Now reading...

[Brad]

The Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser are great fun. The fictional Harry Flashman in various historical pickles and how he gets out of them to live and fight another day. They are decidedly not politically correct! 

[Brad]

On 4/29/2020 at 2:11 PM, Brad said:

Starting to read this. Never read it before. 50 years late 

I just finished this. Never did I wish a book to go on as much as this one. Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassidy), one of literature’s great characters. 

[jazzbo]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

I just finished this. Never did I wish a book to go on as much as this one. Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassidy), one of literature’s great characters. 

Was your version the "scroll" version? Both the original and the scroll version are fascinating reads.

[Brad]

30 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

Was your version the "scroll" version? Both the original and the scroll version are fascinating reads.

No, the original. The scroll version must be something else. 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Brad

[jazzbo]

6 hours ago, Brad said:

No, the original. The scroll version must be something else. 

It's a bit expanded and a slightly diffefent experience. I am due to re=read one of the versions of this soon. . . .

[jazzbo]

Now reading "Dawn behind the Dawn: A Search for the Earthly Paradise" Geoffrey Ashe

[gmonahan]

Some friends from a travel group I went with turned me on to this one. I'm liking it so far.

 

[jlhoots]

Colum McCann: Apeirogon

Edited May 18, 2020 by jlhoots

[ejp626]

The province is fairly close to reopening libraries on a drop-off/pick-up basis, which is less than ideal, but better than nothing.  Presumably Toronto will follow suit, though they may need a bit more time to get organized.  I assume that means they will expand the hold system and there will be no browsing.  Not really sure how we will arrange to get a time slot for the pick up, but they'll figure something out.

This means that the clock is now restarting on the library books I borrowed before this all went down.  And I definitely need to pivot back to print from all the e-books.  At least the weather is a bit nicer, and I have been able to go outside more often.

Anyway, I will now buckle down and get through Camus's The Plague (I really have enjoyed what I have read so far, but there have been so many distractions...) and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Haven't really settled on what's after that, but maybe the next major book will be the Grossman translation of Don Quixote.

[Matthew]

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For some reason, I find myself returning more and more to Fitzgerald, who I tended to ignore in my callous youth.

[Brad]

I’ve had this book for as long as I can remember. Might be one of the oldest books in my library, an old Scribners edition, which I may have purchased from the Scribners bookstore in Manhattan back in the 80s — what a great place that was for browsing! Sadly, no longer there and Scribners was acquired years ago and is now part of Simon & Schuster.

Anyway, I never got around to reading it but better late than never.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Brad

[Matthew]

On 5/19/2020 at 9:46 AM, Matthew said:

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For some reason, I find myself returning more and more to Fitzgerald, who I tended to ignore in my callous youth.

Definitely one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've had in a long time. Now on to Fitzgerald's next book Flappers and Philosophers 

[Matthew]

Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald by David S. Brown. I've started to read this biography side-by-side while reading Fitzgerald's fiction, never realized he was such a fascinating figure, learn something new every day!

[ghost of miles]

Matthew, I went on a renewed Fitzgerald kick myself last year after reading The Basil and Josephine Stories, which are some of the most vivid fictional studies of the social economy of adolescent culture that I’ve ever encountered. 

Brad, would love to hear your thoughts on To Have And Have Not after you finish it. It’s always seemed to have a bit of a footnote status in Hemingway’s oeuvre as his purported entry in the annals of leftist 1930s literature and remembered primarily as the springboard for the much-more-famous movie, but I’ve always been curious to read it. Library of America is bringing out its first Hemingway volume this autumn, btw (and maybe we’ll see a second Fitzgerald volume as the mid-to-late 1920s works begin to fall into the public domain).

On a trashier pop-culture note, just starting this book, which arrived in today’s mail: 

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

 

Brad, would love to hear your thoughts on To Have And Have Not after you finish it. It’s always seemed to have a bit of a footnote status in Hemingway’s oeuvre as his purported entry in the annals of leftist 1930s literature and remembered primarily as the springboard for the much-more-famous movie, but I’ve always been curious to read it. Library of America is bringing out its first Hemingway volume this autumn,   

The first Library of America Hemingway!  What's that about? IIRC  The film of To Have and To Have Not is the only film on which one Nobel Prize winner gets credit on a screenplay adapted from another Nobel Prize winner.  And it's so far removed from the  book that Warner Brothers then did make a film that is based on the book. 

Edited May 28, 2020 by medjuck

[ghost of miles]

17 hours ago, medjuck said:

The first Library of America Hemingway!  What's that about? IIRC  The film of To Have and To Have Not is the only film on which one Nobel Prize winner gets credit on a screenplay adapted from another Nobel Prize winner.  And it's so far removed from the  book that Warner Brothers then did make a film that is based on the book. 

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises And Other Writings 1918-1926  

[medjuck]

7 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises And Other Writings 1918-1926  

What I meant was why are they just getting to Hemingway now?  No wonder they're calling it long awaited.  (Though personally I'm happy they did Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald before him.) 

[ejp626]

7 hours ago, medjuck said:

What I meant was why are they just getting to Hemingway now?  No wonder they're calling it long awaited.  (Though personally I'm happy they did Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald before him.) 

I imagine the estate wouldn't come to terms, and they have had to wait so long for these pieces to go into the public domain.  I believe it is the same with the Fitzgerald but they had a bit more to work with so published the first LOA volume a while back.  Due to the various extensions of copyright, it takes quite a while for these volumes to come out in the States.

What is interesting is that Harper, apparently realizing that quite a few work will go into the public domain have come up with an e-book bundle that gathers up 9 of his novels, ending with The Garden of Eden.  https://www.amazon.ca/Collected-Works-Ernest-Hemingway-Nine-Book-ebook/dp/B00IRDG7L8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YPNVHA5GE2TM&keywords=collected+works+of+ernest+hemingway&qid=1590754578&sprefix=collected+ernest%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1

That said, this seems to be only available in Canada, as the copyright laws are different (looser) here, though they are being brought in closer alignment with the States due to the NAFTA re-negotiations.

 

[ghost of miles]

10 hours ago, medjuck said:

What I meant was why are they just getting to Hemingway now?  No wonder they're calling it long awaited.  (Though personally I'm happy they did Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald before him.) 

ejp626's response is on-target, I'd say--I know in the case of Fitzgerald it's been an estate issue.  With copyright going back 95 years on works published before 1978, a lot of mid-to-late 1920s material will be coming into the public domain in the next few years.  Here's a rundown on copyright from a Stanford.edu site:

For works published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years... All works published in the United States before 1924 are in the public domain (as of Dec 2019, when this article was posted). Works published after 1923, but before 1978 are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. If the work was created, but not published, before 1978, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  Copyright basics

So I'd say there's a good chance we'll see a second Fitzgerald volume in the not-too-distant future that would include Gatsby, The Vegetable (FSF's flop play which I still have yet to read) and All The Sad Young Men, plus other short stories from the 1923-late 20s period.  Or maybe they can reach a deal with the estate and publish all of the remaining novels (Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, and The Last Tycoon) plus The Vegetable in one volume, and all of the 1923-1940 short stories in another.  It'll be interesting to see how they compile his writings; there's quite a lot of excellent non-fiction for them to draw on as well.  LOA definitely wants to do more Fitzgerald; I had some correspondence several years back with the guy who edited the first volume, and he indicated that it was a matter of estate/public domain issues holding them back.  

Re Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises is due to fall into the public domain next year, so the EH estate probably figured they might as well sign off on an LOA volume that includes pretty much everything leading up to it.

[Brad]

I can’t say the LOA volume holds any significant interest for me as their MO seems to try to bring an author’s entire work for a selected period under one cover. That approach has never appealed to me. I’m sure Penguin Classics will bring out The Sun Also Rises when it falls into the PD; I tend to like their approach because they reprint a book with an introductory essay by an expert on the author. Although I read the book many years ago and still have the original Scribners version, I may be tempted by a Penguin Classics version. 

[medjuck]

39 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

ejp626's response is on-target, I'd say--I know in the case of Fitzgerald it's been an estate issue.  With copyright going back 95 years on works published before 1978, a lot of mid-to-late 1920s material will be coming into the public domain in the next few years.  Here's a rundown on copyright from a Stanford.edu site:

For works published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years... All works published in the United States before 1924 are in the public domain (as of Dec 2019, when this article was posted). Works published after 1923, but before 1978 are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. If the work was created, but not published, before 1978, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  Copyright basics

So I'd say there's a good chance we'll see a second Fitzgerald volume in the not-too-distant future that would include Gatsby, The Vegetable (FSF's flop play which I still have yet to read) and All The Sad Young Men, plus other short stories from the 1923-late 20s period.  Or maybe they can reach a deal with the estate and publish all of the remaining novels (Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, and The Last Tycoon) plus The Vegetable in one volume, and all of the 1923-1940 short stories in another.  It'll be interesting to see how they compile his writings; there's quite a lot of excellent non-fiction for them to draw on as well.  LOA definitely wants to do more Fitzgerald; I had some correspondence several years back with the guy who edited the first volume, and he indicated that it was a matter of estate/public domain issues holding them back.  

Re Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises is due to fall into the public domain next year, so the EH estate probably figured they might as well sign off on an LOA volume that includes pretty much everything leading up to it.

I think (don't really know) that it's not the estates but the original publishers who still have the rights if the works never went out of print.  IIRC The Great Gatsby becomes  pd in the next year or so. 

[ejp626]

8 minutes ago, Brad said:

I can’t say the LOA volume holds any significant interest for me as their MO seems to try to bring an author’s entire work for a selected period under one cover. That approach has never appealed to me. I’m sure Penguin Classics will bring out The Sun Also Rises when it falls into the PD; I tend to like their approach because they reprint a book with an introductory essay by an expert on the author. Although I read the book many years ago and still have the original Scribners version, I may be tempted by a Penguin Classics version. 

I think it is an interesting approach for lesser-known writers, like Dawn Powell, Robert Maxwell, perhaps John Dos Passos and others where this is likely the only way this material will stay in print.  It's probably not necessary for the Twains, Faulkners, Fitzgeralds and Hemingways of the literary world.  It often is the only way that the short stories stay in print, though, maddeningly, some of the time they do selected stories and sometime they do the complete stories for that period.  One might argue that this is not too dissimilar from the Mosaic treatment...

2 minutes ago, medjuck said:

I think (don't really know) that it's not the estates but the original publishers who still have the rights if the works never went out of print.  IIRC The Great Gatsby becomes  pd in the next year or so. 

I'm not sure, but I don't think that is accurate.  Rights revert back to the authors and estates in many cases.  I do know that many of these are held up by the estates, and I would imagine the major publishers would find it in their interest to cut a deal if they were the rights holders.

[Brad]

45 minutes ago, ejp626 said:

I think it is an interesting approach for lesser-known writers, like Dawn Powell, Robert Maxwell, perhaps John Dos Passos and others where this is likely the only way this material will stay in print.  It's probably not necessary for the Twains, Faulkners, Fitzgeralds and Hemingways of the literary world.  It often is the only way that the short stories stay in print, though, maddeningly, some of the time they do selected stories and sometime they do the complete stories for that period.  One might argue that this is not too dissimilar from the Mosaic treatment...

Perhaps. I’m just not a big fan of the approach. The only LOA volumes I have are Lincoln’s speeches and Douglasses writings. The approach also suffers from the same problem that some have complained about with Mosaic: you never listen to all the music and some prefer the individual dates.

I just looked at my copy of The Sun Also Rises and it’s falling apart (1970 printing) so I will probably upgrade if Penguin comes out with their version  

 

[ghost of miles]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Perhaps. I’m just not a big fan of the approach. The only LOA volumes I have are Lincoln’s speeches and Douglasses writings. The approach also suffers from the same problem that some have complained about with Mosaic: you never listen to all the music and some prefer the individual dates.

I just looked at my copy of The Sun Also Rises and it’s falling apart (1970 printing) so I will probably upgrade if Penguin comes out with their version  

 

I don't think they've done The Sun Also Rises, but for single works (as well as story collections) I'm a big fan of the modern-day Everyman series, which often includes an in-depth introductory essay.  Sewn bindings, too, which I much prefer to glue (see the contemporary Modern Library series--I *love* the original Modern Library series and have about 200 volumes from it, but not a fan of the relaunched version).  Everyman does some author omnibus editions as well, but they're generally not as geared towards the more completist approach that LOA often employs.  

[medjuck]

18 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

I don't think they've done The Sun Also Rises, but for single works (as well as story collections) I'm a big fan of the modern-day Everyman series, which often includes an in-depth introductory essay.  Sewn bindings, too, which I much prefer to glue (see the contemporary Modern Library series--I *love* the original Modern Library series and have about 200 volumes from it, but not a fan of the relaunched version).  Everyman does some author omnibus editions as well, but they're generally not as geared towards the more completist approach that LOA often employs.  

Are there hard covers now that just use glue?  I guess I haven't noticed.  And are there softcovers that are sewn?   I should go look at my library.