Posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Monday, July 13, 2009
A gift idea for the film lover on your list
At under $50 from Amazon. com, if you're searching for an ideal gift for the movie lover on your gift list, you could do a lot worse than Seen Behind the Scene: Forty Years of Photographing On Set, a collection of photographs taken Mary Allen Mark, who, according to this introduction in Vanity Fair, (which also offers examples of her pictures) "can claim to have documented the turmoil on the most notorious film set of all time (Apocalypse Now), as well as the making of classics as diverse as Tootsie, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Fellini’s Satyricon.
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
In an article that will appear in Sunday's New York Times Review of Books, Mimi Schwartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly writes:
It may be hard for outsiders to accept, but there is, in fact, a Texas canon. Opinions vary, but my list would include T. R. Fehrenbach’s “Lone Star,” John Bainbridge’s “Super Americans,” John Graves’s “Goodbye to a River,” Larry McMurtry's “Lonesome Dove” and his nonfiction classic “In a Narrow Grave,” certain Molly Ivins columns, the Texas portions of Willie Morris’s “North Toward Home,” Billy Lee Brammer’s “Gay Place,” Tommy Thompson’s vastly underrated “Blood and Money” and Edna Ferber’s “Giant.” Not all of these works are great literature, and not all of them were written by Texans, but they’re all required reading if you want to understand the Texas soul. It’s a complicated thing, a roiling psychic stew of narcissism, ambition, brilliance, humor, vengefulness, pettiness, fearlessness and, of course, a bottomless pit of need. (For what? Pretty much everything.)
This pargraph begins her review of a new book, “The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes,” by Bryan Burroughs that chronicles the lives of Houston's Roy Cullen, Fort Worth's Sid Richardson and Dallas' Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt. “If Texas Oil had a Mount Rushmore, their faces would adorn it,” Burrough writes. “A good ol’ boy. A scold. A genius. A bigamist. Known in their heyday as the Big Four, they became the founders of the greatest Texas family fortunes, headstrong adventurers who rose from nowhere to take turns being acclaimed America’s wealthiest man.”
Schwartz says Burroughs' book makes for "lively reading," but, in the end, the author "bit off a little more than he could chew." At 466 pages, that does seem likely.
It may be hard for outsiders to accept, but there is, in fact, a Texas canon. Opinions vary, but my list would include T. R. Fehrenbach’s “Lone Star,” John Bainbridge’s “Super Americans,” John Graves’s “Goodbye to a River,” Larry McMurtry's “Lonesome Dove” and his nonfiction classic “In a Narrow Grave,” certain Molly Ivins columns, the Texas portions of Willie Morris’s “North Toward Home,” Billy Lee Brammer’s “Gay Place,” Tommy Thompson’s vastly underrated “Blood and Money” and Edna Ferber’s “Giant.” Not all of these works are great literature, and not all of them were written by Texans, but they’re all required reading if you want to understand the Texas soul. It’s a complicated thing, a roiling psychic stew of narcissism, ambition, brilliance, humor, vengefulness, pettiness, fearlessness and, of course, a bottomless pit of need. (For what? Pretty much everything.)
This pargraph begins her review of a new book, “The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes,” by Bryan Burroughs that chronicles the lives of Houston's Roy Cullen, Fort Worth's Sid Richardson and Dallas' Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt. “If Texas Oil had a Mount Rushmore, their faces would adorn it,” Burrough writes. “A good ol’ boy. A scold. A genius. A bigamist. Known in their heyday as the Big Four, they became the founders of the greatest Texas family fortunes, headstrong adventurers who rose from nowhere to take turns being acclaimed America’s wealthiest man.”
Schwartz says Burroughs' book makes for "lively reading," but, in the end, the author "bit off a little more than he could chew." At 466 pages, that does seem likely.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Michael Connelly's new book: It may not be on a level of Superman meets Batman, but still ...
Michael Connelly is one of my favorite authors and his fictional Los Angeles Police Department detective Harry Bosch is my favorite character in the genre since Ross McDonald's private eye Lew Archer. Bosch made his first appearance in Connelly's 1992 novel "The Black Echo," which won the Edgar Award (presented by the Mystery Writers of America) as the best first novel of the year.
Since then, Connelly has written 12 other Bosch novels, the most recent one being "The Overlook" in 2006.
He has authored other novels, including "Blood Work" (1998) that was made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood. In 2005, he wrote a book called "The Lincoln Lawyer" that introduced an ambulance-chasing lawyer named Mickey Haller, a fascinating character whose office was one of his three Lincoln cars known for their outrageous vanity plates.
Connelly's just released novel, "The Brass Verdict," opens with the muder of a lawyer and Haller somehow inherits all his pending cases. When Haller goes to the lawyer's offices to go through his files, who should he find there but one Harry Bosch, the LAPD detective assigned to investigate the murder.
When I read "The Lincoln Lawyer," I felt that Haller and Bosch were simply the opposite sides of the same coin. It is only natural, then, that Connelly has brought these two together. This is a book I'm anxious to get my hands on.
Since then, Connelly has written 12 other Bosch novels, the most recent one being "The Overlook" in 2006.
He has authored other novels, including "Blood Work" (1998) that was made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood. In 2005, he wrote a book called "The Lincoln Lawyer" that introduced an ambulance-chasing lawyer named Mickey Haller, a fascinating character whose office was one of his three Lincoln cars known for their outrageous vanity plates.
Connelly's just released novel, "The Brass Verdict," opens with the muder of a lawyer and Haller somehow inherits all his pending cases. When Haller goes to the lawyer's offices to go through his files, who should he find there but one Harry Bosch, the LAPD detective assigned to investigate the murder.
When I read "The Lincoln Lawyer," I felt that Haller and Bosch were simply the opposite sides of the same coin. It is only natural, then, that Connelly has brought these two together. This is a book I'm anxious to get my hands on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)