Now reading...

[BillF]

Read this after seeing Atom Egoyan's film of it. I shall certainly read some more William Trevor novels.

[A Lark Ascending]

I read loads of William Trevor about 30 years ago during my 'Irish' phase. Excellent short stories - and I'm not a big one for short stories. Someone I've lost touch with. 

Remember reading a lot of Sean O'Faolain around that time too; from an earlier generation but very fragile short stories of disappointment and lost chances. 

[Leeway]

BURMESE DAYS (1934) - Orwell's first novel and a very good one. 

[BillF]

BURMESE DAYS (1934) - Orwell's first novel and a very good one. 

[ejp626]

Yes, it is fixed!  I am just about to launch into Elizabeth Taylor's A View of the Harbour.

Recommended.

Enjoying it so far.  I thought her A Game of Hide and Seek was well written from a technical perspective, but not actually particularly compelling, as I had no real interest or sympathy in the main characters.  I like this one better.

Through a weird glitch in the library reserve system, I am about to get 12 books all at once.  The ones highest in demand (and thus that I can't renew) will be read first.  That includes Urquhart's The Night Stages and Bulawayo's We need new names in addition to Neil Smith's Boo and Barbara Comyns' The Juniper Tree.

I did enjoy the Taylor, though it is still hard to get over these quickie marriages.  I think there was one in Bowen's To the North as well, though I am probably confusing it with another book.  I would say Taylor is better in capturing wry ironies than deep passions...  (Definitely more influenced by Austen than Bronte, whereas some critics felt that Bowen more successfully fused these two threads.)

I also finished Comyns's The Juniper Tree.  Quite interesting.  Probably her least characteristic book.  I don't think there was a single feckless character in the novel, perhaps because we met a handful of art dealers, but no artists...  A lot of sadness throughout, but also some hopeful renewal here and there.  I think this and The Skin Chairs have the happiest endings of all her books, if I am remembering correctly (well, perhaps The House of Dolls, though that is more of a farcical ending).

Just starting Urquhart's The Night Stages.  I've generally heard good things about it.  Here's hoping.

[ghost of miles]

John Burdett: The Bangkok Asset

I've recently gotten interested in this series and hope to soon pick up the first couple of books in it. Right now I'm reading Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived In The Castle, as well as this:

Edited September 3, 2015 by ghost of miles

[ejp626]

 

Just starting Urquhart's The Night Stages.  I've generally heard good things about it.  Here's hoping.

Actually I'm not really digging The Night Stages.  I just can't quite understand the logic behind the book.  It is mostly about this woman who gets fogged in at the airport, so she has lots of time to think over her childhood.  But then the narrative keeps shifting to her lover's younger brother, when there is no reason for either the woman or her lover to be able to get into his mind (he vanished without a trace years ago, but here we go working through his childhood as well).  And then we find out about the painter who painted the mural at the airport.

There doesn't seem to be any logical correspondence between them.  I'm finding it like watching one of those jugglers who juggles an apple, a wrench and a chainsaw.  Ok, you can do it, awkwardly enough, but it's actually not as graceful or compelling as watching someone juggle 5 or 6 balls effortlessly.  (It probably doesn't help that I am not a fan of novels that are almost entirely composed of flashbacks.)

I'm kind of surprised at how positive the early reviews have been, though I will press on for a bit longer.

[A Lark Ascending]

I know this one it controversial here; but I liked his interpretation of how 'The Blues' were constructed out of a selective survey of the past. Interesting to read it alongside the Keith Richards bio where the latter is very much part of the process of popularising some of the mythology.  

[BillF]

George Melly's account of the surrealist master:

[Leeway]

It was good to take up another Murdoch after a while. THE SEA, THE SEA won the Booker Prize in 1978. The literary, philosophical and art allusions are as rich as ever, and the humor is as mordant, but there is also a tendency to prolixity. I thought Murdoch muddled the ending by adding a postscript that adds little. 

[BillF]

It was good to take up another Murdoch after a while. THE SEA, THE SEA won the Booker Prize in 1978. The literary, philosophical and art allusions are as rich as ever, and the humor is as mordant, but there is also a tendency to prolixity. I thought Murdoch muddled the ending by adding a postscript that adds little. 

Though not a fan of the later Murdoch, I found this very readable.

[jazzbo]

Re-reading this tome. For me a fascinating work.

 

[BillF]

 

 

A second early Bainbridge. Good - found it more compelling than The Bottle Factory Outing.

Edited September 12, 2015 by BillF

[A Lark Ascending]

A short set of interviews. Found in this wonderful second hand bookshop in Cromford near Matlock:

Also found three of the excellent BBC Music Guides for £1.50 each. Long out of print.

Now I've finished sailing the seas over the centuries with the British navy I'm on to:

Napoleon's just crossed the frontier and headed for the Prussians. A really good read - detailed but so far hasn't got bogged down in the minutiae of regiments etc. 

[ejp626]

There is some fine writing in Urquhart's The Night Stages, and some people will like it very much, but I did not like the book for a number of reasons.

I've just started Neil Smith's Boo.  It is quite interesting.  I can't quite tell if the audience is actually YA or adult (it's about an afterlife devoted solely to 13 year olds from the US!).  I am finding it to read very much like a mix of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead.  I have a general sense of how it will turn out, but I definitely want to read this first to decide if it is appropriate for my son (and if not this year, then at what age level).

 

As an extra bonus, Smith counts as a Canadian author, so I can add him to my pile to be reviewed for the 9th Canadian Challenge.

Edited September 13, 2015 by ejp626

[erwbol]

Thomas Metzinger - Being No One, The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (MIT Press)

[king ubu]

just finished:

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me: most impressive, and rather shocking, though much of it isn't really all that new ... it's been quite a while that a book has so deeply moved me.

David H. Rosenthal - Hard Bop: more an extended essay than a proper study, but not bad at all ... I like how he defines hard bop quite widely (incorporating Monk, Mingus, Andrew Hill, and to some extent even Ornette - his influence on "Blue Note avantgarde" etc.)

 

in progress:

Tom Perchard - After Django: extremely interesting and enriching indeed! And quite a shock, as it's positively the first book (text in general) on jazz I read that uses such scholarly language - which per se is nothing that would shock me, just never had the connection with jazz so far, was mostly busy reading on other topics in the past two decades, catching up some reading on jazz now ... and please don't take this as a negative critique - not at all, it's actually rather refreshing a read, and the language helps to keep it precise indeed ... and it's thought-provoking, that's for sure!

Garth W. Caylor - Nineteen +: very, very good! Not all chapters/interviews/portraits are on the same level, but the best indeed add a lot to the picture!

R. J. Smith - The One: The Life and Music of James Brown: started reading this quite a while ago (two years?) but got to pick it up again now ... didn't get too far yet, but found it very, very good.

[Leeway]

The Berlin Stories, by Christopher Isherwood

I've probably read more about Isherwood than I have read things by him. He has an urbane engaging manner. The rise of Hitler, seen indirectly through these stories, offers a continuing lesson on the rise of extremism. 

[ghost of miles]

I've always wanted to read that book, Leeway... have a copy but haven't gotten to it yet.

Right now, among other things:

[BillF]

The Berlin Stories, by Christopher Isherwood

I've probably read more about Isherwood than I have read things by him. He has an urbane engaging manner. The rise of Hitler, seen indirectly through these stories, offers a continuing lesson on the rise of extremism. 

Sitting on my bookshelf are Mr Norris Changes Trains, Lions and Shadows and Goodbye to Berlin, all read and liked a long time ago.

 

 

in progress:

Tom Perchard - After Django: extremely interesting and enriching indeed! And quite a shock, as it's positively the first book (text in general) on jazz I read that uses such scholarly language - which per se is nothing that would shock me, just never had the connection with jazz so far, was mostly busy reading on other topics in the past two decades, catching up some reading on jazz now ... and please don't take this as a negative critique - not at all, it's actually rather refreshing a read, and the language helps to keep it precise indeed ... and it's thought-provoking, that's for sure!

 

You will, of course, know that Tom posts on this forum as umum_cypher.

[HutchFan]

Slowly making my way through this:

[king ubu]

 

 

 

in progress:

Tom Perchard - After Django: extremely interesting and enriching indeed! And quite a shock, as it's positively the first book (text in general) on jazz I read that uses such scholarly language - which per se is nothing that would shock me, just never had the connection with jazz so far, was mostly busy reading on other topics in the past two decades, catching up some reading on jazz now ... and please don't take this as a negative critique - not at all, it's actually rather refreshing a read, and the language helps to keep it precise indeed ... and it's thought-provoking, that's for sure!

 

You will, of course, know that Tom posts on this forum as umum_cypher.

mais oui, bien sûr  

[BillF]

 

 

 

in progress:

Tom Perchard - After Django: extremely interesting and enriching indeed! And quite a shock, as it's positively the first book (text in general) on jazz I read that uses such scholarly language - which per se is nothing that would shock me, just never had the connection with jazz so far, was mostly busy reading on other topics in the past two decades, catching up some reading on jazz now ... and please don't take this as a negative critique - not at all, it's actually rather refreshing a read, and the language helps to keep it precise indeed ... and it's thought-provoking, that's for sure!

 

You will, of course, know that Tom posts on this forum as umum_cypher.

mais oui, bien sûr  

bien

[johnblitweiler]

A happy surprise - long ago I'd read an early Lethem novel, had no feeling for it, then dismissed him when I saw an interview in which he seemed to believe he wrote better than Philip K. Dick or J.G. Ballard. But this one works. A few stock characters but mostly original characters, an especially vivid narrator-protagonist (sensitive, smart, funny), a hard-boiled detective story with the idiom's virtues amplified - mean-streets atmosphere, suspense - and so far, not many of the idiom's cliches. Far less sentimental than genre writers like Lehane, Burke.

Recently, I read Yasmina Khadra's "The African Equation." The story grabs you. He is such a strong writer, in translation, that it's easy to overlook or miss entirely how conventional his conclusions are or what black-white (in literal and metaphoric senses) cliches he presents (a terrorist who is also a sensitive poet, yet). In fact, as much as I liked "the Swallows of Kabul, "The Attack," and (despite its dishonest ending) "The Sirens of Baghdad," maybe rereading them would reveal flaws.

[BillF]

The second William Trevor novel I've read and I preferred this one, set in his rural Ireland, to Felicia's Journey, with its English urban setting.