What are you currently reading?

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

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arpeggio

^^^^
FYI. David Frum has just released a new book:

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Frum used to work in the Bush White House and is the senior editor of the Atlantic

He was on TV tonight and stated something many of us have suspected, that it is impossible to convince a Trump supporter that Trump is unfit to be President.  All we can do is try to neutralize the Trump movement if they refuse to compromise.

Florestan

Quote from: Florestan on March 10, 2020, 06:59:06 AM


The Man in Revolt

Finished it. Superb! Mandatory reading for anyone interested in political philosophy. Camus belongs to that all too rare breed of writers who are both dedicated left/right wing (left in his case) and completely sincere (that is, they don't brush aside inconvenient facts). Hemingway, Malraux and Orwell come to mind immediately.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

aligreto

Hemingway: The Torrents of Spring





Hemingway's wonderfully satirical cynical and sarcastic first novel. Rereading it after many, many years it really contains a lot of contempt for those of whom he had no respect.

ritter

#9903
Jean Giraudoux 1935 play La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place).

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It's easy to see why this play was so successful in the years prior to WW2 (and also, in translation, in the postwar years outside of France). An anti-war proclamation, focusing on the war-mongering stances of politicians who will not be on the front line. Particularly noteworthy to me was the appearance of the alleged "neutral" international expert Busiris in Act II. The characters are very well delineated, Giraudoux's colloquial but highly educated French is a delight to read, and the dramatic pacing is impeccable. A great work.

SimonNZ

#9904
finished:



Think I've got only three Reachers to go after this. And this one might now be what I'd recommend as a first read to anyone coming new to them.

Opening lines: "Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers."

half way into:



Good but not great overview of the inner sanctum of Kennedy advisers. Irresistible, it seems, is the pull towards the gossipy for the JFK historian, even when stating at the outset they intend to avoid it.

Jo498

A couple of weeks ago I finished O'Connor's "Wise Blood", read a couple of Rex Stout in between and now I am at Leonhard Frank's "The Robber Band" (1914). The latter is a fascinating window into the working/petit bourgeois class of ca. 1900 Germany. The more a I read such stuff I tend to a historically modified version of that famous saying that who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart etc., namely that who was not at least somewhat socialist between the middle of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century had no heart, but that in many countries the conditions have improved immeasureably despite still considerable social injustice.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

AlberichUndHagen


accmacmus


SimonNZ

Quote from: accmacmus on June 05, 2020, 03:32:02 PM
Aleph by Borges

I've had that one on the shelves waiting to be read for some years now. I'll be interested to know how you rate it.

Brian

Just finished a novel called "Ride a Cockhorse" by Raymond Kennedy. It's a vicious, gossipy satire in which a meek, calm 45-year-old woman suddenly wakes up morning with Trump-level self-confidence, delusions of grandeur, and libido. She seduces everyone she wants, aggrandizes her way into promotions, and organizes a posse of loyal followers, led by her hairdresser.

Kennedy exquisitely pinpoints the way that cowards, potential victims, and sycophants latch on to budding tyrants. At the time of the book the lady at the heart of the matter was an allegory for Hitler, but her essential vapidity and self-absorption makes her a better satirical presentation of our current state.

As for the title, its overt sexuality takes on horrifying meaning about 15 pages before the end. Not a super fun read nowadays, but an astonishing deadpan performance of narration.

SimonNZ

Well that's a review that makes me want to hunt down a copy. Thanks!

Looking into it I see there's a NYRB edition:


Christo

John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche (2018). Sort of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance based on Nietzsche's mountaineering experiences in the Swiss Alps:

... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

vandermolen

Quote from: Christo on June 06, 2020, 01:46:56 AM
John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche (2018). Sort of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance based on Nietzsche's mountaineering experiences in the Swiss Alps:



Looks interesting.
Time for some Existential psychotherapy:
"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).

AlberichUndHagen

My first time reading Emile Zola novel: L'argent.

Brian

Quote from: SimonNZ on June 05, 2020, 07:39:40 PM
Well that's a review that makes me want to hunt down a copy. Thanks!

Looking into it I see there's a NYRB edition:


That's the one I have!

SimonNZ

They have such a sharp eye for the books they choose to reprint. It's one of the very few series where you can buy without even reading the back just knowing that if they are championing it then it's got merit.

Mandryka

#9916


In the book she makes a distinction between stories which are about investigation and stories which are about description. This is in the former category, she's trying to see whether she can use a narrative to capture, communicate, her memories of how she felt when she was still a teenager. In particular, her first couple of sexual experiences, her bulimia and her response to her peers' response to her. It's probably the most experimental thing I've read by her, and as such, one of the most stimulating.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Brian

James McBride's new novel "Deacon King Kong," published in March. I'm near the end and totally swept up. McBride is always remarkable for the way he can blend humor into very serious subjects. A lot of serious novels that get praised as "funny" aren't funny at all because most novelists are earnestly deadpan, or scathing, or cutting, rather than funny. McBride is FUNNY. And he's also catching big game here, about race and religion and alcohol and the way people will sacrifice what they really want to have what is easy. Really hope the end lives up to what's transpired so far.

j winter

Well, I finally finished War and Peace; and having closed the book, blinked, brewed another pot of coffee, and peered out the window, it seems clear alas that God has not taken the hint -- the bloody coronavirus is still here. 

So, on to The Brothers Karamazov.   

Perhaps I should reconsider my tactics... I goofed off a lot in college, so the list of brick-sized great novels that I've always meant to read is rather long.  In some ways I imagine this is like a sneak-preview of my eventual retirement (although I always envisioned a bit more travel being involved, or at least the occasional dinner out...)  :-\
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

Brian

I'm starting W&P soon! My thinking is that now's the time to take on real big books like that. After W&P, I plan to spend a month rereading old favorites, because rereading is something I have done almost not at all for many years. The fact that there are so many books to read kinda inhibits me from going back to ones I love.

... But the big question is ... How did you like it???