What are you currently reading?

[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?!

[j winter]

I'm approaching the end of War & Peace -- we could always swap... 

[André]

Maupassant: A Life





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

Superb. Heart-rending, especially since it is so dispassionately, almost clinically told.

[Brian]

I'm approaching the end of War & Peace -- we could always swap... 

Wow! I looked up word counts thinking I could take on W&P... it's actually almost three times the size of Moby-Dick. So you have the easy end of the trade!

How do you like it?

[Jo498]

Wow! I looked up word counts thinking I could take on W&P... it's actually almost three times the size of Moby-Dick. So you have the easy end of the trade!

But W & P is a far more "traditional" narrative and overall very readable. The only challenge is the huge length. (I have a pbck edition in 4 volumes which might have made it a little easier.) One gets a few essayish pages with Tolstoy harping on his view of history, namely that it is not "great people" like Bonaparte who "shape history" but anonymous forces and chance. Despite that nursery rhyme "For want of a nail" etc. this was somewhat of a new and provocative position in the mid-19th century but hardly anymore and the theoretical reflection don't take that much space.
No sublibrarian starting with scraps concerning war Krieg guerre bellum polemos, no sermon on just war, no ballistics of cannons or chemistry of gunpowder etc.

[Florestan]

But W & P is a far more "traditional" narrative and overall very readable. The only challenge is the huge length. (I have a pbck edition in 4 volumes which might have made it a little easier.) One gets a few essayish pages with Tolstoy harping on his view of history, namely that it is not "great people" like Bonaparte who "shape history" but anonymous forces and chance. Despite that nursery rhyme "For want of a nail" etc. this was somewhat of a new and provocative position in the mid-19th century but hardly anymore and the theoretical reflection don't take that much space.

And IIRC the essay is placed at the very end of the book so it can be easily skipped (better said, ignored, because there's nothing more to read after it). W&P was a real page turner for me.

[Jo498]

It must have been about 25 years that I read War and Peace, so I am not sure. I thought there were some reflections in history interspersed within the book. But while not always a page turner it was a readable books and the only challenge is the sheer length, it's not difficult and not particularly longwinded. (Whereas I got stuck roughly in the middle of Anna Karenina because I was bored to death by the Kitty - Levin subplot and the harvesting or whatever. Although AK is a shorter book and probably even more traditional because it has only family/love stories, not politics mixed with family/love)

[aligreto]

Superb. Heart-rending, especially since it is so dispassionately, almost clinically told.

Yes indeed; a tragic tale.

[vandermolen]

It must have been about 25 years that I read War and Peace, so I am not sure. I thought there were some reflections in history interspersed within the book. But while not always a page turner it was a readable books and the only challenge is the sheer length, it's not difficult and not particularly longwinded. (Whereas I got stuck roughly in the middle of Anna Karenina because I was bored to death by the Kitty - Levin subplot and the harvesting or whatever. Although AK is a shorter book and probably even more traditional because it has only family/love stories, not politics mixed with family/love)

I read W and P at university and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I did get a bit fed up with Tolstoy's 40 page philosophical digressions every now and then. I read it a second time as well. Like you I got stuck with AK and never finished it (I preferred the TV dramatisation with Nicola Pagett )

[SimonNZ]

I've only read AK once when I was much younger but at the time the Kitty-Levin stuff were my favorite parts.

[vers la flamme]

I read Anna Karenina in high school and loved it. Never tried W&P. In trying to decide what to read next I'm considering the Kreutzer Sonata which should be a good quick read, but I'm not sure if I'm in a Tolstoy mood.

Finishing Narcissus & Goldmund has left a void in my heart. What an incredible book. I've started a couple of books since, that have been sitting on my shelf forever, but I'm having a hard time to get into them, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, & Camus's L'Étranger, which I've read in English but never en français.

[AlberichUndHagen]

I'm approaching the end of War & Peace -- we could always swap... 

Relatively speaking, I am approaching the end of Proust's In the shadow of young girls in flower. The narrator recently met Elstir, a painter. Narrator certainly makes me squirm with embarrassment at times with his relentless stalking. At least in this book he is still an adolescent but I understand he continues his borderline narcissistic and possessive traits even in later volumes when he is older.

That being said, especially this Balbec section of the book is incredibly evocative text.

[André]

I read Anna Karenina in high school and loved it. Never tried W&P. In trying to decide what to read next I'm considering the Kreutzer Sonata which should be a good quick read, but I'm not sure if I'm in a Tolstoy mood.

Finishing Narcissus & Goldmund has left a void in my heart. What an incredible book. I've started a couple of books since, that have been sitting on my shelf forever, but I'm having a hard time to get into them, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, & Camus's L'Étranger, which I've read in English but never en français.

It really etches in one's mind and heart. Try Demian if you haven't done so already.

[AlberichUndHagen]

Btw, I found Moby Dick much more readable than that part of War and peace which I managed to read. Of course, one cannot judge a book unless one has completely read it.