Now reading...

[Matthew]

A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell. Heaven help me, but I've started my fourth go-round on Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time. It takes a long while to read everything, but at the end, it's always worth it. This is volume one, where a number of important players are introduced, sort of the beginning of a spiders web, where the interlocking of lives develop.

Also making my way, intermittently, through Ian Ker's biography of John Henry Cardinal Newman (my second time), who still strikes me as an unsympathetic character for some reason.

[ghost of miles]

2 minutes ago, Matthew said:

A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell. Heaven help me, but I've started my fourth go-round on Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time. It takes a long while to read everything, but at the end, it's always worth it. This is volume one, where a number of important players are introduced, sort of the beginning of a spiders web, where the interlocking of lives develop.

 

 

I'm hoping to get around to that Powell series at some point--possibly not until I retire, though, which is still a good 15-17 years off.  One of these days I want to re-read Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME as well, which I plowed through when I was in my 20s.  It would be interesting to give it another go from the perspective of decades added.

[Brad]

Just started this.

 

[ejp626]

On 10/10/2018 at 3:24 PM, ghost of miles said:

I'm hoping to get around to that Powell series at some point--possibly not until I retire, though, which is still a good 15-17 years off.  One of these days I want to re-read Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME as well, which I plowed through when I was in my 20s.  It would be interesting to give it another go from the perspective of decades added.

I can just about imagine rereading Powell, though I'd stop at #10, as I feel there is a sharp drop-off in the last two. 

I will never reread Proust.  It was far too much of a slog the first time through.

[Matthew]

4 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I can just about imagine rereading Powell, though I'd stop at #10, as I feel there is a sharp drop-off in the last two. 

I will never reread Proust.  It was far too much of a slog the first time through.

I actually liked the last volume Hearing Secret Harmonies very much, thought it ended the series on a somber, but real note. To my reading, Temporary Kings (volume 11) is a total shambles, advanced nothing in the various story-lines. I'll be interested to see if I'm of the same opinion this time through.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Matthew

[jlhoots]

Keith McCafferty: A Death In Eden

[ejp626]

Finally got across the finish line with von Rezzori's Death of My Brother Abel.  For completeness' sake, I will read the companion piece Cain when it comes out in NYRB edition this March (first time in English), but this is definitely going to be from the library...

Currently rereading (and enjoying) Mahfouz's Midaq Alley.  Will probably reread Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd after that.  (Maybe something one appreciates and even admires, more than enjoys...)

[ejp626]

On 10/18/2018 at 5:58 AM, ejp626 said:

Will probably reread Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd after that.  (Maybe something one appreciates and even admires, more than enjoys...)

I didn't remember a thing about Far from the Madding Crowd (read it about 30 years ago), but I may have just been suppressing the experience.  I found this to be an unconvincing soap opera stuffed with cringe-worthy dialog.  I got halfway in, and it kept getting worse, so I bailed.

Decided on something lighter -- Didion's Play It As It Lays. 

[paul secor]

Kevin Barry: Beatlebone

[ghost of miles]

[Dave James]

I'm a bit of a WWII history geek...mostly non-fiction, but some fiction as well.  In the latter category, I found Kristen Hannah's book "The Nightingale" to be pretty special.  It's focused on the French resistance during the Nazi occupation of France that began in 1940. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it better than two other recent WWII books that moved a lot of needles, "Beneath A Scarlet Sky" and "All The Light We Cannot See". 

 

Edited October 26, 2018 by Dave James

[JSngry]

On ‎9‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 11:07 AM, JSngry said:

Not begun reading yet, but it's on the nightstand, just waiting.

Probably not much in here I either don't know about or at least have heard about, but a linear layout of how all this insanity grew and got normalized...I need this now.

Finished this earlier in the week. Now I can put names and faces to the historical "they" and the events and activities  that they were engaged in.

Only the names have changed, the game hasn't.

Recommended.

[Brad]

7 hours ago, Dave James said:

I'm a bit of a WWII history geek...mostly non-fiction, but some fiction as well.  In the latter category, I found Kristen Hannah's book "The Nightingale" to be pretty special.  It's focused on the French resistance during the Nazi occupation of France that began in 1940. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it better than two other recent WWII books that moved a lot of needles, "Beneath A Scarlet Sky" and "All The Light We Cannot See". 

 

Have you read Decision at Normandy by Carlo D'Este.  That is the best book, in my opinion (and I've read a lot of WW II also) about the Normandy campaign. 

From the fictional side, focusing on the end of the War in Germany as the Russians approach is All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski.  Tremendous book. 

Currently reading:

and this 

Edited October 26, 2018 by Brad

[mjazzg]

the book isn't this big!!!

Thanks to Ghost of miles for the prompt

[Dave James]

3 hours ago, Brad said:

Have you read Decision at Normandy by Carlo D'Este.  That is the best book, in my opinion (and I've read a lot of WW II also) about the Normandy campaign. 

From the fictional side, focusing on the end of the War in Germany as the Russians approach is All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski.  Tremendous book. 

Currently reading:

and this 

Thanks for the recs.  I'll check them out.  

[Brad]

52 minutes ago, Dave James said:

Thanks for the recs.  I'll check them out.  

Max Hastings’ books are pretty good. I’d recommend Armageddon. 

[jlhoots]

Craig Johnson: Depth Of Winter

[jlhoots]

Leonard Cohen: The Flame

[ghost of miles]

On 10/26/2018 at 8:56 AM, mjazzg said:

the book isn't this big!!!

Thanks to Ghost of miles for the prompt

Let me know what you think! 

Tonight... finally!

[Matthew]

Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution by Todd S. Purdum

[ejp626]

Faulkner's A Fable.

Overall I am not enjoying this and find it far too hard-going, though there are occasional passage of interest.

[paul secor]

Francesca Marciano: The Other Language

[ejp626]

For a bit of a change, I read the 2018 Man Booker International Prize winner, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk.

It's certainly different. It's a very episodic novel, basically re-enacting the experience of going from one thing to another in a cabinet of curiosities.  Well over half of the entries are mini-meditations on travel as well as quite a lot on how to prepare bodies to display them after death!  Fictional pieces (with actual characters) are a smaller percentage by number, but as they are longer (3 to 30+ pages), they take up much more of the book. Occasionally, characters reappear, but usually they are there in one-off appearances.

This New Yorker piece is a fair assessment of the novel - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/flights-a-novel-that-never-settles-down

All that said, I didn't really enjoy the novel all that much and felt overstayed its welcome at 400 pages, though there were a few passages here and there I liked.

It's been quite a long string of novel that didn't live up to the hype, so I'm hoping that I do enjoy Paul Auster's Moon Palace. 

After that is DeLillo's White Noise, which I enjoyed very much 15+ years ago.  If I find that even this doesn't live up to my memories, I think I should take a break from reading for a while and catch up on my movie-watching or something.

 

[Brad]

[jlhoots]

Jonathan Lethem: The Feral Detective