Now reading...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Savored this one slowly and just finished it. Amazing book. Caused much thinking on my part.

Not sure what to start next.

Second book in a row about Paul.

Interesting. I knew Saul/Paul was a Farisee and proud of it; and a member of the ruling classes; and a Roman Citizen not above pulling rank when accused of sedition. All that stuff in his writings about 'being a new creature' was hype, because you can see that he remained what he was; someone who really thought that the Government should be obeyed, that slaves should obey their masters, and hadn't much conception of what people (even now) had/have to do to get by.

MG

I think the reality of Paul is WAY more complicated than what you suggest, but that's what makes him such an interesting figure.

I'm sure. The point of my post was to expose how little I did know.

Finished the Musketeers series today. Been a LOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGG and good read

Now starting to reread Harry Turtledove's World War series, because I've just got a recent addition, tacked on to the end. Another long read.

MG

[sidewinder]

Amazingly good read. What a character !

[Pete C]

[johnlitweiler]

Just finished Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. It's obsessive reading like a James Ellroy novel, a lot of the same crimes too. When Nixon was pres. I worked for a newspaper-clipping service and Perlstein's book captured a lot of that period paranoia for me. While some of his reasoning might be arguable, his conclusion feels right: America is divided into 2 kinds of people - we good, honest, hardworking, God-fearing folks and those snobby people with college educations who look down on us. Nixon didn't invent this divide but his genius was in the ways he amplified it.

[jlhoots]

Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl

[paul secor]

Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter

[Matthew]

Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter

I've read that about three times, and each time I've come away thinking about the characters completely different.

[medjuck]

Ry Cooder's" Los Angeles Stories". A series of (sometimes interlocking) stories set in downtown LA in the '40s and '50s. Noir with a bit of magic realism. As you might expect there's a lot of music. (John Lee Hooker makes an appearance in one story.) This is fine literature not just something from a celebrity dilettante. (Is Cooder even a celebrity?)

I may have enjoyed it more because I was briefly living in downtown LA when I read some of the stories-- the first one takes place exactly where I was living-- but I continued to enjoy and admire it when I returned home to Santa Barbara.

[Pete C]

The Heart of the Matter and A Burnt Out Case are tied for my two favorite Greene novels.

[B. Goren.]

[Matthew]

Starting to read The Library of America two volume set Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & 1940s, starting off with Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Interesting novel, I'll have to watch the movie sometime, I've never seen it.

[Pete C]

I'll have to watch the movie sometime, I've never seen it.

Yowza, Yowza!

I thought it was great when it first came out, haven't seen it since.

[A Lark Ascending]

And about to start:

With assistance from...

Edited August 22, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[crisp]

Just finished a couple of Simon Brett Fethering mysteries: The Shooting in the Shop and Bones under the Bach Hut. The former disappointed, but the latter is one of his best and quite brave towards the end in some of the opinions he expresses.

Now reading Big Money by P.G. Wodehouse, and it's a corker: rather anarchic and irreverent but very witty; not too much romance (so far). Wodehouse at his best really.

Must read something literary soon...

[Pete C]

[Pete C]

Have you read:

This one didn't win the Booker Prize, Sacred Hunger did.

[A Lark Ascending]

Have you read:

This one didn't win the Booker Prize, Sacred Hunger did.

No. But having read the blurb on Amazon I will add it to my list. The deconstruction of historical myths always appeals.

[Matthew]

I always found Unsworth a chore to read. "Sacred Humger" suffered from entropy to my way of reading.

[Pete C]

I always found Unsworth a chore to read. "Sacred Humger" suffered from entropy to my way of reading.

His books vary wildly. Sacred Hunger is work, but worth it. Morality Play is a breeze. After Hannibal is a hoot.

[jlhoots]

Finished The Snowman & The Red Breast.

This one is next.

[Pete C]

I've read Redbreast. Nemesis follows directly after, then The Devil's Star, though The Devil's Star was the first to be translated into English.

[ejp626]

Finished reading Five Seasons by A. B. Yehoshua. Really hard to understand how this made the Man Booker list (maybe just the longlist though). I found it a total damp squib of a book. The main character has been taking care of his wife when she finally dies of complications from breast cancer. It then traces his misadventures over the next five seasons as he sort of comes back into the realm of dating and considering remarriage. I found the character to be fairly unlikeable, obsessed with money and to a slightly lesser degree status. To some extent, his profession (accounts auditor) does reinforce these tendencies. But beyond this, almost everyone in the book has a very mercenary approach to relationships (ranging from a professional matchmaker who contacts him too early to his old camp counselor, who has an unusual proposition for him). Frankly, I would consider it on the anti-Semitic side if it hadn't been written by an Israeli. Certainly not my thing.

On the positive side, I have finally cracked Skvorecky's The Engineer of Human Souls and am enjoying it tremendously. What a relief after a summer of largely disappointing novels (though the poetry has generally been fun to read). This is a fairly epic novel, and is probably best considered Skvorecky's fictional autobiography. The main character (Danny) is an unambitious professor of literature in suburban Toronto with a troubled past (he had been forced to work for the Nazi war efforts in occupied Czechoslovakia). The action shifts back and forth between his memories of these times (including a hair-brained scheme to damage some German war planes) and his interactions with his students as well as the exiled Czech community in Toronto. I didn't realize until recently that this novel was written in 1977, so long, long before the Velvet Revolution (and indeed not all that long after the war). I haven't reached the section where Danny escapes and his other friends don't make it out (including a figure who is clearly supposed to stand in for Vaclav Havel). Definitely a good read so far.

[BillF]

[TedR]

Because of a number of posts about Philip K. Dick, I picked up In Milton Lumky Territory at our local library book sale.

[crisp]

Just finished another Wodehouse: Doctor Sally. Adapted from a play, which makes it more interesting (in a technical sense) than especially good. At least it was short, and would have been even shorter if he hadn't padded it out with so much repeated dialogue, eg, "I'm angry" "You're angry?" "I'm angry."

I'm working through the gaps in my Wodehouse knowledge. Hot Water is chronologically the next unread title, so I'll read that then possibly look for something more substantial.