Now reading...

[alankin]

John Irving - The Cider House Rules

[BillF]

Particularly interesting on his formative years, less so when he subsequently became a writing - and money-generating - machine.

[jlhoots]

Timothy Hallinan: Everything But The Squeal

[ejp626]

Just wrapped up Fontane's On Tangled Paths.  I have to say, it is laughably conflict-free. 

 

(SPOILERS follow.)

Aristocrat starts affair with seamstress.  She tells him it is all wonderful, but she knows it won't last long.  His family pressures him to marry a wealthy cousin.  He does so, but every now and then pines for the girl he left behind.  The end.

I get that the novel was daring in its time, but everybody acts so sensibly and they all follow the roles/rules society expects and imposes upon them, that it is rather boring, I'm afraid.

 

I have a bit more to go with Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, and then on to Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom.

 

[paul secor]

W.P. Kinsella: The Miss Hobbema Pageant

Ugly cover - good stories

[jlhoots]

Vicki Croke: The Elephant Company

[Leeway]

The third novel in Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. No doubt an ambitious effort on Mishima's part, but the novel as a whole just fell flat for me. 

[Matthew]

The Ambassadors by Henry James.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Matthew

[gdogus]

 

Just finishing Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which I'm re-reading after 35 years or so in this great translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky. Much different than I remember.

[BillF]

I always find DeLillo since White Noise readable, though the best IMO remain the ones on my bookshelf: White Noise, Libra, Mao II and above all Underworld.

[Leeway]

On 2/26/2017 at 10:31 AM, Matthew said:

The Ambassadors by Henry James.

Love this book.

 

On 2/26/2017 at 1:37 PM, BillF said:

I always find DeLillo since White Noise readable, though the best IMO remain the ones on my bookshelf: White Noise, Libra, Mao II and above all Underworld.

Still have to read Underworld.  Don't know why I haven't.  The others you cited are indeed superlative. 

[alankin]

Philip K Dick -  Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb

Very vivid.  Glad I finally got to it.  The image above is from the first edition.

[jazzbo]

1 hour ago, alankin said:

Philip K Dick -  Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb

Very vivid.  Glad I finally got to it.  The image above is from the first edition.

Great book!

[BillF]

On 2/26/2017 at 3:31 PM, Matthew said:

The Ambassadors by Henry James.

Said to be very difficult. I did, however, read it at university, but an exam ahead of you is quite a incentive. I remember a very dense prose style.

[Brad]

Just finished Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time and am now reading Hillbilly Elegy. 

[jazzbo]

Re-reading for probably the second time.

[Leeway]

The 4th and last novel in Mishima's Sea Of Fertility tetralogy. This novel is something of a throwback to his earlier novels in style. The quartet of novels are challenging to read. 

[Leeway]

A strong novel.

[BillF]

1 hour ago, Leeway said:

A strong novel.

Can't go wrong with Greene. Must do some re-reading soon. I read The Quiet American every twenty years or so.

[paul secor]

Alberto Manguel: The Library at Night

[Matthew]

G. K. Chesterton: A Biography by Ian Ker.  As always with Ian Ker, a well done, professional biography; this one on Chesterton makes a good companion to Ker's bio of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Though, I do find myself getting annoyed with Chesterton's worship of "common sense" -- not everything is quite clear, and obviously true as he makes out at times.

Edited March 5, 2017 by Matthew

[ejp626]

Slowly making progress with Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!  It's a fairly straight-forward story told in an incredibly convoluted fashion...

Also, dipping into Alfred Doblin's Bright Magic (NYRB Classics), which is apparently the first time that Doblin's short stories have been collected in English.  I have to admit they aren't doing a lot for me.  The cover is nice, however.

 

 

[jlhoots]

Bill Beverly: Dodgers

[BillF]

On 1/7/2017 at 0:56 AM, ejp626 said:

I agree.  I read his novels in chronological order, and they really started to sound about the same -- an uncle that cheated the narrator out of some large amount of money, one (or two) nagging ex-wives, generally some poking fun at the liberal sacred cow of the moment, etc.  I believe Ravelstein, his final novel, does break the mold, though I never got around to reading that one.  Of the late Bellow novels, the only one I really liked was The Dean's December.

Well, I've just finished Ravelstein which was going fine until the end, when it moved in a direction that was out of character with the novel to that point. As usual with Bellow, though, plenty of  food for thought in this one.

[ejp626]

On 3/6/2017 at 7:42 PM, ejp626 said:

Slowly making progress with Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!  It's a fairly straight-forward story told in an incredibly convoluted fashion...

Also, dipping into Alfred Doblin's Bright Magic (NYRB Classics), which is apparently the first time that Doblin's short stories have been collected in English.  I have to admit they aren't doing a lot for me.  The cover is nice, however.

 

I finally finished Absalom, Absalom!  To be honest, it didn't seem worth the effort this time around.  I like The Sound and the Fury considerably more, though my favorite Faulkner remains The Reivers.

Definitely underwhelmed by Bright Magic, though I did like "Materialism: A Fable."

Just wrapped up Juan Rulfo Pedro Páramo, which all seems to take place in a City of the Dead somewhere in Mexico.

Tomorrow I launch into Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters.