Now reading...

[BillF]

I think Lanchester gets into his stride with Capital and hadn't got it together with this earlier novel.

I didn't think I was going to enjoy 'Capital' after a few chapters - not keen on books where the tale almost starts again chapter after a chapter as new characters appear. But I'm gripped now. Really want to see Roger and Amanda get their come-uppance!

I don't think you'll be disappointed!

[BillF]

Just read this review of a novel based on the lives of Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro:

http://www.guardian....-martell-review

Edited February 24, 2013 by BillF

[paul secor]

Just read this review of a novel based on the lives of Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro:

http://www.guardian....-martell-review

Anything you might add to The Guardian review?

[BillF]

Just read this review of a novel based on the lives of Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro:

http://www.guardian....-martell-review

Anything you might add to The Guardian review?

Well, I haven't read the novel. Looks like another one from that uneasy territory where biography and fiction intermingle.

[paul secor]

Just read this review of a novel based on the lives of Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro:

http://www.guardian....-martell-review

Anything you might add to The Guardian review?

Well, I haven't read the novel. Looks like another one from that uneasy territory where biography and fiction intermingle.

Sorry. I read your first post too quickly and thought you had read the novel itself, rather than the review. My bad.

[BillF]

Third of Bruce's Cambridge (the proper one) based crime novels.

Not brilliantly written - basically a fan's account relying mainly on interviews with musicians, journalists and fans. But it tells the tale without attempting to relate Colosseum to the dialectics of post-capitalist disfunctionalism.

Saw this referred to above and it was on sale for sixpence next to the eggs in Sainsbury's.

I think you'll find it's all it's cracked up to be.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/01/book-club-capital-john-lanchester

[A Lark Ascending]

Finished it yesterday, Bill. Thanks for the recommendation - I thoroughly enjoyed it, right down to Roger's clearly empty promises to change in the last line.

Though, like Roger, I took a fancy to Matya!

[niels]

Maybe my favorite writer ever. This should keep my happy for the next coming weeks/months

[ejp626]

Maybe my favorite writer ever. This should keep my happy for the next coming weeks/months

I have this exact edition. Haven't cracked it though. I have kind of a long-term agenda of getting back to the Russian classics, starting with Anna Karenina this spring and then probably Dostoevsky next year. I've read many of his books but not in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations. Definitely worth a peek in to their translation of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

Anyway, was 2/3 through Powning's The Sea Captain's Wife, which I was not enjoying that much, seeing it as high-toned chick lit, when she threw in a plot twist that was so incredible/unbelievable that I actually felt insulted. Decided I am not going to read another word.

On to Malone's Handling Sin, which is a fun romp...

[jlhoots]

David McCullough: The Greater Journey

Edited March 4, 2013 by jlhoots

[niels]

Maybe my favorite writer ever. This should keep my happy for the next coming weeks/months

I have this exact edition. Haven't cracked it though. I have kind of a long-term agenda of getting back to the Russian classics, starting with Anna Karenina this spring and then probably Dostoevsky next year. I've read many of his books but not in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations. Definitely worth a peek in to their translation of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

Anyway, was 2/3 through Powning's The Sea Captain's Wife, which I was not enjoying that much, seeing it as high-toned chick lit, when she threw in a plot twist that was so incredible/unbelievable that I actually felt insulted. Decided I am not going to read another word.

On to Malone's Handling Sin, which is a fun romp...

Ah, that's a coincidence. I must admid I just searched it on google images. I'm reading the book in Dutch (my native language). A few months ago I actually started in Anna Karenina, but I didn't really got into it so I lay it away for the future (have to many books I really want to read).

[paul secor]

Gayle Dean Wardlow: Chasin' that Devil Music

[niels]

Just came in, this will be a great reading for commuting:

[jlhoots]

Nick Stone: VooDoo Eyes

[A Lark Ascending]

Finally finished:

An excellent survey.

Now onto:

[ejp626]

Wrapped up Malone's Handling Sin in about a week. It is a long book (about 600 pages) but a very entertaining one, and actually a product of a humane view on those who depart from the straight and narrow. Malone has a very generous outlook on the foibles of his main characters, though some of the secondary characters are literally thugs and criminals and some of them are not "redeemed" in any way.

It is quite an epic road journey with Raleigh Hayes sent on a quest (by his father) from North Carolina, to Charlotte, Atlanta and then to New Orleans with many memorable stops along the way. A few times things go over the top, and there is one somewhat odd section at the end of the second part of the book where Malone spells things out to his "challenged" readers who can't guess the relationship between Raleigh's Aunt Victoria and the bitter (& Black) musician Jubal Rogers. But highly recommended anyway. (Wonder if this exuberance and good-natured tolerance will rub off on this fiction piece I am working on.)

Definitely finding that the road trip books are generally the best things I've been reading over the last year or so, and decided I would reread On the Road. My dog-eared paperback is kind of buried at the moment and I was too lazy to find it, so I went over the library. All were checked out (I guess the movie version inspired people to pick it up?) but oddly the original, original version (not the Visions of Cody version) was in. It is called "The Original Scroll" version. I decided to take borrow that. Maybe I will try to compare versions and see if this is a case where the editor really did salvage something out of nothing -- or if the editor just had no idea what Kerouac was getting after and just got in the way.

[Matthew]

Wrapped up Malone's Handling Sin in about a week. It is a long book (about 600 pages) but a very entertaining one, and actually a product of a humane view on those who depart from the straight and narrow. Malone has a very generous outlook on the foibles of his main characters, though some of the secondary characters are literally thugs and criminals and some of them are not "redeemed" in any way.

It is quite an epic road journey with Raleigh Hayes sent on a quest (by his father) from North Carolina, to Charlotte, Atlanta and then to New Orleans with many memorable stops along the way. A few times things go over the top, and there is one somewhat odd section at the end of the second part of the book where Malone spells things out to his "challenged" readers who can't guess the relationship between Raleigh's Aunt Victoria and the bitter (& Black) musician Jubal Rogers. But highly recommended anyway. (Wonder if this exuberance and good-natured tolerance will rub off on this fiction piece I am working on.)

Definitely finding that the road trip books are generally the best things I've been reading over the last year or so, and decided I would reread On the Road. My dog-eared paperback is kind of buried at the moment and I was too lazy to find it, so I went over the library. All were checked out (I guess the movie version inspired people to pick it up?) but oddly the original, original version (not the Visions of Cody version) was in. It is called "The Original Scroll" version. I decided to take borrow that. Maybe I will try to compare versions and see if this is a case where the editor really did salvage something out of nothing -- or if the editor just had no idea what Kerouac was getting after and just got in the way.

I also liked the book, although I felt everything fell apart at the end, which with the way it was written, I was not a fan of by any means, However, Malone redeemed himself with an amazing closing paragraph describing the wedding -- all was forgiven after that one.

Edited March 12, 2013 by Matthew

[jazzbo]

[John Litweiler]

Recently I read 2 "literary detective stories" (a hateful term) by Michael Collins that really capture the bleakness of modern, small midwestern cities after all the industry moved out. "Lost Souls" and "The Keepers of Truth" are the titles and dammit, these people are people I used to know or else the sons and daughters of the working people I grew up with. Along with the sense of emptiness I get now in Indiana. Never mind the plots, which are sort of pulpish. The sense of people and place are what make these interesting.

Collins is not an American, he's an Irishman who went to school at Notre Dame. "The Keepers of Truth" seems to take place in a city much like Elkhart, my mother's city, but Elkhart long after Conn and Selmer and Buescher and the rest of the musical instrument industry, and other industry, vanished. The protagonist works for a newspaper, the "Truth," which seems like the trash that the Elkhart Truth (once a decent daily) has turned into in this post-Gannett-etc. era.

Collins apparently wins lit'ry prizes in the UK but I wonder if anyone outside the midwestern US reads him.

[paul secor]

Recently I read 2 "literary detective stories" (a hateful term) by Michael Collins that really capture the bleakness of modern, small midwestern cities after all the industry moved out. "Lost Souls" and "The Keepers of Truth" are the titles and dammit, these people are people I used to know or else the sons and daughters of the working people I grew up with. Along with the sense of emptiness I get now in Indiana. Never mind the plots, which are sort of pulpish. The sense of people and place are what make these interesting.

Collins is not an American, he's an Irishman who went to school at Notre Dame. "The Keepers of Truth" seems to take place in a city much like Elkhart, my mother's city, but Elkhart long after Conn and Selmer and Buescher and the rest of the musical instrument industry, and other industry, vanished. The protagonist works for a newspaper, the "Truth," which seems like the trash that the Elkhart Truth (once a decent daily) has turned into in this post-Gannett-etc. era.

Collins apparently wins lit'ry prizes in the UK but I wonder if anyone outside the midwestern US reads him.

Amazingly, my local library has one of the two titles you mention. And three other titles by him are in the system. I'll have to check him out. Thanks.

[BillF]

Despite lots of youthful Steinbeck reading, I never read East of Eden till now, probably because of the length (650 pages in my edition). Spurred to do this by rewatching the movie, which in fact only deals with the events of the last third of the book.

[erwbol]

[jazzbo]

Reading a piece that an acquaintance had published within.

[Matthew]

Owen Johnson: The Lawrenceville Stories.

[paul secor]

Not much there (at least for me), even if it won the Man Booker Prize.