Whatcha reading?

Sweet action for kids 'n' cretins. Marjoram and capers.
Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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Silent Majority wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 9:46am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 8:25am
Silent Majority wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 8:07am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 7:37am
Silent Majority wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 6:46am
32) The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain. 1934. Audiobook, read by Stanley Tucci. A queasy, amoral story of murder and romance. A great novel which is mercifully short because you wouldn't want to spend too much time with these people. Tough guy prose which is still elegant and believable, the world view and characterisation are as real feeling as the dialogue, which is some of the best I've ever read and somehow hardly dated nearly ninety years later. Honestly, it reads so genuinely, you can belive Cain sat around with tape recorders to capture the rhythms of these hard cases. It shares a melancholic mood with something like Ask the Dust by John Fante.
Quelle coincidence! The 1946 adaptation was on TCM last night, and it made me realize I'd never read or listened to the original novel.
I recommend the Tucci reading. He does a fine job.
Alright, smart guy, I'm gonna do just that!
Fine! It's no sap steer, Charley!
Couldn't find an active link, but I'm starting a new tub book today, so I'll make it that.

Also finished Ryan Grim's We've Got People on my walk this morning. Preaching to the choir journo-history stuff. I wasn't especially moved one way or another. That is, I don't need extra reasons for loathing Ruam Emanuel. One tidbit: Joe Crowley, the boss whom AOC knocked off, used "Born to Run" as his campaign theme. Jesus fucking Christ, what is with late Boomer/early Xer white liberals and that song? I've decided I hate it on principle now. Also, some Congressional Democrats describe AOC as "Nixonian," which is a, to be kind, curious application of the phrase.

Audio book to start tomorrow:
Image
Clearly there's a market for these "year that changed everything" books. I've read three or four. They're generally united in failing to deliver on the premise (let alone argument), but rather exist to say that the author really loved that year's music and popular culture. They're exercises in advanced nostalgia. Still, they're useful for mining anecdotes for lectures and the like, and they're often decent narratives.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

eumaas
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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The Talmud for some reason.

Thought I'd give you guys an old school Gene post.
I feel that there is a fascistic element, for example, in the Rolling Stones . . .
— Morton Feldman

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Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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eumaas wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 10:11am
The Talmud for some reason.

Thought I'd give you guys an old school Gene post.
In what language?
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by JennyB »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 10:43am
eumaas wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 10:11am
The Talmud for some reason.

Thought I'd give you guys an old school Gene post.
In what language?
Klingon.
Got a Rake? Sure!

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Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Dr. Medulla »

JennyB wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 10:50am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 10:43am
eumaas wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 10:11am
The Talmud for some reason.

Thought I'd give you guys an old school Gene post.
In what language?
Klingon.
:lol:
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: Whatcha reading?

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Silent Majority wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 6:46am
32) The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain. 1934. Audiobook, read by Stanley Tucci. A queasy, amoral story of murder and romance. A great novel which is mercifully short because you wouldn't want to spend too much time with these people. Tough guy prose which is still elegant and believable, the world view and characterisation are as real feeling as the dialogue, which is some of the best I've ever read and somehow hardly dated nearly ninety years later. Honestly, it reads so genuinely, you can belive Cain sat around with tape recorders to capture the rhythms of these hard cases. It shares a melancholic mood with something like Ask the Dust by John Fante.
Finished reading it today. As style and mood, it's foundational of the noir to come. As a story on its own, it's thin, almost a foreshadowing parody of the genre. The goofiness of the court case and lawyer games could be read as comedy where it doesn't belong, simultaneously convoluted and simplistic. But it's the core motivations, the bleak view of human nature, that drives it all. Why are these people so nasty? Because they are. They are predators who do what they do because that's what they are.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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Tub book:
Image
I've read this once before and wasn't overly enthralled, hoping for something more social and less biographical, a la Our Band Could Be Your Life. But let's give it another shot!
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Silent Majority »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
11 Jul 2021, 8:14pm
Silent Majority wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 6:46am
32) The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain. 1934. Audiobook, read by Stanley Tucci. A queasy, amoral story of murder and romance. A great novel which is mercifully short because you wouldn't want to spend too much time with these people. Tough guy prose which is still elegant and believable, the world view and characterisation are as real feeling as the dialogue, which is some of the best I've ever read and somehow hardly dated nearly ninety years later. Honestly, it reads so genuinely, you can belive Cain sat around with tape recorders to capture the rhythms of these hard cases. It shares a melancholic mood with something like Ask the Dust by John Fante.
Finished reading it today. As style and mood, it's foundational of the noir to come. As a story on its own, it's thin, almost a foreshadowing parody of the genre. The goofiness of the court case and lawyer games could be read as comedy where it doesn't belong, simultaneously convoluted and simplistic. But it's the core motivations, the bleak view of human nature, that drives it all. Why are these people so nasty? Because they are. They are predators who do what they do because that's what they are.
Ah, shame it didn't land as real for you. That was its great asset for me. I took the characters as I found them, there are some nasty pieces of work out there, sans origin story.
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Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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Silent Majority wrote:
13 Jul 2021, 11:54am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
11 Jul 2021, 8:14pm
Silent Majority wrote:
07 Jul 2021, 6:46am
32) The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain. 1934. Audiobook, read by Stanley Tucci. A queasy, amoral story of murder and romance. A great novel which is mercifully short because you wouldn't want to spend too much time with these people. Tough guy prose which is still elegant and believable, the world view and characterisation are as real feeling as the dialogue, which is some of the best I've ever read and somehow hardly dated nearly ninety years later. Honestly, it reads so genuinely, you can belive Cain sat around with tape recorders to capture the rhythms of these hard cases. It shares a melancholic mood with something like Ask the Dust by John Fante.
Finished reading it today. As style and mood, it's foundational of the noir to come. As a story on its own, it's thin, almost a foreshadowing parody of the genre. The goofiness of the court case and lawyer games could be read as comedy where it doesn't belong, simultaneously convoluted and simplistic. But it's the core motivations, the bleak view of human nature, that drives it all. Why are these people so nasty? Because they are. They are predators who do what they do because that's what they are.
Ah, shame it didn't land as real for you. That was its great asset for me. I took the characters as I found them, there are some nasty pieces of work out there, sans origin story.
Oh, no, the characterization was fine—foundational for the genre, as I suggest. It's the narrative/plot that is on the weak side.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: Whatcha reading?

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33) Red Metropolis - Owen Hatherley. Kindle. 2020. A book about times when the nominal left have been in charge of London’s councils and the small amounts of good that was done. This read like the work of a detached academic interested in a topic for all the wrong reasons. The entire first section on council housing was enraptured by the architecture and planning which i found as dull as an interview with a musician. The battles between Thatcher and the Greater London Council when the flamboyant Ken Livingstone was in charge are a great tipping point of neoliberalism but they’re expressed here with all the storytelling acumen of a Dan Brown novel. The thesis? London’s better with left-wing people in charge. Crawl, don’t walk, toward this one.

34) Night Watch - Terry Pratchett. Audiobook. 2002. Most likely the novel I’ve read more than any other and the 29th entry in the Discworld series, it focuses on a police chief being sent back in time, Life on Mars style (though it predates that series by a good few years) to train himself up and look after the police station while an insurrection aims to replace the mad, sadistic ruler of the city. I differ with Pratchett's humanistic, cynical take on the politics of revolution, as he marks it out in the third act. He doesn't marr the book with it. His position is well-considered & internally logical.He presents a colonialist city-state with a terrible poverty, most of the way through the transition from feudalism to capitalism. This is as good as it will get for the population, in his view, because the fuckers at the top will win out and the revolutionaries are out of touch. There's references to "real revolutionaries", shadowy hardmen with a concrete view of the job they have to do, but we never meet them. The fighters we do spend time with are laughable Citizen Smith figures. We view them through Vimes' (the working class police chief who has made it to the top of the chain in his own time) eyes, who has a streetwise infallibility. It's a masterpiece of working class liberalism, really. A fair presentation of the way my Dad sees revolution. A better world is very, very gradually possible. We don't have a secret police torturing people any more because the right policeman is at the top. In other places, Terry Pratchett writes well and compellingly of humanity, but, as great a job as he does as telling this story (his greatest novel) from his side, he underestimates what is possible. But it's an honest presentation of what he sees to be the truth..

35) When Giants Walked the Earth: 50 Years of Led Zeppelin - Mick Wall. 2020. I’ve said here before that band biographies go down as smoothly for me as a glass of good lager, just the default reading that I spent a lot of my years going through. This is an excellent read about the absolute fucking pieces of shit who made four magnificent albums, with brilliant soundscape forming (I don’t rate the songwriting aside from side 2 of Led Zeppelin III, but as a collection of musical moments in a row, they’re near unsurpassed). Robert Plant & John Paul Jones come off the best. A good story, well told.
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Wolter »

Too much effort to snip a quote down, but yeah. Zep were pieces of shit as people a lot of the time, and the songwriting they actually did is…eh. But man they could arrange the shit out of some music and when they pared down the excesses could also play the shit out of things. Wish they’d actually just have given fucking credit for all the songs they had chalked up as “traditional” that were mostly written less than 15 years before by people like Willie Dixon (who should’ve been making bank off them in the early 70s).
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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Image
Decided to use this for my rock class this fall, so I'm reading to write my own synopsis. Haven't read it before, but it seems decent for discussion. Plus I'll be able to tell students that, no, I do not listen to Rush. At all.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: Whatcha reading?

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36) I, the Jury - Mickey Spillane. 1947. Kindle. So crazy over the top, I can only take it as parody of a violent tough guy and only readable because it's entirely sincere. The two dimensions nearly tire me out, but the book cuts the gas just as soon as it gets in danger of boring.

37) Guys and Dolls and Other Stories - Damon Runyon. First collects 1957. Paperback. Every so often, I find myself getting pissed off with Runyon's monomaniacal insistence on the present tense extending itself into dialogue (where my prejudice is for as naturalistic as possible) but he gives me a line made of diamonds and then I am okay with him. It is here that the stereotypical gangster way of speaking, like Fat Tony, starts. The book reminds me of Only Fools and Horses, street level stories with a propensity for violence and a good laugh on the way to the happy ending. The comedy hasn't aged and nor has the razor sharp characterisation. The prose is too idiosyncratic for long sittings, but the stories breeze past you in fourteen pages or so and I recommend one a day.
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Is ten times worse than prison


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Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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Silent Majority wrote:
25 Jul 2021, 12:22pm
36) I, the Jury - Mickey Spillane. 1947. Kindle. So crazy over the top, I can only take it as parody of a violent tough guy and only readable because it's entirely sincere. The two dimensions nearly tire me out, but the book cuts the gas just as soon as it gets in danger of boring.
I have a set of trades that collect the first, I think, six Hammer novels. It does start to get a bit tired by the sixth, so I haven't felt a need to read more, but that batch are gloriously brutal noir. They're also enjoyable from the historical perspective that critics of the era regarded Spillane as murdering the novel.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

eumaas
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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Reading the Super Natural by Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber (was in an adventurous mood) and came across this.
IMG-0545.jpg
Not sure why it's previewing sideways.
I feel that there is a fascistic element, for example, in the Rolling Stones . . .
— Morton Feldman

I've studied the phenomenon of neo-provincialism in self-isolating online communities but this place takes the fucking cake.
— Clashy

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