What are you currently reading?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Somerset Maugham: Ashenden

This is, I found, one of Maugham's much lighter works. It is about the adventures and escapades of an author who is recruited into the world of governmental espionage. His travels, encounters and lifestyle are well illustrated but essentially it is just enjoyable light reading.


The extra images are for our friend Dry Brett Kavanaugh who seems to like the presentation of Heron Books. 

The book looks sharp and cool! Also, you posted a blue book last year. I forgot what the authorship was, but it looked gorgeous. As for Maugham, I only have read The Moon and Sixpence (decades ago). I am planning to get some other works by him.

Now reading Byzantine Art by Robin Cormack. I saw some of the discussed works in Greece a few times.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

A very strong recommendation for Cercas. Maybe the best book that I've read this year so far. Even Roberto Bolano comes up in the book. The Aosawa Murders was also a pretty good detective novel. Very interesting narrative approach.

Cercas looks interesting. I will look for a copy.
Talking about Japanese hardboiled novel, several people in North America enthusiastically recommended Confessions by Kanae Minato to me. I am planning to read it asap.

P.s. I see that Aosawa Murders won the Naoki Prize, a prestigeous award given to quality "popular" literate works. Oyamada's The Hole received another prestigious award, Akutagawa Prize, which is given to a significant "artistic" literate work annualy.

Anyway, I've started this:

Star, by Yukio Mishima. So far so good. A brilliant novella that is not considered one of his major works by any means, but still it's filled with excellent, thought provoking writing. Inspired by the author's second career as a film actor.

Yes, good writing and good imagination.

[vers la flamme]

Anyway, I've started this:



Star, by Yukio Mishima. So far so good. A brilliant novella that is not considered one of his major works by any means, but still it's filled with excellent, thought provoking writing. Inspired by the author's second career as a film actor.

Loved it. I've now read three Mishima books and all were fantastic reads, though The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, my first, was definitely the hardest pill to swallow. This was an easy and quick read but it was by no means a simplistic book; there are several layers to it. Beautiful writing, and I felt compelled to share this passage, when the narrator is on a film set, filming a scene, and he reflects thus:

The piercing fidelity of the landscape must have meant that I was watching from the gates of death. What I saw was as comprehensive as a memory, poor and wretched as a memory, as quiet, as fluorescent...

As I walked along, it became impossible to deny that these empty streets would eventually open onto sprawling tracks where trains came rushing in and out of town, extending naturally to a grand city, and a harbor, and beyond the sea to other countries with their own cities and harbors.

I'm a real sucker for this kind of writing. My only complaint is that this material could have easily been expanded into a full length novel. There were several fascinating characters introduced who could have been explored in much further depth, such as the aging actor, former young heartthrob, who appears only in the novel's final pages. But I'll take what I can get. Strongly recommended.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I'm a real sucker for this kind of writing.

Same here  .
Many of his short stories/novellas are like this with his characteristically razor-sharp and novel writings.
In contrast, Kawabata's writing is conventional without Mishima's flamboyancy or sharpness.
In Japan, Star and other 4-5 very good stories are compiled within a book, and it is sold for US$ 8-9.
I couldn't believe when I saw that the English edition is sold without other stories and sold for a similar price.

[SimonNZ]

Delighted to have discovered an audiobook of Gravity's Rainbow with a reader so talented as to make it much more lucid than it appears on the page.

It's narrated by George Guidall, but its actually not the one pictured above which is his second (!!) and official recording of the work some decades after having made a hard to get and much sought after unofficial first.

Its this earlier fan favorite that some friend of humanity has uploaded to Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBiaHGMEb8Y

I especially love how he brings out all the humour, of which there is so much.

more detail here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/books/review/gravitys-rainbow-read-by-george-guidall.html

(also: always loved that Penguin cover with the blueprint of the V2)

[JBS]

Loved The Nick Adams Stories so much that by the end of it, I decided to pick up another Hemingway book that I hadn't read, the famous A Farewell to Arms...:



... which I read all in one day. I couldn't put it down. Little did I know on Friday morning that I would plow through 600 pages of Hemingway over the weekend, but what can you do. Wow, that was a great book. So many iconic moments. And what a crushing ending. Wow. I'll definitely have to read some more Hemingway in the near future but I've exhausted my modest collection over the past few months. Like I may have alluded to, I don't always get so much out of Hemingway's writing, but with these two books, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Old Man and the Sea is possibly his best work.
I picked up Green Hills of Africa the other day. Hopefully it will be as good as Death in the Afternoon, his other big non-fiction work.

[BWV 1080]

Dos Passos > Hemingway and now cant abide Earnest after learning about this:

https://origins.osu.edu/review/breaking-point-hemingway-dos-passos-and-murder-jose-robles

[Florestan]

Dos Passos > Hemingway and now cant abide Earnest after learning about this:

https://origins.osu.edu/review/breaking-point-hemingway-dos-passos-and-murder-jose-robles

A great artist who was also a bastard? My, my, my, who'd have believed that? That's shocking news, shocking I tell you. 

[vandermolen]

Just finished reading this thought-provoking and interesting book:

[vers la flamme]

Dos Passos > Hemingway and now cant abide Earnest after learning about this:

https://origins.osu.edu/review/breaking-point-hemingway-dos-passos-and-murder-jose-robles

I'd love to read some Dos Passos. Is there a book you recommend to start with?

[BWV 1080]

I'd love to read some Dos Passos. Is there a book you recommend to start with?

42nd Parallel - the first book in the USA Trilogy

[Florestan]

42nd Parallel - the first book in the USA Trilogy

Many moons ago I started Manhattan Transfer but I don't think I made it past the first 50 pages before abandoning it. Time for a second try, maybe?

[Florestan]

As for Hemingway, I can't remember where I read that he was jokingly asked during a party (meaning he was dead drunk) to write the shortest novel in the world, six words only. He obliged: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. In my book this is the very definition of a literary genius, scoundrel or no scoundrel in his private or public life.

Also, For Wom the Bell Tolls is one of the best novels about the Spanish Civil War, and quite non-partisan when it ccomes to describing the atrocities committed by both sides. Malraux's Man's Hope is also good but has a stronger bias towards the Republican side.

[vers la flamme]

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential



This book is hilarious, full of an infectious lust for life. An enjoyable read so far. I found this at Half Price Books yesterday; they somehow had absolutely no Hemingway (which is what I came for) but I did find this and a pristine copy of Mishima's Frolic of the Beasts, so I came out okay in the end.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential



This book is hilarious, full of an infectious lust for life. An enjoyable read so far. I found this at Half Price Books yesterday; they somehow had absolutely no Hemingway (which is what I came for) but I did find this and a pristine copy of Mishima's Frolic of the Beasts, so I came out okay in the end.

I have the book in my house, but haven't started reading it yet.
Tokyo was Bourdain's favorite city.  I don't know how old he was. But in terms of education and culture, he was like an avant-garde of millenial generation.

https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-bourdain-japan-favorite-destination-2016-10

[vers la flamme]

I have the book in my house, but haven't started reading it yet.
Tokyo was Bourdain's favorite city.  I don't know how old he was. But in terms of education and culture, he was like an avant-garde of millenial generation.

https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-bourdain-japan-favorite-destination-2016-10

He's a boomer; he was 61 when he died. That's cool about Tokyo. I will have to see the episode of his show where he goes there.

[aligreto]

Conan Doyle Adventures of Gerard





The high adventures of a French cavalry officer during the Napoleonic wars. Nothing but light reading and yarns of high adventure but an entertaining read nonetheless.

[aligreto]

Tokyo was Bourdain's favorite city.  I don't know how old he was. But in terms of education and culture, he was like an avant-garde of millenial generation.

https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-bourdain-japan-favorite-destination-2016-10

My millennial daughter and her millennial husband still are big fans. In pre Covid times when they travelled they would always follow recommendations by him. 

[Brian]

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential



This book is hilarious, full of an infectious lust for life. An enjoyable read so far. I found this at Half Price Books yesterday; they somehow had absolutely no Hemingway (which is what I came for) but I did find this and a pristine copy of Mishima's Frolic of the Beasts, so I came out okay in the end.

As a millennial and a professional food writer, I can say this book changed our industry forever. It changed food writing in a huge way, from a stuffy old thing for gourmets to compare notes into a visceral, blood-and-guts thing that could be cool rather than elite. It changed the restaurant business in many specific ways - for example, because of Bourdain's comments on when to order fish, restaurants have changed what days they order their fish.

There is also a somewhat strong backlash in the industry against the type of angry, drug/alcohol-fueled, unprofessional kitchen work environments which are depicted in the book. Bourdain was criticized by some as the poster boy (along with Gordon Ramsay and his cursing), but he clearly does not glamorize or glorify it...or at least in his later years, on the TV show, he stopped doing that. Oh, an interesting note for you - the character "Jimmy Sears" in the book is in real life a chef named John Tesar, who lives here in Dallas and whom I've interviewed, met, and reviewed. Tesar is 63 now and hasn't changed very much since Jimmy Sears in the book; he's still a gloriously good chef, a grade-A schmoozer, and a guy who can't stay in the kitchen because he's busy chasing women. (Tomorrow he has a hearing in a custody battle over the kid he had in his late 50s with a 20-something waitress at his own restaurant...if that gives you an idea...  )

I got the Globe 8" chef knife Bourdain recommends in the book and I love it. Have been using it daily for 8 years or so now.

[Florestan]

Actually, what is a millennial?

Related: I was born in 1972. What am I?