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Celluloid Temptation Facilitator
While on Jury Duty some years ago, I sat beside an honors high school history teacher. He wrote out a list of books that he uses in his history course. This particular book intrigued me the most.

I didn't think my daugther would want read it though. So I got the movie. There have been several versions. I got the original one. It's in black and white. I expected her to not enjoy it.

We both really enjoyed the movie and the extras. So much that she sought out the book and loved it too. Awesome!



All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque 1929



I found this in a second hand store for two dollars and this is one the best novels I've ever read. Intimate. Horrifying. Honest.
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Bleacheddecay



I Am Registered And So Can You!
I read a lot.

Current book:

O Shepherd, Speak! -Upton Sinclair.



there's a frog in my snake oil


Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets


A behemoth bit of journalism about a beast of a subject. *EDIT - mutilated metaphors removed*. A year of events in the homicide department is condensed into a breathing world of graveyard hilarity, characters you can believe in, and the unending repetition of crimes - otherwise known as tragedy.

Take the time to shrug on a detectives coat and join them on the beat though; feeling for the pulse of a crime, following the blood trail, the quailing look, the instinct born of street-worn feet; and you feel glad that someone's out there punching above their weight. Somehow Simon has watched the watchmen and been drawn just the right amount into their world. He doesn't shy away from racism, beatings or self-destructive traits, but he does weave the foibles and ferocities into their context. From forgotten demographics, through CSI-spoiled juries to the politics of policing and the many forms of earthly fury, he's managed to add some real meaning to those mean streets.

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



\m/ Fade To Black \m/


Im halfway through reading this book and it is hilarious and another awesome book from Terry Pratchet. I love the Discworld Novels im on my 15th book and after this im reading Nightwatch which is the next book in the Watch series
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~In the event of a Zombie Uprising, remember to sever the head or destroy the brain!~





Icebound Dean Koontz 1995

After reading so much the last few months I can really tell when I read a novel that isn't as good at the rest. The narrative sounds interesting at first glance, there is an arctic expedition stranded on an iceberg rigged with explosives, there's a storm, a submarine and even a psycho killer. Its all laid on pretty thick, every character has a back story but their all pretty similar, the suspense builds up but the outcomes predictable. I got bored and just read on because I had nothing else to read.
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Currently reading;
"Hello" - The autobiography of actor Leslie Philips (which would mean nothing to most on here perhaps)


But recent reads have been:

"A Life" - Elia Kazan.

"Zombiemania - 80 Films to Die For"

"The Cotton Club" - A history

"Bessie" - Bessie Smith autobiography.

"Doing Rude Things" - A history of British Sexploitation films (McGillivray)

"Hellraisers" - The lives and drunken times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed"



there's a frog in my snake oil
Originally Posted by 42ndStreetFreak
Currently reading;
"Hello" - The autobiography of actor Leslie Philips (which would mean nothing to most on here perhaps)




Ahh...yes, a Brit would.

But yes, the 'Harry Potter' connection would probably be the strongest trans-atlantic link, even if you never see him!

Love the stills!



Celluloid Temptation Facilitator
They have an interesting web site with current events added everyday too. This book and web site turned out to be my daughter's fav economic resources when she studied economics in high school.

Just started reading Freakonomics, such an interesting read and very well researched and written, no wonder it was a best seller.



Celluloid Temptation Facilitator


Im halfway through reading this book and it is hilarious and another awesome book from Terry Pratchet. I love the Discworld Novels im on my 15th book and after this im reading Nightwatch which is the next book in the Watch series
I know so many who enjoy Pratchet but I just can't get into his works. One of my reading groups choice his first Discworld novel this month. I tried, I really did but I couldn't read it. It just seemed too nonsensical.



i liked morel a lot, all of the stories. i didn't know there were films so i just looked them up, and on imdb i see a french tv production from the 60s and a film version from the early 70s. have you seen either?

that trailer for the metzger film is pretty funny.
No, I haven't. Those look like they would be pretty difficult to find too.

Recently finished Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake. Now reading Richard Brody's Godard book and Max Beerbohm's Seven Men, which is pretty fun. Also looking forward to this, which seems to have shipped early.



I know so many who enjoy Pratchet but I just can't get into his works. One of my reading groups choice his first Discworld novel this month. I tried, I really did but I couldn't read it. It just seemed too nonsensical.
That's exactly what's so fun/ny about them! Shame. I only read one and a half and I'm really looking forward to the rest...(: I guess you don't like Douglas Adams then?



Celluloid Temptation Facilitator
Not much, no. I thought the movie was funny though.

That's exactly what's so fun/ny about them! Shame. I only read one and a half and I'm really looking forward to the rest...(: I guess you don't like Douglas Adams then?



there's a frog in my snake oil
Originally Posted by bleacheddecay
Not much, no. I thought the movie was funny though.
Wrong way round!

*Panics*

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(I've grown up with those two tho so i'm biased . Ever since I was left alone in a car with an avuncular radio explaining that the world was a giant computer built for mice )



Celluloid Temptation Facilitator
LOL

Yep, I know that most people agree with you!



Wrong way round!

*Panics*

---

(I've grown up with those two tho so i'm biased . Ever since I was left alone in a car with an avuncular radio explaining that the world was a giant computer built for mice )



Change of pace...

Stasiland
Real Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
by Anna Funder



Yes, I liked The Lives of Others so very, very much that It made me want to learn more about the Stasi, and I did so with Anna Funder's Stasiland. Funder spent years living and working in Berlin while writing this book, a sabbatical away after her mother died notwithstanding. She delves into the history and methods of the German Democratic Republic, interviewing victims of the Stasi, former Stasi men themselves, rebellious rock bands under the regime, and so on.

The numbers are striking. One Stasi employee or full-time informer for every 63 GDR citizens, a ratio which utterly dwarfs even Stalinist Russia at its height. When part-time informers are included, some estimates go as high as 1 in 6. The GDR kept tabs on absolutely everything, no matter how insignificant, in hopes that it might be used as leverage at some point. They produced as many records in just 40 years as had been produced throughout Germany's history, back to the Middle Ages. 15,000 bags of shredded documents recovered; the shredding was so sudden and fervent that hundreds of paper shredders literally broke down from use in the regime's waning days.

Funder is very thorough (too thorough at times, perhaps) and asks plenty of pointed questions, but the book is a surprisingly personal one. She doesn't approach this world as a pure journalist, but simply as herself. Personal experiences and observations are never excluded, and she makes mention of her reactions to what she hears regularly. Perhaps the alternative -- a colder, more objective approach -- would have seemed out of place, given the haunting nature of what happened in the GDR.

Storylines create themselves spontaneously more than once, and Funder does a good job of forming themes from the various accounts. She posits questions about how best to deal with tragedy and suffering, and whether dredging up the past does more harm than good. By the end of the book, after she has left and returned to Berlin to complete it, she has circled around her answer with little trace of uncertainty.

The translation is perplexing at times. On one hand, there are several typos, and some sentences that don't end exactly where they seem they should. I learn that the interviews were apparently done in German, but I can't help but suspect some of the rest of the book may have been as well. That said, this book is far more poetic than I could reasonably expect any translation to be, and the mistakes are few and far between.

I don't want to recount too many of the anecdotes; they are best heard from the source, and they seem to go on forever. Story after story details the abuse, always behind a veil of legality. At times, it is almost amusing to hear stories about Stasi offers making outrageous accusations and twisting laws and definitions to their own ends, somehow with a straight face. Some of the victims are too stunned to protest much.

It's hard to believe the Berlin Wall came down only 20 years ago. Perhaps things are easier to forget when entire societies want them to go away. But the GDR remains a stark warning against the dangers of the state's power. Thankfully, it is just as forcefully a warning against such states, and just how quickly they can crumble when their people have had enough.