Now reading...

[BillF]

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.

I read The Ginger Man when it was a cult book c.1960 and found it utterly trivial then. Funny, but the only bit I can now remember is when someone flushes the toilet in a rickety house and the contents end up in living quarters in the storey below.

[ejp626]

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.

I read The Ginger Man when it was a cult book c.1960 and found it utterly trivial then. Funny, but the only bit I can now remember is when someone flushes the toilet in a rickety house and the contents end up in living quarters in the storey below.

Yes, I did read that part. It actually ends up in the kitchen! And then Sebastian buggers off and won't help clean up in the slightest (though it was he that flushed the toilet) and he is too afraid to even confront the landlord to see about getting it fixed. That was basically the moment I decided this book wasn't worth my time, and I skimmed a bit more, then skipped ahead to the end.

[Chuck Nessa]

Just finished the Norman Granz bio. Think less of him now and have some unanswered questions. Bummer.

[ValerieB]

Just finished the Norman Granz bio. Think less of him now and have some unanswered questions. Bummer.

i would say that my warped sense of humor thinks that's pretty damn funny as well as pathetic, Chuck!! i passed last weekend on going to a book-signing, film and concert dedicated to Mr. Granz. i also heard it was quite under-attended!

on my stack at the moment:

Steve Jobs bio

Roger Ebert memoir and

Wendy Wasserstein bio

just finished Clark's autobio, which i enjoyed.

[ejp626]

So I'm looking at tackling Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth, which I've had for a long, long time. This was the core of his unfinished second novel where he had some really powerful blockage going on. He actually wrote and wrote and wrote, but just couldn't bring himself to finish the novel. Anyway, Juneteenth came out over 10 years ago, but then a year or two ago a much longer expanded version of this unfinished novel came out called Three Days Before the Shooting. It is three times as long and just under 1200 pages. I have to be honest, the plot of Juneteenth doesn't really grab me (a white boy is raised by a Black preacher but then grows up to be a race-baiting U.S. Senator), though I think I can make it through this novel, but I can't imagine reading 1200 pages' worth. Anyway, just wondering if anyone had read either version.

[Morganized]

Fascinating

I agree.

Don't know why Roth hasn't won the Nobel prize.

Read it some years ago. Seem to remember it as a very strong novel that went into serious decline towards the end. The details escape me now.

I agree with the last quote, good read but falls apart a bit at the end.

[BillF]

Some mind-boggling tricks with time in this one! Really enjoyed it.

Edited November 26, 2011 by BillF

[jazzbo]

Yes, that's a fun one! Was the second one I read I think, the first PKD I read was "The Zap Gun."

[BillF]

Borrowed DeLillo's latest from the public library. Intriguing short story collection. Have read a lot of his stuff and think he's one of the best of today's authors.

[ejp626]

Borrowed DeLillo's latest from the public library. Intriguing short story collection. Have read a lot of his stuff and think he's one of the best of today's authors.

Curiously enough, I am also reading this, and also from the library. I actually wasn't expecting it to come in nearly so soon, but I think they ordered a bunch of copies system-wide. I'm halfway through, and I'm going to have to go with some of the less positive Amazon reviewers -- meh. I do have slightly higher hopes for the newer stories in the last section, but I haven't found the first ones compelling at all. In particular, The Runner strikes me as a writing exercise where he was trying to write a Raymond Carver story and didn't pull it off.

While I say I admire DeLillo, the truth is he is really hit or miss for me. White Noise is an outstanding book (I'm actually going to try to reread it in 2012) and I also really liked Americana. On the other hand, I really slogged through Underworld and can't recall much of it at all. I struggled with Libra and have put it aside for the time being.

I wrapped up Kroetsch's Badlands, and it was ok but not outstanding. Fairly shortly, I will reread What the Crow Said, which I guess is a kind of magic realism (written before Garcia Marquez had really gotten much attention in the north). I think what Kroetsch is really trying is to take seriously what life would be like in a backwards, frontier town if mythology were real (Zeus as a golden shower and so on, though in this case it is a swarm of bees that seduces a young girl!). My understanding is that John Banville's The Infinities is along similar lines, and I'll be reading that relatively soon (nearly ordered a copy, then realized the library had many copies already).

I finally finished reading RLS's Kidnapped to my kids. I know some people love it, but I found it pretty boring. The language was a considerable challenge and I found myself having to change a lot of the words in the middle of reading to make it understandable. Ultimately, I skipped over large chunks that were basically insensible if you didn't know the difference between a Whig and a Jacobite. This wasn't nearly as much of an issue with Treasure Island, which they did like. Probably read something shorter next time. If I can dig out my copy, I'll probably go ahead and read A Christmas Carol to them this holiday season.

[BillF]

Borrowed DeLillo's latest from the public library. Intriguing short story collection. Have read a lot of his stuff and think he's one of the best of today's authors.

Curiously enough, I am also reading this, and also from the library. I actually wasn't expecting it to come in nearly so soon, but I think they ordered a bunch of copies system-wide. I'm halfway through, and I'm going to have to go with some of the less positive Amazon reviewers -- meh. I do have slightly higher hopes for the newer stories in the last section, but I haven't found the first ones compelling at all. In particular, The Runner strikes me as a writing exercise where he was trying to write a Raymond Carver story and didn't pull it off.

While I say I admire DeLillo, the truth is he is really hit or miss for me. White Noise is an outstanding book (I'm actually going to try to reread it in 2012) and I also really liked Americana. On the other hand, I really slogged through Underworld and can't recall much of it at all. I struggled with Libra and have put it aside for the time being.

I wrapped up Kroetsch's Badlands, and it was ok but not outstanding. Fairly shortly, I will reread What the Crow Said, which I guess is a kind of magic realism (written before Garcia Marquez had really gotten much attention in the north). I think what Kroetsch is really trying is to take seriously what life would be like in a backwards, frontier town if mythology were real (Zeus as a golden shower and so on, though in this case it is a swarm of bees that seduces a young girl!). My understanding is that John Banville's The Infinities is along similar lines, and I'll be reading that relatively soon (nearly ordered a copy, then realized the library had many copies already).

I finally finished reading RLS's Kidnapped to my kids. I know some people love it, but I found it pretty boring. The language was a considerable challenge and I found myself having to change a lot of the words in the middle of reading to make it understandable. Ultimately, I skipped over large chunks that were basically insensible if you didn't know the difference between a Whig and a Jacobite. This wasn't nearly as much of an issue with Treasure Island, which they did like. Probably read something shorter next time. If I can dig out my copy, I'll probably go ahead and read A Christmas Carol to them this holiday season.

The title story of Esmeralda is very reminiscent of an episode in Underworld, but it's such a fat tome that I can't be bothered to go through my copy to find out just how close it is. Agree "The Runner" is Carver-ish, but I think it works. I also like White Noise, as well as Libra and Mao II, but didn't get on with Falling Man.

Understand your difficulties in reading Kidnapped to the kids! Thought it great when I was that age 60 years ago, but its language and issues have now become so remote that there was no chance of interesting my kids in it in the 90s - or in Treasure Island, for that matter.

[ejp626]

Understand your difficulties in reading Kidnapped to the kids! Thought it great when I was that age 60 years ago, but its language and issues have now become so remote that there was no chance of interesting my kids in it in the 90s - or in Treasure Island, for that matter.

They seemed ok with the pirate stuff, though the parts on the island itself could have been shortened up a bit. Anyway, I really thought Kidnapped dragged. While they don't have cell phones themselves, it is hard to imagine an entire world where not one person has a cell phone, which would have almost instantly cleared up so many matters. Oddly enough, they do enjoy The Railway Children, which doesn't hold my interest, despite the many various episodes that make up the book. Both Railway Children and Kidnapped have many sections that seem overly moralistic to me.

This may be an apocryphal story, but I heard that some students were learning Romeo and Juliette, and they asked things like, why didn't Romeo put a mirror under her nose. Nowadays you'd probably have some kid say There's an app for that too.

[ejp626]

Finally have my home library more or less reconstructed, though I am missing a few books (and more annoyingly some key DVD sets). At this point, I have to hope they are in the boxes still in Chicago, which are getting shipped up in Jan. (The goal was to ship all the office stuff, books, DVDs, CDs, etc. in the first batch, then household goods and clothes in the second round. Who says I don't have my priorities in order? )

Anyway, I realized that I had relatively little in the way of Faulkner. While the LOA sets are pretty nice, I don't think I need a full set of Faulkner -- that's what the public library is for. While this is old news, Oprah pushed a three-volumne set of Faulkner in 2005 (As I Lay Dying/The Sound and the Fury/Light in August), and it is hard to beat this price for some of the used sets that are kicking around: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307275329/ref=oh_o01_s00_i00_details

I just ordered one of them for just a bit over $5 plus shipping. Personally, I think what Oprah did for some of these somewhat more challenging novels was great. I don't understand at all people carping at her for her book club. Someone commented that Faulkner would be turning over in his grave! Are you kidding me? He would have been thrilled for hundreds of thousands of new readers to pick up his books. She might have actually moved a million copies of this 3 book set (can't come up with exact figures), and if even 10% read them all the way through, and I expect it was considerably higher than that, I think that's amazing.

For a slightly deeper push, I might go for Absalom, Absalom and then perhaps the Snopes Trilogy (conveniently collected into this Modern Library edition): http://www.amazon.com/Snopes-Trilogy-Library-William-Faulkner/dp/0679600922/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322852552&sr=1-1

Then some of the collected stories, and I think one would be set. Not saying that other Faulkner isn't worthy of reading, but probably wouldn't need much more for a home library (where space is always an issue).

On the other hand, I may break down (someday) and get the entire LOA set of Steinbeck's novels. For some reason it has a greater pull to me as a set. Anyway, I certainly would if shelf space weren't a consideration (with cost a slightly secondary consideration).

[gslade]

Robert McCammon The Five

[jlhoots]

Chris Cleave: Little Bee

[jazzbo]

[medjuck]

"Speak Low" the Kurt Weil- Lotte Lenya letters.

[BillF]

Reading Franzen's Wikipedia entry suggests his books have been subject to unusual and highly effective promotion methods, but I find them good all the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Franzen

This is the second of his I've read, having got through The Corrections earlier this year. "Sprawling" is the word often used to describe them and each took me about a month to read. Anyone else tried them?

[ejp626]

Reading Franzen's Wikipedia entry suggests his books have been subject to unusual and highly effective promotion methods, but I find them good all the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Franzen

This is the second of his I've read, having got through The Corrections earlier this year. "Sprawling" is the word often used to describe them and each took me about a month to read. Anyone else tried them?

I read one of his very first novels -- The Twenty-Seventh City -- which started out kind of promising, but then got increasingly implausible (and even absurd). I also wasn't quite sure if this was supposed to be set in a futuristic, somewhat distopian St. Louis or it was just a contemporary novel.

I own a copy of The Corrections, but it isn't even on deck, so to speak. The earliest I might get to it would be 2014. As an aside, I am generally finding myself impatient and losing interest in books over 350 pages. I don't know if this is a temporary or permanent condition, or indeed if it is simply a function of reading several too-wordy books in a row.

[jlhoots]

Karl Marlantes: Matterhorn (A Novel Of The Vietnam War)

[AllenLowe]

Ethel Waters bio (Bogle); Duke Ellington's America; Lafcadio Hearn on New Orleans; a book on black cults and religion; collection of John Szwed pieces.

[A Lark Ascending]

Karl Marlantes: Matterhorn (A Novel Of The Vietnam War)

I thought that was a marvellous book. Just started:

I know how to have a cheery Xmas!

[rdavenport]

Just finished "Trick Baby" by Iceberg Slim, a 25p find in a charity shop.

[rdavenport]

Finally finished (after about a year) "Sophie's Choice". The film was on TV a couple of nights ago - try as I may, I could never see Meryl Streep playing the role.

Edited January 3, 2012 by rdavenport

[Guy Berger]

Recently finished:

RICHARD EVANS: The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, The Third Reich at War (excellent trilogy... very depressing/horrifying)

KAFKA: The Trial

ERIK LARSON: In the Garden of Beasts (ok, not great)

currently reading:

ERIN MORGENSTERN: The Night Circus (about 70% of the way through, intriguing but I will wait until the end to make a verdict)

DAVID MATTINGLY: An Imperial Possession, a history of Britain from 55 BC to 409 AD (barely started this one)