Now reading...

[BillF]

On 12/24/2015 at 8:47 AM, BillF said:

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:

 

 

Finally got round to reading Carol/The Price of Salt and I found it a fine book - a plot that prepares the way for her mature style and attention to detail and description that the older Highsmith was to perfect.

 

[Matthew]

Edward Bourne-Jones: A Biography by Penelope Fitzgerald.  A very interesting biography, the first one by Fitzgerald that I've read, and I need to get her others.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Matthew said:

Edward Bourne-Jones: A Biography by Penelope Fitzgerald.  A very interesting biography, the first one by Fitzgerald that I've read, and I need to get her others.

It's on my bedside to-read pile. Her book about her father and uncles, "The Knox Family" I think is the title, is superb, as are her novels of course. Her father was editor of Punch, and her two uncles were famous convert Catholic prelate Ronald Knox and Evoe Knox, one of the key codebreakers of WWII. Her paternal grandfather, IIRC, was no less than an Anglican Archbishop, perhaps even of Canterbury? Also very good is her biography of the excellent and eventually suicidal poet (she killed herself by drinking a drain-cleaner) Charlotte Mew.

[Matthew]

6 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

It's on my bedside to-read pile. Her book about her father and uncles, "The Knox Family" I think is the title, is superb, as are her novels of course. Her father was editor of Punch, and her two uncles were famous convert Catholic prelate Ronald Knox and Evoe Knox, one of the key codebreakers of WWII. Her paternal grandfather, IIRC, was no less than an Anglican Archbishop, perhaps even of Canterbury? Also very good is her biography of the excellent and eventually suicidal poet (she killed herself by drinking a drain-cleaner) Charlotte Mew.

I'll have to check the Knox biography out, I just finished reading the sermons of Ronald Knox, and they're interesting.  Sounds like an interesting family.  I need to look into the novels also.

[Larry Kart]

5 hours ago, Matthew said:

5 hours ago, Matthew said:

I'll have to check the Knox biography out, I just finished reading the sermons of Ronald Knox, and they're interesting.  Sounds like an interesting family.  I need to look into the novels also.

Fitzgerald's paternal grandfather was Archbishop of Manchester.

[BillF]

I can recommend this excellent biography of Fitzgerald:

 

[paul secor]

6 hours ago, BillF said:

I can recommend this excellent biography of Fitzgerald:

 

That's on my to read list.

[Jazzmoose]

 

On 6/28/2016 at 11:09 PM, BillF said:

Finally got round to reading Carol/The Price of Salt and I found it a fine book - a plot that prepares the way for her mature style and attention to detail and description that the older Highsmith was to perfect.

 

I guess I'll have to figure out which book of hers I've read.  Maybe it was the wrong period...I kept getting visions of Emily Dickinson trying to write for mystery pulps.

Edited July 1, 2016 by Jazzmoose
double post

[jlhoots]

Walter Mosley: Charcoal Joe

[ejp626]

Nearly done with Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett.  It's in the good but not great category.  I should wrap it up this weekend.

I'm then going to launch into In Between Dreams by Iman Verjee.  (She has her 2nd novel dropping in August, though it may already be available in the States.  The Kindle version is already out.  I want to see what I think of her first novel.)

Then the library is sending me Han Kang's The Vegetarian, which won the Booker International Prize.

Still slowly making my way through The Voyage of the Beagle.  I'm just about at the chapter covering the Galapagos Islands (finally!).

 

 

[ejp626]

On 7/1/2016 at 1:50 PM, ejp626 said:

Nearly done with Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett.  It's in the good but not great category.  I should wrap it up this weekend.

I'm then going to launch into In Between Dreams by Iman Verjee.  (She has her 2nd novel dropping in August, though it may already be available in the States.  The Kindle version is already out.  I want to see what I think of her first novel.)

Then the library is sending me Han Kang's The Vegetarian, which won the Booker International Prize.

Still slowly making my way through The Voyage of the Beagle.  I'm just about at the chapter covering the Galapagos Islands (finally!).

 

 

I didn't really care for the ending of Blackass.  Also, the morals of the main character just get worse and worse as the novel progresses, sort of like The White Tiger, though in that case you knew from the beginning that the narrator was amoral.

I got just a few pages into In Between Dreams and found out it crossed one of my thick red lines (that cause me to abandon novels).  There are some things I simply am not willing to read.  I guess I'm glad I found out right away without wasting any more time.  Of course, now I have no idea whether I will read her second novel, though I am certainly leaning against it.

Anyway, Darwin has finally reached the Galapagos, so I'll just try to wrap that up.

Edited July 3, 2016 by ejp626

[BillF]

Exquisite little book with the concentration and intensity of poetry.

[paul secor]

Robertson Davies: Fifth Business

[Leeway]

[jlhoots]

Cline: The Girls

[kinuta]

Has to be the definitive account of Verdum.

Compulsively well written and a must read for anyone interested in The Great War.

[jlhoots]

Chris Pavone: The Expats

[sidewinder]

Just wading into this..

[Leeway]

 

Woolf's first novel; a beautiful book with the seeds of her later, more experimental fiction already noticeable. 

[jlhoots]

Annie Proulx: Barkskins

[A Lark Ascending]

Sixth of Hill's Serrailler series of detective novels set in an imaginary cathedral town (with nearby modern town with sink estate etc) in central England. Good plots, likeable characters (and unlikable villains) but often with sub-plots revolving around the medical profession. Much of this one revolves around care homes and the issue of assisted suicide. 

  

Warm book revolving round the lives (and deaths) of characters in the the west Cornwall villages of Morvah and Pendeen, near St. Just. 

Quick survey of music from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. Lots on the revival of the mid-20thC.

Now:

 

Glad to see the main characters are as bad tempered as ever. No room for Tom Hiddleston here. 

[paul secor]

Helen DeWitt: The Last Samurai

[Matthew]

Been shifting my bedtime reading between these two books:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Collected Poetry and Prose: 

Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I'm enjoying them both a great deal.  I'm starting to come around on the Victorian writers, I have to admit that I pretty much gave them a dismissive blow-off for most of my life... a serious mistake on my part.

[BillF]

13 hours ago, Matthew said:

Been shifting my bedtime reading between these two books:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Collected Poetry and Prose: 

Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I'm enjoying them both a great deal.  I'm starting to come around on the Victorian writers, I have to admit that I pretty much gave them a dismissive blow-off for most of my life... a serious mistake on my part.

Some High Victorian pics - of Manchester Town Hall - to accompany your reading:

 

[ejp626]

I've finished Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle.  I've collected my thoughts on it here if interested: http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2016/07/darwins-voyage-at-end.html

I'm nearly done with Han Kang's The Vegetarian.  It's kind of interesting, but I have to say I think it won the Booker International more for its shock value than any lasting literary legacy.  Definitely one to borrow or rent rather than buy...

Next up are Aravind Adiga's Last Man in Tower and Willa Cather's My Antonia.  (A bit of strange pairing to be sure.)

After that, for something completely different - Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa.