Now reading...

[BillF]

[paul secor]

[jazzbo]

Re-reading the interview I did with Michael Cuscuna about Alfred Lion.

And reading

[Blue Train]

All the known manuscripts of Shelly's Frankenstein are now online for the first time.

http://shelleygodwinarchive.org/contents/frankenstein

Also a new book about Verve is coming out on Nov. 4th, with 1,200 illustrations in color and black & white.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Blue Train

[aparxa]

Michel Déon - Les Poneys sauvages

Enjoyable read, but I much prefered Le Jeune Homme Vert and its sequel, which used the same narrative scheme on a lighter note.

[alankin]

Philip K. Dick - Vulcan's Hammer

[ElginThompson]

[jazzbo]

Philip K. Dick - Vulcan's Hammer

Cool edition!

Entertaining book.

[Blue Train]

For those that have read Beowulf.....it apparently doesn't start like we think it does.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/listen-beowulf-opening-line-misinterpreted-for-200-years-8921027.html

[paul secor]

Leonardo Padura Fuentes: Adios Hemingway

[Jerry_L]

For those that have read Beowulf.....it apparently doesn't start like we think it does.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/listen-beowulf-opening-line-misinterpreted-for-200-years-8921027.html

For now, I'll go with the free Kindle edition translated by Gummere. It starts with "Lo, praise the prowess..."

[ejp626]

For those that have read Beowulf.....it apparently doesn't start like we think it does.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/listen-beowulf-opening-line-misinterpreted-for-200-years-8921027.html

For now, I'll go with the free Kindle edition translated by Gummere. It starts with "Lo, praise the prowess..."

I read through the article, and it definitely seemed a lot of todo over nothing. Some new academic discoveries are truly interesting and even world-changing. This just seems like scratching around in the dirt for such a limited payoff.

Yeats was addressing a slightly different issue (of how "scholarship" strangled love poems), but I think it is still generally applicable in this case:

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,

Old, learned, respectable bald heads

Edit and annotate the lines

That young men, tossing on their beds,

Rhymed out in love's despair

To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;

All wear the carpet with their shoes;

All think what other people think;

All know the man their neighbour knows.

Lord, what would they say

Did their Catullus walk that way?

W.B. Yeats - The Scholars

[Blue Train]

Only Nov. 7th, but Amazon already has their Best 100 of 2013.

http://www.amazon.com/b/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&node=7734007011&pf_rd_i=7728816011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=1651766682&pf_rd_r=05JSYAPSEHT5S99Z4QR7&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-2&pf_rd_t=101&tag=themillions-20

[Blue Train]

Finally got around to reading these two. Outside of the title....there is not a single thing to do with Jesus in the book. If anything it's Buddhist philosophy by way Sameul Beckett.... If you like Coetzee....you will like this. It's not in the same league as his best books, but it's a good book.

Jim Crace has stated this will be his last book. I haven't read the Booker Prize winner for this year....but after reading this....I am going to have to....to figure out how it won. Excellent book.

P.S. Crace has his own book on Jesus called Quarantine....about those 40 days in the dessert. Favorite by him is Being Dead.

P.P.S. Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary is also excellent.

Edited November 7, 2013 by Blue Train

[BillF]

Recommended!

[kinuta]

[ejp626]

Slowly progressing through Proust, but since I am not enjoying it much, I go off on tangents.

I was thinking about reading some of the more obscure high modernist European novels and turned to Witold Gombrowicz's Ferydurke. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had read this, though I can't quite recall when. It is possible I read the earlier translation. This translation from 2000 is supposed to be the most accurate. I wouldn't say it did that much for me. It is really repetitive (and probably had a better reception in the late 60s and 70s when Erving Goffman and his frame analysis was "in the air" among the intellectual classes). I've started thinking of it as a fictional equivalent to some of Bunuel's films.

However, this wasn't actually the book I had set out to read. I had wanted to read Henri Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, but got confused. It looks like there are 5 competing translations out there. I am in no position to judge, but I heard decent things about R.B. Russell's from Tartarus Press. Tartarus seems to specialize in slightly offbeat, eerie works. They have started selling e-books both through Amazon and on their own web page. I particularly like 1) the fact they are willing to sell epub files (which are not locked into the Kindle format) and mobi files and 2) that their e-books are much cheaper than their print versions, which is how it ought to be in my mind. The Le Grand Meaulnes, for example, is only 3 GBP, which I thought was quite reasonable. If anyone wants to check it out, you can start here.

After I am done with this (and not sure how long it will take to read on the screen -- I can imagine doing some binge-reading), then I think I will tackle That Awful Mess on Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda, which I've never actually read. It sounds pretty interesting though.

[Jazzmoose]

I'm doing something I swore I'd never do again: struggling to finish a book I'm not enjoying. The book is Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, and while he held my attention through the first two books, this one is wearing me down. One problem is that most of the characters, while well done, are thoroughly unlikable. I know this is an award winner, but I really can't recommend it.

[erwbol]

I'm doing something I swore I'd never do again: struggling to finish a book I'm not enjoying. The book is Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, and while he held my attention through the first two books, this one is wearing me down. One problem is that most of the characters, while well done, are thoroughly unlikable. I know this is an award winner, but I really can't recommend it.

Last year I read his most recent SF novel 2312. The man is just not such a good writer as all the acclaim would lead you to believe. I'd read the first two Mars books while in high school and wanted to get into SF again. I shouldn't have bothered with mr. Robinson. What a letdown.

[Jerry_L]

The Big Book Of Pennsylvania Ghost Stories by Mark Nesbitt and Patty A. Wilson

Some interesting history even if you don't believe.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Jerry_L

[jlhoots]

Anne Hillerman: Spider Woman's Daughter

[paul secor]

Jonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens

My advice would be - Don't waste your time.

[Leeway]

I first read "WAR AND PEACE" about 20 years ago, remembered some of it, but not all, and was too busy keeping track of who was who to get a good idea of Tolstoy's aims and methods. Anyway, I thought it was time for a re-reading and just finished Rosemary Edmonds 2nd translation version, in the fat one-volume Penguin edition. I know there are flashier versions but I like hers. As I have some training in Russian, and my wife is Russian, I can usually detect false notes. Anyway, I think she captures Lev Tolstoy's voice here consistently.

Having read the novel, I realized that I thought I knew a lot about Tolstoy but really did not, just what Russians hand down among themselves, part fact, part fiction, part legend. So I am now reading A. N. Wilson's "TOLSTOY," which I am finding informative and entertaining (yep). Wilson is one of those writers who seem to come in for more than their share of criticism in the literary world. But I find this book very much in the Oxbridge tradition of extensive learning presented lucidly and engagingly.

[jlhoots]

Jonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens

My advice would be - Don't waste your time.

Sorry to hear that.

I usually like Lethem.

[paul secor]

Jonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens

My advice would be - Don't waste your time.

Sorry to hear that.

I usually like Lethem.

I don't want to put you off something just because I didn't like it. For me, it was over-written and over-explained, with cardboard characters. You or others might read it differently.