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Well tell that to Chesterton He insists he wasn't going for any religious connotations in the afterword of my version. (It's an extract from a newspaper article, I think. I can try and dig up the citation later if you'd like).

I agree that's how the book comes across though.

EDIT: PS probably best to put this stuff in spoilers for them that's not read, even tho it isn't exactly biggest twist in the world



AFTERWORD EDIT: Linkage

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

The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1) by Stephen King

has anyone ever read The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film by Michael Weldon? a friend recommended it, and i was looking at it on Amazon - it looks pretty interesting, but it's pretty expensive.

Can't say I have. Does look fun tho



An erudite, self-depreciating, self-obsessed, childish, reflective, neurotic, and possibly redemptive rummage through one 30-yr-old Sikh's 'schizophrenic' life split between family traditions and big city freedoms. Only it's more than that, it's also about the genuine schizophrenia suffered by his father, and the extraordinary lengths his mother went to to make their arranged marriage work (and along with some of his equally-affected siblings, create the family life that he grew up in, unaware anything was wrong).

I know what I don't like about this book. It's by another 'puff piece' journalist who wants to run away from the bits of reality that might hurt him. But in fairness, just like War Reporting for Cowards, he admits his foibles, confronts his fears, and is pretty amusing while he's at it. And both the personal and generic experiences he exposes are very interesting indeed.

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Ive borrowed all 6 Scott Pilgrim graphic Novels of my brother in law, Ive read the first 2 books ad started the 3rd this morning

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The House of God by Samuel Shem

'Catch 22 with stethoscopes' does come pretty close to summing up this personal 'tour of duty'. It's idiosyncratic, wrenching and tragic, finding catharsis in gallows humour and institutional absurdity. But eventually that's not enough, and it must rocket up from the waves that control it and gasp the oxygen of something more to survive.

Is there a tougher peacetime job than that of a medical intern? Flung from theory to the messy practice of watching the young die, through cruel chance or evil act, while others seem to live on as a cage, their humanity eked away. And your own ekes with it, over time.

Riven with 70s' political incorrectness, veined with what can only be described as hard core porn, and set against the heightened emotions of Watergate, this is somehow still a tale of love, friendship and humanity sustaining while a small intense world threatens to collapse in shards. 'Shem' has a talent for mirroring his emotional surges and flatlines in the weather patterns that he occasionally glimpses outside working hours. He captures the Wire-esque banter of the A&E cops, the freewheeling, Freudian, pharmaceutically-fused mood of the time. And even amongst the arrogance that such a book (& job) requires, finds and shares by the end some suffusing humility. Expect strong characters, some of the toughest issues around, and a memorable if harrowing take on surviving that ride.

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Comment is free but facts are sacred

I found Crime and Punishment read like a thriller in which every character was manic depressive. Notes from the Underground is similar in tone and is only a short story so don't let it throw you, Chris. It's not the heavy tome that The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov is.

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Louise Vale first woman to play Jane Eyre in the flickers.

The Book of Life (Edited by Eve Claxton)

A collection of autobiographical excerpts, starting with snapshots of youth and ending with the gnarled wisdoms of old age. With a pretentious title comes a fairly personal collection of choices (including plenty of repeated entries from the same authors, not always to great effect), but also an academic range, starting as far back as St Augustine. Despite the drier entries, she has managed to dig up some gold dust, and it's worth plowing through the duller sections to get to it. (I stuck some smaller gems up in the quotes tab, but there are some wonderful larger sections which get several pages lavished on them, to get the full scope of the historical trappings, or the personal revelations, involved).

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Just read a long interview with Alan Moore about trying not to have anything to do with The Watchmen movie, crossovers and why he doesn't want to work in the comics industry anymore. Whole thing was pretty bitter but interesting, thought it doesn't give a whole lot of backstory, particularly about the ABC line and other non-Watchmen dealings. whole thing here. Worth a read.

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis. I love this book so far.

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https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

Thomas More - Utopia

Finished reading Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Also re-read The In the Penal Colony by Kafka.

Bonfire is already super famous but for those who haven't read it it's reputation as a great prescient satire of 80s New York is well-earned. It's not amazingly complex, basically an episodic series of comical portraits and tableaux of varyingly smarmy people that push the central plot of the collapse of a successful Wallstreet bond salesman forward. That main plot actually almost becomes an ironic (but still touching) twist on a bildungsroman by the end. There are just a lot of great details and descriptions throughout the novel that give a very personalized (but usually unflattering) shading to the characters. Some of my favorite parts are the half-repressed, half-forgotten hangover flashbacks that afflict the sleazy tabloid newsman, Peter Fallow. It's a very memorable introduction to his hypocritical jekyl/hyde personality. Highly recommended.

Penal Colony is good and seemed a lot funnier to me than when I first read it, but it's still basically a nightmare description of a judicial machine that doesn't make any sense. It's well written with Kafka's typically precise and engaging attention to details (particular gestures, motion, texture; things like the clothing and idiosyncratic comportment of the Officer seem very lifelike) and emotional shading that makes it work as a fantasy while subtly undercutting any clearcut allegorical interpretation (of which there are many). I still came away with the same feeling that this is not one of the strongest of Kafka's works that I've read. At about 30 pages though, it's certainly worth a read.

I'm an avid reader so will recommend some of my favorites.

I'll start off with one of my favorites.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

It's a fictional philosophical book about a dystopian United States and the people who refuse to be exploited by society.

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"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never really care for anything else thereafter." - Ernest Hemingway

The American was adapted from this novel, so I thought I might give it a go:

Shogun by James Clavell

One of my 10 favorite novels of all-time. If you've never read it I highly recommend it. A must read.

Shogun is about an English sailor marooned in feudal Japan in the 1600s and getting thrust into the political power struggle.

that book isn't grabbing my attention so i am thinking of re-reading my all time favorite book ''The Secret History'' by Donna Tartt. I haven't read it in a year...its long over due

The Innocence of Father Brown & The Wisdom of Father Brown by GK Chesterton

I loved these offbeat and eccentric twists on the detective story, for their jumbled yet judiciously assembled plot styles, and most of all for their painterly perceptions and presentations of humanity and his environs. GK Chesterton may have an awkward name to say, but he translates the world freely and colourfully to the page.

The Christian-centric internal world we inhabit while living alongside Father Brown is rarely alienating to the athiest, 'progressive' as it is in many forms, and amiably portrayed with it. What does catch in the throat (hence the minus points below) is the disdain for 'heathen' practices, which often seems to be flat out racism. Although some societal stereotypes are clearly placed in the mouths of others as evocations of realities of the time (anti-semitism), I took sentiments espoused by Brown himself to be those of Chesterton, and when these entailed everything about an Indian fakir being morally 'the wrong shape', and nigh every African character being a voodoo proponent, and hence deeply evil in act and character, I found him losing much of the love that his rich and thoughtful writing otherwise inspired in me.

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^ must. check. this. out.

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