Yep, after seeing the movie, I decided to reread the book for the first time since high school. Fitzgerald certainly had an elegant way of writing. His lavish descriptions of Gatsby's parties and a list of all the people who attended them were fun reading, and the story of the guy that everyone loves, until he gets down on his luck, is an age old one. Not sure either movie version I've seen - Robert Redford and Leo DiCaprio - does do the novel justice. An interesting read if you've never read it, and I am glad that I have read it again after experiencing life for going on sixty-two years. Not sure if I'll ever read it a third time, though.
A new Lincoln Rhyme novel is always one to which to look forward, and this newest one is no exception. Deaver has a way to come up with plot twists and cliffhangers (at least three in this one alone) unlike almost any other best selling author. However, the almost super human powers of Rhyme and his partner/lover Amelia Sachs is becoming pretty formulaic in these stories. Not enough to make me swear off of them and not read the next one, which is probably at least two more years away, though. If you haven't read the Deaver/Rhyme novels, you should, but don't start with this one. The very first one was "The Bone Collector". Start with that one or some of the other earlier ones.
I will say, though, that "Kill Room" deals with some issues very much in the news today. Things like personal privacy, abuses of personal liberties under the mantle of "patriotism", and the use of drones in warfare. Deaver does not come down on one side or the other, but how he lays it all out is thought provoking to say the least.
I finally got around to reading this Steve Blass autobiography that was published last year. If you are Blass fan and a Pirate fan, you will like it. If you don't like Steve Blass, then don't bother reading it. Blass deals very candidly with the control issues that ended his career, as well as with some issues in his personal life and marriage that could not have been easy to put out there for all the world to read about. (You should know that one very salacious rumor that has been circulating for years about the Blass marriage is NOT true.) The most interesting parts of such sports biographies, to me at least, are the parts that talk about the player in the years after the playing days are over, and this one was no exception.
One thing Blass says, and he says it a couple of times in the book, I found very good. In discussing all of his control problems, he mentioned that whenever someone offered a suggestion on how to fix it, he would try it because "I don't want to be sitting on my porch when I'm 85 years old and think 'maybe THAT would have worked if I only tried it.' " And he offered that same bit of advice to other players over the years. It's not a bad way to look at life, if you ask me.
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