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[Larry Kart]

48 minutes ago, ejp626 said:

There is a lot to be said for that, but it also means our window onto the past is skewed in very specific ways.  If history is primarily written by the victors, novels are primarily written by a very narrow group of middle-class strivers (perhaps more in the past than today when there are more voices to be heard, even if the financial rewards are lower).

If one was going to write a cultural history of 2016 -- and all blogs and twitter feeds and Facebook postings were erased in the Great Magnetic Solar Flare of 2025 -- and we had to rely on Jonathan Franzen or more likely still J.K. Rowling and George Martin, would we really feel they captured the essence of the age?

Novels "are primarily written by a very narrow group of middle-class strivers"? Well, that settles the hash of Melville, Balzac, Proust, Conrad, Gogol, Flaubert, James, Mark Twain, Ellison, Dreiser, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Joyce, V.S. Naipaul et al. pretty neatly. 

[ejp626]

18 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Novels "are primarily written by a very narrow group of middle-class strivers"? Well, that settles the hash of Melville, Proust, Conrad, Gogol, Flaubert, James, Mark Twain, Ellison, Dreiser, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, V.S. Naipaul et al. pretty neatly. 

Compared to the whole of humanity, artists and novelists occupy an extremely narrow and precocious position.  I don't see that as particularly controversial.

Most film-makers are really in a dialog with other film-makers, and I see the same thing happening with most literary novelists.

[A Lark Ascending]

May not be 'Art' (harumph!) but this is proving a wonderful (if uncomfortable!) read. Viv Albertine is just a year older than me and I recognise so much in her description of growing up in late 50s/60s/70s Britain (though she had a more unstable family life and grew up streetwise in London). Interesting that up to the early 70s her musical interests weren't much different to mine, though she took a sharp left in the mid-70s. Communicates brilliantly the obsession about music that I recognise (can't say I share her obsession with clothes or boys!). I think what drew me to buy it was a picture of a stub from a KIng Crimson concert in October, 1973 at The Rainbow which I also attended (there's a not very pleasant encounter with Robert Fripp later in the book). 

Utterly honest about her life experiences - the chapter on getting crabs will have you squirming - and a personality that seems both insecure and vulnerable yet determined to walk on the wild side (there we have nothing in common; I'm the the definition of risk averse). 

I may not care for punk and what followed but this is a riveting read.    

Have just got to her learning the guitar in a rather unorthodox way. 

Makes an interesting contrast to the bio of Gustav Holst that I'm getting towards the end of at present!  

Edited December 23, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

Not being into her sort of music, I first came across her when she appeared in a fairly recent arthouse movie in which the most important character was a modernist house:

Edited December 23, 2015 by BillF

[Leeway]

THE TIME OF THE ANGELS (1966) - Iris Murdoch.

Coming back to an old friend, Miss Murdoch, near the close of the reading year. 

[optatio]

This catalogue has been published in conjunction with the exhibition I Got Rhythm. Art and Jazz since 1920, held at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, October 10, 2015 - March 6, 2016

[kinuta]

[BillF]

I was put off reading that one by a review that said the movie Carol was so much better than the over-talky novel characteristic of Highsmith's early style. (That made sense to me, as I found the novel a letdown after the movie Strangers on a Train.)

Anyway, be that as it may, have just finished a brilliant Highsmith:

 

 

[kinuta]

Seems quite plodding and lacking in bounce after the film. I've got a PDF of Those Who Walk Away, will read it next.

[Leeway]

KANGAROO - DH Lawrence -  Lawrence's novel of Australia.  Lawrence's mystical flights can sometimes be a bit too much, but his passion, sensitivity and honesty surmount any drawbacks. 

[Joe]

Some poetry.

	A profound, humble, uniquely lucid meditation on time's passage, place's place, and what it means to inhabit history. http://entropymag.org/a-kind-of-intelligence-that-refuses-to-act-smarter-than-its-life-a-conversation-with-ed-pavlic/ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/books/review/lets-let-that-are-not-yet-inferno-by-ed-pavlic.html

[sidewinder]

[mjazzg]

Just finished

Jaume Cabre - Confessions

750 pages of very well translated investigation into amongst other things, the history evil from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, consequences of one's actions and a love story

[paul secor]

Robertson Davies: The Cornish Trilogy

This was such a good read that I didn't think about the length. I want to read another Robertson trilogy in 2016. Does anyone have opinions about the Salterton Trilogy?

[ejp626]

16 minutes ago, paul secor said:

 

Robertson Davies: The Cornish Trilogy

This was such a good read that I didn't think about the length. I want to read another Robertson trilogy in 2016. Does anyone have opinions about the Salterton Trilogy?

I think it is worth reading for sure, but it is probably the lesser trilogy, in the sense that he was a better novelist by the end (Deptford and Cornish trilogy follow the Salterton Trilogy).

[Neal Pomea]

Andrew Keen, The Internet is Not the Answer

 

(Saw him interviewed recently on C-Span by Brian Lamb. Looks interesting).

[medjuck]

8 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I think it is worth reading for sure, but it is probably the lesser trilogy, in the sense that he was a better novelist by the end (Deptford and Cornish trilogy follow the Salterton Trilogy).

I agree.  There's a huge jump in the quality of his writing with The Deptford Trilogy.  I was studying with him at the time of the publication of Fifth Business so I figured I'd better read it.  I was shocked at how good it was.  At the time he was better known in Canada as a personality than as a writer. His earlier work was considered rather provincial and nothing I had read (which wasn't much) didn't convince me otherwise. 

[niels]

Toergenjev (or Turgenev, as he is called in English I think) - Collected works, Vol.01 (Dutch edition)

This volume consist of his novels; Rudin, Home of the Gentry, On the Eve and Fathers and Sons. I only read Fathers and Sons before, so this is just a pure joy to read the other novels for the first time finally. 

[crisp]

On 22 December 2015 at 1:58 PM, crisp said:

Well, it's started very well. Shaping up to be more of an old dark house mystery than a marooned train one. I tentatively recommend it.

I finished Mystery in White. A pleasant read although he didn't supply the motive or all the key characters until near the end, so trying to work out the mystery was a bit of a waste of time.

I've been reading this simultaneously:

 

Great opening chapter and brilliantly constructed, although the police inquiry reminds me a bit too much of The Stain on the Snow, which I hated.

I've also started this (very good so far; these mystery writers seem to have been a pretty unhappy bunch):

Edited December 30, 2015 by crisp

[ejp626]

On ‎21‎/‎12‎/‎2015 at 3:04 AM, BillF said:

Middlemarch was one of two set books that defeated me on my English degree course with a reading list of hundreds of books. The other was Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian.

I subsequently managed shorter novels by George Eliot.

I'm with you Bill.  I have finally crossed the finish line of Middlemarch.  It wasn't worth it.  I started out with at least a passable interest in and sympathy with many if not most of the characters.   By the end, I thoroughly disliked all of them except Rev. Farebrother and perhaps Celia.

I found Silas Marner mawkish and a bit stupid (if at least short) and strongly disliked The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch.  I'm clearly allergic to George Eliot.  At one point, I had seriously considered reading Daniel Deronda, but I shan't torment myself a third time.

[A Lark Ascending]

No 17. Not one of the strongest in the series but an entertaining read set in the Lake District. 

Short novel about memory and history, how we perceive, construct and misrepresent the past. My favourite theme. Had me thinking of another novel that explores this theme, Graham Swift's 'Waterland' (one of the rare novels I've read twice). Must re-read Barnes' 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 chapters' - that one really gripped me when I first read it 25 years back.  

Edited January 2, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[Jazzjet]

Recently finished 'Life After Life' by Kate Atkinson. Probably the best novel I read in 2015. about a woman who lives through the most turbulent events of the 20th century, including the London Blitz, and which asks: What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? She has also written some detective stories featuring Jackson Brodie which I have yet to try but, on the evidence of 'Life After Life' should be good.

 

[mjazzg]

Yes, very interesting novel and an addictive read. Her latest novel is a sequel of sorts

Yes, very interesting novel and an addictive read. Her latest novel is a sequel of sorts

[ejp626]

4 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Must re-read Barnes' 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 chapters' - that one really gripped me when I first read it 25 years back.  

I'll be honest and say I didn't much care for this one.  I think I had been spoiled by Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage, which I thought was a more entertaining treatment of the topic.  If you do reread the Barnes, try the Findley as well.

[jlhoots]

Don Winslow: Power Of The Dog