Now reading...

[Joe]

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Collected_Poems/6WwUT7oudRkC?hl=en&gbpv=0 

[jlhoots]

Emily St. John Mandel: The Glass Hotel

[Dave James]

On 5/2/2020 at 8:24 AM, Joe said:

 

Is it just me or does Ceravolo look a little like Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani on "Friends").  

 

 

[Joe]

51 minutes ago, Dave James said:

Is it just me or does Ceravolo look a little like Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani on "Friends").  

 

 

[ejp626]

I've never been a big fan of audiobooks, perhaps because I generally don't drive anywhere, and I would typically prefer to sit down and read something on the page rather than have it read to me.  However, I have been exploring them just a bit because our library has a fair number of audiobooks as part of its on-line offerings.  They have quite a few unabridged editions of Toni Morrison novels, all read by Toni Morrison.  So far I have listened to The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Paradise.  I find it interesting to see what she emphasizes, particularly when she reads out dialogue between characters.  Sometimes the dialogue is a bit casual, just things said back and forth or one person is passing on information to another, and sometimes it is much more freighted.  (Here I am thinking of some of the things Guitar says to Milkman for instance.  Hearing her read it in a certain way made me pay a bit more attention.)  Nonetheless, I still don't love audiobooks, and I'll probably listen to her read Beloved, and that will probably be it. 

That said, I'm more than a little annoyed that regional-blocking prevents me from hearing Samuel Jackson reading Chester Himes's A Rage in Harlem.  I'm sure that is a somewhat intense experience.  Audible has this, but only if you live in the States.

I did enjoy Neil Gaiman reading Norse Mythology, particularly when he was voicing Thor.  He runs through pretty much all the key tales from the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, and it takes just a bit over 6 hours to hear him read his book.  For me it was entertaining listening to him (he has a good performing voice), and while I probably won't seek out Neverwhere or The Ocean at the End of the Lane (which he also reads), I won't completely rule it out (by the end of the lock-down period at any rate).  The library has American Gods also, but this time it is read by a full cast rather than by Gaiman.  Not sure how I feel about that.

I've been surprisingly bad about buckling down and reading, though I am nearly done with the Stephen Jay Gould book.  I think the problem is that I am not reading on transit and I can't go to the gym and read on the stationary bikes.  I was going to read outside more, but it has been very chilly up here, and now it's going to rain for close to a week straight.  So it's just going to take a while to really get back into the right frame of mind.

 

[felser]

[Brad]

44 minutes ago, felser said:

How is this?

[felser]

7 minutes ago, Brad said:

How is this?

Excellent and fascinating, can't put it down, and I'm not even to Butterfield/Love/Doors etc. yet.   Label actually started in 1950 (when Holzman was 19) as a folk and eclectic label.  Also tells a lot about the recording industry as it morphed over time, and about America.  Told in first person by Holzman and others.   Holzman is a really interesting guy, and seems to have a lot of integrity along with the obvious vision and ambition (which he does not seek to disguise). 

[Brad]

3 minutes ago, felser said:

Excellent and fascinating, can't put it down, and I'm not even to Butterfield/Love/Doors etc. yet.   Label actually started in 1950 (when Holzman was 19) as a folk and eclectic label.  Also tells a lot about the recording industry as it morphed over time, and about America.  Told in first person by Holzman and others.   Holzman is a really interesting guy, and seems to have a lot of integrity along with the obvious vision and ambition (which he does not seek to disguise). 

Thanks, sounds like a good read. 

[Brad]

The Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser are great fun. The fictional Harry Flashman in various historical pickles and how he gets out of them to live and fight another day. They are decidedly not politically correct! 

[Brad]

On 4/29/2020 at 2:11 PM, Brad said:

Starting to read this. Never read it before. 50 years late 

I just finished this. Never did I wish a book to go on as much as this one. Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassidy), one of literature’s great characters. 

[jazzbo]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

I just finished this. Never did I wish a book to go on as much as this one. Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassidy), one of literature’s great characters. 

Was your version the "scroll" version? Both the original and the scroll version are fascinating reads.

[Brad]

30 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

Was your version the "scroll" version? Both the original and the scroll version are fascinating reads.

No, the original. The scroll version must be something else. 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Brad

[jazzbo]

6 hours ago, Brad said:

No, the original. The scroll version must be something else. 

It's a bit expanded and a slightly diffefent experience. I am due to re=read one of the versions of this soon. . . .

[jazzbo]

Now reading "Dawn behind the Dawn: A Search for the Earthly Paradise" Geoffrey Ashe

[gmonahan]

Some friends from a travel group I went with turned me on to this one. I'm liking it so far.

 

[jlhoots]

Colum McCann: Apeirogon

Edited May 18, 2020 by jlhoots

[ejp626]

The province is fairly close to reopening libraries on a drop-off/pick-up basis, which is less than ideal, but better than nothing.  Presumably Toronto will follow suit, though they may need a bit more time to get organized.  I assume that means they will expand the hold system and there will be no browsing.  Not really sure how we will arrange to get a time slot for the pick up, but they'll figure something out.

This means that the clock is now restarting on the library books I borrowed before this all went down.  And I definitely need to pivot back to print from all the e-books.  At least the weather is a bit nicer, and I have been able to go outside more often.

Anyway, I will now buckle down and get through Camus's The Plague (I really have enjoyed what I have read so far, but there have been so many distractions...) and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Haven't really settled on what's after that, but maybe the next major book will be the Grossman translation of Don Quixote.

[Matthew]

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For some reason, I find myself returning more and more to Fitzgerald, who I tended to ignore in my callous youth.

[Brad]

I’ve had this book for as long as I can remember. Might be one of the oldest books in my library, an old Scribners edition, which I may have purchased from the Scribners bookstore in Manhattan back in the 80s — what a great place that was for browsing! Sadly, no longer there and Scribners was acquired years ago and is now part of Simon & Schuster.

Anyway, I never got around to reading it but better late than never.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Brad

[Matthew]

On 5/19/2020 at 9:46 AM, Matthew said:

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For some reason, I find myself returning more and more to Fitzgerald, who I tended to ignore in my callous youth.

Definitely one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've had in a long time. Now on to Fitzgerald's next book Flappers and Philosophers 

[Matthew]

Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald by David S. Brown. I've started to read this biography side-by-side while reading Fitzgerald's fiction, never realized he was such a fascinating figure, learn something new every day!

[ghost of miles]

Matthew, I went on a renewed Fitzgerald kick myself last year after reading The Basil and Josephine Stories, which are some of the most vivid fictional studies of the social economy of adolescent culture that I’ve ever encountered. 

Brad, would love to hear your thoughts on To Have And Have Not after you finish it. It’s always seemed to have a bit of a footnote status in Hemingway’s oeuvre as his purported entry in the annals of leftist 1930s literature and remembered primarily as the springboard for the much-more-famous movie, but I’ve always been curious to read it. Library of America is bringing out its first Hemingway volume this autumn, btw (and maybe we’ll see a second Fitzgerald volume as the mid-to-late 1920s works begin to fall into the public domain).

On a trashier pop-culture note, just starting this book, which arrived in today’s mail: 

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

 

Brad, would love to hear your thoughts on To Have And Have Not after you finish it. It’s always seemed to have a bit of a footnote status in Hemingway’s oeuvre as his purported entry in the annals of leftist 1930s literature and remembered primarily as the springboard for the much-more-famous movie, but I’ve always been curious to read it. Library of America is bringing out its first Hemingway volume this autumn,   

The first Library of America Hemingway!  What's that about? IIRC  The film of To Have and To Have Not is the only film on which one Nobel Prize winner gets credit on a screenplay adapted from another Nobel Prize winner.  And it's so far removed from the  book that Warner Brothers then did make a film that is based on the book. 

Edited May 28, 2020 by medjuck

[ghost of miles]

17 hours ago, medjuck said:

The first Library of America Hemingway!  What's that about? IIRC  The film of To Have and To Have Not is the only film on which one Nobel Prize winner gets credit on a screenplay adapted from another Nobel Prize winner.  And it's so far removed from the  book that Warner Brothers then did make a film that is based on the book. 

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises And Other Writings 1918-1926