What are you currently reading?

[Jo498]

If something like karma exists it is not a "mind" in nature but something fairly close to a natural law. Like a ball bounces back from the wall because of conservation of momentum, you reap the fruits of your deeds by some impersonal cosmic connection between certain acts and suffering etc.

But that's beside the point. There is plenty of "poetic justice" in "naturalist" settings in literature without evoking fate, gods, karma etc. Like with other improbable coincidences literature is rife with I think it also  depends for "magical" elements on how well it is done. There are pretty good "supernatural" horror stories, there is probably also good magical realism (I only read a few short pieces by Garcia Marquez ages ago, so I cannot comment on his work). There is also a lot of silly or annoyingly inconsistent stuff out there, of course.

[Ken B]

  Sorry, for some reason I didn't see any of the intervening posts before mine went up. I didn't mean to ignore all your comments.
  Anyway, the other day some woman running for president in the US put up a post suggesting that if we all concentrate on the hurricane not hitting the coast, maybe it wouldn't.  She deleted the post, but she thought that might work in the real world.  Some writers share her sense of...reality. Paul Coelho, perhaps. I hate that stuff.  I don't think Garcia-Marquez really thinks a tree might, under any circumstances, bleed human blood out of sympathy. But he might use it as a poetic metaphor. In the "General in His Labyrinth" the ocean by the corrupt tyrant's country was gone, and there was a desert where it had been, because he had sold it to an American company. That's clearly an image, and a political statement, rather than an indication of his lack of understanding of basic principles of reality. Shakespeare has lots of magic in "The Tempest." In Macbeth, too, I suppose, and there's the ghost in Hamlet, but those don't bother me at all.  But when a Native American detective sees a vision that helps solve a grisly murder in a "realistic" police procedural, I have a problem.  In Twin Peaks, however, I enjoy it quite a lot (especially as there were giants, dwarves, and people who speak backwards in the vision). I guess my view is that authors can make any laws they want in their fictional world, and its fine if they are consistent. But using the tools of true realism (or naturalism) indicate they are subjecting themselves to the laws of empirical phenomonology, as does using real historical events and figures, unless the story is parody or comedy or tongue-in-cheek.  I hated when Tarantino showed moving and horrific scenes of Nazi brutality and then turned the movie into a fantastical farce. So was all that human suffering just "entertainment"?
  Anyway, sorry to ramble on.

No need to apologize, interesting thoughts.

The disappearing ocean is less irksome than communication by milk turn8ng to snakes but both remind me of my dislike for Marvel Comics movies. (Very unlike gods in the Iliad I think.) Lazy and a bit frivolous. You need super villains in order to imagine evil, while Hitler,Stalin, Mao, and ABBA are living memory? I am no fan of Graham Greene, but for some reason I suddenly recall him evoking true, mundane, evil very well indeed without such stuff.

Magicalrealism also reminds me of the kind of hyperbole that Goldman mocks so well in The Princess Bride, which is worth reading.

Interesting question: is moving a hurricane more or less plausible than moving an ocean ... 

[Brian]

The last Garcia Marquez I read was non-fiction, and therefore something Ken could tolerate. "Clandestine in Chile," a short (150 page) book narrating the adventures of an anti-Pinochet documentary filmmaker who smuggled himself into the country in disguise to produce a movie about life under the dictatorship.

The book is quite entertaining and written with typical GGM flair. By all accounts, it's more interesting than the actual movie.

[Ken B]

I did like the one book I read by Vargas Llosa, but the only South American author I have read several books by is Jorge Amado. I read I 3 or 4 of his, decades ago. He was active in the communist party, so Andrei might enjoy the books ...

Vargas Llosa wrote a murder mystery, which is on my list.

[Florestan]

I did like the one book I read by Vargas Llosa, but the only South American author I have read several books by is Jorge Amado. I read I 3 or 4 of his, decades ago. He was active in the communist party, so Andrei might enjoy the books ...

As long as he keeps his politics away from his books, I really might. What do you recommend for a starter?

Vargas Llosa wrote a murder mystery, which is on my list.

Actually, he wrote two. Who Killed Palomino Molero? and Death in the Andes, featuring the same policeman, corporal Lituma. Both are quite good.

[Ken B]

As long as he keeps his politics away from his books, I really might. What do you recommend for a starter?

Actually, he wrote two. Who Killed Palomino Molero? and Death in the Andes, featuring the same policeman, corporal Lituma. Both are quite good.

Dona Flor and her two husbands

And The Black Book of Communism ... 

[SimonNZ]

Finished:



I only knew the story in broad strokes, not in the detail presented here, some of which makes the 2016 election look dignified by comparison, and quite a bit makes 2016 look merely "traditional". Highly recommended.

Will be immediately starting on another by Edward Larson:




also on the go:



I'd seen this around, but hadn't realised what it was until browsing in a secondhand shop a few weeks ago: his autobiography using the framing device and continually returning to the story of the fatwa and his years in hiding - Joseph Anton being the name he lived under.

Its excellent. He's clearly developed his thoughts on his experience, doesn't merely repeat or expand on previous utterances, but offers a thorough and lengthy and unflinching self-review.

[JBS]

I don't know of a specific book to suggest, but if you want presidential contests that were triumphs of mudslinging and skullduggery, read on up on the two elections in which John Quincy Adams opposed Andrew Jackson.  The first one JQA won in the House of Representatives, the second one Jackson won.

[SimonNZ]

Yeah, that's another one I know in outline but not in detail, if anyone can recommend a study of it.

Or even if they know a particularly good biography of Jackson.

[JBS]

Yeah, that's another one I know in outline but not in detail, if anyone can recommend a study of it.

Or even if they know a particularly good biography of Jackson.

As for Jackson, there is a one volume biography by HW Brands--didn't you read his newest one not long ago?--and a book by Meacham that restricts itself to his years as President. I have not read either one, but I read Robert Remini's biography years ago. It is good, but over 20 years old.

[SimonNZ]

As for Jackson, there is a one volume biography by HW Brands--didn't you read his newest one not long ago?--and a book by Meacham that restricts itself to his years as President. I have not read either one, but I read Robert Remini's biography years ago. It is good, but over 20 years old.

Not me, though a number of his books have turned up on my radar:

Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants (2018) by H.W. Brands - biography of the three giants who dominated Congress in the first half of the 19th Century, namely Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster - this was on my list back in early May, but just getting a start.

 

[JBS]

Not me, though a number of his books have turned up on my radar:

That must have been the post my mind was thinking of...

[SimonNZ]

Looking around I see there's also this one, published by Oxford in 2011:

[JBS]

Reminded myself of this one, which is focused on the Adamses. Again, I have not read it.

[SimonNZ]

Instead of starting the Larsen Washington I knocked this off - a quicker read than I expected it to be:



which was as good as I'd heard, and particularly so in the last quarter dealing with the Ukranian response to Soviet ecological imperialism, the growth of the Ukranian green party, and the cruel turnaround they faced in having to support nuclear power and the site in the face of economic collapse in the post-Soviet era

[greg]

Just started this massive undertaking- the legendary, one and only, Umineko no Naku Koro ni (it's a visual novel in the mystery genre).

I say massive, because if it were a book, it would be over 3600 pages! Expecting to take about 2 months to finish this.

What led me to pick it up were: 1) it's related to Higurashi When They Cry, which I love, and 2) the reviews of some people make it sound like this was some sort of life-altering experience that it's so good.

[JBS]

Just started this massive undertaking- the legendary, one and only, Umineko no Naku Koro ni (it's a visual novel in the mystery genre).

I say massive, because if it were a book, it would be over 3600 pages! Expecting to take about 2 months to finish this.

What led me to pick it up were: 1) it's related to Higurashi When They Cry, which I love, and 2) the reviews of some people make it sound like this was some sort of life-altering experience that it's so good.

Why is it legendary? (Never heard of it...but that applies to most graphic novels)

[greg]

Why is it legendary? (Never heard of it...but that applies to most graphic novels)

(side note, since you used the term "graphic novel" just want to mention there's a difference between a VN and a graphic novel, just in case you didn't know)

Probably a little subjectivity of my own there about being "legendary." 

But on any top 10 list of visual novels, it will be there, as well as the glowing reviews (seriously, I've seen a few that are so over-the-top positive that I've never seen quite as much on anything else- and they are dead serious- taken out of context you'd think they are joking).

For me, its importance is large because the anime adaptation is notoriously unimpressive and also incomplete, so I got the memo that it's worth just going to the source: the visual novel. And since it is strongly connected to my favorite anime/tv show of all time (not in story, but in spirit), and created by the same people who made the original visual novel source material for it, this thing has been on my to-do list for a couple years now. 

About ~7 hours into it so far and pretty entertaining even though "nothing" has really happened yet, and it's mainly just character introductions and plot setup.

[JBS]

(side note, since you used the term "graphic novel" just want to mention there's a difference between a VN and a graphic novel, just in case you didn't know)

Probably a little subjectivity of my own there about being "legendary." 

But on any top 10 list of visual novels, it will be there, as well as the glowing reviews (seriously, I've seen a few that are so over-the-top positive that I've never seen quite as much on anything else- and they are dead serious- taken out of context you'd think they are joking).

For me, its importance is large because the anime adaptation is notoriously unimpressive and also incomplete, so I got the memo that it's worth just going to the source: the visual novel. And since it is strongly connected to my favorite anime/tv show of all time (not in story, but in spirit), and created by the same people who made the original visual novel source material for it, this thing has been on my to-do list for a couple years now. 

About ~7 hours into it so far and pretty entertaining even though "nothing" has really happened yet, and it's mainly just character introductions and plot setup.

I  must admit that until now I have never even heard the term "visual novel".

TD


My copy is from the public library, and is the one on the left. I think the one on the right is the UK edition.

A lively collection of what little info is known about Nero's mother.

[vandermolen]

VG