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Tom’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Tom’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Tom Samp’s Followers (4)
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Tom Samp
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CoronaCinema: A Diary of the Pandemic Year in Movie Reviews
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Invaluable memoir for writers, for readers, for anyone who wants to create. Clearly written, humorous, and personal. I enjoyed reading it very much. I would change two things: First, give titles to the 13 chapters, otherwise it is hard to go back and ...more |
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| A thoroughly researched account. Also, more than a portrait of Helen Keller, it is a concise social history of the 20th century. The author goes after other biographers in their own accounts of Keller and questions their motives. This seemed interest ...more | |
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Beautifully researched, clearly written. A valuable resource for fans of Citizen Kane or movies in general. I would have liked to have seen more about Hearst earlier in the book. When he finally does appear it is nicely covered. |
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| A lovely book. Reminiscent of "...Wonderful Life" and The Daniels. Not a book I would normally pick up, but it was an enjoyable read, encouraging and inspiring, with an intriguing premise. No spoilers...I might have written Nora's alternate lives a t ...more | |
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| It's comfort food, spending time with characters I've loved for decades. I cared less about the Burning Man passages, wishing there was some way Maupin could contrive to end this story back at Barbary Lane. Anyway, I loved a lot of this book, and hap ...more | |
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| The writing is labyrinthine. Sentences like walking through molasses. There's a sense of evil that is never explained; similar to the decadence, I think, in Wuthering Heights ( the book, not the film). If it's read in a modern context, the implicatio ...more | |
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| A true original! A novel, narrated by the novel.itself, if that makes sense! Takes time to ease into it, but once it gets rolling it is unusual and hilarious. Some of the Greek mythology chapters tend to drag, but Heller still infuses them with his d ...more | |
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Pulitzer Prize Winning Fiction Project
— 196 members
— last activity Dec 21, 2019 08:06AM
Join me in reading all of the Pulitzer Prize Winning Fiction!
Q&A with Dave Cullen
— 67 members
— last activity Aug 09, 2010 02:02PM
I am hosting a discussion of my new book COLUMBINE June 10-24. Please invite your friends. Tweets, facebook postings, etc. would also be great. A dir ...more
Tackling the Pulitzer Prize Winners!
— 822 members
— last activity Jul 26, 2026 08:18PM
The Pulitzer Prize literature winners comprise a phenomenal collection of novels. Join us as we tackle the monumental task of reading all of the winne ...more
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Hi, Tom. Thank you for inviting me to be a friend on this site. I perused your list of favorite books, and it became adroitly apparent to me that you and I have similar tastes. A Confederacy of Dunces is among my favorite novels, and I also enjoyed The Hours very much. (Imagine how daunting the writing of that novel must have been for Michael Cunnngham! To not only write a multi-dimensional story inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, but to have Ms. Woolf as one of characters, and to write--without ostentatious mimicry--in a style similar to her own.) I also love motion pictures. In fact, I love and admire them so much that I now write screenplays. I enjoy nearly all genres, and my interest spans the history of film itself. Classic, modern, etc.--I love them all.
I love also Annie Proulx's work. Close Range: Wyoming Stories is one of the best short story collections I believe I've read. (I also like Raymond Carver, Eudora Welty, Jhumpa Lahiri, and John Cheever quite a bit.) "Brokeback Mountain" is, I think, one of the best short stories I have ever had the opportunity and pleasure of reading. Have you read The Shipping News, though? It was the first work of Ms. Proulx's that I read, and it's a novel to which I return again and again--just to revisit the characters, all of whom I found to be memorable.
I see that you didn't think much of Shadow Country. I have not finished it yet, but I have to say that what I've read thus far I have enjoyed. P. M. is, though, an acquired taste, akin, say, to John Updike or Richard Ford. Some people like them, others not so much. Different tastes and all of that.
Anyway, thanks again for your friend request. I look forward to speaking with you here in the future.
John
Thanks for the message John! Really great to hear from you. I admire your writing and really respect what you have to say about books.
I hope you will share your screenwriting expertise and experiences.
Shadow Country was a challenge. I am going to review it here but, like a big, rich meal that sits rather heavily and uncomfortably afterward, I felt it best to wait until I had completely "digested" it, to be fair to the work.
I look forward to following your reviews, comments, and would love to exchange more one-on-one messages with you.
Take care,
Tom
tom.samp1@gmail.com