Book Corner
Aug. 20th, 2003 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petermarcusThe good thing about getting a paycheck again is regaining the long-lost ability to buy books!
Just Read:
Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon -- Not as good as The Great and Secret Show or Weaveworld. Barker has slipped a bit in the last few years. It's a good insider's slap at the seedy underside of Hollywood...except that everyone lately writes insider's slaps at the seedy underside of Hollywood, whether it's literary, like The Player, or silly, like the movie Volcano. Barker is still good with the unforeseen plot twist and the everyman character, but the book didn't grab me. It just led me along like a tourist on a sightseeing bus.
Elmore Leonard, Tishomingo Blues -- Leonard, on the other hand, at 78 years old and after more than three dozen books, has still got it. The author of Get Shorty and Rum Punch/Jackie Brown, he'll never be considered a Steinbeck, rather more like a modern Dashiell Hammett. His books are fun to read, and the dialog is so good, it's almost easier to enjoy reading aloud, which is probably why so many of his books have been made into movies.
Next to Read:
James Ellroy, My Dark Places -- I've been wanting to read this book for years, but I've had a hard time finding it. Ellroy, the author of LA Confidential, writes about himself and the murder of his mother. Dumped by the side of the road in an LA suburb in the 1950s, her murder was never solved. Understandably, this is a big influence in Ellroy's writings of crime and criminals. Facts from the murder appear throughout his novels, and his internal linking of similarities between his mother and the Black Dahlia helped inspire his novelization of the Dahlia murder (including solving it...in fiction).
Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons -- Nonfiction, an overview of the surge of super-industrialists, such as JP Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. Love them or hate them, they transformed America from a quiet farming country to the world economic leader.
Just Read:
Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon -- Not as good as The Great and Secret Show or Weaveworld. Barker has slipped a bit in the last few years. It's a good insider's slap at the seedy underside of Hollywood...except that everyone lately writes insider's slaps at the seedy underside of Hollywood, whether it's literary, like The Player, or silly, like the movie Volcano. Barker is still good with the unforeseen plot twist and the everyman character, but the book didn't grab me. It just led me along like a tourist on a sightseeing bus.
Elmore Leonard, Tishomingo Blues -- Leonard, on the other hand, at 78 years old and after more than three dozen books, has still got it. The author of Get Shorty and Rum Punch/Jackie Brown, he'll never be considered a Steinbeck, rather more like a modern Dashiell Hammett. His books are fun to read, and the dialog is so good, it's almost easier to enjoy reading aloud, which is probably why so many of his books have been made into movies.
Next to Read:
James Ellroy, My Dark Places -- I've been wanting to read this book for years, but I've had a hard time finding it. Ellroy, the author of LA Confidential, writes about himself and the murder of his mother. Dumped by the side of the road in an LA suburb in the 1950s, her murder was never solved. Understandably, this is a big influence in Ellroy's writings of crime and criminals. Facts from the murder appear throughout his novels, and his internal linking of similarities between his mother and the Black Dahlia helped inspire his novelization of the Dahlia murder (including solving it...in fiction).
Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons -- Nonfiction, an overview of the surge of super-industrialists, such as JP Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. Love them or hate them, they transformed America from a quiet farming country to the world economic leader.
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Date: 2003-08-20 06:32 pm (UTC)I think I'll pick it up at the library this weekend.
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Date: 2003-08-20 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-21 06:02 am (UTC)Interviews and news about his upcoming books :)
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Date: 2003-08-20 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-21 05:57 am (UTC)