The Red Pony and The Moon Is Down, Steinbeck.
I really liked the latter. It's a short novel about an imaginary Nazi invasion of a small Northern European town.
Oh I eventually ended up loving Cannery Row.
Something that makes it hard to read Steinbeck (besides someone getting their head blown off once in a while) is that there's usually something awful happening to animals. I obviously like his style, though, or I wouldn't keep reading more. I have a few more short novels of his to read here.
Paused the Steinbeck binge to read Ray Bradbury's short stories:
Dandelion Wine
The Foghorn
The Veldt (really fuckin Freudian)
My faves so far. The guy sounds like García Márquez or Borges sometimes when he blurs reality and fantasy. I didn't know he was that poetic. Sometimes I even have to slow down because it's a lot. Underappreciated, though.
What are you reading?
Re: What are you reading?
Can somebody tell me where this has been all my life.
Re: What are you reading?
Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck.
What in God's name possessed Steinbeck to have his chicano characters address each other as "thou"? I think he wants to translate the informal "you", but it sounds really wrong. It's like he said, "Hey, we have that in English too," then proceeds to make the bums in his story speak in Shakespearean English.
What in God's name possessed Steinbeck to have his chicano characters address each other as "thou"? I think he wants to translate the informal "you", but it sounds really wrong. It's like he said, "Hey, we have that in English too," then proceeds to make the bums in his story speak in Shakespearean English.
Re: What are you reading?
Those books are referred to as The Kent Family Chronicles ( https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5768.John_Jakes .)
(Edit: and I just found out the first book the Bastard had a miniseries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW8D92p43zw and so did The Rebel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs0KdQzNTWY )
The Seekers had a TV miniseries ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-xSVbPJzc ) created about it, and though the writer also did a fantasy series similar to Conan the Barbarian, he is mostly known for fiction based on US/American History, and I'm mostly familiar with his work from 'The North and South' books which were also made into a miniseries (1985 with Patrick Swayze, David Carradine, and Kirstie Allen who might have already starred in Cheers.) (found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kv0H2D ... 9TKe0q4XQm with a better quality here, but google search might be needed to find the rest of the episodes https://ok.ru/video/7321240734404 ) and many consider it more of a soap opera. England also has their own series known as North and South.
A close comparison is the book series created by a father, but mostly popularized by the son, Jeff (1952-) and Michael Shaara (1928-1988,) who wrote The Killer Angels which was made into the movie, Gettysburg (Ronald F. Maxwell, 1993) with Martin Sheen, Sam Elliott, Ted Turner (. . . I seem to have overlooked where he was in it, but I think he funded part of it.)
Unrelated to books (though well researched by historians, John Leekley and Bruce Catton) The Blue and the Gray miniseries from 1982 is based in Arkansas. I believe Gettysburg was a far more realistic portrayal of how they generally acted and is one of the few films where it's easy to kind of suspend disbelief that it's mostly fiction.
Probably a better comparison to those particular books is Kenneth Roberts series:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5 ... th_Roberts