<\/p>\n
Still the greatest play, and then I had to go back to reading\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026.the essential book on Shakespeare.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to bounce between the plays and the book.<\/p>\n
The making of a movie I have yet to see.. but an interesting early history of Doug Kenney and the National Lampoon and meeting Matty Simmons, several of whom I knew, for instance Michael O\u2019 Donahue. I missed Lemmings <\/em>\u00a0though Python had to ask them to stop doing our Custard Pie sketch which Tony Hendra had given them.\u00a0 I remember going to see The National Lampoon show<\/em> at the Palladium New York in the Spring of 1975, with Terry Gilliam, and there I saw and met for the first time John Belushi (a little awed by meeting two Pythons), Bill Murray and the adorable Gilda Radner.\u00a0 It was a very funny show and we hung out for a while.\u00a0 This is before SNL began.\u00a0 Happy Days.<\/p>\n Another very fine novel by the showrunner of Fargo. <\/em>\u00a0A gripping modern novel, which reminded me a little of Tom Wolfe.\u00a0 No, not his silly kerpang prose but his clear look at modern business types. The tragedy of City Man.\u00a0 His view of society and money which I suppose has been a major subject of the novel since E. M. Forster.\u00a0 Here in an intensely page-turning read, a plane crash triggers the complex reactions of the modern New York world from the corrupt Fox-like News to its appalling, tasteless, terrible heroes, the mercifully now defunct O\u2019Reilly.\u00a0 Both finely satirical and deeply moving and very enjoyable.<\/p>\n Totally gripping and compelling first part of an extraordinary trilogy about the US and the drugs and arms trafficking world.\u00a0 Set in the Nineties, the characters interweave through complex story layers, both in New York, California and South America,\u00a0 and there is a lot about the Reagan Contra World.\u00a0 Page turning, thrillingly written, I have the other two standing by!\u00a0 I loved his California Fire and Ice<\/em>, and have since let him fall from my radar, but he\u2019s back and glowing brightly.<\/p>\n A simply brilliant novel from 1965.\u00a0 Flawless prose.\u00a0 Every single word is precise and eloquent. \u00a0Hardly a sentence too many and yet generations pass before our eyes.\u00a0 The book really asks the question : what is it to be successful in life?\u00a0\u00a0 What constitutes a good life? \u00a0And the answer is simple and clear.\u00a0 Living honestly, working hard and trying to love.\u00a0 To enjoy the love of your metier:\u00a0 in this case teaching. To enjoy the love of another human being:\u00a0 in this case it\u2019s not his wife, and to be loyal to the right things \u2013 not pro patria but pro humanitas, in this case loyalty to and love for a University. Wholly unexpected and totally enjoyable.\u00a0 I think I picked the tip up from Michael Chabon.\u00a0 Pass it on.<\/p>\n Thoughts from Maigret, Simenon\u2019s alter ego, which I think reveal what he tries to do as a novelist. \u201cEven today, he knew that he was only giving a lifeless, simplified picture.\u00a0 Everything he had just said was true, but he hadn\u2019t conveyed the full weight of things, their density, their texture, their smell.\u201d<\/p>\n I got some way into this then abandoned.\u00a0\u00a0 It happens to me with a lot of his books.<\/p>\n Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-up.\u00a0\u00a0 Totally gripping tale of Theranos and its intriguing, utterly self-confident, strangely weird founder Elizabeth Holmes.\u00a0\u00a0 An excellent and revealing read and a reminder how newspapers can still save us from the Liars and the Lies they tell\u2026<\/p>\n The finest English prose you\u2019ll ever encounter.\u00a0 This 19 year old misfit walked out of Britain in 1933 with the aim of reaching Constantinople.\u00a0 This is his diary of his amazing adventures and his for all time description of Europe before it closed for Fascism.<\/p>\n The debut of this year\u2019s Booker winner.\u00a0 She manages to be both bleak and satirical at the same time, as well as the finest prose writer.<\/p>\n The third and probably the best in this unique series about a dead man and his dog.\u00a0 I love her writing and I love the extraordinarily original setting of a detective ghost story.\u00a0 Amazingly clever and deeply satisfying.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (1957.)\u00a0 I have been looking for this book for some time, ever since I learned about Eric Maschwitz in Robert Hewison\u2019s book about The Footlights.\u00a0 <\/em>A former member, he wrote the lyrics for two great songs: \u201cThese foolish things\u201d and \u201cA Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.\u00a0\u00a0 He married the hilarious Hermione Gingold, joined the BBC, wrote musicals, then went out to Hollywood, playing tennis with Cary Grant, before returning to England for WW2, and ending up as Head of the BBC.\u00a0 We eventually found the book in the LA Public Library but disappointingly it contained hardly any details about the story that intrigued me, that he used the Footlights as cover for an operation against the Nazis.\u00a0 He draws a veil over this alas.\u00a0 Pity.<\/p>\n An interesting forthcoming book about the SNL alumni who went out to Hollywood and changed if not the face then the nose of Hollywood.\u00a0 Since I knew most of these guys and was often around some of their movies (e.g. Blues Brothers in Chicago) it was fascinating for me.\u00a0\u00a0 Belushi, Aykroyd, Chevy, Murray, Eddie Murphy, and the SCTV alums, John Candy, Marty Short, Rick Moranis \u2013 they made a lot of movies and a lot of money.<\/p>\n At the beginning of the book he identifies a set of \u201cpeople who do not read introductions\u201d amongst whom I would have included myself, but I happily basked in him writing about the books contained here, and I immediately subscribed to almost all of them, most of which were entirely unknown to me.\u00a0 Of course he seems incapable of writing a dull sentence, and his prose glitters with gems, amongst which I loved \u201cthe past is another planet\u201d and \u201cIt reveals the fundamental truth of the universe: that the fundamental truth of the universe will remain forever concealed.\u201d<\/p>\n I discovered towards the end I had read it before.\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I keep this diary, but I can\u2019t for the life of me find any reference to it, so I guess I forgot to record it.<\/p>\n An IQ novel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The third by this fascinating local writer and he\u2019s really getting into his stride. I found the opening few chapters to be utterly fabulous and unexpectedly hilarious.\u00a0 Impossible to keep up such expectations, but still a very good yarn indeed.<\/p>\n I am constantly impressed by his writing.\u00a0 By the time he came to write this in 1978 he had already written Terms of Endearment, the Last Picture Show and Horseman Pass by..\u00a0 I thought this an absolutely brilliant Hollywood novel, but then he went and switched horses in the last third, changing the narrator unexpectedly from the man to the women and without any warning which I felt absolutely took the wind out of the book and confused and annoyed me. \u00a0Nevertheless he can really write.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I felt this was an article at book length.\u00a0 I wanted the skinny and abandoned the fatty.<\/p>\n A very nice one.\u00a0 Maigret is sentimental about a tramp under a bridge, assaulted, but by whom?\u00a0\u00a0 Who assaults tramps? he asks, in less violent times.\u00a0\u00a0 Reminding us that the streets were not always filled with the homeless sleeping rough.<\/p>\n A splendid and informative and not too long canter through French history.\u00a0 Very enjoyable.\u00a0 I\u2019m very sad he himself just entered history, and since his father was Duff Cooper he joins his Dad in the pages about the Twentieth Century and France.\u00a0 Very readable.<\/p>\n Being the fifth episode of the rather magnificent epic series of twelve novels A Dance to the Music of Time <\/em>first published in the fifties and sixties. I\u2019m slowly working my way through for the second time. Hope I finish before I\u2019m finished.<\/p>\n I\u2019m so grateful to Penguin for their monthly publishing of new translations of this extraordinary writer. They are novella length and are just perfect for palate cleansing between longer works, and any plane journey, or just popping in your pocket while you wait for something.\u00a0 As usual, weather sets the scene.\u00a0 Here Paris in the rain.\u00a0 I like the way he often changes the setting.\u00a0 \u00a0Maigret recalls an old case in discussion with his friend Dr. Pardon, so you get two levels, the actual story of a murder, and Maigret reflecting on it.<\/p>\n My all-time favorite with a new novel is cause for rejoicing in our household.\u00a0 How does he do it?\u00a0\u00a0 An annual treat.\u00a0 He has written so many great books and here comes another one\u2026<\/p>\n An earlier work by the Booker Prize winner, she is so goddamn funny and so dark.\u00a0\u00a0 Plus she writes like a goddess.<\/p>\n Pretty compulsive reading, and should be compulsory really to understand the mess that one ignorant, vain, narcissistic, criminal can impose on America within days of starting taking office.\u00a0 Wonderfully clear and brilliant journalism of the problems of our times.\u00a0 The big take away is just how much the Government do for us which is purloined and used for profit by Reptards.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March Hamlet\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 William Shakespeare Still the greatest play, and then I had to go back to reading\u2026 Will in the World\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Stephen Greenblatt \u2026.the essential book on Shakespeare.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to bounce between the plays and the book. Caddyshack\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Chris Nashawaty The making of a movie I have yet to see.. but an interesting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Before The Fall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Noah Hawley<\/h2>\n
The Power of the Dog\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Don Winslow<\/h2>\n
Stoner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Williams<\/h2>\n
Maigret in Court\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon.<\/h2>\n
Killing Commendatore\u00a0\u00a0 Haruki Murukami<\/h2>\n
Bad Blood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Carreyrou<\/h2>\n
A Time of Gifts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Patrick Leigh Fermor<\/h2>\n
No Bones\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anna Burns<\/h2>\n
Dead is Beautiful\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jo Perry<\/h2>\n
February<\/u><\/h1>\n
No Chip on my Shoulder\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Eric Maschwitz<\/h2>\n
Wild and Crazy Guys\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nick de Semlyen<\/h2>\n
Bookends\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Michael Chabon<\/h2>\n
Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse. Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
Wrecked\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Joe Ide<\/h2>\n
Somebody\u2019s Darling\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Larry McMurtry<\/h2>\n
January 2019<\/u><\/h1>\n
The Spy and The Traitor\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ben Macintyre<\/h2>\n
Maigret and the Tramp\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
A History of France\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Julius Norwich<\/h2>\n
Casanova\u2019s Chinese Restaurant.\u00a0 Anthony Powell<\/h2>\n
Maigret\u2019s Secret\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon<\/h2>\n
The Burglar\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thomas Perry<\/h2>\n
Little Constructions\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anna Burns<\/h2>\n
The Fifth Risk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Michael Lewis<\/h2>\n