Now reading...

[medjuck]

17 hours ago, paul secor said:

For some reason I read What's Bred In the Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus some years ago and like both books, but not as much as some reviews would have led me to believe. (Actually, the reason why I read them first was that the local library had copies of those two and not The Rebel Angels, and I just grabbed them to read out of curiosity.)  I never read The Rebel Angels until now. I enjoyed it so much that I'm rereading the two following books in the trilogy. Already I'm beginning to find what I missed by not reading the books in the order in which they were intended to be read.

Davies was my teacher in graduate school at UofT (Toronto, not Texas).  Was also my thesis supervisor for several years until I switched topics.  I only read 5th Business  because I was seeing him every couple of weeks.  Was shocked at  how good it was.   After that I read everything he wrote. The later trilogies (starting with 5th Business are much better than the earlier ones (which I eventually went back and read). 

On 10/21/2015, 5:10:03, ejp626 said:

I'm just starting Alice Munro's Who Do You Think You Are?

Her first two collections have a complicated, but largely positive view of growing up in rural Ontario.  That's oversimplifying, but I was shocked when I came to "Privilege" where she is describing the situation in the rural school Rose attends.  Munro makes this sound like some Hobbesian nightmare where the teacher turns a blind eye to all the terrors that the older kids inflict on the younger kids - and the younger kids inflict on each other.  It's practically Lord of the Flies set in Hanratty, Ontario (she was actually writing about Wingham, Ont.).  The relationship between Rose and her step-mother Flo isn't much better.  It looks like the whole collection will be pretty dark.

I love that book.  I think it's a perfect Canadian title but in the States they called it "The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose".  I guess that sense of you're not supposed to rise above your station doesn't resonate in the US. 

[ejp626]

I'm enjoying The Cat's Table.  It is the story of 3 boys from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) taking an ocean liner to England to rejoin their families or to be foisted off on other relations.  They get into a number of odd situations (Narayan's Swami and Friends is an obvious reference) but they also begin learning about the adult world during this topsy-turvy voyage.

It actually makes me want to reread Katherine Ann Porter's Ship of Fools, but I think I'll leave that where it is on the TBR pile.

Somewhat coincidentally the next book I plan to read is Narayan's Mr Sampath.

[paul secor]

Henry Townsend: A Blues Life

[BillF]

Have never read Edna O'Brien before, which is surprising as her books have been around for half a century. This one inspires me to read the rest of the trilogy (in the wrong order).

 

[A Lark Ascending]

8 hours ago, BillF said:

Have never read Edna O'Brien before, which is surprising as her books have been around for half a century. This one inspires me to read the rest of the trilogy (in the wrong order).

 

I read several of those many years ago. Remember enjoying them greatly...a picture of an Ireland that was probably still hanging on when I read them but is unrecognisable now. My mother grew up in that Ireland about a decade or two before they are set; it affected her outlook on life profoundly. 

Have you read Colm Tóibín's 'Brooklyn' ? From a similar world. It's just come out as a film (as I imagine you'd know). 

*******************************

Still working through the Shakespeare bio (lots of interruptions) and into the final stages of Passchendaele (brilliant book). But after seeing 'Suffragette' the other day I had to start this:

I've taught the topic to younger kids (13-14) and bumped into it a lot because my colleagues used to teach it on the other side of the A Level course we did (I did Civil Rights and Korea/Vietnam, boys stuff!!!!!). But have never read anything beyond school textbooks.

Really enjoying this. First hundred pages are about the background in the Manchester radical scene of the late-19thC. It's no hagiography - Pugh tries to to deal with all the Pankhursts (including Adela who I'd never even heard of) and points out the contradictions and vanities in their characters. Just got to the founding of the WSPU.  

[BillF]

25 minutes ago, A Lark Ascending said:

I read several of those many years ago. Remember enjoying them greatly...a picture of an Ireland that was probably still hanging on when I read them but is unrecognisable now. My mother grew up in that Ireland about a decade or two before they are set; it affected her outlook on life profoundly. 

Have you read Colm Tóibín's 'Brooklyn' ? From a similar world. It's just come out as a film (as I imagine you'd know). 

*

 

 

Haven't read the book, but have a ticket for the film on Thursday. Re films, this afternoon's was quite something:

http://homemcr.org/film/lasa-eta-zabala/

[A Lark Ascending]

31 minutes ago, BillF said:

Haven't read the book, but have a ticket for the film on Thursday. Re films, this afternoon's was quite something:

http://homemcr.org/film/lasa-eta-zabala/

Thanks, Bill. Looks interesting. I'll keep my eye out at the Sheffield Showroom. I hope to see Brooklyn some time next week. 

[paul secor]

Percival Everett: Half an Inch of Water

One of my favorite writers

[Leeway]

I put a fair amount of time into reading Charlotte Bronte's "Villette" (1853) and at the end I can't say for sure whether I like it or not.  I liked some of it for sure. It has some nicely quirky parts to it, and the narrator, Lucy Snowe," is quite interesting. But I never got the sense that these parts really added up to a whole. 

[niels]

Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in my Mind

[mjazzg]

On 08/11/2015, 19:06:50, A Lark Ascending said:

Thanks, Bill. Looks interesting. I'll keep my eye out at the Sheffield Showroom. I hope to see Brooklyn some time next week. 

Brooklyn is a great read as are most of Toibin's novels. He addresses some big themes often in a seemingly gentle way. Real craftsman of language

Another contemporary Irish author who's a must-read for me is Sebastian Barry. About time for another novel from him

[A Lark Ascending]

3 hours ago, mjazzg said:

Brooklyn is a great read as are most of Toibin's novels. He addresses some big themes often in a seemingly gentle way. Real craftsman of language

Another contemporary Irish author who's a must-read for me is Sebastian Barry. About time for another novel from him

I was especially moved by "The Blackwater Lightship". John Banville and John McGahern are anothe couple of more recent Irish writers I've enjoyed.

The only Barry I've read is A Long Long Way (my macabre taste for endless WWI books!). Will have to correct that. 

[Leeway]

AGNES GRAY - Anne Bronte.  1847. 

Continuing my tour of the works of the Bronte sisters. Agnes/Anne give the comeuppance to the rich and arrogant who made Agnes/Anne's life as a governess miserable. Some wonderfully bitter scenes of the rich and vulgar, and their dreadful children. In the process, Agnes/Anne does come off at times as a bit of a prig herself. 

[ejp626]

Back from a weekend trip to Ottawa with a side trip to Kingston.  Managed to finish Spark's A Far Cry from Kensington.  In a way it was interesting, since I thought the narrator kept acting unreasonably.  I wasn't sure if we were supposed to agree with her point of view or not, and I thought the ending was pretty lame.  In general, I thought this was sort of an interesting anecdote, but would have worked better as a short story than a novel, even a short one.

I also read Manu Joseph's The Illicit Happiness of Other People.  It is hard to describe the book too much without giving too much away, but it is essentially a father trying to understand the shocking act his son committed.  It is fairly philosophical.  I actually thought it had strong similarities to Gadda's That Awful Mess on Via Merulana (which I personally think is somewhat over-rated).  That's really about all I have to say about it for the moment.

I should be able to return to Narayan's Mr. Sampath and finish that up shortly.

 

[BillF]

Continuing with the Edna O'Brien trilogy. I can see why The Country Girls made her name. Powerful and compelling. Seemed ready-made for film treatment and I see there was a TV movie version in 1984 in which the author wrote the screenplay.

[jlhoots]

Colum McCann: Thirteen Ways Of Looking

[A Lark Ascending]

Very enjoyable standard thriller set in Perpignan/Rousillon in France (I had to look up exactly where that was...I knew it was around the Pyrenees but apart from that half remember it changing hands in one of Louis XIV's peace treaties). Like in Donna Leon's Brunetti novels, the main cop has a (largely) happy home and nice family...you don't get much of that in detective novels. They're normally socially dysfunctional.   

Odd cover...gives no indication of what the book is about (except that the weather is very hot throughout). 

Finished 'Passchendaele' which was superb - extensive quotations from the archives from participants brought out the horror; at the same time you got a real sense of the military strategy and the terrible dilemmas facing the staff. The authors got a nice balance between praising the successes and recognising the difficulties alongside condemning the errors (principally launching further attacks into the mud without adequate preparation or real hope of success). Had me thinking how often we all take decisions based not so much on careful calculation as the hunch that what we want to happen might - in this case Haig and the other staff's conviction that the Germans were about to break.

 

Edited November 17, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[mjazzg]

19 hours ago, jlhoots said:

Colum McCann: Thirteen Ways Of Looking

very much looking forward to that one. I thoroughly enjoyed both 'Let The Great World Spin' and 'Transatlantic'

[Leeway]

THE PROFESSOR - Charlotte Bronte

Bronte's first novel, although only published posthumously. William Crimsworth leaves an oppressive life in England, goes to Brussels to teach, and finds a new life and wife. Many of the themes were later taken up in Bronte's last novel, Villette. I found this work quite engaging, very direct and full of a kind of restless social energy. 

[Leeway]

One of the great RomComs. 

[BillF]

[A Lark Ascending]

I absolutely loved this. I wonderful tale of a woman dealing with grief after the death of her husband, trying to work out what to do with the rest of her life. You very quickly warm to the central character yet as the novel unfolds become aware of how she frightens those around her. Set in the late 60s/early 70s with 'The Troubles' as a distant backdrop - I much prefer novels that glance against historical reality than those that attempt to have their characters at the centre of all the key events. That's how most of us experience the historically significant events of our lives.

So much Irish literature from O'Faolain onwards seems to be about unfulfilled lives set in a provincial, small town, suffocating environment where everyone knows your business and the representatives of the church see it as their duty to tick you off if you step outside of the moral and social parameters they have set. Toibin is also brilliant at evoking the way people rub one another up the wrong way, never completely connecting; and also the muffled but no less vicious impact of the various layers of social snobbery at work in communities. 

There's some lovely sections about the impact of music as well; Norah starts to get meaning back into her life through discovering a love of classical music. Some wonderful passages evoking how music can just flood your world with colours and feelings that might not be there in the everyday landscape. 

I didn't want to leave the characters in this book. 

Edited November 20, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[jlhoots]

Tom McGuane: Crow Fair

[paul secor]

Tom Stoppard: Night & Day

[paul secor]

Niall Williams: History of the Rain

I'd never read anything written by Niall Williams before, so this was a great discovery for me.