Now reading...

[BillF]

I wrapped up Dickner's Apocalypse for Beginners, which was ok (a bit better than his first novel).

I'm midway through Douglas Coupland's Generation X, which I've never read.

I'm also reading George Eliot's Silas Marner. I really don't like the beginning (and am pretty sure I will find the ending far too saccharine). I hated the ending of The Mill on the Floss. This gives me pause. While I am still committed to reading Middlemarch one of these days and probably Felix Holt, I think I am going to scrub Adam Bede from my To Be Read pile. Life seems too short right now...

(Actually I meant Daniel Deronda not Felix Holt, but I'm still way more likely to read Felix Holt than Adam Bede.)

Best of luck with Middlemarch. That, and Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian, were the only books that defeated me in my three-year degree course in English Literature in my youth. I had no trouble with other alleged stinkers such as Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Henry James's The Ambassadors and Melville's Moby Dick - in fact, I positively relished them!

[A Lark Ascending]

I did Middlemarch for 'A' Level. Fortunately I changed schools so didn't have to finish it.

Read it in full many years later and really enjoyed it.

Moby Dick defeated me.

[BillF]

I did Middlemarch for 'A' Level. Fortunately I changed schools so didn't have to finish it.

Read it in full many years later and really enjoyed it.

Moby Dick defeated me.

Chacun à son goût.

[A Lark Ascending]

I did Middlemarch for 'A' Level. Fortunately I changed schools so didn't have to finish it.

Read it in full many years later and really enjoyed it.

Moby Dick defeated me.

Chacun à son goût.

That's the sort of cultural relativism that has weakened our beloved isles. Expressed in Eurospeak too!

[jazzbo]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

[BillF]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

Both of those Dicks get my vote!

[ejp626]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

I don't know about Middlemarch, but I will give it a shot. I've read Moby Dick and wouldn't say I was blown away by it (I found the "Extracts" section with all the quotes about whales to be kind of deadly), but after it settles in, there are a lot of interesting parts. I might give it a another go, though I would be a lot more likely if either of my kids has to read it in high school.

I would recommend Melville's The Confidence Man as a real under-rated delight. It's probably my favorite Melville.

Anyway, yes I think Man in the High Castle is great and do plan on re-reading that within the next 12 months.

Edited June 15, 2014 by ejp626

[ejp626]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

Both of those Dicks get my vote!

There's a somewhat interesting novel that sort of brings the two together -- Mobius Dick by Andrew Crummey. It is an alternate history novel where the Nazis did invade Britain. However, I read it at a stressful time in my life, and I cannot tell you anything else about it, including whether I enjoyed it or not. So I'll have to read the book again to tell you what is in it...

Probably worth a look in, but this is not a strong recommendation on my end. Sorry about that.

[BillF]

By the way, Bev, you'll notice that British university English departments in my day were quite happy to include American literature in their syllabuses. As well as Melville and James already mentioned, I had the privilege of studying Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman and Twain. What is more, on the grounds that English drama and novels could not be properly understood without studying their European forebears, I was also required to read Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus, Cervantes, Laclos, Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov.

Chacun à son Gove.

[A Lark Ascending]

I did two terms of English at the start of my degree and had the same experience - Fitzgerald, Eliott and the like.

Hated the course (though I got introduced to some great books by both Brits and them foreigners). Seemed to get told to read a book only to be informed in the follow up lecture why I shouldn't have enjoyed it. It was such a liberation to be able to just read novels and enjoy them.

I can't believe how illiberal the current attempts to control both literature and history are.

Edited June 15, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

I don't know about Middlemarch, but I will give it a shot. I've read Moby Dick and wouldn't say I was blown away by it (I found the "Extracts" section with all the quotes about whales to be kind of deadly), but after it settles in, there are a lot of interesting parts. I might give it a another go, though I would be a lot more likely if either of my kids has to read it in high school.

I would recommend Melville's The Confidence Man as a real under-rated delight. It's probably my favorite Melville.

Anyway, yes I think Man in the High Castle is great and do plan on re-reading that within the next 12 months.

I haven't come across The Confidence Man, but the haunting Melville short story "Bartleby", read on my course, has never left me.

[BillF]

Re Moby Dick, I never understood why Woody Herman called a tune "Captain Ahab", until I came across Maynard Ferguson's "The Wailing Boat".

[A Lark Ascending]

I recall being really taken by Mark Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur' - I was studying 19thC US history at the time. Might have been that I half-remembered the Bing Crosby / Danny Kaye film, though I don't think that was anywhere near as dark.

[paul secor]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

I don't know about Middlemarch, but I will give it a shot. I've read Moby Dick and wouldn't say I was blown away by it (I found the "Extracts" section with all the quotes about whales to be kind of deadly), but after it settles in, there are a lot of interesting parts. I might give it a another go, though I would be a lot more likely if either of my kids has to read it in high school.

I would recommend Melville's The Confidence Man as a real under-rated delight. It's probably my favorite Melville.

Anyway, yes I think Man in the High Castle is great and do plan on re-reading that within the next 12 months.

I haven't come across The Confidence Man, but the haunting Melville short story "Bartleby", read on my course, has never left me.

Reading "Bartleby" fairly recently was a strange experience. It moved and disturbed me, though I could never reason out a meaning. That's probably the point of the story.

[ejp626]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

I don't know about Middlemarch, but I will give it a shot. I've read Moby Dick and wouldn't say I was blown away by it (I found the "Extracts" section with all the quotes about whales to be kind of deadly), but after it settles in, there are a lot of interesting parts. I might give it a another go, though I would be a lot more likely if either of my kids has to read it in high school.

I would recommend Melville's The Confidence Man as a real under-rated delight. It's probably my favorite Melville.

Anyway, yes I think Man in the High Castle is great and do plan on re-reading that within the next 12 months.

I haven't come across The Confidence Man, but the haunting Melville short story "Bartleby", read on my course, has never left me.

Reading "Bartleby" fairly recently was a strange experience. It moved and disturbed me, though I could never reason out a meaning. That's probably the point of the story.

Bartleby is pretty great (although I would certainly hate working with such an odd fellow). I think there is something to be said for fiction that eschews easy, pat answers. That said, stretching this to novel length wouldn't work.

One last plug for The Confidence Man. There are actually some overlaps with Mark Twain, as much of the action takes place on a riverboat going up and down the Mississippi River. It is never entirely clear what the Confidence Man is after. I just think Melville has a lot of interesting layers and can be a deeper author than most give him credit for (i.e. Moby Dick is not just a simple story of an obsessed man and a whale). The same way that Hawthorne can be a lot deeper in his story stories than in A Scarlet Letter, for example. Anyway, I think it is worth seeking out (and it is a short book, which is often a good thing).

Edited June 15, 2014 by ejp626

[Shawn]

Flipping through "LOST Encyclopedia".

[jazzbo]

I love Moby Dick!

I'm re-reading for the sixth or seventh time Phil K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle."

I don't know about Middlemarch, but I will give it a shot. I've read Moby Dick and wouldn't say I was blown away by it (I found the "Extracts" section with all the quotes about whales to be kind of deadly), but after it settles in, there are a lot of interesting parts. I might give it a another go, though I would be a lot more likely if either of my kids has to read it in high school.

I would recommend Melville's The Confidence Man as a real under-rated delight. It's probably my favorite Melville.

Anyway, yes I think Man in the High Castle is great and do plan on re-reading that within the next 12 months.

I haven't come across The Confidence Man, but the haunting Melville short story "Bartleby", read on my course, has never left me.

The Confidence Man is great. Also great is Dick's The Confessions of a Crap Artist.

[BillF]

[erwbol]

Looks like serious literature. Does it come with a pack of razor blades?

[Leeway]

I'm surprised by all the brickbats thrown in the direction of George Eliot. One of the great authors and minds of the Victoria era. The only real clinker is, I think, Felix Holt. Her greatest book? At one time I would unhesitatingly say Middlemarch, and I would still recommend that to the general reader, but I now think her greatest work is Daniel Deronda. What an incredible book! The novel forms one of the greatest spiritual quest books in English literature.

[Leeway]

Looks like serious literature. Does it come with a pack of razor blades?

I really enjoyed that one. Lots of Spark's sly humor, some good social satire, and enough weirdness to keep it interesting. No razor blades.

[BillF]

Looks like serious literature. Does it come with a pack of razor blades?

I really enjoyed that one. Lots of Spark's sly humor, some good social satire, and enough weirdness to keep it interesting. No razor blades.

(Just some razor-carrying Teddy Boys.)

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

[Larry Kart]

Just finished Thomas Hardy’s “The Dynasts,” his 525-page poetic drama/diorama about the Napoleonic Wars. Very strange in many ways — there are numerous choruses of spirits who comment on what is going on — but I found it immensely gripping.

For instance, check out this IMO gorgeous explosion of verse about something I’d never even heard of before, a disastrous British expedition in 1809 to the isle of Scheldt in the Netherlands, where many of the troops succumbed to wasting disease:

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

Paradoxical, perhaps -- or perhaps not, given Hardy’s predilections in such poems as his “The Breaking of the Twain” about the sinking of the Titanic -- that the content here should be so grim and the verse so elegant:

CHORUS OF PITIES

“We who withstood the blasting blaze of war

When marshalled by the gallant Moore awhile,

Beheld the grazing death-bolt with a smile,

Closed combat edge to edge and bore to bore,

Now rot upon this Isle!

The ever wan morass, the dune, the blear

Sandweed, and tepid pool, and putrid smell,

Emaciate purpose to a fractious fear,

Beckon the body to its last low cell —

A chink no chart will tell.

“O ancient Delta, Where the fen-lights flit!

Ignoble sediment of loftier lands,

Thy humor clings about our hearts and hands

And solves us with its softness, till we sit

As we were part of it.

“Such force as fever leaves is maddened now.

With tidings trickling in from day to day

Of others’ differing fortunes, wording how

They yield their lives to baulk a tyrant’s sway —

Yield them not vainly, they!

“In campaigns green and purple, far and near,

In town and thorpe where quiet spire-cocks turn,

Through vales, by rocks, beside the brooding burn

Echoes the aggressor’s arrogant career:

And we pent pitiless here!

“Here where each creeping day the creeping file

Draws past with shouldered comrades score on score,

Bearing them to their lightless last asile,

Where every wary wave-wails from the clammy shore

Will reach their ears no more.

"We might have fought, and had we died, died well,

Even if in dynasts’ discords not our open;

Our death-spot some sad haunter might have shown,

Some tongue have asked our sires and sons to tell

The late of how we fell;

“But such be chanced not. Like the mist we fade,

No lustrous lines engrave in story we,

Our country’s chiefs, for their own fame afraid,

Will leave our names and fates by this pale sea

To perish silently!"

John Moore was a British general who died in the Peninsular War and commanded these troops there.

A “thorpe” is a hamlet; “alise” is French for sanctuary or refuge.

I’m particularly struck by:

Thy humor clings about our hearts and hands

And solves us with its softness, till we sit

As we were part of it.

[paul secor]

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman

[ejp626]

I'm surprised by all the brickbats thrown in the direction of George Eliot. One of the great authors and minds of the Victoria era. The only real clinker is, I think, Felix Holt. Her greatest book? At one time I would unhesitatingly say Middlemarch, and I would still recommend that to the general reader, but I now think her greatest work is Daniel Deronda. What an incredible book! The novel forms one of the greatest spiritual quest books in English literature.

I feel I approached her with an open mind and seriously disliked the two books I read. I'll probably still give Middlemarch a shot.