On my vacation this summer this is my reading:
Listening to America (Bill Moyers). Yeah he’s an annoying liberal but I read the first chapter and couldn’t put it down. Gives someone who didn’t live through the 1960’s a good feeling for what people from a variety of backgrounds thought about the social change.
Before the Dawn (Gerry Adams). Figure I should at least hear the other side.
Basic Brown (Willie Brown). Can’t believe I haven’t read it yet. Hey I don’t come out of the progressive Republican wing of the GOP. I think organizations provide better representation than civil servants.
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett). I just can’t believe I haven’t read this before. Sam Spade. Classic but is it good?
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett). One of my favorite movies… I had no idea it was a book.
All The Kings Men (Robert Warren). Read it several years ago it needs another round. This is the fallback book.
Plus I saved up a couple weeks of The Economist and the New Yorker for the plane on the way.
I’ll tell you what I think of them when I get back. Maybe.
July 26th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
To gain perspective try “The Great Depression” by David A. Shannon.
Available on AMAZON.
Prepare for a sobering true life read….no lolipops just The Greatest Generation adapting to the mistakes of the NEW DEAL!
July 27th, 2011 at 4:07 am
“Maltese Falcon” is much the best book of Hammett’s career, with a
seamless narrative that grabs you on page 1. His hero, Sam Spade,
is very different from Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Spade is
a moral slob whose conscience is gradually awakened during the story.
Robert Penn Warren was primarily a poet (Ronald Reagan named him the
Poet Laureate of the USA in the 1980s). Warren wrote ONE Novel in his
career, All the King’s Men. It won the Pulitzer prize as Best Novel,
then when Hollywood got the rights, it won the Best Picture oscar and
Best Actor for Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark/Huey Long.