Started on Blood Meridian.

Just started The Gulag Archipelago. It's an abridged version of the full 3 volumes but it's still a hefty piece of work.

Finished Molloy by Samuel Beckett. Wasn't as good as I recall it being 45 years ago, like many unique artistic works, later efforts have improved upon it.

Started In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust trans. Mondrieff and Kilmartin, Enright revision.

You'll never think of the northern lights the same again

Follow it with Vassily Grossmann, Life And Fate, and Primo Levi's If This Is A Man. Also Colin Thubron's In Siberia is good on another track. Also I've heard good things about Koyima Tales, I think it is.

I've read Kolmya Tales but it was so long ago that I don't remember much about it, other than I enjoyed it. I've had Life and Fate on my bookshelf for a while but haven't got around to starting it yet.

Just got back from the theater. Someone is gonna have to explain this "new ending" to me, because as someone who read the book, the ending seemed basically how I remembered.

Chicago Manual of Style

I learn something new every time I pick it up.

The Professional Chef

Same deal. Highly recommended reading if you eat food. Save money purchasing an older edition if you'd like.

Blood Meridian was soooo much better than No Country for Old Men.

enjoying Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel

Stephen King - Misery.

Excellent novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. A lot of King comes through with the Sheldon character. A very insightful navigation into ones personal problems.

Well now I really am curious. I've been meaning to go see it but keep putting it off.

Business Adventures by John Brooks is a great great business book. it's 12 of his long form new yorker articles from the 60s and maybe earlier. a reprint of a book that was previously out of print and hailed as the favourite book of the 2 richest men in the world (bill and warren (**** YOU YOU LOUNGERS AREN'T ABOVE IT EVERYWHERE EVERYONE MENTIONED THIS PARTICULAR POINT)). exhaustively detailed accounts of things like Xerox full of hilariously dry and sardonic wit.
The price-fixing article is my favourite. it's also full of particularly prescient parallels for today.

Started this. Has been a little slow and haven't been able to read much lately but I've heard good things about it.

I read this some time ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. My g/f enjoyed it too and she isn't a big reader and will give up on a book if it doesn't grab her attention early on.

Well that's definitely encouraging, looking forward to getting through some pages tonight then.

I'm reading Gone Girl and liking it a lot. Incredibly well-written for a bestselling thriller/mystery.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. Let us know what you think about the book as a whole when you're finished. I'm still not sure whether I like it or love it.

I've just ordered Gone Girl based on the last two posts. I'm reading Roy Keane's autobiography at the moment.

All I can say about gone girl. I wouldn't want to be dating the author.

Yes! I lost count of how many times I had to stop reading and turn to the back cover to look at the picture of the author. I even ended up doing a google search on her.

He spoke very briefly: I had a sense that he was feeling tired. He was on tour for the new book and had apparently worked this event into an already busy schedule. He mentioned he was only in Toronto for 14 hours and had been in a meeting in the morning. (Perhaps with his Canadian publisher?)

The event was a dinner (a local restaurant that has occasional literary evenings), which was itself pleasant -- and a signed copy of the book was thrown into the price of the evening. He has a very personable air but is perhaps not entirely comfortable as a speaker. That would follow from what he fictionalizes in Black Swan Green regarding his stammer-inspired shyness. He had no stammer while speaking but I thought I could see how he still depended on some of the tricks he talked in his novel about having learned.

The most interesting thing he said was that he believed that the five features of the novel are plot, character, structure, style, and ideas, and that first two are impulsive, moving things ahead; that the last two are ******ing, useful for slowing the pace down; and that structure is what keeps everything from happening all at once.

Just watched the Gore Vidal doc, "The United States of Amnesia" on Netflix, and it's made me interested to read some Vidal...any suggestions?

I know Burr is his most famous novel...

*I should have written "propulsive."

Anyone ever read or heard of a book called The White Boy Shuffle?

I'm reading Lawrence Block's A Drop of the Hard Stuff, one of Matt Scudder books. I've read most of the Scudder series. Block's no-nonsense prose style seems to fit the alcoholic ex-cop's adventures perfectly.

Gone Girl was great btw. I've now got Gillian Flynn's previous 2 books on library hold.