Now reading...

[medjuck]

Zadie Smith:  "Swing Time".  Surprised to discover that the title refers to the Fred Astaire movie. 

[A Lark Ascending]

19 hours ago, mjazzg said:

David Toop - Into The Maelstrom: Music Improvisation And The Dream Of Freedom, Before 1970

I'm finding this a lot more enjoyable than I thought I would. A very interesting survey drawing on precedents and influences from across the arts with some interesting interviews and a dash of lightheartedness to undermine any po-facedness. I think anyone broadly interested in the subject would get something from this

I very nearly bought a copy of that in Fopp last week. Might give it a go next time I see it. 

[ejp626]

I'm also reading Butler's The Way of All Flesh for the first time.  I'm not quite sure where it is going, but I do find the sly asides that the narrator inserts into the story are amusing.

[BillF]

5 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I'm also reading Butler's The Way of All Flesh for the first time.  I'm not quite sure where it is going, but I do find the sly asides that the narrator inserts into the story are amusing.

Now that was one on my university reading list that I never got round to reading!

[ejp626]

11 hours ago, BillF said:

Now that was one on my university reading list that I never got round to reading!

I actually have a post dedicated to books I should have read (mostly for university) but didn't for one reason or another.  The one I feel worst about is Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale.  It looks like I will finally get to it by next fall.

[BillF]

9 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I actually have a post dedicated to books I should have read (mostly for university) but didn't for one reason or another.  The one I feel worst about is Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale.  It looks like I will finally get to it by next fall.

In my case the university reading lists were often unrealistically long - and were condemned as such by academics in another university where I subsequently did a postgraduate degree - so missed texts were understandable and normal. More interesting are the ones I set out to read, but which defeated my efforts to finish them. There were only two: Middlemarch and Sir Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian. Surprisingly, I had no trouble at all in reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall, although only a limited number of volumes were set. 

[A Lark Ascending]

I was obsessed with the French Revolution in the 80s/90s. I stopped teaching it around 1999 and haven't read a thing since. So this was like going back to a once favourite musical genre.

The last Robespierre bio I read was of a 'yes he killed lots of people but his intentions were good' type. Scurr, whilst telling the tale largely with an historian's detachment, can't hide her distaste for Robespierre's priggishness, self-absorption and ultimate indifference to the real suffering of human beings in his pursuit of the interests of abstract humanity. Excellent study of what happens when the machinery of a state falls apart and then the country falls victim to the ambitions of a sequence of politicians prepared to up the ante and manipulate popular discontent to further their own interests. 

I had a university tutor who maintained that you could read the whole of human experience in a study of the French Revolution. Couldn't help but be reminded of that hearing various contemporary politicians claiming to speak on behalf of 'the people' in pursuit of personal power.     

[Leeway]

13 hours ago, BillF said:

In my case the university reading lists were often unrealistically long - and were condemned as such by academics in another university where I subsequently did a postgraduate degree - so missed texts were understandable and normal. More interesting are the ones I set out to read, but which defeated my efforts to finish them. There were only two: Middlemarch and Sir Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian. Surprisingly, I had no trouble at all in reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall, although only a limited number of volumes were set. 

I'm a fan of George Eliot, and that goes for Middlemarch, which I've read at least a couple of times.  However, I've never had any luck with Scott.  Not that I've tried very hard. 

[BillF]

14 hours ago, Leeway said:

I'm a fan of George Eliot, and that goes for Middlemarch, which I've read at least a couple of times.  However, I've never had any luck with Scott.  Not that I've tried very hard. 

I concede I might feel differently about Middlemarch now. My failure to finish it was over 50 years ago. 

 

Edited November 27, 2016 by BillF

[A Lark Ascending]

I struggled with 'Middlemarch' when I had to do it for 'A' Level - don't think I got more than 1/3 through - rescued by changing schools to different set texts. But I re-read it some years later (all the way through) and really enjoyed it (and I'm a lightweight who has little patience for or persistence with books that bore me, whatever canon they are part of).   

Edited November 28, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[ejp626]

6 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

I struggled with 'Middlemarch' when I had to do it for 'A' Level - don't think I got more than 1/3 through - rescued by changing schools to different set texts. But I re-read it some years later (all the way through) and really enjoyed it (and I'm a lightweight who has little patience for or persistence with books that bore me, whatever canon they are part of).   

I found the majority of the male characters to be thoroughly unappealing, particularly Will Ladislaw, who seemed quite a drip actually.  And Fred Vincy seemed to have too easy a path to redemption.  Too much fell into his lap, even if it didn't seem that way to him at the time.  I guess Sir James was reasonably sensible.  The book only really held my interest when we saw Lydgate struggling.

[jlhoots]

Nathan Hill: The Nix

[ghost of miles]

I've been on a Budd Schulberg kick--finished What Makes Sammy Run a couple of days ago and am about 100 pages into The Disenchanted.  Excellent, often humorous and incisive writing.

[medjuck]

Read the Schulbergs many years ago (I think before I knew that Disenchanted was about Fitzgerald).  At a Planned Parenthood book sale I found a paperback copy of Faces in the Crowd.  Your post reminded me that I should read it. 

[jazzbo]

[Leeway]

Book 2 of the Alexandria Quartet.  I'm enjoying Durrell's work so far, although with some reservations. Three is occasionally a bit of "artiness" the creeps in from time to time, but I suppose I'll need to complete the Quartet to form a more complete judgment. 

[BillF]

The Alexandria Quartet was very fashionable reading in the 60s. As far as I recall, I found them a bit superficial - at least when compared with the other unquestioned classics I was reading at the time.

Edited November 29, 2016 by BillF

[BillF]

Clever satire which palls after a while. Although written nearly 20 years ago, its depiction of England's retreat from internationalism into olde worlde insularity leaves you feeling uneasy today.

 

Edited December 2, 2016 by BillF

[Matthew]

Nature; Address and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Matthew

[A Lark Ascending]

On 12/1/2016 at 7:36 AM, BillF said:

Clever satire which palls after a while. Although written nearly 20 years ago, it's depiction of England's retreat from internationalism into olde worlde insularity leaves you feeling uneasy today.

 

I enjoyed that when I read it a few years back (hadn't thought about it's connection with our current rush to 'independence'). Agree about it losing its grip - an interesting idea that doesn't quite sustain its promise.  

[ejp626]

I'm making reasonable progress through Butler's The Way of All Flesh (roughly 1/3 in now).  It's still fairly interesting.  The stress on unhappy childhood reminds me just a bit of Maugham's Of Human Bondage, but actually I like The Way of All Flesh considerable better (so far).

I'm also starting Steve Zipp's Yellowknife, which is sort of a fantastical view of life up north.  Interesting so far.

[A Lark Ascending]

Short biography with lots of reasonably good reproductions. I knew very little about Klee so this was useful. 

No 7 in Hill's sequence of detective novels. Typical of the genre; but Hill adds an extra dimension in her exploration of family dynamics and also a very timely concern for the pressures on the health service and social care.  

[johnblitweiler]

Muriel Spark's novels are popcorn to me. It's been a long time since I laughed out loud as often as  at "The Hothouse by the East River" last week. It's her New York novel, no plot, great characters. 

[Leeway]

Spark's novels are wickedly amusing.  

finished:

3rd in the Alexandria Quartet, and the only one in the 3rd person narrative. A somewhat puzzle narrative choice. I've been enjoying the works. More so than other novels, I suspect it takes two or three readings to really fully grasp what Durrell is doing. It's better than it seems on first blush. 

[ejp626]

I finished up The Way of All Flesh.  While there is almost no plot to speak of, this still held my attention, mostly due to the narrative voice, which constantly rejected Victorian-era mores.

I've just started David Foster Wallace's The Pale King.  This is an unfinished novel, pieced together from his notebooks and computer files.  It is a fairly sad book, with the early chapters somewhat preoccupied with death and suicide.  It's also quite choppy and episodic, though this seems to have been part of the plan (rather than something that the editor was forced to revert to).  I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it, particularly since Wallace had hinted that it would be "about nothing," i.e. there would never be a big denouement at the end where different strands get wrapped up.  On the other hand, so few people write about the tedium of corporate office life (Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End is an honorable exception) that I want to like it.  I guess I'll see how I feel when it ends, but I am not quite liking The Pale King as much as I had hoped.