Now reading...

[BillF]

Just finished my fifth Stanley Middleton, which is perhaps as far as I'll go. (He wrote 45 novels!)

[HutchFan]

Just starting:

[jlhoots]

Craig Johnson: Dry Bones - Longmire series

[Larry Kart]

Barbara Pym's "Some Tame Gazelle"

Robert Bernard Martin's "Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart"

[Leeway]

Been reading Brigid Brophy, Anglo -Irish critic, novelist, journalist, crusader for animal and author rights, open marriage, bisexuality, vegetarianism. A sharp mind, a neat wit, a puckish sense of humor, an elegant sensibility. Her praises are as satisfying to read as her skewerings (love her take-downs of "Lucky Jim" and Henry Miller). Turns out she was also an intimate friend of Iris Murdoch, in what was a fraught friendship. Recently, over a thousand letters from Iris to Brigid were made available (Brigid's letters to Iris were destroyed at Brigid's direction). "Hackenfeller's Ape," the tale of a zoology professor and a caged Hackenfeller Ape (a fictitious species) having a meeting of minds; the book won the 1954 Cheltenham Prize for best first novel; Murdoch's "Under the Net" came in second, certainly a misjudgment, although Brophy's book is fun to read. Brophy is one of those minor talents who are often more fun to read than their more esteemed contemporaries.

[BillF]

I must give Brophy a try.

[ejp626]

I saw the play version of Of Human Bondage, and perhaps not surprisingly they played up the Mildred angle to the hilt, even increasing the conflict above and beyond what was in the actual book. They completely eliminated Philip's uncle and that whole subplot. They killed off a couple of characters and switched around who committed suicide. They made one of the shop assistants into an imitation of Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served, and kind of changed that plot slightly. The Persian rug was actually spared and brought into the happy ending. I guess most of these are relatively minor revisions, and the emotional core of the plot remained, but I was a bit taken aback (and spent much of the play just thinking of where they had made these changes). I generally could only abide the novel when Mildred was not in the picture, and of course she was around most of the time in the play, so I didn't really enjoy myself.

I finally finished The Burn. Didn't like it. I know he was often attempting this novel to be a contemporary update of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, but I found it far more reminiscent of Moscow to the End of the Line (another book on contemporary Moscow that I found exhausting, though that was considerably shorter).

I've just started Geoff Nicholson's Bleeding London. It strikes me as a mainstream writer slumming a bit and writing genre fiction, specially the crime/revenge story. While it came out well before, the plot seems a lot like Kill Bill. I think I'll finish it, but it isn't doing a lot for me at the moment. Unlikely to read any other Geoff Nicholson.

I guess the good news is that the next stack of books looks a lot more rewarding.

[johnblitweiler]

Finally read, for the first time, "Nostromo" - what vivid characters. Now I'm tempted to go back and reread some Conrad novels I first read some decades ago, see how much those books have changed since then.

[crisp]

On the home stretch with Morse. One more to go plus the short stories.

[paul secor]

On the home stretch with Morse. One more to go plus the short stories.

I believe that I've read all of the Morse mysteries. Time for me to do some rereading.

[A Lark Ascending]

Somewhat far fetched Cold War thriller. Starts in the late 50s in a Profumoesque world moving through the Sino-Soviet dispute and, where I've got to, an Apocalypse Now-ish journey from South Vietnam into VC territory.

Not exactly believable but enjoyable...I'll read more by him. It's also made me get a copy of:

[danasgoodstuff]

Wallace Stegner's Wolf Willow. Like myself, Stegner lived in Saskatchewan for awhile when he was young and then moved to the States, albeit at a younger age and a long time ago. It's set in and about the country near East End at (you guessed it!) the east end of the Cypress Hills, an intersting place.

[jlhoots]

Ng: Everything I Never Told You

[paul secor]

Ali Smith: The Accidental

[Simon8]

[Matthew]

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain. An early Twain book, where we see Samuel Clemons turn into his Mark Twain character -- the straight-talking, unimpressed, American outsider, who renders "truth" upon his readers, with cynicism, wit, and humor.

[ejp626]

Finished up Bleeding London. It was ok, not great. I was able to guess one significant plot point from almost the beginning.

Am partway into Open City by Teju Cole. It's pretty good, though it reads a fair bit like a diary and not a novel.

[Jazzmoose]

I finally started "Atlas Shrugged" on holiday. I'm quite enjoying it thus far (only 150 pages in)

You have a stronger stomach than I.

[Leeway]

AN ACCIDENTAL MAN - 1971 - Iris Murdoch

One of the few Murdochs I hadn't yet read, this could properly have been called, "A Dance to the Music of Time," although I think Iris is much more interested in the Platonic than Powell.

[BillF]

British journalist Richard Williams' essay "Gifted" about Dupree Bolton published in Granta (Spring 2000).

[Leeway]

NO SIGNPOSTS IN THE SEA - 1961 - Vita Sackville-West

The premise (one can hardly call it a plot) is journalist Edmund Carr finds out he has only a few months to live. When he also learns that Laura, a woman he loves, is taking an ocean cruise, he books passage on the same ship. The story is mostly the thoughts and philosophical musings of Edmund and Laura. VSW's intelligence keeps it from becoming mawkish (usually), and there are some interesting twists. Here again we have another of those shipboard stories that seem to constitute their own genre.

[ejp626]

I finally started "Atlas Shrugged" on holiday. I'm quite enjoying it thus far (only 150 pages in)

You have a stronger stomach than I.

You are the second person in this thread to express their distaste for the book. I haven't found anything in it so far to explain why this should be so. What's the story?

Ayn Rand is considered the patron saint of a certain brand of libertarianism. While she was never a full-fledged follower of Nietzsche, she shared the belief that superior individuals shouldn't be shackled by lesser men. Generally, her work is noted for its hatred of collectivism, its love of individualism, and its admiration for American capitalism (taken from here: http://atlassociety.org/objectivism/atlas-university/deeper-dive-blog/4444-response-by-william-thomas)

My personal animus towards her followers makes me completely unwilling to ever crack open one of her books.

[Jazzmoose]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. As far as her work on it's own, I consider her to be a lousy writer with morally bankrupt ideas, but probably wouldn't have made the comment if that was all there was.

[ejp626]

Speaking of mixing politics and literature, I am generally sidelining the PEN authors who felt it was in bad taste to give the Charlie Hebdoe staff an award for courage. I will make a few exceptions on a case by case basis, but generally only if the book was still in my queue at the library or something similar. One of these authors is Teju Cole, and sure enough the library told me last week that I had Open City waiting for me. I hadn't really been that gripped by Every Day is for the Thief, though it turns out he actually wrote this before Open City (but Open City was published first). Open City has become quite the novel of ideas, and I find myself drawn in more and more. It's pretty good actually.

[alankin]

Elizabeth Kolbert -- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

About the Anthropocene (you can look it up). Spoiler: we did it.