July- its THE LOHANS Birthday and I am reading...
Patricia Highsmith wrote a lot of good books, but of all of them I like Strangers on a Train the best. I read all of the Tom Ripley books after seeing the first movie when it came out, but I was pretty disappointed in how different he was from how Matt Damon portrayed him. The other books are decent. I would say that of all of them, Ripley's Game and The Boy Who Followed Ripley were the best, even though The Boy Who Followed Ripley was a big gay parade of gay characters.
Sleepwalkers by Tom Grieves. I have high hopes for this book.
Out of Touch by Brandon Tietz.
Just finished The Gilded Age by Twain and Warner. Chiefly of historical interest but that's pretty-much it.
Dunno what's next. May continue with Twain's next or go back to Dickens.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I lied. It's Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy by Bradley Sands. It was decided that a palate-cleanser was needed. Or a palate-mucker. Whatever.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I gave Praise of Motherhood to my mom. She can't get behind his writing style. 
I liked it though.
Irony!
This is why we can't have nice things.
Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner.
Journey To The End Of The Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Better by John O'Brien.
Chuck Klosterman's The Visible Man
I read The Time Machine (H G Wells) yesterday - it's really short! Then I started Billy Budd (Melville).
This is why we can't have nice things.
After I saw the movie The Time Machine, I had the most horrible nightmare (not counting those with bears) with that character with the protruding spine. I still recall the "human pate de foie gras" in my dream and it was the only time I went to my parents' room after childhood. Then - embarrassment.
Yeah, none of that's in the book.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Speaking of what's not in the book, I watched the trailer to Total Recall, which apparently is based on that short story I read last week or two weeks ago, We Will Remember It For You Wholesale. No three-boobed girls in the book either.
Virtually none of what was in the movie is in the story. I assume the remake follows that tradition.
It's kind of a PKD thing : Make a film based on the story that has little -or nothing- to do with the story.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Chelsea Cain- Kill You Twice.
Not last year but the year before Gabriel had screwed around for his whole semester and was about to get a D in English for not turning in any Book Analysis Reflection Forms (otherwise know as a BARF, otherwise otherwise known as a book report), he had less than a week to read and turn in a minimum of three BARF's to pass with a B (and not be grounded for the summer) anyway, The Time machine was one of the books I had him read because it is so short but considered a real book, and The Pearl, also because it is short, and Catcher in the Rye (just to punish him a little) and his teacher was all impressed with how well read he was and gave him flying colors.
That's awesome! Did he enjoy them? Giancarlo thought The Pearl was very sad.
Giancarlo has required summer reading and is being a little pokey about it. He has to read two books before August 20th, when school starts back, and he's only halfway through one of them. He knows the drill, though. He's got to take an online test for each one to show that he's read/understood so he's prepped for the tests he'll have to take on them when school starts. He thinks it sucks that I do that, but he'll thank me one day. MOM LAW.
He really like The Time Machine, he talked his class into reading it as their group book, but then everyone started complaining after the first chapter or so that it was boring and they all picked another book instead. The Pearl he thought was really sad too, but liked Steinbeck's style, and Catcher in the Rye- he said he wanted to punch Holden to make him shut up by the end of it, but also loved Salinger's writing style.
I need to get Trevor reading more. He is the only one who isn't really into books.
Read a beautiful surrealist short novel, Zenobia, by Gellu Naum, a Romanian writer. It's been translated into English, so if anybody happens to find it, I definitely recommend it.
El Zorro: comienza la leyenda by Isabel Allende.