The Cryptogram by David Mamet
Posted: October 16, 2012 Filed under: Books, Theater / Drama | Tags: Books, David Mamet, English, Theater Leave a comment
Can't say I truly understood what this book was about. I didn't read it as child's coming of age or betrayal related to family breakup, as some reviews claimed.
It seems I am falling out of grace with Mamet – second play in a row that I don't like much. Frankly, Keep Your Pantheon one was funnier and easier to dig.
I reckon I should stop reading his drama and start hitting the theater more often – sad no Mamet available in Moscow though.
Or audio books. Downloaded Speed the Plow for Kindle – will see how it goes.
P.S. Am reading Bambi vs. Godzilla in parallel – also, not an easy read, though it's non-fiction – but it has it's moments, I guess.
Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography by Chester Brown
Posted: October 8, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic, Documentary | Tags: Books, Chester Brown, English 1 Comment
Imagine a comic book on the story of Stepan Razin or, I dunno, the Decabrist movement. This is what this Louis Riel comic bio is – a story of a renowned Canadian freedom fighter, statesman and politician, hanged by the neck at the end.
Chester Brown has always claimed it to be his masterwork – maybe so indeed, but I prefer his autobio books like Paying For It much more.
Truth be told, Brown must’ve studied quite a few books on Riel – as it shows him with all the weaknesses and controversies. Ah, whatever – not the worst 1.5hr read I’ve had in my life.
Keep Your Pantheon (and School): Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet
Posted: September 23, 2012 Filed under: Books, Theater / Drama | Tags: Books, David Mamet, English 1 Comment
You have to agree – the title is a smart-ass pun of words, huh?
Keep Your Pantheon is Mamet's 2008 play about a troupe of poor Roman actors struggling to make a buck (well, a few hundred sesterces) and keep not even their pants – their heads on.
Frankly, as much as I like Mamet (by all means, the man is a great playwright), while the book is quite readable (and, god is merciful, short: just 70 pages), it's just not as much fun as, say, Glengarry Glen Ross or Oleanna or even more recent Race.
It is witty and it is about ancient Rome, a very trendy topic recently, but not something I could relate to in full. It probably had something to do with the fact that I view Mamet as a quite contemporary author, and all his attempts at pre-XXth century settings are not exactly my favorites, movies inclusive – take The Winslow Boy, for example – weak.
School is way too short – plus it lacks a meaningful story for me to like it – thought it had a funny quote for me to steal.
B: No, we “won” the war. Though, while not debatable, it is ironic. That the cars we drive. Are made by the nations we obliterated. That's ironic.
R.I.P.: Best of 1985-2004 by Thomas Ott
Posted: August 8, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic | Tags: Books, English, Thomas Ott 1 Comment
The R.I.P. anthology is a much darker and uglier set of crime/horror stories by Swiss author Thomas Ott than his other books like Cinema Panopticum or The Number.
Full of murder, hate, oppression, torture, suicide, and madness, these stories may repulse quite a few readers. The content is not so much different from a typical Alfred Hitchcock Presents / Tales from the Crypt kind of story, but in a comic book format, especially one drawn by Ott, the stories are much more graphic, disturbing and gory.
I copied here Clean Up!, not so sinister a tale that I was able to get from the book sampler – probably not the best in the collection, but still, it gives a very good idea what to expect.
Cinema Panopticum by Thomas Ott
Posted: August 7, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic | Tags: Art, Books, English, Thomas Ott 2 Comments
I found Thomas Ott by pure accident, flipping through the shelves of Newbury Comics in Harvard Sq. The book I got myself back then had a fascinating cover and an intriguing title The Number 73304-23-4156-6-96-8 – and given it was a pricey hardcover packed in sealed cellophane, I couldn't sneak a peak – so I bought it just because of these two characteristics, cover and title. It was worth it – indeed, it was a hell of a read, as far as i remember – though, to be absolutely frank, I forgot the story entirely by now. Will re-visit.
Cinema Panopticum is a shorter book – took me 20-something minutes to flip it through. An intriguing collection of five short horror stories, drawn in line with Ott's unique style. No words used at all, the book is a classy silent movie in comic book format – and not a Chaplin one, but rather Eisenstein's or Vertov's. The content of the stories is quite Kafkian, to say the least, form and plot – and I wonder whether The Champion story was influenced by any chance by Guy Maddin's La Sombra Dolorosa short. Hm.
Absolutely enjoyable and fun.
Fair Weather by Joe Matt
Posted: July 30, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic | Tags: Books, English, Joe Matt Leave a comment
Liked Joe Matt so much, decided to read another book of his this Sunday evening – a short comic memoir about his childhood called Fair Weather.
Turned out to be an easy going 100-or-so pageturner about two boys' weekend in suburban Pennsylvania. So charming, it reminded me a few Soviet childhood stories I read as a boy in late 80s – written in the post war Soviet Union, 50s to 70s, I guess, about kids looking for potential spies or exploring neighborhood basements etc etc. All those Soviet young commie propaganda authors long forgotten by all but myself. [sigh]
My honest opinion: this is a perfect comic book for a teenager to read – and can be as perfect for a grumpy old fellow like me who smiled sadly remembering his childhood long gone. Too much swearing for a children's book, some parents might say – oh well, I did swear as well as a youngster, if I remember correctly. Bikes, swearing and ножички, that was cool. Oh youth.
The Poor Bastard by Joe Matt
Posted: July 29, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic | Tags: Books, Chester Brown, English, Joe Matt, Seth Leave a comment
Joe Matt is merciless to himself – and I guess, gets more and more so with each book he writes (draws). The Poor Bastard precedes Spent, Matt's well known book depicting his lifelong addiction to masturbation and porn – and Bastard is from pre-Spent times, when Joe had girlfriends or aspired to have them at least.
The funniest is chapter 1, no doubt, The Girl from Ipanema story, describing Joe's big time crush on his girlfriend's Trish co-worker named Frankie – and how Trish finds out about this from a comic strip. Classic.
Funniest about it is that it turned out to be not a fictitious character – I did enjoy reading the interview with the original Frankie girl, who also found out about her being Joe's crush from this book.
Insecure and picky about girls' looks, Matt keeps on trying to find his one and only in bold and unsavvy moves. Overall, sheer fun. Sveta from Ivanovo отдыхает.
The Walking Dead vol. 15: We Find Ourselves by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn
Posted: July 28, 2012 Filed under: Books, Comic | Tags: Books, English, Robert Kirkman, Zombie 1 Comment
Only now I have laid my hands on Kirkman's TWD vol. 15 – quite some time after I watched seasons 1 and 2 of the joint Darabont / Kirkman extremely popular and gripping AMC show – which, I have to say, is very close to the book in spirit, but quite different in story line.
Just to mention a few plot differences – I keep on waiting for the show to saw off Rick's arm. Carl's been shot in the belly on the telly – in the book, it was a headshot he survived through. On TV, Dale died in the last season, devoured by a walker – and in the book, he also died, but slowly, first, bitten by a walker, and then cannibals ate his leg! Don't think Alabama housewives are prepared for that kind of gore in the zombiebox.
The surprise of this volume – and to put things in perspective, Lori has been dead for a while in the book – Rick makes out with Andrea – now that's the new twist of the melodrama the TV series lacks ))) TWD vol. 16 awaits to be read.
P.S. Whew, Sherlock, TWD vol. 16 was plain boring. Nothing to report.
Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith
Posted: July 17, 2012 Filed under: Books, Documentary, Non-fiction | Tags: Books, English, Filmmaking, Kevin Smith Leave a comment
Smith is one funny bastard, that I have to agree. The guy who brought Clerks less than 20 years ago on an unbelievable $27k budget, having passed through the guts and glory of show biz, he still hasn't lost it. Well, hasn't lost it entirely, at least.
The book is about him – well, who else? Childhood in NJ, convenience store clerk job, Clerks, Sundance, Harvey Weinstein, bigger budgets, go-go-go.
Key highlights of the book – Kev's way into the movies, Bruce Willis who turned out to be a total primadonna jerk (reading Cop Out shooting notes was fun fun fun), and Kev's true story about Too Fat To Fly incident.
While going through the book I realized I had missed Smith's last movie, a messy action thriller called Red State – watched it immediately, gripping stuff. Smith claims Quentin loved it. I'm not surprised.
To finish, a small piece of wisdom from our one and only Silent Bob
People need to be regularly reminded that they began as cum. Not to diminish or cut 'em down to size – quite the contrary: I tell people they were cum once as a gesture of my awe at their very existence and to pat 'em on the back. There are no losers in life because every one of us who is born is a huge fucking winner.
Whenever someone tells me I'm fat, I tell 'em I wasn't always: Apparently, at one point in my life, I was fit enough to out-swim a legion of sperm. And now, like any past-their-prime athlete, I'm enjoying the good life: I hoisted my Cup already, so at this point, fuck off and lemme enjoy bacon and brownies (maybe even together).
Fooling Some of the People All of the Time by David Einhorn
Posted: July 4, 2012 Filed under: Books, Documentary, Non-fiction | Tags: Books, David Einhorn, English 1 Comment
I came by David Einhorn's Don Quijotean saga of a 6-year long fight by pure chance.
All I knew was that Einhorn was a hedge fund manager for Greenlight Capital, a prominent short-seller and critic of Lehman a year prior to their demise.
As usual, I didn't read the description when I bought the book – so I was quite surprised to find out that it was not about Einhorn shorting subprime bonds in late 2000s (which apparently he never did), but about his 2002 short position in a midcap public PE and SME lending outfit called Allied Capital. Now, who the F are Allied Capital and why read 400 pages about them?
Turned out, it didn't matter that much. Allied was the villain, or so it seems – but the book is not about that at all. Or not only about that. The book is about extreme example of acute shareholder activism – and from a guy who shorted the stock! Our very own enfant terrible Alexey Navalny should envy the level of detail, attention, investigation efforts and time invested in this position. I seriously doubt most fund managers do anything close to that kind of thing – the guy is simply amazing.
Greenlight's fight against Allied started from an investment idea speech (quite an interesting and funny one!) at a charity investor conference. Essentially, Einhorn claimed a company misstated accounts. As a result, he endured a 6-year long libeling campaign by Allied and a number of government authority investigations only to prove he was right in the first place! He even had his phone records stolen by his corporate adversary – not in Russia, no Nemtsovgate – in the US! I am struggling to remember whether I heard about Navalny in 2006. 6 years is a lot!
On the reading side, the narrative gets boring from time to time as Einhorn is extremely methodical in putting all arguments in an exhaustive fashion, never missing a beat. Not a single shady disclosure on page 87 of the appendix to the quarterly report is missed. Basic accounting knowledge required, huh.
Still, a great find and a great read. Proves 2 things: (a) governments are malfunctioning everywhere, and (b) talent won't suffice, you need persitance. True indeed.
More on Einhorn's website: http://foolingsomepeople.com/
The Byrne performance reminded me of something Warren Buffet once told me about the difficulty of shorting the stocks of companies run by crooks, because they'll fight dirty to save themselves. “The crook's life depends on it,” – Buffet said.
Arguably, the biggest difference between Allied and Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme is that Allied went through the motions of actually investing the customer money while Madoff didn't even bother.
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