BOOKS THREAD

Just finished Waiter Rant. Great read, and many hilarious stories. Well-written.

 

I read that, too. Not bad.

 

Love Emerson. Haven't read him lately and I'm not sure why. He's very good.

Lehane is brilliant, though the more he moves away from crime fiction the less interest I have. He's really dismissive of his earlier work now.

One more for the must-read list: Nick Hornby.

One guy who fell off my must-read list: Harlan Coben. He's very, very good, but he now writes the same damn novel every time. "He seems to be living the American dream, raising the perfect family in New Jersey... but there's a secret from his past that will DESTROY IT ALL!!!" Of course now that he does that they all hit the bestseller list, so I don't see it changing anytime soon.

 

Has anyone mentioned the English translation of Steig Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?" I haven't quite finished it yet, but I found the intertwining plots to be really captivating. It was a little confusing at first though.

It's a novel about a magazine publisher who is on trial for libel at the start of the book, and winds up being hired to investigate a murder. I still don't know whodunit, and I've only got about 50 pages left!

 

I finished the Brass Verdict by Connelly. Compared to nearly every other book you can read, it's terrific. But in terms of Connelly books, I felt like it was only OK. It had the feel of a TV episode that doesn't advance the action, but sets up future episodes. It felt like he was introducing Bosch and Haller to each other to set up future novels. Bosch and Haller are pretty similar, despite the obvious differences, so I think future books will need to flesh them out more.

 

Finished Pearlman's "Boys Will Be Boys," which pretty much read as promised, though it wasn't all negative. His utter smackdown of Skip Bayless was priceless.

 

It fascinates me how most of you don't read fiction. I wonder why?

Anyway, I just read The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. It was a good book.

I'm rereading Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien.

I love that book.

 

Certainly can't go wrong with O'Brien, 'Gola.

 

Hey! I just read a novel.

(Of course, it was maybe the sixth novel I've read in my entire life.)

Anyway, it was The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. His first book, and I really, really liked it. I hardly ever finish fiction but that one got me through. I haven't read any of his more famous, better selling later work, but I plan on going through his catalogue soon.

Also read, The Man Who Heard Voices, Michael Bamberger's account of M. Night Shyalaman's Lady in the Water. The NYT (Janet Maslin, the dumb twat) gave it a pretty savage review, calling it a blowjob, essentially, but I didn't read it that way at all.

You can tell pretty clearly that the movie is going to be a disaster (there's a nice afterward in the paperback edition that starts, "The poor bastard."). But I was struck by how much Shyalaman worked and how hard he tried and badly he wanted to be great, even if he failed miserably. It made me want to work harder. And having Bamberger write it, a golf guy writing film, encouraged the feeling. It made me feel as though anything is possible if you're willing to take a stab at it. Of course, you might end up poking your eye out while you're at it, but I guess that's part of the deal. Risk-reward, and all that.