Search Results for: Books Read

A

“A” Is for Alibi

Abandon Ship!

The ABC Murders

About a Boy

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

After the Funeral

Against All Enemies

The Agenda

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 

The Alienist

Alive

All the King’s Men

All the President’s Men

American Conspiracies

American Jihad

American on Purpose

American Rhapsody

America’s Great Unsolved Mysteries

The Amityville Horror

The Ancient Alien Question

And the Sea Will Tell

And Then There Were None

Angela’s Ashes

Animal Farm

Anna Karenina

The Antichrist

Appointment with Death

Arctic Drift

Are Men Necessary?

Around the World in 80 Days

Art That Changed the World

The Ask

Atonement

Aunt Dimity’s Death

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Autobiography of Mark Twain

Awake in the Dark

 

B

Bad Love

Bag of Bones

Ball Four

The Beatles

Beautiful Ruins

The Bedwetter

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Being There

The Bell Jar

Benjamin Franklin

Bias

The Big Short

The Big Sky

The Big Sleep

The Black Arrow

Black Like Me

Blizzard

Blood Feud

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Bonjour Laziness

The Book of Genesis

The Book of Guys

The Bourne Identity

Brave New World

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Breakfast of Champions

A Brief History of Time

A Bright Shining Lie

 

C

Call of the Wild

Candy Girl

Captains and the Kings

Captains Courageous

Cards on the Table

Carrie

The Case of Jennie Brice

The Case of the Stuttering Bishop

Catch-22

Catch Me If You Can

The Catcher in the Rye

The Cater Street Hangman

Cat’s Cradle

Cell

Chariots of the Gods?

The Chill

Christine

A Christmas Carol

The Circular Staircase

A Clockwork Orange

Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind

The Club Dumas

The Cobra Event

A Coffin for Dimitrios

The Coffins of Little Hope

Cold Mountain

The Color of Magic

The Coming Generational Storm

The Complete History of Jack the Ripper

The Concrete Blonde

A Confederacy of Dunces

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Confessions of a Video Vixen

Contact

The Count of Monte Cristo

Creepy Archives, Volume 1

Creepy Archives, Volume 2

Crime and Punishment

The Crying of Lot 49

Cujo

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Curtain

 

D

The Da Vinci Code

Danse Macabre

The Dante Club

The Dark Side of Genius

Dark Soul of the South

Dark Star Safari

Darkness, Take My Hand

The Daughters of Cain

David Copperfield

The Day of the Jackal

The Dead Zone

Deadly Innocence

Death by Black Hole

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death in Holy Orders

Death in the Clouds

Death Is Now My Neighbor

Death of a Salesman

Death on the Nile

The Deep Blue Good-by

Deliverance

Democracy in America

Desperation

Devices and Desires

Devil in a Blue Dress

Diary of a Drug Fiend

The Diary of a Young Girl

Different Seasons

Dog On It

The Dogs of Riga

Don’t Look Now

Dr. Death

Dracula

Drift

A Drinking Life

Duma Key

Dumb Witness

The Dying Animal

 

 

E

Early Autumn

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eerie Archives, Volume 1

Eleven on Top

Empire Falls

The End of Men

The End of the Affair

Endgame

An English Murder

Equus

Everything Bad Is Good for You

Evil Under the Sun

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

Exclusive

The Executioner’s Song

The Exorcist

Explosive Eighteen

 

 

F

Faceless Killers

Fahrenheit 451

Fatal Vision

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear of Flying

Fearless Fourteen

The Fellowship of the Ring

Fiasco

50 Great Short Stories

Fight Club

Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

Firestarter

Flowers for Algernon

Flowers in the Attic

Forging the Tortilla Curtain

Fountain Society

Four Past Midnight

Four to Score

The Fran Lebowitz Reader

Frankenstein

Friday Night Lights

From Beirut to Jerusalem

Full Service

The Further Prophecies of Nostradamus

Future Shock

 

 

G

The Game

Game Change

A Game of Thrones

Get Shorty

The Ghost

Ghost Soldiers

Ghost Story

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

God Is Not Great

Gone Girl

Gone with the Wind

The Good Nurse

The Grand Design

The Grapes of Wrath

A Great Deliverance

Great Expectations

The Great Gatsby

Gulliver’s Travels

The Guns of Navarone

The Gunslinger

 

 

H

Hallowe’en Party

Ham on Rye

Hamlet

A Handful of Dust

The Handmaid’s Tale

Happy Endings

Hard Eight

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Harry Potter:  Page to Screen

Harvey

Hating Women

The Haunting of Hill House

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Heart of Darkness

Heartburn

Helter Skelter

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

Hickory Dickory Dock

High Fidelity

High Five

Hitchcock

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Hocus Pocus

Holy Bible

Homefront

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

Hot Six

The Hot Zone

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The House Next Door

How to … Make Love Like a Porn Star

The Hunger Games

The Hunt for Red October

Hush Money  

 

 

I

I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed

I Am Legend

I Hate Other People’s Kids

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

I Lock My Door Upon Myself

I Love This Game!

The Ice Princess

I’ll Always Have Paris!

In Cold Blood

In Defense of Women

Independence Day

The Inferno

Inside the White House

Insomnia

An Instance of the Fingerpost

Into Thin Air

Invisible Man

The Invisible Man

The Island of Dr. Moreau

It

 

J

Jane Eyre

Jaws

The Jewel that Was Ours

Johnny Carson

A Journey to the Center of the Earth

Juliet, Naked

 

K

Kidnapped

The Killer Inside Me

Killing Floor

King Arthur and His Knights

King Lear

Kiss the Girls

Kitchen Confidential

The Kite Runner

  

L

Last Bus to Woodstock

The Last Good Kiss

The Last Magazine

The Laughing Policeman

Lean Mean Thirteen

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Les Miserables

Let the Right One In

Lies My Teacher Told Me

A Life on the Road

Light in August

The Lodger

Lolita

Lonesome Dove

The Long Walk

Look Homeward, Angel

Looking for Rachel Wallace

Lord Edgware Dies

Lord Grizzly

Lord of the Flies

The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover

The Lovely Bones

Lucky Jim

   

M

Macbeth

Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard

Main Street

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

The Man with the Golden Gun

Master and Commander

Master of Ballantrae

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Mein Kampf

Memoirs of a Geisha

Men and Marriage

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

Men in Love

The Merchant of Venice

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Mike’s Election Guide 2008

A Million Little Pieces

Misery

Miss America

Moby Dick

The Monkey’s Raincoat

The Monster of Florence

The Moon and Sixpence

The Moronic Inferno

Mortal Stakes

The Most Dangerous Game

The Mother Tongue

A Moveable Feast

The Moving Finger

The Moving Toyshop

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Mr. Murder

Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Obliged, Jeeves

Murder in Mesopotamia

A Murder Is Announced

Murder Must Advertise

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder on the Links

Murder on the Orient Express

My Dog Skip

My Life and Hard Times

My Life So Far

Myra Breckinridge

Myron

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Island

  

N

Naked Pictures of Famous People

Needful Things

Neither Here Nor There

Never Let Me Go

The “New” New Rules

Nickel and Dimed

The Nigger of the Narcissus

Night Film

Night Shift

A Night to Remember

The Nine

1984

Nineteen Minutes

No Easy Day

No Mercy

No More Dying Then

Nothing to Lose

Notorious Nineteen

  

O

Obsession

The Odyssey

Of Mice and Men

The Old Man and the Sea

Oliver Twist

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

On Death and Dying

On the Beach

On the Road

On Writing

The Once and Future King

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One for the Books

One for the Money

102 Minutes

One Hundred Years of Solitude

The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes

The Osterman Weekend

Our Final Hour

Out of Sight

Out on a Limb

Outrage

The Oxford Murders

 

P

Pale Blue Dot

The Passage

The Pelican Brief

People Who Eat Darkness

Peril at End House

Pet Sematary

Peter Pan

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Playmates

Plum Lovin’

Plum Lucky

Plum Spooky

Plutocrats

The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

The Poet

Portnoy’s Complaint

The Post-American World

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Presumed Innocent

Pride and Prejudice

Primary Colors

Private Parts

Pros and Cons

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The Psychopath Test

Pygmalion

 

R

The Rant Zone

Rebecca

The Red Badge of Courage

Red Dragon

Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon

The Redbreast

The Regulators

The Remains of the Day

The Remorseful Day

Rendezvous in Black

The Riddle of the Third Mile

The Right Stuff

The Road

Robinson Crusoe

Rosemary’s Baby

The Round House

The Ruins

The Rules

The Rules of Attraction

Rules of Prey

 

S

‘Salem’s Lot

Sanibel Flats

The Scarlet Letter

The Searchers

Second Reading

The Secret Adversary

The Secret Life of Bob Hope

The Secret Sharer

Semi-Tough

Sense and Sensibility

A Separate Peace

Serling

Service of All the Dead

Seven Up

The Shining

Shock Value

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Shrub

Sidetracked

The Silence of the Lambs

Silent Witness

A Simple Plan

The Sirens of Titan

Sizzling Sixteen

Skeleton Crew

Skinny Legs and All

Slaughterhouse-Five

Smokin’ Seventeen

The Sociopath Next Door

The Solitary Vice

Some Buried Caesar

Someone Like You

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Song of Solomon

The Sound and the Fury

Sphere

The Stand

Starship Troopers

State of Wonder

Stealing Shadows

Stiffed

Stormy Weather

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Stranger

The Stranger Beside Me

Stupid White Men

The Sun Also Rises

The Swiss Family Robinson

  

T

Takedown Twenty

A Tale of Two Cities

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Ten Big Ones

The Terror of Living  *

A Test of Wills

A Thief of Time

The Thin Man

The Thin Woman

Third World America

The Thirty-Nine Steps

Three to Get Deadly

Through the Looking-Glass

Thus Was Adonis Murdered

The Tiger in the Smoke

The Time Machine

A Time to Kill

Timeline

The Tin Drum  *

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

To Kill a Mockingbird

To the Nines

Totally MAD

Toxic Bachelors

Track of the Cat

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

Treasure Island

True Grit

The Turn of the Screw

The Twelve Caesars

Twelve Sharp

20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea

Two for the Dough 

 

U

Ubik

Undaunted Courage

Under the Dome

The Unexpected Guest

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

  

V

Valley of the Dolls

Vanity Fair

Velocity

Visions of Sugar Plums

 

W

Waiting for Godot

War and Peace

The War of the Worlds

The Way Through the Woods

The Way We Live Now

Weir of Hermiston

The West Wing

What Cops Know

What’s the Matter with Kansas?

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden

White Fang

The White Lioness

White Teeth

Who Goes There?

Whose Body?

Why Do Men Have Nipples?

Why You’re Still Single

The Window at the White Cat

Wiseguy

The Witches of Eastwick

Wolf Hall

Women on Top

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Working Stiff

The World According to Garp

Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love

Wuthering Heights

  

Y

The Year of Magical Thinking

You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again

  

 

*  There are two books on the list that the Grouch did not read from cover to cover.  The Terror of Living was too terrible to finish; The Tin Drum was simply annoying.

 

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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Since we are “self isolating,” we thought this would be a good time to post something fun. So here are thumbnails of the covers of books that Grouch has read over the past 25 years. Where possible, the covers shown are the actual covers when the books were purchased, whether in 1995, 2005, or yesterday — probably about 95 percent of the titles. The list is alphabetical. 

Click on any image for a view of the full cover. 

 

grouchyeditor.com perfect people 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whew … that’s a lot of scrolling. If you’d like to read short reviews of about one-third of the above books, click here for an index with links.

 

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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Books

 

If Art Garfunkel feels the need to post a “books read” list on his Web site, then so does the Grouch.  Here is a list of Grouch’s literary conquests of the past 20 years – works of genius and works of dreck.  Click here.

 

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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 by Joe Queenan

Queenan

 

Humorist Queenan, now in his 60s, says he occasionally visits the suburban Philadelphia library that he patronized in his youth, and where a librarian from that era, one Edith Prout, still toils among the shelves.  One of Queenan’s books is stocked on those shelves.  “Edith herself isn’t all that taken with my work,” Queenan tells us.  “Too cynical, she says.  Too snarky.”

I think Edith might have a point.  Although Queenan’s homage to the book, in which he writes lovingly not just of his collection’s content but also of each title’s importance as a symbol of treasured moments in his life, is often funny, sometimes poignant, and frequently biting,  I think One for the Books is probably best read in bits and pieces, rather than all at once – too much snarkiness can be hazardous to your health.

 

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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by Jonathan Yardley

Reading

 

What a great book about books.  Yardley, a literature critic at The Washington Post since 1981, has an infectious writing style; I couldn’t decide what I enjoyed more, the prospect of digging into some of his recommendations, or the reviews themselves.  Yardley praises the majority of “notable and neglected books revisited,” but on occasion he unfurls critical claws, most memorably on Steinbeck (“too often, for me, reading his prose is like scraping one’s fingernails on a blackboard”), Ulysses (“a book I simply cannot read”), and The Catcher in the Rye and The Old Man and the Sea (“two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst”).  He also has some choice words for the National Book Award:  “I read Morte d’Urban not long after it won the NBA; in those years that prize still occasionally went to books that deserved it.”  But mostly, Second Reading is a love letter to the 60 books and authors in its pages.  I’d say more, but I have to get reading.

 

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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Click on title for review 

 

Adios, America!

Aesop’s Fables

Against Football

All Creatures Great and Small

The Almost Nearly Perfect People

American Conspiracies

American Dirt

American on Purpose

The Amityville Horror

The Ancient Alien Question

Angry White Men

Anna Karenina

Art That Changed the World

The Ask

Atonement

Autobiography of Mark Twain

Beautiful Ruins

The Bedwetter

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Being There

Benighted

The Big Short

Bleak Harbor

Blood Feud

Booked to Die

The Bookshop Murder

Brideshead Revisited

Candide

The Canterville Ghost

The Case of Jennie Brice

The Chaos Kind

The Chill

A Christmas Carol

The Clocks

The Coddling of the American Mind

The Coffins of Little Hope

Consider the Lobster

The Constitution & The Declaration of Independence

The Corrections

Crooked House

The Cuckoo’s Calling

Dark Soul of the South

The Daughters of Cain

David Copperfield

Death in Holy Orders

Death in the Clouds

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The Devil in the White City

Diary of a Drug Fiend

Dog On It

Don’t Look Now

Down the Rabbit Hole

Drift

The End of Men

Endgame

Endless Night

An English Murder

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

Explosive Eighteen

The Far Side Gallery

Fatal Vision

Final Justice

Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

Five Little Pigs

Flashman

Four Past Midnight

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy

Free Women, Free Men

Full Service

Game Change

A Game of Thrones

Get Shorty

The Ghost

The Girl on the Train

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

God Is Not Great

Gone Girl

The Good Nurse

A Good Time for the Truth

The Grand Design

Grand Hotel

The Guest List

The Handmaid’s Tale

Happy Endings

Harry Potter:  Page to Screen

Heartburn

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

House of Mirth

The Hunger Games

The Ice Princess

The Importance of Being Earnest

In the Woods

Iron Lake

The Island of Dr. Moreau

Jane Eyre

Johnny Carson

The Joy Luck Club

Juliet, Naked

The Killer Inside Me

Killing Lincoln

Killings

The Killings at Badger’s Drift

The Lady Vanishes

The Last Magazine

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Les Miserables

Let the Right One In

Lights Out

The Lodger

The Long Walk

Lord Grizzly

The Lost World

Lucky Jim

Madhouse at the End of the Earth

Magpie Murders

Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard

Making Movies

The Man in Lower Ten

The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Martian

The Merchant of Venice

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Monsieur Lecoq

The Moon Maid

The Moon-Spinners

The Moon’s a Balloon

The Most Dangerous Game

Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You

A Moveable Feast

The Moving Toyshop

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Murder in Mesopotamia

Murder in the Crooked House

My Life and Hard Times

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Mystery of the Blue Train

The Mystery of the Yellow Room

The Name of the Rose

Needful Things

The “New” New Rules

Night Film

No Easy Day

Notorious Nineteen

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Old Man and the Sea

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

On the Clock

One for the Books

Out on a Limb

The Oxford Murders

The Passage

People Who Eat Darkness

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

Plum Spooky

Plutocrats

Presumed Innocent

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Psycho

The Psychopath Test

Put Out the Light

Pygmalion

The Redbreast

The Road to Little Dribbling

Roadwork

Rosemary’s Baby

The Round House

Sanibel Flats

The Searchers

Second Reading

The Secret Adversary

The Secret Garden

The Secret Life of Bob Hope

Sense and Sensibility

Service of All the Dead

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The Shakespeare Requirement

Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Ship of Fools

Shock Value

The Silence of the Lambs

The Sittaford Mystery

Sizzling Sixteen

Smokin’ Seventeen

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed

Someone Like You

The Spiral Staircase

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Stalin

State of Wonder

Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films

Stiffed

Still Life

Sting-Ray Afternoons

Takedown Twenty

Ten Dead Comedians

The Terror of Living

A Test of Wills

The Thin Woman

Things That Matter

Third World America

Thirteen Guests

Thus Was Adonis Murdered

The Tiger in the Smoke

Time and Again

The Tin Drum

Totally MAD

Track of the Cat

The Tragedy at Freyne

True Grit

The Twelve Caesars

Ubik

Up the Down Staircase

Valley of the Dolls

The Voyeur’s Motel

Waiting for Godot

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

Welcome to the Monkey House

What the Dog Saw

The White Lioness

White Working Class

Who Goes There?

The Window at the White Cat

Winners Take All

Wolf Hall

The Woman in White

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

A Wrinkle in Time

 

Books Read 1995 – 2014

The Bookshelf

 

 

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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OK, so I’m a bit late to the party with Game of Thrones. The show ended its run in 2019. But I was curious to find out what the fuss was about, so I spent the past four months binge-watching all 73 episodes.

I had read the first installment of George R.R. Martin’s celebrated Thrones novels years ago. I thought it was OK, but not so good that I wanted to continue reading the books. When it came to fantasy literature, I preferred The Once and Future King, or even the Harry Potter novels.

But HBO’s adaptation of Martin’s books was a cultural phenomenon. And I had missed out (I did see season 1).

In December of last year, I decided it was time for me to check out the entire series.

 

Click on any picture for a larger view

 

Main takeaways: It is a very good show. Not my all-time favorite, which remains Breaking Bad, but it’s probably in my top ten; possibly in my top five. Also, the much-maligned eighth and final season was fine. More on that later. Impressions:

 

1)  Let’s face it. The story is silly. Very silly. It has fire-breathing dragons, witches, giants, and vampire-like ice people. The miracle is that all this fantasy silliness lives in harmony with character-driven scenes in which actors deliver clever, occasionally profound dialogue. There are so many larger-than-life personalities in play, and we know it’s just a matter of time before they clash.

It’s this riveting soap opera that makes the series so addictive — even though the dragons are a hoot. 

 

2)  Season eight’s episode titled “The Bells” is essentially a 60-minute fight scene. Normally, I get bored with fight scenes before 60 seconds elapse.

Too many shows conflate deafening sound effects, speed-of-light edits, and swirling camera angles with “action.” They are not good action. It’s annoying chaos when you cannot tell who is who, what is what, where is where, and when is when.

To this episode’s credit, I was absorbed for the entire hour. Thrones is exceptionally good about this in most of its action scenes.

 

3)  I am going to defend season eight as a whole. I thought it was fine. I’m thinking a lot of fans were disappointed by the ending because their favored characters did not wind up on the throne. If you loved Arya and Arya wound up ruling the seven (or six) kingdoms, you’d probably be fine with season eight. Ditto for Jon Snow, Daenerys, et. al.

Season eight also had satisfying wrap-ups for most of the show’s major characters.

 

King’s Landing

 

4)  Much of the CGI in Game of Thrones looked fake, including King’s Landing castles, and the dragons, but I didn’t care. Ray Harryhausen’s skeleton soldiers in 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts also looked fake, but I enjoyed them anyway.

 

5)  The themes were timeless. If you follow politics in 2024, you will recognize many of the same issues and characters in fictional Westeros that we see on the daily news. Are things better with men in charge, or women? How much democracy is too much democracy? Is blood really thicker than water? Are the White Walkers a metaphor for climate change? Would you shoot your abusive father while he is sitting on the john?

 

6) All the gratuitous nudity. Call me old fashioned, or call me a chauvinist pig, but I appreciate that the naked ladies looked like real naked ladies from any historical time period — save the last 30 years. Medieval broads did not have Life Time Fitness. They did not have abs or pecs. They were soft and cuddly.

 

7) Season eight was heavily criticized for abandoning the show’s leisurely pace. But if I had a complaint about earlier seasons, it was that some of the plotlines tended to drag. I am thinking of Arya’s endless apprenticeship as “a girl.” I am thinking of Daenerys’s reign in the continent of Essos. For the most part, Bran’s journey was a bore (the three-eyed fucking raven?).

 

8)  Too often, when the good guys are suddenly surrounded by bad guys, or even armies, and things look dire, they are rescued at the last minute by allies with perfect timing. You can get by with that sort of deus ex machina occasionally, but it happens a lot in Thrones.

 

Overall, Game of Thrones was an excellent show. Its dark moments were often shocking. Its action sequences were well done. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss took a lot of shit for, allegedly, letting down fans in the show’s later seasons. I think they did a bang-up job. A better job than George R.R. Martin in the first book.

I’m going to miss Game of Thrones. Is it my favorite show of all time? No. Does it make my top ten? Definitely. In my top five? Hmmm, maybe. Ask me again in a few years.

 

 

Favorite duo:  Arya and “The Hound” (above)

 

Character I was supposed to love, but did not:  Jorah Mormont

 

 

Character I disliked at first. But much like his waistline, he grew on me:  Samwell Tarly (above)

 

Best villain: Can’t list all of them. But here are my top five: Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon, Tywin Lannister, Ramsay Bolton, Walder Frey

 

 

Glue holding the entire series together:  Tyrion Lannister (above), of course

 

Best nudes:  Because I have little interest in Hodor’s crowbar or Peter’s dinklage, I’m focusing on Thrones’s actresses.

 

Honorable Mentions:

 

Carice van Houten (above) was not shy about showing her goods — all of them

 

Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter, Oona (above) in a cheeky scene

 

Hottest Nudes

 

Nathalie Emmanuel front (above) and back (below)

 

 

Emilia Clarke (above and below), who was every (male’s) queen

 

 

 

Airdates: 2011-2019   Grade: A-

 

 

 © 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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I finally got around to watching Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. If you’d like to read a traditional review of the film, there are 484 of them on Rotten Tomatoes, and 442 on IMDB (probably some overlap between the two sites).

I’m not going to do a traditional review. Instead, here are some of my thoughts about the film:

 

 

 

Nolan’s biopic is ostensibly the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic, scientific genius dubbed the “Father of the Atom Bomb.” But with apologies to Jordan Peele, I think Oppenheimer might have more accurately been titled Us. It’s about much more than a single man.

I was born long after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so I’ve lived my entire life under the shadow of potential nuclear war, the specter of global annihilation. I presume that you have, too. It makes me wonder if the Japanese bombings fundamentally changed the psychology of the human race.

Did people born pre-1945 have a completely different outlook than those of us born later? If so, how does that manifest itself today? According to the movie, Oppenheimer himself was haunted by his creation. Shouldn’t we be, too?

 

 

I’m no scientist nor a historian, so I can’t vouch for the historical accuracy of this movie. But as a dramatization, it is gripping and, for such a lengthy (three hours) production, moves at lightning speed.

It’s very talky. In that respect, it reminded me a bit of The West Wing. As in Aaron Sorkin’s TV series, I got lost trying to keep up with the incessant talk about subjects with which I was unfamiliar. In West Wing, that was often government policy; in Oppenheimer, it’s fission, fusion, isotopes — and the political climate of the 1940s- ‘50s. But there’s something mesmerizing about watching smart people discuss difficult subjects, whether we are well-versed in those subjects, or not.

 

 

There’s been a lot of praise for Robert Downey Jr., who as politician Lewis Strauss returns to “serious cinema.” From some Web-site articles, you might suspect that Downey had been kidnapped and held hostage in South America for the past ten years or so.

Uh, not really. He very happily grabbed lots of cash and turned his career into a series of comic-book movies.

 

Downey doing comic books

 

 

 

Oppenheimer makes me an even bigger fan of Cillian Murphy.

With his baby-face, I did not expect Murphy to completely own the role of a tough mobster in the TV show Peaky Blinders. But he excelled as Tommy Shelby. Ditto for Oppenheimer, in which Murphy nails the titular character. Baby face or not.

 

Baby-faced Tommy Shelby

 

 

 

I have never been a huge Nolan fan. I was underwhelmed by Inception and haven’t bothered to see his comic-book movies (about Batman). But this movie is clearly a triumph for him.

Nolan’s been criticized for making films that are “too much brain, too little heart.” I’m afraid that holds true in the final hour of this film, in which Oppenheimer comes under attack in the aftermath of the war and finds supporters in short supply. The last third of the movie should have been more powerful, like the two hours that precede it.

 

Release: 2023  Grade: A-

 

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I am reading On the Clock, a 2019 expose by journalist Emily Guendelsberger about blue-collar employment at companies like Amazon and McDonald’s.

I feel qualified to toss in a few opinions about this book. After working more than 30 years in the white-collar publishing world, I’ve spent the past five years doing low-wage warehouse work. (Don’t ask why; that’s another story, although it does not involve prison). You can safely say that I’ve experienced two vastly different American work settings.

Guendelsberger’s book is illuminating. It should be required reading for anyone who has only experienced the realm of the college-educated worker bees. Here are a few of my early impressions (through 80 pages) of On the Clock:

It’s a lot like Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 book, Nickel and Dimed. In both cases, reporters go undercover as low-skilled employees at corporate behemoths like Amazon (and at smaller venues, such as restaurants).

I do have one big issue with both books: Ehrenreich and Guendelsberger had an enormous advantage over most of their blue-collar coworkers. This advantage was psychological. Both writers knew that eventually they would escape the mind-and-body-numbing routines of unskilled labor.

Toiling at McDonald’s for a month or two is nothing compared to knowing that you could well spend most of your adult life in such an environment. In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich acknowledges this fact, but she downplays it. You should not do that.

I’m not far along enough into Clock to know if Guendelsberger will make the same mistake.

Aside from this shortcoming, Dimed and Clock are invaluable resources. I am convinced that college-bred, often pampered, white-collar America will learn something important. If they can be bothered to read the books.

 

**

 

 

The Grouch is happy to see TV journalist Liz Collin making news with her new documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis.

Rip van Dinkle is also tickled at Liz’s success. The two of them met back in 2015, when the topic of their conversation was … well, never mind.

 

**

 

 

Using the logic of this Media Matters headline, Donald Trump should never have done all those New York Times interviews, given how often the newspaper burned him.

Trump’s repeated acquiescence to Times requests for interviews was a classic example of the idiom, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Shame on Trump.

 

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I can smell the beginning of the end for artists who create covers for books, records, movies, etc. Why pay anyone hundreds or thousands of dollars for a design you must then wait for, when within seconds artificial intelligence can do the job for free?

I typed in “Three Stooges as vampires” and got the pictures above and below in less than 30 seconds.

 

 

I typed in “grouchy editor” and got this:

 

Nice, but I am not bald, dammit

 

I typed in “Elizabeth Montgomery in a bikini” and got threatened with a suspension. This angered me, so I searched other A.I. sites until I found one that produced the pictures below. Eh — not bad, but not great.

 

 

Clearly, A.I. is a genuine threat to many creative types.

 

**

 

It’s hard to write hundreds (or thousands) of movie, TV, and book reviews without resorting to cliches. I am certainly guilty.

I thought of this recently while reading about a television show that the reviewer called “highly addictive.” I’m sure that I’ve used that phrase.

Here’s another cliche that annoys me:

 

 

For some reason, this particular cliche is beginning to grate on me. “The movie doesn’t know what it wants to be.” Ugh.

I’ve used that, but I must not do it again.

 

**

 

 

I like and agree with a lot of what Vivek has to say. He seems to be a truth teller.

If only he didn’t remind me so much of a yipping chihuahua.

 

**

 

I am officially addicted to The Traitors. I finished season 1 of the U.S. version of the reality show, then watched season 1 of the British version, and am now gripped by season 1 of the Australian version. (There are more out there; seems every country in the world is producing this show.)

Which did I think was better, the U.K. or U.S. Traitors? Nobody does a murder mystery better than the Brits.  The U.K. show was less snark, more genuine emotion; less showbiz, more real suspense.

Bottom line: No matter the country of origin, The Traitors is a show that knows what it wants to be. Plus, it’s highly addictive.

 

 

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