A Year in Books/Day 116: The Thin Man

Posted on April 27, 2012 by maedez

Title: The Thin Man
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Year Published: 1933/This Edition: 1989 (Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage Books Edition)
Year Purchased: 1990
Source: Doubleday Book Shops
About: Oh, Hammett. Hammett. Dashiell Hammett. I had such a teenage crush on you. This book, right here, this exact volume, started it all. This is where phrases like ‘hard-boiled’ and ‘tough as nails’ usually come into play. His characters are certainly that, but Nick and Nora Charles are so much more besides: sly, witty, elegant, sophisticated, sexy, bewitching. His prose is streamlined, sleek, purposeful, entertaining; as you would expect from a good crime story, there is not one unnecessary word or action to be found. He was a master of dialogue, real-world, genuine, fresh dialogue. Hammett was a very fine writer-and not just for a detective novelist. The Thin Man is a quick read in the best sense: it’s intelligent and fast-paced, with a smart plot and interesting characters. He knew how to hook you and, just as importantly, he knew when to let you go.
Motivation: The 1934 film version. I like to read books before seeing film adaptations but I was introduced to The Thin Man in reverse order; I caught it on television when I was 14 or 15. Instant love, of course. Who can resist William Powell and Myrna Loy? No one I’ve ever met.
Times Read: 4 or 5
Random Excerpt/Page 12: “That afternoon I took Asta for a walk, explained to two people that she was a Schnauzer and not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish terrier, stopped at Jim’s for a couple of drinks, ran into Larry Crowley, and brought him back to the Normandie with me. Nora was pouring cocktails for the Quinns, Margot Innes, a man whose name I did not catch, and Dorothy Wynant. Dorothy said she wanted to talk to me, so we carried our cocktails into the bedroom.”
Happiness Scale: 10
Dashiell Hammett, teen idol (1894-1961). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Year in Books/Day 115: James Williamson Studies and Documents of a Pioneer of the Film Narrative

Posted on April 27, 2012 by maedez

Title: James Williamson Studies and Documents of a Pioneer of the Film Narrative
Author: Martin Sopocy
Year Published: 1998 (Associated University Presses, Inc.)
Year Purchased: 2002
Source: Unknown
About: Be warned: This book is so dry and bland that you could crumble it up and toss it in a bowl of soup. It’s so slow-paced that I had to put it away and pick it up again a few months later. Twice. That was a new experience for me, as I relish slogging through even the most dry-toast academic volumes. To have that happen with a book on silent film was almost unbearably disappointing. Yet, it is significant in its way: it’s a book about English filmmaker James Williamson; it offers painstakingly detailed breakdowns of films long since lost; the photographs and images of slides are of critical importance to film history.
Motivation: I have a sizable library of books on silent cinema. Since I write extensively on the subject, I’m always eager and excited to add a new volume (this book is possibly the only time I have been disappointed) to my collection.
Times Read: 1 (barely)
Random Excerpt/Page 61: “An overall view of the history of the film narrative could tempt us to suppose that motion photography, that cinema itself, has an inherent affinity with realism. Yet in actual practice such an affinity exists only to the extent that the filmmaker rejects the camera’s capacity for illusion and uses it instead with the conscious purpose of recording the world around him as he sees it, and the incidents within that world that have actually happened or could plausibly happen.”
Happiness Scale: 5

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 27th April

Posted on April 27, 2012 by maedez

Ralph Waldo Emerson died on 4/27/1882.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”

Hart Crane died on 4/27/1932. “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.”

A Year in Books/Day 115: Pompeii The Living City

Posted on April 27, 2012 by maedez

Title: Pompeii The Living City
Authors: Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence
Year Published: 2005 (St. Martin’s Press)
Year Purchased: 2005
Source: History Book Club
About: History should be a living, breathing, laughing, squirming thing. Alive, thought-provoking, uncomfortable, enlightening. Not boring or stilted. When presented in book form, you shouldn’t want to skip ahead to find the good bits; it should all be good bits. Fortunately, Butterworth and Laurence agree. Their Pompeii The Living City is as vivid, varied and fast-paced as the subject itself. The result is an indelibly engaging volume that pulls on your senses until it feels-almost, if only in the back of the mind-like a real-time experience.
Motivation: I’ve loved ancient history since I was a kid and dreamed big dreams of being an anthropologist or archaeologist when I grew up. Well, kind of; I never seriously wanted to do anything but write. Kid me envisioned the anthropologist/archaeologist thing as kind of a side-line or hobby. Ah, youth!
Times Read: 1
Random Excerpt/Page 130: “In all respects, the beauty industry was big business in Pompeii. Affluent women struggled to emulate the idealised femininity of the frescoes on their walls, who stared into polished bronze or silver mirrors with justified self-regard, their dressing tables bare of any artificial means of enhancement. Yet the great range of ingeniously wrought bottles that have been found testifies to the lengths to which some women in the real world would go to preserve or improve their looks.”
Happiness Scale: 9
House of the Faun in Pompeii, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)