Niko Posted January 19, 2009 Report Posted January 19, 2009 finally checking out the guy in my avatar Georges Rodenbach- Bruges La Morte my suspicion that a guy who looked so much like me had to be talented was right... strongly recommended if you like dark late 19th century stuff... just placed an order for Cruel Tales by Rodenbachs friend Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam Quote
ejp626 Posted January 20, 2009 Report Posted January 20, 2009 Roberto Bolano: 2666 Not sure when/if I will get to this. I do have Bolano's The Savage Detectives, and it is "on deck," so to speak. I just finished Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union (particularly appropriate that it is snowing yet again -- one thing that seems weird is that he talks about cold and snow but it just doesn't seem bone chillingly cold -- maybe it takes place in what should be spring or something). I enjoyed it greatly and yet I felt a little let down by the ending. It was almost as if it morphed from a riff on Hammett/Chandler to a neo-noir like Chinatown, specifically in terms of the scale of the conspiracy. Of course, there are also a handful of pratfalls in the middle, and maybe Chabon is riffing on some of the 1970s detective films here (Long Goodbye) that play the genre for laughs a bit. So maybe he is doing a metacritical riff on the detective genre (a little like Joyce's Ulysses is a riff on all English literature). Well, if I ever run into Chabon, I will ask him. Right now I am in the middle of Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl, which is a novel set in rural North Dakota. I'm feeling he has just a bit too much distance from these characters (maybe a bit too snobby about people who never escaped the small towns like he did) and maybe it would have been a bit stronger if he had written it before moving to NYC. But it's an entertaining read so far. And then I should be able to start the Bolano. Quote
Jazzmoose Posted January 20, 2009 Report Posted January 20, 2009 8th grade seems about right as a definition of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction." Quote
BruceH Posted January 21, 2009 Report Posted January 21, 2009 8th grade seems about right as a definition of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction." You've got a point...and come to think, that's about when I first read most of the Heinlein juveniles. And the summer vacation after 8th grade is when I first got into Stapledon. I wonder what it would have been like to have read Watchmen back then. Quote
Jazzmoose Posted January 21, 2009 Report Posted January 21, 2009 I wonder what it would have been like to have read Watchmen back then. Eighth grade? Well, for me it certainly would have taken the shine off of Kirby's New Gods stuff... Quote
BruceH Posted January 21, 2009 Report Posted January 21, 2009 Come to think of it, I was much more into comics at the age of 25, which is what I was when Watchmen started coming out, than when I was in 8th grade. In 8th grade I thought I was too old for comics. Quote
jazzbo Posted January 22, 2009 Report Posted January 22, 2009 I pretty much gave up comics before I was 25, seemed rather silly to be reading them. . . but when the graphic novels started coming out I tried a few, namely Ronin, The Black Knight and The Wathmen (I didn't buy the individual issues, waited til these were bound together in a volume.) These three were pretty good. I was 33 though and the only comic I started to collect then was issues of Kitchen Sink's "The Spirit" because I had tried to get copies of Spirit stories since 1965 and don't think I'll ever be too old for The Spirit! Quote
BruceH Posted January 22, 2009 Report Posted January 22, 2009 I can dig it. I thought I was getting "too old" for comics at the age of 12, then changed my mind at 24. Quote
Jazzmoose Posted January 22, 2009 Report Posted January 22, 2009 I was a hopeless nerd. I held on until 18, and then returned at 22. Of course, I pretty much left again at 36, so... Quote
paul secor Posted January 25, 2009 Report Posted January 25, 2009 Frederick Turner's novel, Redemption Quote
jazzbo Posted January 25, 2009 Report Posted January 25, 2009 Continuing my Chandler review, alternating a Chandler with something else. Right now Quote
BillF Posted January 25, 2009 Report Posted January 25, 2009 Isaac Asimov, The Complete Stories, Vol 1. Quote
medjuck Posted January 25, 2009 Report Posted January 25, 2009 Roberto Bolano: 2666 My son gave me this for Xmas in a paperback 3 volume boxed edition. I'm away from home right now and took the first volume (books 1-30) with me. I'm just getting into it but quite like it so far. Very well translated it seems to me. (ie the English is not in the least stilted-- can't tell that it's a translation-- though I of course can't say how close it is to the original.) Quote
bichos Posted January 25, 2009 Report Posted January 25, 2009 bouncin´ with bartok, the incomplete works of richard twardzik by jack chambers. (but only a few pages per day when i go to bed and that´s normaly so late that i can read only a little bit before my eyes close automatically.... so it will take a long time to finish this very interesting book) keep boppin´ marcel Quote
jlhoots Posted January 26, 2009 Report Posted January 26, 2009 Roberto Bolano: 2666 My son gave me this for Xmas in a paperback 3 volume boxed edition. I'm away from home right now and took the first volume (books 1-30) with me. I'm just getting into it but quite like it so far. Very well translated it seems to me. (ie the English is not in the least stilted-- can't tell that it's a translation-- though I of course can't say how close it is to the original.) Bolanos translator is quite amazing (IMHO). Quote
Harold_Z Posted January 26, 2009 Report Posted January 26, 2009 Roberto Bolano: 2666 My son gave me this for Xmas in a paperback 3 volume boxed edition. I'm away from home right now and took the first volume (books 1-30) with me. I'm just getting into it but quite like it so far. Very well translated it seems to me. (ie the English is not in the least stilted-- can't tell that it's a translation-- though I of course can't say how close it is to the original.) Bolanos translator is quite amazing (IMHO). I've heard lots of good things about Bolano. I'll be getting this. Quote
poetrylover3 Posted January 26, 2009 Report Posted January 26, 2009 I'm one chapter away from finishing Team of Rivals, a fascinating portrait of behind the scenes politics during the Lincoln Administration. On deck: Non-fiction: Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything Fiction: Phillip K Dick's Library of America volume Four Novels of the 1960s. I've never read him, IIRC. I'll also be teaching Night and Jane Eyre as well as English Romantic Poetry, so I'll have my hands full. Peace, Blue Trane Quote
jazzbo Posted January 26, 2009 Report Posted January 26, 2009 Wow. I'll be interested in your opinions about any of the Dick novels when you get to them. Thanks. Quote
ghost of miles Posted February 2, 2009 Author Report Posted February 2, 2009 Just re-read Charles Drazin's In Search of the Third Man. A good book to read if you've just re-watched The Third Man for the millionth time. The chapter on the differences between the original British cut and the American cut of the film is particularly fascinating, especially if, like Drazin, you've long felt that the American cut is clearly inferior. I'm on a huge Orson Welles kick right now--reading Simon Callow's THE ROAD TO XANADU, volume 1 of his Welles bio, and just ordered HELLO, AMERICANS (volume 2) as well as Jim Naremore's THE MAGIC WORLD OF ORSON WELLES. (Naremore teaches here at IU; he wrote a very good book on film noir as well, and he's actually in a Night Lights program I did several years ago about jazz and postwar French cinema.) Quote
jlhoots Posted February 2, 2009 Report Posted February 2, 2009 Frederick Turner's novel, Redemption Good book. He lives here, & I see him out & about at book signings, restaurants, etc.. Quote
BruceH Posted February 2, 2009 Report Posted February 2, 2009 I'm on a huge Orson Welles kick right now--reading Simon Callow's THE ROAD TO XANADU, volume 1 of his Welles bio, and just ordered HELLO, AMERICANS (volume 2) as well as Jim Naremore's THE MAGIC WORLD OF ORSON WELLES. (Naremore teaches here at IU; he wrote a very good book on film noir as well, and he's actually in a Night Lights program I did several years ago about jazz and postwar French cinema.) I've read both those Naremore books. He's a solid writer; the title of the Welles book, by the way, was foisted on him by the publisher. Quote
BruceH Posted February 3, 2009 Report Posted February 3, 2009 Isaac Asimov, The Complete Stories, Vol 1. "It's Such A Beautiful Day" Quote
poetrylover3 Posted February 4, 2009 Report Posted February 4, 2009 I've finished The Man In The High Castle and am now re-reading (after what has to be 25+years) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I'm juggling with it -a picaresque novel Johnny One-Eye, A Tale of the American Revolution by Jerome Charyn and -my winter science fix-A Short History of Nearly Everything in my continuing struggle to become scientifically literate-yes that was me the Biology teacher caught snoring when the lights went down and the overhead projector snapped on. When I retire from school teaching, I definitely plan to study biology, physics and more history, just for the sheer pleasure found in exercising my curiosity. Quote
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