Now reading...

[Matthew]

Abraham Lincoln by Carl Sandburg. Always wanted to read this, as I heard so much about this biography when I was growing up.  On volume one, and it is a smooth, enjoyable read.

[jlhoots]

Julie Fenster: Jefferson's America

[jazzbo]

A book I've been meaning to get around to. . . well here it is. Impressive.

 

[Leeway]

IN THE FIRST CIRCLE - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 2009  revised edition

96 chapters, 741 pages, hundreds of characters make this a challenging read, but the moral force, the penetrating dissection of the Soviet system, indeed any totalitarian system, makes it more than worthwhile.  Solzhenitsyn's moral authority comes through on every page. 

[A Lark Ascending]

Finally finished:

...started in mid-April. Not exactly beach reading and probably just a bit too detailed in places - also hard to keep track of things changing at different rates in different places (knew very little about what was happening in eastern Europe). But I understand some of the doctrinal differences a little bit better - though things like transubstantiation and justification by faith can seem rather 'angels on the heads of pins' concepts to go out killing in the name of to a 21stC materialist.

Over the last week also:

Clever little book exploring the moment in the late 50s/early 60s when the Soviet UNion thought it had found the philosopher's stone of the planned economy, told in a series of fictionalised short stories largely about the blind belief that all it was going to take was getting the mechanism working perfectly. 

Just started:

 

Will clear this quickly - my kind of history book with a strong narrative drive.

Edited June 15, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[ejp626]

I finished up Edgar Mittelholzer's A Morning at the Office.  It was ok, though not quite as amazing as some of the reviews had made out.  I don't think it could quite decide between being a sociology (or anthropology) tract and a novel...

I'm quite disenchanted with Savyon Liebrecht's A Good Place for the Night and am on the point of abandoning it.  In addition to being extremely downbeat -- not one but two stories feature the murder of young woman -- I don't know that I have ever come across a book written by a woman that so thoroughly fails the Bechdel Test.  There does not appear to be a single female character that isn't spending her entire time fretting about her husband or boyfriend.

[Matthew]

The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor.  O'Connor seems to be a forgotten writer nowadays, as this book, and The Edge of Sadness are the only two books of his that are readily available.  He wrote on themes that turned out to be transitional, Boston-Irish politics, and with TEOS, the priesthood.  Both books well worth the read, though The Edge of Sadness is a book about a time, Catholic Church, and a priesthood that has completely changed. Both books have a strong current of melancholy to them, which given the topics, is understandable.  There are two other books by O'Connor that I'll have to buy, as they are cheap off Amazon.

Edited June 19, 2016 by Matthew

[paul secor]

Richard Russo: Everybody's Fool

[BillF]

Continuing my reading of mid-20th century American Jewish fiction: a fine campus-based humorous novel.

[ghost of miles]

Plane reading today, purchased at Word On The Water (a floating bookstore in London) yesterday: 

 

Edited June 22, 2016 by ghost of miles

[BillF]

53 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Plane reading today, purchased at Word On The Water (a floating bookstore in London) yesterday: 

Bon voyage!

[A Lark Ascending]

Finished this morning after a few months. Recommended if you want a substantial bio of Mahler. Mainly useful for the life story - Fischer does have chapters on the symphonies but they are pretty standard. 

Not a man I would have taken to in real life (though his egotism makes it pretty unlikely that he would have tolerated anyone not on his exalted level). The condescending way he writes to his wife right from the courtship phase makes you squirm.

Especially enjoyed reading the reactions to him as a conductor and composer - good lord, if you think some critics today can be imperious. Amazing that music we take in our stride today caused so much incomprehension and outright hostility (not just for anti-Semitic reasons).   

Gets a bit old-farty at the end - in reviewing how Mahler's music fared after his death he gives due attention to the explosion in popularity from around 1960 but then suggests the enthusiasm has probably peaked because of poor educational standards and the fact that fewer people read music any more and so won't really understand it beyond the emotion. I don't see any slowing down of recordings and the recent concerts I've been to have been packed and received ecstatically without a score in sight (apart from on stage!).  

[ejp626]

I just finished Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last, which is sort of a SF thriller in a near-future where the economy of the U.S. Rust Belt has completely collapsed. To try to find some sort of stability, the couple at the heart of this novel sign up for an experimental town where everyone spends one month in a suburban-type house and then the alternate month as a prisoner.  As if this weren't enough, there is more double-dealing throughout the novel.  It was quite entertaining, I must admit.  There are perhaps a few nods to The Prisoner, though I thought thematically, it reminded me more of eXistenZ.

Also reading Blackass by A. Igonibo Barrett.  The novel is inspired by Kafka's Metamorphosis, though in this case a Nigerian man is transformed into a white man on the morning he is to go off on a critical job interview.  Apparently, the only part of his body that is still black is his posterior (hence the title).  I like the writing style and the pacing so far, so I expect this is a case where the conceit enhances rather than detracts from the overall novel. 

I've also gotten 3/5 of the way through Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle.

Edited June 23, 2016 by ejp626

[BillF]

5 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I just finished Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last, which is sort of a SF thriller in a near-future where the economy of the U.S. Rust Belt has completely collapsed. To try to find some sort of stability, the couple at the heart of this novel sign up for an experimental town where everyone spends one month in a suburban-type house and then the alternate month as a prisoner.  As if this weren't enough, there is more double-dealing throughout the novel.  It was quite entertaining, I must admit.  There are perhaps a few nods to The Prisoner, though I thought thematically, it reminded me more of eXistenZ.

 

Yes, "quite entertaining" is right. I also found it readable, but pretty superficial compared with her earlier forays into this genre, most notably The Handmaid's Tale.

[danasgoodstuff]

On 6/20/2016 at 11:08 AM, BillF said:

Continuing my reading of mid-20th century American Jewish fiction: a fine campus-based humorous novel.

My dad (a prof himself) quite liked this, IIRC.

[ejp626]

21 hours ago, BillF said:

Yes, "quite entertaining" is right. I also found it readable, but pretty superficial compared with her earlier forays into this genre, most notably The Handmaid's Tale.

I'm fairly sure that was intentional -- that she wanted to write a thriller (rather than a psychological thriller like Alias Grace).  I recall that a fairly recent work (The Penelopiad) had quite a bit of depth to it.  I do think she was inspired by eXistenZ where characterizations are tissue-thin.

[BillF]

8 hours ago, danasgoodstuff said:

My dad (a prof himself) quite liked this, IIRC.

Very much a book of your Dad's generation - but then, so am I! 

5 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I'm fairly sure that was intentional -- that she wanted to write a thriller (rather than a psychological thriller like Alias Grace).  I recall that a fairly recent work (The Penelopiad) had quite a bit of depth to it.  I do think she was inspired by eXistenZ where characterizations are tissue-thin.

I take your point.

[Leeway]

I gobbled these down like potato chips. 

[Jazzmoose]

On 6/23/2016 at 10:00 PM, BillF said:

Yes, "quite entertaining" is right. I also found it readable, but pretty superficial compared with her earlier forays into this genre, most notably The Handmaid's Tale.

Yeah, but The Handmaid's Tale was thirteen pages away from being perfect.   (I don't understand why she tacked that silly "historical notes" section on the end.  Turned a great novel into a "sci-fi" trhiller.)

[BillF]

On 12/24/2015 at 8:47 AM, BillF said:

I was put off reading that one by a review that said the movie Carol was so much better than the over-talky novel characteristic of Highsmith's early style. (That made sense to me, as I found the novel a letdown after the movie Strangers on a Train.)

Anyway, be that as it may, have just finished a brilliant Highsmith:

 

 

Finally got round to reading Carol/The Price of Salt and I found it a fine book - a plot that prepares the way for her mature style and attention to detail and description that the older Highsmith was to perfect.

 

[Matthew]

Edward Bourne-Jones: A Biography by Penelope Fitzgerald.  A very interesting biography, the first one by Fitzgerald that I've read, and I need to get her others.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Matthew said:

Edward Bourne-Jones: A Biography by Penelope Fitzgerald.  A very interesting biography, the first one by Fitzgerald that I've read, and I need to get her others.

It's on my bedside to-read pile. Her book about her father and uncles, "The Knox Family" I think is the title, is superb, as are her novels of course. Her father was editor of Punch, and her two uncles were famous convert Catholic prelate Ronald Knox and Evoe Knox, one of the key codebreakers of WWII. Her paternal grandfather, IIRC, was no less than an Anglican Archbishop, perhaps even of Canterbury? Also very good is her biography of the excellent and eventually suicidal poet (she killed herself by drinking a drain-cleaner) Charlotte Mew.

[Matthew]

6 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

It's on my bedside to-read pile. Her book about her father and uncles, "The Knox Family" I think is the title, is superb, as are her novels of course. Her father was editor of Punch, and her two uncles were famous convert Catholic prelate Ronald Knox and Evoe Knox, one of the key codebreakers of WWII. Her paternal grandfather, IIRC, was no less than an Anglican Archbishop, perhaps even of Canterbury? Also very good is her biography of the excellent and eventually suicidal poet (she killed herself by drinking a drain-cleaner) Charlotte Mew.

I'll have to check the Knox biography out, I just finished reading the sermons of Ronald Knox, and they're interesting.  Sounds like an interesting family.  I need to look into the novels also.

[Larry Kart]

5 hours ago, Matthew said:

5 hours ago, Matthew said:

I'll have to check the Knox biography out, I just finished reading the sermons of Ronald Knox, and they're interesting.  Sounds like an interesting family.  I need to look into the novels also.

Fitzgerald's paternal grandfather was Archbishop of Manchester.

[BillF]

I can recommend this excellent biography of Fitzgerald: