Books: Last Book You Read and Rate It

kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
Jun 14, 2006
42,530
10,129
Toronto
Les enfants terribles by Jean Cocteau (1929) - Hadn't picked it up in a week and feel like reading something else. I can respect Cocteau's style and his capacity with sentences, but the work felt like it was navel-gazing a little too much. Not what I feel like reading at the moment. Since it's a such a short work, I'll return to it soon enough. Probably sometime when I'm on vacation. Got to say - so far what I've read from Cocteau hasn't done much for me, despite his obvious skill.
Try any of these movies that he directed:

Orphee
The Testament of Orphee
Beauty and the Beast

Blood of a Poet


They are all imaginative, strangely surreal and dream-like, and unlike anything else in cinema.

You might also want to check out Jean-Pierre Melville's adaptation of Les enfants terribles, the script of which Cocteau co-wrote with the director.
 
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Chili

En boca cerrada no entran moscas
Jun 10, 2004
8,440
4,269
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Many are probably familiar with the story of Oskar Schindler because of Steven Spielberg's film. Some may have heard of others who help save people during WWII such as Albert Göring (Hermann's younger brother).

Another person who helped a lot of people survive was Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty. He had a position with the Vatican in Rome during the war. As the war came to Italy more refugees, escaped prisoners of war and others were seeking shelter. Through his connections, the Monsignor was able to set up an extensive network to help these people. He and his companions were risking there lives and had some close calls, some fatal. He became a wanted man. There was a film made of the story starring Gregory Peck, The Scarlet and The Black.

Courageous, inspiring story of someone who was devoted to those who needed help.
 
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ItsFineImFine

Registered User
Aug 11, 2019
3,534
2,263
The Final Empire (Mistborn #1) by Brandon Sanderson [2006] - 3/5

A long fantasy sci-fi which had its share of thrills but the writing style felt like I was reading a young adult novel and I'm not convinced by the high reviews. Pacing was generally good minus some lulls but I just couldn't get past the writing style at times and I say this as someone who generally just reads mystery novels. Can't really say I have a desire to read more from the same series after the conclusion of this one.

The pull/push aspect was neat but very hard to actually comprehend when described which made those parts a slog.
 

Hammettf2b

oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg
Jul 9, 2012
22,489
4,610
So California
Half way through Red Rising and boy am I not getting into it. Has anyone read it? My buddy swears by this book. I'll still finish it regardless
 

Pink Mist

RIP MM*
Jan 11, 2009
6,736
4,824
Toronto
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The Pyramid: And Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries (Kurt Wallander #9)
by Henning Mankell

A collection of short stories about Inspector Wallander’s detective career before the series kicked off, including his first case before he’s a detective and just a simple police officer. In a way kind of a look back on the series so far and a way to fill in the gaps of the mystery of detective himself through these short self-contained stories. A rather unnecessary book since I didn’t think I needed to know more about Wallander’s past then what was described from the previous novels and the pacing was off in Mankell’s writing, but I do appreciate the smaller scale of the mysteries in this collection of stories. Definitely not the starting point for a new reader of the series though.
 
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kihei

McEnroe: The older I get, the better I used to be.
Jun 14, 2006
42,530
10,129
Toronto
20133343.jpg


Many are probably familiar with the story of Oskar Schindler because of Steven Spielberg's film. Some may have heard of others who help save people during WWII such as Albert Göring (Hermann's younger brother).

Another person who helped a lot of people survive was Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty. He had a position with the Vatican in Rome during the war. As the war came to Italy more refugees, escaped prisoners of war and others were seeking shelter. Through his connections, the Monsignor was able to set up an extensive network to help these people. He and his companions were risking there lives and had some close calls, some fatal. He became a wanted man. There was a film made of the story starring Gregory Peck, The Scarlet and The Black.

Courageous, inspiring story of someone who was devoted to those who needed help.
I'd have cast Karl Malden in that role.
 
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Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
113,009
15,069
Of the course of my life I have given my mother a few books to read. The first I remember was the Harry Potter series, when I was young enough to care about them and young enough to be humoured about them. I think she got to about the fourth one and stopped. I gave her The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, she didn't like that because she spent the whole thing picturing Humphrey Bogart in a trenchcoat and apparently this was bad. She also had the nerve to read it while in the bath and the cover started peeling off. I have her the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster and it had too many words. I gave her The Great Gatsby when the last film adaptation came out in 2013 and it was, I quote: "too boring, nothing happens in it."

When she comes to me with a book and says "you should read this, it's filled with great reviews but I had to fight to make myself get through it," well, could there be a more ringing endorsement? So we come to Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton, a book released in 2020 concerning an armed siege at a fictional school somewhere in Somerset. I can't really condense the plot any further than that because to do so would be to describe everything that happens in the book, as well as pre-empt the specific aspects of it I'm going to criticise in the coming paragraphs.

Central to the story is the notion that the school is "a microcosm of 21st century Britain" where a narrative voice wonders aloud "what students must have thought when a teacher announced she was a lesbian before giving them geography homework." The school welcomes everyone and encourages them to be who or whatever they are. That's why we have gay teachers. We have a young boy who wears headphones all the time and doesn't like to be touched. We have a head teacher who is shot in front of a glass case on the wall containing pictures of boys from the school before they went off to fight in the wall, the pictures kept there as solemn, as brave, as a reminder, and the glass like the shrapnel they faced as it breaks behind him. That sequence is mentioned twice for some reason, I don't know why. It's why we have Rafi and Basi, two Syrian refugees who were taken in by the school's headmaster because he just had to. It's why the school's deputy head has only just returned to work after being off for depression, which apparently makes him more attuned to evil when it appears. That narrative voice from earlier muses that Churchill suffered from depression and that's how he knew Hitler was so bad.

The police task force which rolls up to respond to the shooting is presumably supposed to be the same snapshot of modern life, with a list of names and ethnicities reminiscent of a scouting report full of regens from Football Manager. Lysander, Dannisha, Rose and Aamil all get on perfectly, and if they're not busy looking up what a psychopath is on wikipedia then friendly old PC Beard is on the phone to the school's deputy head after being shot at himself, saying not to worry about the buggers haha, they probably won't think a regular bobby like me is a threat.

Unusually for a story about an armed siege in a fixed location, the identity of the shooters (there's two of them, there might be three but the suggestions of a third honestly read like she planned to write one in, forgot to mention them again then nobody who edited this noticed or remembered to take it out) don't actually feature until halfway through. "Who could it be, do we reckon?" "Oh the school's had three people been expelled. It must be one of them." Five minutes elapse. "Oh it is one of them, we've cracked his laptop, he's been on the dark web, he's become radicalized, he's a Nazi, he's made a bomb, he's modified his gun to be automatic, he's read some Donald Trump tweets (reprinted in the book in their original format, no less), he's read some Katie Hopkins articles, he's blowing up the school because there's two Muslims in it, he's befriended a lonely boy and this is exactly like Columbine because that's what Columbine was, a psychopath and a hopeless idiot tagging along.

This is roughly how the pacing of the book goes. Even then, and even with the story taking place over, er, three hours with the current time featuring at the start of each chapter, it's a physical effort to get through writing this awful. The entire thing read like liberal twitter became self-aware and collaborated to write a book about how downright mean and nasty right wing terrorists are and how gosh darn honest to goodness welcoming accepting society is in the face of it. After spending half an hour researching the subject on wikipedia. I'm not exaggerating that Columbine thing - it's practically lifted straight from the page. Some attempts at actual writing appears when the two Syrian boys' journey comes up with no warning, as the younger one remembers parts of the journey without being able to distinguish them from the situation he's currently in. This is a subject which could actually be interesting in the hands of someone who could string a sentence together, but here it's so clumsily managed it's impossible to know what's real and what isn't even when you're told.

Quite honestly, writing this bad has to be seen to be believed. I'm stunned that something this terrible can have been produced so recently, never mind published by Penguin and starting with three and a half pages of testimonials (some from actual reputable newspapers, the rest seemingly from other women with books published by Penguin). Writing this bad does a disservice to the subjects it attempts and fails to wrangle together. Its maudlin, childlike sentimentality undermines any real societal threats it tries to challenge or highlight. While it attempts subtlety - some of the children are performing Macbeth which is also about an unseen, unknown evil killing people, great. Saying the Syrian boy picked this specifically because it's like the Syrian civil war and saying that pictures of Aleppo are projected on stage and repeating several times that it's like the Syrian civil war, not great - it's done so obviously and insistently that no matter your political or sentimental leanings, you'll resent everything this book claims to stand for by the end of it.

I am of no doubt that I could write better books than this. I am also of no doubt that I could write this exact story much better than this. The only way I could do proper justice to its horrors is to actually pick out passages and just post them, then you could see this for yourself. Judging by the amount of times I had to stop to laugh while reading, I'd be here a while.
 
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Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
113,009
15,069
I almost want to hate read this now.
If you have something you want to read and want to properly appreciate it, read Three Hours first. Whatever follows will feel like the best book ever written.
 

Thucydides

Registered User
Dec 24, 2009
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9/10 - great biography on one of the best investors and businessmen the world has ever seen. A long book, packed with so much info that you finish feeling like you really know the man , flaws and all.

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6.5/10


Written in the last years of Rousseau’s life, he goes on long walks around Paris and Switzerland, talks about botany , the pleasure of a solitary existence, and finding pleasure in the small things in life. This is my first time reading Rousseau and it’s probably not the place to start, but he has me wanting to read more. He’s an excellent writer .

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Not a deep read about ISIS , but all the information is there . Also some great “human” stories of Iraqi civilians trying to find their way during terrible times.

7/10
 
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Thucydides

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Dec 24, 2009
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I am not finished with this book, but even after I am finished with this book, I don’t think this book will be ever finished with me.

The greatest book of all time.

I’ll write a proper review later, but highly recommend.
 

KallioWeHardlyKnewYe

Hey! We won!
May 30, 2003
15,504
3,325
From the last few months a quartet of entertainment (or entertainment adjacent) books:

Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris. Harris is one of my favorite writer/thinkers about movies and movie history. More journalist than critic (though he has plenty of opinions). Nichols isn't the "sexiest" subject on the surface. Quite accomplished — an EGOT winner with three of those awards coming in the first few years of his career — but not quite as cool or beloved as many contemporaries. Truly interesting life though moving from comic prodigy and performer to many-honored theater and film director. One of the most striking things is how well-liked and respected he was by crews and actors. He could be a jerk, but his guiding principles were more of a collaborative sort than a tunnel-visioned hard-assed genius. Nice to see a portrait of a generally nice guy who did good work as opposed to the misanthropic artiste types that so many in society seem transfixed by.

The Big Goodbye by Sam Wasson. A behind-the-scenes of Chinatown focused on the four main men behind it — director Roman Polanski, producer Robert Evans, writer Robert Towne and star Jack Nicholson. The reporting is good and interesting but I didn't care much for the writer himself. His style was too florid for my tastes.

The Making of Dune by Ed Naha. A detailed behind-the-scenes of David Lynch's Dune. What was fascinating is that it isn't a post-mortem. It was written and released in the moment. The ultimate fate and failure of the movie is not known. Some of the most interesting aspects were that Lynch has always and will always be Lynch. The guy in these pages is every bit the same guy you'd see in any other interviews over time. The frankness of several the actors was refreshing — more than a few "ah I get to get paid to play dress up" responses. I feel like folks today would be more aware and wanting to craft more of a narrative about themselves and "the work." Everyone seems so happy and positive ... you feel bad knowing what's to come.

Bad Company by Steve Wick. The story behind the so-called "Cotton Club" murder where a drug smuggler and a small-time stage producer meet over a pile of cocaine and decide they want to get into movie production together. Robert Evans makes an appearance here too as the man who can bring them into the business. They were going to back Francis Ford Coppolla's The Cotton Club but they wind up double crossing each other and one ends up dead in pretty horrific fashion. Classic blow-by-blow true crime retelling. A genuine page turner that I'm kinda shocked hasn't been turned into a movie at some point.
 

Chili

En boca cerrada no entran moscas
Jun 10, 2004
8,440
4,269
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A cat and mouse game as a reporter tries to find a war criminal. Meanwhile the ODESSA organization is chasing the reporter, trying to protect one of their own. Suspenseful and hard to put down. A lot of info early in the book to set up the later chases all comes together nicely. The reporter's motive only revealed late in the story. Some of the story is based on fact.

I watched the 1974 film of the same name and was disappointed that a great deal had been changed from the book.

Interesting footnote to the film, the villain of the story was living under his own name in Argentina. After the film was released, someone there realized he was the character from the story and reported him to the police. He was arrested and while out on bail tried to flee. While on a ferry from Argentina to Paraguay, he collapsed and died. Neither country wanted the body so it made several trips back and forth on the ferry. Apparently he was eventually buried in an unmarked grave in Paraguay.

An intriguing thriller.
 

Spring in Fialta

A malign star kept him
Apr 1, 2007
25,085
14,267
Montreal, QC
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor (1952) - Life stuff made me put this off for a couple of weeks before I cracked it open. I was so hyped. I have to admit that it came as a bit of a letdown. One of those things that I wanted to like much more than I ultimately did, mostly because I, for one, love Southern Gothic and two, consider her collection Everything That Rises Must Converge one of the most satisfying book that I have ever read. Unfortunately, this wasn't it. The set-up is ambitious and pulls in at once: Hazel Motes, a war vet and something of a misguided Christ Hater, heads to a nameless Southern city and decides to preach the Church without Christ to perplexed city dwellers. This puts him in contact with various degenerates and scumbags.

The biggest problem with the book is with how it's formatted, IMO. According to Wikipedia, the novel was put together by various short stories that O'Connor had previously published. It shows continuously. While the novel has a continuous thread, it's often held together rather clumsily and strains to avoid untying. This leaves initial high-stakes happenings and events to sputter in relation to their presentations which in turn gives a bit of a muddled quality to the book. Unfortunately, O'Connor extremely high level of intelligence/culture and flair for a great declarative sentence can't overcome that failing. Motes' preachings, which are supposed to his life's work, offer too much and too little at once. There's too many of them without ever diving into them and their effect. Large portions of the book are essentially descriptive tellings of a character's state of mind. While I find Show, Don't Tell to be a largely bloated platitude that doesn't mean much of anything in most instances, there is a little bit of an overkill here.

Still, O'Connor's talents are apparent throughout the novel. An obvious influence on McCarthy (he could recite her by heart) who surpassed her, she has a phenomenal knack for declarative statements, original descriptions of surroundings and twisted heads. She can finish a paragraph as good as anyone else. She's also a funny enough gal. The last chapter is by far the best of the bunch, both in its horror and its depth relating to life and death. Its sheer originality deserves recommendation but it rarely caused the pang that I get from my favorites.
 
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Chili

En boca cerrada no entran moscas
Jun 10, 2004
8,440
4,269
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Richard Pryor-Pryor Convictions and Life Sentences

One of the funniest books ever, according to this NY Times article:
A History of the Comedian Memoir in Nine Books

Laughed so hard a few times, it hurt. There's a lot pain in there too. Grew up in a whorehouse, thrown out of school, the army and from the family home, married 7 times and a lot of illness, some self inflicted like setting himself on fire.

'Temptation was my muse'.

Highly recommend to any fan of his humour.
 
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Pink Mist

RIP MM*
Jan 11, 2009
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The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
by Ernest Hemingway

The complete (but not actually complete since it is missing some stories) collection of Hemingway’s stories. Seventy stories of men not talking about there feelings, getting drunk, and then dying unexpectedly – but in a very reflective way. Hemingway is a master of the short story format; I much prefer his short story work over his novels. He has such an efficiency with words and can write seemingly simple sentences and stories that can feel like a strong punch to the face. Hemingway gets a bad rap as being misogynistic and racist among many other things, however I think much of this comes from an inability to separate the man and his writing. Yes, Hemingway the man probably was those things, but his writing actually has a lot of meaningful things to say about gender relations. Not only is much of his work reflect on toxic forms of masculinity, but he writes a lot of things pertaining to feminism. One of the first short story he ever published, Up in Michigan, is a depiction from the woman’s perspective of a woman who gets raped by a man she had a crush on who refused to refuses to listen to her pleas to stop. Similarly he writes about abortion (Hills Like White Elephants), motherhood (Cat in the Rain), and gender identity issues (Great News from the Mainland – one of Hemingway’s children was transgender). His writing is a lot more nuanced than the myth of his persona. But fear not, there is also many many stories of men doing manly things – stories filled with hunting, fishing, war, and bullfighting – but there’s much more under the surface that is missed by his mischaracterization as a hyper masculine writer. Anyway, that’s my defense of Hemingway against 21st century twitter critics who haven’t read his work. He is such an effective stylist and his work cuts so deeply and I’m sure I’ll return again and again to many of his stories. The first half, the so called first forty-nine stories, and his strongest as the back half is filled with many things that were incomplete or published posthumously. The best of the bunch are The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, The Capital of the World, The End of Something, Hills Like White Elephants, and a Clean, Well Lighted Place.
 

Thucydides

Registered User
Dec 24, 2009
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Much like his tome, “The Prize” , Yergin has a way of showing the reader how the world works through the lens of the oil industry - Iranian conflicts with the Saudis & UAE, Ukraine - Russia, China and the South China Sea, etc , Yergin pieces it all together and shows the reader that the old saying “it’s all about oil” still rings true today .

Yergin goes further here and looks at electric cars, renewable energy, automated vehicles , and the very present climate emergency .

Unlike “the prize” it’s not dense at all, but interesting throughout.

We are in for some interesting times in the years ahead.

8.5/10
 

Thucydides

Registered User
Dec 24, 2009
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Hailed as the first modern novel, it’s easy to see how influential this book has been to all the masterpieces that ever came after it & why many claim it to be the greatest book of all time . It was Faulkner who said he read it once a year , like someone reads the Bible , and Dostoevsky claimed it was “the final and greatest utterance of the human mind”.

The story starts with Don Quixote reading so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and decides to become a knight. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho, as his squire, and the two set out on horseback and a donkey for one of the greatest adventure stories of all time.

The book is a blend of fiction, comedy and philosophy. Cervantes really threw everything he had into this one book, and though there are many side plots , and at almost a thousand pages there’s a tendency to zone out during the “boring” parts, overall it works . This book had me laughing out loud on a few occasions. One of the notable ones is when Don and Sancho are riding through the country side and meet a prison guard who is ferrying prisoners off the jail. Don talks to each of the prisoners and after hearing their stories decides that they shouldn’t go to prison so he attacks the prison guard thinking he’s doing something noble , and let’s the prisoners go free, only for it to come back later that these prisoners had formed a chain gang and were wrecking havoc all over the place. Hilarious.

I don’t think I’ll read this once a year and I don’t know if it’s the greatest utterance of the human mind, but the book is definitely a masterpiece, and I’d recommend to anyone with a little patience and doesn’t mind slogging through it at times , as it’s a worthwhile read and you will remember Don and Sancho for a long time after you finish.
 

ItsFineImFine

Registered User
Aug 11, 2019
3,534
2,263
Finished The Foundation by Anisimov. Starts slow, gets really juicy in the middle, and a bit tiresome but readable in the end. I'm not a big sci-fi person but I enjoyed the political maneuvering aspect of this which it focused on far more than the actual sci-fi.

Reading a more grounded book next, Anxious People from 2020.
 
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Thucydides

Registered User
Dec 24, 2009
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Did not finish. Started strong, but got boring very quick. Not my thing . First time I’ve quit a book in awhile .
 

Pink Mist

RIP MM*
Jan 11, 2009
6,736
4,824
Toronto
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Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury

In the near future, Guy Montag lives his life working as a fireman and lives a subdued live in the suburbia of the city. However, while in the past firemen may have put out fires, in the future they start fires – particularly the burn books and the homes that hide them. A classic novel that shows up on most high school students’ reading list (I however did not read it in high school, though it certainly was an option) and a book that many contemporary people like to point towards as to where culture is going. While those who like to scream about so called “cancel culture” like to say this book is a warning for things to come, I think this book had more interesting things to say about technological advancement than it does about censorship (though I think Bradbury would agree with them and a lot of this book and his afterword reads like reactionary bullshit about minorities being too sensitive). Fahrenheit 451 certainly is a product of its time, the banning of books is reminiscent of Nazi book burnings during the Third Reich, as well as the McCarthy witch hunts and Stalinist suppression of writers during the 1950s. But a major preoccupation of the book, in fact the reason why people are no longer reading in the book, is because of consumption of mass entertainment through television as distractions from cold war era paranoia and social dislocation during the era. It’s a book which asks what are the consequences if we seek to conform and distract ourselves from the world. Bradbury writes in a beautiful poetic style and builds and releases tension in a masterful way. However, while I think Fahrenheit 451 is a good book, I don’t think it is a great book. It’s entertaining and well written but the depths of its themes and characterizations are fairly shallow. Many of the themes are primarily addressed through expository monologues which explain the history of the world in the book which I think is fairly lazy, and the ending of the novel (in which a nuclear bomb blows up America) is way too convenient and a lackluster ending. The characters are all fairly one note and lack depth and it’s hard to believe that Guy Montag can go from gleefully burning books at the beginning of the novel to being a secret hoarder of books within a few pages. That said, it is easy to see why this book is taught at the high school level as I’m sure it provides a lot of debate in English classes over its themes.
 

tarheelhockey

Offside Review Specialist
Feb 12, 2010
84,977
137,333
Bojangles Parking Lot
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Brown


51o4inZLRjL.jpg



Should probably be required reading in American high schools.

The only downsides are:
1) It's perhaps a bit too credulous toward tribal sources, a bit willing to ignore or forgive serious atrocities committed by Native bands, and yes I do appreciate the irony in this statement. The overall impact is to counter the prevailing cultural narrative which is a good thing, but a more scholarly/neutral perspective would have landed closer to the truth.

2) After a few chapters it becomes grueling to just continuously relive the cycle of exploitation, betrayal, and massacre. It's like reading a story about 10 holocausts in a row. About 5 or 6 in, you just want to curl up in a ball.
 
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eXile3

Registered User
Dec 12, 2020
3,813
3,453
The Final Empire (Mistborn #1) by Brandon Sanderson [2006] - 3/5

A long fantasy sci-fi which had its share of thrills but the writing style felt like I was reading a young adult novel and I'm not convinced by the high reviews. Pacing was generally good minus some lulls but I just couldn't get past the writing style at times and I say this as someone who generally just reads mystery novels. Can't really say I have a desire to read more from the same series after the conclusion of this one.

The pull/push aspect was neat but very hard to actually comprehend when described which made those parts a slog.

I gave up on it after a hundred pages or so fore the same reason. The writing style just wasn't for me. Especially after reading the ASOIF in comparison.
 

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