Monday, December 29, 2008

Books in the News Vol 1

The Financial Times had a great book section this week, including a short story by T.C. Boyle. I love reading newspapers and can't imagine reading them on a Kindle. I like spreading them out over the kitchen table while having a cup of coffee.


The Wall Street Journal's list was pretty interesting too. On their shelf: Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon by Mark Bostridge, Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles, and Lush Life by Richard Price.



I sampled the Hunter S. Thompson biography via Kindle and decided to borrow it from the library. It was very interesting, but after awhile I got tired of the stories of Hunter's drug-fueled antics (which sometimes involved firearms.) Although Jann Wenner did an excellent job with the book, I'd rather read Thompson's writings.

"Hunter was a genius who revolutionized writing in the same way that Marlon Brando did with acting, as significant , essential, and valuable as Dylan, Kerouac, and The Stones." ~ Johnny Depp




I read this memoir and never got around to reading the sequel (in the sequel Fox meets Marlon Brando and they have a brief fling.) Years later, Courtney Love is going around saying she might be Brando's granddaughter, and the name Paula Fox keeps coming up. It turns out that Fox is Love's maternal grandmother. I don't know if the Brando claim is ever proven, but I do plan to read more by Paula Fox in 2009.

4 comments:

R.L. Bourges said...

I found it interesting that T.C. Boyle's book - Talk Talk - is about the lost girl of the Aveyron, as I was reading a short description about her the other day at the patisserie, whose owner - a master chocolatier - made a huge chocolate representation of that wild child.

So many books to read. So little time.

(Much enjoyed reading your list of fiction - a bit like dropping in on someone and looking at the bookshelves.)

tut-tut said...

I have some P. Fox here you can read. let me know . . .

Avid Reader said...

Tut-Tut, what do you think of Fox ? which titles do you have?

ArtSparker said...

Speaking of short stories (and this is a total excuse) was that Donald Antrim story "Another Manhattan" in the New Yorker a pastiche of Gift of the Magi or was it all in my twisted mind?

My Classic Fiction Book List -Partial List

  • Austen, Jane: (Complete Works)
  • Balzac: Cousin Bette/ Eugenie Grandet / Cousin Pons
  • Best Russian Short Stories
  • Boyle, TC: Short Works
  • Brennan, Maeve : Short Works, 1 Novella
  • Bronte, Emily, Ann, Jane (Complete Works)
  • Brookner, Anita ( Complete Works)
  • Cather, Willa (Complete Works)
  • Chekov: Short Works
  • David Copperfield (Dickens)
  • Dickens:A Tale of Two Cities
  • Dickens:Great Expectations
  • Dickens:Nicholas Nickelby
  • Dickens:Our Mutual Friend
  • Dickens:The Old Curiosity Shop
  • Doyle, Roddy (some novels, memoir)
  • Drabble, Margaret (4 Novels)
  • Drieser, Theodore (Complete Works)
  • Fitzgerald, F.Scott (Most Novels & short works)
  • Hardy, Thomas (Complete Works)
  • Hemingway, Short stories
  • Hemingway: The Old Man in the Sea
  • Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises
  • Hugo: Les Miserables/Hunchback Of ND
  • James, Henry: Daisy Miller
  • James, Henry: In The Cage
  • James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady
  • James, Henry: The Golden Bowl
  • James, Henry: What Maisy Knew
  • James, Henry: Wings of a Dove
  • James, Henry:The Ambassadors
  • James, Henry; The Bostonians
  • Kerouac: Dharma Bums
  • Kerouac: On The Road
  • Kerouac: The Subterraneans
  • Kerouac: Tristessa
  • Lardner,Ring:Short Works
  • Larsen: Quicksand
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Arrowsmith
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Free Air
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street
  • Lewis, Sinclair: The Job
  • MacGill, Patrick (Complete works)
  • Mackin, Walter (novels)
  • Maupassant: Short Works, novels
  • McGahern, John (novels of)
  • McNulty, John (Short Works)
  • Norris, Frank: McTeague
  • O'Brien, Edna (3 Novels)
  • O'Donnell, Paeder : Novels of
  • O. Henry
  • Potok, Chaim (4 novels/1 non fiction)
  • Salinger, JD : Nine Stories
  • Salinger: Franny & Zooey
  • Salinger: Raise High the Roofbeams
  • Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
  • Sinclair, Lewis: Dodsworth
  • Sinclair, Lewis: Elmer Gantry
  • Sinclair, Upton: King Coal
  • Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle
  • Steinbeck, John: Sweet Thursday
  • Steinbeck: Winter of our Discontent
  • Steinbeck: Cannery Row
  • Steinbeck: East of Eden
  • Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
  • Theroux, Paul (3 Novels )
  • Toibin, Colm: (Novels of)
  • Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
  • Tolstoy: Short Works
  • Turgenev (2 novels)
  • Twain: T Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi
  • Vonnegut: Early Works (1950s-60s)
  • Wharton, Edith: Novels of/Short Stories
  • Women & Fiction (Edit. Cahill)
  • Zola, Emile ( 10 novels)