Now reading...

[A Lark Ascending]

A good one volume history. Neither romanticises nor demonises.

Just started:

[BillF]

[Pete C]

Still, you might like The Invention of Solitude, or at least the first half which is about Auster's father.

I'm not a big fan of Auster's fiction, but that's a brilliant book, especially the first part. I taught it once in a course on experimental nonfiction. Before Hustvedt he was married to one of my favorite writers, Lydia Davis, who is the mother of the son the other half of that book is about.

[jlhoots]

Carlos Fuentes: The Death Of Artemio Cruz

[Pete C]

Carlos Fuentes: The Death Of Artemio Cruz

One of those guys I can appreciate but have trouble reading. Too grand & maximalist for my taste. He was teaching in the writing program at Columbia my first semester in 1978, but being a rookie I didn't get my first choice of workshop instructor and was stuck with a total mediocrity named Hilma Wolitzer (whose daughter Meg has subsequently eclipsed her).

[ejp626]

Carlos Fuentes: The Death Of Artemio Cruz

One of those guys I can appreciate but have trouble reading. Too grand & maximalist for my taste. He was teaching in the writing program at Columbia my first semester in 1978, but being a rookie I didn't get my first choice of workshop instructor and was stuck with a total mediocrity named Hilma Wolitzer (whose daughter Meg has subsequently eclipsed her).

I've not read all that much Fuentes, but I did like Christopher Unborn (wonder if I'd still like it).

[kinuta]

The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell

Suitably downbeat end to the Wallander series. LeCarre meets Ingmar Bergman. I wish they would lose the Sir Kenneth picture, it ruins the cover.

Case Histories - Kate Atkinson

Excellent, full of witty insights. I wonder how the following Jackson Brodie books compare to this ?

[ejp626]

In the midst of Findley's Headhunter. Definitely an interesting read (or rather re-read). Findley imagines Toronto if Kurtz (from Heart of Darkness) was released from his book and ended up in charge of a mental hospital. Not sure how that came together in his imagination, but interesting.

Just completed Carol Shields Various Miracles, which is a collection of short stories. Most of them didn't grab me. Still, I decided to pick up her earlier short story collection The Orange Fish when I saw it at the library.

Happy Bloom Day everyone! There may be a thread devoted to it, but here is as good as anywhere. I've actually read Ulysses twice and may tackle it once again (in 5+ years). BBC Radio 4 has done a reading/dramatization of much of it (not the entire thing) and the podcasts can be downloaded for approx. 2 weeks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ulysses

[BillF]

Just completed Carol Shields Various Miracles, which is a collection of short stories. Most of them didn't grab me. Still, I decided to pick up her earlier short story collection The Orange Fish when I saw it at the library.

Happy Bloom Day everyone! There may be a thread devoted to it, but here is as good as anywhere. I've actually read Ulysses twice and may tackle it once again (in 5+ years). BBC Radio 4 has done a reading/dramatization of much of it (not the entire thing) and the podcasts can be downloaded for approx. 2 weeks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ulysses

Very much liked Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries and Larry's Party and less so Unless, but haven't tried the short stories.

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

[A Lark Ascending]

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

Me too!

Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative!

Just started this:

I love Gaddis on the Cold War (though not always his conclusions!); thought this a good way to kick start yet another year teaching the topic.

[BillF]

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

Me too!

Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative!

Just started this:

I love Gaddis on the Cold War (though not always his conclusions!); thought this a good way to kick start yet another year teaching the topic.

Nice to know the Cold War is now history! Was even more gratified to realise that Thatcher was already history ten years ago when she appeared on my daughter's school history syllabus!

[A Lark Ascending]

Nice to know the Cold War is now history! Was even more gratified to realise that Thatcher was already history ten years ago when she appeared on my daughter's school history syllabus!

From the preface to Gaddis' general account of The Cold War, where he explains why he decided to write a one volume survey:

EVERY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY afternoon each fall semester I lecture to several hundred Yale undergraduates on the subject of Cold War history. As I do this, I have to keep reminding myself that hardly any of them remember any of the events I'm describing. When I talk about Stalin and Truman, even Reagan and Gorbachev, it could as easily be Napoleon, Caesar, or Alexander the Great. Most members of the Class of 2005, for example, were only five years old when the Berlin Wall came down. They know that the Cold War in various ways shaped their lives, because they've been told how it affected their families. Some of them - by no means all - understand that if a few decisions had been made differently at a few critical moments during that conflict, they might not even have had a life. But my students sign up for this course with very little sense of how the Cold War started, what it was about, or why it ended in the way that it did. For them it's history: not all that different from the Peloponnesian War.

Edited June 17, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

Nice to know the Cold War is now history! Was even more gratified to realise that Thatcher was already history ten years ago when she appeared on my daughter's school history syllabus!

From the preface to Gaddis' general account of The Cold War, where he explains why he decided to write a one volume survey:

EVERY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY afternoon each fall semester I lecture to several hundred Yale undergraduates on the subject of Cold War history. As I do this, I have to keep reminding myself that hardly any of them remember any of the events I'm describing. When I talk about Stalin and Truman, even Reagan and Gorbachev, it could as easily be Napoleon, Caesar, or Alexander the Great. Most members of the Class of 2005, for example, were only five years old when the Berlin Wall came down. They know that the Cold War in various ways shaped their lives, because they've been told how it affected their families. Some of them - by no means all - understand that if a few decisions had been made differently at a few critical moments during that conflict, they might not even have had a life. But my students sign up for this course with very little sense of how the Cold War started, what it was about, or why it ended in the way that it did. For them it's history: not all that different from the Peloponnesian War.

Reminds me of Philip Larkin's words in his introduction to All What Jazz (1970), a collection of his jazz criticism articles. He imagines his audience as "fathers of cold-eyed lascivious daughters on the pill, to whom Ramsay McDonald is coeval with Rameses II".

[ejp626]

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

Me too!

Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative!

It's not the easiest thing in the world for sure. In general, I find that the extreme snobbery and exclusiveness of the high modernists hasn't served them well. 'Oh, you mean I have to have a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature and even read a bit of Greek in order to understand your work? Pass.'

And Joyce is by no means the worst. I keep looking at my copy of Pound's Cantos, saying why did I order this? I will never read through the whole thing. My goal for this year is to skim it once and take it to a bookshop. As it happens, I was reading (probably in the Guardian) that some editors have spent 20 years revamping Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. It's just coming out on Penguin. I even had it in my Amazon basket, and I said to myself -- what are you doing -- you will never in your life finish this book. And I came to my senses just in time.

[jlhoots]

Jo Nesbo: Snowman

[Jazzmoose]

The modernist poets may be annoying and pretentious, but the highlight of my schooling was when I was called on to read the second half of A Game of Chess from The Wasteland and proceeded to do so in my best Pythonesque housewife voice...

[Matthew]

The modernist poets may be annoying and pretentious, but the highlight of my schooling was when I was called on to read the second half of A Game of Chess from The Wasteland and proceeded to do so in my best Pythonesque housewife voice...

What is that noise now? What is the wind doing? Nothing again nothing.

Edited June 18, 2012 by Matthew

[Matthew]

My favorite T. S. Eliot quote was when he told Thomas Merton: "A poem is a temptation I resist for years."

[Pete C]

Connell is one of the greatest and most eclectic of living American fiction writers and woefully underappreciated.

Never got through Ulysses. Never made more than a dent in Finnegans Wake. Didn't like Portrait of the Artist. Liked but didn't love Dubliners. I'm definitely not a Joycean, but his disciple Samuel Beckett is in the pantheon for me as a reader and a writer, as is Joyce's arch-enemy Gertrude Stein.

[ejp626]

Closing in on the halfway mark with Headhunter. I like how the pace doesn't flag, even as Findley layers more and more improbable events on top of each other. I don't really know what genre it fits -- perhaps the fantastic writ large.

Happened to pick this up at the library: John Barth's The Book of Ten Nights and A Night. It is so absurdly & ridiculously post-modern that I can't find even the semblance of a plot threaded through any of these stories (it's almost all about what name the narrator wants to go by etc. etc. etc.). I might have had more tolerance for this back in the day (and I do think earlier Barth is worth reading), but this is not worth my time. I feel complete antipathy to the book, and it's going right back to the library on my next trip.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've just started re-reading, and in some cases reading, Alexandre Dumas' D'Artagnan novels:

1 The three musketeers

2 Twenty years after

3 The Vicomte de Bragelonne

4 Louise de la Vallière

5 The man in the iron mask

'Twenty years after' was the second wot he wrote, but it takes place ten years after the three later books, which were supposed to be one novel, but turned out to be too huge to be published that way. I've only read 1, 2 & 5 before.

Haven't made up my mind whether, when I finish #1, to go on to 3, 4 and 5, then 2 - taking them in story order - or in book order, in case there are things one's supposed to know about 2 when reading 3, 4 & 5. But I am inclined to read them in story order, if only because I had some difficulties following the incomplete sequence when I read a few of them, years ago.

Does anyone know this series well enough to advise?

MG

My granddad had a whole bunch of Dumas in the attic, which I had a great time working my way through in early adolescence. He had a great hero of a couple of them - a fat cleric, whose chief claim to fame was that he could eat a ridiculous quantity of capons at one sitting, washed down with copious quantities of red wine.

I would recommend - if you have all the 'Musketeers' series to read them in order. I don't understand why you're saying that Vingt-ans Apres is last in story order - it's not. TMITIM ends with both Porthos and D'Artgnan buying the farm, so you're a little confused I think.

Anyways, great series of books, glad to encounter someone else who's read them.

You're absolutely right, as I found when I took up Vicomte and read the intro. I think I was confused by the AMazon UK reviews. I put it down and went on with 20 years after. Now most of the way through Vicomte.

I'm appreciating how extremely good these books are now. For a guy who wrote HUGE novels, there's almost no padding in them; no long descriptions of scenerey or people; action follows action at what one might describe as a furious pace; the only pauses are for banter; or for laughter at some of Dumas' more extravagant lines - in two books, different characters get into such a rage that, when the object of their rage turns his back on them, they rip their handkerchief to pieces with their teeth!!! Wonderful!

MG

PS I've only got these five plus Count of Monte Christo and haven't read any others. Which others would you suggest for after I've read these?

[ejp626]

I'm appreciating how extremely good these books are now. For a guy who wrote HUGE novels, there's almost no padding in them; no long descriptions of scenerey or people; action follows action at what one might describe as a furious pace; the only pauses are for banter; or for laughter at some of Dumas' more extravagant lines - in two books, different characters get into such a rage that, when the object of their rage turns his back on them, they rip their handkerchief to pieces with their teeth!!! Wonderful!

MG

Sounds gripping! Now if only someone would buy the film rights...

Sorry -- just thinking about how Hollywood is so convinced that there are no new decent ideas out there that it seems like 80% of the films out now are either remakes (of much better movies) or sequels.

[jlhoots]

Connell is one of the greatest and most eclectic of living American fiction writers and woefully underappreciated.

His book Son Of The Morning Star is one of the best books on Custer.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm appreciating how extremely good these books are now. For a guy who wrote HUGE novels, there's almost no padding in them; no long descriptions of scenerey or people; action follows action at what one might describe as a furious pace; the only pauses are for banter; or for laughter at some of Dumas' more extravagant lines - in two books, different characters get into such a rage that, when the object of their rage turns his back on them, they rip their handkerchief to pieces with their teeth!!! Wonderful!

MG

Sounds gripping! Now if only someone would buy the film rights...

Sorry -- just thinking about how Hollywood is so convinced that there are no new decent ideas out there that it seems like 80% of the films out now are either remakes (of much better movies) or sequels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers_(film)

Wiki lists 23 (twenty-three) Musketeers films plus 6 cartoons, the latest of which - Barbie & the three musketeers, in which the musketeers are all women, might just possibly be a porn version.

MG

[ejp626]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers_(film)

Wiki lists 23 (twenty-three) Musketeers films plus 6 cartoons, the latest of which - Barbie & the three musketeers, in which the musketeers are all women, might just possibly be a porn version.

MG

Now that might (just possibly) be worth the pixels.

Not that I'd ever find out...