A successor to A Model TrILBY; or, What Are You Reading Now, Winter 2016/17
― And Run Into It And Blecch It (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 April 2017 16:52 (seven years ago) link
Carver - Cathedral
and
Queneau - Exercises in Style
― flopson, Sunday, 2 April 2017 17:01 (seven years ago) link
To continue the Cather discussion started by Aimless: yes, I don't doubt the Pulitzer thought OFO's topicality put it over. Their picks in the '20s were schizophrenic: accommodating modernity but only after taking a couple lateral steps. Wharton's The Age of Innocence beat Main Street because Lewis' novel shocked too many voters; in 2017 I suspect most of us think the crew made the right decision regardless.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 2 April 2017 17:07 (seven years ago) link
I finished Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus' essential Landslide for a paper I'm writing and have moved on to Pynchon's Bleeding Edge
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 2 April 2017 17:08 (seven years ago) link
(Now regretting not using a colon or at least a semicolon in thread title)
― And Run Into It And Blecch It (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 April 2017 18:29 (seven years ago) link
Steve Pinker's Language Instinct. I read this 15 or so years ago but I feel I've learned a whole bunch since then so giving it another go. I find him kinda hectoring but I can't argue with the clarity (albeit some of the deeper grammar modelling is a bit beyond me). Is it still considered canonical or is there something else I should be reading?
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Sunday, 2 April 2017 18:50 (seven years ago) link
Spending a lotof time looking through a book of cooking ingredients since getting into putting more Asian etc greens in stir fries recently.
Errornomics by Joseph Hallinan book on making mistakes. PIcked this up in a charity shop a while back and it's come to the top of the pile for bog books. I think I finished something I was just reading also have been shuffling things around since i finally got my sower rail done after way too long and had to have things outof there while it was done.
Think i'm still mainly reading Surviving by Henry Green as a transport book but since bus strike is on not sitting on buses to read it.
― Stevolende, Sunday, 2 April 2017 21:07 (seven years ago) link
love this book.
― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Sunday, 2 April 2017 23:22 (seven years ago) link
^^ It's great. Have you seen the comic it inspired, which illustrates in 99 different comic styles a man working at his desk while his wife calls to him from the next room? http://mattmadden.com/comics/99x/
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Monday, 3 April 2017 02:29 (seven years ago) link
Am currently reading Denton Welch: Maiden Voyage, which is marvellous, Can't believe he was only in his 20s when he wrote it, the precocious fucker.
I've been meaning to read Queneau's Le Chiendent/BarkTree/Witch Grass since it turned up in Rowland S Howard's Portrait of The Artist as a Consumer in the early 80s. Did start it as Bark Tree I think in the mid 80s but didn't finish it. Assume Witch Grass is a totally different translation.Georges Perec is also good if you're into weird French stuff.
― Stevolende, Monday, 3 April 2017 07:02 (seven years ago) link
Zazie dans le metro is also good by Queneau.
― Stevolende, Monday, 3 April 2017 07:04 (seven years ago) link
I love Denton Welch and totally agree on the precocious fucker call. He strikes me as one of those characters who were 'borrowed from death'. Recommend the journals if you can get hold of the them.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Monday, 3 April 2017 07:07 (seven years ago) link
need to read the welch collection i have, maybe after the compton-burnett
xpost: think witch grass also uses the barbara wright translation (not sure if there are any others)
― no lime tangier, Monday, 3 April 2017 07:11 (seven years ago) link
Im reading and enjoying David Byrne's "How Music Works"
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Monday, 3 April 2017 10:05 (seven years ago) link
just finished the ginger man - gotta say i'm glad it's over. i really enjoyed parts of it but dunno if it has aged very well - the main character is such a terrible prat, which is one thing, and the violence against women and general misogyny is another, but also it's sort of unbelievable and a bit false to me. like this character is supposed to be american, behaves like a posh british person, but the author imbues him with some form of irishness too. it might be possible to balance all these things but it comes across extremely confused. it's also just so cartoonish. there's no real centre to the story and the character's journey doesn't make much sense. there are far better books in the irish wastrel pantheon.
next up i'll prob read these:
knausgaard 2 - a man in love - going on holiday next week so might as well go back to this trashy/easy world. the cover is so embarrassing i'm almost unwilling to read it in public.mark o'connell - to be a machine - irish guy has a book about transhumanism - sounds interesting.richard yates - liars in love - read his other collection last year so figure i'll like this
― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Monday, 3 April 2017 10:17 (seven years ago) link
Is the Byrne book any good? It's sitting on my shelf unread.
― Eallach mhór an duine leisg (dowd), Monday, 3 April 2017 11:07 (seven years ago) link
Yeah I'm really enjoying it, a lot of stuff about how tech and context shapes music (slightly ilm-ish at times even!) and a fair bit concerning the creative process behind his own music.
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Monday, 3 April 2017 12:25 (seven years ago) link
Reading more Lispector atm. Thinking about getting some Katherine Mansfield, I've never read her. Any ILB recommendations for best collection?
I was a bit disappointed by Exercises in Style when I first read it, while still enjoying it a lot. I think my thing is that while I've always loved the ideas of Oulipo, only Perec really managed to create something that was both a fun formalist experiment AND a world that resonated with me.
― emil.y, Monday, 3 April 2017 14:13 (seven years ago) link
Mansfield's Bliss and The Garden Party, the second and third of the three collections she published during her lifetime, have most of her strongest writing, as far as I can tell.
― one way street, Monday, 3 April 2017 17:09 (seven years ago) link
On the most recent What Are You Reading or maybe the one before that, I got cranked up about Stories---Vintage trade pb, ISBN 0-679-73374-4, intro by Jeffrey Meyers (not always perceptive, I say): 28 stories, from early to very late (and the first, though written in 1908, wasn't published 'til 1924, the year after her death). The POV and voice are always there, even in the apprentice work, and despite some occasionally obvious influences (incl. magazine editors) along the way, and when she really gets going (somewhere in every selection and all of quite a few), omg.
― dow, Monday, 3 April 2017 17:41 (seven years ago) link
Agreed on Exercises in Styles and almost all Queneau and Oulipo. Diverting, kinda slight..
Perec is often great (Species of Spaces collection above everthing else) and I want to engage with his work again. I'd add Harry Mathews to that.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 3 April 2017 17:50 (seven years ago) link
Ah yes, I've been meaning to ask: anyone have any particular Mathews recommendations? Interested in actually being able to read some Oulipo in the original language.
(Although I must say the translation of e.g. <i>Life a User's Manual</i> (which I read recently and looooved) seemed to me to have survived translation impressively well, based on my occasional cross-referring to the original (which I certainly don't have enough French to properly read).)
― anatol_merklich, Wednesday, 5 April 2017 23:51 (seven years ago) link
gnah bbcode sorry
would agree with the evaluation of bliss/the garden party above. the penguin collected km should be easy to find and has her three original volumes + some posthumous collections.
about a third of the way into ivy compton-burnett's a family & a fortune: lots of (so far) unspoken familial tension. most struck by her remarkable ability to conjure up quite vivid images with little more than dialogue.
― no lime tangier, Thursday, 6 April 2017 04:56 (seven years ago) link
Haven't posted in a bit since fitfully starting to a few months ago. Since my last post, I've read and would warmly recommend: Rachel Cusk's Transit, Coetzee's Scenes from Provincial Life, Victor Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary, and Tim Lawrence's history of NYC nightlife/music in the early 1980s (Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor).
Up next for me: Paul Beatty's Sellout, Kamel Daouad's Merseult Investigation, and - after months on hold from my library and my forgetting about it until it arrived last week - Chris Kraus' I Love Dick (which I'd never gotten around to despite wanting to - the (pretty good) Amazon TV pilot of the adaptation renewed my interest in it)).
Anyone read Sellout and have any thoughts on it? I was initially skeptical but have since come around and am looking forward to reading it.
― Federico Boswarlos, Thursday, 6 April 2017 15:27 (seven years ago) link
The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake has proved to be quite good. It is well-researched, well-structured, clearly written, level-headed, and knows just how much detail is enough for an intelligent lay reader to follow the evidence and get the point, without feeling the need to exhaustively prove its case to academic historians or specialists. The author is not a gifted stylist, such as Barbara Tuchman, but more than good enough to keep my interest at a simmer. Good stuff.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Thursday, 6 April 2017 17:54 (seven years ago) link
Reading Red Shift by Alan Garner. I wasn't sure at first - too dialogue heavy, too riddled with elisions - but it's grown on me. Kitchen sink landscape mysticism? It might just catch on.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 6 April 2017 21:08 (seven years ago) link
This is a bit Books 101, but I read The Dead today, my first ever Joyce, without knowing anything about the story, or about Joyce really.
Anyway - so much to love - not just the ending (which I gather is famous) but the party section too, which reminded me of a showoffy long take from a Welles movie, and the tension of the cab home, and the constant dread even though the story itself seems quite joyous and full of light incident. I feel like I'll be able to read it every ten years for the rest of my life and feel something different every time.
― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 6 April 2017 21:56 (seven years ago) link
You might like John Huston's film version too. I came to Dubliners very late, about 40 years after reading A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man and Ulysses in school, and was bowled over. I know some people who don't care for any of his others, but love these early stories. Not me, but---wow. And don't worry about Books 101; several of us are still catching up. As mentioned upthread, I recently/finally enjoyed Swann's Way (Lydia Davis translation), and only in part because I realized how much Swann and I had in common, a while back---but today I was relieved to get to the end of "At Mme. Swann's", midway through In The Shadow of Young Girls In Flower (James Grieve translation). To paraphrase Grieve's intro, Proust will show you some wonderful scenes, but before, during and instead of showing, he will tell and tell and tell and fucking tell some more, incl. some of the most obvious and/or boring talking points, Didn't mind in the amazing first volume, but here it can be a chore. But I do think he's left me to infer, right or wrong, that the climatic, rhapsodic odes to Odette as a genius of dress, which I found hard to swallow, given her cheesy tastes in Swann's Way, can be taken as the narrator cheering himself up after the long autopsy of "the slow painful suicide" of his earlier romantic self-image---the self that blew any chance at happiness with Gilberte, whether there really was or could have been one or not.
― dow, Friday, 7 April 2017 01:09 (seven years ago) link
Although I didn't mind it all that much, mainly compared to Swann's Way: Monsieur P.'s got me spoiled, "cossetted" as Grieve says of him (lots of complaints, but you didn't get drafted, JG).
― dow, Friday, 7 April 2017 01:27 (seven years ago) link
Also wondering about The Sellout.
Started Jane Rawson's 'From the Wreck', about a shipwrecked Australian man in the 1850s who is haunted for the rest of his life by a transdimensional shapesifting cephalopod, and which is really good.
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Friday, 7 April 2017 02:16 (seven years ago) link
I find 'The Dead' more moving than I can account for - especially the closing few paragraphs. I can access most of it from memory, and it's like a piece of music in some regards. So much great poetry and poetic truth but the 'falling faintly/faintly falling' is enough to reduce me to tears.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Friday, 7 April 2017 18:33 (seven years ago) link
^^^^^
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Saturday, 8 April 2017 00:34 (seven years ago) link
Play with Christopher Walken was good too and they sang at the end.
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 April 2017 00:49 (seven years ago) link
In other words, ^thirded
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 April 2017 00:57 (seven years ago) link
What did they sing?
― dow, Saturday, 8 April 2017 01:35 (seven years ago) link
The last sentence of the story, iirc
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 April 2017 01:54 (seven years ago) link
Agree with Chuck Tatum and others about 'The Dead'!
still reading Johnny Marr: SET THE BOY FREE.They are making the first LP.
It inspired me to record an instrumental version of 'this charming man' with one take per guitar.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 8 April 2017 23:08 (seven years ago) link
THE BOG OF ALLEN
― mark s, Saturday, 8 April 2017 23:33 (seven years ago) link
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski
The Huston adaptation finds an analog with the music in Angelica Huston's monologue about the delicate boy.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 9 April 2017 00:08 (seven years ago) link
Mark S did you know that one of Flann O'Brien's funniest early writings is a mock play called THE BOG OF ALLEN ?
It stars a character called ALLEN BOG.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 9 April 2017 10:10 (seven years ago) link
I've been reading Malgudi Days, a set of short stories by R. K. Narayan, mostly by the light of an LED headlamp, because we've been out of power for the past 3 days. Just got electricity back about an hour ago. There was a windstorm on Friday.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Sunday, 9 April 2017 19:16 (seven years ago) link
Did you like it? I'm a big Narayan fan. Downloaded a whole bunch of Malgudi episodes from the Indian 1980s TV series a while back, but have never actually got around to watching them yet.
On book 2 of Wolfhound Empire trilogy, which retains its excellence. People who like Alan Furst or Dave Hutchinson and who can handle a bit of fantasy will like this, i think.
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Monday, 10 April 2017 00:13 (seven years ago) link
I love Narayan, have a bunch of his stuff. His American tour diary is v interesting.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 10 April 2017 00:16 (seven years ago) link
The first 2/3 of Malgudi Days is excerpted from two early short story collections. These stories all tend to be quite short, about 5 pages each, could more accurately be described as brief tales or vignettes than fully-developed stories. Their interest for me lay chiefly in their capturing some small slice of Indian life drawn almost exclusively from the poor or petty middle class, which a contemporary Indian would have instinctively associated with particular castes, but I am not versed enough in the culture to make such distinctions. The latter third seems to contain longer stories of a dozen of more pages, but I haven't read these, yet.
imo, Narayan's great strength is his ability to capture India's bewildering diversity of people and folkways in extremely simple and convincing microcosms. These stories display that strength. It's like a slide show but in full color and 3-D, full of lively detail.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Monday, 10 April 2017 05:21 (seven years ago) link
Should I read Mistry's Such a Long Journey?
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 10 April 2017 10:19 (seven years ago) link
Reading a trashy paperback I picked up ages ago: Forbbiden Lovers, about lesbianism during the classic Hollywood era. It's a total mess, making no real distinctions between relationships that have actual documentation backing them up, shady rumor based stuff and stars who happened to have a strong gay following (an interesting topic in its own right, of course). It's padded out with lists of gay women on Broadway and 1920's Paris, and chapters on stuff more unrelated still - Fatty Arbuckle's scandal, for one. Also jumps back and forth in time to a frustrating degree - the "Garbo talks!" moment is mentioned after, like, chapters on her talkie career. Still, the first few chapters, which get very detailed about the love triangle between Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and screenwriter/author Mercedes De Acosta, are written with empathy and avoid trying to make things seem sleazy or lurid - could make for a good episode of You Must Remember This.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 10 April 2017 11:50 (seven years ago) link
and - after months on hold from my library and my forgetting about it until it arrived last week - Chris Kraus' I Love Dick
Interested to hear what you think! I read that recently and found it both fascinating and irritating - reading GoodReads reviews of it made me more puzzled still.
I got the BFI DVD of the TV version of this and it comes with an extra on Garner that makes him seem hyper-pretentious in a not entirely unlikeable way.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 10 April 2017 11:52 (seven years ago) link
Ah yes, I've been meaning to ask: anyone have any particular Mathews recommendations?
There is a thread btw.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 10 April 2017 20:47 (seven years ago) link
i love empson tho i have not read COMPLEX WORDS
― mark s, Saturday, 1 July 2017 19:10 (six years ago) link
COMPLEX WORDS, COM-PLEX WORRDS, CMPLX WRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-DSAH
― dow, Saturday, 1 July 2017 21:08 (six years ago) link
I finished Michael Wood's ON EMPSON.
The opening chapter or so is often stunningly interesting and droll. Then it comes and goes a bit. But it's Michael Wood so it's better, and funnier, than almost anyone else would be.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 2 July 2017 14:17 (six years ago) link
Back to Flann O'Brien's drama - still on his first play Faustus Kelly. Will read the rest also.
remy de gourmont - angels of perversitymirbeau - the torture gardencendrars - moravagineapollinaire - the poet assassinated
― no lime tangier, Monday, 3 July 2017 06:16 (six years ago) link
had only read some of gourmont's criticism prior to the story collection & wasn't that impressed by it (theophile gautier did that kind of thing better!), still interested in reading the novel of his that arthur ransome translated though.
― no lime tangier, Monday, 3 July 2017 06:23 (six years ago) link
Jean De Florette, Pagnol. I recently watched, and very much enjoyed, the Yves Robert adaptations of Pagnol's memoirs so I'm happy to dive deeper.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 3 July 2017 08:11 (six years ago) link
I've now read all the Simenon Maigret novels from 1931 up to 1950, and the absence of any mention of WW2 is quite odd
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Monday, 3 July 2017 11:11 (six years ago) link
The way my (German) parents talked about their parent's generation a lot of people just wanted to forget about the era as quickly as possible, perhaps in France as well? (though that doesn't explain lack of mentions in the 30's volumes).
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 3 July 2017 11:23 (six years ago) link
Simenon was accused of collaboration after the war, so maybe he wanted to keep quiet about everything. Also, he didn't publish any Maigrets between '34 and '42, and then only a few for the remainder of the war.
― sacral intercourse conducive to vegetal luxuriance (askance johnson), Monday, 3 July 2017 13:56 (six years ago) link
2/3rds of the way through Mason and Dixon
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 3 July 2017 20:56 (six years ago) link
Haven't read it, but I've seen favorable review of Simenon's The Train, about a little guy faced with moral conundrums in Vichy France---maybe also self-justification, like On The Waterfront---?
― dow, Monday, 3 July 2017 23:47 (six years ago) link
Reminds me, I recently skimmed NYTimes veteran Alan Riding's And The Show Went On, about Vichy Paris (lots of research, incl. interviews of some who were there, now octo- and nonogenerians): some complex situations etc. of too-visible culture workers, big names and others.
― dow, Monday, 3 July 2017 23:54 (six years ago) link
Ive got patrick marnham's simenon bio. Should actually read it. I just need to read these other 20 books by simenon himself first.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Tuesday, 4 July 2017 00:20 (six years ago) link
^ has his priorities straight
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 4 July 2017 00:58 (six years ago) link
Never get into Simenon myself. What am I missing?
― Guidonian Handsworth Revolution (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 4 July 2017 01:31 (six years ago) link
Got
economy of phrase, plot and detail. good at the psychology of ordinary people.
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 4 July 2017 03:29 (six years ago) link
Dirty Snow might be Simenon's WW2 novel - one of his best romans durs. Never read any of his Maigret novels but read plenty of his romans durs and they are excellent, brutal, existentialist works not really very far from Camus's L'Etranger.
― Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, 4 July 2017 03:51 (six years ago) link
Eric Foner - A Short History of Reconstruction
― flopson, Tuesday, 4 July 2017 04:30 (six years ago) link
woke up in the night so decided to read something comfortingly easy. Turned to James Wood, THE FUN STUFF and reread essays on Hollinghurst and Orwell.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 4 July 2017 07:55 (six years ago) link
I finished Angels on Toast, Dawn Powell, last night. It's a strange mix of qualities I have a hard time putting my finger on. The most prominent quality is satire, it is not in a pure form. It is certainly not a comedy, even if it has a few comic moments. It has flashes of wit, but they are not allowed the front of the stage. I'm not sure I'll come to any more solid conclusions about it or about Powell, unless I read several more of her works in close succession.
I haven't decided my next book, but I am eyeballing The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton. I read it originally a couple of decades ago and may revisit it. He is easily the most sympathetic modern Christian author I've encountered.
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 4 July 2017 16:32 (six years ago) link
Yeah, if trying to get into Simenon, go for the non-Maigret stuff. Dirty Snow, Red Lights, Striptease, Three Rooms in Manhattan all good starting places.
Now on Frank Tuohy: The Ice Saints, about a woman trying to get her married-to-a-Pole sister/nephew out of 1960s Poland; low-key, insightful and very good on the dreariness of day-to-day life behind the Iron Curtain.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Wednesday, 5 July 2017 01:54 (six years ago) link
My favorite Dawn Powell is A Time to Be Born, but I suspect any Powell novel you read first will be a favorite.
I just finished a boring John Tyler bio and finished these things.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 July 2017 01:59 (six years ago) link
I did read The Locusts Have No King about two years ago. Enjoyed it. Not enough to ignite an ardent fandom in me.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 5 July 2017 03:03 (six years ago) link
Turns out I read it back in 2012.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 5 July 2017 03:15 (six years ago) link
Reading a battered copy of Huysmans "against nature"
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Wednesday, 5 July 2017 12:42 (six years ago) link
Finished Middlemarch which I loved and happy to note that I made good on my post upthread about revisiting Bolano (Last Evenings on Earth and Distant Star). I hope to turn to The Savage Detectives soon and am also interested in reading Enrique Vila-Matas as well. Has anyone read Bartleby & Co.?
― Federico Boswarlos, Wednesday, 5 July 2017 20:33 (six years ago) link
It's really good. Very congenial and clever and bookish.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Thursday, 6 July 2017 03:30 (six years ago) link
Seconded
― Guidonian Handsworth Revolution (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 6 July 2017 10:48 (six years ago) link
All I remember is finding it enjoyable rather than mind-blowing but I kept it (rather than reading it and moving it on); that's a good sign.
I am reading "All My Puny Sorrows" by Miriam Toews.
― Tim, Thursday, 6 July 2017 10:50 (six years ago) link
I've started The Seven Storey Mountain. It is most definitely the work of a new convert, a young man hugely grateful to have found his vocation in monasticism. He is almost painfully careful to frame his entire life story as a justification of Catholic doctrine and to emphasize the perfect sincerity of his new found faith.
Having read other, later works by Merton, it is interesting to see how much he deepened his approach to spirituality as he passed more decades as a cloistered monk. His abbott must have been a fine man, who understood how Merton differed from most of the monks he oversaw, and who allowed Merton to flourish as a scholar of the contemplative traditions, including Buddhism and Taoism.
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, 6 July 2017 16:13 (six years ago) link
Miriam Toews: Her 1st, 3rd, and every odd-numbered book seem to be really good, her even-numbered books all seem to be duds. Very odd.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Friday, 7 July 2017 02:08 (six years ago) link
David M. Friedman - Wilde in AmericaColm Toibin - House of Names
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 July 2017 02:40 (six years ago) link
How is the Toibin? The reviews make it sound nothing like Brooklyn or Nora Webster.
― some sad trombone Twilight Zone shit (cryptosicko), Friday, 7 July 2017 04:08 (six years ago) link
Based on thr Oresteia!
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 July 2017 10:44 (six years ago) link
Thought that was posted on the wrong thread for a second
― Guidonian Handsworth Revolution (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 7 July 2017 11:02 (six years ago) link
I could never bring myself to read a Colm Toibin book. They sound so dreary
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Friday, 7 July 2017 15:33 (six years ago) link
Ha, me neither. Couldn't even read the one(s) he wrote under a pseudonym.
― Under Heaviside Manners (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 7 July 2017 18:15 (six years ago) link
Oh sorry. Mixing him up with John Banville.
― Under Heaviside Manners (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 7 July 2017 18:28 (six years ago) link
I think this new Toibin will indeed be dreary.
He is not the most exciting writer, in any way.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 8 July 2017 08:29 (six years ago) link
I started SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY, after all these years owning it.
I understand why people love eccentric amusing Empson, but so far this book is giving me very little of that. It seems technical in an I.A. Richards sense. I am finding it very dense and not entertaining, not always really comprehensible.
I have an idea that later Empson is easier. I read some of SOME VERSIONS OF PASTORAL years ago - didn't really get it but it does seem less technical.
But I think my big problem with Empson is -- though he offers lots of local insights and fun, I just don't understand his main ideas. His sense of 'pastoral' has never intuitively made any sense to me, and his senses of ambiguity don't seem to click for me either.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 8 July 2017 08:33 (six years ago) link
Toibin is one of my favorite writers, particularly when he writes short fiction.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 8 July 2017 13:55 (six years ago) link
Banville is dreary, yeah.
> John Darnielle, Universal Harvester
Kazuo Ishiguro likes it:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/08/hot-books-summer-reads-holiday-writers-recommend
― koogs, Saturday, 8 July 2017 18:09 (six years ago) link
Ishiguro OTM.
― some sad trombone Twilight Zone shit (cryptosicko), Saturday, 8 July 2017 18:16 (six years ago) link
Terry Pratchett Pyramids not sure if first 11 pages of this are missing or not. Library copy that I've had out for months and am only just getting around to reading.Events in the Assassins guild college.
Memoirs of A Geezer Jah Wobblethink I mainly picked this up because of teh p.I.L. connections but am getting interested in his solo stuff, probably should have been already.
The Philosopher's Stone Peter Marshallpicked this up from a sale years ago. Got about 100 pages into it then started reading something else.Thought I'd give it another shot.History of the transforming object, starts with an ancient Chinese tomb being opened and the lady inside still being perfectly preserved. he then looks at similar beliefs across the globe and across history ancient to modern going through alchemy etc etc.Should be really interesting.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 8 July 2017 18:29 (six years ago) link
Wholly without warrant or authorization, I have initiated a new WAYR thread: Heavens! Look at the Time: What Are You Reading During This Summer of 2017?.
I am hoping ILB will soon occupy it, like a hermit crab seeking a new shell, and adorn it with our usual literate observations.
― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 8 July 2017 18:31 (six years ago) link
And for the people who use www.ilxor.com, not those heathens who use just ilxor.com
Heavens! Look at the Time: What Are You Reading During This Summer of 2017?
― koogs, Saturday, 8 July 2017 21:37 (six years ago) link
And for the people who use www.ilxor.com, not those heathens who use just ilxor.comHeavens! Look at the Time: What Are You Reading During This Summer of 2017?🕸
Heavens! Look at the Time: What Are You Reading During This Summer of 2017?🕸
― Tim, Saturday, 8 July 2017 22:44 (six years ago) link