One thing I like about NYRBs is that I discover quite a few new authors. What are some other books by NYRB authors that are worth reading (ones from different publishers)?

I'll have to give a bump to Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo (NYRB publishes his As a Man Grows Older). It's funny, well-written and I always enjoy good psychological novels. The book is the memoir of whiny, neurotic Zeno - written at the behest of his therapist - and follows his relationships, business problems and addiction to smoking.

Hmm DieFledermaus, what does it mean that I saw your description and thought it sounded like a fun book.

I have seen Zeno's Conscience on friend's bookshelves and in bookshop displays so I feel like it is one of those books that is making it's way to my reading list and you may have just tipped it onto the list.

DieFledermaus, actually As a Man Grows Older is Senilita`, not La Coscienza di Zeno.
Italo Svevo was a great writer, so one cannot go wrong with any of his books.

I recently finished The Fountain Overflows and enjoyed it quite a bit. The introduction mentioned that West had planned a trilogy about the same family and that the other two works, though unfinished, had been published. While I was nearing the end of the book, I was thinking that I could probably do with several hundred more pages of narrative, so I was hoping to track the rest of the trilogy down. Has anyone read the other books - This Real Night and Cousin Rosamund?

I have read Cousin Rosamund, but not This Real Night, even if it has been sitting on one of my shelves for a while.
I love Rebecca West's style and her way of constructing a story and depicting the characters.
The Fountain Overflows is, in my opinion, better than Cousin Rosamund.

I've read The Fountain Overflows and This Real Night (which is the second in the planned trilogy). Cousin Rosamund was left unfinished at Rebecca West's death. I liked The Fountain Overflows best because it was just such a revelation to me, but I also liked This Real Night. It was sadder, though. It shouldn't be difficult to find a copy (quite a few, starting at a penny, on Amazon!).

(crossposted at 75 book challenge)

A brooding novel, the sort with no vulgar action, The Devil in the Hills holds one rapt with the atmosphere it creates. It is a simple story of three students who fall in with a decadent older couple and end up spending time with them at their remote country estate. A gun appears early in the novel, and though it does go off once, the convulsive explosion with which one expects the novel to end, and to which a lesser novelist would have had recourse, never occurs. Instead it is the relationship among the friends, the descriptions of Italian city, village, and country life, the beauty of the prose (translated by D.D. Paige) that keeps one turning pages, and convinces one that the author, Cesare Pavese was, indeed, an artist of the first rank.

Message edited by its author, Aug 25, 2008, 3:32am.

Thank you for speaking so highly of one of my favourite authors, dcozy!
:-))

This was the first book I've read of Pavese's. What would you suggest I read next? The memoirs sound intriguing.

House on the hill and The Moon and the Bonfires. My favourite is La Bella Estate, but I don't know whether it has been translated into English.

I'm reading The Time of Indifference by Alberto Moravia - not an NYRB. I loved his two NYRBs, Contempt and Boredom. This one is published by Steerforth, and they have two others that are sitting on the pile, The Conformist and The Woman of Rome. What other Moravias would people recommend?

I read The Glass Bees by Ernst Jünger but I really preferred his Storm of Steel about his experiences in the trenches during WW I. I wouldn't mind reading more books by Jünger but I don't think anything else has been translated into English.

11> I have a novel by Moravia titled The Lie, but I haven't read it yet.

If you like John Collier's Fancies and Goodnights you should try his novel His Monkey Wife.

I just finished reading Nancy Mitford's translation of The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette. Set during the time of Henri II of France and full of court intrigue, the main story concerns what happens when the Princess of Cleves falls in love with a man who is not her husband. I can't comment on the accuracy of Mitford's translation, but once you get past the first ten or eleven pages of naming of names and explaining of relationships the book is a quick and enjoyable read.

>15 I've been slowly making my way through The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh—in which Mitford discusses translating the book, so I've been curious about it. You might want to check that out.

>16 Thanks, I'll look it up.

Does she also mention the play The Little Hut by Andre Roussin that she adapted? I have a copy of that, too.

W. W. Jacobs is primarily known for his story "The Monkey's Paw" (included in The Haunted Looking Glass). He also wrote stories set around the London Docks. I picked up a copy of his Salthaven off a sale table and found it very enjoyable. It's a humorous love story with the normal confusions and misunderstandings until the right people end up together.

Message edited by its author, Oct 31, 2009, 7:42am.

Just finished T. H. White's England Have My Bones. It's White's diary of a year (April 16, 1934 to March 3, 1935) spent hunting, fishing, learning to fly an airplane, playing darts, and keeping snakes. This is one of White's best books. I enjoyed it even though I'm not particularly fond of hunting.

I just finished T. H. White: A Biography by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It was a very good biography of a strange and interesting man. (I guess England doesn't have T. H. White's bones since he's buried in Athens.)