What are you currently reading?

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

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 7 Guests are viewing this topic.

AlberichUndHagen



SimonNZ

#9542



also nearly finished Jack Reacher No.15:


pjme



For francophiles and lovers of the 19th century.

I'm reading the dutch translation.

aligreto

Aldous Huxley: Crome Yellow





Huxley is an author whom I read avidly as a young man but have not read anything of his in many years. I picked Crome Yellow randomly off the shelf. I instantly remembered liking Huxley's characters immensely. They are so natural and alive. His writing style is so easy and fluid; everything moved along effortlessly.

AlberichUndHagen

#9545
Wondering if I shall ever finish Joyce's Ulysses. It's an endless series of alternating between outrageously funny and witty parts and then mind-screwy enigmas impossible to figure out. There have been several months when I haven't read it at all.

Yet I must finish it. This is often regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and to be fair, it shows often enough. Appropriately enough, I have recently thought a lot of about reading Fleming's From Russia with Love again: I am sure decoders trying to figure out Joyce would have loved to get their hands on Spektor/Lektor. I wonder if Joyce ever decrypted messages in war himself? I know Fleming did.

j winter

Quote from: AlberichUndHagen on December 06, 2019, 09:43:57 AM
Wondering if I shall ever finish Joyce's Ulysses. It's an endless series of alternating between outrageously funny and witty parts and then mind-screwy enigmas impossible to figure out. There have been several months when I haven't read it at all.

Yet I must finish it. This is often regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and to be fair, it shows often enough. Appropriately enough, I have recently thought a lot of about reading Fleming's From Russia with Love again: I am sure decoders trying to figure out Joyce would have loved to get their hands on Spektor/Lektor. I wonder if Joyce ever decrypted messages in war himself? I know Fleming did.

A man after my own heart, can't decide between James Joyce & James Bond...  :laugh:

FWIW, I've tried Ulysses twice and never got more than halfway through it (wonderful stuff, but I can't take it in such large doses.  I bought Finnegan's Wake in college and have honestly never even cracked it open.)  I've read all of Fleming several times (though not for many years now).  I actually thought about re-reading some Bond recently after watching one of the movies -- I might pull On Her Majesty's Secret Service off the shelf this weekend if I have some time....
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Ken B

Quote from: AlberichUndHagen on December 06, 2019, 09:43:57 AM
Wondering if I shall ever finish Joyce's Ulysses. It's an endless series of alternating between outrageously funny and witty parts and then mind-screwy enigmas impossible to figure out. There have been several months when I haven't read it at all.

Yet I must finish it. This is often regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and to be fair, it shows often enough. Appropriately enough, I have recently thought a lot of about reading Fleming's From Russia with Love again: I am sure decoders trying to figure out Joyce would have loved to get their hands on Spektor/Lektor. I wonder if Joyce ever decrypted messages in war himself? I know Fleming did.

Finish it.

I did, dammit. And take your cod liver oil too!

Florestan

Quote from: AlberichUndHagen on December 06, 2019, 09:43:57 AM
Wondering if I shall ever finish Joyce's Ulysses. It's an endless series of alternating between outrageously funny and witty parts and then mind-screwy enigmas impossible to figure out. There have been several months when I haven't read it at all.

Yet I must finish it. This is often regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written

Written for whom? For literary critics and historians, or for the general audience?  ;D




Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

SimonNZ

I doubt he expected the first wave of literary critics to like it, and I believe most were hostile, except the rare few as perceptive as Edmund Wilson. I believe it was other authors who did most of the initial championing of the work.

Florestan

Quote from: SimonNZ on December 06, 2019, 11:28:10 AM
I doubt he expected the first wave of literary critics to like it

This, while true, is no argument against the idea that he wrote "Ulysses" rather for literary critics than for the general audience.

If you ask me, a humble member of the general audience, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is much more humane and reader-friendly  --- ie, much more interesting --- than "Ulysses".

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

SimonNZ

I think he wrote it for himself, the only way he knew how to write it. And I think you might have some skewed ideas about both snobby literary critics and the supposedly simple tastes of the "general audience" - of which I'd like to consider myself a member.

Some mountains are worth the climb. (also I'd take Ulysses over Portrait any day)

Florestan

Quote from: SimonNZ on December 06, 2019, 12:08:43 PM
I think he wrote it for himself, the only way he knew how to write it.

I think you're spot on.

And I also think that great novelists truly worth their name know how to write for others. Three names OTTOMH: Dickens, Hugo, Dostoievsky.


Quote
And I think you might have some skewed ideas about both snobby literary critics and the supposedly simple tastes of the "general audience" - of which I'd like to consider myself a member.

It's not a question of snobbery or simplism. It's a question of why, and for whom, one writes novels. See above.

Quote
Some mountains are worth the climb. (also I'd take Ulysses over Portrait any day)

No mountain is worth the climb in abstracto. Do you really claim that anyone who dislikes Ulysses, or is not able to finish it, is a dimwit?
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

AlberichUndHagen

Well, from what I've heard, Ulysses is the easiest book to read in the world when compared to Finnegan's Wake. It seems Joyce's books got steadily more and more incomprehensible the more he developed as a writer.

SimonNZ

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2019, 12:24:29 PM


Do you really claim that anyone who dislikes Ulysses, or is not able to finish it, is a dimwit?

No, I think you're being unnecessarily defensive because *you* didn't like it. Which I, for one, don't require you to, and don't feel it points toward any larger truth.

Ken B

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2019, 11:43:04 AM
This, while true, is no argument against the idea that he wrote "Ulysses" rather for literary critics than for the general audience.

If you ask me, a humble member of the general audience, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is much more humane and reader-friendly  --- ie, much more interesting --- than "Ulysses".

I'll take Dubliners over both. I never much liked Portrait. Ulysses at least is often very funny. I could imagine curiosity maybe leading me to re read Ulysses. Not Portrait.

Florestan

Quote from: Ken B on December 06, 2019, 01:02:46 PM
I'll take Dubliners over both. I never much liked Portrait. Ulysses at least is often very funny. Not Portrait.

It shows you're not a Christian. The sermon in Portrait makes for a fascinating reading --- and I have to say it makes some good points.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Ken B

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2019, 01:50:42 PM
It shows you're not a Christian. The sermon in Portrait makes for a fascinating reading --- and I have to say it makes some good points.
There's a sermon in Portrait??

;)

I remember a priest droning on and on to a bunch of boys. I assumed it was foreplay.

JBS

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2019, 01:50:42 PM
It shows you're not a Christian. The sermon in Portrait makes for a fascinating reading --- and I have to say it makes some good points.

It was Joyce's way of showing everything he thought wrong with Irish Catholicism.

I think Portrait is a great book, better than Dubliners, probably better than Ulysses, which I have tried to read but never finished.

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk