Now reading...

[ejp626]

About halfway through Dawn Powell's The Wicked Pavilion.  It starts a bit disjointed, as she focuses on five or so different groups of people (who all occasionally dine at the Cafe Julien) but then the plot threads start to knit together.  A lot of sharp commentary, particularly when a "respectable" woman gets rounded up with a bunch of prostitutes and ends up in a hospital ward and some notes on how artists are only appreciated after their death...

I'm closing in on my survey of Powell's novels, with only one more major one (The Golden Spur) left, though one day I'll circle around to some of her earlier works, like Angels on Toast.

On the near horizon, Hrabal's I Served the King of England and Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.  I also have a fairly recent (well, new in English) short story collection by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, The Word of the Speechless (NYRB) on hold at the library.

 

It appears The Word of the Speechless is a pretty good sampler, 19 or so stories across Ribeyro's whole career, but is only a very small taste.  Perhaps this will inspire a translation of the rest of the stories and possibly his remaining 2 novels (Chronicle of San Gabriel has been translated into English).

Edited February 25, 2020 by ejp626

[Brad]

For those who may be interested, NYRB Classics is having a winter sale: 50% off on certain titles.

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/winter-sale

[ejp626]

Had a very long Friday, spent largely on buses, getting to a meeting 2 hours away from our main office.  (We decided to take the bus rather than trying to drive through some snow squalls.  Then on the return leg, our train was cancelled due to frozen switches, so it was back on the bus...)  On the positive side, I managed to read a large chunk of The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I wrapped up on Sat.  This was my second time through.  It holds up pretty well (sort of a mix of Dashiell Hammett and PKD's The Man in the High Castle), though I'm not quite sure I can buy the ending.

The Word of the Speechless turned up, so I'll be going through those stories and starting Hrabal's I Served the King of England.

 

[ejp626]

On 2020-02-25 at 5:07 PM, Brad said:

For those who may be interested, NYRB Classics is having a winter sale: 50% off on certain titles.

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/winter-sale

A few interesting titles to be sure (though sadly the sale is already over).  The sale listings led me to David Jones's In Parenthesis.  This in many ways is what T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land would have been like if it were 5 or 10 times longer, had more prose sections, and was focused on exclusively on life in the trenches during WWI.  (It's not really a surprise that T.S. Eliot was a major promoter of In Parenthesis.)  I think for most folks, including me, this is basically a curiosity that would be read once and set aside, but I'm sure for others it will resonate more strongly.

I also wrapped up Hrabel's I Served the King of England.  It had its moments, but didn't really do that much for me.

Just starting in on the stories in The Word of the Speechless, and the next book after that should be Maxwell's The Château and some of his short stories as well.

Edited March 7, 2020 by ejp626

[jlhoots]

Louise Erdrich: The Night Watchman

[Brad]

9 hours ago, ejp626 said:

A few interesting titles to be sure (though sadly the sale is already over).  The sale listings led me to David Jones's In Parenthesis.  This in many ways is what T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land would have been like if it were 5 or 10 times longer, had more prose sections, and was focused on exclusively on life in the trenches during WWI.  (It's not really a surprise that T.S. Eliot was a major promoter of In Parenthesis.)  I think for most folks, including me, this is basically a curiosity that would be read once and set aside, but I'm sure for others it will resonate more strongly.

I also wrapped up Hrabel's I Served the King of England.  It had its moments, but didn't really do that much for me.

Just starting in on the stories in The Word of the Speechless, and the next book after that should be Maxwell's The Château and some of his short stories as well.

I was going to purchase Parenthesis (as well as a few other titles) but I have so many other things to read that I decided to pass, for now. 

[Brad]

On 2/17/2020 at 7:39 AM, Brad said:

Having finished Soldiers of Salamis, which was outstanding, I have now begun his latest Lord of All the Dead, about Javier Cercas’ uncle who was killed in the Civil War. 

I just finished reading Lord of All the Dead. It’s one of the better books I have read about the Spanish Civil War. The title comes from The Odyssey where Achilles says he would rather be a slave of a penniless laborer than lord of all the dead.

Next up is probably this:

Edited March 10, 2020 by Brad

[Brad]

On 2/6/2020 at 10:21 AM, erwbol said:

Re-reading Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost in this Folio Society edition, bought in last month's sale (50% off).

He has a new one out, Rebel Cinderella, about the socialist and feminist Rose Pastor Stokes.

The Unlikely Life of a Socialist Activist Resonates a Century Later

[ejp626]

Just wrapping up the stories in The Word of the Speechless.  A bit hit or miss, as many short story collections are, but on the whole pretty interesting pieces from a writer completely new to me (thanks again, NYRB!).

I've decided to take a short detour into contagion literature, so will tackle Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider and Camus's The Plague (I've been remiss and never actually read this previously).  While only a chapter of Ben Cohen's The Hot Hand is about Shakespeare and the plague, this excerpt was intriguing enough for me to put a hold on it at the library: https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/shakespeare-plague-influence-hot-hand-ben-cohen.html

Whenever I am through all this, I will go back to Maxwell's The Château.

 

[felser]

Using this in the Men's group I lead:

 

[ghost of miles]

... and also contemplating revisiting Camus’ The Plague, which I haven’t read since high school.

[Brad]

In times like these, I want to avoid reading books like The Plague or seeing Contagion, which Wesley Morris in the New York Times recently discussed. 

[David Ayers]

I’ve got Anna Reid’s book on the siege of Leningrad lined up. Um. 
 

Anything to screen out the I-told-you-sos from preppers...

[ghost of miles]

Went ahead and pulled out my old Modern Library copy of The Plague for first rereading in 35+ years. As a teenager I all but worshipped Camus, so going back to this novel at this particular moment will be interesting, I’m sure:

[jlhoots]

I'm going to re-read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. 2014 novel about a pandemic. Scary shit.

[Brad]

A flash sale from NYRB Classics.

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/ides-of-march-flash-sale?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYRB%20Ides%20of%20March%20Flash%20Sale%202020&utm_content=NYRB%20Ides%20of%20March%20Flash%20Sale%202020+CID_4d0c1e0cab8148bf16d463680955e2f1&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Browse%20the%20books

[jazzbo]

[ejp626]

3 minutes ago, Brad said:

A flash sale from NYRB Classics.

 

Thanks for the update.  From this list, I've read The Jokers, which was interesting and well-written, and Letter to Survivors, which is kind of a one-joke graphic novel.  (I would definitely recommend borrowing from the library...)  I own, but haven't read, Ride a Cockhorse and The Alteration.  (One of these days...)

I'm nearly done with Pale Horse, Pale Rider and will tackle The Plague next.  I've heard that the newish translation by Robin Buss is the way to go.

Since the libraries are closed here(!), I'll be going through the tall stack of books near my desk.  Maxwell's Château and DeLillo's Cosmopolis and probably Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being and eventually Celine's Journey to the End of the Night (another uplifting tale...).

[Brad]

Although not my idea for reading, here's an article on books about pandemics such as The Plague and Station Eleven. 

Your Quarantine Reader 

[ghost of miles]

6 hours ago, jazzbo said:

My best friend just gave me a grocery bag full of books from the Hard Case Crime series.

[jazzbo]

Yes, there are some fun titles. I like the Quarry series and the A.A. Fair/Earle Stanley Gardner et al.

[GA Russell]

4 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Yes, there are some fun titles. I like the Quarry series and the A.A. Fair/Earle Stanley Gardner et al.

Lon, I gather from the Amazon reviews that the Cool & Lam Hard Case books aren't very good.  Can you recommend one?

[jazzbo]

I've always loved them and consider them great fun. The earlier the better in some ways, in other ways the later ones are very good. "The Bigger they Come," the first one, is a must. They recently published what would have been the second, "The Knife Slipped," which is interesting to me as it was rejected at the time of writing, not for quality reasons imo. "Spill the Jackpot" is fiun, as is "Fools Die on Friday."

It occurs to me that the series was to be a sort of inverse of the Nero Wolfe series. . . I love those books as well.

[David Ayers]

17 hours ago, jazzbo said:

I’m sold on the cover!

[GA Russell]

1 hour ago, jazzbo said:

I've always loved them and consider them great fun. The earlier the better in some ways, in other ways the later ones are very good. "The Bigger they Come," the first one, is a must. They recently published what would have been the second, "The Knife Slipped," which is interesting to me as it was rejected at the time of writing, not for quality reasons imo. "Spill the Jackpot" is fiun, as is "Fools Die on Friday."

It occurs to me that the series was to be a sort of inverse of the Nero Wolfe series. . . I love those books as well.

Thanks!  It looks like your recommendations are out of print, but I'll keep my eye out.