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silvercompassjournal · 2 years ago

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Silver Compass Journal’s Winter Reading List - 2023

Purple Deceiver - Buck Reilly #10 - John H. Cunningham I thought I'd start the winter reading list with a book set in warm, sunny Key West. I really enjoy the fun and exciting Buck Reilly series from John H. Cunningham. Buck is a treasure hunter turned seaplane pilot. These books are Indiana Jones meets Jimmy Buffett. A Step Beyond Chaos - Alex Rutledge #10 - Tom Corcoran Another novel set in Key West. This is the 10th book by Tom Corcoran that features the photographer and reluctant crime solver Alex Rutledge. Alex is one of my favorite characters. He tries to live a quiet life in Key West but is constantly pulled into helping KWPD solve murders around the island. If you haven't read these, I recommend starting with the first one 'The Mango Opera' and reading them all. The Paris Bookseller - Kerri Maher "The dramatic story of how a humble bookseller fought against incredible odds to bring one of the most important books of the 20th century to the world." This is the story of how Silvia Beach opened the famous Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company, published James Joyce's Ulysses, and befriended the characters of 1920's Paris including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. The Search for the Genuine - Jim Harrison "The first general nonfiction title in thirty years from a giant of American letters, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive collection of Jim Harrison's essays and journalism-some never before published." I'm a big fan of Jim Harrison, particularly his non-fiction writing about food, wine, hunting, fishing, travel, and life.

The Great Railway Bazaar - Paul Theroux "In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on a four-month journey by train from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In The Great Railway Bazaar, he records in vivid detail and penetrating insight the many fascinating incidents, adventures, and encounters of his grand, intercontinental tour." I'm currently reading his follow up to this book called Ghost Train to the Eastern Star Where he re-visits his journey in The Great Railway Bazaar 30 years later.

#books #books and reading #reading list #bookstore #jim harrison #paul theroux #reading

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ryanmeft · 6 years ago

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My Favorite Films of 2018, part 1

Let’s make the introduction quick: these are my favorite films released in 2018. As always, the rules are simple: I don’t say they are the best or that you must agree, simply that I found them the most memorable. They are in completely random order, with no emphasis on one over another. Films released at festivals but not to the public in 2017 are counted as 2018, as are films that were not available in the United States. I apologize for not having the accents on certain people’s named; I don’t know how to reproduce them.

Many excellent films didn’t make the cut this year, and it was already difficult to narrow down my shortlist of 26 to 14. I had to stop there, as I could not bring myself to cut anymore. The list is in two parts this year to accommodate the additional length.

Let’s get rolling.

Sorry To Bother You

While decent-but-ordinary films got lauded with undeserved reputations for being revolutionary, Boots Riley was quietly (okay…maybe not so quietly) sliding this biting, bizarre, hard-edged satire under the radar. Where most films have simple good guys and bad guys, Riley takes furious aim at everyone in sight. Black people are exploited by a white establishment. The hero only cares about his own advancement until he himself is taken advantage of. His girlfriend rails about purity but sells out almost immediately herself. A labor organizer is mostly doing it to get laid. The film is driven by Lakeith Stanfield, whose performance as a black telemarketer who finds tremendous success by kow-towing to his white bosses is a sterling and hilarious take on the classic everyman. Supporting roles from Danny Glover and Armie Hammer, in particular, contribute greatly. Nobody escapes unscathed, leaving the film with only one viewpoint: everybody in the world is a terrible hypocrite to one degree or another. Riley’s outspokenness didn’t help the film at major awards shows, but it likely would have been shafted anyway. Like other huge, overlooked critical hits, from Inside Llewyn Davis to Lucky, it is just too nihilistic to grab people’s attention.

Paddington 2

Iron Men and super spies are nice, but they can’t approach the sheer joy, creativity, adventure, humor and heart of the Paddington series, which started out great and got better with this sequel. All the cast you loved the first time around are back, but just like the Harry Potter franchise, it’s the new faces and what director Paul King and co-writer Simon Farnaby do with them that makes this one special. Most notable is Hugh Grant, who both honors and spoofs his own career reputation by playing a washed-up former celebrity who tries to frame Paddington to restore his lost lustre. Grant devours every one of his scenes, as he skips comically between costumes and disguises. Brendan Gleeson is one of those actors who is never unwelcome, and here he plays a tough-as-nails prison cook with a heart of gold. The movie gets as sweetly silly as turning an entire prison’s uniforms pink and as genuinely thrilling as a final train chase that is the most exciting action sequence of the year. The key to Paddington is that there’s not a cynical thing about him---his movies just consistently and unerringly deliver pure creative joy.

The Sisters Brothers

In recent years the western genre has moved hard towards social commentary. Jacques Audiard’s adaptation of a Patrick DeWitt novel, co-written with Thomas Bidegain, has such unconventional heroes that it takes aim at the traditional western strongman even when it isn’t trying to. John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play a pair of mercenary brothers who are, respectively, too sensitive and too useless to have ever been stars in westerns of old. Jake Gyllenhaal is an eloquent bounty hunter and Riz Ahmed is the inventor they are all after. The wild west was definitely not a storied land of opportunity for all. The hired hands are out to kill Ahmed’s character because a powerful businessman feels entitled to his invention, and the film ends in greed, tragedy and brokenness rather than success. That’s not to say it has no trappings of the classics, as it may be the most beautiful western ever made; painstaking detail has gone into towns and saloon halls, while a wilderness stream lit up with a phosphorescent gold-finding chemical has a mesmerizing beauty. All these good looks serve to back up a dark comic story, and it is a highly effective contrast.

Capernaum

Nadine Labaki’s film about a 12-year-old boy in prison for striking back at his desperate poverty was criticized, in some circles, for not being bleaker than it is. Labaki and her team of writers, with a mostly non-professional cast, have painted a picture of life in the world’s slums that mostly foregoes easy drama in favor of being unblinkingly, ceaselessly blunt about the sheer offenses against human life that take place there. The focus of the film is Zain, named after the young actor Zain Al Rafeea, whose parents recklessly pop out kids despite barely being able to care for themselves. They enjoy themselves in a bed right next to the floor housing their seven children; in court, they insist that the existence of their kids is a burden on them. Zain ends up temporarily becoming a sort of custodian for a friend’s infant son, and we see three stops on a sad spectrum: the innocent baby unaware of life’s terrors, the broken boy he may become without help, and the adults that are the result of a life lived without hope. That the film’s bad guy, a human trafficker, is eventually foiled is not the catharsis it would be in a more multiplex-oriented movie, because we know there will just be another after him, and another, and another.

First Man

A bio-pic of a quiet man with no political message was never going to do well in the modern movie landscape, and that’s a shame. Ryan Gosling’s taciturn portrayal of Neil Armstrong is the fuel of a film that is not about the glory of space travel but about the risks and tolls it takes, all of which are recreated with bone-rattling immediacy. Damien Chazelle and Josh Singer ignore the political demands of the moment to portray one of our most important national figures exactly as he was: a reserved man more concerned with math than with press conferences, whose taciturn response to what he’d bring with him to the moon was “More fuel”. Yet what really sells the film is the time we spend in the various cockpits with Armstrong. Where Linus Sandgren could have gone for soaring vistas and patriotic imagery, he instead brings home the terror and uncertainly of space travel in a way that makes the stakes feel real and immediate. Chazelle eschews the need to see the past through the lens of the present, and an excellent movie results.

Annihilation

Some science fiction deals in lasers and spaceships. Some deals in thoughts and ideas. Alex Garland’s trippy sci-fi adventure, based on a novel by Jeff VanderMeer, is certainly the latter. A team of women, led by Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh, enter a no-go zone where it seems the local scenery is slowly being eaten by alien vegetation. What they find there is up to the viewer to interpret, but Garland wisely decide to really let us think about it by pulling back on the horror and leaving much unexplained. The world inside the “Shimmer” is quiet and haunting, not packed with activity. When monsters do attack, it comes in small-scale, individualistic encounters, rather than wars between armies of CGi. It’s also notable that whereas a very specific kind of woman is often held up as an example of strong female characters, the women here are the opposite: ordinary people, more egghead than warrior, investigating rather than kicking ass; a movie that relegates Oscar Isaac to about 20 minutes of screen time certainly has the courage of its characters.

Roma

Another example of a film whose greatness is achieved specifically because it bucks the need to have a message or to conform to momentary fits of politics, Roma tells a simple story of a middle-class Mexican family in the 70’s and their working class servant. It commits numerous sins of modern cinema: the middle-class family is not seen as oppressors, the servant is not seen as a victim, nothing in the film is a veiled attack on systems of any kind or shape. Therein lies the beauty, captured perfectly by Yalitza Aparicio. She plays Cleo, the servant, and while the film is seen through her eyes---so that we witness only the snatches of family life she does---Alfonso Cuaron has never been given much to preaching, and that’s still true here, despite it being his most personal film. It’s also mournfully beautiful in black and white, with city houses shown as a tangle of balcony stairs and one-car garages, and an especially beautiful shot of woods on fire. The kind of film you think about for years after seeing it once, it’s also Cuaron’s most intimate accomplishment. Part 2: http://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/182988135292/my-favorite-films-of-2018-part-2

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lzteach · 6 years ago

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Interview Questions:

What was your motivation or inspiration for writing “SILVER GOODBYE”?

As a resident of Key West, I saw firsthand the destruction caused by hurricane Irma, so combining that into a story where Buck Reilly pursued his own family mystery that took place there during the 80s and 90s, while being simultaneously hunted by an ex-con drug smuggler and torn between two women made the story very compelling.

How did you research information hurricanes and storms and other information for your book?

I have lived through a few hurricanes and had firsthand accounts from several friends in Key West and around the Caribbean specifically during Irma. The impending natural disaster made for a natural backdrop to Silver Goodbye, and ultimately an additional antagonist that put everyone at risk.

When did you realize that you wanted to become a writer, and how did that happen?

I was the editor and chief of a professional photography magazine thirty years ago and have always loved the written word. I wrote my first book in 1990 and have written several since. The Buck Reilly series was the natural culmination of writing what I know and love: Key West, the Caribbean, seaplanes, social issues, and a flawed Everyman protagonist. To tell a story that both grips the reader on the edge of their seat, while also provides historical insight, romance and takes them on a journey of self-discovery where no white knight is there to bail them out, where they must overcome their own fears and failures, it is a form of life therapy that is as thrilling to write as it is to read.

What are your goals for the reader to take away after reading your novel?

I hope the reader can experience being in a hurricane, the pull of a family mystery, the sense of need to learn the truth, the urgency fight evil, to take the risk of being vulnerable, to trust in someone you want to believe in, the burn of betrayal, hope, and ultimately surprise and joy. As an Everyman protagonist, Buck Reilly makes mistakes, like we all do, and a big part of the experience is how he, and maybe we, respond.

What is a typical day in your life as a writer?

There is no typical day for me as a writer. I live in both Virginia and Key West, and work in New York City, so like my protagonist, I’m often up in the air. During this time my mind creates the moments that become another Buck Reilly journey to self-discovery, struggle, overcoming mistakes, romance, battling for a cause and catharsis. These stepping stones become an outline, then chapters that I refine with my editor and beta readers.

How do you maintain a balance between being an author,a career person?

I have been in commercial real estate for over thirty years, but was the editor of a magazine before that, and wrote my first book almost thirty years ago. When not with family or working, my mind and heart are searching for the myriad ingredients that become the fabric of a Buck Reilly story. I have a writing barn at my 200-year-old farm in Virginia, my 140 year old home in Key West has porches on both levels, and in New York I often cap my day off writing, editing or researching the latest or next book. I don’t think of myself as a workaholic, but recognize I have an innate desire to learn, and experience life to the fullest, which this very busy, yet full existence provides.

What are things that you enjoy doing in your downtime?

Since I live and work in amazing locations, my downtime is filled with nature, mountain biking, scuba diving, boating, fishing, walking beaches with my wife and dogs, spending time with friends, travel to all parts of the world living a life of adventure to imbue my Buck Reilly series with first hand experiences that will make my readers feel as if they too are there in the moment.

you enjoy doing in your downtime?

Did you base any of your characters or events on anyone that you know in your life?

All of my stories include aspects of my own life, that of people I know, history, and in every book, real life characters who give me their permission to include them in the story. Buck Reilly adventures have included multiple musicians that I have co-written songs with, or others who contribute to the story. Other characters include presidents of island nations, executives, men and women I know, that by inclusion provide a multiplier effect to the story. The inclusion of real people, often celebrities, provides another dimension to the Buck Reilly stories that makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction, which enriches the experience for readers.

Can you tell us something of your future writing plans?

I have several more Buck Reilly books planned. His journey from Red Right Return, the first book in the series, to Silver Goodbye, the seventh one, has been full of self discovery, pain, victories, love, and sorrow, but also hope. Like Buck, we are all on this same path, and readers identifying their own journey with his is one of my favorite accomplishments in writing the series. I am also writing a television series that takes place in south Florida in the 1970s and 1980s that is both timely and would be an amazing complement to not only the history that Buck Reilly is pursuing in Silver Goodbye, but also an era that I experienced living there at that time.

How would you like readers to connect with you?

My readers are active followers on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/johnhcunningham, my Instagram page, my Amazon page and my website at www.jhcunningham.com. I love to interact with readers and friends online so encourage people to follow and participate. Thanks for sharing me and the Buck Reilly series with your fans and followers. As I like to say, once you’ve seen the world through Buck Reilly’s eyes, the view will never be the same. Enjoy.

Lindas Book Obsession Interviews John H. Cunningham, Author of “Silver Goodbye” for Suzy Approved Book Tours Interview Questions: What was your motivation or inspiration for writing “SILVER GOODBYE"? As a resident of Key West, I saw firsthand the destruction caused by hurricane Irma, so combining that into a story where Buck Reilly pursued his own family mystery that took place there during the 80s and 90s, while being simultaneously hunted by an ex-con drug smuggler and torn between two women made the story very compelling.

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silvercompassjournal · 4 years ago

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Five Books to Read This Summer

I often get asked for book recommendations. Especially around summer time. So I thought I’d put this list together as a place to start if you’re looking for some books to take to the beach. Books that are perfect for reading with a cold Corona in hand and waves lapping at your feet. Enjoy.

Cuba Straits - Randy Wayne White

The 22nd book in the Doc Ford series. But don’t worry if you haven’t read any of the others in the series (though I highly recommend them). This book features baseball, Cuba, Russian assassins, fast boats, murderous Santeros, and a little bit of history. What more could you want?

A Salty Piece of Land - Jimmy Buffett

Jimmy’s 2004 novel about Tully Mars. “From a lovely sunset sail in Punta Margarita to a wild spring-break foam party in San Pedro, Tully encounters an assortment of treasure hunters, rock stars, sailors, seaplane pilots, pirates, and even a ghost or two.”

White Knight - John Cunningham

The 8th book in the fun Buck Reilly series. Buck lives at the La Concha hotel in Key West but this adventure is set in the Virgin Islands. Perfect fun, exciting book to get lost in at the beach.

The Cuban Affair - Nelson DeMille

This book is just fun. Especially if you are interested in Cuba as much as I am. “This “action-packed, relentlessly paced thriller” featuring US Army combat veteran Daniel “Mac” MacCormick, now a charter boat captain, who is about to set sail on his most dangerous cruise.”

Pirate Hunters - Robert Kurson

The only non fiction book on the list but just as exciting as the others. Treasure, obsession, and the search for a legendary pirate ship. “A thrilling adventure of danger and deep-sea diving, historic mystery and suspense.”

#summer reading #beach reads #doc ford #jimmy buffett #buck reilly #nelson demille #robert kurson

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silvercompassjournal · 4 years ago

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The Cuba Reading List

I’ve never been to Cuba, but I’ve been fascinated by the island for a long time. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to visit someday. It’s on the top of my travel bucket list. These works will have to hold me over for now. Included are several fiction books, a biography, and a Hemingway short story. This list pairs nicely with a mojito and a good cigar. Enjoy.

This is a continuation of my travel reading list series. Previously released in the series are my New Orleans and Key West reading lists. Drop me a line and let me know what you think - Gary

North of Havana - Randy Wayne White

The 5th book in the Doc Ford series. But don’t worry if you haven’t read any of the others in the series (though I highly recommend them). “Still haunted by his suspected involvement in a plot against Castro, Ford ventures to Cuba where he finds himself entangled in a web of murder, revenge, and assassination.”

Havana - Stephen Hunter

“Stephen Hunter takes beloved hero, Earl Swagger, into the lush world of 1950's Cuba to fight the American mobsters who control the Havana casinos.” Ernest Hemingway makes a cameo appearance.

Green to Go - John H. Cunningham

The 2nd book in the fun Buck Reilly series. Buck lives at the La Concha Hotel in Key West but this adventure is set in Cuba. Great book to get lost in while sipping some Havana Club rum.

The Cuban Affair - Nelson DeMille

This book is just fun. Especially if you are interested in Cuba as much as I am. “This action-packed, relentlessly paced thriller features US Army combat veteran Daniel ‘Mac’ MacCormick, now a charter boat captain, who is about to set sail on his most dangerous cruise.”

Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir - A.E. Hotchner

“In 1948, A. E. Hotchner went to Cuba to ask Ernest Hemingway to write an article on “The Future of Literature” for Cosmopolitan magazine. The article never materialized, but from that first meeting at the El Floridita bar in Havana until Hemingway’s death in 1961, Hotchner and the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize–winning author developed a deep and abiding friendship.”

Pursuit as Happiness - Previously unpublished short story by Ernest Hemingway

Recently discovered short story where Hemingway himself seems to be the narrator. The story is about marlin fishing off the coast of Cuba. It was found among his personal papers and manuscripts housed at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum by his grandson Sean Hemingway.

#books #cuba #reading #doc ford #havana #earl swagger #buck reilly #nelson demille #ernest hemingway

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lzteach · 6 years ago

Text

Interview Questions:

What was your motivation or inspiration for writing “SILVER GOODBYE”?

How did you research information hurricanes and storms and other information for your book?

When did you realize that you wanted to become a writer, and how did that happen?

What are your goals for the reader to take away after reading your novel?

What is a typical day in your life as a writer?

How do you maintain a balance between being an author,a career person?

What are things that you enjoy doing in your downtime?

Did you base any of your characters or events on anyone that you know in your life?

Can you tell us something of your future writing plans?

How would you like readers to connect with you?

0 notes

lzteach · 6 years ago

Text

Interview Questions:

What was your motivation or inspiration for writing “SILVER GOODBYE”?

How did you research information hurricanes and storms and other information for your book?

When did you realize that you wanted to become a writer, and how did that happen?

What are your goals for the reader to take away after reading your novel?

What is a typical day in your life as a writer?

How do you maintain a balance between being an author,a career person?

What are things that you enjoy doing in your downtime?

you enjoy doing in your downtime?

Did you base any of your characters or events on anyone that you know in your life?

Can you tell us something of your future writing plans?

How would you like readers to connect with you?

0 notes