Last Book You Read

[titoli]

I've read recently a collection of essays on western published many years ago by an italian professional cinema critic (he also wrote a biography of Fellini). It was fun reading a 1966 article in which he marvelled at how people in Italy discarded the hollywood westerns, "even the ones with the big stars", preferring the local product "even those starring perfectly unknown, indigenous ones". And that was, he continued, because in an single italian western you could see more deaths than those amassed by, say, Randolph Scott in a career. 

[mr. mouse]

Just finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Currently reading Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick.

[Groggy]

I purchased David McCullough's John Adams at Barnes and Noble and Saturday and I'm already about halfway through. Great book so far.

Also finished Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man last week for English class - a great read, although the ending was a bit too drawn-out for me.

[mr. mouse]

Currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

[moviesceleton]

To have something lighter to read side by side with the Bible I decided to start reading the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The book has all of his short stories (what is it? 66?) but I'm afraid I'll have to return the book before I've finished it.

[cigar joe]

"Outer Dark" Cormac McCarthy and "The Six Gun Mystique" John G. Cawelti 

[marmota-b]

Wilma Dykeman's Explorations. Well, I left out some essays, because I had to finish it for a lesson, so... But I enjoyed it a lot, so I'm sure going to read those left out ones when I have more time.

[Kurug3n]

read The Road in about 2 days because its just so great. No Country for Old Men is a great book too. Started reading All The Pretty Horses but its taking its time for me to get into it.

[cigar joe]

Once you get into Mexico in "All The Pretty Horses" it moves along pretty good.

I'm just finnishing "Roughing It" by Mark Twain, and also reading "Indian Tribes of Hudson's River 1700-1850"

[Jill]

Reading Balzac's La Comédie Humaine, vol. 2. It's ten books, all over 1000 pages.  Dude had many time.

God, Vautrin would make a perfect Spaghetti anti-hero... he's a scoundrel, and yet very wise. And a real tough guy. Has cool lines. I'd cast William Berger.

[titoli]

I recently read Count of Monte Cristo (yes, I know, I should have read it in my teens: but I didn't read french then; and afterwards I read something else). The story, until Dantes escape from Chateau d'If (about a quarter of the  total 1400 pages of my two-volume editions) is the greatest turnpager ever written, or about. After that the uselessly intricated revenge plot is a let-down: like seeing a giant killing a mosquito. Still it is better adventure than anything produced currently (I presume). 

[dave jenkins]

I've never read Dumas's novel, but I did once enjoy Italo Calvino's short story (translated). Don't remember much about it, but here's Gore Vidal's take:

Calvino ends these tales [t zero] with his own " The Count of Monte Cristo." The problem he sets himself is how to get out of Chateau d'If. Faria keeps making plans and tunneling his way through an endless, exitless fortress. Dantes, on the other hand, broods on the nature of the fortress as well as on the various drafts of the novel that Dumas is writing. In some drafts, Dantes will escape and find a treasure and get revenge on his enemies. In other drafts, he suffers a different fate. The narrator contemplates the possibilities of escape by considering the way a fortress (or a work of art) is made. "To plan a book -- or an escape -- the first thing to know is what to exclude." This particular story is Borges at his very best and, taking into account the essential unity of the multiplicity of all things, one cannot rule out that Calvino's version of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is indeed the finest achievement of Jorge Luis Borges as imagined by Italo Calvino.

I  can't help but wonder if the whole story wasn't suggested to Calvino by the very name of the chateau: d'If.

[titoli]

I can't help but wonder why do you surcharge yourself with secondary literature.

[dave jenkins]

Dumas is primary?

[titoli]

Dumas is primary?

Opening up the topic I was afraid you had posted another quotation....