What are you reading the week of June 11, 2016?

Charles Portis (born December 28, 1933) is an American author best known for his novels Norwood (1966) and the classic Western novel True Grit (1968), both adapted as films. The latter also inspired a film sequel and a made-for-TV movie sequel. A newer film adaptation of True Grit was released in 2010.

Portis has been described as "one of the most inventively comic writers of western fiction".

Charles Portis was born in 1933 to Samuel Palmer and Alice Waddell Portis in El Dorado, Arkansas. He was raised and educated in various towns in southern Arkansas, including Hamburg and Mount Holly.

During the Korean War, Portis enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and reached the rank of sergeant. After receiving his discharge in 1955, he enrolled in the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He graduated with a degree in journalism in 1958.

Portis began writing in college, for both the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville student newspaper, Arkansas Traveler, and the Northwest Arkansas Times. One of his tasks was to redact the colorful reporting of "lady stringers" in the Ozarks, a task credited as a source for the vivid voice which he created years later for his character Mattie Ross in True Grit. After Portis graduated, he worked for various newspapers as a reporter, including almost two years at the Arkansas Gazette, for which he wrote the "Our Town" column.

"I got to be something of a reader in the service. Paperback books, whatever came to hand. I got out of the Marines in May of 1955 and went back to Hamburg (Arkansas). A friend of mine there, Billy Rodgers, had just gotten out of the Air Force, and he had a car. So we drove up to Fayetteville and enrolled for the summer semester at the university. An all-day drive, then. I think Hamburg is actually closer to LSU and Ole Miss than Fayetteville. Anyway, we registered, and you could do that then, just show up with a high school diploma and $50, or whatever the tuition fee was, and you were in. You had to choose a major, so I put down journalism. I must have thought it would be fun and not very hard, something like barber college.--Not to offend the barbers. They probably provide a more useful service."

He moved to New York, where he worked for four years at the New York Herald Tribune. His work led him to return to the South frequently to cover civil rights–related stories during the early 1960s. After serving as the London bureau chief of the New York Herald Tribune, he left journalism in 1964.

Portis returned to Arkansas and began writing fiction full-time. In his first novel, Norwood (1966), he showed his preference for travel narratives with deadpan dialogue, combined with amusing observations on American culture. Set sometime from 1959 through 1961, the novel revolves around Norwood Pratt, a young, naïve ex-Marine living in Ralph, Texas. He is persuaded by con-man Grady Fring (the first of several such characters created by Portis) to transport a pair of automobiles to New York City. Norwood encounters a variety of people on the way to New York and back, including ex-circus midget Edmund Ratner ("the world’s smallest perfect fat man"), Joann ("the college educated chicken"), and Rita Lee, a girl Norwood woos and wins on the bus ride back to the South. Norwood was adapted as a movie in 1970, starring Glen Campbell as the title character, with Kim Darby and the football star Joe Namath.

Like Norwood, his novel True Grit (1968) was first serialized in condensed form in the The Saturday Evening Post. The story is told in first person from the perspective of Yell County native Mattie Ross. At the time of the novel's events, she is a prim, shrewd, strong-willed, Bible-quoting 14-year-old girl. When her father is murdered in Fort Smith by Tom Chaney, a hired hand, she sets out to bring the killer to justice. She recruits Deputy Marshal Rooster Cogburn — in whom Mattie sees one possessed of "grit" — to help her hunt down Chaney (who has joined an outlaw band) to "avenge her father’s blood". Both satirical of Westerns and realistic, the novel succeeded through its taut story line, Mattie’s believable narrative voice, sharp dialogue, and a journalistic attention to details.

Dog of the South (1979) is a comic novel detailing the travels and travails of Ray Midge on his quest to find his truant wife. Following a trail of credit card receipts, Ray tracks his wife and her lover across Mexico in his dilapidated held together by coat-hangers. He's soon joined by Dr. Reo Symes, an excentric schemer with a broken down bus named Dog of the South.

Both Norwood and True Grit were adapted as movies starring fellow Arkansan Glen Campbell and Kim Darby, and were commercially successful. John Wayne won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, one of the top box office hits of 1969. True Grit was released on June 11, 1969, earning USD$14.25 million at the box office. A second film version, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, debuted in December 2010.

Portis published several short pieces in The Atlantic Monthly, including the memoir "Combinations of Jacksons" and the story "I Don't Talk Service No More".

As of 2010, Portis lived in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Today's author selection was inspired by a comment by the wonderful Mary Roach in the New York Times' By the Book column.

The last book that made you laugh?

“Norwood,” by Charles Portis. In particular, the wonder chicken section.

I had to supplement the Wikipedia article with a few additions. Most notably, I found the long quote in an interview that he did.

I finished up Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre this week. I had started it a couple of weeks ago but interrupted it to read something else. Which isn't a knock against the book, you just have to be the right frame of mind to read it.

Now I'm reading Aerodynamics: Selected Topics in the Light of Their Historical Development, by Theodore von Karman. It's a collection of his Messenger Lectures on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Wright Brother's first flight.

>2 fredbacon: Wow, Fred! An outstanding start to the week. I loved True Grit. I read it when I was maybe a little too young but it shocked the hell out of me. Great characters! And, I'm sending my aeronautical engineer/ former USAF pilot dad the Aerodynamics: Selected Topics in the Light of Their Historical Development because this book has "Father's Day present" written all over it! Thank you!!

As for me, I'm clipping along with Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli. I'm enjoying it. I really, really like Mrs. Disraeli although I am very glad not to be one of her servants. In order to save money, she would furlough her servants when she went abroad and it sounds pretty grim. Mrs. Disraeli needed to save money often since Mr. Disraeli was quite the big spender. By the way, this is a book off of my very own shelves(inordinately pleased with myself whenever I do this)!

I'm still reading the Civil War history, The Guns of Cedar Creek by Thomas A. Lewis. Extremely well written. Also, I recently finished Manhunt Detective Story Monthly, January, 1953. This was the very first edition of a detective pulp monthly. Lots of fun to read.

Still working on Pierced by the Sun and Alien Emergencies.

>1 fredbacon: Thank you for the fresh start. Although I'm not generally a big western fan, I've intended to read one of Charles Portis's books for ages, and have True Grit on my e-reader, still untouched by human hands. Maybe that will be my next e-book.

I'm still listening to The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, which I am enjoying, and finally started reading We Need to Talk About Kevin, another book I mean to get around to but didn't for years.

Thanks again, Fred! I loved True Grit, the movie. I'll have to look for those books.

>1 fredbacon: Thanks for the start, Fred. Enquiry: there's a right frame of mind to read Nausea?? I remember reading it in French class in my freshman year of university and feeling profoundly bleak afterwards.

Am reading Mr. Mercedes as a prelude to re-reading Finders Keepers, and am looking forward very much to reading End of Watch. The first two books of the trilogy have been excellent, and I hope the third one is as well.

Thanks, Fred!

I am reading The Violet Hour: Great Writers At The End by Katie Roiphe, and I am listening to Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume.

>8 ahef1963: Yes, it is pretty bleak, but after reading Voices from Chernobyl it was positively uplifting! I read most of it sitting on a lounge chair in the sun with my 41 pound dog laying in my lap. (We had gorgeous weather here in New England last week.) As I read it, I kept trying to imaging it as a black and white French New Wave film from the 50s.

>3 enaid: The von Karman book sounds like it would be a great gift for him! It has a couple of mildly funny anecdotes about the early years of aerodynamics. The last chapter is a bit of a hoot. The original lectures were from 1953 and the book was published in 1954. His speculations on the possibilities of rocketry (he wasn't very hopeful about them) are kind of amusing in retrospect.

I'm starting Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievitch today.

Just finished The Violet Hour: Great Writers At The End. This is not a book for the faint of heart. However, if you ponder death, your own or that of others, this book is brilliant!

Next up to read is an Early Review book, Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson.

Finished Pierced by the Sun. Mostly meh.

Started A House for Happy Mothers by by Amulya Malladi.

My wife and I are doing a shared reading of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. It is perfectly pleasant so far, but it is hard to understand why it was selected as one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

Finished The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression- Shirley Temple and 1930's America by John F. Kasson
4/5 stars

Started 2 books-
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry: a novel by Burr Steers
and Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

I finished Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli last night; they certainly were a colorful couple. I was so pleased with myself for reading something from my own shelves that I am aiming to try another book I already own. Initially, I tried The Man Without Qualities and, wow, the prose remains kind of impenetrable to me(I've tried reading this before and always quit around page 4!).

Now, I'm about 15 pages into Vita the Life of Vita Sackville-West and I'm enjoying it. This might be a winner!

I've also got A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine/ Ruth Rendell on the go and it is excellent. Like a very smart, British version of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The "arrogant college students get into trouble with too much time and intelligence on their hands" genre. Also - it just occurred to me - The Likeness by Tana French? I think it also involved smarty-pants college students and a murder.

Reading Arnold Wesker's The Birth of Shylock and the Death of Zero Mostel. It's partially about the creative process and mostly about the difficulties of mounting a play, made more difficult by the death of the star after the first night of previews. Wesker kept a diary and the insights into the various personalities - most of all, his own - make this an intriguing read for me.

I'm realizing that this genre fascinates me. Both The Entertainer by Margaret Talbot and Without Lying Down about screen writer Frances Marion and the powerful women of early Hollywood were fascinating (to me) looks into the birth of the movie business. But my absolute favorite is Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told. Taken from scores of interviews, it's an oral history of the machinations of the scrappy entrepreneur who bludgeoned NYC into providing free theater, creating The Public Theater and the Delacorte in Central Park. Papp, love him or hate him, was a Shakespearian-like figure who made the impossible possible.

>16 NarratorLady: I also loved Without Lying Down. It was a lovely present from my mother. I'm sorry to say, I didn't feel quite as much love for Cari Beauchamp's next book about Joseph Kennedy. Like you, there is something about this genre that I find really appealing. In Mount TBR, I have a book Complicated Women Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood; I have not read it yet but it looks mighty good.

I'll be looking at Free for All: Joe Papp - it sounds right up my alley!

A few chapters into The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens. Interesting so far. I haven't been reading much the last few weeks. Hope I get back into the groove now that I have more time.

>1 fredbacon: Great start, Fred!

I'm still reading Fangirl. I'm really sorry that I didn't notice before I started it that this YA book is 435 pages long (a problem with ebooks is you don't necessarily note their size). I'm 283 pages in though, and there's no going back. It's ok, just a little too much teen angst.

I also started All the Light We Cannot See. It seems well worth its page count.

On audio, I'm nearly finished with Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. It's been entertaining.

Yesterday I finished Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. I definitely will be adding 'Tis to my wishlist.

Now I'm reading Wonder by R. J. Palacio. It's pretty good for a YA book so far.

Finished ThomasJefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings last nght and started a reread of The Sandcastle Girls for a bok club and The Devil's Making by Sean Haldane. Still working on Baking Cakes in Kilgali, End of Watch and Britt- Marie was Here

>21 cdyankeefan: Did you like the Thomas Jefferson book? It's on my wish list.

I finished When Elephants Dance. The story is set amongst the Philippine people during the WWII. While it is a good book, its side stories seem to long and diverting and their various morals as to the family repeated.

Thanks, Fred.

Dodgers was excellent, and my review's on the book page.

I'm now about halfway through Jane Steele and enjoying it, and I just started Bernard Cornwell's Waterloo: A History of Four Days.

>16 NarratorLady: I loved Without Lying Down- what a fascinating look at early film making when women were as equal as men were. I will have to look into the Joe Papp book.

>20 PaperbackPirate: Was not as impressed with Tis as I was with Angela's Ashes - will be interested in what you think of it.

Finished The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. A sweet, fast read about a bookseller and the girl he adopts.

Finished A House for Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi. Enjoyed it. Started A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter.

>17 enaid:
>24 JulieLill:
So glad to see love for Without Lying Down. I'm sure you'll both enjoy the Joe Papp book.

I can't say enough about Margaret Talbot's The Entertainer which covers much of the same era as Without Lying Down. The entertainer is the author's father, the character actor Lyle Talbot, whose long life spanned the 20th century. She manages to tell the history of Hollywood as she's telling her father's own history. Talbot is a writer for the New Yorker and she is a compelling story teller. There is fascinating stuff about her dad riding around the studio on a bicycle with scripts in his satchel, going from one soundstage to another as he had parts in many movies at the same time. She also covers the birth of the unions and the moguls' efforts to squash them.

It's a honey of a book.

#22 hi snash- not a big fan of the Thomas Jefferson book- a little too odd for me Hope you like it

26 hi julielil- I loved Fikry!! What a wonderfully sweet story!!

I just started Cottage Cheese Thighs by Jenn Sadai. I loved her first book and this one looks great. Has anyone read it?

>28 NarratorLady: Have you seen the documentary based on the book? That is where I first heard about Frances Marion.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268037/

> 31 Tiff W This sounds funny. I have never read her-will have to check her out.

>32 JulieLill: This looks interesting!

I'm currently reading Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is my 1st Kay novel and after 120 pages it's quite enjoyable. It seems to be his take on the Italian Renaissance. Pretty good so far.

>32 JulieLill:. Me too! The documentary led to my reading the book. She was an amazing lady!

Jane Steele was good fun, and I've now started The Lie Tree.

I finished We Need to Talk About Kevin, which I started before the incomprehensible Orlando massacre. What a sad, depressing book read at a tragic time. I hope we have no more massacres but I am not optimistic. What was once unthinkable has become commonplace.

I finished The Life We Bury a few days ago, and thought it quite good.

I'm still listening to The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, and enjoying it.

Finished A Faint Cold Fear and started Lock In by John Scalzi.

Started Not My Father's Son: A Memoir by Alan Cumming.
Very good so far.

I just finished A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine/ Ruth Rendell. Wow, what a ride! It was pretty intense; sometimes I forget what a talented writer Ruth Rendell was. I'll be thinking about this one for a while. Wow.

I'm also reading Vita the Life of Vita Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning. Yet another book from my own shelves.

Back again! After the tension of A Fatal Inversion I felt like I needed to really chill out so I picked up The Storied Life of AJ Fikry based upon this thread's recommendations. So far, I'm really liking it and love his bookshop!

Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers

>38 TooBusyReading: I just finished The Life We Bury last night, having read the bulk of it yesterday. Very engrossing.

I have read We Need to Talk About Kevin too. A very difficult read. In that case, I saw the movie before reading the book. It was a very faithful adaptation.

>38 TooBusyReading: Have not read the book but the movie We Need to Talk About Kevin blew me away.

Not My Father's Son: A Memoir
by Alan Cumming
5/5 stars

This is the unbelievable story of the relationship between Alan Cumming and his father. Not a complete biography but Cumming writes about life growing up in Scotland, his family and about secrets that are revealed when he agrees to be on the show Who Do Think You Are? Could not put this down.

Finished the brilliant Early Review edition of Shylock is My Name.

Next up is A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler.

The new thread is up over here.

>44 framboise: >45 JulieLill: I haven't seen the movie We Need to Talk About Kevin, but I don't think I could handle it right now. I can read about bad things more easily than I can seen them on screen. I think I need to read something light and fluffy now, something pure popcorn.

>47 hemlokgang: Oh, I liked A Whole Life a whole lot. Hope you have a good time with it.