, mostly in the Village. They're great. I'm looking to pick up John. D. MacDonald's stuff next.
I studied NLP and hypnosis for couple of years and the NLP stuff has some good useful elements to it.. anchors, reframing techniques, swish pattern, eye accessing cues, the meta model etc, but some of the stuff is just too far fetched... and some people take it waaaay to far, like its some kind of religion. Plus, Milton Erickson gets a bit blown out of proportion too. The ericksonian handshake is cool though.
What really makes me chuckle is how many of Derren Brown's magic and mentalism tricks the hardcore NLP'ers try to pass off as feats of pure psychological mastery (like he's flying the flag for them or something) when they are actually just simple magic tricks presented and dressed as psychology.
ive been meaning to pick this up because i really like ellis a lot but i hate hardback books. i have a shit ton of books and between those and records, i dont need to add more weight.
i just finished this:
and it was amazing. a nice mix of surreal fiction b/w autobiographical elements. kind of reminds of lethem's short stories or murakami's dance dance dance.
Somehow I missed that Imperial Bedrooms was already out. Definitely want to read that, although I should maybe re-read Less Than Zero first. Lunar Park had a lot of promise but fell kinda flat for me -- but still had some great passages, and was the first book from him that didn't do it for me.
Meyer Levin, Compulsion
In Cold Blood
Dryer, American Tragedy
Waller, Kidnap Story of the Lindbergh Case
Maury, The Ultimate Evil (I read this book in like 3 days. When I was finnished I felt like maybe I knew too much and that I would be in danger. I ended up giving the book to salvation army because it creeped me out to have it in the house anymore)
In the Pulp Fiction/Noir vein, although not true-crime, Woolrich Waltz into Darkness.