Books

More mob books aaaaahhhhh aaaaaaaaahh!!!! I did read a good gruesome crime book a few months ago called Messiah.

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who wrote it?

Boris Starling. The endings a total surprise. But the best part is the nature of the murders, they have a religious element & they are drooling gruesome.

Plite, read Tick Tock yet?

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No I havent found it yet, is it a very old book? If it is, I will go to a secondhnd bookstore.

Nah, maybe 1995 or so.

an author that everyone should check out is ralph waldo emerson. emerson is not only my alltime favorite philosopher, he is a brilliant wordsmith who wrote poetry, essays, and books about human nature, and had an extremely interesting outtake on life. he philosophized that man is completely, 100% in charge of his own destiny, and that self-reliance and personal freedom are the only way we as humans can reach our true potential. i found his works to be first of all, inspiring, and secondly, a damn interesting read. i find it funny that people read chicken soup for the whatever, and various self-help books when eloquence and inspiration is often found in the classics.

Hummm, dont think Ive ever read him, I hope hes easier than CS Lewis. Screwtape was kinda hard for me even though I finished it. chicken soup books are silly. Pigsnie is always naggin me to read essays of Jonathan swift, not just Gullivers travels. Isnt he a philosfer too?

"Eyes of the Dragon"is one of my favorie King novels.His earlier work can't be matched:Salem's Lot,The Shining,Stand By Me(actuall titeled something else)The Shawshank Redemption,Running Man;that was all stuff I read in highschool.I read Patrica Cornwall now.She writes thriller/murder mystery.The main charactor is a medical examener.Lots of autopsy stuff.

I've read all of her stuff too... Body of Evidence was the best one I think. Dr. Scarpetta is wearing thin on me now though, she needs to lighten up. Hornets Nest was good too, no Scarpetta! If you like serial books (kind of...same characters) try John Sandford's "Prey" novels.. these blew me away, especially "Rules of Prey".

James Thayer - "White Star"

Talk about a "Hack". I bought the hardcover of this in the "Dollar Tree" store. I figured, how bad can it be for a buck...right. Turns out it's pretty damn fine. It's about a vietnam sniper turned lawyer. His calling card as a sniper was that he would leave an origami star on his victim's bodies. Well... story progresses into a war between this guy and another vet who is also a sniper (from USSR). Cat and mouse extraordinaire! Seems he's written other novels, think I'll check them out.

plite-
swift was sort of a philosopher in some ways. more than anything he was a very crafty writer who used satire, sarcasm, and an unbelievably wicked sense of humor to demonstrate his personal views. his best-known piece is "a modest proposal". if you read, for christ's sake, keep in mind it's supposed to be sarcastic.

Hahaha, Ive read that Modest proposal thingie, its about roastin babies. Pigsnie said that I would probably have tasted very good in a stew becuz I wuz a fat popish infant, heheh. BTW, youll like Pigsnie, he reads even more weirdoo
books than you do, Brodyman. His fave is Monteign.

The current book I'm reading is quite the page-turner. It's called The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem by Myrick Land. It basically details several literary feuds that have occured this millenium (starting with Samuel Johnson's feuds with, well, everybody).

The book seems to be written in the vein of Paul Johnson's Intellecutals (er, it would be the other way around), except Land isn't nearly as biased as Johnson. Alexander Pope vs. Colley Cibber, Turgenev vs. Tolstoy AND Dostoevsky, Thackeray vs. Dickens, Henry James vs. H.G. Wells, Henry Arthur Jones vs. George Bernard Shaw, Hugh Walpole vs. W. Somerset Maugham, Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis vs. Bernard DeVoto, and Norman Mailer vs. nearly every writer of the 20th century.

There's also a chapter on D.H. Lawrence and his very strange, messianiac behavior.

Sometimes Land does seem a little biased, for instance in the James vs. Wells chapter. He tries to make us believe Wells was only at fault, and that the smug, patronizing Henry James was only trying to be polite that entire time. I also didn't like the potshot taken at Oscar Wilde. However talented Henry James may be, his literary criticism leaves a lot to be desired.

Also, the Norman Mailer chapter leaves out some important (and funny) occurences. For instance, after Gore Vidal wrote that "No one reads [Mailer]. They hear of him.", Mailer knocked Vidal down at a party. While Vidal was still on the ground, he said "Once again, Norman Mailer is at a loss for words."

Also, since this book was printed in 1963, it missed out on a lot of great feuds like Vidal vs. William F. Buckley, Lillian Hellmann vs. Mary McCarthy, Thomas Wolfe vs. John Irving, Vidal vs. Truman Capote, Norman Podhoretz vs. Saul Bellow, etc.

Truman Cappote...awesome author.There's this great collection of short stories called Point's of View...all the greats are in it and short stories are so entertaining!

Arthur,

I'm also fascinated by literary feuds and I'll look for that book. Hopefully its still in print.

I myself am partial to Wilde and Evelyn Waugh who had his own thing going with Auden and Isherwood. Seems they left England during the Blitz so he made A and I characters in one of his novels. They dressed up as nuns and boarded a transatlantic liner to escape from the war in England

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I have read the letters of Evelyn Waugh. I found it in Pigsnies library. He was a funny guy & is the only guy in history who actually used an ear trumpet. He had a little daughter named Teresa he called Pig in an affectionit way.

Every Time I read the words "Ear Trumpet" I keep thinking of that WILD WILD WEST picture with Will Smith and there's a general in there who uses an ear trumpet and it DRIPS! Ugh!

Hey, you and Pigsnie don't have the surnames of WAUGH, do ya?

HOW did you GUESS Wortle???? hahaha! Cigar cigaret? He was a weird bloke. My favorit book of his is the Loved One.

hope you don't mind if I join in with ya'll. One of my favorite authors is Tom Robbins,he is the best, with alot of humor and very weird situations,one of his best efforts is Jitterbug Perfume, check it out. Once you start reading him you will read everything he has ever done! Ann Rice is also very good, her "Beauty" series is exceptionaly good, basically it's very well written porn. wink, wink,nudge, nudge. My all time favorite book for sheer LOL humor is a great book by John Kennedy Toole, titled "a confederacy of dunces" has anyone else read this masterpiece? I pretty much read anything I can get my hands on.But nothing in the romance bodice ripping genre, YUCK. The Patricia Cornwell books are good(right sadesdrk?)Right now Iam reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It's by the guy who wrote Wonder Boys. It takes place in the 1930's and it is about the early years of comic books, but that is just the back story, really. I have a feeling it's about alot more than that.