Now reading...

[Larry Kart]

Just finished Emily Wilson's recent translation of the Odyssey. Don't see how it could be bettered.

[ejp626]

Aside from my very slow march through Don Quixote (and Nabokov's lectures on same), I'm mostly reading Canadian literature.

I thought The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis had its moments, but I thought the situations were a bit too pat (like a play in many cases) and it certainly isn't as good as The Free World.

I thought the claustrophobic rural community depicted in Fortier's The Unknown Huntsman was certainly creepy but it was a literary affectation that bore no resemblance to anything in real life (maybe drawing on his memories of watching The Wicker Man or the like).  I'm glad it was fairly short as I was getting ready to bail.

I'm starting in on Atwood's The Edible Woman (which I read many, many years ago), and I expect this will hold up better than these other two.

[Dave James]

On 9/19/2020 at 5:09 AM, sidewinder said:

I can recommend this one - a fascinating and authoritative account of a tragic episode. Currently working my way through it.

Purely and simply, a war crime.  No ifs, no ands, no buts. 

[sidewinder]

41 minutes ago, Dave James said:

Purely and simply, a war crime.  No ifs, no ands, no buts. 

That statement can be debated ad infinitum and I don’t think any of us who weren’t there first hand and exposed to the horrors - either in Germany or elsewhere on this Continent - can make judgement. Sadly, Dresden’s strategic location as a border rail marshalling area and pressure from the Russians to support their advance probably sealed its fate.

As I said in my original comment, a very good book which provides a balanced, unbiased account and can be recommended.

Edited November 15, 2020 by sidewinder

[jlhoots]

Michael Connelly: The Concrete Blonde

[soulpope]

[jlhoots]

Daniel Silva: The Order

[Dave James]

On 3/9/2003 at 1:30 PM, J Larsen said:

Nielsen and Chuang - Quantum Computation and Information Theory - what computers of the future might look like and what they might be capable of.

Datta - Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic Systems - How to model the response characteristics of nanoelectronic circuit components. Anyone want to talk nanotech??

Supersymmetry in Disordered Systems - First there was math, then new math, now we're talking about "supermathematics".

 

 

I have the Cliff Notes for these if you'd like to borrow them.  

[Larry Kart]

Kipling's'"Puck of Pook's Hill"

George Ade's "Chicago Stories"

Just by chance, Kipling and Ade were contemporaneous, the former 1865-1936, the latter 1866-1944. Not that well known anymore, Ade is quite something.

[Ken Dryden]

The American nephew of Reichs Marshal Herman Goering was a US B-17 pilot, who bombed his homeland. I've just got started reading it.

[ghost of miles]

Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer sparked me to finally start reading this book, which I’m rather embarrassed to admit I’ve never read before... but I did pick up a copy a few years ago as part of my longstanding penchant for vintage Modern Library editions with the dustjackets still intact:

 

On 11/28/2020 at 7:56 PM, Larry Kart said:

Kipling's'"Puck of Pook's Hill"

George Ade's "Chicago Stories"

Just by chance, Kipling and Ade were contemporaneous, the former 1865-1936, the latter 1866-1944. Not that well known anymore, Ade is quite something.

Ade, believe it or not, is still celebrated here by Indiana history nerds for his Hoosier heritage. I haven’t ever gotten around to reading him, but I’ll add Chicago Stories to my list. Always happy to read anything well-written about Chicago.

Edited December 3, 2020 by ghost of miles

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer sparked me to finally start reading this book, which I’m rather embarrassed to admit I’ve never read before... but I did pick up a copy a few years ago as part of my longstanding penchant for vintage Modern Library editions with the dustjackets still intact:

 

Ade, believe it or not, is still celebrated here by Indiana history nerds for his Hoosier heritage. I haven’t ever gotten around to reading him, but I’ll add Chicago Stories to my list. Always happy to read anything well-written about Chicago.

Something I sent the other day to a friend about Ade:

 Been reading “Chicago Stories” by George Ade (1866-1944). Written in the 1890s for a predecessor of the Chicago Daily News, they earned Ade quite a reputation as a humorist,  and I can see that; but these “pen portraits” ( to use an old term that fits) of the denizens and neighborhoods and manifold colorful and often eccentric details of Chicago’s then past (e.g. the remains of the canal system that once was vital to transportation of goods/material  to Chicago, since almost wholly superseded by the railroad, and all the now mostly tumbledown buildings (taverns, hotels, etc. that were associated with it), alongside the city’s turbulent then present (new construction rapidly afoot). Ade’s sense of observation is very acute, and his sense of affectionate empathy is broad, extending to every “disadvantaged”  group one might think of — including immigrant Jews and their junk shops, Italian street peddlers, and perhaps rather surprisingly, given that Ade was a native of southern Indiana, the city’s burgeoning black population. See, for one, the piece "A Plantation Dinner at Aunt Mary's," Aunt Mary being the city's finest purveyor of "chidlins."  Ade was a very supportive Purdue graduate, and the school's Ross-Ade Stadium is named in part for him.

 

 

 

[ejp626]

5 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Ade, believe it or not, is still celebrated here by Indiana history nerds for his Hoosier heritage. I haven’t ever gotten around to reading him, but I’ll add Chicago Stories to my list. Always happy to read anything well-written about Chicago.

If you haven't read Stuart Dybek then you will want to take a look at his short story collections.  I personally prefer The Coast of Chicago but I Sailed with Magellan also has some strong stories.

[ghost of miles]

5 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Something I sent the other day to a friend about Ade:

 Been reading “Chicago Stories” by George Ade (1866-1944). Written in the 1890s for a predecessor of the Chicago Daily News, they earned Ade quite a reputation as a humorist,  and I can see that; but these “pen portraits” ( to use an old term that fits) of the denizens and neighborhoods and manifold colorful and often eccentric details of Chicago’s then past (e.g. the remains of the canal system that once was vital to transportation of goods/material  to Chicago, since almost wholly superseded by the railroad, and all the now mostly tumbledown buildings (taverns, hotels, etc. that were associated with it), alongside the city’s turbulent then present (new construction rapidly afoot). Ade’s sense of observation is very acute, and his sense of affectionate empathy is broad, extending to every “disadvantaged”  group one might think of — including immigrant Jews and their junk shops, Italian street peddlers, and perhaps rather surprisingly, given that Ade was a native of southern Indiana, the city’s burgeoning black population. See, for one, the piece "A Plantation Dinner at Aunt Mary's," Aunt Mary being the city's finest purveyor of "chidlins."  Ade was a very supportive Purdue graduate, and the school's Ross-Ade Stadium is named in part for him.

 

 

 

In terms of subject matter, he sounds in some ways like a forerunner of Joseph Mitchell.

[Larry Kart]

3 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

In terms of subject matter, he sounds in some ways like a forerunner of Joseph Mitchell.

Kind of but less dark (Mitchell could get pretty grim and haunted at times), more folksy humorous, not unlike a more genial Ring Lardner. Mencken, a great admirer of Ade,  said of him: "Here are brilliant flashlight pictures of the American people, and American ways of thinking, and the whole American Kultur.... Ade himself is as absolutely American as any of his prairie-town traders and pushers, Shylocks and Dogberries, beaux and bellles."
  

 

[jlhoots]

Michael McGarrity: Head Wounds

[ghost of miles]

Great read, highly recommended (so to speak ) for anybody with a love of this movie:

[Matthew]

Collected Poems of W. H. Auden. Very good, a first time reading of Auden for me. Auden has been referenced in so many articles I've read recently that I had to see what the fuss was about.

[Dave James]

Larson is a terrific writer.  He has a real talent for personalizing history.  His latest book is no exception.

 

[Joe]

Gilbert Sorrentino, Lunar Follies. 

[jazzbo]

Lost power a few days and read two books in two days. First

Then

 

And now

[Matthew]

An interesting article on the "hot" investment app Robinhood

[jlhoots]

Phil Klay: Missionaries

[Matthew]

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Third time for me to read this book, and I'm enjoying much more than the other two time. I think I got caught up in looking for the "Catholic Symbolism" that is supposed to be running wild throughout the novel. Eh, I've never noticed all that much in my previous readings, so I'm just enjoying the luxurious writing of a great story.

[ghost of miles]

Just finished Leonard Gardner’s Fat City, a beautifully-written novel set in the Steinbeck-meets-Bukowski milieu of 1950s/60s skid-row Stockton, California. Highly recommended. Gardner adapted it for the 1972 John Huston film (available for free if you have Amazon Prime), which I intend to watch at some point.