Just started a short story collection (Bang Crunch) by a young Canuck author named Neil Smith. So far, finding it very impressive. Reminds me of a less graphic and more character-driven version of Chuck Palahniuk...

I'm reading Dostoyevskii's Demons. Must start today or tomorrow on Frank Norris' The Octopus for a group read. I volunteered to shepherd the group through this one (whatever that means). I've been wanting to read this in a group setting for a while now. Once that's done, I hope to read Henry James' The Bostonians for another group read. I have Genius in the Shadows, a biography of Leo Szilard, looming taller and taller. This book was given to me and while I want to read it, I feel almost compelled to do so soon, since I've had it for a while now.

Just got word about The Octopus: A Story of California by Frank Norris (same group read as Geneg) and the library just notified me that it's ready for pickup. I plan to start it today. I also have Foucault's Pendulum on hold as I have been meaning to read it forever. I just received books 9 and 10 of the Aubrey series by O'Brian to fill up my time. My TBR pile contains Lolita, The Savage Detectives and Le Desert. Sigh....

I'm still working on The Chateau by William Maxwell which seems to be largely unknown in the U.S. even though Maxwell is American. So far it is excellent and beautifully written.

I just started Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman for a group read. I'll need the support to get through it I'm sure!

I've started Gormenghast which, coming as it does directly after Great Expectations in my reading pile is an interesting contrast. Myself and my better half have started a bookswap principal that we each read what the other has just finished, meaning the pairing is completly accidental. It's going well, but man, is she going to haye The Goliath Bone

GORMENGHAST...God, I had a crack at that one 18-20 years ago. It utterly defeated me. Treated me with contempt and left me by the side of the road with a big sign in my hand, reading "I'm with Stoopid"...

Finished Rise and Fall of the Third Reich last night. Started Justice at Nuremberg by Robert E. Conot.

Nearly done with Book 1 of Brideshead Revisited by Waugh.

Rereading The Big Sleep for the first time in five or so years and loving it.

I'm currently working on Transition by Iain Banks. It's going pretty slowly at the moment, but it is holding my interest.

I'm on the same... Not his best.

GeoffWyss--I'm a big Chandler fan. I re-read most of the novels about two years ago. I think he's underrated.

I'm reading Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, Interview with the Vampire, and Cannibals and Kings.

I started Interview because I wanted to read it once more before I gave it away, and it's as good as I remember. I tried reading The Vampire Lestat and thought it was utter trash, so I never picked up any more Anne Rice. Anyone else feel the same?

>11 Pretty much anything after Interview with the Vampire (and even parts of Interview) is trash, mostly because Rice began to hate the process of editing after that one. *sigh*

#11 & #12

Couldn't agree more--Rice's first book had promise and then...

Too bad the new Iain Banks doesn't rock--I think he's been a slump for some time.

Just finished Wolf Hall. Now starting Byatt's The Children's Book.

This week I'll be starting A Dirty Job . This month I'm gonna purchase The Original Frankenstein which has been edited by Charles Robinson .

#14 Working your way through the Booker shortlist?

16--Yes. I do it when the shortlist interests me.

My review of Dan Abnett's Legion:

http://blogcritics.org/books/article/boo...

Finished Fatelessness, and it was incredible. The first half was disappointing, but the final half further cemented Kertesz in my mind as one of the great writers of the last Century.

Now time for 2666!

Her Fearful Symmetry; I enjoyed Time Traveler's Wife (though I plan never to see the movie) so I decided to go on and see how her new book was.

Still rocking out Ishiguro's Artist of the Floating World - Ishiguro's subtle as always, it seems.

To #20:

I'm interested in both our those books-- let us know what you think of them.

Yes, I'm also interested in Her Fearful Symmetry, though I'll probably be reading it myself soon. I caved and bought it even though I thought The Time Traveler's Wife was just ok (I liked it more at the time I read it). I saw weird twins and ghosts and stuff, and then found out it referenced David Tennant in the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace," and that pushed me over the edge.

About 60 pages into Jane Eyre and liking it about 3 million times more than Wuthering Heights. Charlotte's the girl for me.

HFS - so far - is pretty good, if not quite as good as Time Traveler's Wife. There are some very enjoyable characters (the ghost, for example) and it's a breeze to read. I'm about halfway through and I give it a general recommendation. We'll see how it wraps up...

to #23: Absolutely. Jane Eyre was great, but I detested Heights. Ugh.

The beginning of 2666 is incredible.

In between marathon bouts making music (and merry) on Garageband, I managed to read John Shirley's CITY COME A WALKIN'. William Gibson writes an admiring introduction and it's clear that he wants to give credit where credit is due--but CITY doesn't hold a candle to the best of Gibson's oeuvre. The book is over-written and there's an alarming frequency of unnecessary adverbs. Shirley tries to put the "punk" into cyberpunk but the pose is affected and his "street" characters seem pretty stock to me.

Give it **1/2 out of five stars.

I quite like Shirley's novels, but I'll admit City Come A-Walkin' is not his best. And he's churned out some right hackery in his time - The Black Hole of Carcosa springs to mind. But his short fiction is often very good - in Heatseeker and Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories.

the time traveler's wife along w/ Norrell/Strange (sic) were the books that i most expected to enjoy and left me sorely disappointed. In both cases friends whose tastes often coincide w/ mine had recommended the books strongly, hell, one had given me Norrell/Strange. In both cases the books came across as far to mannered and precious and i dropped both half way through. And I LIKE a fair number of pretty twee/precious books so it wasn't a genre problem per se. Mostly i didn't care for the writing.

Just finished Sanctuary by the Irish mystery writer Ken Bruen. Enjoyable noirish detective wonders why on earth an ex-Irish nun wants to see him (along w/ other worthies dead). He survives; worthies die. Modern Galway setting. The second in a longish sequence that i've enjoyed. Also finished Robt Charles Wilson's Spin a decent, hardly great, 2006 Hugo winner. A bit different from most "big theme" SF in that the best feature was the excellent characterization of both major and minor players. The SFictional conundrum that motivates the book (err, the end of the world being postponed by a mysterious alien time dilation "membrane" is sort of silly, despite being discussed at great length). All the same, i'll be inclined to see if our library has the sequels.

Here's another of my reading/watching roundups.

NORRELL disappointed me too--the book seemed intelligent, well-researched...but nothing ever seemed to happen, it just meandered on and on.

Wilson bores me, frankly, nice man but his novels all have the same feel to them, his tone has hardly changed since the first one I read of his years ago. He and Jack McDevitt are similar that way...

Plenty of things happened in Strange/Norrell - just in the last 100 pages of the book. When you've got that in an 800 page book, it doesn't tend to work out well.

Reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being - got it as part of a set with Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Foer's Everything is Illuminated. So far, it seems alright, but I'm about 10 pages in.

And the girlfriend has urged me to start Wicked... I've heard mixed things about Maguire. We'll see how it goes.

when I said Gormenghast earlier I meant Titus Groan...
It was grotesque, but marvellous.
On to Under The Net now, which has more than a touch of the Lucky Jims about it, which is no bad thing. Nothing like the heights Murdoch will late ascend though

Finished Brideshead Revisited One of the best books in the language, even if it is about dithering aristocrats. A kind of "Rules of the Game" set in acerbic Augustan prose.

Started reading Battle for the Abyss by Ben Counter. A little different than Waugh.

>33 So glad to hear you liked Brideshead! And, heck, "dithering aristocrats" are usually entertaining when placed at the tip of Waugh's pen, are they not?

Indeed, even though Waugh was a rampant striver who wanted nothing more than to be one of them. Still, his acid wit melded well with his elegiac paeans of inherited privilege.

At same time I heard "Brideshead", I'm also tackling Volume 1 of Das Kapital Puts things into perspective, that's for sure.

As a fan of the decorative arts, I loved his descriptions of the manor house and his disdain for Art Deco.

Just finished reading Her Fearful Symmetry, which is much different than The Time Traveler's Wife. It was great writing with interesting characters, but left me wanting more of what I fell in love with in TTTW.

#20 Chamberk (or anyone else who has read it or at least gotten halfway through so far): I have one question that I can't figure out. Please help me! I'll private msg you so as not to spoil it for anyone. Thanks.

Message edited by its author, Oct 7, 2009, 9:47pm.

2: Please report to the Octopus thread and give us some sage advice. Your followers are getting frustrated with this book.

35: I read Scoop a year or two ago and thought to myself, boy this guy is a funny writer. I need to put BR in my TBR list.

I just finished The Chateau by William Maxwell. I give it 4.5/5 stars. Here's a link to my review:

http://www.librarything.com/profile_revi...

I think I'll start Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima now. I haven't read any Mishima and seems like it will be a good thing to alternate with Life and Fate-- sufficiently different.

Recovering from Proust (in a good way) and making my way through The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James and Cien Anos de Soledad by Garcia Marquez. Anyone else using the Clifton Fadiman Lifetime Reading Plan?

>40

I am jburg. After 18+ years of formal American education, I've found I'm a literary illiterate. I thought 'ol Cliff was a good antidote.

I've recently started on The Makioka Sisters.

Finished T is for Trespass - fancied something light for a change. Now reading The Translator by Leila Aboulela.

Finished Her Fearful Symmetry, and found that I liked it a lot. While it took quite a while to get started - about 2/3 of the book is set-up and character development - the last third of the book was excellent. Not quite The Time Traveler's Wife but still definitely worth reading.

Going to start on Atwood's newest, The Year of the Flood, soon.

The Guardian was less than complimentary about Her Fearful Symmetry this weekend.

Here's my review of Iain Banks' Transition. It came to an unexpected conclusion...

Yesterday I read Mary Seacole's Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands; a nice, quick read, the autobiography of a black Jamiacan woman who served as a nurse first in Panama and then for the British in the Crimea in the 1850's. Historically interesting, but also very witty and at times touching.
Now, after I finish grading a stack of papers I'll be reading Lady Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters for class.

45: Very nice review, Ian. Trying to combine three genres into one is an interesting observation.

Bizarrely, I didn't have that in mind when I started the review. But as I put down my thoughts, and the evidence for them from the book, it came to me. And once I'd thought of it, the truer it felt.

Today, I started The Right to an Answer, an early book by Anthony Burgess (1960). So far, it's much more restrained than is usual for him.

I was sleepy last night and started my volume of The Chronicles of Narnia. Rather pleasant thus far, though for some reason I have the recurring urge to go start Only Revolutions while I'm in the middle of reading. Both volumes I bought yesterday, by the way; Only Revolutions was a bargain book which, in addition, had a 75% off sticker. I also got The Brooklyn Follies as a bargain plus 75% off book, along with some other less notable goodies. All hardcover, too.

Message edited by its author, Oct 12, 2009, 4:29pm.

#50: I'm interested in your opinion of Brooklyn Follies. Let us know how you like it.

>51 - I'll get started on it this week, then, and get back to you here.

Grab some early Auster sometime too--BROOKLYN FOLLIES is a good book but he HAS done better. And avoid TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORIUM like a petri dish of Ebola...

Message edited by its author, Oct 13, 2009, 10:20am.

>53 - I'm definitely planning on getting more Auster. If I ever pick up Travels in the Scriptorium, it won't be until I'm done with everything else.

This morning I started PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE, the film diary Michael MacLiammoir kept while playing Iago in Orson Welles' adaptation of OTHELLO. Fascinating thus far and I was stunned that our local library was able to snag it for me via the interlibrary loan process because you can't find copies of this book in North America without paying a very dear price for it.

I just started Inherent Vice on the advice of several people in this group. This is my first Pynchon, by the way. I just last spring read Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which was published much closer to the time period. I hope this one (IV) holds up to the authenticity of the other.

I started Inherent Vice but then lost it in a recent house move. It'll resurface this weekend when I get my bookshelves up.

Currently on a double-pronged assault on The Southern Gates of Arabia and Earthly Powers, on the recommendation of you 'orrible lot.

Bloomin' good, aint it?

Ahhh, EARTHLY POWERS...(Sigh).

If there's one book I wish I'd written...

56 and 57> I hope you enjoy Inherent Vice as much as I did. If you aren't really into the beginning, keep going because it gets better as the novel goes along.

a couple of books worth mentioning:train by Pete Dexter, and The Dylan Dog casefiles. "Train" is a spare, noir-ish take in Los Angeles just after World War II. The book interweaves the point of views of three protagonists: Lionel Walk aka Train, a black teenage golf prodigy at a time when there is no place for a black golfer to play; Norah, widowed and brutalized in a horrific crime; and the prime mover, Packard, a detached gambler-cop who enters their disparate worlds. Train, alert to appearances and nuances, catches Packard's essence early on, caddying for him @ an exclusive country club, calling him the "mile away man." While there are a multitude of subplots and characters that fit neatly into a relatively short book - the nub is Train becoming Packard's player/protege in high stakes golf matches. Of course an undercurrent of foreboding haunts the book - but it's as much a depiction of the intersection of the different social worlds that comprise LA circa 1953 as it is an effective noir novel.

more later - off to see "Bright Star (slow moving, but gorgeous in all regards - esp. the soundtrack. Lots of good poetry recitation!)

Finished The Translator, Leila Aboulela, about a woman of Sudanese extraction, an Arabic translator, living in Edinburgh, who falls in love with the university lecturer for whom she translates work. I enjoy lyrical prose - I love Durrell, after all - but far too often this felt gelid and over-sweetened, like some Arabic dessert.

Also finished Anthony Burgess' The Right to Answer, about an expat - so it would have appealed to me for that reason alone. Very funny, however. Full of Burgess's usual firework prose, although not quite so pyrotechnical as it is in later novels. Loved Burgess' comments on the Dutch: "...was met by fair plump men in blue who spoke English so well that, when they returned to Dutch among themselves, one grew afraid as in the presence of Ray Bradbury Martians, clever at quick human disguises" and, For Dutch, though it looks like a reasonable language, never really sounds like one: it is, as Gulliver implied, the right tongue for talking horses."

"the right tongue for talking horses"

Now, THAT'S very good. Sounds like an observation Bill Bryson would make.

Finished Battle for the Abyss by Ben Counter. Some good ship-to-ship space battles.

Started reading Journey to the End of the Night by Ferdinand Celine, everyone's favorite misanthrope. I'm only a few pages into it, but all I can say is: gutter poetry.

Reading Sacred Games, by Vikram Chandra. This is a DENSE detective story. When I say dense, I don't mean dumb, I mean packed with story and Indian vocabulary. It's a wonder. Its main local is Bombay, aka Mumbai, which I have acquired a taste for after I read the (literally) incredible Shantaram by a completely different author.

This has a lot about the Mumbai world and the lives of its inhabitants, much more than a normal detective story would give you.

I think that Sacred Games is going to be on my select list of favorite books. The author reminds me of Haruki Murakami in that he just has a complete knack of story-telling. The early story of a criminal and how he gets and disposes of his gold reminds me of the story in Wind-Up Bird Chronicle about the soldier out on the plain -- anyway, it stands alone as a great piece of literature all by itself, yet it's just part of a great book. I am handling Sacred Games specially, reading more slowly than usual, because I want to pay close attention to the many Indian references. There is a glossary at the end, and a cast of characters in the beginning. You can really dispense with either, since you can figure out almost everything in context, but I want to take my time.

I'm reading it on my Kindle...

>64 - I got Sacred Games some months ago for three or four dollars, hardcover. I'm glad to hear you like it, and hope I'll like it, too.

I won't be reading this anytime soon:

http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/2...

Just ick ...

Atwood's Year of the Flood. Pretty decent so far, though I liked the world she created in Oryx and Crake so I may be biased.

I read a review of the latest Atwood that indicated it takes awhile to really get going and only kicks in during the last 1/3 of the book. So you may have to be patient with it...

Today I'm starting The Hound of the Baskervilles . Nothing like a great mystery/thriller in October !

And that's nothing like a great mystery/thriller. Badum-tish.

Finished The Octopus and now starting on Foucault's Pendulum.

I was on Richard Brautigan (The Abortion), but now I'm back to Flann O'Brien -- The Hard Life.

It's the month of reading secondary novels, I guess....

Not too many people reading Brautigan these days. Another writer who's fallen by the wayside (a depressingly familiar refrain)...

Brautigan's last novel, An Unfortunate Woman, which was published posthumously, is actually quite good. But he had to get it published in France, because American publishers had written him off as an artifact of the hippie era.

Reading Martin Booth's biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, THE DOCTOR AND THE DETECTIVE. Interesting that this bio was written in 1997 and Conan Doyle's estate is STILL withholding correspondence from public scrutiny. You gotta wonder what skeletons are rattling around in that musty closet after all these years...

Just finished Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Coincidentally, it just got nominated for the National Book Award. Definitely worth a read especially if you remember NYC in the seventies.

Well, my hankering for Stephen King has finally bared fruit and needed to be plucked. That being said, I am nearly finished with Needful Things. I read it once when I was between the 8th and 9th grade. I did not care for it as much as I cared for the other books of King's I was reading at the time. However, now that i am older, a tad wiser, and still wrinkle free, I am loving it now. It's a very snarky book.

Nonetheless, I left the book in my downtown office and I am off site right now...

So, I started The Broom of the System since I was without Needful things. I must say, Wallace's fictional introduction is quite...well, it just seems like he did not like very many people back in those days.

especially if you remember NYC in the seventies.

That was a happening town and time period: mid-coke, pre-AIDS

Yesterday I bought - and pretty much read in its entirety - Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens who Don't Float. This is a very funny book that takes classic literature and writes it as Facebook profiles. I can't wait to share this with my students. The other teachers love it.

At home, I'm reading Inherent Vice, my first Pynchon. I've also dipped into Censoring an Iranian Love Story because I didn't have IV with me. Both are good so far.

Speaking of Pynchon, I picked up Gravity's Rainbow. Hoo boy, I've got my work set out for me.

Good luck...you're going to need it.

:: eyeballs his 35% read copy ::

80: Check out A Gravity's Rainbow Companion by Steven Weisenburger Might help make the work seem less imposing.

Just started an ARC of Don Gillmor's Kanata, based on the life of explorer David Thompson.

About a third of the way through DARK CARNIVAL (written by David Skal & Elias Savada), a biography of film director Tod Browning ("Dracula", "Freaks"). Not the most attractive subject (a drunk with a famously prickly personality) but it is an interesting look at the early days of the film biz...

Mariette in Ecstasy.
To do justice to "Mariette" and Ron Hansen's prose, i SHOULD take the time to write a short essay and paste it into a message. But - tempus fugit, and I'm not a writer, so impressions, jotted down in brief, after finishing will have to do.

The story follows the trails and trials of a 17 yr Catholic girl in upstate NY, the younger daughter of a doctor, who enters a convent of the Sisters of the Crucifixion (1906)- a smallish order who moved from France to the US late in the 19th C. Mariette's much older sister, Annie, is Mother Celine, the convent's prioress.

Beautiful, pious and Jesus obsessed, Mariette becomes disconcerting touchstone among the sisters. Many are taken with her humility, quiet, self-possession and, yes, physical beauty; others see her as prideful and dangerous - spiritually and morally. But as much as anything else, Mariette is a mirror in which the sisters see themselves - graced or distanced from their hopes and desires for holiness.

Whether by grace of god or hand of fraud, Mariette's fervor becomes manifest by stigmata. And the bulk of this short, elegant, novel is concerned with the social consequences of possible appearance of the holy where it's sought - but not expected. The factions, believers and skeptics, divide the order. The convent's priest as well as the prioress who replaces Mariette's sister after Annie's death from cancer, try to work through the heart of the matter in every regard.

While a decision as to what to DO w/ Mariette is reached - by the hand of her doctor father, who utterly resisted losing a second daughter to Christ - the truth of the matter remains problematic and untouched, I think. Now i must pick up Hansen's novelization of G.M. Hopkins' acceptance of his poetic vocation Exiles which Patty gave me for Christmas and which i left undone. Umm, reading a little about Hansen - Jesuit education, currently the Gerard Manley Hopkins Prof of Literature at Santa Clara U. I read Atticus a few weeks ago and while it was decent, i wasn't prepared for this as my followup Hansen book. He also wrote The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford which i haven't read - wasn't it turned into a film?
*story date corrected..
A verse by Lou Reed - from the VU's first lp kept playing (duh...in my head) as i read Mariette.

"'ll be your mirror,
Reflect what you are
In case you don't know.
I'll be the wind,
The rain and the sunset,
The light on your door
To show that you're home.

When you think the night has seen your mind,
That inside you're twisted and unkind,
Let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands 'cause I see you."

Message edited by its author, Oct 19, 2009, 6:47pm.

JESSE JAMES was turned into a film, with Brad Pitt. Not bad but overlong and boring at times.

I gave MARIETTE IN ECSTASY to Sherron last Christmas but she hasn't got to it yet. Can I also recommend Hansen's short story collection NEBRASKA? Brilliant...

i'm ready for Nebraska - he's really a terrific stylist. And doesn't take long to get to where he's going.

I read the Jesse James book but did not see the movie. The book was very good.

I found the movie fascinating. To make money The Coward Ford produced a stage show that had him killing James. And he would perform this act over and over. He was heroic in the stage show, but of course in the actual event he shot James in the back.

Last night started an early Jim Harrison novel, A GOOD DAY TO DIE. Lovely so far...

>85 - Thanks to this (and the book's status as bargain-priced), I've ordered Mariette in Ecstasy from Amazon.com, along with Laura Warholic, also bargain-priced. Both of 'em for seventeen or eighteen bucks...

Finished Jim Harrison's A GOOD DAY TO DIE. Wonderful. One of the finest books I've read by a great author. This guy and Robert Stone put their hearts and souls into everything they write. Literally couldn't put this one down...

I finished a good day to die a couple of weeks ago. Engrossing and the 'nam vet who's the prime mover of the action, if not the emotional center, was only a couple of steps beyond some of the guys i knew who'd been grunts in that war. In a peculiar way, a good day to die and mariette in ecstacy pair up well as a reading sequence. While they are wildly different in prose style, both are spare and remarkably intense and suspenseful.

Both were books I picked up @ the last P'boro library book sale.

I started Jacob Neusner's Foundations of Judaism.

how did 2666 go?

Finished Atwood's Year of the Flood; nice companion to Oryx and Crake but not quite as good.

Also finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which was... ok. Had its good moments, but the most sympathetic character was the dog.

Pondering what to read now. Still working my way thru Wicked and I'm gonna read through Ishiguro's Nocturnes. Might also pick up the old beat-up copy I have of The Ox-Bow Incident.

Think I'm going to start Richard Russo's new one, THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC today. Looking forward to it--along with Jim Harrison, Robert Stone and two or three others, he's one of my fave Yank writers...

Cliff, you've almost tempted me to take Harrison's memoir, Off to the Side, off the unread pile and read it. My most recent Harrison was his poetry collection In Search of Small Gods, which I really liked.

But instead, for now I'm reading Under the Volcano and The Last Shot by Leon Rooke.

Well, you can't go wrong with Harrison. Even when he's not up to his usual standards--THE ENGLISH MAJOR comes to mind--he's still miles beyond most fictioneers.

I'm about 100 pages into THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC and it's a winner. This one might end up devouring most of my day. And I won't begrudge that one bit...

#99: Ah, I'll be interested in your final verdict on the Russo. I heard some negative opinions of it, but they came from people whose reading tastes I don't really trust anyway. I'll let you be the deciding factor on whether I buy this in hardcover now or wait for the paperback!

I'm still reading Les Miserables--about 2/3 of the way through.

96:
I'm with you on Unbearable Lightness.... Even on the conceptual level, I still found it just okay.

95> I'm still working through it, but it's incredible so far.

The only bad review I know of re: THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC was a critique penned by some twit in NEWSWEEK who claimed the novel was "misogynistic" or some such tripe. Ah, don't you love it when a work is viewed through the narrow focus of gender/religion/politics/whatever?

The writing is clean, unadorned, the characters lovingly drawn, there's a sense of heartache throughout. My favorite line thus far:

"The attraction of cynicism was that it so often put you in the right, as if being right led directly to happiness."

The cynic in me goes "Ouch" but acknowledges a direct hit.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through and haven't been able to put the goddamn book down, despite pressing demands on my time. Hoping and praying it doesn't let me down in the end.

LES MIZ is one of those classic books I'm hoping to get to when I'm an old man on my front porch, blanket across my knees. My dream...my fantasy (in all likelihood)...

Finished the Russo book.

Wow.

Best novel of 2009 thus far. Nary a false note.

Buy it, borrow it, steal it, READ IT.

#103: A book critic for Newsweek. Lol. Glad to hear the glowing recommendation, I'll definitely get a copy.

We're both Russo fans (like me, you loved STRAIGHT MAN, if I'm recollecting correctly), so I feel quite safe giving THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC my highest recommendation.

You can always get it from the library for nuttin', right?

Yep, adore Straight Man--the semester's back in full swing and I have already taken it off my shelf once to browse through. :) I'll go ahead and shell out for Mr. Russo--he's earned it from me.

...and the authors of the world give you a curtsy of thanks for your consideration.

I think you have to be in a rut within your own life to enjoy Unbearable Lightness of Being... like I was, at the time.

But, then, I could relate the the philosophy of eternal return at the time.

Now, I just use eternal return for artistic reasons rather than a life application ;-)

Currently reading The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe. A few stories every week.

I dont think other people understand why I want to read classical literature, i've had many people come up to me and ask me if i am reading it for fun or for school. I tell them its for fun and they give me an odd look.

Lots of people think I am odd for reading it since Poe is known for his gruesome/creepy tales. Which then prompts me to correct them and show them several examples that are non-horror/creepy, such as The Adventures of Han's Pfall and The Balloon Hoax which are actually little sci fi stories.

=l

Is it so wrong that one of my goals in life is to read all the classics in the English Cannon?

Message edited by its author, Oct 25, 2009, 1:00pm.

Not if you hang out with this crowd.

Keep readin' those classics.

Started reading Sex Scandal America by David Rosen and American Gods by Neil Gaiman, in addition to the other 4 books I'm reading. My girlfriend is also reading "American Gods." Pretty good so far.

Sex Scandal America should be fun, since it is a scholarly account of American sex scandals. If the United States could somehow bottle our sexual hypocrisy and use it as a fuel source, our recession would be over in a few nanoseconds.

Message edited by its author, Oct 25, 2009, 1:25pm.

110> Shoot a cannon, read a canon!

>110
Don't worry, I get that, too. I just smile and go back to my book. They don't know what they're missing out on...

A couple chapters into Neuromancer. Don't normally read sci-fi, so it's a nice change.

I love Neuromancer It's actually part of a trilogy. Good stuff. Pattern Recognition is also highly recommended.

Completed SHELF MONKEY by Corey Redekop this afternoon. Recommended by someone in this group (was that YOU, ajsomerset?). Very funny, a real takedown of the Oprah-tization of books...but, even more than that, a viciously satirical indictment of the reading habits of the great unwashed. Don't forget, publishers wouldn't be releasing shite like Dan Brown, Nora Roberts, Candace Bushnell, limitless shelves of fat, stupid fantasy novels and "Star Trek" tie-ins if people weren't, y'know, buying them up by the bushel. I don't think there are many "average readers" in this group so perhaps we don't truly grasp just how mediocre or downright dumb the folks are who foist awful tomes to the top of the bestseller lists. WE may not be buying THE LOST SYMBOL but many, many people are, in excess of a million copies cold A DAY when the book first came out. This despite universally bad reviews that verged on literary assassinations.

I'm off topic.

The snobs of this group will truly appreciate the acidity of Redekop's vision. It's a fun read, razor sharp and nasty. From a small Canadian press (ECW) so I'm not certain of its availability elsewhere. But do search it out, it's worth the effort...

Yeah, that was me. I knew you'd like it.

>110

I have been reading those same stories to my kids (ages 6, 4, 4) to get in the mood for Halloween. Though I have to pause and explain in modern language often, they enjoy the stories. Their friends' parents think I am insane. Oh well....

#117: Thanks for the tip, mate. Redekop lives in Thompson, Manitoba and I've spent a number of summers in that area--visiting the in-laws, camping, canoeing. Gorgeous country. I ever run into that Redekop dude, I'll buy him a brew or two. I think we'd have A LOT to talk about...

Finished Brideshead Revsiited a few weeks back. Wow, what a wonderful book!

Here's my review for your reading pleasure:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com...

Waugh would be pleased...

The reviews have me curious about Jonathan Lethem's new book Chronic City, but I've never read any of his stuff. Anyone here have an opinion?

I like Lethem--one of those guys who can do mainstream and genre fic; not quite up to Michael Chabon caliber but in that ballpark.

Message edited by its author, Oct 25, 2009, 10:59pm.

>116 - It's downright indecent how many copies of The Lost Symbol I've seen running around my high school. Keep in mind, this means they must've read the books leading up to it...

Speaking of school and books, I find it sad how my fellow students fare in Literature & Writing class. Both for the literature section of the class and the writing section.

Still reading The Brooklyn Follies since I've been busy of late. I really love Auster's writing. Also still reading Les Misérables when I'm at school; barely made a dent in it, happily.

Edit: And, shame on me for forgetting, Cliff's stories when I'm on the computer and awake enough for them.

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 12:39am.

Gee, me, Auster and Vic Hugo. I feel....honoured.

Just finished The Island of the Fay , it was a philosophical musing/short-story. Interesting.

To be honest I didnt understand all of his philosophical wanderings in this piece.

And Poe apparently assumes that I am fluent in French (which I'm not)

http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-e...

There is a link to the story if anyone is interested in giving it a glance.

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 11:28am.

>124 I've read all of Dan Brown's books except The Lost Symbol It is my opinion that Dan Brown is highly over-rated.

At the same time, at least your classmates are reading (which is sort of a pathetic thing to have to say since everyone should realize the benefit of reading and read...)

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 11:26am.

120 yes, but did you read it on a full stomach? Waugh did id and didnt like it as much as you did

128: If you bothered to read my review, I also mentioned how some parts didn't translate well to today. Some sections are masterpieces of high camp / borderline kitsch.

Granted, writing a book about the pretty, pretty problems of pretty, pretty Anglo-Catholic aristocrats during the monumental devastation of World War 2 is probably not in the best taste. Equivalent to the re-make of Beverly Hills 90210 during the War on Terror ... still, it's art. Great Art is beyond time and place and the author's own dislike for it. In his later years, Tolstoy rejected his early works like War and Peace and Anna Karenina

But Waugh did a beautiful job of capturing a world that would obliterated in the aftermath of World War 2 and the ascendancy of the Labour Party

Trying to decide between Mistry's A Fine Balance and Wolfe's Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test.

110> I had never gotten so many odd looks for reading a book for pleasure as when I was reading White Noise.

However, I think it is because of the cover rather than the actual work. http://perival.com/delillo/whitenoise_cr...

I finished the King novel (for the second time) Needful Things. Now, I shall continue with the HIGHLY entertaining The Broom of the System.

Message edited by its author, Oct 27, 2009, 12:36pm.

Finished DETECTIVE STORY by Imre Kertesz--short, with a nice (though tragic) twist. Marred slightly by a translation that was a bit clunky in places but a good, diverting companion for a cool-ish fall afternoon...

I love love love Kertesz. Did you read the Wilkinson translation?

That's the one. But, as I said, it seemed a trifle off-key at times. But the story transcended those quibbles.

Started reading Jonathan Carroll's THE GHOST IN LOVE. Used to be quite a big fan of Carroll's, his early novels, LAND OF LAUGHS in particular. But his work began to seem contrived to me and with the exception of those first novels, the man is incapable of writing a decent ending. The last 50 pages of his novels invariably fall apart. Maddening...

Just started Finch by Jeff Vandermeer; I'm only fifty or so pages in, but thus far it's excellent.

129 it was just a joke. i thought you would recognize the quote. I guess its time to re read Brideshead Revisited.

Revisit REVISITED?

137: Sorry, didn't recognize the quote. Quote marks help. To be fair, Brideshead is so full of good lines and great writing, it's hard to remember specific quotes.