Now reading...

[Leeway]

Rediscovering Solzhenitsyn after a long gap in time. It's hard to recall just what a towering presence he was in the 60s and 70s. 

[BillF]

51 minutes ago, Leeway said:

Rediscovering Solzhenitsyn after a long gap in time. It's hard to recall just what a towering presence he was in the 60s and 70s. 

Brief but fascinating. I remember that one well. Then I went on to The First Circle.

[Leeway]

2 hours ago, BillF said:

Brief but fascinating. I remember that one well. Then I went on to The First Circle.

I'm on First Circle now. Back in the day, I read Gulag Archipelago, which left a strong impression on me. 

[BillF]

56 minutes ago, Leeway said:

I'm on First Circle now. Back in the day, I read Gulag Archipelago, which left a strong impression on me. 

Never got round to that one. First Circle remains strong in my memory. The horrors of Stalin's Russia hold a dreadful fascination for me, so I can't resist Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Victor Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev and, much more recently, Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time.

[Matthew]

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

[paul secor]

2 hours ago, Matthew said:

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

[Brad]

On May 29, 2016 at 4:52 PM, paul secor said:

Stephen Benatar: Wish Her Safe at Home

Memorable and fairly disturbing.

NYRB sent me the book when I renewed my book club membership but haven't read it yet. 

[Larry Kart]

Almost finished with this excellent account of the life and trials, literal and figurative, of  Radclyffe Hall, author of the pioneering lesbian novel "The Well of Loneliness." Quite apart (or almost quite apart) from her sexual orientation, Radclyffe Hall  is among the most seriously batshit people I've ever read about -- victim of some of most vicious parenting imaginable (mostly on the part of an utterly narcissistic self-indulgent mother who loathed her daughter's father (a philandering bounder, as they used to say, who left his wife's company ASAP), while she regarded all of her daughter's nascent traits of character and physicality as stemming directly from her husband, whom again she loathed. Throw into the mix the fact that Hall's father died when she was in late adolescence, leaving his large-ish estate almost entirely to her, which gave RH the chance to turns the tables financially and emotionally on her needy/extravagant mom, for whom she was now virtually the sole source of support. And that's only a wee bit of the setup. The author, Diana Souhami, has a nice dry wit, which is much needed at times to fend of the atmosphere of RH's proliferating professional victimhood -- not that she and her book (which was of minor literary merit but an immediate best-seller) weren't on the receiving of treatment by the British government that might stir the gene of victimhood in almost anyone (it was banned in  the mid-1920s in a "sentence first--verdict afterwards" court proceeding that it would be an insult to call arbitrary).

[BillF]

Still continuing with Bellow. One I never read back then. Just finished this Penguin edition.

 

[A Lark Ascending]

The impact of the Vietnam War starting from the fall of Saigon as seen through the eyes of a South Vietnamese intelligence officer who is actually a communist mole. Really makes you realise how the Film/Novel depictions of Vietnam have been largely portrayed as America's tragedy. 

[Leeway]

4 hours ago, BillF said:

Still continuing with Bellow. One I never read back then. Just finished this Penguin edition.

 

Contains one of the, if not the, most notorious scene in Bellow's fiction:  the scene in which Sammler is attacked by a black mugger who presents his genitals to Sammler in a show of power. Bellow's take on the collapse of civilization in late 1960s New York City.  

[BillF]

48 minutes ago, Leeway said:

Contains one of the, if not the, most notorious scene in Bellow's fiction:  the scene in which Sammler is attacked by a black mugger who presents his genitals to Sammler in a show of power. Bellow's take on the collapse of civilization in late 1960s New York City.  

I agree that it's a novel from another age with that age's attitudes and values - and yet an age in which I was already quite a seasoned reader, so for me reading/rereading this stuff is something of a personal journey.

[BillF]

DeLillo's latest. Certainly not an achievement like Underworld, White Noise, Libra or Mao II, but at least I kept reading, which I couldn't say for Falling Man. It's inspired me sufficiently to order up a copy of Point Omega from the public library.

[jlhoots]

Walter Mosley: Rose Gold

[Matthew]

Abraham Lincoln by Carl Sandburg. Always wanted to read this, as I heard so much about this biography when I was growing up.  On volume one, and it is a smooth, enjoyable read.

[jlhoots]

Julie Fenster: Jefferson's America

[jazzbo]

A book I've been meaning to get around to. . . well here it is. Impressive.

 

[Leeway]

IN THE FIRST CIRCLE - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 2009  revised edition

96 chapters, 741 pages, hundreds of characters make this a challenging read, but the moral force, the penetrating dissection of the Soviet system, indeed any totalitarian system, makes it more than worthwhile.  Solzhenitsyn's moral authority comes through on every page. 

[A Lark Ascending]

Finally finished:

...started in mid-April. Not exactly beach reading and probably just a bit too detailed in places - also hard to keep track of things changing at different rates in different places (knew very little about what was happening in eastern Europe). But I understand some of the doctrinal differences a little bit better - though things like transubstantiation and justification by faith can seem rather 'angels on the heads of pins' concepts to go out killing in the name of to a 21stC materialist.

Over the last week also:

Clever little book exploring the moment in the late 50s/early 60s when the Soviet UNion thought it had found the philosopher's stone of the planned economy, told in a series of fictionalised short stories largely about the blind belief that all it was going to take was getting the mechanism working perfectly. 

Just started:

 

Will clear this quickly - my kind of history book with a strong narrative drive.

Edited June 15, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[ejp626]

I finished up Edgar Mittelholzer's A Morning at the Office.  It was ok, though not quite as amazing as some of the reviews had made out.  I don't think it could quite decide between being a sociology (or anthropology) tract and a novel...

I'm quite disenchanted with Savyon Liebrecht's A Good Place for the Night and am on the point of abandoning it.  In addition to being extremely downbeat -- not one but two stories feature the murder of young woman -- I don't know that I have ever come across a book written by a woman that so thoroughly fails the Bechdel Test.  There does not appear to be a single female character that isn't spending her entire time fretting about her husband or boyfriend.

[Matthew]

The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor.  O'Connor seems to be a forgotten writer nowadays, as this book, and The Edge of Sadness are the only two books of his that are readily available.  He wrote on themes that turned out to be transitional, Boston-Irish politics, and with TEOS, the priesthood.  Both books well worth the read, though The Edge of Sadness is a book about a time, Catholic Church, and a priesthood that has completely changed. Both books have a strong current of melancholy to them, which given the topics, is understandable.  There are two other books by O'Connor that I'll have to buy, as they are cheap off Amazon.

Edited June 19, 2016 by Matthew

[paul secor]

Richard Russo: Everybody's Fool

[BillF]

Continuing my reading of mid-20th century American Jewish fiction: a fine campus-based humorous novel.

[ghost of miles]

Plane reading today, purchased at Word On The Water (a floating bookstore in London) yesterday: 

 

Edited June 22, 2016 by ghost of miles

[BillF]

53 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Plane reading today, purchased at Word On The Water (a floating bookstore in London) yesterday: 

Bon voyage!