Now reading...

[BruceH]

It's really silly stuff, like mentioning the WTC twin towers 'still standing' at one point, the character 'listening to CDs', and such; stuff that adds absolutely nothing to the book.

Sheesh, what's the point? Just seems misguided to me. Too bad.

[ejp626]

Finally finished Narayan's The English Teacher -- I kind of lost steam about 60% in when he starts communicating with dead spirits (and apparently this isn't supposed to be taken ironically, i.e. look how silly he is taken in by these charlatans). Still, it is hard to be too hard on a novel that is essentially a love letter to his recently departed wife (she died very young in real life, just as the character does).

Mahfouz's The Beginning and the End -- a page-turner, practically Dickensian in the way he covers a family's descent into poverty after the unexpected death of the father. Obviously depressing of course.

Am partway through Nabokov's Despair as well. Just am not enjoying Nabokov at any level at all. I'll try to wrap this one up as well as Invitation to a Beheading. If I don't warm up to him (and I don't think I will), I will read Lolita and then get rid of all the rest of the novels (I bought the LoA Nabokov set, but am kind of ruing that now).

Edited November 30, 2010 by ejp626

[rdavenport]

Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. I remember watching the TV series about 20 years ago, but never read the book. The mother is portrayed much more sympathetically in the book than on TV (up to now, anyway).

[paul secor]

Jonathan Valin's The Music Lovers - A tale of music/audio obsessives hung over a fairly flimsy mystery plot.

[jlhoots]

Adam Levin: The Instructions

[ejp626]

Adam Levin: The Instructions

How is this? I'm probably going to tackle it next year, but it looks like a book I'd only read once, so I am struggling not to buy it with a 33% off coupon or something.

Anyway, I just wrapped up Mahfouz's The Beginning and the End. Towards the end it looks like it is about to become An American Tragedy set in Egypt, but it doesn't (which is good as I actually didn't care for Dreiser's tale too much) and it goes somewhere darker actually. Quite a good book on the whole, but depressing.

Just thought I would share a rant on Ted Hughes' The Iron Giant. I've known about it for a long time, though I never read it or watched the animated film. Anyway, it looked age-appropriate for my son, so I checked it out. I hated it. I thought so much was wrong with it, including the absurdity of having a star/ship travel from somewhere in the Orion constellation to Earth in a matter of months, and all kinds of other bogus physics, then the sadomasochism and the slave imagery, then the simpering wish fulfillment at the end where the space dragon sings the music of the stars and the people of earth lose their war-like tendencies. In short, I hated everything about it and was heartily sorry I'd picked it up. I do wonder what the movie is like, however, as I simply can't believe they could have been that faithful to the original.

[jlhoots]

I'm a third of the way through The Instructions (1030 pages total).

To me it's a fascinating novel.

Obviously some will be put off by the length.

Some familiarity with a lot of the Jewish references will help.

[rdavenport]

"Spoilt Rotten - The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality" by Theodore Dalrymple. Utterly convincing, as ever.

[ejp626]

I'm a third of the way through The Instructions (1030 pages total).

To me it's a fascinating novel.

Obviously some will be put off by the length.

Some familiarity with a lot of the Jewish references will help.

I'm still very much on the fence. I am sure I won't read it twice, if I read it at all, so I'll just have to be patient and sign up for a copy from the library in the spring.

I really didn't understand all the fuss about Kalooki Nights (a fairly big deal in British Jewish literature from 2007). I just didn't enjoy it at all, but the reviewers just lapped it up (as they did with Jacobson's Booker-winning The Finkler Question). I have a fairly strong suspicion that I would be feeling the same way at the end of The Instructions -- meh. That's a lot of reading for little reward. I felt the same way about The Savage Detectives (no way was my effort fully rewarded) and I'm feeling that way about Nabokov now. I'm clearly moving away from a certain kind of ultra-literary fiction as I age. Still, I generally enjoy Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon, who are sort of in the same circle.

[BillF]

Nearing the end of this 650 page tome.

[jazzbo]

I know that people rag on the Gateway sequels, but I think they're quite good.

Wow, nearing the conclusion of this one, and I really have to say the three sequels I found quite interesting. Very interesting about "machine intelligence," and the prescient discussion of terrorism, and I really was intrigued by the idea of an enemy race of energy beings who were trying to recreate the universe without matter.

And. . . spoiler below. . . ..

I was totally blown away how at the end of the third book you realize your friendly neighborhood narrator. . . has been dead the whole time he's narrating to you!

[BruceH]

Shades of P.K. Dick there.

[Chuck Nessa]

Liner notes.

[jazzbo]

Shades of P.K. Dick there.

Yes. Done entirely differently though.

[paul secor]

Liner notes.

Hope that means that there are some new releases in the air.

[jlhoots]

Nearing the end of this 650 page tome.

Loved it.

I'm told that those who like this book will like A Visit From The Goon Squad (which I'm going to try as soon as I finish The Instructions).

[Dave James]

Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels For what they are, they're about as good as it gets. Completely and totally mindless and completely and totally entertaining.

[ghost of miles]

Rereading ON THE ROAD--I've been bitten by the Kerouac bug again of late.

[GA Russell]

In 1982 I started reading Life After Life by Raymond Moody. I found it very interesting, but half way through it I moved from Pittsburgh to York, and the book was lost in the move.

I recently picked up a copy, and I've started it tonight. I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing now.

[ejp626]

Before I get too senile might as well start reading some classics.Think I'll finish it when summer comes along if everything goes well.

I am looking to get into Proust in 2012, maybe help distract myself from everything else going to pot.

Anyway, for a classic classic I've been reading Erasmus's The Praise of Folly. Not a gut-buster, but it has its moments.

I've demoted Nabokov to the benches for the time being and am replacing him with Kamila Shamsie. She doesn't have that many novels, so then I'll read two by Uzma Aslam Khan, and then see how I feel about inserting Nabokov back into the line-up. I have, however, been enjoying Mahfouz and generally Narayan, so they will stay in. It is kind of a nice change: a year of reading almost entirely non-Western fiction.

[jostber]

Norman Lewis - A View Of The World

[kinuta]

Great read.

[Matthew]

Deadball Stars of the American League. A totally captivating book put out by the Society For American Baseball Research, which contains 136 biographies of American League baseball players from the "Deadball Era" of 1901 - 1919. Fascinating reading of players long dead and forgotten; the "Deadball Era" has always held me enthralled, an era with an unique style of play, and of an America way of life long gone. I just ordered the National League version....

[BruceH]

Finally got around to finishing "The Terrorists," the final Martin Beck novel. I'd been going slow with it because I didn't want it to end. Great series.

[gslade]

Just Started a Norman Partridge Novella Dark Harvest