Bibliophile Thread

[Gaucho]

[Gaucho]

It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.

[shafnutz05]

I often forget just how good that novel is.

[Gaucho]

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall–soon–it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.

[eddy]

I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.

[eddy]

I've never read that Gaucho. I should bump it up on the list.

I'm finishing up the john scalzi scifi political thriller trilogy The Last Emperox and these 3 books are so much damn fun and easy to fly through. Highly recommend anyone looking for something different to read.

[Gaucho]

I've never read that Gaucho. I should bump it up on the list.

I'd recommend reading V first.

[Gaucho]

Caddy smelled like trees.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Man, I read about 300 pages of The Expanse book 3 yesterday. Great stuff, a lot more in depth than the show (which is awesome). I love this work from home life.

[shafnutz05]

Man, I read about 300 pages of The Expanse book 3 yesterday. Great stuff, a lot more in depth than the show (which is awesome). I love this work from home life.

Oh man, I didn't even realize this was a book series. This sounds like a great series to get into.

The last long form series I read was Wheel of Time and crapped out after like Book 11. Still regret that.

[Gaucho]

Highly recommended.

[robbiestoupe]

I have The Expanse book series in queue. We’re on season 2 of the tv series

[DigitalGypsy66]

Yeah, look out for the short stories and novellas. There’s one about Fred Johnson, another about Amos’ origins, and some of Bobbie’s nephew ‘s backstory that’s hinted on about the show. And the guy that made the Epstein drives, too.

[Shyster]

That reminds me, I bought a new Expanse book months ago and haven't read it yet. Totally agree on it being a great sci-fi series. I think I'm somewhere around book 4 or 5.

[Gaucho]

The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even get rich - small-town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast-iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city.

[Gaucho]

Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires. Rabbit Angstrom, coming up the alley in a business suit, stops and watches, though he's twenty-six and six three. So tall, he seems an unlikely rabbit, but the breadth of white face, the pallor of his blue irises, and a nervous flutter under his brief nose as he stabs a cigarette into his mouth partially explain the nickname, which was given to him when he too was a boy. He stands there thinking, the kids keep coming, they keep crowding you up.

[Troy Loney]

The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even get rich - small-town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast-iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city.

Who dis

[shafnutz05]

It sounds like the Big Sleep, but I know it's a series and couldn't say which book it actually is.

[Gaucho]

Close: it's The Long Goodbye.

[Troy Loney]

Watched the movie version of the big sleep with Bogart. It was extremely difficult to follow, according to the internet, the actress that played carmen upstaged bacall to such an extent that they cut a bunch of her stuff out to hide that. So plot could have been lost.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Watched the movie version of the big sleep with Bogart. It was extremely difficult to follow, according to the internet, the actress that played carmen upstaged bacall to such an extent that they cut a bunch of her stuff out to hide that. So plot could have been lost.

Did you happen to take Detective Fiction at Pitt? A ton of reading but a really fun class.

[Troy Loney]

Watched the movie version of the big sleep with Bogart. It was extremely difficult to follow, according to the internet, the actress that played carmen upstaged bacall to such an extent that they cut a bunch of her stuff out to hide that. So plot could have been lost.

Did you happen to take Detective Fiction at Pitt? A ton of reading but a really fun class.

I didn't. Would have been a great way to read Chandler though.

[nocera]

Watched the movie version of the big sleep with Bogart. It was extremely difficult to follow, according to the internet, the actress that played carmen upstaged bacall to such an extent that they cut a bunch of her stuff out to hide that. So plot could have been lost.

Did you happen to take Detective Fiction at Pitt? A ton of reading but a really fun class.

I didn't. Would have been a great way to read Chandler though.

I took detective fiction in my grad program (not at Pitt). It was probably my favorite course of the semester apart from the workshops. Loads of great Chandler books obviously but I had never read any Hammett at that point. Maltese Falcon is amazing

[Gaucho]

Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down— from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.

[Gaucho]

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.