Now reading...

[ejp626]

I'm making reasonable progress through Butler's The Way of All Flesh (roughly 1/3 in now).  It's still fairly interesting.  The stress on unhappy childhood reminds me just a bit of Maugham's Of Human Bondage, but actually I like The Way of All Flesh considerable better (so far).

I'm also starting Steve Zipp's Yellowknife, which is sort of a fantastical view of life up north.  Interesting so far.

[A Lark Ascending]

Short biography with lots of reasonably good reproductions. I knew very little about Klee so this was useful. 

No 7 in Hill's sequence of detective novels. Typical of the genre; but Hill adds an extra dimension in her exploration of family dynamics and also a very timely concern for the pressures on the health service and social care.  

[johnblitweiler]

Muriel Spark's novels are popcorn to me. It's been a long time since I laughed out loud as often as  at "The Hothouse by the East River" last week. It's her New York novel, no plot, great characters. 

[Leeway]

Spark's novels are wickedly amusing.  

finished:

3rd in the Alexandria Quartet, and the only one in the 3rd person narrative. A somewhat puzzle narrative choice. I've been enjoying the works. More so than other novels, I suspect it takes two or three readings to really fully grasp what Durrell is doing. It's better than it seems on first blush. 

[ejp626]

I finished up The Way of All Flesh.  While there is almost no plot to speak of, this still held my attention, mostly due to the narrative voice, which constantly rejected Victorian-era mores.

I've just started David Foster Wallace's The Pale King.  This is an unfinished novel, pieced together from his notebooks and computer files.  It is a fairly sad book, with the early chapters somewhat preoccupied with death and suicide.  It's also quite choppy and episodic, though this seems to have been part of the plan (rather than something that the editor was forced to revert to).  I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it, particularly since Wallace had hinted that it would be "about nothing," i.e. there would never be a big denouement at the end where different strands get wrapped up.  On the other hand, so few people write about the tedium of corporate office life (Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End is an honorable exception) that I want to like it.  I guess I'll see how I feel when it ends, but I am not quite liking The Pale King as much as I had hoped.

[jlhoots]

Timothy Hallinan: Skin Deep

[Leeway]

Finished the fourth and final volume in The Alexandria Quartet. Overall, it was a worthwhile reading experience. Durrell is interested in narrative devices, but I find he also has a strong poetic faculty, and there are many lovely scenes in these volumes. It might be a minor classic, but it is a classic nonetheless. 

[BillF]

14 hours ago, Leeway said:

Finished the fourth and final volume in The Alexandria Quartet. Overall, it was a worthwhile reading experience. Durrell is interested in narrative devices, but I find he also has a strong poetic faculty, and there are many lovely scenes in these volumes. It might be a minor classic, but it is a classic nonetheless. 

I might give those Durrells another try one day. You never know! 

[jlhoots]

Susan Faludi: In The Darkroom

Edited December 14, 2016 by jlhoots

[Leeway]

A book as strange as its author. The book consists of dozens and dozens of stories by "Tarden," a member of "the Service," in which Tarden injects himself, for better or worse Usually worse), into the lives of others, often at random. This is sometimes fascinating, sometimes mundane, but as the stories keep coming, it becomes wearying, especially as there seems little sense in what goes on.  A deeper message? Hard to say. Perhaps it is an extreme version of Kosinski's The Painted Bird. 

[Leeway]

A biography of one of America's most influential art critics.  

[BillF]

8 hours ago, Leeway said:

A biography of one of America's most influential art critics.  

I am currently reading Saul Bellow's biography in which Greenberg gets quite a few mentions.

[Leeway]

11 hours ago, BillF said:

I am currently reading Saul Bellow's biography in which Greenberg gets quite a few mentions.

I recall one or two brief mentions of Bellow in this book, although oddly enough he does't appear in the Index. The "Partisan Review" crowd was pretty incestuous and usually turn up in each other's personal accounts.  

[A Lark Ascending]

Odd book. Part history, part travelogue, part tour of the moth collections of dull provincial museums. Winder is a self-confessed life-long Germany/Central Europe obsessive and seems to randomly visit out of the way places. All done with a Brysonish comedy which sometimes comes off but at times becomes a bit 'aren't foreigners funny'. Reminded me of a lot of history I'd once lived in (17th/18thC) but also made sense of some of the more confusing bits (everything before The Reformation).

Intrigued me enough to start something rather more serious:

Clark wrote the brilliant 'The Sleepwalkers', as good an account of the causes of WWI as I've read. This one has started well. 

[ejp626]

I just wrapped up The Pale King.  It's somewhat interesting watching the editor reveal what is behind the curtain (many of Wallace's notes suggest that he was going to radically reshape the material), but there is essentially no plot to speak of.  It's basically quite a few portraits of the sort of person who can handle the extreme tedium of working as a tax inspector/auditor for the IRS.  It was fundamentally unsatisfying to me, but I think that was largely the point...

I'm rereading some classics - Kafka's The Castle, Calvino's Invisible Cities and Borges' Ficciones.

Then I am going to start Vanity Fair.  Not sure how long that will take me.

 

Edited December 20, 2016 by ejp626
duplication

[Leeway]

Could have rightly been called Depression as it seems most of the characters are suffering from that malady. The central character, Maria (Mar-I-ah of course) is a sort of modern-day Tess, punishing herself as much as she is punished. Very downbeat, but cool and hip too. 

[BillF]

Now I've been learning Spanish for a year, I'm just about up to reading this - at least in this edition with the English translation printed underneath the text.

Beautiful stuff!

PAISAJE

El campo

de olivos

se abre, y se cierra

como un abanico.

Sobre el olivar

hay un cielo hundido

y una lluvia oscura

de luceros frios.

Se riza el aire gris.

Los olivos,

estan cargados

de gritos.

Una bandada

de parajos cautivos,

que mueven sus larguisimas

colas en lo sombrio.

 

Landscape

The field of olive-trees opens and shuts like a fan. Over the olive-grove is a deep sky and a dark rain of cold stars. By the river bank, reeds and darkness tremble. The grey air ripples. The olive-trees are full of shrieks. A flock of captive birds that move their very long tails in the shadow.

 

 

[jlhoots]

Mike Lankford: Life In Double Time (Confessions of an American Drummer)

[ejp626]

Kafka's The Castle.  It's quite interesting how one can feel totally different about a novel when one rereads it much later.  I'm about 1/3 through The Castle, and I know I am much less sympathetic to K. than I was as a young man.  There's no question the Castle remains an arbitrary force that meddles with the villagers, but this time around I find K. to be incredibly pompous, stiff-necked and unwilling to learn from any of the people trying to give him advice,  Have some humility, man, and listen to others.  That's not the same as being a servile toady to the Castle. 

(In contrast, I believe The Trial still affected me roughly the same way after a gap of close to 20 years.)

[paul secor]

Elizabeth Taylor (the original, not the actress): Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

[T.D.]

I read a lot of the books on "behavioral economics" and this is a new one (about the Kahneman/Tversky collaboration, if that helps).

[BillF]

9 hours ago, ejp626 said:

Kafka's The Castle.  It's quite interesting how one can feel totally different about a novel when one rereads it much later.  I'm about 1/3 through The Castle, and I know I am much less sympathetic to K. than I was as a young man.  There's no question the Castle remains an arbitrary force that meddles with the villagers, but this time around I find K. to be incredibly pompous, stiff-necked and unwilling to learn from any of the people trying to give him advice,  Have some humility, man, and listen to others.  That's not the same as being a servile toady to the Castle. 

(In contrast, I believe The Trial still affected me roughly the same way after a gap of close to 20 years.)

I read The Castle in the early 1960s. Perhaps it's time to return. I read an interesting article by Julian Barnes in the Guardian a few weeks ago on returning to books after many decades.

[BillF]

On 12/22/2016 at 11:45 PM, paul secor said:

Elizabeth Taylor (the original, not the actress): Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

A fine little book.

Have just finished Zachary Leader's fascinating biography of Saul Bellow. Pleased to have got for £5 from an Amazon trader an apparently new hardback as shown, marked $40. A valued addition to the bookshelf.

Edited December 26, 2016 by BillF

[jlhoots]

Timothy Hallinan: The Four Last Things

[Matthew]

 

Relativity (Book one of the Goddamned Lonely Universe Saga) by Henry Abner.