I forgot to mention Wodehouse.  Jeeves and Wooster exclusively.

I'll look into that trilogy.  I'd more or less given up on King having groaned my way through about a third of 'From A Buick Six' in the staffroom in 2009.
I took to carrying a copy of Clancy's 'Red Storm Rising' around with me in my first year at University - just to annoy the trendy middle-class students. 
'The Hunt For Red October' was quite an entertaining movie.  Sean Connery as a Lithuanian submarine commander with a broad Scots accent.  And Tim Curry, giving one of the worst performances of his career. 
India - watching 'The Jewel In The Crown' during 'lockdown' rather put me off.  I never managed to get on with John Masters.  I read the Pan paperback on the Mutiny more years ago than I care to remember.

Reading the The Lord of the Rings trilogy right now. I'm at the end of the second book. Haven't read it since I was 15. Never been a big fan, if you can believe it. I like them better now than what I did then.

Before that I read Stendhals The Red and The Black, Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist, A Man in Love by Martin Walser, two novels by Christian Kracht, Lá-bas by Huysmans, a short story collection by ETA Hoffmann, First Love by Ivan Turgenev, Wolf among Wolves by Hans Fallada. That's all that I've read this year, its been a slow year for reading I'm afraid.

Finished the third book today. Final thoughts: Elves are a bunch of pretentious sons of bitches. Now I'm either going to read something modern (as in 21th centhury) German, or... Scandinavian (even race between Knausgårds Morning star and Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren).

Last edited by DuluthandBackAgain (2022-03-26 13:33:31)

I read one of the John Gardner Bond books during 'lockdown phase one', after coming across Philip Larkin's damning review.  Larkin was right, it was shite.  I remember handing over to the League Of Friends just before my wife saw her oncologist and I tore skin off some leftie for sticking his 'Guardianista' nose in where it was least required.  But I'd trotted through Fleming beforehand and found that only a few of the originals were really up to much.  Fleming, in truth, was a snob and something of a bore.  'Thrilling Cities' bears that out.  I'm going back to Chandler and Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain and Jim Thompson.

Ira Gershwin's Lyrics on several occasions is a very good insight into the art of lyric writing.
The Gershwin Years by Edward Joblonski is well worth hunting out too.

Extend this thread to summer.
I've just finished James Gavin's 'Intimate Nights', a history of the New York cabaret scene.  Good in part but only in part.  I love the story of Bobby Short, a black man who lived in one of the wealthiest areas of Manhattan.  Something to celebrate.  But I could have done without all the crap about Streisand, Bette Midler etc. 
I'm now rereading Lenny Bruce's 'autobiography' for the first time since around 1979.  I'm no more a fan of all that counter-cultural shit than Woody Allen - but Bruce was funny. 
His shtick about flies.  Why has everybody got it in for flies?  They say they spread disease.  Listen, I've got a cousin who gave two guys the clap but no-one ever whacked her with a newspaper...

'The truth is what is, not what should be.  What should be is a dirty lie'.

Did Lenny Bruce say that?  I believe he did.

Yes, it's a terrific discography.  I ordered one of the Julie Wilson CDs just a couple of days ago. 
I bought the book mainly for the snippets on Blossom Dearie.  Who remains something of an enigma.  Evidently, though, a much tougher cookie than she's usually given credit with being.  She survived when others didn't. 
All the gay/AIDS stuff bored me rigid.