I'm coming off an enjoyable week of reading during which I finished up three novels (The Hustler by Walter Tevis, The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham, and The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman) and made pretty good progress on several others. Nonfiction is still coming slow for me this year, but a wildcard biography that I'm really enthusiastic about finally hollered loud and long enough a couple of days to get my attention. More on that one in a minute.
So I'm making good progress again on The Blues Brothers (an account of the making of the movie of the same name), and Agatha Christie's A Murder Is Announced, along with Holmes on the Range (about a cowboy Sherlock Holmes wannabe), while trudging more slowly along on Writing to Learn and What to Read and Why.
In addition, I've started these three:
I've barely dipped a toe into Anna Katherine Green's 1896 novel The Affair Next Door so my reaction to this one is definitely subject to change - but the thing that strikes me is how much a prototype the novel seems to be for the kind of crime fiction still being written today. Replace the carriage that pulls up next door late one night to discharge two strangers with a taxi cab or car, and the plot reads like one that could have just as easily been written this century. I can see already why Green is considered such an influence on the genre.
I'm also juggling library due dates and ARC reviews promised, so any additions to this weeks reading are most likely to come from these:
So there you have it, the very fragile plan for this week. Happy Reading to you all!
A very nice collection of books. I am interested in reading quite a number of them.
ReplyDeleteLarry McMurty is a great writer and I read his memoir "Water Benjamin At the Dairy Queen" and he went into detail about growing up in a very rural part of Texas, where the Last Picture Show was filmed. McMurty was not cut out for the ranching life and the desolate setting made for a lonely childhood. Books saved him. And yet it was clear from Larry's memoir that he is also fascinated and loves his hometown and he returned there to live.
There's certainly never a problem of choice when it comes to finding something to read, is there? I remember as a kid hating to finish a book because they were so hard for me to get hold of that I would sometimes go days in between having something new to read. Now the opposite is true. lol
DeleteMcMurtry was a fascinating man, and I think still too underrated by critics and others supposedly in the know. His books were so accessible that some just wrote off his work as commercial and not literary. I think that was a mistake
Archer City, his hometown, hasn't changed a whole lot since his youth. Still tiny. I drove out there when McMurtry was shutting down the numerous bookstore locations he had on the town's main business block, and it seemed like his presence was everywhere. The town is probably a lot quieter these days than when he was still doing business there. People came from all over the world that day to buy the books being auctioned off.
The Anna Katherine Green novel sounds really good. My library doesn't have a copy of it, but I noticed it on Project Gutenberg, so that means I could read it at work on my lunch break. And I'm glad the McMurtry biography is turning out to be such a good book. Happy reading this week! :D
ReplyDeleteI think I'm going to enjoy this one, Lark. I found a 7,000 page e-book (very nicely formatted) that seems to include everything she published when browsing over on Amazon. I think it cost me all of $2.
DeleteI cannot keep up with all the books you are reading or plan to read. How do you do it?
ReplyDeleteThe Larry McMurtry bio sounds very interesting but I have read nothing by him so it seems silly to read it before I do. Does it give you too much information about any of the books? I don't like to know the stories in advance.
I do have to use a couple of different calendars and lots of lists in order to do any forward planning, but it's become second nature now to read this way. Too, my Kindle Scribe allows me to write and keep all my notes and calendars right on the device, so it's easier than ever.
DeleteThe McMurtry bio is very detail oriented but I'm only up to 1958 when McMurtry was still in grad school here in Houston, and so far McMurtry only has a couple of draft manuscripts in hand. Crazily enough, both of the manuscripts were published and became Hollywood films, one of them starring a very young Paul Newman (Hud). That novel was actually titled Horseman, Pass By.
The more you say about the Kindle Scribe the more appealing it seems to me. It is pretty expensive but it might be worth it.
DeleteI had no idea that Hud was based on a book by Larry McMurtry. Very interesting. And he wrote the novel, Terms of Endearment.
I bought the Scribe on Black Friday, Tracy, at something like one-third off. It was a real bargain at that price. I'm sure that will be happening again a time or two this year.
DeleteHe also co-wrote the screen play for Brokeback Mountain and one an Oscar for that, I think. He was all over the map.
I'm thinking I should read more books by male writers. Ruined by Reading, though written by a female author, caught my attention. People in my household think I have strange views from my reading!
ReplyDeleteHarvee at https://bookdilettante.blogspot.com/
I think all of us probably read heavily from books written by our own gender, which makes sense for lots of reasons. My own reading is about 2-1 in favor of male authors, and that ratio never seems to change much.
DeleteRuined by Reading is interesting. I think her motivator was a newspaper article quoting a Buddhist monk saying something to the effect that we should all stop reading so that others wouldn't interfere with our "free thinking." It's a 120-page memoir.
This needs to be the year that I read something by Larry McMurtry. I own Dead Man's Walk on my Kindle so there's no excuse. I believe it's the first adventure but book 3 in the series so is it a good place to start, Sam? I believe I said in the previous comment how much I liked The Chatham School Affair. How to Solve Your Own Murder sounds pretty intriguing too!
ReplyDeleteIt's always the year for Larry McMurtry, Cath, and I think your husband would maybe enjoy him if he hasn't tried a McMurtry western yet. While Dead Man's Walk is the chronologically first in the series, it was written about a decade after the Gus and Call characters became so well known, so I can't judge how much of a difference not already being familiar with the characters would impact your opinion of the book. It certainly works as a standalone, but it's 30 or so years before I met them as cowboy-retirement age men on their last hurrah.
DeleteI'm looking forward to The Chatham School Affair...really need to work that one in soon.
From what I've heard the McMurtry bio sounds fantastic. I hope you enjoy it. I like reading on my Kindle Fire so I can adjust the font bigger as needed. Some fonts in print books are just too small.
ReplyDeleteI often have the same problem, especially in relatively low light. That's one of the huge advantages I'm finding on the Kindle Scribe. It's so large that even with a larger font I don't find myself having to turn pages every few seconds.
DeleteThe bio is good, but I just read a long chapter that has been criticized by several readers because it contained page after page of information that just doesn't seem to pertain directly to McMurtry all that much. I agree with those unhappy with that chapter...but looking forward to it flipping back now to McMurtry.