Books you're reading (17 Viewers)
- Thread starter mikhail
- Start date
well than you for that i was close to buying this recently but decided to go later. i just finished Puzo's The Sicillian which was excellent. having read Cosa Nostra last year i had a better insight into the legend of Salvatore Gulliano and puzo does well to flesh out the legend, romanticising it a bit and making him a real robin hood character.
may just have to settle for omerta instead
may just have to settle for omerta instead
You won't be sorry. As for Turi Giuliano, quite excellent. There was another book "The Kingdom Of Johnny Cool," (alias Johnny Collini) by John McPartland (still available from Amazon, £2.50) back in the late 50's about how the Mafia supposedly faked Giuliano's death in 1950 & how they brought him to the US a year after hiding him in Rome & preparing him to do all they asked, but being Giuliano, he wanted to be a Don & they had to finally get rid of him...they didn't kill him, they beat him up so badly he was left like a vegetable. There's those who say that book is a true story, & it's a lot more explicit than the 1964 movie Johnny Cool which for legal reasons, calls him Salvatore Giordano! If you ever get to see the film, look for Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched) as Dare Guiness, Telly Savalas, & rat packers Joey Bishop & Sammy Davis.
Oh you haven't heard? 
Anyway I avoided this thread like the plague in case spoilers did show...guess I didn't have to afterall.
Spoilers ahead:
It was okay...didn't really fall in love with the happily ever after ending for the trio at the end. I was hoping that at least one of them would die.
The blood tie thing (if anyone beside me here has read the book
) was also very confusing. I got the fact that Harry was one of Voldemort's horcruxes and when Harry "died" Voldermort's fragmented soul was removed from Harry, but did that mean that the blood tie, which in my mind was an entirely different thing to the Horcrux, was removed too? :S Rowling left me with the impression that the blood tie meant that both had to die...Oh and the epilogue...I had to skim over it pretty quickly to avoid wretching my guts out...it was that corny/cheesy/bad. I mean c'mon!
I finished Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown last night.
It's about a wide range of techniques Brown uses in his shows, from simple magic tricks to memory tricks to hypnotism to cold reading. It's also highly critical of alternative medicine, religion, pseudo-science and fraudulent psychics, written from the perspective of someone who uses many of the techniques which are often employed to make those things seem real. Brown has a nice writing style, jaunty and occasionally silly (I'll paraphrase, "I used to have a neighbour called Mike. (Actually, that's not his real name, to save him embarrassment. His real name is Guy.) Mike was dating a minor actress who was into reiki at the time." and in the afterword "When I began writing this book yesterday afternoon, I worried...").
Worth a read if you're not the kind to be offended by the odd pot shot at religion.
It's about a wide range of techniques Brown uses in his shows, from simple magic tricks to memory tricks to hypnotism to cold reading. It's also highly critical of alternative medicine, religion, pseudo-science and fraudulent psychics, written from the perspective of someone who uses many of the techniques which are often employed to make those things seem real. Brown has a nice writing style, jaunty and occasionally silly (I'll paraphrase, "I used to have a neighbour called Mike. (Actually, that's not his real name, to save him embarrassment. His real name is Guy.) Mike was dating a minor actress who was into reiki at the time." and in the afterword "When I began writing this book yesterday afternoon, I worried...").
Worth a read if you're not the kind to be offended by the odd pot shot at religion.
