Now reading...

[Larry Kart]

Am in the middle of Anthony Trollope's "The Duke's Children." I've read a lot of Trollope in recent years and have yet to be disappointed. Can't imagine I would have cared for him before I got to about this age.

Also just read the most recent of Lee Childs' Jack Reacher novels, "61 Hours."

I actually read a great deal of Trollope in my early 20s, perhaps a bit too young to fully appreciate it, but I did start to get into the pacing about halfway into Can You Forgive Her? I suspect someday I will read through the Palliser novels again, though I am fairly unlikely to read Powell's Dance to the Music of Time for a second time. I'd really like to read The Way We Live Now, but I have stashed it away in storage, but maybe in a year or two... Curiously, I never read any of the Chronicles of Barsetshire books, so that is something else I have to look forward to.

Am mostly done with Karinthy's Metropole, which successfully conveys the overwhelming, pressing nature of this overcrowded metropolis the narrator has landed in. It actually is making me a bit claustrophobic.

A couple years ago, after Larry mentioned how he liked the Palliser novels, I read The Eustace Diamonds and liked it a lot. Read 3 more with diminishing appreciation - by The Prime Minister it looked like Trollope actually admired his protagonist and had no more sense of irony. Time to return to Dickens and Fred. Engels.

Well, the Plantagenet of "The Prime Minister," while not without a fair number of good qualities, is (it might be said) is a man who is profoundly bewildered by much of life (by his wife Glencora, of course, and also by his own deeply diffident, rather stiff-necked nature, his political-social role, and his fate), and Trollope IMO captures those very ironic strains perfectly. Or do you want Plantagenet to be kicked about a good deal more than he is, just because his title is -- ironic enough, no? -- Duke of Omnium.

I think I know what you mean, though -- I too was was attracted by the at times startling darkness of "The Eustace Diamonds" -- but Trollope is a realist, not a prosecuting attorney.

Am reading and enjoying J.G. Farrell's at times very funny but also very ominous "The Singapore Grip."

[BillF]

[alankin]

Donald E. Westlake - Two Much!

[A Lark Ascending]

Rereading a favorite, which for some reason always seems like a good choice:

I like the look of that!

[kinuta]

[Royal Oak]

Just finished "Glue" by Irvine Welsh, which I enjoyed very much.

Welsh novels require some effort - I find myself thinking in a Scottish accent!

Anyone else read any Welsh? Any thoughts?

[aparxa]

Hervé Bazin - Un feu dévore un autre feu.

[ghost of miles]

A certain gent of literary repute interviews novelist Jonathan Lethem.

[jazzbo]

[porcy62]

Lately:

Good stuff

The greatest literature I read in the last years

[ghost of miles]

[A Lark Ascending]

[ejp626]

Combination of Board software and my computer conspired to eat my last message, which is really annoying. I'll try to repeat the gist of it.

Agree Grossman's Life and Fate is a keeper. Unfortunately, I only got 100 pages in when I had to return the library copy. Ordered my own and may read it this fall when I am on my own for a few months in Vancouver (probably Proust as well).

Just read John Rechy's The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez. Rechy is best known for City of Night, but this is an interesting read.

In general, this is very much a book in the "the city is hell" vein. I particularly like this passage:

"She worried because she had overheard some women on the bus say that the governor was going to shut down many of those clincas. Where would the women go? Thank God she and her children were healthy. Perhaps the Blessed Mother would ask for a clinic instead of a chapel.

Rosario might have said that, but she had gone too far in thinking it. She might have to confess it. The Blessed Mother always asked for a chapel. Who was she to question eternal mysteries?

Next up is Moth Smoke by Moshin Hamid.

Edited May 28, 2011 by ejp626

[jazzbo]

I'm finding this book fascinating.

[jlhoots]

Max Evans: The Hi Lo Country

[Royal Oak]

Charles Perry - Portrait Of A Young Man Drowning.

[alankin]

Janwillem Van De Wetering - Outsider in Amsterdam (the first in the Grijpstra & de Gier "Amsterdam Cops" series)

Edited May 30, 2011 by alankin

[A Lark Ascending]

Just started two totally contrasting reads:

[jlhoots]

Daniel Silva: The Defector

[Royal Oak]

Duncan Hamilton's biography of Harold Larwood (unlikely to mean anything to anyone but the English and Australian posters!)

[A Lark Ascending]

Statue of Larwood from the centre of Kirkby-in-Ashfield where I work. Bill Voce also came from here.

When I first moved here in 1978 one of the houses at the School was named after Larwood (it vanished in an 80s reorganisation).

I'm no cricket buff but am aware of the controversy of the Bodyline Tour of Australia in the early 1930s.

There's even a pub in Nottingham itself called the Larwood and Voce:

http://www.molefacepubcompany.co.uk/the-larwood-and-voce1.html

[BillF]

Amazing how he's balancing that lamp standard on his left elbow! (Should have taken the photo yourself, Bev!)

[sidewinder]

Statue of Larwood from the centre of Kirkby-in-Ashfield where I work. Bill Voce also came from here.

When I first moved here in 1978 one of the houses at the School was named after Larwood (it vanished in an 80s reorganisation).

I'm no cricket buff but am aware of the controversy of the Bodyline Tour of Australia in the early 1930s.

There's even a pub in Nottingham itself called the Larwood and Voce:

http://www.molefacepubcompany.co.uk/the-larwood-and-voce1.html

Somewhere I've still got, I think, the autograph of his old front line fast bowling partner from Yorkshire, Bill Bowes.

He was a pretty old chap when that autograph was done (umpiring I think).

Edited May 31, 2011 by sidewinder

[A Lark Ascending]

Amazing how he's balancing that lamp standard on his left elbow! (Should have taken the photo yourself, Bev!)

Ha!

Actually, the photo is very flattering of the pedestrianised precinct. In reality it's mainly boarded up shops and kids on skateboards. Mixture of the death of the mines and hosiery and the migration of trade to the supermarkets and retail parks. Larwood and Voce wouldn't recognise it - they lived in a vibrant mining community.

[medjuck]

"My Life in E-Flat". Chan Parker's autobiography.