Welcome to Litsy!

At almost 300 pages, Nightmare Alley is the longest book in the American Noir Collection‘s first half. And it feels like it too. It seems as if Gresham is trying to create something epic but in the confines of Noir it becomes too laborious. By the end of the book the pacing is so haphazard that you can tell Gresham just wanted to be done. And by that time I did too.

Image from the 1947 film adaptation. Directed by Edmund Goulding

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book was excellent! The classic film was my first experience with this story. The movie captures this book so well but the book has so much honest grit and frightening yet realistic troubled people. The ending is also perfection. Highly recommend this one. This was my April #bookspin pick No. 18 pick.

#BestMidYear22 Day 4: Gresham's book about ruthless ambition, illusion, power, money & fraud is an American cult classic. As much as I appreciated del Toro's adaptation, it falls short of capturing the capaciousness of the novel & the full impact of the moral arc of the MC Stan Carlisle. This is one of my favorite NYRB Classics.

This noir novel about the rise and fall of a con man is freakin' fantastic!

It's exploration into the dark, seedy side of human nature made me feel despicable just for reading it. It blows my mind that this was published in the 40s and yet the immorality of the characters ring true to people even today.

Now tomorrow I get to treat myself and watch Guillermo del Toro's version of this great read.

My local library just added 50+ NYRB books to their online catalog. I'm beyond excited to start reading some of these. I've already checked out the tagged book and put Stoner on hold. 💚

Nightmare Alley opens with Stan Carlisle at a “geek show“ in a carnival. Stan pairs up with Zeena, a mentalist. At the time he is performing basic sleight of hand tricks but his ambition, & the discovery of a notebook, soon leads him to progressively elaborate tricks & changing careers & partners. Published in '46, Gresham's book has a lot to say about American society & beliefs. At the risk of simplicity, one of the interesting aspects of the👇

I bought this maybe a decade ago and while I‘m not setting foot in a theater any time soon, I need to be ready to watch my fantasy wife smash it as Dr. Lilith Ritter. I‘ve long been fascinated by con artists and this examination of one such individual‘s rise and fall was mesmerizing.

Apparently part of the new film coming out was filmed in my City #howcoolisthat

#currentlyreading artwork by Greg Hildebrandt

I was in a mood for noir last weekend & while researching movies to watch I came across an adaptation of the tagged. It had been on my TBR for a while & I came across it just now while reading a recently posted reading list on Crime Reads about best novels feat. con artists. Here's the description on the CR list “A devastatingly cynical book about mid-century America, a long ignored classic that is being (re-)filmed by Guillermo del Toro👇

Afternoon reading: I don‘t know why I have waited so long to read this. 🎪🖤📚

I reread this book about a month ago, and I loved it even more the 2nd time. It's so sketchy and seedy, I just loved it. #LMPBC #GroupO

*trigger alert, there is a brief scene of animal abuse.

Oh, what seedy, morally bankrupt, unlikable people are out there! A carnival worker/conman shoots for the stars...but that‘s an awful long way to drop...Dr. Ritter though, *shudder* This must have blown some minds in the ‘40‘s!! I don‘t want to spoil too much, because this is @Dempsey pick for #LMPBC #GroupO and @corycatelyn and @melyndarae have yet to read it! Jamie, it‘ll be on it‘s way tomorrow!

Starting the weekend off right 💪🏻🤓

#ImStillWithHer #photoadaynov16 #bookandbrew