Now reading...

[sal]

Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

How's this? It's been getting good reviews, and I'm looking around for a good used copy here in Chicago.

I read this and thought it was just OK. He's a good writer, I just didn't really like the way he presented the story. Too often I felt like I was reading a book on the history of the DR rather than a work of fiction.

Edited September 30, 2008 by sal

[ghost of miles]

A graphic-novel mystery: Mat Johnson's INCOGNEGRO. Plus Farah Jasmine Griffin's book on Billie Holiday (interesting approach, but rather disappointing so far).

[BruceH]

Copernicus' Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began, by Jack Repcheck.

[paul secor]

Dorothy West: The Wedding

[aparxa]

the epic of gilgamesh

[jazzbo]

Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vol. One.

[jlhoots]

Roth: Indignation

[sal]

What did you think of "Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao", jlhoots?

[kinuta]

[BruceH]

the epic of gilgamesh

I'd give my mother's right arm for that.

[jlhoots]

What did you think of "Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao", jlhoots?

I liked it more than you did.

I found the writing style & story quite moving.

I did have to get out my Spanish dictionary now & then.

[Jazzmoose]

the epic of gilgamesh

Never heard of it; must be new...

[Jazzmoose]

Picked up Joe Haldeman's The Coming today, and I'm about to sign off this thing and get back to it. If all you've ever read by him is The Forever War, give yourself a treat and try some more! If, on the other hand, you've never read The Forever War and like SF at all, what are you waiting on???

Edited October 6, 2008 by Jazzmoose

[porcy62]

Alexandre Dumas' feast over here.

After 'The Three Musketeers' I just started 'Twenty Years Later', with 'The Count Of Monte Cristo' laying on the night table.

[BillF]

Philip K Dick, Ubik

[ghost of miles]

Finally finished Rick Perlstein's NIXONLAND and am now getting started on Nick Salvatore's biography EUGENE DEBS: CITIZEN AND SOCIALIST ('tis the season to be liberal and all that). Debs came from Terre Haute, about 45 minutes west of here (as did Claude Thornhill).

[BillF]

Philip K Dick, Time Out of Joint

[Jazzmoose]

Started F.M. Busby's The Breeds of Man. I've been carting this book around for about fifteen years now; Busby was someone I wanted to try at some point in life and I just never got around to it. I remember him being fairly highly touted back at that time, but I'm completely out of touch with the SF world of today; anyone know if he's still read? Or still writes?

[Jazzmoose]

...Nick Salvatore's biography EUGENE DEBS: CITIZEN AND SOCIALIST ('tis the season to be liberal and all that).

You know, I feel like I ought to read that, just as a thankyou to Kurt Vonnegut...

[BruceH]

Started F.M. Busby's The Breeds of Man. I've been carting this book around for about fifteen years now; Busby was someone I wanted to try at some point in life and I just never got around to it. I remember him being fairly highly touted back at that time, but I'm completely out of touch with the SF world of today; anyone know if he's still read? Or still writes?

Busby goes way back. I don't know if he was ever really big, but I do seem to remember him being mentioned more in the 70's. Never read him myself.

Wait, didn't he write that short story "If This Is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy"? Great title.

Edited October 11, 2008 by BruceH

[BillF]

Wait, didn't he write that short story "If This Is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy"? Great title.

Almost as great as that jazz title, "The Big Noise From Winnetka"!

[BruceH]

Started F.M. Busby's The Breeds of Man. I've been carting this book around for about fifteen years now; Busby was someone I wanted to try at some point in life and I just never got around to it. I remember him being fairly highly touted back at that time, but I'm completely out of touch with the SF world of today; anyone know if he's still read? Or still writes?

According to Wikipedia he passed away in 2005, stopped writing in 1996 or so.

[T.D.]

Some time ago, I read Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux (one of my favorite authors). He traveled (essentially) by bus, car and train from one end of Africa to the other (Egypt-S. Africa, with an understandable gap in the middle).

In the mood for more exotic travel, I recently heard about Jeffrey Tayler, and read his Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Boat, Bus and Camel. Not bad, and I'm going to read more of his books, probably some Siberian ones next.

[Jazzmoose]

Started F.M. Busby's The Breeds of Man. I've been carting this book around for about fifteen years now; Busby was someone I wanted to try at some point in life and I just never got around to it. I remember him being fairly highly touted back at that time, but I'm completely out of touch with the SF world of today; anyone know if he's still read? Or still writes?

According to Wikipedia he passed away in 2005, stopped writing in 1996 or so.

Sounds like a "no"...

I never remember him as being 'big', just as 'up and coming'. Having read the book now, I'd say he's very good, but not great. Certainly worth reading.

[ejp626]

I have been on a fiction jag, after slogging through some academic books on urbanization (some were good to be fair).

I read Murakami's After Dark. I can see why it got lukewarm reviews. It is about two sisters, one of whom does nothing at all for the entire book, and could easily have been omitted. Except for the fact that nearly all of Murakami's books seem to contain dualisms and switch back and forth between times, narrators, characters, etc. The other thing is that of the Murakami I have read, it sort of peters out and there is no real resolution. This one was an exagerrated version of that with 3 or 4 threads left hanging. I still enjoyed the half about the active sister (and her budding friendship/romance with a trombone player!), but it certainly isn't top-rank Murakami for sure.

Then I read Kramer's A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space. This came out in the mid 1980s under Vintage Contemporary, as part of a push to mainstream literary (as opposed to easy reading) fiction. Some of the other well-known books in this imprint are A Visit from the Footbinder and Clea and Zeus Divorce. Well, I finally got around to reading this one. This is sort of a fable about soldiers waiting for war, as well as about family secrets (and incest), but I just didn't care for it. It was too flat. Too many people acted in ways that were completely unbelievable. Generally not much happens until 30 pages towards the end, but then they pull short of any real resolution. I would probably have liked it more 10 years ago.

Finally, I read Jesse Bell's Samedi the Deafness. This got raves in several book review circles. I was more like, meh. There are certainly echoes of Kafka, but only a handful of reviewers have picked up that the entire book is a riff on G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. I really dislike Chesterton, as I think he is a religious prig. So I didn't like the source material, and I generally am not that impressed by books that are that open about their source material.

So really I only liked one-half book of the last three books I've read. It looks like I will be reading Oscar Wao pretty soon (borrowing this one from the library), and I hope this is the one to break the streak.