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If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children



I finished this one today and it had me crying at the end.

Those poor boys, they lost their mom and then are abused by that fucking coward.

I dunno, I think I'd lose it and take him to one of the mines and torture him till he told me what he did to my daughter.
 
I have it. I got halfway through and stopped cause it was so fucking boring. Maybe I'll try it again.
 
While I did enjoy the book, I have to agree that there were definitely some long dull bits in which BEE got bogged down in musical criticism and/or fashion minutiae. I realize that the purpose of this is to establish Patrick Bateman as an obsessive sociopath and an unreliable narrator, but geez...

Unlike you, however, I was disappointed by the fact that the violent episodes were so few and far between. Although the level of sadism and brutality in each instance may seem over-the-top, I think it helped establish Bateman's complete lack of emotion and conscience.

Honestly, I found the book both entertaining (but not hugely so) and frustrating.
 
Yeah I guess I kind of started to see like crumbling mask or something......
I like how it showed him going from calm and methodical, to just plain erratic. I was extremely disappointed in the number of murder scenes, and I really wish that there were more, or maybe a sequel.
I love how the book ended though, like asking the question "Did he really do it?"
Right? You're like, "Did he really do ANY of it?" Or was it just the ramblings of a disturbed mind? Was it just thoughts about things he wanted to do?
 
I am reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It's about a 13yr old Indian kid living on a reservation and going to a white school. I really like it so far. It's written for Middle Schoolers probably, but shit so was Harry Potter. What's funny about it my mom bought two copies, one for my daughter and one for her. My daughter is only in 3rd grade but sure enough reading it too. I am proud of her but also kinda shocked to think she is reading the same book as me at 9yrs old!
 
Reading Gone Girl. About 3 chapters in and it's pretty okay. But his wife seems kinda neurotic. I haven't spoiled myself in all these years the book has been out but I've been watching commercials for the movie and it seems really intriguing. So I finally picked it up.
 
I'm re-reading A Walk In The Woods, by Bill Bryson. It's the story how he and an old friend walked the Appalachian trail after living abroad for 20 years. Never has a book made me laugh as hard as when I first read it. I just love his humor and dry wit.
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Reading Gone Girl. About 3 chapters in and it's pretty okay. But his wife seems kinda neurotic. I haven't spoiled myself in all these years the book has been out but I've been watching commercials for the movie and it seems really intriguing. So I finally picked it up.
If you haven't read Dark Places by Flynn, I highly recommend you do so. Great. Fucking. Book. I realize Gone Girl got a lot of attention, but of the three she's written, I think Dark Places is the best.
 
If you haven't read Dark Places by Flynn, I highly recommend you do so. Great. Fucking. Book. I realize Gone Girl got a lot of attention, but of the three she's written, I think Dark Places is the best.
I couldn't put this book down, I can usually figure out in the beginning who the bastard is but this book took me by surprise
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@penelopejo Dark Places is far far better than Gone Girl.
 
Bitch was CRAY CRAY! That's all I have to say. I would add though that the very end when Nick says what he says, totally connected with me. Well, not with me, but the quote could be applied to so much right now.
 
If you haven't read Dark Places by Flynn, I highly recommend you do so. Great. Fucking. Book. I realize Gone Girl got a lot of attention, but of the three she's written, I think Dark Places is the best.

I need to put that on my list. I still haven't read Gone Girl, and I've been meaning to. Right now I'm working on The Secret Place by Tana French, which is the fifth book in her series about the homicide detectives in Dublin, Ireland. It's an excellent series, which I may have said on this forum before (I rave about it everywhere so double-posting about it is inevitable).
 
I need to put that on my list. I still haven't read Gone Girl, and I've been meaning to. Right now I'm working on The Secret Place by Tana French, which is the fifth book in her series about the homicide detectives in Dublin, Ireland. It's an excellent series, which I may have said on this forum before (I rave about it everywhere so double-posting about it is inevitable).
I tried reeeeeeally hard to like Tana French because bandwagon and shit. I can't explain why, exactly, but her writing bores me. Two pages in to any book and I'm snoring.
 
I tried reeeeeeally hard to like Tana French because bandwagon and shit. I can't explain why, exactly, but her writing bores me. Two pages in to any book and I'm snoring.

I didn't realize that she was so popular until recently. I had gotten the first book, In The Woods, way back when I was living in Chicago. It took me a couple of years to read it for some reason. Then I read the rest of them when they came out. I like them a lot.

I didn't really like the last one, as I can't even remember the name. This new one seems to be good so far.
 
I just finished 13th step: Zombie Recovery, and am now reading World War Z by Max Brooks, finally. I enjoyed 13th Step more... But World War Z is pretty good too... Long though.
 
"The Murder Casebook"

Edited by Colin Wilson

It's a collection of short stories about old murder, circa the 1930' and 1940's.
 
I am currently reading a biography of Francisco Franco, right wing dictator of Spain from the 30s until the 70s. But that's one of my other interests - history - and a bit off the beaten track for this forum.

The last true crime book I read earlier this year was about that evil witch Theresa Knorr who tortured her daughters, and later deliberately burned one alive and then starved another to death, forcing their siblings to ignore the cries of the latter who was shut in a cupboard, and forcing her sons to participate in the murder of the former. Truly horrific and evil.

When it comes to crime fiction, I've always enjoyed the books of Michael Slade, whose name I believe to be the pseudonym for a conglomerate of Canadian crime fiction writers with professional experience. The first two that I read - Headhunter and Ghoul - have very much remained etched upon my memory. I think the thing I love about these books is not just the killers, their morbid and sick crimes, and the hunt for them, but also the psychological analysis of them, along with the bits where things are viewed through their mindset. I have long had an interest in abnormal psychology, so found these aspects fascinating.

Headhunter included bits where the killer's past periodically graced the pages. One of these scenes late on in the book is probably the most twisted thing I have ever read in a work of fiction....

The killer's mother earned her keep as a dominatrix catering to the most depraved clients, and on this particular occasion had paid a young blackwoman to be present. The dominatrix is torturing the client in horrible ways, after which he breaks free and grabs hold of the axe provided and begins chopping the screaming black girl into pieces whilst the dominatrix looks on laughing. He then starts to eat some of her chopped up flesh. All the while, the later killer, then still a very young child, is chained under a table, made to watch this by the dominatrix mother as some kind of sick lesson about everything and everyone having their price, as she introduces her dogs to eat what's left of the black girl.

I know I would have seriously struggled to imagine something like that and was left wondering what kind of mind could concieve of such a scene. An enthralling read , though.
 
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/06/a-tribe-among-the-trees/
Ernst Jünger
The Forest Passage
ir

Translated by Thomas Friese
New York: Telos Press, 2013

We all live in deserts.

Urban deserts. Suburban deserts. Even in rural areas it is difficult to escape the commercially refined silicates of mechanized and meaningless modernity that blow over and bury the fossilized remains of dead gods and old ways. The desert — The Nothing — grows and obscures and stifles all.

Describing the terrorized boredom of modern men, Ernst Jünger, quoting Nietzsche, warns: “woe to him in whom deserts hide.”

Jünger was writing in the aftermath of World War II about the chafing of his own individualism against the bureaucratic machine of Nazi Germany, and The Forest Passage makes mention of dictatorships. But, with uncanny foresight, he predicted our Twenty-First Century predicament, from the pointlessness of voting to near-constant surveillance and the neurotic need to know the news numerous times throughout the day. Jünger prophesied our states that make technicians into priests, while paving over institutions, like churches, which facilitate an inner spiritual life that the secular state is unable to control. That which cannot be counted, measured, or taxed cannot be permitted. This unquantifiable grain of existence that survives beyond the reach of the mechanized world is what Jünger identifies as freedom, and woe to him who knows only the desert, “woe to him who carries within not one cell of that primal substance that ensures fertility, again and again.”
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Unbroken
Read it! The movie is good, but it can't hold a candle to the book. Fucking Chrome is at it again. Never mind, just read this testament of courage, faith and pure stubborn defiance.

Fucking Chrome, I hate you.
 
Oh, Hagar . . . I had forgotten about Theresa Knorr. I remember reading about her several years ago, and thinking about real monsters who are disguised in human form, and she was indeed a monster.
Right now I'm browsing a stack of crime and true crime books to start. I was reading some back to back Patricia Cornwell, but need a change.
 
I'm pretty sure another post on this thread mentions it but I finished "Devil's Knot' a little bit ago, about the West Memphis Three. If you haven't read it yet, buy it, check it out at the library or whatever, it was an amazing book.

Also, Damien Echols has a book that he has written about his experiences that I cannot wait to get.
 
I love John Sandford books, and yesterday I got so excited when I got an email from Amazon that his new book was out.:bookworm:

And then

FUCK YOU AMAZON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

his book won't be out until April :finger:
 
I need a recommendation. Not just a good book, a really, really, REALLY good book. Thing is, I'm not much into serials or true crime. And I would rather take a spork to the eye before reading any sort of romantical bullshit.
 
I need a recommendation. Not just a good book, a really, really, REALLY good book. Thing is, I'm not much into serials or true crime. And I would rather take a spork to the eye before reading any sort of romantical bullshit.
It's not fair to ask for a recommendation when you read 20 books a week. :rolleyes::p
 
I need a recommendation. Not just a good book, a really, really, REALLY good book. Thing is, I'm not much into serials or true crime. And I would rather take a spork to the eye before reading any sort of romantical bullshit.

Did you read McMurtry's Lonesome Dove yet? It doesn't matter if you hate western themes, this book transcends themes and is IMO one of the richest stories written in the 20th century. Excellent writing. It sucked me in to the point I carried the book around everywhere so I could get a page in while standing in line or on my lunch break.
 
Thank you, @Kittyskyfish . While I don't normally read westerns, I'll see if it can suck me in. :)
And thank you, @Alf .... I put that one in the queue.

I have been in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian kind of phase for a couple years now. I think I have read everything. Well, except the Uglies series... that one keeps putting me to sleep. So if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open.

Also looking for suggestions in grit lit and horror.
 
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