pontalba Posted September 19, 2008 Author Share Posted September 19, 2008 It's a natural mistake, I haven't been posting as much lately, that nagging little thing called Real Life is a ****** sometimes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordsgood Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 Hmmm, yes that's exactly what the bloody issue is right now! How dare "real life" get in the way of my entertainment! The nerve...... Thanks for understanding. Now I really must get off my behind and go see to some errands before the bank closes, groan.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roland Butter Posted September 20, 2008 Share Posted September 20, 2008 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. That sounds interesting, pontalba. New Orleans is a place that has fascinated me, from way back when I first became interested in its music and realised that it's very different from pretty much any other city in the US. I've read Paris Noir (fairly unimpressed, to be honest) and I've got Wall Street Noir knocking around somewhere, but New Orleans Noir is one I'll definitely look out for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted September 20, 2008 Author Share Posted September 20, 2008 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted September 24, 2008 Author Share Posted September 24, 2008 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted October 3, 2008 Author Share Posted October 3, 2008 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kate Posted October 3, 2008 Share Posted October 3, 2008 Ooo both Man in the Dark and Heart of Darkness sound really good. I'll add them to my list of books to look out for Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~Andrea~ Posted October 4, 2008 Share Posted October 4, 2008 I've added Heart of Darkness to my TBR - it's one of those books I feel I really must read one day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted October 4, 2008 Author Share Posted October 4, 2008 I've added Heart of Darkness to my TBR - it's one of those books I feel I really must read one day. 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~Andrea~ Posted October 5, 2008 Share Posted October 5, 2008 Ah - thanks for that. Have you read any of the other stories in it yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted October 7, 2008 Author Share Posted October 7, 2008 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted October 13, 2008 Author Share Posted October 13, 2008 (edited) 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 Edited October 13, 2008 by pontalba Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted December 27, 2008 Author Share Posted December 27, 2008 American Pastoral by Philip Roth...finished last month and it is one of those books that hammer at you and doesn't let up, and even then it doesn't let go of the reader. Some books seem to be more interesting in retrospect than during the actual reading and this one qualifies as such. Certainly a reread down the road is in the cards. It's certainly discussion worthy reaching [at present] 375 posts over on Constant Reader on Good Reads. The possibilities are endless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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