First Hemingway I’ve read in a good long while. The stereotype is that he writes lots of short sentences, but I don’t think that’s true. He likes writes a lot of direct descriptive sentences, but also goes hog wild joining them together into the long run on that are expressive in the way poetry is: dense with imagery, occasionally wandering into philosophical speculation.
I was holding out hope that the ending would not be sad, but it was, and abruptly, viciously so.
The autobiography of Joe Bonanno, formerly the head of one of New York's criminal "Five Families." Worth reading for extensive discussion of how the Sicilian Tradition is not limited to the cliches of mob movies -- as long as you believe Bonanno, who is surely not a disinterested reteller of historical events.
I should have loved this book. It was recommended by a dear friend, and the elevator pitch is pure Maxwell bait: "In the 17th century, an Italian is captured by Turks and forced to work for their rulers".
But by God, the writing is dull, dull, dull. 80-90% of this slim book is the main character endlessly pontificating or having pointless arguments with the Turk who is his tutor, student, and jailer. It's not quite as bad as The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt, another mind-melting bore with a navel-gazing, daydreaming, self-hating protagonist. But it's friggin' close, and in some cases it offends more: the setup for the most predictable twist in the world is not so much telegraphed as repeatedly blasted into your face.
I watched this as part of my "curriculum" for movies featuring intrigue. Although I've given this a star rating, as with previous entries this is less a review and more an analysis of character interactions to improve my D&D Dungeon Mastering skills.
The idea of watching movies to study intrigue was inspired by this Tao of D&D post, and subsequent discussion on Alexis Smolensk's Patreon. As always, if you care about the cutting edge of roleplaying games, you need to read Alexis's blog. Once you see how much you can learn from the millions of words he's given away for free, you'll understand why I send him some cold hard cash each month to get just a little extra.
