I loved Just Kids by Patti Smith. At age 20, she left college for Manhattan and began a relationship / lifelong friendship with another artist Robert Maplethorpe. Cool story about 2 starving artists as they traverse the seedy areas of NYC, hang in the circles with prominent artists of the time and navigate Robert’s sexuality on their way to becoming renowned artists themselves.
Currently reading The Master and Margarita.
next genre, Action / Adventure, and flying, so need smaller in size
King Rat - Clavell
I think that’s the book that made me take up smoking haha
I lived in Brisbane Australia right after college for half a year while my brother did study abroad. We lived in a 12 person house with a lot of people our age who smoked. It was (is?) very common in Australia to roll cigarettes because pre-rolled (tailored) packs are taxed like crazy. The book really romanticized smoking iirc and was one of the reasons I caved. Great book series though.
Great book and great movie
“My Grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry.” Bachmann. I like his other books.
Wife’s book club.
That was my first Backman book.
The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World, 2020 political history book by American journalist and author Vincent Bevins.
CS alerted me to this book earlier in this thread. It is a powerful criticism of US foreign policy carried out by the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s against left wing movements in the Third World. The book discusses CIA interference in about a dozen countries but the main focus is Indonesia where the CIA’s support for Suharto resulted in about a million murders of Indonesians. Anyone with any connection to the popular, democratically elected PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) was at danger of “disappearing”.
Western media bought the CIA’s propaganda campaign against the PKI despite the lies and vileness. There was generally praise for the CIA’s and Suharto’s success in destroying the PKI.
Book is well-written and a good summary of CIA campaigns in other countries, including assistance with the assassination of many popular, left wing leaders. While I was familiar with most of them the number of Third World countries targeted was staggering when they are all referenced in one book.
I had this on one hold, waited too long to pick it up. So waiting again.
I don’t read much but I was at the library and saw this, read the first chapter and decided to check it out. Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley. About halfway through.
The disinformation campaigns by the CIA were disgusting. Sadly, people believed the demonization of people the CIA wanted to see destroyed. People unfortunately are still easily swayed by disinformation.
Finished The Master and Margerita. I was so excited for this one but didn’t end up loving it.
My Dad just loaned me West with Giraffes, which is a historical fiction inspired by a true story of the first transporting of giraffes across the US.
Halfway through Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s strange and I like it.
Going to start on The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen
i finally finished Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. It was not an easy read.
Then I read Will Leitch’s Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride bc I needed an easy read.
I am now reading a new translation of Albert Camus’s The Stranger.
next genre is Self-Help. At one point I said I would skip if I didn’t have any on the shelf, but then decided to include spiritual and religious.
So. I chose Six-Word Memoirs on Jewish Life, Smith Publishing.
I believe their are other versions as well.
Finished The Stranger. For those who have read it - what am I supposed to get from it?
Started Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.
Read it not long ago, and I am not sure it hit me as anything much more than a story, though I was looking for something more “spiritual” in it.
In a modern view, we’ve learned not to judge people by emotional response or reaction, but I don’t feel this was meaning to be that deep into mental illness
next genre Classics. Another category I know when I see it. Not sure what defines it other than opinion. Not many I would consider under 50 years old.
anyway…
Of Human Bondage - Maugham
I would consider “The Handmaid’s Tale” as a classic less than 50 years old.
Been a long time since I read it but I just enjoyed it without trying to “get” anything more from it.