What are you Reading now ..... other than comics ? 7 7

[Jeffro.]

I was going to start book 3 of Song of Fire and Ice, but instead I'm going to read Eye of the Hunter . While I'm going through that I'll dabble in Wonder Tales

[TupennyConan]

Wonder Tales

 

[Zonker]

Now that I'm traveling a bit for work again, I've been able to catch up on some reading and have something to contribute to this thread:

 

Recently finished:

 

1- Scott Turow's Ordinary Heroes - I've read most of Turow's stuff- this one, as a WWII narrative, is a bit of a departure from his normal lawyer fiction. It has a split-first-person narration, as one of Turow's recurring minor characters finds his dad's WWII memoirs sealed away after the father's death. Really enjoyed this one, the only flaw being I didn't buy the father's 1st person narration being literally the transcript of an essay he wrote to his own lawyer. Turow has a WWII judge advocate recounting the intimate details of his wartime love affair in order to assist in his court martial defense?

 

 

2- Willam Gibson's Spook Country - While I like the conceit that "the future has now caught up with Gibson, and is stranger than the cyberpunk founder could have imagined," I do find the willing-suspension-of-disbelief harder to hang on to when we're talking about a story taking place in the supposedly here & now as opposed to the indefinite future several years from now. Whereas his SF seemed much more grounded in reality than most works in that genre, his political/suspense/thrillers seem comparatively hard-to-swallow. Still, well worth a read, as long as you're expecting more of a James Bond rather than a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy experience.

 

And-- for something completely different-- I'm currently half way through The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

[hockey&comicsguy]

This

 

150 pages in and it's fantastic.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Endgame and This Time Its Different, both interesting books.

[Guest Reader]

Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston.

[Silver Surfer]

Finished this Big John Buscema.

 

It's a well produced work but owes much of the biographical material to two issues of Alter Ego that I was lucky enough to pick-up here on the Boards this year.

 

 

 

Hey Tup is this the US version of this Spanish tribute by any chance? Seems like it might be, 300 plus pages and all.

 

[TupennyConan]

Finished this Big John Buscema.

 

It's a well produced work but owes much of the biographical material to two issues of Alter Ego that I was lucky enough to pick-up here on the Boards this year.

 

 

 

Hey Tup is this the US version of this Spanish tribute by any chance? Seems like it might be, 300 plus pages and all.

 

 

I don't know what that is. It looks nice & has the same title, though.

 

My book is the one in the link & it was in both languages.

[Silver Surfer]

Sounds like a reprint version of the one I have, great stuff. (thumbs u

[TupennyConan]

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark

[lb jefferies]

That was good read

[ciorac]

Currently reading: The Crowded Universe by Alan Boss

 

Just finished:

 

My Life in Comics by Joe Simon

and

The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananhaswamy

 

On deck: Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

[lookwhoitis]

 

Finished Road into the Open. It had been on my amazon to-buy list for about 4 years. I finally bought it. It was excellent.

 

what is this about?. Zero info on the amazon link.

[lookwhoitis]

Five Families-The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Radd

Covers The Cosa Nostra from its proto-organized state, through Lucciano's creation of The Commision and into the current regimes.

 

Good book

 

I'd like to check this one out!

[Whizzer]

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark

 

 

I might have to buy this. Is it balanced, or just an anti contemporary art hatchet job? I'm pretty anti myself, but would like to hear both sides of the argument on this

[cd4ever]

In The Night Room by Peter Straub.

[TupennyConan]

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark

 

 

I might have to buy this. Is it balanced, or just an anti contemporary art hatchet job? I'm pretty anti myself, but would like to hear both sides of the argument on this

 

He's writing an expose, right? The satirical title tells us that.

 

100 pages of the 250 pages in & the author is doing a pretty good job explaining how the market works: schools, artists, dealers, primary markets, secondary markets, galleries, museums, collectors, auction houses.

 

Tastemakes & winetasters & BSD's.

 

But a hatchet job of the modern, contemporary, postwar art world?

 

I don't think so. He praises Rothko, for example. But he doesn't fail to deliver on the lunacy of it all. He hits Hirst, obviously, & many of the other Young British Artists, for example.

 

[TupennyConan]

 

Finished Road into the Open. It had been on my amazon to-buy list for about 4 years. I finally bought it. It was excellent.

 

what is this about?. Zero info on the amazon link.

 

It's a classic of central European Decadence.

 

Like the Shark book, this one is a critical look at the psychology of bourgeois elites.

 

On its surface, it’s concerned with the pervasive anti-Semitism & the perceived hallucinatory insanity of Zionism in the art & society circles of turn of the century Vienna.

 

Below the surface & shot throughout is the novel’s true concern which is the interior reality of the protagonist’s detached mind as he stumbles through his music career, lost in meaningless fin de siècle hedonism.

 

[Whizzer]

Bourgeois elites

[delekkerste]

I might have to buy this. Is it balanced, or just an anti contemporary art hatchet job? I'm pretty anti myself, but would like to hear both sides of the argument on this

 

I've read the book twice. It is not a hatchet job on contemporary art by any means. It rather seeks to demystify how the art market works, everything from the good, the bad and the ugly. I also just re-read "I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon)" by Richard Polsky, which is another great read into the world of contemporary art dealing.

 

Why are you "anti" contemporary art, anyway? I think there's a lot of great art that's been produced in our lifetimes.