February, 2012--what are you reading at the moment?

Still enjoying Blake Bailey's CHEEVER: A LIFE. Sublime biography.

Just started Betrayals, Charles Palliser.

The dude who wrote QUINCUNX? Haven't heard about him for ages. Kind of a "where are they now"...

Blazing through The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin and starting Isaac: a modern fable by Ivan Goldman.

Cliff, that's the bloke. He's only had 4 books published, afaik: The Quincunx (1989), The Sensationist (1991), Betrayals (1993), The Unburied (1999). I've read the first and last.

A Game of Thrones. It's fun comparing to the TV series and seeing what bits of dialogue they lifted right out of the book and what stuff they changed (most of which sucked. Was it really necessary to make Catelyn an idiot and Drogo a rapist?)

Isn't almost every male character a rapist?

Just started Charles Frazier's Nightwoods.

7: Only in the novel Atlas Shrugged

Woke up this morning and decided that if I read any more of this posh stuff, my head is going to fly straight off and explode. Even Waugh's too highflown, so I picked out an old 60s gothic called Amberleigh, with the winner of a Vincent Price Lookalike Contest glowering on the cover. The story shows promise so far, though punctuation errors are everywhere.

It's funny that what I'd never tolerate in any other genre (rampant exclamation marks, heavy foreshadowing, prose with more enthusiasm than talent) I find adds to the charm of all but the very worst in gothic suspense. It's my light read of choice nearly every time; the bookish equivalent of baked macaroni and cheese.

#7 Read the books and not the internet rants and decide for yourself. I do not believe so, no, although certain characters are horribly sexually abused.

...prose with more enthusiasm than talent...

I love that description. :)

I'm plodding my way through A Soldier's Tale for bookgroup, which I'm not finding particularly interesting, although I'm pretty sure there will be heated discussion over what constitutes rape.

It's raining in Sydney and I want to escape into something with sorcery and swords and just plain damn fun, and I've still got 50 pages to go of WW2 and dodgy sexual politics. Sigh.

11: I read Atlas Shrugged and yes, there is a lot of sexual abuse, and all of it is deserved. Then again, anyone who considers Rand's prose to qualify as "good" deserves the same fate.

Isaac: a modern fable by Ivan Goldman is pretty good thus far. Smart without being Heavy and Self-Important.

#13 At least it's wasn't like The Fountainhead where the vicitm liked being raped.

14: Luckily the Fountainhead was mercifully shorter. Fun fact: Clarence Thomas requires candidates applying to clerk for him to watch the film version. Another monument to individualism: think how I think or you don't get the job. Objectivists are like hipsters that way, in their adorable artifice of mock-rebellion. Rand is equivalent to James Patterson in terms of writing talent and belligerent fandom.

Finished Bailey's CHEEVER: A LIFE. One of the best literary biographies I've ever read. He's also written a book on Richard Yates that I'll be seeking out.

#14> Last time I came across a character like that in a book, the book got thrown across the room.

I'm reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but am also a fair way into The End of Mr. Y, which is annoying me in small ways, but I like the concept enough to persevere.

Carrying on with my method of alternating Bolano's back catalogue, just finished By Night in Chile and much looking forward to starting The Letter Killers Club on the bus tomorrow.

I still haven't gotten too much into Middlemarch, dense thicket of words that it is. Still, I've made good progress with shorter books like Life of Pi (a reread) and Going After Cacciato.

January had a lot of amazing books, but unless I do get around to starting Earthly Powers this month, Feb's looking a little weak.

13 I read Atlas Shrugged and yes, there is a lot of sexual abuse, and all of it is deserved.
Really?

I think the people most abused by ATLAS SHRUGGED are its hapless readers, don't you agree?

Read Betrayals, Charles Palliser, which is excellent and contains a hilarious spoof of the TV programme Taggart. Now reading Leviathan Wakes, by James S Corey, and I think the author's name is really an anagram of "space opera by computer". It has many plaudits, but to me it reads like the sort of clichéd juvenile space opera that gives the genre a bad name.

20: Yes. And considering what Rand's fans did to the global economy, they deserve the same fate. It's not like I'm overly endowed with sympathy or compassion like some bloodsucking looter socialist.

But I've been over this before:

http://coffeeforclosers.wordpress.com/category/atlas-summer/

Ayn Rand was a morally bankrupt hack writer and pseudo-philosopher who, when she wasn't swooning over German Supermen, defending child-murderers. And people who like Ayn Rand are either just reaching puberty, brain damaged, or Clarence Thomas

Are these really ground-breaking revelations here?

I have been reading a ton of non-fiction and am stuck in the middle of a book on LBJ, Guns or Butter (it's research! I have to read it!) but I recently finished World of our Fathers and would like to read some I.B. Singer. I have the books piled up on my library shelf but I may not get to them until the end of the week.

24: I would also suggest Robert Caro's massive LBJ bio, if you are so inclined.

Amen on the Caro series. Best political biography I've ever read. Nothing even comes close. Can't wait for the next volume.

>21 CliffBurns: (>23 kswolff:) I was hoping that was what was meant....I've certainly seen the debate. But cant bring myself to read it yet. So cant slag it off even if I can guess how I'll feel about it.

Finished Isaac: a modern fable by Ivan Goldman. Like Job: a comedy of justice, if Heinlein was less talky and digressive.

Began Make it stay by Joan Frank.

Nearly done with The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin -- then I'll start Scorpions by Noah Feldman

I don't think after Guns or Butter that I will go for the Caro, although I liked his bio of Robert Moses. Guns or Butter is very detailed on LBJ's legislative agenda. I got it because I was researching passage of the civil rights bill but I kept reading because I was amazed by the amount of bills he got passed...medicare, poverty, early pollution control laws, conservation. It also covers the buildup in Vietnam pretty well, at a slightly different angle from The Best and the Brightest. But I think I'm done and need to read some fiction.
Incidentally, the chapter on the 64 Republican primaries reminded me a lot of the current day, not the least because the most popular candidate was "none of the above" and a guy called Romney was involved.

And, Jesus, in '64 the Republicans ended up nominating Goldwater. Christ, the pickings must have been pretty fucking slim.

Started Scorpions by Noah Feldman The third SCOTUS book in a row. All to make a multibook multipart review.

Make it stay by Joan Frank is a nice short read. The prose is luminous and the narrative is minimal yet tinged with an unnamed menace.

In keeping with my desire to read big books, I've just started David McCullough's TRUMAN bio. Smashing so far. McCullough is a national treasure.

>30 CliffBurns: Yes, and Mitt Romney's old man was brought in late in the day as the liberal alternative to Goldwater!

Am reading a few at the same time this month...

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
The Siege (Helen Dunmore)
Trapped- Remarkable Stories of Survival from the 2011 Canterbury Earthquake (Martin Van Beynen)
Stig of the Dump (Clive King)
The Greatest Show on Earth (Richard Dawkins)

and....

On Chesil Beach (Ian McEwan) was new from the library today, so will see if I can fit that in too.

Just started What is the What.

Can someone tell me how to list what I am Currently Reading. I can't seem to locate the place to enter my selections. Thanks

36:

Hi,

In your catalog, click on the title of the book you wish to mark as currently being read.

You will then be on that individual work's page.

In the box titled "Your Book Information" you will see the sub-heading "Collections". Click on the little orange box/folder to select one of the standard choices - one of which is "Currently Reading". When you wish to change the status, just go back and un-click "currently reading" and it will be removed.

Finished Amberleigh a while back. Villain was a loser. Geez. What self-respecting midnight strangler can strangle a woman into unconciousness, then flee with no reason given and leave no marks on the throat? I read all the pertinent text twice - no interruption was ever implied, so he apparantly had the energy to {SPOILER} creep into the mansion through secret passages and don a wedding dress before his murderous adrenalin flagged and he went back home to sleep. Fail.

Read Goblin Market in a nice edition from Chronicle Press, and finished Decline and Fall. Both were excellent.

Finished A Game of Thrones and moved right on to A Clash of Kings. The tv series really did an excellent job.

About 5/6 of the way through the massive TRUMAN bio--I think I might have pulled a muscle in my forearm reading this one...

Perhaps you should have rephrased that...

Sales, only YOU would find something weird about that comment. The fucking book weighs about eight pounds. (Sorry, four kilos.)

Remember, I am a master of the printed word. You swine.

Two great quotes from the book for you. One from Harry Truman:

"The responsibility of a great state is to serve and not to dominate the world."

...and the other from Mark Twain:

"Always do right! This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

I'm finally digging into Middlemarch, which started slowly. Now that it's about pretty much all the residents in a small town, I can see myself getting comfortable there.

As far as my fluff reading goes, I read Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind and I'm following it with the sequel, The Wise Man's Fear. Neither book is particularly brilliant, but it's fun stuff.

Finally, occasionally I crack a Murakami short story in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. I really love short stories, dunno why it took me so long to get into this collection, as Murakami's one of my favorite writers! (And it's nice to see him be succinct after that massive doorstopper 1Q84... not his best.)

I finished Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in plenty of time for movie watching (going to see it tonight, and I may have to sulk if it gets postponed again). Unfortunately, I read it while suffering through a headcold, so I don't think it made as much sense as it should have. (Bother.) Serves me right for reading to a schedule.

I'm now almost finished The End of Mr. Y and that's been a fun trip. Even the bits about Derrida. (Maybe I'm finally over those Philosophy lectures from my undergraduate days. I never found the Continental philosophers terribly agreeable or even comprehensible at times.)

Slogging along in The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell A work of unrelenting cruelty and carnage. The relentlessly dark tone reminds me of The Royal Family by Vollmann. Thus far, it's been: mass executions, vomiting, dream sequences, vomiting, hangings, terrorism, vomiting. Yet the writing is strangely matter-of-fact, very few passages of "purple prose."

I am currently reading Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, Artemis Fowl The Opal Deception, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr, Some Nerve, by Jane Heller, and The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Balancing reading with my high school work is difficult at times, but I think I pull it off pretty well. I have putting off reading the last few chapters of Inheritance because I just don't want the series to end.

Does anyone have any book suggestions for a young adult fantasy reader? I am trying to read 50 books this year, so I am open to any suggestions. Some of my favorite books are Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover (by Ally Carter), Pride and Prejudice, and Mockingbird (by Kathryn Erskine, the most moving book I have ever read).

47: I just read The Alchemaster's Apprentice and recommend anything by that writer - apparently he has 3 or 4 books out in that series so far. They are really good fantasy.

I also recommend The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud.

If you are interested in older books, the Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper are also very good.

Thanks for the suggestions! I will definitely have to look into The Alchemaster's Apprentice and The Barimaeus Trilogy. I have looked at the Dark is Rising series, but was a little unsure.

I'll second Bartimaeus and Dark is Rising. I also recommend His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, first book is The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights). And since you liked Pride and Prejudice, do try Sorcery and Cecilia, it's a fun romp.

Finished The End of Mr. Y and the ending was a bit silly, but I liked it overall as a rather fun read with some interesting ideas. And I liked the narrator, even though she's usually not my cup of tea. She might have been damaged and self-destructive, but she had a good sense of humour.

Moving on to The Wayward Bus.

50: YES! His Dark Materials is terrific. So thought provoking. My sons and I had many a great conversation based on those books and the questions they raised.

49: The Alchemaster book is translated from German and I wish I knew it well enough to read it in the original, but it is terrific even in English. You need to like humorous narration to enjoy either it or the Bartimaeus books, but given that you like P&P you should be OK there. :)

I second Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and sequels.

I have finished Titus Groan, the first book in the Gormenghast Trilogy. I am now on the second one, Gormenghast. I am so charmed by Peake's world that I have let my other major commitment, Moby Dick, fall by the wayside. Sorry, white whale, I shall return anon.

WRESTLING STURBRIDGE, STONEWALL'S GOLD and Philip Reeve's MORTAL ENGINES series are big faves around my house, in terms of YA content.

Let me also give a plug to a book my oldest son read around Christmas and liked very much, THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER. If you're a little more daring, you might want to give two other offerings a try, THE WORLD HOUSE by Guy Adams and THE SHERIFF OF YRNAMEER by Michael Rubins (an ex-writer from "The Colbert Report").

I second the recommendation for Bartimaeus.

The Hollow Kingdom was excellent. Goblins in Victorian England. Two sequels introduced elves into the mix.

You could also try anything by Patricia McKillip. She's one of fantasy's most distinctive stylists.

About half way through The Master and Margarita. Wanting to withhold judgment until I finish it but can't help wondering what all the fuss is about.

Began Wonder by Hugo Claus Only a couple chapters in, but it is a weird little book about Nazi collaboration in the Netherlands and a teacher's insanity.

Thirding, fourthing, whatever: His Dark Materials. Loved that series.

58: Fifthing, whatever, His Dark Materials as well. Might even recommend reading that and Chronicles of Narnia back-to-back, since HDM is a critique of CoN.

Bartimaeus was great. You might enjoy some Neil Gaiman, as well. Maybe start with Stardust.

Oh, and anything by Diana Wynne Jones.

Yes, Diana Wynne Jones, especially the Chrestomanci chronicles, as well as Dogsbody and The Time of the Ghost.
I'm reading one of my free Kindle books, Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie. It was very influential in its day, basically a recreation of an Edwardian boyhood, going to Oxford (the entire second half of the book is set at Oxford) but very detailed and a little overwhelming. The odd thing is that the main character is illegitimate (thus the title) but it doesn't seem to be a problem for him socially at all.
Speaking of illegitimate I also read Luck and Circumstance by Michael Lindsay Hogg in which he spends most of his time going back and forth on whether or not Orson Welles was really his biological father.

Finished (and loved, if that's a word you can use for Bernhard) The Loser.

Finished The Finkler Question. Funny, except towards the end but so relentlessly Jewish it gave me a headache.

Have reached Book Four in Les Miserables: St. Denis. In need of a change of fictional scenery, so will be reading The Sound of Waves on the side. Set on a Japanese island populated by red seaweed and fishermen and refreshingly different from nineteenth-century Paris.

Preparing to read Milton's first long poem, Comus.

Nietzsche has picked up. He was rambling/theorizing for a while, but has now settled down to the business of critiquing Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Socrates.

Is this time for me to mention Alan Garner again? I wouldn't advise Red Shift if you're feeling anything less than emotionally invulnerable though, it's a devastating book.
I'm working my way through The Dark Is Rising quintet at the moment at the moment, and enjoying them very much. They seem to get a measure more adult with each installment (I'm on book 3 now.) This is of course, no bad thing.
The month's major endeavour is Independent People, and my favourite passages are those describing the landscape and the weather. It doesn't sound like a landscape I'd last five minutes in, quite frankly.

65: I would highly suggest William H. Gass's essay on Nietzsche in Finding a Form

Re: Independent People -- You'll have to let me know what you think overall, since I found it today at a local thrift shop.

I'm just finishing that uplifting Christmas story, The Corrections.

67: Thanks for the recommendation. Researching Gass turns up phrases like "stylistic bellwether," "intellectual aerodynamics," "dexterous wit," "cerebral" and "deftly challenging." I'll check him out.

-- Meanwhile, I've read Comus, ironically about the son of Dionysius (called Bacchus in the text). Not a poem, properly, but a mask (or should that be masque?). I would label it a morality play of some sort - Unassailable Virtue meets Hedonistic Excess in the woods one night and they try to cajole one another to agree with their differing lifestyles. Meanwhile, Virtue's brothers and a spirit sent by God sally forth to rescue her. The plot seems like some sort of Medieval throwback, but it did make excellent poetry.

I would love to see some enthusiasts make a short film of it. It would be a stunning feat of memorization if nothing else.

What I'm most enjoying about Milton's style are his meldings of Christian themes with liberal doses of pagan mythology. Most of his poems are laced with Greek and Roman references. Many of them are too obscure for me to get, and while I mostly just infer what he's talking about I could really use an annotated copy of his poems, as I think I'm doing myself a disservice.

Next up: Lycidas and the poems he wrote during his political life (all of which look very short).

69: Unassailable Virtue meets Hedonistic Excess in the woods one night and they try to cajole one another to agree with their differing lifestyles

I think that happened already, but UV always gets caught ...

http://bossip.com/545193/sex-scandals-mitt-romneys-arizona-co-chair-resigns-afte...

70: Weird that you should post that. Milton wrote his mask for the Earl of Bridgewater, whose brother-in-law (Earl of Castlehaven) had been on trial a couple of years earlier. The charges against him included sodomy and he and the others involved were all executed. Rough times.

Whether Milton's masque of the triumph of Unassailable Virtue had any connection to the scandal is up for debate. I just think it amusing that you found a modern instance of the old story.

Read two books over the weekend. This Island Earth, Raymond F Jones, which was rubbish; and The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler, which was much better. And no, I don't know why I picked two Raymonds to read. Have just started The Door by Magda Szabó. Liking it so far...

I'm reading through the way-to-brief A Man Without a Country. Mark Twain Lives!

Read The Hunger Games. Have to say it had two of the hallmarks of YA fiction that can bug me: poor world building, and poor writing. But I polished it off in two days, so it fulfilled its brain candy purpose. And the ending was surprisingly good, after being rather ambivalent about most of it.

Have just started Evening's Empire, which came highly recommended by iansales, I believe.

Yup, that was me. Hope you like it as much as I did.

Wonder by Hugo Claus is mesmerizing. Written in 1962, it reads like a New Wave film -- disjunctive changes in perspective, strange imagery, sex and violence, and coming to terms with World War 2. Add some Fascist messianism, dry humor, and Dutch-specific politics and pop culture. Strange, strange book ... in a good way.

Finished The Birth of Tragedy. Chalk another one up for academics. The introduction was so relentlessly negative and nit-picky about the author's achievements with this volume that I was wondering why I'd bothered. With fiction, I always read the intro once I've finished, and that's clearly going to be my policy from here out unless the author or the translator or some reasonable person wrote the damn thing. Most of the footnotes were useless, too; preferring to alert students to which passages best "encapsulate" Nietzsche's whole aim with the book.

The actual meat of the text itself was great. He covered a lot of ground: bashed opera, was suspicious of rationalism, suspicious of optimism (ironic considering how optimistic he was concerning Wagner) and made a fascinating critique of Socrates among other things. The end product was flawed by arrogance, incoherence and the futility of trying to convey an aesthetic reaction to art in words. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. It's certainly going to stick in my mind for a while.

Now I'm going to shoehorn some Greek tragedy onto my booklist this year, and some more stuff by or about Nietzsche. Basically: he sounded exactly the way I've always hoped he would. And that's the best thing that can happen when reading an author for the first time.

#75> It's definitely very good so far, I'm quite gripped wondering where it's going to go. And loving the Verne references, I must re-read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it's been far too long. And the cheese. I may pass it on to a muso friend of mine when it's finished, I think it might be just up her alley.

#77> I started with the intro to The Wayward Bus when I read that last week, because I'd been warned it was allegorical and I don't really get allegories (I'm too straightforward). Almost wanted to rip my eyes out by the end, it reminded me so much of High School dissections of literature. (And I still didn't get the allegory, but I did enjoy the book anyway, and that's more important for me.) I've sworn off introductions again (usually I don't read them because of spoilers).

#78 I did exactly that after finishing it - read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea :-)

Wrote about This Island Earth, which I read last weekend - see here.

By way of contrast, am really liking Magda Szab:o's The Door. Only two books in and this year's reading challenge is already proving to be my most successful...

The Lives of the Poets which I just started last night and got as far as the chapter on Chaucer. I was a little bothered that it was mostly about Troilus and Cressida and only touched on The Canterbury Tales, presumably because readers would already be familar with the latter. It makes me wonder if the Shakespeare chapter will spend most of its time on King John or something like that.
Also, I definitely don't think I'll read Piers Plowman now. It sounds too much like Pilgrim's Progress, a book which I did NOT enjoy. I don't know how it ever became a classic.

81: I don't know how anyone can enjoy Pilgrim's Progress Ugh, an early modern version of Atlas Shrugged I'd read it, but I wouldn't want to suffer repeated blunt traumas to the cranium because the author needs to really get his really important message across. What's the moral of the story? Crack is wack or some such?

I wouldn't know because I didn't finish. I was going through a shaky period mentally when I picked it up and I felt it would not be conducive to good mental health to continue. A lot of it was old fashioned fire and brimstone and I kept thinking, "they gave this to children to read?"

81:

In our recent discussion it was mentioned that unimaginative readers often pigeon-hole J.F. Powers as a "Catholic writer" (I think Waugh and Greene may have made a brief appearance as well) and skim over the greater qualities that characterize his novels. So too with Pilgrim's Progress. It is often scorned as too un-hip by some who confuse subject matter with quality of writing. Yet this type of reader is often the first to make such distinctions when discussing any novelist who pretends that "shocking" the middle classes is a substitute for good writing.

Pilgrim's Progress displays a clarity of prose and gift of phrase that explains how it became (along with the KJV Bible) responsible for shaping the next two centuries' of writing. Indeed, its influence is so pervasive that, like the Bible, we often don't recognize it's imprint. (eg. Vanity Fair)

I don't read much 17th century literature myself, so I'm sympathetic to other readers who find it a tough slog. Yet I think stylistic difference between then and now is an insufficient reason for dismissing it outright. If we expect the same from Bunyan as we do from a 20th century novelist, then I think disappointment is inevitable.

"His Pilgrim's Progress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read Spenser."

--Samuel Johnson

82: Book reviewing tip: Read the book first.

84: Touche. Like I should see Titanic before criticizing it as inept, overlong middlebrow slag? (I eventually did see and it reinforced my prejudices against the hack Cameron.) Still, proselytizing authors are by and large terrible reads, whether it's Marx or Joseph Smith.

Purgatory:A Novel by Tomas Eloy Martinez is just a well written engrossing novel with memorable characters and insights into memory, fascism and exile. Martinez died in 2010 and this is his 1st posthumously published book. His The Peron Novel and The Tango Singer are also excellent.

84: I hear what you're saying but I think I just missed something with Pilgrim's Progress. All I could see was a retread of the old scary-hell stuff (although I'll say that Bunyan being original it couldn't be called a retread) I was just too familar with from my childhood. I did want to like it, because I'd read something of Bunyan's life and I was impressed with his dedication to his faith. But perhaps it was just my state of mind at the time.
BTW, I did get a copy of Morte D'Urban and I've just started it as my "daytime" book. (Lives of the Poets is my nighttime book.)

87: Having seen an animated version of PP and a made-for-TV movie of The Cross and the Switchblade, it seems to a challenge to appreciate Bunyan's work as anything more than a Puritan-era relic. The metaphors are blatantly obvious, the plot simplistic, and the ending pre-ordained. Where's the drama in that? It's the opposite of Milton writing all the best lines for Satan in Paradise Lost or the poetic concision of the Book of Common Prayer

Wonder by Hugo Claus is pretty awesome. Visionary, disturbing, sarcastic, playful, and off-kilter.

Bunyan is fun to read though the moralizing is tedious. It's like reading robinson crusoe. The language alone makes it fun. And, it was hugely influential for a period of a few hundred years so it is just interesting to read the book that people used to think was so important.

88:

The metaphors are blatantly obvious, the plot simplistic, and the ending pre-ordained.

It sound like what would be left if all the great language was removed. That's probably why so many readers complain about movies "not being as good as the original book". When you take away the writing and animate or film a plot summary then the resulting product can only be lessened.

I love 19th century fiction and often the characters in the books I love talk about what they read and think about. The Bible is there. Bunyan is there. Several works by Sam Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith are referred to, some of which I've read (I am looking forward to reading some Goldsmith plays which I have so far not gotten to). It is sort of fun for me to read things that influenced generations of other readers and that are repeatedly mentioned in other books. I feel I am a link in a great reading chain going back many generations. Also, again I have to say, I love that elegant form of writing, that is so precise and yet so beautiful, that was prevalent back then. Sometimes I like to read Locke's 2nd Treatise and similar things for the language alone.

Bunyan is definitely there, which is why I was so disappointed I didn't get anything out of him.
I read The Vicar of Wakefield last summer. There are some moments of Austen-like humor and generally it's enjoyable, although from a feminist perspective the ending is disturbing.
Anyway, maybe I'll go back and look at Bunyan again, and pay greater attention to the language.

Have bunged up my review of Magda Szabó's The Door - see here.

Over in my part of the civilized world, "bunged up" has somewhat different connotations. Namely, mothers stalking toward their children, brandishing a table spoon and a bottle of castor oil.

Brits are weird.

I'm reading Esi Edugyan's much-ballyhooed Half-Blood Blues -- well, actually, I have stalled 40% of the way through said much-ballyhooed novel. Not that it's a bad novel per se, but I think the ballyhoo wrote cheques that the novel can't pay.

And I'm starting into Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down.

#94 Weird even from my expat Brit perspective. Bunged up to me implies a sinus infection. I'd have used 'banged out', perhaps it's a Scottish thing, they are well known to be even weirder than the south of the border Brits and in some cases completely unintelligible.

"Bunged up" in Ian's post made perfect sense to this Australian. Although I'm willing to accept that we may, in general, be partially unintelligible to other speakers of English.

Funnily enough the OED has my sense (M16), Ian's (dial. &slang. E19 Imit. but for you antipodeans it has - Austral. & NZ slang L19 Aborig. Ruined, useless, broken, bankrupt. Formerly also dead.
Bung is also another name for a publican or brewer. I am unable to find a reference to that immortal line of Beavis:
"I am the Great Cornholio. I must have tp for my bung-hole"

Finished Wonder by Hugo Claus

Started Flat Spin by David Freed -- a fun police procedural / thriller with just the right balance between smarts and smartassery. Very Elmore Leonardish.

If I'd known I was going to confuse this many people, I'd have chosen another word :-) I'm neither Scottish nor Australian, but "bung" has always meant "throw" to me - as in, "bung it over here". I've no idea where that usage originated.

Ir's your own fault for using an odd Brit colloquialism.

As a result, this thread got bunged up the bunghole.

Re-reading A Clash of Kings in preparation for the new season on HBO.

Am enjoying the Grove Press Reader so far. Plenty of short excerpts make it ideal to dip into while cooking or the like. The quality of the 1950s material is stunning. The passage from Molloy left me so emotionally devestated that I immediately ordered a copy of Beckett's Three Novels online. I probably won't get around to it until next year, but I must have it in the house in the meantime.

The book also sports various reminiscent essays, illuminating the vision, the ethic, and the nitty-gritty financial troubles of the publishing house. I find it all tremendously interesting.

103: I highly recommend Beckett's "Trilogy." It's on par with Ulysses and while spare, not minimalist.

I finished Lives of the Poets. Made some discoveries, like George Crabbe and Charlotte Mew whom I had always heard of but whose works I wasn't very familar with.
I also finished Morte D'Urban yesterday and those of you who recommended Powers to me, maybe you can help me out. Is Urban supposed to be admirable -- i.e., a King Arthur figure (as suggested by the title) or are we supposed to see him as kind of a sell-out, a failure as a priest because of his lack of moral conviction, which is what I thought most of the time?