Now reading...

[Bright Moments]

Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Shadow Of The Wind

an EXCELLENT read!!!

i am reading "the life of pi" at the moment

[Joe]

Lewis Hyde, TRICKSTER MAKES THIS WORLD: MISCHIEF, MYTH AND ART

[BillF]

Samuel Johnson: The Struggle is a fascinating new narrative of Johnson's Life which includes information suppressed by Boswell and new revelations about the great man's masochism. His whole life was a struggle for balance and he was never satisfied with himself either. Johnson had never done enough and he lived in constant fear of damnation Unlike many, Johnson's wisdom was hard won and unflinching. He loved the poor and was a champion of the underdog. He despised cant. Socially, his poor hygiene and various tics, his wolfen voracity at dinner and his satirical bent made him unpopular among many, yet the force of his intellect and the goodness of his heart won him many loyal and devoted friends. If you enjoyed Boswell's Life of Johnson, this is an excellent supplement to experiencing one of the most fascinating men who ever lived.

Very interesting man, Johnson. I once read Boswell's Life of Johnson. I had it as a bedside book and it took me two years to get through! A single paragraph used to have the same effect as a blow to the head with a blunt instrument. A wonderful sleep inducer!

I have loved Johnson ever since picking up a collection of his letters at a book sale years ago. By chance, I opened the book to the page containing his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield - a masterful dismissal of someone much higher than Johnson on the social scale. I love Johnson, warts and all, and enjoyed Meyers' Samuel Johnson: The Struggle very much. It sent me back to Boswell's biography, which I'm reading for the second, and probably last time. I find it fascinating for the most part, but it puts in mind on Johnson's line about Paradise Lost: "No man ever wished it longer."

Yes, length was the problem - 1,200 pages in the 2 vol edition I read. Much closer to "a good read" were Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and his London Journal.

[porcy62]

Did anybody here read Stieg Larsson's trilogy?

"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl Who Played With Fire", "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest"/"Castles in the Sky", not sure about the last title.

I think only the first one is available in the US. Second one now out in UK. Don't know about the third one.

I've read the first two. I like them but I think because he died before they were published nobody edited them. (Or at least they read that way to me.)

My thought too, a wise editing would have made them better.

[ejp626]

Been reading academic things. Most not interesting, though Immigration and Integration in Urban Communities was pretty readable for an academic book. Anyway, now that the reviews are wrapping up, I can get back to some fiction.

I'm finally going to finish The Savage Detectives (a bit of a chore at this point -- I never really warmed up to it).

I also am dipping into A.N. Wilson's A Watch in the Night, which seems pretty good so far.

Not sure after those two. Most likely Gibson's Spook Country.

On the other hand, I've been on a bit of a Japanese kick, esp. the cinema. I just reread Soseki Natsume's Ten Nights of Dream and picked up used copies of his Kokoro and I Am a Cat. I might try to read one of those before too long.

Edited May 12, 2009 by ejp626

[sal]

"The Echo Maker" by Richard Powers

[paul secor]

Arthur Phillips novel, Prague

Early 20's American yups in Budapest in the very early 1990's. The only interesting character in the book is somewhat of a cliche - an elderly female jazz pianist/singer who tells some great stories. It turns out that her stories probably are lies, but they're good stories, nonetheless.

[jazzbo]

My favorite Frank Miller

[Matthew]

I've been able to borrow from a friend all seven volumes of Thomas Merton's journals. I'm on volume one: Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation The Journal of Thomas Merton, Volume 1: 1939-1941. Very interesting to see the bad and boring theology Merton writes before his entrance into the monestry, but not surprising. The first volume discloses a very disjointed person, who is striving to get the different aspects of his life together. On the plus side, he is very interested in the world and in the arts, and these topics are the most interesting part of volume one. Very daunting to see all the pages I have to wade through on these journals though, but I think it'll be worth it.

Edited May 23, 2009 by Matthew

[jlhoots]

Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge

I'm a sucker for prize winners.

Pretty good so far.

Edited May 24, 2009 by jlhoots

[Nate Dorward]

I'm finally going to finish The Savage Detectives (a bit of a chore at this point -- I never really warmed up to it).

Interesting to see--I've read 270pp of it & was debating whether to bother finishing. Uh, does it get better?

Instead, while I put that on the back burner, at the moment I've been reading The Laxdaela Saga & Maurice Scully's selected poems, Doing the Same in English. & just finished a pair of Charles Stross s.f. books, Iron Sunrise & Glasshouse. Both pretty good, though the ending of the latter has several problems, I think.

[Alexander]

"Great Expectations." It's always a treat to come back to Dickens!

[BillF]

Kazuo Ishiguro's new book, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

Very slight stuff as literature, but possibly of interest to board members as it concerns the working lives of musicians. (I've never heard that the author was a working musician, mind you.) Still, not many novels or short story collections contain references to Chet Baker, Sarah Vaughan, Clifford Brown, Joe Pass, Ben Webster, etc!

[jazzbo]

[ejp626]

I guess this really needs to go on a wish-list, but Murakami has a new novel - 1Q84 - that has just come out in Japan. No word on when or whether it will be translated, but I imagine it would be soon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/2...novel-published

[paul secor]

Over Breakfast:

An old New Yorker article on WBAI Radio Unnameable's Bob Fass

[ejp626]

I'm finally going to finish The Savage Detectives (a bit of a chore at this point -- I never really warmed up to it).

Interesting to see--I've read 270pp of it & was debating whether to bother finishing. Uh, does it get better?

Not for me. I've got about 100 pages to go, and it still seems pretty pointless. As I said, Fuller's Best of Jackson Payne does kind of the same thing but is shorter and far, far more interesting. I have actually gotten better about dropping novels that bore me, but I guess I will finish this one, then chuck it out (it literally is falling apart on me and other library copies are doing the same -- it wasn't a well-bound book, which is appropriate I guess though probably not intentional).

[jeffcrom]

Okay, I need some of you Brits to help me.

I love P.G. Wodehouse, and have almost everything he wrote. I just finished one of his early "school" novels, A Prefect's Uncle - not up to the level of his later stuff, but still entertaining. Except that it seems to be written in another language. I mean, the long descriptions of cricket matches leave me baffled, and I can accept that, but what am I to make of the sentence below? Our hero is about to be harassed by one of the masters (and yes, I know that's a teacher):

'Be firm, my moral pecker,' thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for the conflict.

?????

[BillF]

Okay, I need some of you Brits to help me.

I love P.G. Wodehouse, and have almost everything he wrote. I just finished one of his early "school" novels, A Prefect's Uncle - not up to the level of his later stuff, but still entertaining. Except that it seems to be written in another language. I mean, the long descriptions of cricket matches leave me baffled, and I can accept that, but what am I to make of the sentence below? Our hero is about to be harassed by one of the masters (and yes, I know that's a teacher):

'Be firm, my moral pecker,' thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for the conflict.

?????

"Pecker" means "courage" in Britain and has no penile connotations.

[BruceH]

Okay, I need some of you Brits to help me.

I love P.G. Wodehouse, and have almost everything he wrote. I just finished one of his early "school" novels, A Prefect's Uncle - not up to the level of his later stuff, but still entertaining. Except that it seems to be written in another language. I mean, the long descriptions of cricket matches leave me baffled, and I can accept that, but what am I to make of the sentence below? Our hero is about to be harassed by one of the masters (and yes, I know that's a teacher):

'Be firm, my moral pecker,' thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for the conflict.

?????

"Pecker" means "courage" in Britain and has no penile connotations.

Wow, so in England you could actually tell someone it was time to screw their pecker to the sticking-post?

[BillF]

Okay, I need some of you Brits to help me.

I love P.G. Wodehouse, and have almost everything he wrote. I just finished one of his early "school" novels, A Prefect's Uncle - not up to the level of his later stuff, but still entertaining. Except that it seems to be written in another language. I mean, the long descriptions of cricket matches leave me baffled, and I can accept that, but what am I to make of the sentence below? Our hero is about to be harassed by one of the masters (and yes, I know that's a teacher):

'Be firm, my moral pecker,' thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for the conflict.

?????

"Pecker" means "courage" in Britain and has no penile connotations.

Wow, so in England you could actually tell someone it was time to screw their pecker to the sticking-post?

Not quite. But "Keep your pecker up" is often heard!

[Matthew]

Almost done with volume two of Thomas Meton's journals Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and a Writer. About half of this volume appeared in Merton's book The Sign of Jonas. It is very interesting to see Merton struggling with so many aspects of his life; with silence, the other monks, himself, and his constant complaining; sometimes you just want to tell the guy to shut up. OTOH, it must have been difficult for Merton's superiors to figure out what to do with him, and he was overworked. I wonder how much the income producing aspect of Merton's life came into the decision making of his superiors. I wasn't like Merton was the cash cow, but he was one of the few monks there who could bring in extra money during a time when the money was needed. The writing and insights improve greatly after Merton's ordination, but you still can sense that his mind was struggling to break out on the confines of Gethsemane. Merton's journals are challenging, as I find myself struggling to come to grips with Merton.

PS (very late edit for a question): Does anyone know if there is an english translation of La Mort de Jean Madec by Brian Parain? I've googled, and nothing? My french could never get through it

Edited May 31, 2009 by Matthew

[Nate Dorward]

I'm finally going to finish The Savage Detectives (a bit of a chore at this point -- I never really warmed up to it).

Interesting to see--I've read 270pp of it & was debating whether to bother finishing. Uh, does it get better?

Not for me. I've got about 100 pages to go, and it still seems pretty pointless. As I said, Fuller's Best of Jackson Payne does kind of the same thing but is shorter and far, far more interesting. I have actually gotten better about dropping novels that bore me, but I guess I will finish this one, then chuck it out (it literally is falling apart on me and other library copies are doing the same -- it wasn't a well-bound book, which is appropriate I guess though probably not intentional).

Hm, well, I think, since I have less pagecount invested into it I will put it aside. I think that the real tip-off is that I recently reread the review of it by James Wood in the NY Times bookreview & realized that all the passages he singled out for praise had already taken place within the first 270pp or so. So it's not like I haven't already come across the stuff that is, supposedly, going to blow me away.

So: at the moment, the reading is

Borges' Fictions

The Laxdaela Saga

& the manuscript of a book of poems by Peter Larkin

& I guess I should mention two other "professional" instances of reading--

cris cheek's part: short life housing too, which I just published

a collection of essays on peace & protection in the Middle Ages edited by David Rollason & TB Lambert, which I edited for an academic press this week

[Jazzmoose]

Finished Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by John Gribbin. An excellent book, and now I'm only fifteen years behind on having a layman's understanding of quantum theory. Woohoo!

I'm now five pages into The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I've never read Roth before; can he actually keep this up? An amazing start!

[jlhoots]

Finished Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by John Gribbin. An excellent book, and now I'm only fifteen years behind on having a layman's understanding of quantum theory. Woohoo!

I'm now five pages into The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I've never read Roth before; can he actually keep this up? An amazing start!

Yes - he can.

Edited June 3, 2009 by jlhoots