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The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
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By Lynn · 3 posts · 36 views
last updated Jun 25, 2025 08:25PM
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August: What Are You Reading?
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last updated Sep 01, 2010 11:38AM
The Schedule January 2012 - June 2012
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By Sherry , Doyenne · 22 posts · 340 views
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What Members Thought
This was a book I'd have never picked up on my own, so thanks to Constant Reader for forcing my out of my beaten path. I enjoyed it. It was an easy read, altho occasionally I got lost in the twists and turns of plot. (One of the reasons I don't generally read mysteries. I find them mystifying.) Competently, if not gracefully, written. Highsmith's strength, as others have noted, was to make us root for a sleazeball.
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Patricia Highsmith's classic portrait of a psychopath is just as good today as it was when it was written. Ripley is a true psychopath - he can emulate the emotions he thinks people expect out of him, but it is exhausting. He has no empathy and his only true feelings regard the repercussions things such as murdering his only friend will have on his life. Whereas the movie version of Ripley is driven to misdeeds by passion, in the book he is cold, calculating, weighing the repercussions only to h
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In this novel, Highsmith has mastered the art of creepiness.
In New York, Tom Ripley is a small-time con artist. So small-time that he hasn't figured out how to cash the checks he has conned. He can't hold down a job, but has managed to get many jobs (and many very different jobs). He is currently mooching off a friend for a place to stay.
Then one day he is approached in a bar. He thinks the cops have discovered his con--but it is the father of an acquaintance, who has been told to talk to Tom by ...more
In New York, Tom Ripley is a small-time con artist. So small-time that he hasn't figured out how to cash the checks he has conned. He can't hold down a job, but has managed to get many jobs (and many very different jobs). He is currently mooching off a friend for a place to stay.
Then one day he is approached in a bar. He thinks the cops have discovered his con--but it is the father of an acquaintance, who has been told to talk to Tom by ...more
I don’t read a lot of mystery novels but this is likely a notch above most. Much more than a well done ‘whodunit’, it is an exploration of a man’s struggle with his ambitions, his sexuality and his past. Thomas Ridley wants little more than wealth and membership in upper class society. After a difficult childhood and an early life of petty crime, an opportunity lands in his lap. He is hired to find and bring home the son of rich New York parents. Tomas finds and befriends Dickie but far from car
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Apr 03, 2010
Curious Squid
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
1001-books
Atmospheric and moody.
I saw the movie several years ago, and it seems to have followed the book closely (based on my swiss cheese memory). This book was hard to put down, a perfect read for a rainy spring day. Reminded me of rainy days in Italy and gives me the urge to travel.
I saw the movie several years ago, and it seems to have followed the book closely (based on my swiss cheese memory). This book was hard to put down, a perfect read for a rainy spring day. Reminded me of rainy days in Italy and gives me the urge to travel.
Aug 05, 2009
Dana
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
favorite-classic-of-mine
Dec 21, 2009
nikki crupi
marked it as to-read
Jul 31, 2013
Celeste
marked it as to-read
Nov 30, 2014
Donna
marked it as to-read
Mar 28, 2015
Elizabeth
marked it as to-read
