What are you reading at the moment?

[hotmetal]

Quite a gritty tale then?

 

[Ferrum]

"20,000 Streets Under The Sky" by Patrick Hamilton, alcoholic author of this, "Hangover Square" and the plays "Rope" and "Gas Light" (then made into a film and the origin of the current expression "gaslighting"), among many other plays and novels. He certainly managed to produce quite a lot "under the influence" and before pegging out at 58.

 

[PHR]

"20,000 Streets Under The Sky" by Patrick Hamilton, alcoholic author of this, "Hangover Square" and the plays "Rope" and "Gas Light" (then made into a film and the origin of the current expression "gaslighting"), among many other plays and novels. He certainly managed to produce quite a lot "under the influence" and before pegging out at 58.

That's quite an output! Hangover Square was also made into a film with a terrific score by Bernard Herman. Rope I assume is the source of the Hitchcock film?

 

[Ferrum]

That's quite an output! Hangover Square was also made into a film with a terrific score by Bernard Herman. Rope I assume is the source of the Hitchcock film?

Indeed it is. Hamilton died at the start of the Sixties, and although he must have made some money from his works being made into films, I have the impression it wasn't a fortune.

He, along with Julian Maclaren-Ross and Jocelyn Brooke, is one of my favourite authors of the Thirties and Forties.

 

[Skylarking]

 

[Ferrum]

I'm ploughing on with "20,000 Streets Under The Sky", which, in my paperback copy, runs to 527 pages. That's because it's really three books together. It's a curious writing style, which in places is a bit "stream of consciousness", but with better grammar and punctuation. It's not a book to raise the spirits, but as one who lived and worked in central London, before it changed radically and lost a lot of its pre-war locales, it has the attraction, for me, of describing places I knew and frequented.

Happy New Year and Good Reading.

 

[factormax]

John Cooper Clark - 'I Wanna Be Yours'

Hilarious! Highly recommended!

 

[paulmc]

Just finished “born a crime” by Trevor Noah, describing his upbringing in apartheid South Africa. Both entertaining and enlightening.

 

[Missoni]

Just find Jean-Patrick Manchette's violent, existentialist, crime novels addictive at the moment...a slice of French noir so atmospheric you can almost smell the Gitanes and taste the black coffee...nearly started smoking again!

 

[Missoni]

 

[Mike Smart]

Reading this for the second time
Absolutely love this author

 

[IanR]

The Borders Trilogy - Cormac McCarthy.