BOOKS

[Brooklyn]

The Conformist by Alberto Moravia


https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-revi ... onformist/


it was also made into a movie in 1970:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcmJx3DvjLE

[Brooklyn]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Best_Families






Rotund detective Nero Wolfe meets his match in the diabolical Arnold Zeck.

[Brooklyn]

Charles Francis "Socker" Coe:





https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news ... /515567868



screen writings:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0168633/

his many books and magazine writings:

https://www.google.com/search?q=charles ... 17&bih=695

bio:

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi ... &id=I21001




His most famous interview was of boxing manager Joe Jacobs. Jack Sharkey "defeated" his protege' Max Schmeling in a fight that was clearly fixed. When Coe asked Jacobs what happened, the manager replied "we wuz robbed!" Another famous interview was of "Brown Bomber" Joe Louis whose one line reply to a question was the famous "I'm glad I won". A scene in a story written by Coe was later used as inspiration by Al Capone in his infamous St Valentine's Day Massacre. Thus, Coe may no longer be famous in today's society but his influence (for better or worse due to some controversial comments he made) remains quite significant to this day.

[Brooklyn]

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn 75th Anniversary:


Brooklyn BookBeat
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
From the moment she entered the world, Francie needed to be made of stern stuff, for the often harsh life of Williamsburg demanded fortitude, precocity and strength of spirit.

Often scorned by neighbors for her family’s erratic and eccentric behavior — such as her father Johnny’s taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy’s habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce — no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans’ life lacked drama.

By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking and uplifting, the Nolans’ daily experiences are tenderly threaded with family connectedness and raw with honesty.

Betty Smith has, in the pages of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life — from “junk day” on Saturdays, when the children of Francie’s neighborhood traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry.

Smith has artfully caught this sense of exciting life in a novel of childhood, replete with incredibly rich moments of universal experiences — a truly remarkable achievement for any writer.

In honor of the timeless novel, the Brooklyn Public Library’s Leonard branch in Williamsburg was last night designated a literary landmark.



http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2 ... ry-edition





This was the popular book we had among my childhood peers when I was growing up in God's Country. A book I disregarded back then as I was obsessed with the writings of Mark Twain.

Famous one line quotes from the book: https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/aut ... tty-smith/

[Brooklyn]

Boredom by Alberto Moravia:





https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67140.Boredom

http://quarterlyconversation.com/readin ... as-boredom



Considered by many to be his finest writing.

[Brooklyn]

Contempt by Moravia.


commentary:

http://marcelproust.blogspot.com/2007/0 ... tempt.html

[Brooklyn]

Khlaed Hosseini - Sea Prayer


https://www.npr.org/2018/09/19/64927611 ... -s-journey


Brief but profound.

[Brooklyn]

September issue of Yankee magazine. One esp interesting article to me is about a group of folks who meet every year to recite the many poems of the Divine Miss Em ...


https://newengland.com/yankee-magazine/ ... ing-emily/


Reading Emily
Every fall, people come from hundreds— even thousands—of miles away to read aloud all of Emily Dickinson’s 1,789 poems in one day. From dawn until dark, the author joins this singular band of poetry fans to find out why.



I just love this line: My Holiday, shall be / That They- remember me- / My Paradise- the fame / That They- pronounce my name.

[Brooklyn]

I read this novel back in 1967 well before I could fully understand its message. Makes a great deal more sense now especially in view of all the crapola going on in Washington DC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

[seriously?]

Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a sci-fi dystopian novel about automation and the existential angst associated with it, from the perspective of engineers. I like this book the most, because this is the novel that I wanted to write...a story about how people deal with increasing amounts of automation in their day-to-day life.

Those replaced by automation get a government check.

[molo]

Just started Milkman having warmed up with the new crime novels by Burke and Mosley. Try The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter for a weird account of identity theft.

[Brooklyn]

Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years In the Louisiana Swamp by Gwen Roland


https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... Id=5367035




While not the greatest read I have ever had there was one segment that was utterly fascinating - Chapter Five dealing with the old Cajun Alcide Verret:







here's just a bit more about Alcide:

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/13/arch ... tones.html



I would love to have met Old Alcide. Read the chapter and you will say the same.

[seacoaster]

Just finished another good yarn by Philip Kerr called Hitler's Peace. A fictional new take on the 1943 Conference of the Big Three in Teheran. Kerr is a very able writer, backed by a lot of authenticating detail. Good book.

[Brooklyn]

Brave New World

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

When I think about it, Huxley did a great job of predicting how right wingers would think today. Consider these things:


In that brave new world, Ford (a materialist antichrist figure) would be deified, sex and drugs would be pervasive (righties are noted for loving porn as shown in the Red state studies on internet porn use), art would be stifled, history would be re-written, Third World would be referred to as "savage" people just like Trump referred to them as "sh|thole", society would be completely stratified, differences would not be tolerated (just like today when right wingers condemn multiculturalism), people always found consolation by repeating mantras (much like today when people repeat words such as "blame Obama", "blame Soros", "blame liberals", and there would be much conformist thinking (if it can be called thinking) as people would practice group sex, group intoxication, group think, and imagining that a messiah figure was just around the corner. More parallels between the book and today's right wingers can readily be drawn. It is well worth reading, again.

[Brooklyn]

Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a sci-fi dystopian novel about automation and the existential angst associated with it, from the perspective of engineers. I like this book the most, because this is the novel that I wanted to write...a story about how people deal with increasing amounts of automation in their day-to-day life.

Those replaced by automation get a government check.

I did get the book per you recommendation. While not quite as entertaining or thought provoking (IMO) as Brave New World or 1984 it does illustrate a credible dystopian society as corporatism and mechanization runs amok which is what we see in today's society. But it's too long (for me), just too much verbiage. Had it pared off a few pages (say about 60 pages) it would have kept my interest a good deal more. Still, it's worth reading.

[Brooklyn]

White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class In America



https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/book ... class.html


America’s colonial beginnings tend to be viewed, Ms. Isenberg writes, through the “beliefs of those principled leaders molded in bronze — the John Winthrops and William Penns — who are lionized for having projected the enlarged destinies of their respective colonies.”

Yet she demonstrates that most early settlers did not buy into these destinies. Nor did most come to escape religious persecution. “During the 1600s,” she writes, “far from being ranked as valued British subjects, the great majority of early colonists were classified as surplus population and expendable ‘rubbish.’”

Many were indentured servants. Others were “roguish highwaymen ...




The USA ~ stratified land of marginalized and permanent underclass.

[Brooklyn]

review: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/book ... rship.html



One thing that is clear about these individual histories is that each was determined from early in life to go to the top. But in doing so, there was a benevolent streak to their ambitions. This in marked contrast to the present regime in Washington DC.

[Brooklyn]

Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports
by Mark Fainaru-Wada, Lance Williams


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/906.Game_of_Shadows

“With few exceptions, the more than three dozen athletes who
appeared before the grand jury admitted taking steroids ... all to
run faster, jump higher, hit the ball farther, and, ultimately, make
more money. Some of the confessions were grudging and evasive. Others were extremely forthcoming. It came down to the same thing: Competitive sports, it turned out, was part mirage, a game of shadows. “



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_S ... hadows.PNG

[Farfromgeneva]

Just finished Michael Lewis’ most recent book. For all the politics crazies on both sides shouting at each other on those boards this would be a very good read. (And anyone else as well)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

[youthathletics]

Just finished Michael Lewis’ most recent book. For all the politics crazies on both sides shouting at each other on those boards this would be a very good read. (And anyone else as well)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

I does look interesting. From the wiki page you referenced. Not sure if this sentence is written well, makes it sound like the Obamas need to read the book to understand more about gov't.

Barack and Michelle Obama have acquired the rights to the book for a possible Netflix series to better understand the U.S. Government.