Now reading...

[jlhoots]

Thomas Perry: Strip

[Larry Kart]

"The Three Musketeers" (in the translation that Lowell Blair did for Bantam Books about 25 years ago) -- so far it's like a runaway train, crazy fun. 

[BillF]

An old and still strange friend. 

Found this difficult to read - even when I had to read it at university. Didn't have that problem with Jane Eyre BTW. I like the cover illustration on that Penguin edition - something French from a British collection - Corot? Barbizon school?

[A Lark Ascending]

An old and still strange friend. 

Found this difficult to read - even when I had to read it at university. Didn't have that problem with Jane Eyre BTW. I like the cover illustration on that Penguin edition - something French from a British collection - Corot? Barbizon school?

I read it as 'light relief' in my last year at uni as finals were approaching (unbelievable as that may seem it was light relief compared with memorising the key points of Civil War era political pamphlets!).

Utterly haunted by it at the time. I'd read virtually no pre-20th C novels since school up to that point. I was so taken by it that it started me on Austin, the other Brontes, Elliot, Hardy etc over the next couple of years. Must re-read it. 

[Leeway]

An old and still strange friend. 

Found this difficult to read - even when I had to read it at university. Didn't have that problem with Jane Eyre BTW. I like the cover illustration on that Penguin edition - something French from a British collection - Corot? Barbizon school?

I read it as 'light relief' in my last year at uni as finals were approaching (unbelievable as that may seem it was light relief compared with memorising the key points of Civil War era political pamphlets!).

Utterly haunted by it at the time. I'd read virtually no pre-20th C novels since school up to that point. I was so taken by it that it started me on Austin, the other Brontes, Elliot, Hardy etc over the next couple of years. Must re-read it. 

The cover illustration is a detail from Corot's "Gust of Wind," in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. 

I agree that WH is a tougher read than JE. I'm re-reading Jane Eyre at the moment. 

[Matthew]

A Boy's Will by Robert Frost.  Frost's first book of poems.

[A Lark Ascending]

Waterstones to stop selling Kindle as book sales surge

 

[ejp626]

Waterstones to stop selling Kindle as book sales surge

 

To be honest, I have to agree with the sentiments in the comments that Waterstones was just complete rubbish at selling the things, since the management and staff are wedded to the idea that paper books are the only real books.  I'd say well over 90% of my reading is in the form of tangible books, but I don't pooh-pooh the idea of reading digital books, particularly given the awesomeness of Project Gutenberg.

I just wrapped up Muriel Spark's The Informed Air, which are mini-essays on how she became a writer, her literary preoccupations (mostly Proust and T.S. Eliot) and her reflections on religion, particularly the Book of Job.  This is definitely a book that almost everyone would only flip through once, so see if your library stocks it.

Still working my way through de Assis's Epitaph of a Small Winner.

[BillF]

A Boy's Will by Robert Frost.  Frost's first book of poems.

Frost was always a great favourite.

[mjazzg]

Laila Lalami - The Moor's Account

lots of good things written about this and Pullitzer and Booker prize nominations to add to the buzz. the idea of telling the story of Conquistadors from the perspective of one of their African slaves is interesting. The writing however won't flow for me. It's as if it's a translation which self-evidently it isn't. I'll persevere

[BillF]

 

Just got to the end of this 770-page tome! Liked it at first, but the larger-than-life sensationalist tone palled on me eventually. Was far more impressed by The Secret History which I read some years ago.

The third - and best - Franzen I've read, which as a 560-page contemporary American novel obviously invites comparison with Tartt's blockbuster. It was a relief after Tartt's verbal torrents to encounter a more measured prose style. And, unlike her, structure is all: a very complex narrative with occasionally perplexing shifts in time and voice, but all resolves eventually into a very satisfactory book. Very contemporary feel, particularly in the part played by the internet and a Snowden/Assange character. Recommended.

Edited October 12, 2015 by BillF

[Neal Pomea]

Pioneers of the Blues Revival, 2014, by Steven Cushing. Interviews with Pete Whelan, Sam Charters, Dick Waterman, Phil Spiro, Bob Koester, Dick Spottswood, Dave Evans, Gayle Wardlow, Chris Strachwitz etc.

Really good chapters with Spiro, Spottswood, and Evans, in particular.

[ejp626]

I'm just about done with Epitaph for a Small Winner.  I don't find it quite as engaging as his short stories, but it has its moments.  The general outlook on life expressed within is pretty bleak, and that is probably mostly what is troubling me.

I'm also just about done with Iris Owens' After Claude (NYRB).  I find the main character absolutely infuriating, actually a couple of notches past the annoyance I often felt at Ignatius in A Confederacy of Dunces.  I really look forward for terrible things to befall her, as it seems likely to transpire.  Actually she reminds me a bit of the "wild woman" who is just "misunderstood" also seen in Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding, but the narrator of After Claude has no redeeming qualities that I can see.  I can't wait to be through with this one.

[A Lark Ascending]

Finished this early in the week...

As good a military history book as I've read. Balances narrative and analysis perfectly. What make it is the use of eyewitness accounts that gives you a real sense of what it must have been like to be there. Never realised how gruesome it was - I always associate mass horror with the American Civil War and World War I. But the accounts gere of the squares just standing there to repel cavalry whilst the artillery pound into them chill the blood. And the complete lack of logistical organisation after the battle to deal with casualties with people lying out there five days later. Then you turn on the news and see Syria.

No, not the lot. 'King Lear' - first Shakespeare I've read for many a year. Extraordinary play. Not an easy volume to handle whilst lying on the couch but it was cheap! Hope to read a lot of these in the coming years. 

Reading too many books at once at present - the John Peel book, a thriller, the Shakespeare bio mentioned further up and this:

 

Really don't know what to make of this. The first 50 or so pages are really quite dull - a sort of history of LSD, the pre-60s American avant-garde, the Beats etc. Gets interesting once he gets round to the music. 

But suffers from that thing with so many books written by enthusiasts who haven't really based their writing on objective research. Projects his own prejudices onto the music and presents this as objective truth. So he decides that the reaction against psychedelia in the late 60s (The Band and all that) has been overrated and was as much game playing as the hippy era itself. Which I suspect is the case, but...

Can't work out his point - seems to want to see that popular culture from the 60s onwards owes everything to LSD. But I'm not sure if he is saying that.

Reminds me of another 'fan' book about British jazz from a few years back where a bunch of personal prejudices were stitched together as a history...though this one is more entertaining and isn't cursed by pseudo-sociology. This sort of thing might be fine as an internet blog, bulletin board exchange or pub debate. But putting it in printed form requires rather more discipline. 

Some atrocious factual errors too - can't believe he made these mistakes as he seems so knowledgeable about the music of the era. Get the impression it was the sort of thing we all do typing at speed but the errors were never picked up later - The Band as the backing group of 'Screaming Jay Hawkins?; a couple of other glaring ones I can't recall.

I was too young to have been aware of the 60s when they happened; imagine anyone who was there would be driven nuts by this book. I'm preparing to go nuts when I get to the 70s. But I will read on.     

  

[jazzbo]

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

 

I'm still re-reading this one, with other material around it, and this book is making me reach into other books to verify and supplement what is here.

This is a dense seditious mofo of a book. Elements of it have ratified thoughts I have had during my years of research of the religions of the ancient world and the big picture it conveys is hard to refute and tables-turning. I've still weeks ahead in this tome, and in time will read its sequel. This is Alzheimer's prevention at its best (for me and my interests).

[Matthew]

Jack Kerouac: Road Novels -- 1957-1960.  Starting to reread Kerouac, which I haven't done in quite awhile.  This time around, I'm not getting the craziness, but a melancholy feeling of missed chances in life.

[mjazzg]

Marilynne Robinson - Lila

beautifully written first fifty pages.....hungry to finish but want to savour at the same time. i don't remember Gilead having quite such an immediate impact as good as that was

Finished this early in the week...

As good a military history book as I've read. Balances narrative and analysis perfectly. What make it is the use of eyewitness accounts that gives you a real sense of what it must have been like to be there. Never realised how gruesome it was - I always associate mass horror with the American Civil War and World War I. But the accounts gere of the squares just standing there to repel cavalry whilst the artillery pound into them chill the blood. And the complete lack of logistical organisation after the battle to deal with casualties with people lying out there five days later. Then you turn on the news and see Syria.

No, not the lot. 'King Lear' - first Shakespeare I've read for many a year. Extraordinary play. Not an easy volume to handle whilst lying on the couch but it was cheap! Hope to read a lot of these in the coming years. 

Reading too many books at once at present - the John Peel book, a thriller, the Shakespeare bio mentioned further up and this:

 

Really don't know what to make of this. The first 50 or so pages are really quite dull - a sort of history of LSD, the pre-60s American avant-garde, the Beats etc. Gets interesting once he gets round to the music. 

But suffers from that thing with so many books written by enthusiasts who haven't really based their writing on objective research. Projects his own prejudices onto the music and presents this as objective truth. So he decides that the reaction against psychedelia in the late 60s (The Band and all that) has been overrated and was as much game playing as the hippy era itself. Which I suspect is the case, but...

Can't work out his point - seems to want to see that popular culture from the 60s onwards owes everything to LSD. But I'm not sure if he is saying that.

Reminds me of another 'fan' book about British jazz from a few years back where a bunch of personal prejudices were stitched together as a history...though this one is more entertaining and isn't cursed by pseudo-sociology. This sort of thing might be fine as an internet blog, bulletin board exchange or pub debate. But putting it in printed form requires rather more discipline. 

Some atrocious factual errors too - can't believe he made these mistakes as he seems so knowledgeable about the music of the era. Get the impression it was the sort of thing we all do typing at speed but the errors were never picked up later - The Band as the backing group of 'Screaming Jay Hawkins?; a couple of other glaring ones I can't recall.

I was too young to have been aware of the 60s when they happened; imagine anyone who was there would be driven nuts by this book. I'm preparing to go nuts when I get to the 70s. But I will read on.     

  

are you retired or something? all this lazing about reading......

 

[jlhoots]

Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Beautiful Struggle & Between The World & Me

[A Lark Ascending]

are you retired or something? all this lazing about reading......

 

Dave and George put money in my bank account every month to do this. All I have to do is turn up and vote Tory every 5 years. 

[mjazzg]

are you retired or something? all this lazing about reading......

 

Dave and George put money in my bank account every month to do this. All I have to do is turn up and vote Tory every 5 years. 

I knew I was going wrong somewhere. Remind in four and half years will you please

[ejp626]

Marilynne Robinson - Lila

beautifully written first fifty pages.....hungry to finish but want to savour at the same time. i don't remember Gilead having quite such an immediate impact as good as that was

I ended up liking Gilead much more than I expected.  I understand what she is doing in Lila and in Home, but I am just not sure I want to spend time in these other characters' lives.  But I may one of these days.

Currently, midway through Machado de Assis's Philosopher or Dog? which is a sort of sequel to Epitaph of a Small Winner.

I'm also reading Margaret Atwood's Payback, which is a non-fiction exploration of debt and indebtedness.

Next up, more Canadiana: Alice Munro's Who Do You Think You Are? and Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table.

Edited October 17, 2015 by ejp626

[niels]

Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers
Fantastic collection of essays on Herzen, Tolstoy, Belinsky a.o.

[ejp626]

Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers
Fantastic collection of essays on Herzen, Tolstoy, Belinsky a.o.

I read that last year, along with some of the writers he was describing.  A very good set of essays, even if he goes a bit over the top in praising Herzen.

[niels]

Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers
Fantastic collection of essays on Herzen, Tolstoy, Belinsky a.o.

I read that last year, along with some of the writers he was describing.  A very good set of essays, even if he goes a bit over the top in praising Herzen.

I have to say that reading Herzen has been high on my list for a long time now (especially My Past and Thoughts), and these essay's certainly got me excited to finally start with these memoirs. When you say you think Berlin is getting a bit over the top, do you mean that in regards to Herzen's prose or regarding his ideas? 

When I read his ideas, I always get the impression that many of these can be directly linked to existentialism (long before anyone spoke of this term).  Furthermore his seemingly firm rejection of all extremes, whether it be extreme conservatism, liberalism or socialism is a moral conviction I also see in people like Albert Camus or Václav Havel. And because these are people I hold in very high esteem (to say the least), I have the feeling that diving in  Alexander Herzen's memoirs would be of high interest for me.    

 

 

Edited October 18, 2015 by niels

[ejp626]

I would say that Berlin wanted so desperately to find a Russian socialist thinker who opposed the communism that stemmed from Marx's writings that he often exaggerates the break.  You can find several places in Herzen's late letters where he is still calling for revolution, for example.

I thought Herzen's memoirs were quite interesting (I read them slightly abridged in the two volume set from Oxford), but at some point or other Berlin calls them as good or better than Tolstoy's War and Peace!  Come on, man.  Don't blow these things up to that extent.  It does them a real disservice.

I've actually meant to blog about this for a while, but just haven't gotten around to it.

After you finish Berlin and read Herzen, you might be interested in reading Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, which draws very heavily on both these sources.