 Red Room Writer Profile
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Geoff Schumacher's Blog
August 25, 2009
- I'm more than halfway through "Inherent Vice," Thomas Pynchon's new novel, and I'm really liking it. It's funny, and the writing is brilliant. It's essentially a detective novel set in Los Angeles, an homage to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett but with a strong dose of "The Big Lebowski" thrown into the mix. The story is set in 1970, and the detective in question is a ...
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July 29, 2009
- The verdict: I thoroughly enjoyed rereading Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," which I think is a great book, but the "restored edition" just published doesn't add much of anything to the experience.The changes to the original book are relatively minor, and the additions don't bring much of value. The whole exercise, performed by Hemingway's grandson, seems to be a poor ...
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July 27, 2009
- I don't reread books very often. There are so many good and important ones to read that I find it hard to justify rereading something, even if it's really great. I seem to make one exception to this rule, though, and that is Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast." A "restored edition" of the book has just been published, prompting me to take up the book yet again and perhaps ...
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July 9, 2009
- Big news today. I am the editor of CityLife Books, an imprint of Stephens Press, we have signed our first author, P Moss. We will publish his book in the fall. Check out the press release here.Also, the CityLife newspaper wrote a great article about the author, P Moss. Find it here.
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June 22, 2009
- The Nevada Historical Society Quarterly magazine does not have a large readership. Nonetheless, I am never happier about doing an occasional freelance piece than when it appears in the Quarterly. In the latest issue, Spring 2009, I have a long review of two books, Gus Russo's "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers" and Gary ...
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June 11, 2009
- In my last blog post, I discussed Michael Connelly's 1996 novel "The Poet," and why I had decided to read it now. I have just finished the book and I liked it. The story held together pretty well, and there were several clever twists and turns as newspaper reporter Jack McEvoy works with the FBI to track down a serial killer.
This is not my usual type of reading material, but as a change of ...
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May 30, 2009
- I bought Michael Connelly's well-reviewed new novel "The Scarecrow" today. But I can't read it until I have read his earlier novel with the same main character, "The Poet," published in 1996. The main character is newspaper reporter Jack McEvoy.
"The Poet" has a great opening: "Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it. I treat it with the passion and ...
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May 28, 2009
- I recently reviewed William Zinsser's new memoir, "Writing Places," for the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Book Nook blog. I loved Zinsser's recollections about his life as a writer and a writing teacher, as well as what went into the writing of his revered "On Writing Well." Here's a link to the review: http://tinyurl.com/p2wzf8
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May 22, 2009
- I like literary novels but I tend to read them slowly. There is a basic reason for this: The narrative often doesn't hurtle you forward. You rarely get the "what's going to happen next" urge, and so you have no problem setting the book down.
This is definitely the case for me with Colson Whitehead's new novel, "Sag Harbor." It's a thinly veiled autobiographical novel about teenagers who are ...
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May 19, 2009
- I am reading Cyril Connolly's legendary "The Unquiet Grave," a nonfiction book he wrote during the dark days of World War II. There are some fine things about the book but one notable drawback: When Connolly quotes a French author, which he does frequently, he quotes in French and does not bother to translate.
I don't speak or read French, so a good one-tenth of the book is of no use to me. I ...
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May 13, 2009
- My next book will be a history of Elvis Presley's Las Vegas years. Elvis made his musical comeback in 1968, and his string of live performances in Las Vegas starting in ’69 played a huge role in this active and ultimately tragic period of his life. The book will look not only at Elvis and his career but his impact on Las Vegas and Las Vegans during this period.The hard work of researching this ...
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May 9, 2009
- I learned this morning that I have been accepted as a Red Room author. I don't know exactly what this means yet, but we'll find out soon enough. I like the idea of this site very much, so I look forward to exploring its possibilities. In case it isn't clear, I am the author of two books so far, the latest of which is pictured herein.
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May 6, 2009
- My name is Geoff Schumacher, and I am a journalist and author in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have written two books published by Stephens Press, and I am working on a book about Elvis Presley's Las Vegas years. I also am working on a "revised and updated" paperback version of my first book, a history of modern Las Vegas. I write a weekly column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and I also have ...
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