Last Book You Read

[titoli]

To be read only if you have an interest in the matter of codes. The stories are not gripping, some are boring, mostly they are based on how a secret message can be delivered. In facts the best are still the two classics by Poe (Gold Bug) and Doyle (Dancing Men). I liked the De La Torre - Samuel: Johnson story and that's that. 5\10  

[Groggy]

The Stories of Ray Bradbury - Ray Bradbury - 2nd reading. Omnibus collection of Bradbury's stories through 1980. At least 95 percent of my favorites are present, including obscure ones like Fever Dream and Frost and Fire.  Really this book is all a Bradbury fan needs, inevitable omissions aside.

[moviesceleton]

Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
Jarring, fascinating, embarrassing, beautiful. Flawed, yet has its moments. I like visiting the 20th century and Hemingway is an excellent guide to have - for some reason his writing really shifts me to the time and place he describes.

Just borrowed Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and David Robinson's Chaplin, His Life and Art from the library. Forty pages into Slaughterhouse-Five and I'm hooked.

[Groggy]

The Tiger and the Horse - Robert Bolt - 4th (?) reading. Ignore the dated "topicality" (nuclear freeze etc.) and this is a good play. In this early work, Bolt displays his preoccupation with personal commitment against societal pressure, his ear for dialogue, and penchant for strongly-rendered characters. On the other hand, the plot mechanics are creaky, especially a character's descent into madness, and the speechmaking veers toward the didactic. Interesting but perhaps best-viewed as a formative work.

[Groggy]

Gentle Jack - Robert Bolt - 4th (?) reading. Eschewing the naturalist (if Brecht-inflected) form of his earlier plays, Bolt presents a bizarre fantasy about a mild-mannered clerk trapped between the human and natural worlds. The first act is extremely stilted, with an excess of characters mixed with little plot. The second half, when the title character (a Pan-like nature god) belatedly appears, allows Bolt to explore his favorite themes in clever and inventive fashion. Lots of lavish set design and stage directions that don't overcome the thin story. A notorious flop in its day and it's easy to see why, but it holds a certain frustrated fascination.

[titoli]

Reviewing the movie I had said I'd never read the novel out of respect for Chandler. But then I came across a cheap copy last week and started rereading the first Chandler-written chapters and then, well, got to the end. Parker probably writes better than what Chandler was able to do in the last 2 years of his life. He lacks though the sparkle of the single metaphor or image that Chandler was still able to find even at his worst. So the novel is good though no masterpiece. And it is better than the movie. 7\10

[Groggy]

Flowering Cherry - Robert Bolt - 2nd reading. Bolt's oldest surviving play is Arthur Miller by way of Chekhov: a frustrated businessman fantasizes about quitting his job and starting a farm, his delusions alienating family and friends. Parts of it are so derivative of Death of a Salesman as to be laughable, and aside from the protagonist the characters are one-dimensional ciphers. Maybe it would come off better in performance than on the printed page: its initial run starred Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson. Still, without a production playing nearby I'm forced to judge its literary merits, which are minimal.

[Groggy]

Flowering Cherry - Robert Bolt - 2nd reading. Bolt's oldest surviving play is Arthur Miller by way of Chekhov: a frustrated businessman fantasizes about quitting his job and starting a farm, his delusions alienating family and friends. Parts of it are so derivative of Death of a Salesman as to be laughable, and aside from the protagonist the characters are one-dimensional ciphers. Maybe it would come off better in performance than on the printed page: its initial run starred Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson. Still, without a production playing nearby I'm forced to judge its literary merits, which are minimal.

P.S.: There appears to be a made-for-TV film with Michael Hordern: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1116353/

[moviesceleton]

Just borrowed Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

... and it turned out to be one of the greatest pieces of literature I've ever read. But then again, I haven't read that much.

[Groggy]

Continuing with a theme...

The Individual at the Crossroads: The Works of Robert Bolt - Sabine Prufer - Prufer analyzes Bolt's work mostly through the prism of individualism and selfhood. This provides the most exhaustive survey of Bolt's oeuvre, examining obscure entries like The Critic and the Heart and a TV movie about James Brady alongside better-known works. Aside from Ronald Hayman's old book it's the only comprehensive look at Bolt's output, and as such extremely valuable.

Robert Bolt: Scenes from Two Lives - Adrian Turner - 3rd viewing. Turner provides a long, detailed, but incomplete portrait of his subject. Its main demerit is Turner giving Bolt's movie work much more emphasis than his radio and stage endeavors. He's best conveying Bolt's personal side: Bolt's preaching socialism while indulging material comforts, his ambivalent attitude towards film, his rocky marriage to Sarah Miles and his long, painful recovery from a stroke.

[Groggy]

S is for Space - Ray Bradbury - 4th or 5th reading. As mentioned before, Pillar of Fire is my favorite Bradbury story and it's hard to find it outside this volume. For that reason alone this book's worth a look. Most of the other stories are available in other collections (at least two from Illustrated Man, others from Medicine for Melancholy) but they're mostly good ones so why complain?

[titoli]

Before working in an advertising agency and then, finally, in cinema with Leone, Donati, still a young law student, wrote and published 3 mysteries. This is said to be the best and I read it with great pleasure, though no Leone's screenplays elements seem to have been anticipated. Italian mysteries published in the 50's you can count on a hand: they didn't sell. Which is exactly the opposite of what has happened in the last 10 years. 7\10

[emmo26]

Anyone read Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night???


Taken from wiki

Leone was a fan of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night and was considering a film adaptation in the late 1960s; he incorporated elements of the story into The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker! but his idea of adapting the novel itself never got past the planning stages.

[drinkanddestroy]

Anyone read Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night???


Taken from wiki

Leone was a fan of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night and was considering a film adaptation in the late 1960s; he incorporated elements of the story into The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker! but his idea of adapting the novel itself never got past the planning stages.

I remember Frayling discussing it in STDWD

[cigar joe]

Anyone read Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night???


Taken from wiki

Leone was a fan of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel Journey to the End of the Night and was considering a film adaptation in the late 1960s; he incorporated elements of the story into The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker! but his idea of adapting the novel itself never got past the planning stages.

No but I probably should check it out.