BOOKS THREAD

I read "All the Light You Cannot See" a while ago, and I liked it but didn't love it. It is compelling, and even made me gulp in a couple of places. But still didn't connect with the main characters as people quite enough to love them, therefore, care more about them. I don't know, something about their (lack of ) depth kept them from jumping off the page at me.

It felt plenty "literary," all right, but just didn't totally connect with me.

 

Hi! This is my first post after reading and lurking for a long time.

I just finished Tommy Chong's biography, "The I Chong: Meditations From The Joint." It wasn't literature for the ages, but it was a quick, engaging read. I was afraid it would read like an extended novelization of one of his movies. He writes at length about his spirituality and values. It was refreshing and surprising.

 

Had you heard that Tommy Chong gave Jordan Belfort, aka, the Wolf of Wall Street, the inspiration to write the book? They were in prison together and Belfort was always going on about all these crazy stories about what he'd done, and Chong told him he should write a book. So he did.

Read about 200 pages of City on Fire, but had to bring it back to the library and frankly I wasn't upset to part with it. Fine enough writing, but the story was too reminiscent of Bonfire of the Vanities and the Bronx is Burning. At 900 pages long, I just wasn't moved enough to stick with it. Conversely, I just picked up "Station 11" and read like 75 pages in the first sitting and will probably finish it this weekend. Love me some post-apocalyptic literary.

 

Just a couple months away ...

 

Tommy Chong seems like the kind of person who could talk someone into writing a 900 page novel.

I'll have to look for Station 11. One of my favorite apocalyptic novels is Nick Harkaway;s "The Gone-Away World."

"The Bronx is Burning" is such a great book. It so perfectly captures what it was like to be right there, right then.

 

I actually pre-ordered it I'm so psyched for it; (1st time ever done that).

 

They're pre-apocalyptic, not post-, but The Last Policemen trilogy by Ben Winters are pretty good.

As for Station Eleven, I can't recommend it enough. I read it over a year ago and it's really stayed with me.

 

Really enjoy the same genre (The Passage, World War Z, Wool) and thoroughly enjoyed Station 11.

 

On a recommendation HC made just about a year ago, I finally read "The French House," by Don Wallace.

This was a book I'd kept in mind that I should read ever since it came up on this thread last April, and I'm glad I did it. It's a good, kind of breezy read with writing that's descriptive and "alive" enough that you get a good picture, and sense, of the people and the place of Belle Ile. I could see how Wallace and his wife could have loved it, and could have bought a French country cottage there.

I loved the pictures of their house and garden. There weren't a lot of them, but I loved seeing them. Totally added to the feel of the book. In short, I enjoyed it a lot. Good suggestion, HC.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it too. I spent two summers on Belle-Ile singing in an opera festival there and am completely in love with the place and Wallace captured it to a T. I actually emailed him my compliments and got a lovely reply from him. I think the festival has folded after the death of its founder last October but I have to go back there again somehow.

And if you want more pictures, you'll find some on his blog: DonWallaceFranceBlog

And this photo from my personal collection of the harbour in Le Palais where the ferry arrives from the mainland:

 

Thanks for posting that link to photos, HC. I was going to look it up but hadn't, yet. I was happy to see that the photos of Donnant beach and its surrounding grassy paths and cliffs looked almost exactly as I'd imagined they would, based on what I'd read in "The French House," and that that meant that Wallace must have gotten it right. (Unlike you, I haven't been to Belle Ile so whatever I read in this book amounts to everything I know or have ever heard of about it.

This book was a real change of pace for me -- probably also intended by Wallace, who, himself, always went there for the change from the U.S. and his home of New York City. (I tend to read a lot of social-services related books, a lot of Star Trek and other science fiction, quite a bit of true-life adventure/survival stuff, some sports-related biographies, and marine life and natural and astrological-science things, with a little bit of Christian fiction (and non-fiction stuff) thrown in, too).

So, my tastes are pretty eclectic, and "The French House" certainly added to that.

I even related to the bit of a journalistic vibe that the book had. One particularly memorable part, for me, came as Wallace was relating his almost abject disappointment that the publishing of his first book, "Hot Water," did not actually change his life forever, and make it so that he didn't have to keep working, especially freelancing, like a madman in order to help finance his family's trips to Belle Ile for annual personal restorations, as well as the ongoing, years-long French house renovations:

"Journalism is a messy craft, and its temporal quality rebukes any pretensions of writing for the ages," he wrote. "Instead of immortality, we get to bitch, colorfully and extravagantly. That is the joy of a newsroom. But you can't take it with you."

I couldn't help but smile and laugh a little at that, despite his disappointment.

 

Here's some Christian fiction for you: