pontalba

Gosh, I just don't know, it's fairly simply written, I don't see why not, but maybe ii would be surer of that.

Yes, that was particularly awful, in mostly because it caused the Handmaids to take part in the 'execution'. The first time I read it though the scene that truly put me off was the consummation scene with Offred and her Commander and the wife. The affair between Offred and Nick was only the scratching of an itch as far as I can see, not having read any of Atwood's other books, I wonder if she is not as adept at putting across a purely physical passion as for example the murders you mention. I thought the Commander wanted to and tried to put a bit of personality into the "relationship" but just didn't know how to go about it exactly within the narrow parameters he was confined to. She was quite understandably trying to manipulate him for any bits of pseudo freedom she could. I think it must be because if you impose rules and regulations on the deepest part of a human you can control the other factors. There's more to it than that, this is only off the top of my head so to speak.

It's certainly worth looking for Chimera, it was my first Atwood, and I have a few more in the stack and look forward to them now. A poster on another forum has been after me for years to read her, I was rather resistant, but no more.

I read it back in July, it was a second reading for me, the first being more or less when it came out. I was far more pleased with it this time around. Have you finished it yet?

Thanks, I'd hoped as much.

I have The Painted Veil in my TBR stack, but saw the film, oh I guess about 6 months ago, and loved it. Has anyone both read the book and seen the film? And if so how do they compare?

Paul, I received a notification of a post from Shelbel, but when I logged in, it wasn't here. I wonder what happened. Strangeness.

What a great list Paul! Many of my favorites are listed, it's hard for me to take in that Gone With the Wind and I, Claudius, two of my all time favorites both came out in the '30's. I knew it of course, but it didn't sink in till I just saw it on your list. And I see Planet of the Apes...I only read that a few years ago. Nothing like the horde of films made in it's name. A good little book. As for overflow, so what? The more the merrier.

supergran, I have always been a dyed in the wool Sean Connery as Bond advocate, however this new guy Daniel Craig is very good. Just as intense, focused and has that basic streak of what I call stick-to-it-tivness that makes Bond what he is. I never, ever liked Roger Moor as Bond, love him as The Saint [the old TV series], but he was too smooth, too soft for Fleming's Bond. While I liked some of the others as actors, they just weren't Bond. Daniel Craig "gets" Bond. Not Kell, but couldn't resist answering.

Baked! And...in an oven, not a microwave. No comparison in taste.

I bake the sweet potato in it's jacket after having scrubbed the skin with water and a brush, rubbing it down with olive oil. For a large one, usually about an hour. I add butter after splitting and mashing. I've tried microwaving one, but it doesn't taste right as far as I am concerned.

Moon Palace by Paul Auster A lost young man of the '60's struggles to find himself. Sounds pretty ordinary doesn't it? Not when Paul Auster gets through with the reader. In actuality there are at least three main stories, finally intertwining in a practically unbelievable series of meetings. Auster turns coincidence into a fine art form and makes us believe him. . Young Marco Fogg begins his narrative many years after the fact, so we know he survives the year of the moon landing, but if not for that foreknowledge given by the author in the very first paragraphs, the reader would be hard pressed to believe Fogg could live through it. Loss of parent, all family, loss of home, the loss in fact of everything humans consider necessary to survive in this world is inflicted on this man, mostly through his own self-confessed inertia. What he finds however are the very things he has lost. Reading this book no New Yorker will ever look upon Central Park in the same light, the deserts of the West will seem even emptier and more heartless than ever before, the Pacific even more beautiful than thought. As Fogg traversed the few years covered, I found myself cringing, weeping, laughing and finally cheering him on, this is a must read. 5/5

No I haven't, although I do plan on it, maybe by December sometime, unless I can fit it in-between two discussions that are up coming for me. They're certainly short enough to fit in like that. I'll post about them when I do though for sure.

It's quite short, less than a hundred pages, only a novella really. I bought the Barnes & Noble hardback that included some other stories of his.

United States. Louisiana for all my life so far.

I just finished, in one sitting mind you, Paul Auster's Man in the Dark. What a trip! A 72 year old man, a widower that has been injured in a terrible car crash lies in bed night after night in his divorced daughter's home with his granddaughter downstairs who has suffered a terrible loss herself. Three generations of a family in mourning at different stages of life and their way of coping with the losses. His method is to lie in bed and make up a continuing story of an alternative united States that is suffering a civil war and the assassin that is slated to kill him in a crossover from said alternative time line. Will he decide to live or die? Almost more important, what is real and what is imaginary. Fascinating study of time threads. Highly recommended. Last night I finished Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and found it to be excellent. It's one of those books that was difficult for me to pick up, but just as difficult to put down. I've never read any of Conrad's work before, and definitely want to read more. Colonialism, unconscious racism, the Ivory Trade that decimated the Congo of Africa in the latter part of the 19th Century is the setting, a man's struggle against himself and the force of nature that was Africa. A well told tale, certainly worth reading. It isn't what I'd call a layered story by any means, but a fairly straightforward story that stays with the reader and seems to grow in stature as time goes by. Definitely recommended.

Finished a blast from the past this evening, 52 Pickup by Elmore Leonard. This is the first Leonard I've read and the main reason I picked it up was I remembered seeing the film some years ago with Roy Scheider and Ann Margaret. I have to say Hollywood kept very close to the book with only one minor time line change that I can recall. It's a brutal story of a man that strays from his marriage at exactly the wrong time and the wrong place. But his own background which doesn't become know till more than half way through the book makes him the wrong person for the crooks [blackmailers] to have picked on, all in all an unhappy conjunction of the planets for all. And some think 52 Pickup is a card game.

Roland, I honestly don't know how much a person can get out of those books if they are not familiar with the neighborhoods and all they imply. Unless you've lived in a place for a while and know at least some of the history and plain outright vibes of a place, it'd be difficult to completely 'get' it. Maybe. I've read part of the Brooklyn book, and liked it, but knew I was missing something.

It's a natural mistake, I haven't been posting as much lately, that nagging little thing called Real Life is a ****** sometimes.

The last two months have been woefully slow reading months for me. I'll start something, toss it aside, start something else. Gak. I've been reading Harlot's Ghost for over a month now, and while I do like it, it has slow spots, and I feel I know more or less what'll happen, so am not as motivated to finish. I'm about a third of the way through. I've finished an old comfortable reread, The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart. Gosh, I hadn't read it in over 30 years, and it was so enjoyable. I do believe it was my first experience with twinning or a possible doppleganger, and even though I remembered exactly what happened, Stewart's prose is so mellow, I kept reading. Lovely book. I did enjoy New Orleans Noir, even though it was depressing for me. It, like it's siblings, Brooklyn Noir, Berlin Noir, et als is a series of short stories about different sections of the City and take on the personality of same. New Orleans Noir is further divided by pre and post Hurricane Katrina, so doubly poignant. They are all crime stories, I wouldn't go so far as to call them mysteries, they arn't, and most don't have a "happy ending" and some have no real conclusion, you just know it continues. I'm very ambivilant about the book. I'd recommend it for someone that would like to know New Olreans nitty-gritty.