What was the last book you bought or read

[pat grimshaw]

... "The Line of Beauty" ...

The 'line of beauty' is the ogee as aptly demonstrated in healthy buttocks.

 

[rareboy]

Read it in English or in Spanish?

The movie was so bad. Thankfully, I didn't watch the whole thing from the beginning.

Obviously in the original language is best. But the English translation was absolutely lyrical.

I never saw the movie...but I think it could never do justice to the book.

 

[ballcaphair]

Ready Player One Ernest Cline

 

[pat grimshaw]

Oh, I read Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty" a couple of years ago, and I don't think I quite got what is so extraordinary about thr style of the novel that so many critics and readers keep praising ever since it was first published.

I hope you didn’t choose the 'The Line of Beauty' because it won the Booker. The Bookers are as unreliable as the Oscars. Valuing an item based on its calendar year of release is not a criteria of quality.


The Swimming Pool Library (1988)
This one is the most fun as he inserted as much sex as was credible for the characters involved. And it presents the differing perceptions of things as viewed from different decades, the 1930s, the 1980 and so on.


The Folding Star and The Spell (1994 and 1998)
I have forgotten these two. I remember being apprehensive at the unappealing subject matter but that dissolved as one went through them.


The Line of Beauty (2004)
This one is the exception to the first of his two obsessions: how people perceive things differently according to the decade in which they live. This particular story happens in one period of time making it the only one of his to be filmed or filmable. The TV version has pretty Dan Stevens but the Persian millionaire was so utterly OTT to make the character plausible for fiction.


The Stranger's Child (2011)
This one is quite difficult and not appealing at all. It emphasises his second obsession: that human lives don’t fit neatly into 300 page plots. It’s like how EM Forster’s characters suddenly go off-stage and die. Lives are random and without purpose.


The Sparsholt Affair (2017)
This is the latest, and again it has the disconnected, seemingly-random plot which some people find unsatisfying. But the prose is spellbinding.

He uses plain English words to present a clear concise view of human behaviour just like an Impressionist painter uses dabs of colour to make a picture. His easy prose draws one into itself like a slab of butter draws a hot knife through it.

 

[Thad1527]

I just finished Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg. It's the story of Rafe, a gay high school junior from Boulder who doesn't want to be defined as just "the gay kid." So off he goes to prep school in Massachusetts leaving all labels behind...

I read the copy from the Media-Upper Providence Free Library.. And it was signed by the author.
Nice surprise!

 

[Blk_Thickness]

I believe that last book I bought was The Danish Girl. I need to start reading again.

 

[belamyi]

I hope you didn’t choose the 'The Line of Beauty' because it won the Booker.

No, I was intrigued by all those comments about the excellence of its style, although common opinion is about as reliable as the Oscars, Roger Ebert (RIP), or whatever official or "professional" critic and authorized authority
I couldn't even explain what the Booker is if anyone asked me right now.


EDIT: oh, that was you, pat... I usually focus so much on what it is being said, I often forget about who is saying it

 

[pat grimshaw]

^ Richest prize for fiction written in English language

http://themanbookerprize.com

 

[belamyi]

^ Richest prize for fiction written in English language

http://themanbookerprize.com

Oh, "richest", you mean like the Planeta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premio_Planeta_de_Novela

for best-selling liTTerature, known in Spanish as "litebasura".

 

[pat grimshaw]

Are you saying the Planeta is awarded to the 'best-selling liTTerature' rather than the best literature?

 

[belamyi]

Are you saying the Planeta is awarded to the 'best-selling liTTerature' rather than the best literature?

It is what the successive heads of the publishing house themselves say: they ask people to hint them on what people like to read and, whenever a new printed fad appears, its author becomes the runner-up of the prize a couple of years later, while the first place is always reserved for a household name... who would have been the runner-up some years before.

 

[PalacePaul]

This morning I bought a book called "Principes mundi". It seems to be a love story between two roman soldiers in the 3rd century.

 

[TickTockMan]

Last book I bought was the Music and Lyrics To In The Heights the Broadway musical.

 

[bedbugy]

my bangkok bank book

 

[pat grimshaw]

Are they as meh as the movie?

That movie was very 'meh' because it was supposed to star the fabulous English star Margaret Leighton opposite Peck—

The febrile, intelligent blonde Margaret and dark-haired import would have made a very handsome couple.

But the Culver City idiots said she was 5' 10½" tall and therefore not suitable.

 

[theworldwithout]

Last book I bought was an old used SF book from the late 60s. It's a double feature book so one half is a book by Clifford D. Simak called So Bright the Vision, and on the opposite side and upside down is another book called The Man Who Saw Tomorrow by Jeff Sutton.

 

[ShadowCat]

The last of the Pretty Little Liars series. I like seeing how the books and things compare to the tv show or movie!

 

[pat grimshaw]

Are they as meh as the movie?

The other reason the movie was 'meh' was that it probably compressed the plots of 11 stories into 90 minutes.

Lots of plot without much character development.

 

[belamyi]

The other reason the movie was 'meh' was that it probably compressed the plots of 11 stories into 90 minutes.

Lots of plot without much character development.

Couldn't it be that the books are meh because they repeat eleven times what can perfectly fit in one single story?

 

[pat grimshaw]

... books are meh because they repeat eleven times what can perfectly fit in one single story?

I say most of the fiction books sold are time-fillers.

They have as much lasting value as sitting down to have a hot cup of tea or sitting down to have a smooth bowel movement.