The Reader’s Nook - The N&G Book Thread

TenderLovingKiller® said:
Fun Fact: While Thompson was out researching Hell’s Angels he partied with Tom Wolfe who was researching Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test with the Merry Pranksters. The 60s musta been wild.
Click to expand...

He does mention toward the end of Hell's Angels about going to the Merry Pranksters parties at Ken Kesey's house, and how the angels didn't really fit in. I often wonder if he encountered Manson while they both lived in Haight-Ashbury too.
 
Book One of 2022.

Adrift in Melbourne - Robyn Annear

6BE6D901-DCD8-49C7-8581-EC8A2A34EED0.jpeg
A history of Melbourne and it’s people through 7 walks. Australian city centres are more business and shopping centres than anything (they are called CBD’s for a reason), so this is a good way to find the forgotten and knocked down history of the place. Once my wife has read this, the plan is to do the walks in stages.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Fun Fact: While Thompson was out researching Hell’s Angels he partied with Tom Wolfe who was researching Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test with the Merry Pranksters. The 60s musta been wild.
Click to expand...
A friend (who is an ardent feminist) just told me about Joyce Carol Oates and Connie Schultz are getting into Twitter beef because Connie Schultz found out and is outraged by Norman Mailer having stabbed his 2nd wife in the 60s. Schultz's reaction is a very reasonable "WHAT THE FUCK" and Joyce Carol Oates is beefing with her because she knew Mailer and her reaction is a kind of blasé "yeah, that was Norm, he was just kind of like that, nbd"

So yeah, the 60s were wild, even in the casual moments.
 
Started the year with The Boys in the Boat and just finished my second book of 2022: The Anomaly. Both very solid reads. I was a little disappointed but the Anomaly because I had heard incredible things about it, but overall it was a fun page turner with some interesting ideas.

I was also very excited to learn yesterday that Hanya Yanagihara has a new book that just came out today. Her first book was good but A Little Life is one of my absolute favorites. Anyone else going to be picking up her new book soon?
 
So I finished Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelisation a while ago, but its taken this long to put how I felt about it into words.

I've been obsessed with his movies for over half my life now, which is probably why I found this book so disappointing and unnecessary.
I realise its meant to be cheap and trashy in order to be a genuine 60s drugstore paperback novelisation; but "The proposal Murdock Lancer proposed his sons was simple" is horrendous, and the book is full of these. The whole thing just has the tone of those gross monologues he sometimes writes himself into a movie for, it seriously sounds like a bedtime story read by stuntman Mike. You can clearly still shoot a movie roughly in the style of Golden Era Hollywood and still make it great, the same should be able to work for a book.

Speaking of Death Proof, that is an excellent adaption of a cheap, tacky style that stays genuine in being all about sex without having to resort to any self-gratifying nudity or sex scenes. This book on the other hand seems straight up transparent, with way too much plot regarding Hollywood's horrible, manipulative sexual power dynamics. Maybe this is throwing his best friend Harvey Weinstein under the bus, but its just way too uncomfortable and personal. Obviously it was (or is) truly the culture, but I don't know, it feels more like he's revelling in it than exposing it.

I love the movie this is based on, and rank it among his best. What I was hoping to get out of this book was an expansion, and hopefully some extra plot details to flesh out the setting. It does deliver on some of this, but to a minimum with how much the other aspects mentioned detract.
If writing is his retirement plan, I hope straight up novels suit him better. Or at least that he gets a better editor than Harvey was as a producer (who he clearly doesn't need).
 
BoilerRhapsody said:
So I finished Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelisation a while ago, but its taken this long to put how I felt about it into words.

I've been obsessed with his movies for over half my life now, which is probably why I found this book so disappointing and unnecessary.
I realise its meant to be cheap and trashy in order to be a genuine 60s drugstore paperback novelisation; but "The proposal Murdock Lancer proposed his sons was simple" is horrendous, and the book is full of these. The whole thing just has the tone of those gross monologues he sometimes writes himself into a movie for, it seriously sounds like a bedtime story read by stuntman Mike. You can clearly still shoot a movie roughly in the style of Golden Era Hollywood and still make it great, the same should be able to work for a book.

Speaking of Death Proof, that is an excellent adaption of a cheap, tacky style that stays genuine in being all about sex without having to resort to any self-gratifying nudity or sex scenes. This book on the other hand seems straight up transparent, with way too much plot regarding Hollywood's horrible, manipulative sexual power dynamics. Maybe this is throwing his best friend Harvey Weinstein under the bus, but its just way too uncomfortable and personal. Obviously it was (or is) truly the culture, but I don't know, it feels more like he's revelling in it than exposing it.

I love the movie this is based on, and rank it among his best. What I was hoping to get out of this book was an expansion, and hopefully some extra plot details to flesh out the setting. It does deliver on some of this, but to a minimum with how much the other aspects mentioned detract.
If writing is his retirement plan, I hope straight up novels suit him better. Or at least that he gets a better editor than Harvey was as a producer (who he clearly doesn't need).
Click to expand...
Have you ever read the film scripts? I remember reading the Django Unchained script a few years ago and couldn't put it down. The story differs quite a bit from the film at parts and it was really gripping from what I remember.
 
BoilerRhapsody said:
So I finished Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelisation a while ago, but its taken this long to put how I felt about it into words.

I've been obsessed with his movies for over half my life now, which is probably why I found this book so disappointing and unnecessary.
I realise its meant to be cheap and trashy in order to be a genuine 60s drugstore paperback novelisation; but "The proposal Murdock Lancer proposed his sons was simple" is horrendous, and the book is full of these. The whole thing just has the tone of those gross monologues he sometimes writes himself into a movie for, it seriously sounds like a bedtime story read by stuntman Mike. You can clearly still shoot a movie roughly in the style of Golden Era Hollywood and still make it great, the same should be able to work for a book.

Speaking of Death Proof, that is an excellent adaption of a cheap, tacky style that stays genuine in being all about sex without having to resort to any self-gratifying nudity or sex scenes. This book on the other hand seems straight up transparent, with way too much plot regarding Hollywood's horrible, manipulative sexual power dynamics. Maybe this is throwing his best friend Harvey Weinstein under the bus, but its just way too uncomfortable and personal. Obviously it was (or is) truly the culture, but I don't know, it feels more like he's revelling in it than exposing it.

I love the movie this is based on, and rank it among his best. What I was hoping to get out of this book was an expansion, and hopefully some extra plot details to flesh out the setting. It does deliver on some of this, but to a minimum with how much the other aspects mentioned detract.
If writing is his retirement plan, I hope straight up novels suit him better. Or at least that he gets a better editor than Harvey was as a producer (who he clearly doesn't need).
Click to expand...
Funny thing is, you’re basically describing why I rejected Death Proof the first time I saw it. I came back around on it on rewatches; maybe the same’s the case with this book.
 
BoilerRhapsody said:
So I finished Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelisation a while ago, but its taken this long to put how I felt about it into words.

I've been obsessed with his movies for over half my life now, which is probably why I found this book so disappointing and unnecessary.
I realise its meant to be cheap and trashy in order to be a genuine 60s drugstore paperback novelisation; but "The proposal Murdock Lancer proposed his sons was simple" is horrendous, and the book is full of these. The whole thing just has the tone of those gross monologues he sometimes writes himself into a movie for, it seriously sounds like a bedtime story read by stuntman Mike. You can clearly still shoot a movie roughly in the style of Golden Era Hollywood and still make it great, the same should be able to work for a book.

Speaking of Death Proof, that is an excellent adaption of a cheap, tacky style that stays genuine in being all about sex without having to resort to any self-gratifying nudity or sex scenes. This book on the other hand seems straight up transparent, with way too much plot regarding Hollywood's horrible, manipulative sexual power dynamics. Maybe this is throwing his best friend Harvey Weinstein under the bus, but its just way too uncomfortable and personal. Obviously it was (or is) truly the culture, but I don't know, it feels more like he's revelling in it than exposing it.

I love the movie this is based on, and rank it among his best. What I was hoping to get out of this book was an expansion, and hopefully some extra plot details to flesh out the setting. It does deliver on some of this, but to a minimum with how much the other aspects mentioned detract.
If writing is his retirement plan, I hope straight up novels suit him better. Or at least that he gets a better editor than Harvey was as a producer (who he clearly doesn't need).
Click to expand...
He's made movie that I absolutely love (including OUaTiH). Couldn't finish this book.
 
I read She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan over the last couple of weeks and I think it's great. It's a war epic set in Ancient China and the main character is a girl who disguises herself as a boy so she can become a monk and escape famine. Her foil is a eunuch general in the Mongol army. The narrative voice switches back and forth between the two over a number of years. It was a good mix of characters and action, really enjoyed it.
 
Selaws said:
Have you ever read the film scripts? I remember reading the Django Unchained script a few years ago and couldn't put it down. The story differs quite a bit from the film at parts and it was really gripping from what I remember.
Click to expand...

Tbh I wasn't aware they are available, good to know though. There are definite bits I would like to check out in screenplay form.

Bull Shannon said:
Funny thing is, you’re basically describing why I rejected Death Proof the first time I saw it. I came back around on it on rewatches; maybe the same’s the case with this book.
Click to expand...

To be fair, Death Proof made me uncomfortable for the first time when I watched it again after the Harvey story. I still find it way more forgiving than this novelisation though, and it has more to offer outside of that, and Mike gets way more of what was coming to him than anyone in OUaTiH.
 
Just finished Lost & Found: A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz. She masterfully combines storytelling with introspective thoughts on loss and death in society. I really really enjoyed it.

Time to actually get around to finishing The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
 
Lee Newman said:
Just finished Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel. It's a nifty little bit of speculative fiction about time travel, pandemics and metaphysics. It's very lyrical. One of the best books I've read in some time. Might have even brought a tear to my eye.
Click to expand...
Has been on my list for a few months, happy to hear it’s worth it!
 
Very excited to be the first check-out from my local library for this!

20220822_162247.jpg
20220822_162258.jpg20220822_162710.jpg

...so crisp and shiny!

I don't know that I've ever been the first person to check-out a novel from the library before. And perfect timing too, we're flying across the country on Wednesday to spend a week with the wife's family - should provide ample time for reading.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top