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I wrapped up Narayan's The Financial Expert. There were a few good scenes (especially in Madras) but this seemed to me to try too hard to be clever. Plus, I didn't care for the main character, I absolutely detested his spoiled son, and I couldn't really fathom the motivations of the third character (they seemed all over the place and just not internally consistent). I have to say I think God's Grace by Malamud is just not for me. It is a very strange book, but almost anything I write about it would be a spoiler. Speaking of spoilers, the latest edition of Nabakov's Invitation to a Beheading has a blurb on the back that spoils the entire novel! Are you kidding me? I honestly don't know if I should bother now, even though this is the publisher's fault and not Nabokov's (and I realize plot is not usually the main point of reading Nabokov, but still...). I'll get a chapter or two in and see if I am still feeling it, but I have a strong intimation I will abandon this. After I clear out all this, I have Faulkner in the batter's circle: Go Down, Moses. I'm pretty sure this is a book I will enjoy without major reservations.

That assumes the winners actually do invest it all -- highly doubtful -- and they have a surefire strategy that will consistently beat inflation. For most periods, that's probably true, but this has been a period of extremely low inflation combined with volatile market activity. I'd probably go with the annual payments under that scenario. On the other hand, it depends how big the payoff actually is, since it might be better to be in the top tax bracket in one year and then return to a slightly lower bracket later on (depending of course how the investments are structured and/or sheltered, how much goes into a trust, how much to charity, etc.). I think it is not totally straight-forward until you consider all the variables.

RIP Lousy, lousy, lousy week. I'm hoping to dig out Galaxy Quest (I should have a copy somewhere) and play it over the weekend.

My sleep patterns are all jacked up, but it is certainly as a result of my choices -- staying up too late to try to get too much in any one day. I wouldn't say I exactly have insomnia, since I fall asleep almost instantly but then wake up in the middle of the night -- 3 or 4 am. I get up and surf the internet and work on blog posts, so it isn't terribly productive time, but isn't completely wasted either. Then I maybe get two more hours sleep, and then I am grouchy at work until lunchtime. So I know better, but it is a hard pattern to break. Still, I feel the consequences a lot more now than I did 10 years ago, so maybe I'll wise up one of these days.

I'm a fan of basically all his periods, though I have only a few of the classic albums (Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Ziggy of course) and am more of a singles guy throughout this period). Like Rooster, I have nearly all of his post Tin Machine CDs, and I just ordered Outside and BlackStar to complete the set. My favorite is Earthling, but the others have some great songs. I'll be going through a lot of this over the next week.

I am just stunned and really taken aback. RIP I managed to see him in concert twice -- once in 1990 on the Sound + Vision Tour (when he was supposedly retiring all his hits -- glad he didn't stick to to that). And then in 2004, the Reality tour, which of course was his last tour. I liked most of his later albums (haven't heard the brand new one yet) and respected how he didn't just play it safe but kept changing things up (at least relative to most rock/pop artists).

While I don't care much for the annoying central character in Nancy Lee's The Age (a teenage girl who is just desperate for love and human connection and who makes some bad decisions as a result), this is a pretty compelling book. It is about growing up in the 1980s and being sure that nuclear war would break out at any moment. Coincidentally, I am also reading Bernard Malamud's last completed novel God's Grace, which is about what happens after the entire human race is wiped out except one man. I'm not very far into this one. Next up after these are Narayan's The Financial Expert and Munro's The Moons of Jupiter.

That is so, but Trollope was a working stiff much of his life -- he had a long career at the Post Office and only started earning enough from his writing that he was able to resign at age 52. Also, he ran as a Liberal in Beverley, though apparently, this was primarily a scheme to show how corrupt the borough was and led to its eventual disenfranchisement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope I remember it taking about half of Can You Forgive Her? until I finally got into the rhythm and pace of Trollope -- after that I enjoyed him a lot and finished up the Palliser novels. However, I did not have the time to read the other 41 novels he wrote! I've decided in the next 2-3 years I will read some stand-alone novels: The Three Clerks, He Knew He Was Right and The Way We Live Now. After that I'll try to tackle the Chronicles of Barsetshire.

Has anyone seen the latest tour by the SF Jazz Collective? Apparently it features them doing new compositions and the other half is the music of Michael Jackson. I realize they did the music of Stevie Wonder a year or two ago, though I could see how that would have more possibilities than MJ's music, which strikes me as considerably simpler and not all that interesting as a starting point for jazz soloing. But perhaps I am just being far too snobbish about the whole thing. They are coming through Toronto in a few months, and I haven't really decided either way, though I may go in the end.

I like Mahfouz quite a bit. He has two main periods (three if you count the trilogy of novels he wrote about ancient Egypt, which I don't find very interesting). He wrote longer, realistic novels with multiple characters, up through the Cairo Trilogy. I think Cairo Modern is a good representative novel of this period, and if you like it, you might read a few other early novels and perhaps tackle the Cairo Trilogy. The only one from this period I don't like is The Beginning and the End. His later period (the majority of his career) features shorter novels, simpler stories (only a handful of characters), often focused on meetings in cafes. Also, they are somewhat more fable-like or dream-like. He mostly started to shy away from writing about politics, though The Day the Leader was Killed, is actually a fairly bold work from this period. From this period, I might recommend Adrift on the Night or Arabian Days and Nights. Or indeed The Thief and the Dogs, which is starting out well. Both periods are good, though I have a bit of a preference for the earlier novels. Fair enough. I was thinking more along the lines of the heavy drinkers William Kennedy wrote about, but your explanation makes sense. I think I read The Emperor's Tomb too early and didn't much care for it, but now that I have a fuller understanding of Roth and his work, I will try it again after tackling Radetzkymarsch.

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.

I'll be honest and say I didn't much care for this one. I think I had been spoiled by Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage, which I thought was a more entertaining treatment of the topic. If you do reread the Barnes, try the Findley as well.

I'm not sure I've ever encountered anyone who couldn't justify or explain away their actions to themselves at least, no matter how monstrous to others. I would say that is the defining feature of Middlemarch after all, though one that I found increasingly tiresome. He might well have said to himself that these women knew that there was a quid pro quo at work, and then they had agreed to come to his place, even after he had made various advances, so they surely knew the score. The 'ludes were just part of the general loosening up and letting go of their inhibitions, since some of them would have been hung up over sleeping with an African-American. He was just helping them over the hump, so to speak. Well, that's how I would write it if I was going to stage this as a novel with access to Cosby's inner thoughts. I wouldn't buy it if I was on the jury, I should hasten to add...

I did make it to the Cleveland Museum of Art for its big impressionist show. It was pretty incredible. Some images and musings here: http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2015/12/monet-exhibit-in-cleveland.html Unfortunately, tickets are sold out for the rest of the run (one more week). I think even if you are a member of the museum, it is too late to get in now. I've gone a couple of times to the Turner show at the AGO. It is good, though many of the best paintings didn't leave the Tate. Still worth seeing of course. I'll probably go one more time. It isn't guaranteed, but it looks like they will be republishing the Archibald Motley catalog, which had gone OOP, so I've put in an order on Amazon. While I was browsing, they recommended a new Norman Lewis catalog called Procession. I like Normal Lewis, so I think I'll order that as well. This led me to look into the related exhibit, which is running at PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). More information here: https://www.pafa.org/normanlewis While I would love to visit Philadelphia, I doubt very much I can get there before the summer, by which time the exhibit will be in Ft. Worth. I'm a bit bummed out that the touring schedule isn't flipped, since I will be going to Chicago in the summer, but I suppose I can find an excuse to travel to Chicago in the late fall next year. I'm sure my wife would appreciate it if we went around Thanksgiving -- or even the week before or after just to save a bit on airline tickets. (It is worth noting this is a big exhibit -- 90 paintings -- and while the upper floor of the Chicago Cultural Center can hold a lot of art -- they still might have to trim it back a bit. Nonetheless, I just can't see making it to Phily this spring.)

I would actually disagree with that. Just as with Rashomon, there is no absolute truth in these kinds of matters, since Cosby probably did feel justified in his actions. Anyway, it doesn't help that the jury is being asked to decide about things over 10 years ago. That said, one can certainly say there is a pattern of behavior, and a reasonable person would conclude that Bill is a sexual predator. Nonetheless, this will be a difficult case to prosecute, since if the judge does allow in all these "extraneous" witnesses, it will probably be appealed forever. It is also pretty clear that this is a "political" prosecution, since the new DA actually ran on a platform of charging Cosby on the stand. No matter what you think about this case, it just feels sleazy and unjust to have criminal case proceedings dependent upon the outcome of an election -- and points to the general abuses that arise from having these positions being elected ones.

I'm with you Bill. I have finally crossed the finish line of Middlemarch. It wasn't worth it. I started out with at least a passable interest in and sympathy with many if not most of the characters. By the end, I thoroughly disliked all of them except Rev. Farebrother and perhaps Celia. I found Silas Marner mawkish and a bit stupid (if at least short) and strongly disliked The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. I'm clearly allergic to George Eliot. At one point, I had seriously considered reading Daniel Deronda, but I shan't torment myself a third time.

I think it is worth reading for sure, but it is probably the lesser trilogy, in the sense that he was a better novelist by the end (Deptford and Cornish trilogy follow the Salterton Trilogy).

I still have some wrapping to do, but generally things are under control. Merry Christmas to all.

Compared to the whole of humanity, artists and novelists occupy an extremely narrow and precocious position. I don't see that as particularly controversial. Most film-makers are really in a dialog with other film-makers, and I see the same thing happening with most literary novelists.

There is a lot to be said for that, but it also means our window onto the past is skewed in very specific ways. If history is primarily written by the victors, novels are primarily written by a very narrow group of middle-class strivers (perhaps more in the past than today when there are more voices to be heard, even if the financial rewards are lower). If one was going to write a cultural history of 2016 -- and all blogs and twitter feeds and Facebook postings were erased in the Great Magnetic Solar Flare of 2025 -- and we had to rely on Jonathan Franzen or more likely still J.K. Rowling and George Martin, would we really feel they captured the essence of the age?

I know that Eliot is making all kinds of various cutting remarks about society in general and certain characters in particular, but I just don't think she has any subtlety compared to Austen, for instance who is much slyer and more rewarding (to me). I wouldn't say Dickens is subtle either. I've enjoyed the Trollope I have read (and will start going through his novels again in a few years) and he might be a shade subtler. I realize that's not the only characteristic that matters,* but I so prefer novelists who don't hit me over the head with what I should be paying attention to in a scene or, worse, what I should be feeling. I thought Mill on the Floss much worse in that regard, however. Eliot is worth reading once, but I am sometimes glad to find out that I haven't been missing much by getting around to an author relatively late in life. * For instance, many here find Muriel Spark kind of sly and I can't warm up to her either.

I thought I would have gotten further this weekend, but I only got through Book 3 (of 8) in Eliot's Middlemarch. I find I just don't have a lot of patience for her particular omniscient narrative voice. Is it really that different from Dickens or Trollope? Probably not, but I do grow weary of her explaining everything to me all the time. I don't think the book really knows whether it is a novel or a sociological tract...

This is so over-the-top that now I am a bit sorry I mentioned Roth (since Hofmann is the major promoter of Roth and seems to mostly take this opportunity to run down Zweig and elevate Roth).

You might like Joseph Roth a bit better, particularly his Berlin reportage, mostly in What I Saw. Roth was more of a man of the people, though he didn't fit in with society that well either, and drank himself to death to Paris in 1939 (despite having opportunities to move to the US).

I will finally wrap up Nabokov's The Gift today. I found Chapter 4 really dragged, and Chapter 5, while shorter, isn't much better. Well, I'm not really that surprised, Nabokov is just not a writer I enjoy reading, so I think I'll postpone reading any further novels by him indefinitely. I will be rereading Kafka's The Trial after that and hope to wrap it up by Friday. If all goes as planned, I will be tackling Middlemarch by the weekend. I should also mention that there is a new collection/translation of Joseph Roth's non-fiction pieces called The Hotel Years. I managed to check it out from the library. So far, pretty interesting.