s&d: True Crime! books

i haven't seen the series but i loved the dunst durst movie so much. that movie freaked me out in a big way. i had to google that shit after watching because i couldn't believe that it was even near true. (one of the best movies i've seen in a long time and i had no hopes for it. just random netflixing and the fact that i will watch any and all dunst i have missed...)

Haven't practiced for a very long time, but yeah I guess it is a stretch to call myself a "non-lawyer".

i think i'm going to skip the good nurse
seems like it might make me flip out and i can't afford to flip out recreationally atm

it is making me flip out. But also blowing my mind. I feel like it is laying out the nuts and bolts of a specific type of irrational sociopath that I did not previously know about and which -- this is key -- has lessons to teach about the smaller-scale but similar maladaptions we (the merely neurotic) engage in. If that makes sense.

also it has shown me that hospital admin world is way way more fucked than i ever dreamed

Binged on the Jinx this week-end. I could relate to Jarecki (altho, damn that goatee makes it hard to take him seriously) starting out pretty open to hear the guy out and progressively get caught up in the anguish of having to bring down someone he obviously got pretty close to.
But yeah Durst what a character. I dunno if there's such a thing as mild schizo but the constant referring to himself in the 3rd person, the weird risk-taking and the final "confessional" dialogue all point towards a guy very much at odds with himself, to put it mildy.

finished The Good Nurse. The scene with Cullen and Amy in the restaurant was just astonishing and will probably stick with me forever.

this terrifyingly irrational guy, these terrifyingly rational hospital administrations

I also read The Good Nurse recently. Reading it, I felt pretty gross, bummed out and anxious. I think it was partly the setting- hospitals, end of life care and all that.Depressing. The sense of shared moral failure also made me feel bad- reading about stuff like this, or people who don't call the cops while they overhear their neighbor being murdered or whatever make me feel kind of guilty and anxious myself for some reason.
Also one of the images that sticks with me is the supposedly excessive amount of lotion Cullen would use on his patients.
I am reading some other kinds of books now but I think the next true crime might be Lost Girls, which also seems like it could be depressing and frustrating.

"When Buddhism goes bad": good tag, attention-grabbing-wise, but shouldn't blame it on the Buddha, just more moneyed and multivated young-ish Americans cuttin' up, in a (relatively) non-Dursty way, though plenty spacey and somewhat haplessly manipulative. Good presentation here of Scott Carney's A Death on Diamond Moutain by Laura Miller, who also provided an astute round-up of True Crime books in a piece I linked upthread:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/15/when_buddhism_goes_bad_how_a_yoga_and_meditation_retreat_turned_cult_like_and_deadly/

i am halfway through the jinx. i love it. it reminds me a little of the clark rockefeller thing.

durst's guilt-burps immediately reminded me of anwar congo in 'the act of killing,' the only other place i think i've seen anything like that. gave me chills

not all the way through 4 but i did reach the "lawyering up" part and was pretty disturbed they made so much of it. "so why is he getting a CRIMINAL lawyer?" uh because you guys keep saying he killed her, which is a crime? even if he hadn't done anything wrong, come on. also didn't like how jarecki stalked doug durst and filmed himself doing it.

also the trying to ask the investigator privileged info and then somehow obtaining his report, which is privileged. not necessary imo.

Finally finished "True Crime: an American Anthology" and it is a must-read. I loved the Damon Runyon piece, I'll have to check out more. It has two Manson pieces - one by Gay Talese and an interview of Bobby Beausoliel by Truman Capote. It ends with Dominick Dunne's account of the Menendez murders, which are much more interesting than I'd realized. Jose Menendez is just not a sympathetic guy.

Anyway, it's 800 pages but worth it!

Watched The Cheshire Murders documentary last night. All recommendations OTM

we watched the first 40 mins of the cheshire murders doc earlier (don't know anything about the case other than ET's preceding post) but it didn't seem all that gripping, just an examination of an admittedly nasty case. is it worth watching the rest? no spoilers if there are any big twists and revelations please

WATCH

IT

GODDAMMIT

i mean if it doesnt grab you after that idk but cmon, at least watch it through

I loved it
Still trying to find a good book on the snowtown murders
Read some Robert keppel after the good nurse bc I guess I needed to hurt my brain some more

i bought masha geffen's book about the tsarnaev brothers, haven't started it yet though
i guess it's true crime?

The author was on Fresh Air a couple nights ago. Haven't heard all of the interview yet, but it's here (stream or download):
http://www.npr.org/2015/04/07/398061941/tracing-the-roots-of-the-brothers-and-the-boston-marathon-bombing

Also heard some of the discussion re Tsarnaevs during the first hour of WBUR's On Point this morning (not yet posted): incl. typological context; also somebody pointed out that there were almost no traces of the bombmaking, even though the flakey brothers seemed unlikely to have anything close to Unabomber skill sets. Possible that they were yer alienated loser textbook children *and* tools of conspiracy.

yup
i can't wait to learn the deets!

there's a masha geffen and a sasha geffen?

i guess so!

i kept wondering if her name was marcia or mosche (?) but apparently it's masha

masha geSSen

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/04/the-brothers-masha-gessen-tsarnaev-brothers-book?mbid=social_twitter

She's a pretty great reporter, I'm looking forward to this. She's been writing about the verdict in the NYT, lots of interviews this week too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/opinion/in-the-boston-marathon-bombing-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-verdict-but-few-answers.html

woops sorry masha!

I'd take anything Masha Gessen reports with a pinch of salt. Her brother Keith is excellent though.

So I just did something I've been wanting to do for a long time, which is create a spreadsheet of every book recommendation in this thread. I can't access Google Drive from work, but if someone wants to make this publicly accessible/editable, I will email it to you if you ILX mail me an address.

Also halfway through The Jinx. I like it, although I keep comparing it to The Staircase which I liked much better (obviously, if you happen to read through this thread gathering book titles and see the like 70 posts I posted about how great it is).

81 books mentioned by name. I pretty much put any book people said they were reading or said looked like something they wanted to read unless the person specifically un-recommended it.

sasha geffen should write true crime

Oh man I need to bump The Staircase up on our Netflix queue.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dude you really do.

what kind of pinch of salt?

Carl, I want to talk about the staircase with you, but don't wanna spoil it for anyone in this thread!!!!

ILX mail me!!!

this is a v troubling corner of tru crime - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_abduction

I watched a Web of Lies show on the KY case.. 1 detail that I can't shake is that post-abduction (& murder obv) and before going to the hospital, the woman GOT A FRIEND OF HERS to take a picture of her w/ the baby (sitting behind the wheel of her car was the way the show restaged it) to post on facebook in order to make her ex think it was his kid to get him back, like delusions w/in delusions for this woman it was so sad

Update, The Staircase is apparently unavailable from Netflix, even on DVD? I swear it used to be on our queue.

re: fetal abduction - "Fetus abductions often happen at the hands of a friend"

Some friends.

the staircase is on tpb if anyone wants it. it was on youtube (i downloaded the files a few months back) but it's been deleted now.

looking forward to seeing the list, carl, nice work!

jesus murphy, that fetal abductions shit is fucked up

Yeah I watched all eps of the staircase on yt

Murder on A Sunday Morning, a doc by the director of The Staircase, is also on YouTube. Really good.

Here you go. It's editable!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IDauY2Ll7tceSnoE60V-OQdocFgI2wNJqWfuscqig_c/edit?usp=sharing

damn, nice work carl!!

you get the true crime gold star (possibly bone fragment, according to unconfirmed reports)

gold star under fingernail of vic

what kind of pinch of salt?

She is quite compelling at creating narratives but her reporting often has fairly basic factual errors. She also has a pretty challenging relationship with other writers on Russia, especially ones in the same field as her (anti-government, anti-corruption, etc, like Anna Arutunyan), which seems to be based on the idea that she's the only person who can be trusted to be infallible / honest and doesn't seem to lead to a lot of self-reflection. Maybe the Tsarnaev book is good though.

the tsarnaev book looks good - she emigrated from Russia as a teenager herself, speaks Russian, travelled around to get the family's back story before they came to the US. I wasn't aware of basic factual errors she'd made, though I see she's been in a bunch of feuds with other Moscow journalists.

xpost yeah she's one of them snooty Westernizing troublemakers, look out carl