Still working through Springsteen's autobiography. He mentions he wrote Fire for Elvis.

Too bad that never happened. In my head, that sounds awesome.

The first 2-3 Gunther books are fine as long as you're not expecting Le Carre or good Marty Cruz Smith.

I've never heard of these guys but want to read them now

Any book/series from each of them you'd particularly recommend?

Always on my bed stand: Shakespeare’s Insults.

Thou lump of foul deformity!

A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers.

Drop into the rotten mouth of death.

Putting dents into Mind Master, by the former world champion of chess Vishy Anand.

I like one of the early lessons about ditching the ladder. Maybe it's a very common idea, it was new to me, at some points in strategy and life there are times of no return or looking back. Anand used his surprise deployment of 1. d4 versus Kramnik to further illustrate the lesson.

My neighbors quote the Bible I quote Shakespeare
I look at them and think “This small choice of rotten apples”

I usually quote William Blake to my biblically-inclined neighbors, but may try to mix things up by quoting some Shakespeare. Balance my range, so to speak.

The Falcon of Sparta was really good, that's quite a story. It's not great literature or great history of course, but I'm sure not about to read the actual Anabasis. Besides, my ancient Greek is awful rusty.

I ended up trying out Iggulden's series on the War of the Roses but that just wasn't happening, all those boring old English guys when I've been spoiled by the spiced-up glitzy GoT knockoffs.
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I've read (since the pandemic started) most of the Inspector Chen series, beginning with Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong. The plots are interesting and the depiction of a changing China is a plus.

Marty C Smith: Gorky Park, the first in what became the Inspector Renko series. Also a good snapshot of Russia during a certain time and place in the 80s, and a truly well-written mystery.

Le Carre: Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor.

The first 3, Gorky Park, Polar Star, and Red Square, are all excellent, head and shoulders above the rest of the Renko books. The Cuba one I thought was pretty weak, I think Havana Bay. Wolves Eat Dogs I think is the best of the rest, after the USSR falls. Renko was at his best when he had communism to play off of imo.

Le Carre is without peer, he's the gold standard but let's face it, Arkady Renko is a helluva lot cooler and way more fun than boring old George Smiley.

The first two Renko's are the best, but I disagree on Havana Bay which I just re-read a couple months ago, I found the take on late Cuban Communism [and murder] well done. Wolves Eat Dogs was also very good, agreed.

Cosign on Renko > Smiley although I love both.

I've read most/all of these and agree the view of a changing China is quite good. The first one is probably the best.

I read about half of Ruling Passions, the autobiography of Tom Driberg, over the weekend. Sex with random, middle-aged men in Brighton public toilets at the age of 12, high jinks with Evelyn Waugh at Lancing, tea at Oxford with Wystan Auden, supper with Alasteir Crowley at the Savoy Grill. All mixed in with an intimate knowledge of the minutiae of High Church rituals. Page after page of it.

This vaguely reminds of what Matthew McConaughey book sounds like from and interview i heard with him that makes me really want to read it

Skookum: An Oregon Pioneer Family's History and Lore, by Shannon Applegate.

Excellent read. Even more so because I'm so familiar with the people and county described.

The Applegate families (three brothers of the clan from Missouri) all came to Oregon in 1843 and were very important as settlers, farmers, ranchers, and business men and women. One home still stands; see below link.

Link: applegate_house

If you're looking for a good mystery by a real literary author, I can recommend Snow by John Banville.

Finished Invisible Ink by Patrick Modiano.

It amazes me that Modiano can write the same detective story with the same theme (existential mutable identity) over and over and keep it interesting, but he does. This time there is a bit of a twist at the end.

Half the fun in reading a Lee Child book is figuring out how he's going to write the same story and make it interesting.

I thought that's why people like Agatha Christie.

Come on, Agatha Christie is cleverer then that - she does unreliable narrator pretty well, she has books where she's clearly playing with the genre, and her best books are pretty tight. She's like Le Carre in that her A game is very good, even if not everything is up to that standard.

Dame's best books are pretty tight, there's just not many of them relative to her output.

Hey, I don't like Dickens either.

Finished 10:04 by Ben Lerner. Lerner deserves credit for trying to do something different, but his writing style fluctuates between Jonathan Lethem and Don DeLillo (this doesn't include the different style of the novel within a novel which makes sense) for no apparent reason and continues (after Leaving Atocha Station) to be pretentious and didactic. He also falls into the junior year creative writing trap of thinking that insightful comment can replace substantive action.

I think it was Elmore Leonard who advised to leave out the parts that readers skip over and to never use a big word when a simple one sufficed. Lerner would do well to consider Leonard's advice.

Despite the flaws, Lerner's effort to find new energy for the novel form is highly creditable and worth reading.

I didn't realize it was possible to not like Dickens. Maybe if I hadn't read him as a child I wouldn't like him so much. Adults might find him melodramatic.

Does the forum know of any other good books that go deeply into the making of a film?