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[Leeway]

THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON -1864- Anthony Trollope

I finally wrestled this baggy  monster into submission. Trollope can be frustrating. In a few pages he can shift from brilliant social scenes to trite and mawkish page-filler. That might be the problem when one write a certain number of words each day; some are bound to be bad. Apparently others esteem the book more highly; John Major cited it as his favorite novel. Anyway, it's the 5th volume in the Barsetshire Chronicles. I have one more to go to complete the series. 

[BillF]

3 hours ago, Leeway said:

THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON -1864- Anthony Trollope

Apparently others esteem the book more highly; John Major cited it as his favorite novel. 

I wouldn't cite John Major as my favourite politician. 

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, Leeway said:

THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON -1864- Anthony Trollope

I finally wrestled this baggy  monster into submission. Trollope can be frustrating. In a few pages he can shift from brilliant social scenes to trite and mawkish page-filler. That might be the problem when one write a certain number of words each day; some are bound to be bad. Apparently others esteem the book more highly; John Major cited it as his favorite novel. Anyway, it's the 5th volume in the Barsetshire Chronicles. I have one more to go to complete the series. 

"The Last Chronicle of Barset" is a killer, in the best sense. Mrs. Proudie! 

[A Lark Ascending]

Have four on the go at present...

The Jens Malte Fischer bio of Mahler mentioned previously which is excellent. Just got him to Leipzig. My, he was a right prig as a young man. 

This is suberb. Much of my formal study of history and then early teaching was in the 17th and 18thC so the Reformation was integral as background and its ideas central to those times. This quite dense but very readable survey put lots of disconnected bits together for me. Especially good on the ideas that fuelled the change.

 

Current novel - slowly working through this series. Should finish when I'm 80. The heroes back from their American adventures around the time of the 1812-14 war, about to set off for the Baltic.

This has had quite a bit of press coverage as an argument that 1971 was the greatest year in rock. Daft marketing premise and hides the fact that this is more than just a fluffy bit of fandom. Covers the year month by month linking the music with the social context. 1970-73 were probably my formative years with music (and still the period of rock music I use as a comfort zone) so it has obvious personal appeal. He's very good on how unformed much of the business still was then and how central listening to records was to young people then with few other alternatives (he's spot on when he comments how most teenagers/early adults just assumed TV was not for them...I went through most of the 70s almost completely ignoring it).

But he also reminds you of what was really prominent at the time rather than what subsequent revisionism has deemed significant. So early on he highlights the huge success of Carol King's 'Tapestry' (with suggestions as to why), a record that rarely figures highly in the standard histories of the time (most accounts would have you believe that everyone was listening to Iggy Pop). I remember it being hugely popular right through to my university years from 1970s. I hated the record (without having listened to it beyond the radio hits), probably for no other reason than its popularity. I very much like it now. An echo of a past I didn't actually experience. My, I was right prig as a young man.    

Edited April 20, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[ejp626]

On 4/17/2016 at 8:19 PM, ejp626 said:

Just starting Keane's Queen Lear.  The opening scene is this young girl running all around her parents' estate, checking up on what all the servants are doing.  It kind of reminds me a bit of Peake's Gormenghast actually.

I am not enjoying this at all.  In the opening section, Molly Keane managed to portray the mother as a monster, yet again.  She basically hated her own mother and takes it out on mothers again and again and again.

Then we shift to the young girl as a young woman, who is the most boring milquetoast character I've endured in a very long time.  I understand there is some dark comic twist at the end of the novel, but I can't see it making up for the middle section.  Well, I should wrap it up tonight.

I'm astounded that a few people (relatively few) consider this her best novel.  I much preferred the novels from the first part of her career, as I didn't like Good Behaviour that much either (which far more people consider her best).

[HutchFan]

On 4/17/2016 at 2:17 AM, Jazzmoose said:

After reading the Faulkner stuff earlier, I had to pull The Sound and the Fury off the shelf one more time, mainly to see if I could figure out the second section a bit better.  (First section I've read too much-it was too fun to ignore.  The third is pointless; I'd just put it down and grab The Hamlet instead.  The fourth section tells me that Faulkner had too much power in the writer-editor relationship.  It's like having a Disney ending tacked onto Citizen Kane.)

Hmm. I had a very different take on Dilsey's section. I wouldn't characterize it as Disney-like or Pollyannaish.  After the unremitting bleakness of all that comes before, there's finally a character who recognizes that other people exist. All of the preceding characters live in a solipsistic world. Dilsey doesn't. Even though she's on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy, she's the only one who's admirable. Her hope in something greater may be foolish, but at least she's fighting for meaning. I think that gives her far more dimension and humanity than the others, all of whom are already defeated.

Then again, one of my beefs with Faulkner is that all of his characters are close variations on the exact same character. They're all "Faulkner characters," rather than the myriad types of human beings that one recognizes in the world.

For what it's worth...

Edited April 21, 2016 by HutchFan

[Jazzmoose]

I get that this was his intent, but to me it just seems like bad execution after the first three sections.

[Leeway]

THE BAY OF NOON - 1970- Shirley Hazzard

My first exposure to Hazzard's work (I've been meaning to read "Transit of Venus" forever, but it's this early novel I ended up reading first), it left me with an interest in reading more of her. Set in post-WWII Italy, the portrait of the city of Naples is quite wonderfully evocative. 

[ejp626]

I've decided that I need to take a bit of a breather from fiction and even from urban studies, which is what I typically read when reading non-fiction, and I will focus on science and anthropology for a while.

I'm starting with this:

Or rather I'm actually rereading it, but then I will read Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle, which I started several times but never finished.  I will this time around.

[BillF]

The third early Bellow I've returned to recently and the best - an impressive work. Looking forward to re-reading Herzog soon.

[Leeway]

THE BACHELORS - 1960 - Muriel Spark

Came across this relatively very early Spark novel. Not among her best, but plenty to amuse and ponder. Her ostensible targets are bachelors and spiritualism, but her real concerns may be marriage, sin and the devil. 

[paul secor]

45 minutes ago, Leeway said:

THE BACHELORS - 1960 - Muriel Spark

Came across this relatively very early Spark novel. Not among her best, but plenty to amuse and ponder. Her ostensible targets are bachelors and spiritualism, but her real concerns may be marriage, sin and the devil. 

I've read two if Spark's novels and keep meaning to read more, but my "to read" list and piles are too large already. Someday ....

[jlhoots]

Dana Spiotta: innocents & Others

[BillF]

Perhaps not Highsmith's best, but she's always worth reading!

 

[ejp626]

Not as far as I thought/hoped with Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival.  The first section is incredibly dull, just about like reading about paint drying.  The next section is a bit better but still not nearly as good as the sea voyage sections of Ondaatje'e The Cat's Table, for example.  I guess I'll persist though.

On the other hand, I did finish the section on the special theory of relativity and am heading into the general theory.  It does help to read other books about the subject though, since Einstein is a bit too terse for a lay audience to grasp the implications of what he is writing about.  Martin Gardner's Relativity Simply Explained is one of the better primers. 

[A Lark Ascending]

Still leisurely working through 'Mahler' (about to hit the Vienna opera) and 'The Reformation' (Council of Trent about to kick off; I think I now understand Anabaptists!). 

Read this quickly over the weekend and very much enjoyed it:

 

A sort of follow-up to his 'What a Carve Up' of some years back; where that was a black satire on Thatcherism, this one focuses on the current 'Age of Austerity'. Not so much a novel as a series on interconnecting short stories; a mix of social/political satire, Gothic novel and B-Movie horror (his technique probably owes more to cinema than lit-er-a-tuh). Continues Coe's regular theme of nostalgia for the Welfare State era which at least attempted to place state duty to care for the entire community as paramount, contrasted with the stark dog-eat-dog world of free-marketism (ironic as one of the book's themes is a warning about the dangers of nostalgia). Reading it in the immediate wake of the Panama Papers and antics of the greedy buggers* who raided the BHS pension scheme, it seems less fiction than news reporting.

Might appeal to those who enjoyed John Lanchester's 'Capital' - though it's much more of a shaggy dog story.      

* Of course I really meant 'risk-taking wealth creators'. 

Edited May 3, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[alankin]

7 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

  

A sort of follow-up to his 'What a Carve Up' of some years back; where that was a black satire on Thatcherism, this one focuses on the current 'Age of Austerity'. Not so much a novel as a series on interconnecting short stories; a mix of social/political satire, Gothic novel and B-Movie horror (his technique probably owes more to cinema than lit-er-a-tuh). Continues Coe's regular theme of nostalgia for the Welfare State era which at least attempted to place state duty to care for the entire community as paramount, contrasted with the stark dog-eat-dog world of free-marketism (ironic as one of the book's themes is a warning about the dangers of nostalgia). Reading it in the immediate wake of the Panama Papers and antics of the greedy buggers* who raided the BHS pension scheme, it seems less fiction than news reporting.

Might appeal to those who enjoyed John Lanchester's 'Capital' - though it's much more of a shaggy dog story.      

* Of course I really meant 'risk-taking wealth creators'. 

Some might say "wealth-taking risk creators".     

Edited May 3, 2016 by alankin

[jlhoots]

James Scarantino: The Drum Within

[paul secor]

Ross Macdonald: The Barbarous Coast

[ejp626]

Almost done with Einstein's relativity (the first book made me feel smarter -- the second one the reverse...  )

I'm also reading a short novel by Edna O'Brien -- Night.  Quite enjoyable if one likes High Modernism.  Definitely feels influenced by Molly Bloom in Ulysses, as well as Doctor O'Connor in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.  I think this was a bit of a departure for O'Brien, but I'm enjoying it.

Edited May 11, 2016 by ejp626

[alankin]

Richard Price - Lush Life

[Simon8]

[Matthew]

The Warden by Anthony Trollope.  A very enjoyable read.

[Shawn]

[Leeway]

The last of the six books that form Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire.  Trollope gathers up all the loose ends , and some new ones as well, and pulls them all together in this uneven but amusing narrative. Maybe the best of the series after The Warden.  Mrs. Proudie's death seemed a little anticlimactic, happening as it does offstage, which seems to be Trolllope's preference in such things. It was good to read the entire series.