What are you currently reading?

[CD]

Finally finished Joyce's Ulysses. Probably the funniest book ever written.

Probably should've read this before, but now I'm starting Dubliners, and after that his play Exiles. I dare not touch the Wake yet.

[Bu]

Black Money, by Ross MacDonald. I think Lew Archer has replaced Spade and Marlowe as my favorite literary P.I.

[Dr. Dread]

Black Money, by Ross MacDonald. I think Lew Archer has replaced Spade and Marlowe as my favorite literary P.I.

Oh, you're getting ahead of me.

[Bu]

Oh, you're getting ahead of me.

Haven't read that one?  Well, I'm thinking of reading one more after this (prolly the Instant Enemy) and then calling it quits. I should go back to some good Russian Lit. soon.

[Dr. Dread]

Haven't read that one?  Well, I'm thinking of reading one more after this (prolly the Instant Enemy) and then calling it quits. I should go back to some good Russian Lit. soon.

Quits? Like permanently? 

[Bu]

Quits? Like permanently? 

Nah, just a little breather.   

[Bogey]

Gentlemen,
Tried some of the Brooklyn Noir and found nothing noir-ish about it so returned it and grabbed this



20 shorts from DH.

[Bu]

Gentlemen,
Tried some of the Brooklyn Noir and found nothing noir-ish about it so returned it and grabbed this



20 shorts from DH.

Badass, Bogey.  I have a collection of short stories by Hammett also called Nightmare Town, but its published by Vintage. Every tale was a lean and captivating winner; just loved the way DH methodically described action and fight sequences, too.  Perhaps the best aspect for me was that many of the tales take place in San Francisco........when I'm in the city it's cool to walk through those same streets and think of Hammett also prowling through them on a case for the Pinkertons.

[Bogey]

Badass, Bogey.  I have a collection of short stories by Hammett also called Nightmare Town, but its published by Vintage. Every tale was a lean and captivating winner; just loved the way DH methodically described action and fight sequences, too.  Perhaps the best aspect for me was that many of the tales take place in San Francisco........when I'm in the city it's cool to walk through those same streets and think of Hammett also prowling through them on a case for the Pinkertons.

My first go around with the shorts and have cleared four of them today.  Great stuff!  For example, this opening from House Dick:

The Montgomery Hotel's regular detective had taken his last week's rake-off from the hotel bootlegger in merchandise instead of cash, had drunk it down, had fallen asleep in the lobby, and had been fired. I happened to be the only idle operative in the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco branch at the time, and thus it came about that I had three days of hotel-coppering while a man was being found to take the job permanently.

The Montgomery is a quiet hotel of the better sort, and so I had a very restful time of it -- until the third and last day. Then things changed.

I came down into the lobby that afternoon to find Stacey, the assistant manager, hunting for me.

"One of the maids just phoned that there's something wrong up in 906," he said.

We went up to that room together. The door was open. In the centre of the floor stood a maid, staring goggle-eyed at the closed door of the clothes-press. From under it, extending perhaps a foot across the floor toward us, was a snake-shaped ribbon of blood.

I stepped past the maid and tried the door. It was unlocked. I opened it. Slowly, rigidly, a man pitched out into my arms -- pitched out backward -- and there was a six-inch slit down the back of his coat, and the coat was wet and sticky.

That wasn't altogether a surprise: the blood on the floor had prepared me for something of the sort. But when another followed him -- facing me, this one, with a dark, distorted face -- I dropped the one I had caught and jumped back.

And as I jumped a third man came tumbling out after the others.

From behind me came a scream and a thud as the maid fainted. I wasn't feeling any too steady myself. I'm no sensitive plant, and I've looked at a lot of unlovely sights in my time, but for weeks afterward I could see those three dead men coming out of that clothespress to pile up at my feet: coming out slowly -- almost deliberately -- in a ghastly game of 'follow your leader.'

[Florestan]

Great stuff!  For example, this opening from House Dick:

Excellent indeed!

[Dr. Dread]

[Lethevich]

You may want to try Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. One of my favorite English novels.

(Sorry, I didn't see this first time round.) I made a note on it. I hadn't even considered him until now, as I appear to have an irrational bias against anybody with a county as part of their name - I guess I had subconsciously associated him with dukedom or something

[Dr. Dread]

...as I appear to have an irrational bias against anybody with a county as part of their name...

How about a state? 

[Lethevich]

How about a state? 

Only if abbreviated!

[karlhenning]

An MBTA On Time Service Guarantee Claim Activation

[Ten thumbs]

It's The Professor by Charlotte next up for me, as I ran into it for £1 and thought "why not?".

I found 'The Professor' in the library when I was looking for 'Villette', so luckily I am able to read it first. Charlotte's character analyses are quite scary and very compelling. I note that school kids were just as bad in those days as now.

[DavidW]

I just finished Geck's biography of Bach.  It is very informative but sometimes it feels like merely a collection of facts and quotes without any attempt at building a narrative.  I only read the biography part, I know the musical analysis would be over my head so I didn't read that part.  The strong point is that he thoroughly trashes the mythology created in previous biographies (excepting Wolff which only debunked one little bit about speculation concerning how much secular works written during the Cothen period might have been lost) and creates an account of Bach as a man, and a musician, and not as overwhelming god amidst pions nor as forgotten genius not appreciated in his time.

[Lethevich]

I just finished Geck's biography of Bach.  It is very informative but sometimes it feels like merely a collection of facts and quotes without any attempt at building a narrative.  I only read the biography part, I know the musical analysis would be over my head so I didn't read that part.  The strong point is that he thoroughly trashes the mythology created in previous biographies (excepting Wolff which only debunked one little bit about speculation concerning how much secular works written during the Cothen period might have been lost) and creates an account of Bach as a man, and a musician, and not as overwhelming god amidst pions nor as forgotten genius not appreciated in his time.

Thanks for this, I just bought a secondhand copy on the basis of this description - it sounds like a decent primer. I will probably take ages to get through it, though: it's so much easier to buy books than to find time to read them

[Florestan]

it's so much easier to buy books than to find time to read them

QFT.

[DavidW]

Thanks for this, I just bought a secondhand copy on the basis of this description - it sounds like a decent primer. I will probably take ages to get through it, though: it's so much easier to buy books than to find time to read them

Indeed! (increasing Florestan's counter to +2).