What are you currently reading?

[FelixSkodi]

Nice!

Hope your foot's not to sore on the day.

Thanks.

Sore foot?

[Brian]

Good to see you back here by the way, Philo!

[FelixSkodi]

Good to see you back here by the way, Philo!

Thanks! Good to be back. 

[SimonNZ]

Sore foot?

From that snake bite you got.

[FelixSkodi]

From that snake bite you got.

I am very confused, as I've never been bitten by a snake.

[SimonNZ]

I am very confused, as I've never been bitten by a snake.

Sure you did. It festered so badly that Odysseus had to leave you on Lemnos.

[FelixSkodi]

Sure you did. It festered so badly that Odysseus had to leave you on Lemnos.

Ha!

Should be all right by Saturday. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

It's quite relevant. The carbon footprint of the average Luxembourger is almost 7 times that of the average Chinese, almost three times that of the average American, Canadian, and Australian, about four times higher than most of its European neighbors,  and almost twelve times higher than your own in Romania. So it's quite right to ask why. 

Neither China nor Luxembourg are monoliths. And if overall totals are the only standard, then China will almost always be number one, simply by dint of the size of its population.

Thank you for posting that JBS.  And, yes, it is interesting and important to see things/studies from different angles and studies.  One thought:  studies of carbon emissions by areas and looking at what businesses/companies/factories, etc.  are there., and what they pollute.

Best wishes,

PD

[SimonNZ]

After aluding to the myth of Philoctetes this morning I went back and read the title essay from Edmund Wilson's The Wound And The Bow which is how I know the story (having not yet read or seen a production of the Sophocles play).

Am now rereading the 100-page opening essay on Dickens from that book, writen at a time - 1939 - when, according to Wilson, there were few worthy volumes of biography, fewer still of criticism and a more general suspicion of Dickens "literary"as opposed to popular merit.

The real gem of the collection, which I'm not going to reread today, is his early assessment of Finnegans Wake. Astonishingly having the full measure of the work without previous explanations or the guidebooks we have now.

[arpeggio]

I have not posted here in quit awhile but I have been reading.

There were two classics I have read that I was disappointed in: Lord Jim and For Whom the Bell Tools.  Which is strange since I normally like Conrad and Hemingway.  Now the one classic I have read that I could not put down was Ivanhoe.

I have read some political stuff.  I hesitate to mention the books for fear of starting a tsunami.

I decided to read some junk: Firing Point by George Wallace and Don Keith   The movie Hunter Killer is based on this novel.  I know it is second rate Hunt for the Red October.  It was either this or Moby Dick.  Well they are still both about the sea.  So I am reading about a submarine instead of a whale.

I get my science fiction fix by reading the Magazine Analog.  Some of the stories are great, some not so good.

[SimonNZ]

I have read some political stuff.  I hesitate to mention the books for fear of starting a tsunami.

I'd be interested to know.

[FelixSkodi]

I'd be interested to know.

Me as well, we're all mostly harmless.

I've been reading Kissinger thoughts on the current situation (not in book form though).

[SimonNZ]

Have you been reading his thoughts...telepathically?!

[JBS]

I have not posted here in quit awhile but I have been reading.

There were two classics I have read that I was disappointed in: Lord Jim and For Whom the Bell Tools.  Which is strange since I normally like Conrad and Hemingway.  Now the one classic I have read that I could not put down was Ivanhoe.
.

I never could read Conrad. Even Heart of Darkness wss a chore.

I've never read much Hemingway. FWTBT is a book I tnought was well written but I have no desire to reread. Same with Old Man and the Sea. Sun Also Rises I gave up on. The only Hemingway that left me feeling enthusiastic about it was Death in the Afternoon.

[FelixSkodi]

Have you been reading his thoughts...telepathically?!

Lol. No, online.

[SimonNZ]

A few things on the go with less than usual enthusiasm:



but the one I'm really enjoying and looking forward to getting back into each day is this:

[ritter]

[asin]2070127583[/asin]

After having read Blaise Cendrar's stunning poetry (Du monde entier, which includes Les Pâques à New York, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, and Le Panama, which I now understand why they are seen as foundational for modern poetry) and his fun but rather weird novella La fin du monde, filmée par l'ange N.-D.—my post on that vanished in GMG's recent time warp  —, moving on to another author new to me, Roger Caillois:

[asin]2070772799[/asin]
Caillois is an interesting figure, a polymath with a tangential relationship to the surrealists and a strong link to South America and the fascinating Victoria Ocampo—he spent the WW2 years in exile in Argentina under her protection and later became the strongest promoter of Latin American literature back in France. His late work includes a theory of games and a peculiar study of stones. This Quarto anthology starts with a tribute by Marguerite Yourcenar (in which this author's erudite and donnish, but IMHO ultimately barren and even pointless, style inevitably shines through), and now I'm halfway through Caillois's autobiographical Le fleuve Alphée, which is interesting in charting his intelectual development, but also appears—so far, at least—terribly egotistic. I'm going to finish it out if self-discipline (it's not that long, thankfully), but am not enjoying this that much.

[aligreto]

Maupassant: A Life





This was a wonderful book to re-read [English translation unfortunately] after many years.

[Ratliff]

All my insightful posts about Faulkner novels, gone. 

Now we are only left with our vague, contradictory memories about what I wrote. Sort of like a Faulkner novel. 

[Brian]

I finished Moby-Dick. Now what am I supposed to do all day long - work?!