48 Hours Read-A-Thon Update: Closing Down

With a good long sprint, I managed to finish Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon. I'll probably write up something further on my thoughts, but suffice it say, it was interesting, both for reading a classic of the genre and thinking how it has been adapted over the years. Most people have some faint knowledge of the story because of the movie. It's interesting read the real story. It's a little ironic we associate Maltese Falcon with that final line "the stuff that dreams are made of" -- added for the movie I might add -- since it adds an almost fantastical romantic twist to the story. It's really a story of obsession and betrayal and murder and greed and vengeance.

And with the closing of that book, I am prepared to call my inaugural 48 Hour Read-a-thon a reasonable success. I managed to clear off two books (Heat Wave and Maltese Falcon) from my pressing list. I was able to get away from the computer and just read for some consecutive hours. Also I tapped into the bigger book blogging community and saw what they were reading. I was able to blog about my reading thoughts without worrying if I didn't sound solemn and "book critic" enough. I need to force myself to do this more, maybe not in an organized fashion, but just allow myself time away to read or write or "be".

48 Hours Read-A-Thon Update: Slowing Down

Just to update everyone on my progress on the 48 Hour Read-A-Thon -- unfortunately it's slowed down a bit. I included Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon in my pile because I've made several attempts at reading it, including an online class. I'm finding it hard to forget the John Huston movie or even what I already know about the story. The descriptions do help separate the book from the movie, because while you can hear Bogey in his trenchcoat, you see Hammett's Spade. And Bogey made him a bit more tragic/romantic, because in the book, Spade comes off as slightly unsympathetic in places. And I still don't know how anyone trusted Brigid O'Shaughnessy -- obviously my woman's intuition tells me different things than Effie's does.

I also started Alan Furst's Spies of Warsaw last night. He writes a sequence of espionage books set in Europe during WWII or the years just before. It's a very different world, filled with foreign dignitaries and innuendo. I'm looking forward to reading more.