What are you currently reading?

[stingo]

They're spread across three anthologies, but I've been reading GRRM's Dunk and Egg tales. The first, The Hedge Knight, was really good and I am looking forward to the others. Having read the available ASOIF I thought it was really great how he made subtle tie-ins between the two worlds (Dunk and Egg's stories take place about 100 years prior to the events in ASOIF).

[mn dave]

I am reading this fine book about my man PM.
[asin]080417914X[/asin]

[Karl Henning]

I may or may not like the movie better than this reviewer, but I did enjoy this review:

The Omen (1976)

The Screen: 'Omen' Is Nobody's Baby

The best thing that can be said about "The Omen" is that very few viewers will want to walk out. They will stay, but they will feel foolish.

A member of the "Exorcist" family, it is a dreadfully silly film, which is not to say that it is totally bad. Its horrors are not horrible, its terrors are not terrifying, its violence is ludicrous—which may be an advantage—but it does move along.

Movies about Satanic possession do not depend for their effectiveness on making their central device convincing. They should, however, make all the details surrounding this device so plausible that when the Thing appears the audience's skepticism has gone to sleep. It was this peripheral credibility that gave "Rosemary's Baby" its strength.

"The Omen," which opened yesterday at the National, Loews Cine and other theaters, takes its details with no seriousness at all. It is not a put-on—it is terribly solemn, in fact—but it often seems like one.

There are miles of plot. It deals with the problems of a rich and privileged American—he happens to be Ambassador to Great Britain, which is the source of a great deal of the movie's incredibility — whose wife gives birth to a dead baby. A devil-possessed priest slips them another baby who is destined to grow up to rule the world in the name of Satan.

The baby becomes a lovely little boy, but when he is 4 years old or so, a mysterious black dog turns up. In quick order the boy's nursemaid hangs herself and a mysterious new nursemaid, a malevolent Mary Poppins, arrives to replace her.

Things begin to go badly wrong and the Ambassador, played by Gregory Peck, can't figure out why. A mad-looking priest arrives—not the one who supplied the baby —and warns him that the child is the Antichrist. Soon the priest is impaled by a spire falling off a church.

The Ambassador begins to be convinced. Joined by a photographer, played by David Warner, he goes to Italy to try to find the origins of his adopted child, and from that point the disasters begin to mount.

From the moment Mr. Peck comes home after a hard day and tells his wife, played by Lee Remick, that they're off to be Ambassadors, the film's working-level reality is hopelessly scratched. This must be the most unattended American emissary to Great Britain since John Jay. Scenes in which he and his wife look for a house—the United States Ambassador in London has an official residence—or in which he runs around London by himself are quite impossible.

Yet the movie is reasonably well-paced. We don't have time to brood about the sillinesses of any particular scene before we are on to the next. There is not a great deal of excitement, but we manage to sustain some curiosity as to how things will work out. "The Omen" is the kind of movie to take along on a long airplane trip.

[mn dave]

(Should be) reading this for review.
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[Karl Henning]

Very nice, too.

. . . And the conclusion, which will leave you thinking that Nixon wasn't half bad.

[mn dave]

Will get around to this one in a few years. I'm glad it's out.

Swafford is good. Can't wait to read this one.

Well, I can wait but it will be nice when it happens. 

[Karl Henning]

Is it another of those the facts just aren't nearly enough "biographies"?

[mn dave]

Is it another of those the facts just aren't nearly enough "biographies"?

You don't know Swafford???

He wrote the best beginners book on classical music I've ever read. And then there are those books on Ives and Brahms...

[Karl Henning]

You don't know Swafford???

He wrote the best beginners book on classical music I've ever read.

I did not know, tell me more.

And then there are those books on Ives and Brahms...

I know the Ives book is well regarded.  I have somehow got the idea that he "sexed up" Brahms.

[mn dave]

I did not know, tell me more.

I know the Ives book is well regarded.  I have somehow got the idea that he "sexed up" Brahms.

Well, you don't need this, do you. http://www.amazon.com/The-Vintage-Guide-Classical-Music/dp/0679728058

[Karl Henning]

Well, you don't need this, do you. http://www.amazon.com/The-Vintage-Guide-Classical-Music/dp/0679728058

I do not, but the title is good to know, for when I am asked 

[mn dave]

I do not, but the title is good to know, for when I am asked 

Highly recommended. One of several books I'll never be without.

[Karl Henning]

Very good, sir.

[kishnevi]

Very nice, too.

I am not very "in" to horror movies, but I remember The Omen being far more believable than The Exorcist,  none of the silly things complained of in the review being of much importance during the actual watching, and certainly I always looked askance at any boy named Damien after seeing it.  Ebert's review accords more closely to my memory of it.  It does contain some horrifying scenes by any sccount.

[mn dave]

Dipping into this as well...
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[Karl Henning]

I am not very "in" to horror movies, but I remember The Omen being far more believable than The Exorcist,  none of the silly things complained of in the review being of much importance during the actual watching, and certainly I always looked askance at any boy named Damien after seeing it.  Ebert's review accords more closely to my memory of it.  It does contain some horrifying scenes by any sccount.

Aye, my gratitude for the absurdities in The Exorcist made it a little easier to shrug off the disgust.  And your counterpoint viz. The Omen is well taken . . . that old truism about impossible-but-probable trumping possible-buit-improbable.

[mn dave]

THE EXORCIST is awesome.

[Karl Henning]

Thread Duty:  On my Kindle, revisiting that stunning classic, Churchill's The Second World War.

[Karl Henning]

THE EXORCIST is awesome.

I'll always be grateful that it fed some of Richard Pryor's funniest gags.

http://www.youtube.com/v/DU8HDLwbLVU

[mn dave]

I'll always be grateful that it fed some of Richard Pryor's funniest gags.

http://www.youtube.com/v/DU8HDLwbLVU

Tied into that, one of my favorite horror novels is the sequel novel, LEGION. Spooky shit.