Now reading...

[paul secor]

Interesting article on Haruki Murakami in today's N.Y. Times magazine.

[A Lark Ascending]

Overlong - 700 + pages - took me 5 weeks to get through (10 pages here, ten pages there during a pretty brutal half-term with little room for pleasure reading). But a good tale, interesting setting, nice characters.

Now racing through:

A send up of heritage industry Britain.

[jlhoots]

Erik Larsen: In The Garden Of Beasts

[BillF]

Lesser known Wells science fiction novel, excellent in parts, though flawed.

[Van Basten II]

[Guy Berger]

I've been doing a lot of reading on the train. One book I just finished and loved is Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar":

I guess I am in an inter-war mood - I am currently about halfway through Kafka's "The Trial", and after that I have Richard Evans's "Rise of the Third Reich" on deck. I love the kindle!

Edited November 8, 2011 by Guy

[jazzbo]

Fascinating

I've stalled on this about halfway. It's great, but it may be time to slip some fiction in.

[jazzbo]

Wow, it's hard to believe that I am holding this in my hands. I never thought it would see publication.

[paul secor]

Kate Atkinson: When Will There Be Good News?

[thedwork]

on the recommendation of my step-mom:

i'm a bit more than halfway through and i'm not enjoying it at all. i actually rather dislike it, as opposed to simply disliking it in a 'disinterested' way, but will finish it out of respect for my step-mom. we'll see what happens. maybe since i've been reading so much non-fiction for the last 5-6 years i just don't like reading fiction much anymore? could be...

Edited November 12, 2011 by thedwork

[TedR]

The Civil War of 1812 by Alan Taylor

[Morganized]

Following recomendation from friend and comments on this board

[BillF]

Excellent!

[paul secor]

Haruki Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

One helluva journey!

[Leeway]

Marching bravely forward on my Dickens marathon. Now on to:

[Brad]

Recommended for students of Lincoln and the Civil War.

[thedwork]

on the recommendation of my step-mom:

i'm a bit more than halfway through and i'm not enjoying it at all. i actually rather dislike it, as opposed to simply disliking it in a 'disinterested' way, but will finish it out of respect for my step-mom. we'll see what happens. maybe since i've been reading so much non-fiction for the last 5-6 years i just don't like reading fiction much anymore? could be...

finished it. not for me, but i see how others would enjoy it.

[BillF]

Read this after rewatching the film recently. Profound, moving.

[jlhoots]

Alice Hoffman: The Dovekeepers

[ejp626]

on the recommendation of my step-mom:

i'm a bit more than halfway through and i'm not enjoying it at all. i actually rather dislike it, as opposed to simply disliking it in a 'disinterested' way, but will finish it out of respect for my step-mom. we'll see what happens. maybe since i've been reading so much non-fiction for the last 5-6 years i just don't like reading fiction much anymore? could be...

finished it. not for me, but i see how others would enjoy it.

I haven't read this, but I did read Moth Smoke, which had its moments. I will say that of Pakistani novelists, I prefer Kamila Shamsie to Mohsin Hamid.

[A Lark Ascending]

Read this after rewatching the film recently. Profound, moving.

That film was relatively new when I was training as a teacher and clips were used as a critique of what was wrong with the education system.

I hope we've got much better with most youngsters, but the basic inequalities are still there, the sense of alienation amongst the most disadvantaged too.

I'm really enjoying the fourth of David Downing's wartime Berlin based novels, this one set as the Russians close in in April 1945.

[BillF]

Read this after rewatching the film recently. Profound, moving.

That film was relatively new when I was training as a teacher and clips were used as a critique of what was wrong with the education system.

I hope we've got much better with most youngsters, but the basic inequalities are still there, the sense of alienation amongst the most disadvantaged too.

In his Afterword to the 1999 edition, Barry Hines noted that the only significant employment opportunity on Kes's territory, mining, had now been killed off. Today, twelve years later, national youth unemployment figures speak for themselves.

Edited November 18, 2011 by BillF

[Justin V]

[ejp626]

So I am about halfway through Norman Rush's Mating. It's pretty slow going and I am getting bored with it, so I will probably just stop. It is definitely at least 100 pages too long. Life's too short.

I positively hated Donleavy's The Ginger Man. Basically only for those who find intellectual-poseurs and drunkards compelling (as found in Withnail and I). And then to add to that, the main character is a wife-beater who treats all women equally shabbily, basically trying to screw all the women in Dublin. Maybe this was genuinely liberating in the 1950s and early 60s, but it strikes me that the only liberation that mattered was for men. I can't imagine Donleavy remaining in the literary pantheon (in fact he's probably not there now). A poor man's Norman Mailer, basically (not even sure Mailer will be in the pantheon in another 50 years). Ultimately, it was the physical abuse of the women that make me stop reading -- I skipped to the last 25 pages and he was still a complete shitheel, so I tossed the book into a donation box. Life is definitely too short to read books that glamourize violence against women.

Starting Kroetsch's Badlands. Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy is around the corner. Boy, that is going to be a tough book to digest. I imagine it will take a month at my current rate of reading.

[A Lark Ascending]

In his Afterword to the 1999 edition, Barry Hines noted that the only significant employment opportunity on Kes's territory, mining, had now been killed off. Today, twenty-two years later, national youth unemployment figures speak for themselves.

I'm a bit south of Hines area and with a little more diversity to pick up on the loss of the coal mines, but still a 'social priority area'. It's starting to get hit hard - we're noticing a renewed attitude of hopelessness in some of the kids. Why bother to work/conform/behave when dad, mum, uncle are out of work or in really low paid jobs? - much more fun to tweak the noses of the teachers.

Edited November 18, 2011 by A Lark Ascending