Page 41 of 107

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: September 19th, 2010, 11:48 am
by feaito
I read David Sakmyster's excellent "Twilight of the Fifth Sun", a thrilling book about Old Aztec Prophecies and all kind of intrigues concerning the salvation of souls, the end of times et al. Super entertaining.

I also read the only available Biography on George O'Brien "A Man's Man in Hollywood" by David W. Menefee. While it contains many first-hand quotes from O'Brien himself and his son and daughter, loads of pictures and a very detailed filmography, the biography itself is relatively short (174 of the 436 pages). Interesting, a must-read for any O'Brien fan, but not altogether succesful and absorbing as I would have wished. Anyhow, one must recognize the effort, care and willingness to stick to fact and not include unfounded rumors or shock value stuff, which is very valuable considering the crap that's been written about so many actors and actressed of the Golden Era in so many biographies.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: September 19th, 2010, 11:59 am
by Lzcutter
I am reading Michael Sragow's book Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master. While Sragow's writing style isn't as lyrical as Vance's, it is a good nuts and bolts style. Howard Hawks fans beware! Hawks and Fleming were good friends but Sragow calls Hawks a braggart and man who never met a story he couldn't enhance for his own ego.

I am up to the point where Fleming is making Red Dust.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: September 19th, 2010, 12:49 pm
by charliechaplinfan
I read Hawk's biography last year, he wasn't a man I could warm to at all. I have Victor Fleming's book which I'll read after the david Lean biography, which is one of the best biographies I've read in a long time.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: September 19th, 2010, 3:32 pm
by silentscreen
How was the Janet Gaynor/Charles Farrell bio, Alison? Or have you read it yet?

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: September 20th, 2010, 5:54 am
by charliechaplinfan
I'm half way through it, it's quite good, I'm just up to the beginning of the talkies.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: November 2nd, 2010, 1:59 pm
by charliechaplinfan
I've finished Lucky Star now Brenda, the fact it's taken me a couple of months is no reflection on the book. I enjoyed it although I wished it was more detailed, despite quoting Gaynor's third husband throughout the book his marriage is hardly talked about even though he was married to Janet for 20 year and theirold age and death was hardly talked about. Charles Farrell's old age was sad and his marriage an enigma, he was a womaniser but Virginia would never divorce him and he finally had an understanding with William Powell's wife Mousie . The book is skewed a little towards Gaynor, she was the more successful of the two. There's was a romance that turned into a firm friendship.

I've also finished Kevin Brownlow's book on David Lean, a very well written book, full of detail about films and filmmaking as well as about the man himself. I'd heartedly recommend it.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: November 2nd, 2010, 2:54 pm
by CharlieT
Just read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I enjoyed both books, although dealing with the Swedish names and locations can distract from following the plot if you let it. Then I watched both movies through Netflix. Both were good, but (since they were subtitled in English) I would recommend reading the books first to help understanding of the storyline - because, as always, so much had to be left out to make the films fit into a manageable time frame.

I'm waiting for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest to make it to paperback before I read it... okay, I'm cheap. So sue me!

If you are offended by language or sexually explicit situations, be forewarned. Other than that, the writing by the late Steig Larsson is well done and he does a very good job of character development.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: November 4th, 2010, 2:01 pm
by charliechaplinfan
I was a bit dissappointed by the first one. They've been such hit here that my husband bought them to take on holiday.For me I think the ending let the book down, I could see who the killer was and I didn't click at all with the heroine. Having said that I did finish the book and it kept up a steady pace.

I've started reading The Live and Times of Maurice Chevalier by Edward Behr, so far, so good.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: November 27th, 2010, 4:05 pm
by feaito
I read the very enlightening collection of William Wyler Interviews (1939-1981) from the Conversations with Fimmakers Series, Edited by Gabriel Miller. Since it includes many interviews, some things get repeated over & over -of course- but for any film buff or Wyler fan, it is a must read and wonderful companion to the Bio I read some months ago by Jan Herman "A Talent for Trouble". Wyler is my favorite director: a top artisan, an unassuming, down-to-earth, honest man; also a very brave man; commited to his passion for filming and to his adopted country. What a guy! I liked his opinions, views and statements...like: "I could hardly call myself an auteur -although I'm one of the few American directors who can pronounce the word correctly"...

Or..."I think the director's most important function centers around the performances of his actors. As I read reviews by many critics, I notice that some of them have a misconception of what a director is. So does the public. They think in terms of a good shot. That is part of it, of course. Getting a good effect, a good dolly shot. But these things are entirely secondary. They can contribute to a scene, but first, performances. There is no such thing as good direction with a bad performance. I don't care what you do with the camera. When there is a bad performance by anybody, at that moment the direction is not good...." How true.

I'm currently reading Ann Harding's Bio by Scott O'Brien. So far a great read. I loved this author's style, so I'll run to buy his books on Kay Francis (I bought the Kear & Rossman Bio a couple of years ago, which is fine but not excellent) and Virginia Bruce.

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: December 2nd, 2010, 1:30 pm
by ChiO
Some of my reading over the past three months:

The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 (Andrew Sarris, 1968) -- So that's why I think like I do? Great fun reading his comments with which one agrees, controlling one's blood pressure regarding those with which one disagrees (Rouben Mamoulian in the Less Than Meets the Eye section?), and laughing at what I assume are his sly winks (listing Stanley Kramer in the Miscellany section rather than in Strained Seriousness).

Hollywood Voices (Andrew Sarris, ed., 1967) -- A collection of interviews with directors by various writers, plus a Sarris introductory essay, The Rise and Fall of the Film Director, and preface to each interview. Worth reading just for the essay and interviews of Joseph Losey, Nicholas Ray and Abraham Polonsky.

Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage (Garner Simmons, 1976) -- More biography, interview and behind-the-scenes story-telling than film analysis. And, in case there was any doubt, apparently Steve McQueen really could be difficult. Nice companion piece to a book I'm reading now, A Siegel Film: An Autobiography (Don Siegel, 1993).

Cassavetes Directs: John Cassavetes and the Making of Love Streams (Michael Ventura, 2007) -- Cassavetes asked the author to write a book about the day-to-day making of LOVE STREAMS (1984). This is it, a daily record of what the intended tasks of the day were to be, what actually happened -- the directing, the off-camera playing and fighting, the shooting -- and what from the day appeared in the movie. Clearly, if one worked with Cassavetes, one was family; and, especially in the case of Gena Rowlands, that meant much joy and strain. One sees Cassavetes' philosophy and what he wanted from the actors, from the technicians and on the screen (even though he claimed he didn't know). And one feels the pain that he and his film family went through as he was dying while making this masterpiece. Like LOVE STREAMS itself, this book had me smiling, laughing and crying...often at the same time. Every picture should start at the ending. That's where it really starts. -- John Cassavetes

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: December 5th, 2010, 6:15 pm
by knitwit45
Moraldo posted a BBC Book List on Facebook, with the information that the editors of same think most people will have read only 6 of the books. You are supposed to bold the ones you've read. I'm at 39 and counting, thought others who read a lot more than I do would like to see this list.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (This one's kind of not fair.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: December 5th, 2010, 7:18 pm
by JackFavell
Whew! I did OK. although I see now that a couple of the books listed are actually series, so that would add more.

It's a cool exercise, Nancy!


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I only read half)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (This one's kind of not fair.)I have read a lot of Shakespeare, but not all.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray Favorite book of all time!
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

It's interesting to me that they have three Hardy books on the list (I'm lucky because I have read almost all of Hardy), but no Maugham, Dreiser, Crane, London, or Wharton. No Henry James. No Milan Kundera and no Colette.... No Virginia Woolf.

Maybe these are the books that someone deemed to be the most likely to have been read by people in the U.S.?

I have read some Dickens, but the ones they listed are not the ones I read. The same with John Irving and George Eliot - I wonder why they included specific titles by the authors they picked. Interesting, Nan!

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: December 5th, 2010, 7:38 pm
by ChiO
Luckily I read on occasion in high school, otherwise there'd probably be two bolded.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (This one's kind of not fair.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: December 5th, 2010, 8:00 pm
by knitwit45
this is really fun. The ones I have read that others haven't, I keep saying, "Oh, but you MUST read that, it's wonderful!" But I wouldn't want someone to insist on me reading Lord of the Flies, so there you are!

Re: What are you reading?

Posted: December 6th, 2010, 12:26 am
by Moraldo Rubini
JackFavell wrote:...It's interesting to me that they have three Hardy books on the list (I'm lucky because I have read almost all of Hardy), but no Maugham, Dreiser, Crane, London, or Wharton. No Henry James. No Milan Kundera and no Colette.... No Virginia Woolf.

Maybe these are the books that someone deemed to be the most likely to have been read by people in the U.S.?

I have read some Dickens, but the ones they listed are not the ones I read. The same with John Irving and George Eliot - I wonder why they included specific titles by the authors they picked. Interesting, Nan!
I have no idea how they compiled this list and was curious about it too. I wondered why the Donna Tartt book and DaVinci Code were listed (both highly overrated in my humble opinion). Regarding John Irving, I always considered A Prayer for Owen Meaney to be his masterpiece, so was not suprised to see that made the list.

P.S. As long as I'm here, I'm now reading The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross' history of music in the 20th century. There's a chapter on Hollywood that might titilate the SSO crowd, but now I'm reading the chilling chapter on music in Nazi Germany. Looking forward to the 1950's and away from the concentration camps.