Topic: what are you currently reading? is it any good?

[bhodges]

Have you read Oryx and Crake? That's the one I intend to read from her next.

No, but friends who have (including the one who gave me The Blind Assassin) liked it a lot.  The Handmaid's Tale just knocked me out, and then I read Cat's Eye, which I thought was very good, if not quite at Handmaid level.  Then I found a copy of Bluebeard's Egg, a collection of short stories that I haven't gotten around to yet.

--Bruce

[orbital]

No, but friends who have (including the one who gave me The Blind Assassin) liked it a lot.  The Handmaid's Tale just knocked me out, and then I read Cat's Eye, which I thought was very good, if not quite at Handmaid level.  Then I found a copy of Bluebeard's Egg, a collection of short stories that I haven't gotten around to yet.

--Bruce

I got all her books a while back, and plan to read them all, not chronologically or anything, but by whim alone  O&C seems to bein Handmaid's vein -only more dystopian-  from what I've read around. Should be a treat!

[SonicMan]

Drink:  A Cultural History of Alcohol (2008) by Iain Gately - just started this book today, so far getting into the early Middle Ages (chapters on Greece & Rome quite enjoyable) - should be a fun read - click HERE for Amazonian comments & reviews - 

[Kullervo]

Has anyone here read anything by Yukio Mishima? I don't think I have any Japanese literature on my shelf (apart from a set of Akutagawa short stories).

[mozartsneighbor]

Has anyone here read anything by Yukio Mishima? I don't think I have any Japanese literature on my shelf (apart from a set of Akutagawa short stories).

I have read Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask" -- his first book. Quite interesting, but haven't gotten around to reading any more of his books yet. I did however read a biography of the man shortly after I read the book: "The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima" by Henry Scott Stokes. Mishima was at least as interesting as the literature he wrote -- definitely an odd fellow.

As for other Japanese writers I have enjoyed:
-- Yasunari Kawabata was the main Japanese writer of the generation prior to Mishima's. "Snow Country" and "Beauty and Sadness" are especially good
-- there's the pretty famous living writer, Haruki Murakami, who is the best-selling Japanese author abroad. I have found his work to be sliping a bit and becoming repetitious lately, but his earlier work is often very good. "A Wild Sheep Chase", "Norwegian Wood" and what is perhaps his best so far "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"
-- Natsuo Kirino writes some macabre and powerful literary detective-story-type novels. Her most famous is probably "Out"

Hope this helps you delve into Japanese literature, which is really very rich from my experience. I want to explore more of it, but lately haven't had time. So many good books, so little time, alas.

[Kullervo]

Thanks a lot, you've been very helpful. 

[adamdavid80]

Currently reading Sporpion Tongues by Gail Collins. 

It's okay, but doesn't measure up to her Op-Eds in the NY Times, which are always very, very smart and witty.  (I think the main problem for me is the Op-Eds - due to their brevity - lend themselves more to "zingers" and author "heckling".  A book about the history of slander and smear campaigns in American politics, the humor should almost take care of itself, so she cast herself a lot more invisibly.

[orbital]

-- there's the pretty famous living writer, Haruki Murakami, who is the best-selling Japanese author abroad. I have found his work to be sliping a bit and becoming repetitious lately, but his earlier work is often very good. "A Wild Sheep Chase", "Norwegian Wood" and what is perhaps his best so far "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"

Norwegian Wood is a few books down the road for me.
I've read his "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" earlier this year, which I liked a lot. Its narrative was strange, to say the least but I was quite convinced with his idea of infinity.

There is also Ishiguro, though I don't know if he is considered as a Japanese (or British) author. The Unconsoled was a very interesting novel about a concert pianist suddenly losing most of his memory, not to mention his repertoire right before a major European concert.

[val]

MICHEL FOUCAULT:     "Histoire de la folie à l'age classique"

An history of the social and cultural perspectives about madness, since the Middle Age until 1800.

[Drasko]

Has anyone here read anything by Yukio Mishima? I don't think I have any Japanese literature on my shelf (apart from a set of Akutagawa short stories).

I've read The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, quite striking, it did leave an impression, spare style, beautiful in very stark way, could easily be disliked but I thought rather strong and individual voice, didn't sound derivative of anyone (though my knowledge of japanese literature is more than minuscule). But don't trust my opinion too much, read it some time ago and haven't read anything else by him since, so can't really put it into perspective within his oeuvre. 

[Haffner]

It's a little tedious to read though (there are no pictures). Alternatively, you can also rent the video.

 (dying laughing)



Really enjoyed this one, am immediately re-reading it:

[Brian]

It's a little tedious to read though (there are no pictures). Alternatively, you can also rent the video.

I think this one has pictures:



Yes: The Extreme Teen New King James!

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

Stevie Van Zandt's preface to the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of, Like, Forever, Dude.

Great literature? No.

For what it is, it's all right.

[rockerreds]

Ann Beattie-Another You

[Florestan]

Louis de Bernieres --- Captain Corelli's Mandolin

simultaneously with

Jose Saramago --- Baltasar and Blimunda (Memorial do convento)

[Kullervo]

I really hate to do this, but I had to give up on Ulysses — for now, at least. There is just too much about it I don't understand.

Now reading:

[mozartsneighbor]

Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre

Very good satire and great fun.

[mozartsneighbor]

I really hate to do this, but I had to give up on Ulysses — for now, at least. There is just too much about it I don't understand.

You will never understand most of all the little references, allusions, and layers. Not unless you make a career out of it and become a college professor. So just enjoy it, and be content to understand a part of it.
I took a class on Joyce in college and was lucky enough to have great Professor, expert in Joyce, who took us through Ulysses in a way that was joyous rather than pedantic. It is a funny book really, and Joyce himself took the littering of allusions and cross-meanings as a game, so no use getting hung up on every little detail.
Have you read Dubliners? That's really wonderful in a very different way, which might be a good antidote to the crushing magnitude of Ulysses.

[Sarastro]

Now reading

Quite an inappropriate image for Oblomov (according to Goncharov's descriptions), looks more like Raskol'nikov from Crime and Punishment.

Goncharov has three novels with the titles starting with "O": Oblomov, Obryv (The Precipice), and Obyknovennaya istoriya (A Common Story) - this last one I find adorable.

Interesting, what you will think about Oblomov, if you finish it.

Last Saturday my English instructor told me how he once tried to bring The Cherry Orchard into the curriculum and how the students thought it is a good idea to chop the orchard and build a shopping mall. We have Othello this semester  -- never have read it in the original English -- I can't wait.

[Sarastro]

And I am reading this:



Damn, and there are still so many cool books about opera singers!!! I gotta read them all.