Started Steinbecks Cannery Row, such a great story from a great author.

Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Astonishing recent research from the liberated Soviet archives, as well as a myriad interviews with surviving witnesses, confirming and expanding the charges against Stalinism and his successors. A detailed, perceptive and well-analyzed account of the Stalin court seen from the perspective of Stalin's turbulent and intermingled political and personal relationships, expanding into the "democidal" policies in the thirties and then the Kremlin's collusion with Hitler and Ribbentrop, followed by the vast war with Nazi Germany in the forties. One of the few books in the last few years that I have been absolutely unable to put down, despite its considerable but necessary length.

Thanks for the information about the Stalin book.I have read many WW2 books
over the years,recently reading much about the Eastern Front including
"Ivans War",a book gleaned from interviews with former soldiers and Party members
which would have been impossible in Stalins time.
There is a Polish movie called "Katyn",recently released,that is a powerful look
at Stalin's brutal methods of terror.See it if you can.

Winslow

Finished reading Heinrich Böll's The Clown last week. Very good, even better if you dislike Catholics and have an interest in comedy itself. It's written as a memoir of a down-and-out 28-year-old clown in 1963 West Germany who is watching his personal relationships and his communities change as Catholicism and socialism duke it out in postwar Europe. He does an excellent job of pointing out how a lust for power lies at the very bottom of both groups in society and neither are really that moral at all (especially the Catholics, he really hates Catholics), and as a clown how he is utterly lost and confused as to how to make fun of them. Böll is a very personal writer, and a lot of the book is the clown figuring out for himself what kind of people he's around. Might be hard to find, but I think a lot of readers can easily connect.

Don't know what to read next. I feel more like reading philosophy than fiction. Maybe Dostoevsky, or I could finally read Faust.

Le Roman de Saint-Pétersbourg by Vladimir Fédorovski.

A "Saint Petersburgh confidential" about the great city commanded to be built by Tsar Peter the Great in the Eightenth Century.

Finished Cannery Row & started Of Mice & Men.

For all Sherlock fans, just finished Laurie King's " The Language of Bees", latest in series of Mary Russell mysteries. All are higly recommended. Half way thru Caleb Carr's " The Italian Secretary"another take on Holmes Mystique.

The Buffalo Soldiers, A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West. This is about the 9th and 10th Cavalry in the Indian Wars on the Southern plains. Fought with tenacity, vigor, and honor, all while getting the short end of the stick in supplies and respect. A good read.

Stone Cold, by David Baldacci. I really enjoy the tomes written by this author being mostly connected with CIA, FBI and other notorious organizations. Haven't been disappointed with any of his books, quick reads, good story lines, and thoroughly entertaining.
Doc

I'm just about finished with Shelby Foote's Trilogy on the American Civil War.

The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

Finished Of Mice & Men, Started The Wayward Bus. I love Steinbecks knowledge and use of of human psychology and interaction in his stories. He really brings out the humanity, the real person, flawed & raw, just like we really are, under all our layers of protection.

I've been reading The Tin Drum by Günter Grass for the past week and a half and I'm about 2/3 of the way through. (I'm reading it in English, couldn't find a bilingual version ) It's the fictional autobiography of a man-child who stunted his growth at three feet at age three, has a neurotic obsession with toy drums, turning words and things he sees and feels into drumbeats growing up in the city of Danzig before, during, and after WWII, narrating his life from his grandmother's childhood to the day of his writing in a mental institution.

Extremely weird, wordy, and wonderful. Draws me in for hours at a time.

I've seen the movie years ago,believe it was in German.Quite hilarious
in a strange way.I used to go to German language movies 50 years ago,
never anything controversial in the least was permitted.I asked why no
war movies and the German-Americans told me they were too sensitive
a subject in the early sixties.

Winslow