bravo, franzen!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/books/review/Franzen-t.html?pagewanted=1&hpw
― scott seward, Sunday, 6 June 2010 13:58 (thirteen years ago) link
I started reading this book but had to return it because my library privs are revoked for the summer. I will start again next fall! (if I remember)
― denvil crowe (dyao), Sunday, 6 June 2010 13:59 (thirteen years ago) link
but maybe it will be a hot book since franzen is repping for it and I won't be able to get it again. I knew I should have pressed on the gas and tried to finish it.
― denvil crowe (dyao), Sunday, 6 June 2010 14:01 (thirteen years ago) link
It was a book that I always saw on my parent's bookshelves as a child, but I never read it. I even read (some of) the history of Comintern before it. I don't know why. Clearly I should give it a go. I'll pick it up when I go down in a couple of weeks' time.
― GamalielRatsey, Sunday, 6 June 2010 14:57 (thirteen years ago) link
good article! i remember reading his thing in the nyt abt alice munro aaaages ago and he was really otm there as well
― just sayin, Sunday, 6 June 2010 17:04 (thirteen years ago) link
i have a paperback copy of the man who loved children that probably came out in the late 90's? and it has a franzen blurb on the cover. maybe it came out in 2000. i can't remember. so, he's been raving for a while about the book. read a nice stead piece by angela carter in a book of her essays/reviews. didn't check if its online. really good too.
― scott seward, Sunday, 6 June 2010 19:03 (thirteen years ago) link
forwarded this link to a friend of mine who adores this nov. his reply:
Thank you. Good for JF! Some, if not all, of her other books certainly are hard work.
― Ward Fowler, Sunday, 6 June 2010 20:03 (thirteen years ago) link
Wish all the 'literature-is-dead-lit-crit-is-nonsense'guff was cut off from that review.
Otherwise, fine, would be up for reading it someday, even more because of ILB posters liking it.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 6 June 2010 21:32 (thirteen years ago) link
My coworker is reading it and she gives it a rave review. Am number two on the library wait list. Excited for a new old book.
― Virginia Plain, Friday, 11 June 2010 16:58 (thirteen years ago) link
I just picked up a copy of this today for $1, as a used paperback. Horrid cover. I look forward to reading it.
― Aimless, Friday, 11 June 2010 20:29 (thirteen years ago) link
i'm about a hundred pages into this, and i'm finding it to be kind of -- for lack of a better word -- unlikable? as amusing as the dialogue sometimes is, the dad's ravings are a chore to slog through, and i find louie kind of maddeningly unsympathetic. i realize this is probably a shallow response to a probably-great novel, but i don't know if i can bear to spend much more time with these characters. stead is a much better writer than franzen, but it somehow doesn't surprise me that he lists this among his favorite books.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 12 April 2012 00:03 (eleven years ago) link
It's a straaaaange novel. Stick with it, despite its longeurs.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 12 April 2012 00:04 (eleven years ago) link
I'm reading I'll Die Laughing.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 16 January 2014 02:52 (ten years ago) link
Haven't made it past 150 pages in this, been sitting on it half a year
― 龜, Thursday, 16 January 2014 03:01 (ten years ago) link
i went through a major stead phase ten or so years ago which came to an abrupt end with her 600 page novel about international banking, yikes.
other than cotters' england, i found the earlier the stead the better: salzburg tales, beauties and furies, the ocean of story collection (which was very mansfieldish). still haven't read a bunch of her america period novels i have sitting around, so...
― no lime tangier, Thursday, 16 January 2014 03:27 (ten years ago) link
Checked Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife) outta the library cuz why not
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 17 November 2021 16:31 (two years ago) link
"i went through a major stead phase ten or so years ago which came to an abrupt end with her 600 page novel about international banking, yikes."
Sounds intriguing to me.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 17 November 2021 16:52 (two years ago) link
^that would be house of all nations; comes at the world of international finance from a marxist perspective (presumably informed by her marxist/banker husband's work?) which i can sympathise with... was not so fond of its more melodramatic moments.
since that post i've read all her fiction with the exception of the posthumous novel. only real disappointments were the above novel & for love alone.
― no lime tangier, Thursday, 18 November 2021 03:38 (two years ago) link