What are you currently reading?

Started by facehugger, April 07, 2007, 12:36:10 AM

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Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Ganondorf on March 26, 2021, 12:08:49 PM
The film adaptation was terrific (Stroheim's Greed) so I was excited to find this in a library. So far, unfortunately, it doesn't quite have the charm the film has. The book isn't very subtle in its thematic significance and symbolism. Nevertheless, the basic storyline I am familiar with is still there and there are some great passages. Unfortunately certain Jewish character in this book is extremely racistly drawn, even for its time.

Also, I have to say this, Mcteague is a real creep. I mean, he makes out with a passed out woman in dentist's chair. while he's supposed to treat her. How messed up is that?


As I said before, the original books are usually much better than their movie adaptations- ie, Gatsby, Memoir of Geisha, idiot (Kurosawa), Gone with the Wind, Lady Chatterley, etc. Only exceptions for me are Zhivago and L'amant (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras. I don't know why this happens, besides my personal preference.

The interesting book you discussed reminds me of the book I read and enjoyed several years ago. It is called Fairyland. It is a memoir of the female author's adolescence with homosexual father-poet in San Fransisco in the 1970s. It was a fun read and Abbott's writing was super sharp.

SimonNZ

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on March 26, 2021, 05:00:04 PM

Only exceptions for me are Zhivago and L'amant (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras.

Golly! What makes you prefer the film to the book?

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

#10662
Quote from: SimonNZ on March 26, 2021, 05:17:47 PM
Golly! What makes you prefer the film to the book?

I was wondering about that. Probably, my bias, lack of understanding/sophistication, etc. But are these all?
Any movie adaptations you prefer to the original literary works?

Ed. I know most people prefer Zhivago to the movie.

Ed. For L'amant, come to think of it, I like the music and the narration by Jeanne Moreau (in French). Plus, cinematography.

SimonNZ

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on March 26, 2021, 05:22:43 PM

Any movie adaptations you prefer to the original literary works?


I'm sure there are. I'll try and think of some.

I did read half of Jaws recently and admired Spielberg's improvements...but then its not hard for a slick film to be better than a pulpy novel.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

For artistic merit, I may (or maynot) have to accept that the Duras is better. But for likability, the movie is more attractive and well-organized.

JBS

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on March 26, 2021, 05:22:43 PM
I was wondering about that. Probably, my bias, lack of understanding/sophistication, etc. But are these all?
Any movie adaptations you prefer to the original literary works?

Ed. I know most people prefer Zhivago to the movie.

Ed. For L'amant, come to think of it, I like the music and the narration by Jeanne Moreau (in French). Plus, cinematography.

Witches of Eastwick is a much better film than book.  Of course the cast helps.

World According to Garp might be another. It cuts and elides several parts of the book
Some cuts help, some hurt, and the resulting difference would undoubtedly strike different people differently.  (And again the film's cast certainly helps the movie.)

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

Brian

Sadly just gave up on "Circe" by Madeline Miller, the latest in a long, diverse series of acclaimed novels from the past ~20 years that I've failed to enjoy. Others include "Overstory" by Richard Powers, "The Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt, "The Power" by Naomi Alderman, "The Flamethrowers" by Rachel Kushner, anything and everything by Jonathan Franzen (with "The Corrections" I still haven't finished the horrible first chapter)... also barely managed to finish "There There" by Tommy Orange.

I wish I could figure out from the reviews whether a novel would be good or not, but the review industry seems so keen to lavish praise that they're no longer reliable guides for me.

aligreto

I have read the following two books in succession. These two books have common themes; they are both tales of the sea and they were both set in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Dana: Two Years Before The Mast





Two Years Before The Mast is an autobiographical account of Dana's experience as a common sailor. It depicts the hard life of that occupation and illustrates the characters whom he encountered and the places that he visited on his trip from Boston, around Cape Horn, up to California and back again.


Forester: The Commodore  




The Commodore depicts the adventures of Horatio Hornblower in the Baltic and his influence on the war against Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a good yarn but a work of total fiction.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: JBS on March 26, 2021, 07:06:18 PM

World According to Garp might be another. It cuts and elides several parts of the book
Some cuts help, some hurt, and the resulting difference would undoubtedly strike different people differently.  (And again the film's cast certainly helps the movie.)

You maybe right about Garp. For me personally, it is difficult to determine as both the book and movie were good. Same for his (John Irving) Hotel New Hampshire. Both the book and movie are excellent though, as for artistic quality, the book is better than the movie. I haven't read or watched Cider House Rules, but I heard that both the book and movie were great.

vers la flamme

Just finished Hiroko Oyamada's The Hole.



A very quick read, I read it all today. In short, I loved it. What an eerie, vivid, strange, and beautiful book. I've been enjoying very much my forays into Japanese literature since New Year's. For this recent fascination, I have largely to blame my discovery of Haruki Murakami as well as the guidance of our friend Dry Brett Kavanaugh here, but this one was a random find from one of the take-a-book-leave-a-book boxes in my neighborhood. I'll very much be looking forward to reading Ms. Oyamada's only other published book (at least in English translation), The Factory.

vandermolen

Newly published:
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: vers la flamme on March 29, 2021, 01:32:07 PM
Just finished Hiroko Oyamada's The Hole.

A very quick read, I read it all today. In short, I loved it. What an eerie, vivid, strange, and beautiful book. I've been enjoying very much my forays into Japanese literature since New Year's. For this recent fascination, I have largely to blame my discovery of Haruki Murakami as well as the guidance of our friend Dry Brett Kavanaugh here, but this one was a random find from one of the take-a-book-leave-a-book boxes in my neighborhood. I'll very much be looking forward to reading Ms. Oyamada's only other published book (at least in English translation), The Factory.


Thank you, and Artem, for the interesting reviews of Oyamada. I need to get her books. I read and heard about her many times. Again, it seems that her works are hardcore artistic literature, rather than entertainment novels. Also I heard that The Hole is (just) a little similar to Kobo Abe's Woman In Dunes, which I like. You may want to check it out. When I read various reviews of Japanese literature on Amazon USA, the sophistication of the readers impresses me. But I never see these people in my town! Perhaps they are tiny intelligentsia, which account for 1-3 percent of the population?
Now re-reading here and there in Casanova's History of My Life.

steve ridgway


Artem

Finished today. Bolano is one of my all time favourite writers.


vandermolen

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

vers la flamme

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on March 29, 2021, 05:09:19 PM
Kobo Abe's Woman In Dunes, which I like. You may want to check it out

Thanks, I'll put that one on the list. Been meaning to check out some Kobo Abe. I don't know if hardcore artistic is how I'd describe Oyamada, though she does seem to be very much an aesthetic-forward writer (not unlike Mishima in that regard, now that I think about it). But I may have picked up on a bit of a "this is serious literature" kind of feeling to her writing, that others might see as a flaw. But again, I did enjoy it a lot. Looking forward to your reviews of her work if you ever do check 'em out. I know there's a whole lot to read out there.

Reading Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Still hooked on Murakami's writing. I don't know whether I'll read all of his books that are available in English, and I don't really have that as a goal, but I'm well on my way there, anyway. I have been wanting to get back into running and this is further inspiration. Murakami is a seriously disciplined kind of dude.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: vers la flamme on March 30, 2021, 03:01:19 PM
Thanks, I'll put that one on the list. Been meaning to check out some Kobo Abe. I don't know if hardcore artistic is how I'd describe Oyamada, though she does seem to be very much an aesthetic-forward writer (not unlike Mishima in that regard, now that I think about it). But I may have picked up on a bit of a "this is serious literature" kind of feeling to her writing, that others might see as a flaw. But again, I did enjoy it a lot. Looking forward to your reviews of her work if you ever do check 'em out. I know there's a whole lot to read out there.

Reading Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Still hooked on Murakami's writing. I don't know whether I'll read all of his books that are available in English, and I don't really have that as a goal, but I'm well on my way there, anyway. I have been wanting to get back into running and this is further inspiration. Murakami is a seriously disciplined kind of dude.

As I haven't read Oyamada, certainly I trust your observation. She won the prestigeous Akutagawa prize, which is usually awarded to serious, artistic literate works. In contrast, the Naoki prize is usually awarded to more mass-oriented novels. Waseda University in Tokyo is opening what is called Murakami Library this year. You may want to visit there someday, make friends, and eat nice food.

https://thesmartlocal.com/japan/haruki-murakami-library/


Quote from: Artem on March 30, 2021, 12:53:20 PM
Finished today. Bolano is one of my all time favourite writers.

Interesting! I will look for a copy.

Artem

Quote from: vers la flamme on March 30, 2021, 03:01:19 PM
Reading Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Still hooked on Murakami's writing. I don't know whether I'll read all of his books that are available in English, and I don't really have that as a goal, but I'm well on my way there, anyway. I have been wanting to get back into running and this is further inspiration. Murakami is a seriously disciplined kind of dude.
Not all Murakami's books are as great as his earlier work, but I think reading chronologically most of his writing available in English within a year, for example, could be a very enjoyable project. His non-fiction complements well his fiction.

Ganondorf


vers la flamme

Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love



Having finished Haruki Murakami's running memoir whose title pays tribute to this classic collection, I figured there's no time like the present to finally read some Ray Carver. Wow. I'm hugely impressed with the beautiful writing here. It's not at all what I expected, which was bleak, joyless, depressing minimalist narratives of downtrodden working-class Americans. Well, I guess that's all there, too, but what I'm finding more impressive is the deep poetry in this writing, which seems obsessed with the minutiae of life and the specter of death. This is dark stuff, sure, but some of it warms my heart, especially the stories toward the middle of the book. I'm fairly close to finishing and I suspect I'll be reading more Carver quite soon.