Now reading...

[ejp626]

Probably the best book I read for the first time was Dostoevsky's Demons, followed by Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia Trilogy, while the best I reread was Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. I'll have to go back through my reading list to see what else I tackled. The main things were novels by Molly Keane and Barbara Comyns and finally making it through Proust. I also liked Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth quite a bit (it would be in top 5), but I can't recall if I read this in 2013 or 2014.

I did read Hotel Savoy in 2014. It's definitely interesting. Rounding out my top 5 read in 2014 are Iris Murdoch's Under the Net and Michel Tremblay The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant.

Honorable mentions go to: Turgenev's Sketches from a Hunter's Album, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason, The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy and Rebellion by Joseph Roth (again).

[BillF]

Richard Ford's THE SPORTSWRITER

I'm a great fan of Richard Ford's. Just finished the latest in the Frank Bascombe series, Let Me Be Frank With You.

Rounding out my top 5 read in 2014 are Iris Murdoch's Under the Net ...

[Brad]

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

[BillF]

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

Another great favorite! First time I read it, I couldn't stop laughing at the "burnt bedclothes" episode!

[Leeway]

A new one in my pantheon of 20th century English novelists. This, her first novel, is a beautifully written satirically comic murder mystery. Her life sounds interesting - I shall be looking out a biography in due course.

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

I can recommend her The Book Shop. I read that Hermione Lee has completed a biography of Fitzgerald, and that it is quite fine. Fitzgerald didn't start writing until her mid-40s believe.

Nice to get your comments, Leeway. Got The Bookshop from Manchester University library this morning and am ready to go. Will probably have to buy Lee's biog, as neither the university or public libraries have it. According to Wikipedia, Fitzgerald published her first book at the age of 58!

58! I say! There's hope for us yet, old boy

Rounding out my top 5 read in 2014 are Iris Murdoch's Under the Net ...

Oh no, do I feel another round of Murdoch re-reads coming on for 2015?

[paul secor]

Some books I enjoyed reading in 2014:

Murakami: 1Q84

Simenon: The Bar on the Seine

Best Poems of Stevie Smith

Elizabeth Spencer: Starting Over

Aminatta Forna: The Hired Man

Antonio Tabucchi: Pereira Declares: A Testimony

Elizabeth Taylor: The Devastating Boys

Vance Bourjaily: The Man Who Knew Kennedy

P.G. Wodehouse: The Code of the Woosters

Rohinton Mistry: Family Matters

The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy

Belinda Rathbone: Walker Percy: A Biography

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (Actually a reread, but it had been so many years since I read it, it seemed new no me.)

Murakami: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Reginald Hill: A Killing Kindness

And two that were ok but I expected more:

Steve Lowenthal: Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist

Penelope Lively: Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir

[paul secor]

Forgot to mention:

August Kleinzahler: The Hotel Oneira

[niels]

For me it would be:

Albert Camus - The Rebel - 1951. (This one made an immense impression on me. As someone who is not philosophically/academically schooled, I can't say that I understood everything, but sometimes you know you're just reading something very special without fully grasping the entire meaning of it. This is a book I will come back to very often in the future is my expectation. Many observations, sentences and ideas just felt so sharp and true, they really hit me in the face big time)

Leo Tolstoi - War and Peace - 1869. (Tolstoi's ideas, his detailed description of characters and history, and beautiful prose, really make this novel rightfully one of the masterpieces of literature).

Venedikt Jerofjev - Mosow to the End of the Line - 1969. (praised as the ultimate "drinking novel", and I can't agree more. About a man who steps on the train and starts drinking; and after that drinks some more (and then some more). Oh yeah, and in the meantime he talks to his fellow passengers, touching on many aspects of (Russian) society, life and the soul. First coherent, but the more the alcohol flows the more vigorous, disconnected and rambling it gets. Also a great book if you want to find some inspiration for making cocktails (it does help if you have a death wish in this case)).

Rob Riemen - The Eternal Return of Fascism - 2010. (Very insightful essay from Rob Riemen about the constant presence of (beginning) fascism in our society, and also our fear/cowardice to address this. In the Netherlands this book/essay caused a lot of discussion because with this essay Riemen clearly addresses to the PVV (Dutch right wing "freedom" party of Geert Wilders), who was involved as a "gedoogpartner" (I don't even know if there is a correct English term for this typical Dutch construction) in the government at the time he wrote this. Because of this essay, the PVV demanded all government funding to the Nexus Institute (founded en led by Rob Riemen) would be stopped.

Louis Couperus - The Books of Small Souls - 1901-1903. (My favorite Dutch writer with regards to prose (he's the Dutch Tolstoi if you will).These four books (which I read as collected works) are all masterful novels of a Dutch "High Society" family in decline. All the money, posturing and all their important acquaintances, can't hide the fact that deep down inside they all have pitiful small souls.)

Edited December 14, 2014 by niels

[ejp626]

Louis Couperus - The Books of Small Souls - 1901-1903. (My favorite Dutch writer with regards to prose (he's the Dutch Tolstoi if you will).These four books (which I read as collected works) are all masterful novels of a Dutch "High Society" family in decline. All the money, posturing and all their important acquaintances, can't hide the fact that deep down inside they all have pitiful small souls.)

Sounds interesting. I see that all four were translated ages ago and are up on Gutenberg.org, so I'll give them a look in. It's like turning corners in an endless library, another gifted author you have never heard anything about. Simulaneously thrilling and depressing, knowing that there is no way to read all the deserving authors and their works in one lifetime.

Anyhoo, I am starting to explore Theodor Fontane, another author whom I was almost completely unaware of just a few months ago.

[Leeway]

NEW GRUB STREET - George Gissing - 1891.

The title of this book probably comes up in a lot of literary chat, but I wonder how many have read it. I finally have got around to reading it myself and found it quite satisfying, in fact, surprisingly rich. Very basically, it is the story of how the literary marketplace sinks rewarding authors such as Edward Reardon (standing-in for Gissing), while literary hacks like Jasper Milvain thrive. Gissing skewers everything about the literary scene in late 19th-century England. The fact of the matter is that it is all still all very recognizable today, but maybe with the Internet the New New Grub Street.

One of the things I wasn't expecting was that the other hot spot of the book was Gissing's intense feelings about marriage. In essence, he hated it. (His own marriages were not successful). The novel presents a number of portraits of marriages: failed, hostile, corrupt. Women, more particularly women's income, were treated as chattel. The wrong marriage would prove disastrous for a man's career. The fraud and back-stabbing of the literary marketplace are reflected int he fraud and back-stabbing of individual marriages.

Gissing's attitude towards women struck me as ambivalent. He cited the recent passage of the Women's Property Act. which allowed women to keep money they earned or inherited for themselves rather than give it to their husbands or fathers . In some of the instances he describes, he notes, seemingly approvingly, how the women were able to stand up for themselves, to present a stronger, more independent posture. Yet Gissing also seems to resent that same sort of independence of wives in marriage. Gissing also shows women writing stories and miscellaneous pieces for the periodicals ("The English Girl" is one), benefiting from the separate income, but also feeding the commercial literary marketplace with insubstantial stuff.

Gissing also takes a rather substantial interest in suicide, reflecting upon it in a number of places, and finally with one character enacting a beautifully staged suicide. I see this as part of Gissing's engaging, and sometimes startling, oddness and honesty.

Lest this all sound too morose, the book is shot through with a 1,000 points of humor and satire. For example, Jasper's name. Jasper means "treasurer" in Persian, and Jasper is indeed obsessed with making money without regard to merit. "Milvain" suggests "vanity," maybe "Mil" indicating a huge abundance of vanity; it might also be taken as "Malvain,"for his vanity corrupts and harms. This is out of the Dickens' playbook of course, but Gissing doesn't play it for yucks. It's just one part of a satirical honeycomb. There is plenty of other grim and mordant humor, often catching one by surprise.

Anyway, those are some first thoughts on this book: exceedingly well-crafted, socially engaged, unflinching honest, mordantly funny, terribly bitter.

[BillF]

NEW GRUB STREET - George Gissing - 1891.

The title of this book probably comes up in a lot of literary chat, but I wonder how many have read it. I finally have got around to reading it myself and found it quite satisfying, in fact, surprisingly rich. Very basically, it is the story of how the literary marketplace sinks rewarding authors such as Edward Reardon (standing-in for Gissing), while literary hacks like Jasper Milvain thrive. Gissing skewers everything about the literary scene in late 19th-century England. The fact of the matter is that it is all still all very recognizable today, but maybe with the Internet the New New Grub Street.

One of the things I wasn't expecting was that the other hot spot of the book was Gissing's intense feelings about marriage. In essence, he hated it. (His own marriages were not successful). The novel presents a number of portraits of marriages: failed, hostile, corrupt. Women, more particularly women's income, were treated as chattel. The wrong marriage would prove disastrous for a man's career. The fraud and back-stabbing of the literary marketplace are reflected int he fraud and back-stabbing of individual marriages.

Gissing's attitude towards women struck me as ambivalent. He cited the recent passage of the Women's Property Act. which allowed women to keep money they earned or inherited for themselves rather than give it to their husbands or fathers . In some of the instances he describes, he notes, seemingly approvingly, how the women were able to stand up for themselves, to present a stronger, more independent posture. Yet Gissing also seems to resent that same sort of independence of wives in marriage. Gissing also shows women writing stories and miscellaneous pieces for the periodicals ("The English Girl" is one), benefiting from the separate income, but also feeding the commercial literary marketplace with insubstantial stuff.

Gissing also takes a rather substantial interest in suicide, reflecting upon it in a number of places, and finally with one character enacting a beautifully staged suicide. I see this as part of Gissing's engaging, and sometimes startling, oddness and honesty.

Lest this all sound too morose, the book is shot through with a 1,000 points of humor and satire. For example, Jasper's name. Jasper means "treasurer" in Persian, and Jasper is indeed obsessed with making money without regard to merit. "Milvain" suggests "vanity," maybe "Mil" indicating a huge abundance of vanity; it might also be taken as "Malvain,"for his vanity corrupts and harms. This is out of the Dickens' playbook of course, but Gissing doesn't play it for yucks. It's just one part of a satirical honeycomb. There is plenty of other grim and mordant humor, often catching one by surprise.

Anyway, those are some first thoughts on this book: exceedingly well-crafted, socially engaged, unflinching honest, mordantly funny, terribly bitter.

You ask how many have read it. I have, simply because it was required reading on my English degree course in the 60s. I now recall very little of it, other than that I reached the end without a struggle - which I can't say of either Middlemarch or The Heart of Midlothian!

[A Lark Ascending]

I had to read 'New Grub Street' at the start of my first two terms at university (where English was a subsidiary). We then attended a lecture where we were told why we shouldn't have liked it. That set the pattern for the next few months.

Was enormously relieved to stop doing the subsids and concentrate on History, if only because it allowed me to just enjoy the novels I was reading.

[ejp626]

NEW GRUB STREET - George Gissing - 1891.

The title of this book probably comes up in a lot of literary chat, but I wonder how many have read it. I finally have got around to reading it myself and found it quite satisfying, in fact, surprisingly rich. Very basically, it is the story of how the literary marketplace sinks rewarding authors such as Edward Reardon (standing-in for Gissing), while literary hacks like Jasper Milvain thrive. Gissing skewers everything about the literary scene in late 19th-century England. The fact of the matter is that it is all still all very recognizable today, but maybe with the Internet the New New Grub Street.

One of the things I wasn't expecting was that the other hot spot of the book was Gissing's intense feelings about marriage. In essence, he hated it. (His own marriages were not successful). The novel presents a number of portraits of marriages: failed, hostile, corrupt. Women, more particularly women's income, were treated as chattel. The wrong marriage would prove disastrous for a man's career. The fraud and back-stabbing of the literary marketplace are reflected int he fraud and back-stabbing of individual marriages.

Gissing's attitude towards women struck me as ambivalent. He cited the recent passage of the Women's Property Act. which allowed women to keep money they earned or inherited for themselves rather than give it to their husbands or fathers . In some of the instances he describes, he notes, seemingly approvingly, how the women were able to stand up for themselves, to present a stronger, more independent posture. Yet Gissing also seems to resent that same sort of independence of wives in marriage. Gissing also shows women writing stories and miscellaneous pieces for the periodicals ("The English Girl" is one), benefiting from the separate income, but also feeding the commercial literary marketplace with insubstantial stuff.

Gissing also takes a rather substantial interest in suicide, reflecting upon it in a number of places, and finally with one character enacting a beautifully staged suicide. I see this as part of Gissing's engaging, and sometimes startling, oddness and honesty.

Lest this all sound too morose, the book is shot through with a 1,000 points of humor and satire. For example, Jasper's name. Jasper means "treasurer" in Persian, and Jasper is indeed obsessed with making money without regard to merit. "Milvain" suggests "vanity," maybe "Mil" indicating a huge abundance of vanity; it might also be taken as "Malvain,"for his vanity corrupts and harms. This is out of the Dickens' playbook of course, but Gissing doesn't play it for yucks. It's just one part of a satirical honeycomb. There is plenty of other grim and mordant humor, often catching one by surprise.

Anyway, those are some first thoughts on this book: exceedingly well-crafted, socially engaged, unflinching honest, mordantly funny, terribly bitter.

You ask how many have read it. I have, simply because it was required reading on my English degree course in the 60s. I now recall very little of it, other than that I reached the end without a struggle - which I can't say of either Middlemarch or The Heart of Midlothian!

It's somewhere on my TBR list (I think). I will say you make it sound a bit more interesting than I had imagined, so I will move it up a bit. It does sit behind a few other classics that I have skipped and am trying to get to in the next couple of years: Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale, Gaskell's Wives and Daughters (and maybe North and South) and, yes, Eliot's Middlemarch.

I'm actually very close to closing out the Dostoevsky/Tolstoy/Turgenev portion of my Russian reading "seminar." I'm on Notes From Underground right now and later in the week I get to Tsypkin's Summer in Baden Baden.

Next week will be Platonov: Soul and Happy Moscow and The Foundation Pit.

[Leeway]

I'll confess I'm both a George Eliot fan, as well as an Arnold Bennett fan (but to a lesser degree).

I have enormous respect for Eliot, as a writer, thinker, critic. On most days of the week, I do think Middlemarch is her great work, but on other days I think it is Daniel Deronda, a flawed but great, neglected masterpiece.

I had a Bennett binge once upon a time. Old Wives Tale is probably his best known work. I particularly liked Clayhanger, a coming of age story. Also, Anna of the Five Towns. Bennett also wrote a lot of odd miscellany, among which, Buried Alive, The Desperate Adventures of a Wise Man is amusing. Virginia Woolf pretty much smashed Bennett's critical reputation (at least in the US academic community), but he has his champions still.

[ejp626]

I'll confess I'm both a George Eliot fan, as well as an Arnold Bennett fan (but to a lesser degree).

I have enormous respect for Eliot, as a writer, thinker, critic. On most days of the week, I do think Middlemarch is her great work, but on other days I think it is Daniel Deronda, a flawed but great, neglected masterpiece.

I had a Bennett binge once upon a time. Old Wives Tale is probably his best known work. I particularly liked Clayhanger, a coming of age story. Also, Anna of the Five Towns. Bennett also wrote a lot of odd miscellany, among which, Buried Alive, The Desperate Adventures of a Wise Man is amusing. Virginia Woolf pretty much smashed Bennett's critical reputation (at least in the US academic community), but he has his champions still.

I think I'll just stick with Old Wives' Tale for now, but perhaps some day...

At any rate, it was a U Michigan professor* who still was championing Bennett in the 90s, so he still has some defenders. I'm sure the wheel will turn again, and Bennett will be back in fashion. OTOH, long fiction in general is not in fashion, and it might take a while before its particular pleasures are recognized.

* I still feel bad that I just couldn't read this novel back when it was assigned, so I have committed to finishing it in the next couple of years. I'm almost certain I'll like it more than The Egoist, which I did manage to read.

[A Lark Ascending]

Give these two a read. Carey rides to the rescue of the likes of Bennett. Goes hell for leather at the Bloomsbury elite.

A bit disappointed to read in a review of his autobiography that he joins the dewy-eyed throng lamenting the demise of the grammar school.

[BillF]

What a fine novel this is! With its East Anglian landscape setting and distinctive characters would have made a good film.

P.S. Just checked IMDb and it says "In development"! Great minds think alike!

[Leeway]

What a fine novel this is! With its East Anglian landscape setting and distinctive characters would have made a good film.

P.S. Just checked IMDb and it says "In development"! Great minds think alike!

Yes indeed, this would make a good movie, or maybe better yet, a perfect BBC-type multi-part series (and if you bend the events of the novel a little, a multi-year series, "Vicar of Dibley" style. In Mrs. Gamart, it has the perfect villain).

On re-reading, it struck me how indebted Fitzgerald is to Muriel Spark: same slim narrative, same incisive characters, same implicit feminism. The big difference, to me, is that Spark is all steak knives and sharp edges, while Fitzgerald is all butter knives and round edges. Spark's heroines go for the glittering prizes, while Fitzgerald's learn resignation (albeit after a brief skirmish). At the end of the story, Florence "valued kindness above everything." Spark's women valued victory; they are more in line with Mr, Brundage's "Courage!" These are just differences, not necessarily superiorities on either side.

[BillF]

What a fine novel this is! With its East Anglian landscape setting and distinctive characters would have made a good film.

P.S. Just checked IMDb and it says "In development"! Great minds think alike!

Yes indeed, this would make a good movie, or maybe better yet, a perfect BBC-type multi-part series (and if you bend the events of the novel a little, a multi-year series, "Vicar of Dibley" style. In Mrs. Gamart, it has the perfect villain).

On re-reading, it struck me how indebted Fitzgerald is to Muriel Spark: same slim narrative, same incisive characters, same implicit feminism. The big difference, to me, is that Spark is all steak knives and sharp edges, while Fitzgerald is all butter knives and round edges. Spark's heroines go for the glittering prizes, while Fitzgerald's learn resignation (albeit after a brief skirmish). At the end of the story, Florence "valued kindness above everything." Spark's women valued victory; they are more in line with Mr, Brundage's "Courage!" These are just differences, not necessarily superiorities on either side.

Perhaps the Spark/Fitzgerald heroine differences spring from the differing personalities of their authors. Patently Spark did NOT value kindness above everything. I look forward with interest to reading Fitzgerald's biography; at the moment all I have to go on is her photo, which suggests a kindly woman:

[Leeway]

I'll confess I'm both a George Eliot fan, as well as an Arnold Bennett fan (but to a lesser degree).

I have enormous respect for Eliot, as a writer, thinker, critic. On most days of the week, I do think Middlemarch is her great work, but on other days I think it is Daniel Deronda, a flawed but great, neglected masterpiece.

I had a Bennett binge once upon a time. Old Wives Tale is probably his best known work. I particularly liked Clayhanger, a coming of age story. Also, Anna of the Five Towns. Bennett also wrote a lot of odd miscellany, among which, Buried Alive, The Desperate Adventures of a Wise Man is amusing. Virginia Woolf pretty much smashed Bennett's critical reputation (at least in the US academic community), but he has his champions still.

I think I'll just stick with Old Wives' Tale for now, but perhaps some day...

At any rate, it was a U Michigan professor* who still was championing Bennett in the 90s, so he still has some defenders. I'm sure the wheel will turn again, and Bennett will be back in fashion. OTOH, long fiction in general is not in fashion, and it might take a while before its particular pleasures are recognized.

* I still feel bad that I just couldn't read this novel back when it was assigned, so I have committed to finishing it in the next couple of years. I'm almost certain I'll like it more than The Egoist, which I did manage to read.

I was shifting the books about (that's as effective as I get) in my library and started looking into my Arnold Bennett shelf. I found a pamphlet, "Arnold Bennett Himself" by Rebecca West, and Margaret Drabble's bio of Bennett, two interesting connections that I think offer insights on both sides.

I also looked through some of his miscellaneous writings like, "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day," and "Literary Taste and How to Form It." Most of this stuff seems to have sunk out of sight, but it is rather interesting. I guess I'll be reading some Bennett in 2015.

[Leeway]

What a fine novel this is! With its East Anglian landscape setting and distinctive characters would have made a good film.

P.S. Just checked IMDb and it says "In development"! Great minds think alike!

Yes indeed, this would make a good movie, or maybe better yet, a perfect BBC-type multi-part series (and if you bend the events of the novel a little, a multi-year series, "Vicar of Dibley" style. In Mrs. Gamart, it has the perfect villain).

On re-reading, it struck me how indebted Fitzgerald is to Muriel Spark: same slim narrative, same incisive characters, same implicit feminism. The big difference, to me, is that Spark is all steak knives and sharp edges, while Fitzgerald is all butter knives and round edges. Spark's heroines go for the glittering prizes, while Fitzgerald's learn resignation (albeit after a brief skirmish). At the end of the story, Florence "valued kindness above everything." Spark's women valued victory; they are more in line with Mr, Brundage's "Courage!" These are just differences, not necessarily superiorities on either side.

Perhaps the Spark/Fitzgerald heroine differences spring from the differing personalities of their authors. Patently Spark did NOT value kindness above everything. I look forward with interest to reading Fitzgerald's biography; at the moment all I have to go on is her photo, which suggests a kindly woman:

I did want to mention one other thing about The Bookshop, that is, its "hidden" Nabokov connection, and the fairly prominent role Lolita plays in the story. One is delighted to find the connection, but in the end, it doesn't play the sort of role one might have expected in the story. Maybe Hermione Lee has something on the Nabokov-Fitzgerald connection, if any.

I can't find my copy of The Blue Flower, Fitzgerald's story of Novalis, but it's a good one.

[jazzbo]

[ejp626]

What a fine novel this is! With its East Anglian landscape setting and distinctive characters would have made a good film.

P.S. Just checked IMDb and it says "In development"! Great minds think alike!

Yes indeed, this would make a good movie, or maybe better yet, a perfect BBC-type multi-part series (and if you bend the events of the novel a little, a multi-year series, "Vicar of Dibley" style. In Mrs. Gamart, it has the perfect villain).

On re-reading, it struck me how indebted Fitzgerald is to Muriel Spark: same slim narrative, same incisive characters, same implicit feminism. The big difference, to me, is that Spark is all steak knives and sharp edges, while Fitzgerald is all butter knives and round edges. Spark's heroines go for the glittering prizes, while Fitzgerald's learn resignation (albeit after a brief skirmish). At the end of the story, Florence "valued kindness above everything." Spark's women valued victory; they are more in line with Mr, Brundage's "Courage!" These are just differences, not necessarily superiorities on either side.

Perhaps the Spark/Fitzgerald heroine differences spring from the differing personalities of their authors. Patently Spark did NOT value kindness above everything. I look forward with interest to reading Fitzgerald's biography; at the moment all I have to go on is her photo, which suggests a kindly woman:

It's sounding like Fitzgerald (and really Pym as well, aside from a few "pushy" female characters) is more aligned with Austen, whereas Spark's characters are more descended from Becky Sharp.

I read most of Molly Keane's novels and she is all over the map. Many younger female characters are accommodating, though some are slyer than others in getting what they want, whereas the female heads of household are usually pretty monstrous and full-bore egoists. There are some that break from this pattern, and I believe in Good Behaviour it is one of the younger or middle-aged women who is a bit of a monster. (I only got a few pages in before having to set this aside -- I should be returning to it at the end of Jan. to finish up.)

[A Lark Ascending]

Thriller set in Hollywood in 1946 among the emigrant Jewish community at the start of the Red Scare. A bit slow but I'm drawn in.

[Brad]

Plumbing the New York Review of Books Classics catalogue:

Reading Alfred Hayes' My Face For the World to See.