Now reading...

[kinuta]

I've been meaning to read this for a long time.

[T.D.]

KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST - Adam Hochschild

Decided to read some history related to the African fiction I've mostly been reading. This is a horrifying account of the brutal exploitation of Congo-Central Africa resources and people by King Leopold and his minions. Leopold pretty much owned it and ran it as his personal fiefdom. Forced labor, mutilation, murder--all part of Leopold's system for extracting the maximum amount of ivory and rubber. A chapter on Conrad, who spent 6 months there, whose Kurtz expressed the state of things, "The horror! The horror"!

An excellent book. I found it very informative.

I just finished this:

and started this:

[Leeway]

ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH - 1987 - Chinua Achebe

Uneven but nevertheless interesting novel of political corruption and how governments slide ineluctably towards one-man rule and dictatorship.

[BillF]

Just finished Bruce Turner's highly entertaining autobiography, full of quirky humour. For example, Bruce could not resist spoonerisms and always spoke of Jack Clayton's Bum Sessions and Denny Baker's Cousin. Geddit?

[Van Basten II]

The Goldfiinch

Enjoyable page turner, well crafted, writing wise.

[ejp626]

In the middle of a few books, which always makes me a bit edgy, so I am trying to wrap at least one up tonight. I'm about halfway done with both Williams' !Click Song and Wideman's Philadelphia Fire. Of the two, I like !Click Song a bit better, but neither of these is going to become a perennial favorite or anything like that.

After I wrap these two up, I'll probably read Stoppard's Travesties, in honor of just having seen it (in Montreal no less!). And perhaps move on to The Real Thing and Night and Day. I find Stoppard is an acquired taste, but I acquired that taste a while back and think he is probably the most interesting playwright of our time. I'm still waiting to see if New York or Chicago will be staging his latest play, The Hard Problem, anytime soon.

[ejp626]

In the middle of a few books, which always makes me a bit edgy, so I am trying to wrap at least one up tonight. I'm about halfway done with both Williams' !Click Song and Wideman's Philadelphia Fire. Of the two, I like !Click Song a bit better, but neither of these is going to become a perennial favorite or anything like that.

In the end I really disliked Philadelphia Fire. It was such an unstructured novel with Wideman going in 3 or 4 directions and not resolving anything. While it may have been inspired by Invisible Man, it ultimately felt to me like one of those saggy postmodern novels without an ending. It could have been quite something if he had just picked one thread and saw it through, but jumping around so much was just annoying and (to me) pointless.

I'll be going through Travesties tonight and seeing what references I missed in the staged production, which was quite enjoyable.

I should be wrapping up !Click Song shortly and probably start Vasily Aksyonov's The Burn over the weekend. Next week I hope to launch into Of Human Bondage.

[A Lark Ascending]

Second and third in Hill's detective series. Enjoyed the first but was horrified to find a lovely main character killed off! Read 'The Pure in Heart' very quickly last week...to find the mystery spilled over into the third book so had to jump there.

Very enjoyable books in a well worn genre - murder and abduction in a lovely imaginary place in England, drawing on the leafy suburbs and the more disadvantaged estates. Serrailler is a nicely buttoned up, emotionally inhibited main character.

[Leeway]

KARL MARX: A NINETEENTH CENTURY LIFE - Jonathan Sperber

Read a chapter here and there while following more literary lines, satisfying an historical/biographical interest in Marx. Came away from this very even-handed work with not much regard for Marx as a person or, surprisingly, as a contemporary political thinker (he was often wrong on such key developments as Indian uprising, Italian unification, and the Franco-Prussian war, just to cite some examples). He was a formidable theoretician though.

[Leeway]

THE MIMIC MEN - 1967 - V.S. Naipul

A difficult book, mostly due to the quite unpleasant first-person narrator, "Ralph" SIngh, a self-styled dandy, which here I suppose means snob, dilettante, and monumentally disaffected person. I suppose he can be considered something of an existentialist anti-hero. I would not e surprised to find that this novel served as Naipul's apologia pro vita sua in breaking with Trinidad and becoming an English ex-pat. If the lead character is a bit hard to tolerate, the writing itself is marvelous.

[HutchFan]

Just started reading this:

[B. Goren.]

Baking Cakes in Kigali.

[Leeway]

Teacher, intellectual and l'honnete homme, Oidili, contests personally and politically with corrupt and rapacious government minister, M.A. Manga, for personal and political integrity. Predecessor (1967) to "Anthills of the Savannah," which also concerns itself with fighting corrupt power. Achebe's innate geniality, reasonableness and personable literary style make it a good read but perhaps keeps it from the ranks of the strongest political novels.

[kinuta]

[HutchFan]

Just picked this up from the library:

A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis

[johnblitweiler]

Hutchfan, don't be surprised if you have to renew your library borrow. Fascinating book.

[jazzbo]

I just love these Parker novels.

[Leeway]

GUERRILLAS - V.S. Naipaul - 1975

Jane, something of a thrill-seeker from England, and Roche, her lover, a white South African who had been tortured by the regime, come out to an unnamed Caribbean island (modeled on Trinidad), where they hook up with an erstwhile revolutionary, Jimmy Ahmed. You know something bad is going to happen--and it does. The tension in the book remains palpable from the start. As in much of Naipaul, there is hardly room for a smile (after those early novels); it's all deadly earnest (literally). But beautifully crafted.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Leeway

[johnblitweiler]

What I got from "Guerillas" was Naipaul's contempt for his characters.

[Simon8]

[Leeway]

What I got from "Guerillas" was Naipaul's contempt for his characters.

That's certainly part of it, in particular, Jane, but Roche is I think a more complicated situation. In most of Naipul's novels, no one is likely to come off terribly well I think. That's part of the heaviness, the brooding, of the atmosphere.

[BillF]

The Second EJH novel I've read. Where The Beautiful Visit teetered on the edge of melodrama and was very earnest, this, as befits a time when she was married to Kingsley Amis, is something of a comedy of manners, though with a tragic element.

[Leeway]

The Second EJH novel I've read. Where The Beautiful Visit teetered on the edge of melodrama and was very earnest, this, as befits a time when she was married to Kingsley Amis, is something of a comedy of manners, though with a tragic element.

Sounds like a description of the marriage itself, from what little i know. I haven't read her work, but it sounds interesting.

[BillF]

The Second EJH novel I've read. Where The Beautiful Visit teetered on the edge of melodrama and was very earnest, this, as befits a time when she was married to Kingsley Amis, is something of a comedy of manners, though with a tragic element.

Sounds like a description of the marriage itself, from what little i know. I haven't read her work, but it sounds interesting.

I recommend her. Well up there with the other English female mid-20th century writers we've been reading recently.

[kinuta]