If you ever watch the film, the exterior shots of the building are of the Dakota, where John Lennon lived.
I am reading An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. Blurbs on the cover describe the book as “Wildly, unpredictably funny” and “Absurdly hilarious…searingly funny”. I am at the halfway point and so far I think I have been made to smile, briefly, once. No hilarity. Maybe the author, Brock Clarke, has stashed all the funny stuff in the second half of the book. I sure hope so.
I’m in the middle of this one right now. It feels a lot like Ready Player One.
I’m reading “The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs” by Nick Trout and liking it very much. Very clever bit of storytelling.
Haven’t read the book, but I’m afraid you’re doomed to disappointment. If an author hasn’t hooked me in the first 50 pages, I’ve found from hard experience, he or she never will.
I absolutely loved the first section of Quicksilver, which features Daniel Waterhouse, but I didn’t care much for Eliza’s story in the rest of the book. My husband tells me that Eliza is featured in The Confusion, so I’ve been putting it off for so long that I really need to re-read *Quicksilver *again before I continue, too.
Wolf Hall was great, the best book I’ve read so far this year. I’ve ordered the next book, Bring up the Bodies - and it seems there will be a third book to round out a “Thomas Cromwell” trilogy.
I finished Jo Walton’s “Small Change” trilogy, the alternative history where Britain made peace with Hitler in the 1940’s. The books are Farthing, Ha’penny, and Half a Crown. It’s an odd series, and I can’t quite make out whether I liked it or not. While I found the narrative of each book pretty absorbing, there is something… unconvincing, and unsatisfying about them.
I read another Terry Pratchett book, The Fifth Elephant. It was fun, and I’m still snickering because the dwarf king’s coronation ceremony uses a Scone of Stone.
Please convince me to keep pressing on with Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. It’s not that I find the good doctor dull. Far from it. He’s fascinating, inspiring, amazing and exhausting. I wish he had written the book! I am getting tired of the fawning hero-worshiping tone of the author, though, and find myself not looking forward to the next chapter.
Everybody and their brother-in-law loves this book so the problem has got to be mine. 
Just finished Alexandra Fuller’s Let’s Not Go To The Dogs Tonight. I found it in our bookstore, think it was prescribed reading in a local school. Very interesting memoir of a childhood spent in Zimbabwe (then white-ruled, war-torn Rhodesia), Malawi and Zambia. Her parents seem to have been the last true believers in British colonialism in Africa. Some very funny parts and some very sad parts, beautifully written, and with zero sugar coating.
Oops that should be Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight.
I’ve added it to my “to-read” list! Thank you!
delphica, I recently finished Beautiful Ruins as well and feel the same about it. It was a fun read, but nothing that’s going to stick with me.
I finished Uncle Al by Deirdre Marie Capone, and This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers. The former was a fascinating look at the Capone family from the perspective of an insider. The latter is a YA book about students trapped in a school following a zombie apocalypse. I had a hard time putting it down. Overall it was well written and exceeded my expectations.
I’m starting A Moveable Feast now, and also This is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz.
Finished The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold: A Conversation Piece, very interesting, and with it the Evelyn Waugh anthology.
Next week, I’ll start Point Counter Point, by Aldous Huxley.
I finished In Harm’s Way by Doug Stanton earlier this month. It’s the recounting of the disaster that was the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during the last days of WWII. The sinking itself was a catastrophe with hundreds of sailors killed outright. Then, as unimaginable as it sounds, it took almost five days for anyone to realize that the ship was missing - the survivors tortured for over one hundred hours in the shark infested waters of the western Pacific before a search was even started. A true war horror story.
I’m now nearing the end of Anne Applebaum’s astounding Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944 - 1956. I say “astounding” because that is the only word to describe the outrageous actions and machinations of the Soviets in Eastern Europe after WWII. Applebaum, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her earlier Gulag, documents how in all fields of activity - religion, sports, art, and of course, politics, to name a few - the Soviets plotted and then established their rule. I doubt that I was alone in having never really considered precisely how the Soviets had brought about their eastern European hegemony. With meticulous documentation, Applebaum shows the reader just that: how it came to be. That she does so in a style that is, at once, both intimate and comprehensive, is testimony to her huge talents.
You may recall that rough, tough old Quint in Jaws was a survivor of the Indianapolis’s sinking.
Oh yes, you bet I do!
I absolutely agree, I love the Waterhouse stuff but was more neutral on Eliza the first time I read this. This time around, I’ve read more Stephenson books since … and I fear I’m going to have even less patience for Eliza because I’ve gotten more of a sense that he keeps recycling the same female characters.
Well, I polished off The New Watch yesterday. A solid installment that develops the mythology of the Others nicely, but it was a bit short on the scheming and machinations between Gesar, Zabulon and the Inquisition that I love about this series. Also, I’d rather like Anton to come visit America sometime. Still, there’s plenty of mysteries to be explored, and I’m looking forward to the next installment.
This leaves me currently out of book, and I’ve not really got anything in mind. Need to figure something out quick!
Well, I gave up on Arsonists’ Guide after about two thirds of the book. So if the protagonist didn’t burn those other writers’ homes, who did? When I realized I could not give a large rodent’s posterior I knew it was time to give up.
Next up is Dogs of Winter by Kem Nunn, whose writing has been described as “surfer noir”.
I read that one awhile back. The HBO series John from Cincinnati was reportedly influenced by Nunn’s books.
I’m re-reading A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin, and waiting for a few books to arrive in the mail: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer; Night Film by Marisha Pessi, a thriller involving a cult film director; and The Son by Philipp Meyer, a multi-generation saga set in the American West.
I’m really looking forward to the Packer book. The author was on The Daily Show last week. Stewart said the book was a combination of Studs Terkel and Ken Burns.
All right… I’ve figured it out. I’m going to have another shot at Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. I read… well, at least a big chunk of the first two books a while ago, but never finished it. But I appreciated the density of the prose. And I enjoyed the archaeoneologisms, perhaps because I’d studied enough Greek to be able to puzzle most of them out. So… let’s try this again.
Also picked up Applebaum’s Iron Curtain, as mentioned above. Seems like I might need something to read when Wolfe makes my head hurt.
I picked up The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander at a garage sale. The pictures alone are incredible: stunning black and white photographs of a rarely seen place with atonishing detail. The actual voyage across ice and then to an isolated island and then to a whaling station is unreal. You are left in awe of Shacketon’s skill and amazing bravery and resourcefulness of the men who followed him.