What book are you reading at the moment?

Ooh that looks good, Dan! Is it?

I'm reading The Grass Harp by Truman Capote. I'm on a Capote kick and ordered all his books from Amazon. Going to a book shop or to Amazon is dangerous for me. It's hard to restrain myself!

Actually is is not as good as I expected. I am more than halfway through it and it is just now getting somewhere. I thought I would really like it because Ghost Story is one of my very favorite ghost stories.


I adore Truman Capote!!!

Shadowland has got better. I am going to send it to you Sheila just becasue of the content.

I didnt realize truman capote penned so many books. you only ever hear about "In Cold Blood"

That's the one he's most famous for. It kinda fucked his life up as he got so emotionally involved with Perry, one of the murderers. He felt that somehow that their lives had a similar arc and thatas he put it, "we came from the same house but I walked out the front door and Perry walked out the back".

He was the only personal" friend" to show up for Perry's execution by hanging and it took the guy a long time, 20 mins or something to die. Horrible. Capote never really got over it.

wow. In Cold Blood was a non fiction story? was it completely non fiction or a loosely based?

Thanks to Sheila. I received it as a gift from her the other day.

In Cold Blood is a 1966 book by American author Truman Capote detailing the brutal 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a successful farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, his wife, and two of their four children. When Capote learned of the quadruple murder, before the killers were captured, he decided to travel to Kansas and write about the crime. He was accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow author Nelle Harper Lee, and together they interviewed local residents and investigators assigned to the case and took thousands of pages of notes. The killers, Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Smith, were arrested some six weeks after the murders, and Capote ultimately spent six years working on the book. The book became the greatest crime seller at the time and is almost universally acknowledged as one of the best books of its type ever written.
Some critics consider Capote's work the original non-fiction novel, although other writers had already explored the genre, such as Rodolfo Walsh in Operación Masacre. The book examines the complex psychological relationship between two parolees who together commit a mass murder. Capote's book also explores the lives of the victims and the effect of the crime on the community where they lived. In Cold Blood is regarded by critics as a pioneering work of the true crime genre.



The movie Capote is pretty much about this Michele.

yea I need to watch that movie. thanks dan!


Currently reading The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks

This probably should have been posted somewhere else but since In Cold Blood was just in conversation.....


DNA from "In Cold Blood" killers may help solve 1959 Florida murder
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida detective trying to crack a 53-year-old unsolved murder case will ask a Kansas judge for permission to exhume and extract DNA from the bodies of two notorious killers made famous in Truman Capote's 1966 true-crime novel, "In Cold Blood."
Sarasota County Sheriff Detective Kim McGath told Reuters she believes the two men convicted for the 1959 murder of Herbert Clutter, his wife and two children in Holcomb, Kansas, might be responsible for a similar killing one month later of a family in Osprey, Florida.
Capote's celebrated book about the Clutter case, written in a new style associated more with fiction than journalism, is often credited with spawning the nonfiction novel genre.
The case of the Florida family, the Walkers, has long stumped investigators. Cliff Walker and his wife and their two toddler children were shot to death in their home near Sarasota, Florida.
McGath, who spent four years reviewing half-century old investigative files on both the Clutter and Walker murders, said the exhumation of killers Richard Hickok and Perry Smith, who were executed in 1965, could provide key clues.
The hope is that DNA can be obtained from the men's long buried remains to either rule them out or connect them to the Walker murders, McGath said.
"Certain things kind of kept jumping out to me that got my attention. Certain clues that came to the forefront," McGath said.
She noted the killers in both cases murdered entire families including children in their homes, which McGath said was unusual during the late 1950s.
The Clutter children were aged 15 and 16; the Walker children were 3 and 23 months. All of the victims were shot in the head or face, McGath said.
On the run from Kansas, Hickok and Smith, both ex-convicts, stayed briefly in Sarasota County, which includes the town of Osprey, and were in the area at the time of the Walker family killings, McGath said.
One of the men had scratches on his face after the Walkers were killed, according to a witness statement.
The two were once considered suspects, but passed an early version of the polygraph test when they eventually were caught in Las Vegas. Smith had in his possession a knife identical to one stolen from Cliff Walker, who was 24.
McGath said another potential connection is that the Walkers went shopping for a green and white 1956 Chevy Bel Air on the day before their deaths.
Hickok and Smith, who were driving a black and white version of the same car, had sought work as mechanics at local gas stations and reportedly went to the home of at least one resident who was in the market to buy a car.
McGath said detectives at the time never had a prime suspect. But they did have evidence that now could be combined with DNA technology that was unavailable in the 1950s. Christine Walker, 23, was raped by her killers, and detectives found semen.
"What they did do, the early investigators, they preserved the clothing and Christine Walker's underwear," McGath said.
McGath said investigators are conducting DNA testing of the semen and the victims' clothes. Clothing belonging to Hickok and Smith is also being examined.

I will read that later dan, thanks!

I started reading AR's Angel Time. About 60 pages in and so far I really like it!

"So This Is Boston"

Wow that's weird about Smith and Hickock's bodies being exhumed

I'm reading" Playing With Grown Ups" by Sophie Dahl, Roald Dahl's granddaughter and model famous for those Opium ads. It's a pretty good book.

Christmas Holiday by Somerset Maugham. Very gripping story and subtle, complex characterizations.... I just finished it and ordered a bunch of other Maughams from Amazon.

Revisiting "the Unbearable lightness of Being" by Milas Kundera. Such heavy prose. It's not my favourite book but, it leaves me emotionally spent everytime I finish reading it. In a good way.

The blurb:The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a story of irreconcilable love and infedelities in which Milan Kundera addresses himself to the of 20th century-Being,offering a wide range of brilliant and amusing philosophical speculations. First piblished in 1984, Kundera's masterly novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy and was at once hailed by critics as a contemporary classic.

A review: "There are novels that are tragic, or entertaining and this one is both. There are very few that give a fresh perspective on existence and force the reader to reassess his own life and attitudes" Victoria Glendinning for the Sunday Times

Read the second heroes of olympus (percy jackson books) yesterday, today im reading warm bodies by isaac marion. Its really good so far

I got and read that book Dan!

The Catholic Church is just evil.

oops post.

Anne posted in the wrong thread