Now reading...

[BillF]

Just finished a re-read. Interesting Cold War setting of Berlin at the time of Operation Gold. One can pick holes in McEwan's technique/style, but always readable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gold

[jazzbo]

[johnblitweiler]

Speaking of wasting time, I recently read about half of "Timescape" by Kurt Vonnegut with a sense that the author had become awfully smug and trivial in his old age. Too bad.

[jlhoots]

Don Winslow: The Cartel

[HutchFan]

Yesterday, I picked up Graham Lock's Forces in Motion: The Music & Thoughts of Anthony Braxton from my local library. I'd requested it through inter-library loan, and they finally got a copy for me.

I'm already half-way through it.  Fascinating stuff.

 

 

On 1/10/2016 at 6:45 AM, A Lark Ascending said:

Terrific!

Tried to read this 10+ years ago but it lost me. But this time I was gripped. A pretty despairing tale about the thin veneer of civilisation and what happens when the chaos breaks through (amongst other themes...I like his idea about how we always get the past wrong and always tell it quite differently to how others choose to tell it).

Quite a dense and challenging book. He can get very detailed (I think I could make a glove now if someone handed me the kid-skin!). He is also constantly interrupting the narrative by cut-backs to different points in the past which can leave you frustrated when you're waiting for a major confrontation to unfold; but that's exactly how our brains work, the effect I assume he was aiming at. 

I want to read a couple of other authors first but have 'The Plot Against America' lined up - another counter-factual history.   

 

A few years ago, I went on a big Philip Roth bender. I read maybe a dozen of his books. I enjoyed every one of them. But I think American Pastoral was the best of the bunch.

 

On 1/10/2016 at 10:59 AM, jlhoots said:

Everytime Philip Roth comes up in this thread, I repeat my belief that he deserves the Nobel prize.

Yes. I agree.

Edited January 18, 2016 by HutchFan

[A Lark Ascending]

15 hours ago, HutchFan said:

A few years ago, I went on a big Philip Roth bender. I read maybe a dozen of his books. I enjoyed every one of them. But I think American Pastoral was the best of the bunch.

Now you've spoilt it for me. 

[HutchFan]

1 hour ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Now you've spoilt it for me.

Ha! I hope not!  Like I said, they're all very good.  

Also, don't overlook Patrimony: A True Story. Instead of a novel, it's a memoir. Roth reflects on his relationship with his father, as well as his friendship with Primo Levi. Some of it is very sad, but it all rings true.

[A Lark Ascending]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

Ha! I hope not!  Like I said, they're all very good.  

Also, don't overlook Patrimony: A True Story. Instead of a novel, it's a memoir. Roth reflects on his relationship with his father, as well as his friendship with Primo Levi. Some of it is very sad, but it all rings true.

Thanks, HutchFan. Sounds like one to try when I've read a few of the novels. Just as long as there's not too much baseball! 

[Leeway]

Finished off this second novel in the Barchester series. Enjoyable especially for its portrait of the slimy Reverend Obadiah Slope and the formidable Mrs. Proudie. One annoying thing about Trollope is how he insists on pulling back the curtain and showing how the novel is constructed. He loves puncturing the fictive illusion. He gets away with it mostly, because his storytelling abilities are so strong.

[ejp626]

43 minutes ago, Leeway said:

 

Finished off this second novel in the Barchester series. Enjoyable especially for its portrait of the slimy Reverend Obadiah Slope and the formidable Mrs. Proudie. One annoying thing about Trollope is how he insists on pulling back the curtain and showing how the novel is constructed. He loves puncturing the fictive illusion. He gets away with it mostly, because his storytelling abilities are so strong.

I've not seen it but Alan Rickman was Obadian Slope in The Barchester Chronicles.  I probably should snag a copy, though I really would prefer watching it after I read the books, and that is several years away.

[Brad]

On Tuesday, January 5, 2016 at 4:44 PM, ejp626 said:

I enjoy Roth a fair bit.  It is interesting how his politics shifted over time becoming fairly conservative by the time he wrote The Radetzky March, even though he was essentially drinking himself to death at this time and would have presumably had more in common with the working class that he focused on in his earlier works.  I find this interesting anyway.  I'm enjoying the new non-fiction collection The Hotel Years.  My absolute favorite novel by him is Hotel Savoy.

I'm about halfway done with Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow.  It's ok.  I wish less of the novel had been in flashback.

On deck is Mahfouz's The Thief and the Dogs.

This is my first experience with him.  Have ordered the continuation of the Trotta saga, The Emperor's Tomb.

What would be your recommendation after that?

 

[ejp626]

28 minutes ago, Brad said:

This is my first experience with him.  Have ordered the continuation of the Trotta saga, The Emperor's Tomb.

What would be your recommendation after that?

 

I quite like Hotel Savoy, which is my favorite novel by Roth.  The Legend of the Holy Drinker is good, but probably better to get out of the library.  It's fairly short.

I've heard good things about The Leviathan, but I've not read it.  That can be read as a stand-alone or in his Collected Stories.

I also like his reportage quite a bit.  I'm wrapping up The Hotel Years, which is good.  His non-fiction is also collected in What I Saw and The White Cities.

It's a bit out of left field, but I'm finding some interesting parallels between Roth and Emmanuel Bove, so he might be a writer worth checking out at some point.  For Bove, My Friends/Mes Amis is a good starting point, as well as the newly translated Henri Duchemin and His Shadows (NYRB).

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I quite like Hotel Savoy, which is my favorite novel by Roth.  The Legend of the Holy Drinker is good, but probably better to get out of the library.  It's fairly short.

I've heard good things about The Leviathan, but I've not read it.  That can be read as a stand-alone or in his Collected Stories.

I also like his reportage quite a bit.  I'm wrapping up The Hotel Years, which is good.  His non-fiction is also collected in What I Saw and The White Cities.

It's a bit out of left field, but I'm finding some interesting parallels between Roth and Emmanuel Bove, so he might be a writer worth checking out at some point.  For Bove, My Friends/Mes Amis is a good starting point, as well as the newly translated Henri Duchemin and His Shadows (NYRB).

Harvey Pekar was a big fan of Bove. When I was editor of the Chicago Tribune Books section, Harvey lobbied to review a recently translated Bove novel. I was happy to tell him "yes."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-08-06/entertainment/9508060144_1_emmanuel-bove-carol-volk-night-departure

[ejp626]

45 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Harvey Pekar was a big fan of Bove. When I was editor of the Chicago Tribune Books section, Harvey lobbied to review a recently translated Bove novel. I was happy to tell him "yes."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-08-06/entertainment/9508060144_1_emmanuel-bove-carol-volk-night-departure

Larry, thanks for this.  That's a solid review.  I own Night Departure/No Place (as well as Quicksand) but haven't gotten to them yet.  I hope to before too long.

[Brad]

Thanks.

I know NYRB Classics has published a Bove book.

[ejp626]

6 hours ago, Brad said:

Thanks.

I know NYRB Classics has published a Bove book.

Yes, it is called Henri Duchemin and His Shadows.  It's five or so short stories and one slightly longer story (not quite a novella).  It's good, but probably not the best introduction to Bove.

[A Lark Ascending]

Don’t read classic books because you think you should: do it for fun!
A new poll shows Britons are weighed down with regret over novels they haven’t found ‘time and patience’ for. Why do we shame ourselves over entertainment?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jan/21/dont-read-classic-books-because-you-should-war-peace-fun

Not that good an article but I love the idea behind it (and not just with regard to lit-er-a-tuh. The stranglehold elite ideas of 'culture' continue to have over those of us with a middle or more class education is more than a little remarkable). I too have a copy of Ulysses that I never got more than 50 pages through. On the other hand I'm currently having a second crack at Moby Dick - not an easy read with all those diversions and biblical references but am enjoying it. Can't manage more than two or three chapters at a time so it'll take a couple more months (about 200 pages through at present). I imagine Moby Dick is something of a white whale for many a reader with those elite cultural prejudices. 

[Hard to believe 7% of Brits have read Moby Dick...I somehow doubt the 1 664 people used in the survey were a proper socio-economic reflection of Britain]

This is excellent - a military history of the 1775-1783 war. I only have the vaguest knowledge of this conflict - lots of names like Benedict Arnold, Trenton, Saratoga that I know without having any context for (for some reason I know exactly what Yorktown was all about!). Just the right balance between narrative and analysis. I've just got to the American victories at Trenton and Princeton.

Funny how you can warm to one book and be cold to another. I tried to read Rory Muir's first volume on Wellington last year and had to give up; just found something in the writing style utterly unengaging. Yet this one completely grabs me. Both clearly excellent historians who have carried out the spadework. For some reason with Muir I had this vision of a dreary academic don. With Ferling I get this sense of someone really excited by his subject.   

 

Edited January 22, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

1 hour ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Don’t read classic books because you think you should: do it for fun!
A new poll shows Britons are weighed down with regret over novels they haven’t found ‘time and patience’ for. Why do we shame ourselves over entertainment?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jan/21/dont-read-classic-books-because-you-should-war-peace-fun

Not that good an article but I love the idea behind it (and not just with regard to lit-er-a-tuh. The stranglehold elite ideas of 'culture' continue to have over those of us with a middle or more class education is more than a little remarkable). I too have a copy of Ulysses that I never got more than 50 pages through. On the other hand I'm currently having a second crack at Moby Dick - not an easy read with all those diversions and biblical references but am enjoying it. Can't manage more than two or three chapters at a time so it'll take a couple more months (about 200 pages through at present). I imagine Moby Dick is something of a white whale for many a reader with those elite cultural prejudices. 

[Hard to believe 7% of Brits have read Moby Dick...I somehow doubt the 1 664 people used in the survey were a proper socio-economic reflection of Britain]

 

 

I was fortunate in my course of English Literature at Leeds University in the 60s to be able to take what nowadays would be called a module on American Literature and so was introduced to Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Melville and Henry James - even had an imported American tutor! - and so I became one of those few Brits to have read Moby Dick, which I thought was a great book, particularly when read in the studious atmosphere of a reference library. It's obviously read - or was read - far more generally by Americans. Discussing his recording contract with Whaling City Sound of New Bedford, MA, I remarked to Greg Abate that I'd read Moby Dick at college. "Didn't we all?" he replied.

[jlhoots]

Thomas McGuane: Crow Fair

[A Lark Ascending]

8 hours ago, BillF said:

I was fortunate in my course of English Literature at Leeds University in the 60s to be able to take what nowadays would be called a module on American Literature and so was introduced to Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Melville and Henry James - even had an imported American tutor! - and so I became one of those few Brits to have read Moby Dick, which I thought was a great book, particularly when read in the studious atmosphere of a reference library. It's obviously read - or was read - far more generally by Americans. Discussing his recording contract with Whaling City Sound of New Bedford, MA, I remarked to Greg Abate that I'd read Moby Dick at college. "Didn't we all?" he replied.

I read a smattering of those writers but from a different perspective - a course on late-19th to 1960s American history. I had a couple of essays to write on the emergence of American cultural identity (The Transcendentalists, I vaguely recall). I remember especially enjoying Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court', a much darker tale than the Danny Kaye/Bing Crosby film I half-remembered. 

I've read a couple of Henry James novels but found them hard going. I did like 'The Turn of the Screw'...read that twice...but was helped there by a 60s/70s film version (THe Innocents) and later getting to know the Britten opera. 

[paul secor]

Elaine Sciolino: The Only Street in Paris

Somewhat entertaining but, overall, too much fluff included.

[Joe]

Recommended. I think this book -- not Knausgård, not Ferrante, not Houellebecq, not Bolano, or Vila-Matas, or McBride -- might truly represent the future of the novel.

[Leeway]

ONE FAT ENGLISHMAN - Kingsley Amis

A little digression from the Victorians lately, but I have to say not a  very edifying one. I found the humor sour and, well, not very funny. For a short novel, it rather dragged. Guess I'm not an Amis fan (father or son). BTW, the cover reminds me of that infamous Herbie Mann LP cover. 

[BillF]

1 hour ago, Leeway said:

ONE FAT ENGLISHMAN - Kingsley Amis

A little digression from the Victorians lately, but I have to say not a  very edifying one. I found the humor sour and, well, not very funny. For a short novel, it rather dragged. Guess I'm not an Amis fan (father or son). BTW, the cover reminds me of that infamous Herbie Mann LP cover. 

Sorry you don't like Amis (père), as I have most of his books on my shelves, plus a couple of biographies. Hopelessly politically incorrect nowadays, of course. Anyway, I still rate certain passages in Lucky Jim as among the funniest things I've ever read.

[crisp]

It's minor Amis pere. I've read almost everything and would recommend long before OFE:

Take a Girl Like You / The Green Man / The Egyptologists / Ending Up / You Can't Do Both

And if you like those:

Girl, 20 / The Alteration / Jake's Thing

Most of those I like better than Lucky Jim, which many people seem to read without exploring him further. My way in was the collected letters, which is hilarious and gives a good overall impression of this spoilt, strong-minded, funny and interesting man.

Oh, and if you drink, this is great fun: