What are you currently reading?

[vers la flamme]

Thank you for the review. Kawabata's works sometimes appear to be thin, simple, or superficial. There are no explanations or descriptions much let alone psychologies. And the characters in his works don't challenge their circumstances 
Funny, Mishima, whose works are like Gothic architecture-flamboyant and energetic, loved Kawabata's works, which are like origami.
Kawabata received Nobel Prize because of Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, and the Old Capitol. Though I prefer the latter two and Dancing Girl of Izu, still Snow Country is a beautiful story. It seems to me Thousand Cranes is a solid and fine work.

I'll most definitely be reading more Kawabata. I was thinking Thousand Cranes next, which ought to be another very quick read. May even swing by Barnes & Noble tonight and see if they have it. But I will look out for The Dancing Girl of Izu which I hadn't heard of.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I'll most definitely be reading more Kawabata. I was thinking Thousand Cranes next, which ought to be another very quick read.

Sounds great. Thousand Cranes is an exemplar of Kawabata's aesthetics and style.

Izu Girl is a fine short story as well.

[aligreto]

Somerset Maugham: The Painted Veil





I found this to be a wonderful story told very well in Maugham's very easy storytelling style. It is a story of a wasted youth, a convenient marriage, a trip to China, infidelity and ultimate [unsuspected] retribution. The characters are very credible and come alive on the page. Maugham wrote people really very well.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Somerset Maugham: The Painted Veil





I found this to be a wonderful story told very well in Maugham's very easy storytelling style. It is a story of a wasted youth, a convenient marriage, a trip to China, infidelity and ultimate [unsuspected] retribution. The characters are very credible and come alive on the page. Maugham wrote people really very well.

I haven't read the work. The plot sounds very interesting. I will get a copy!

[Artem]

With this book I think I've read all the major works by Thomas Bernhard that have been translated into English language thus far. He's one of my all time favourite authors.

[vers la flamme]

Rereading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. I first read this as a teenager and loved it, though rereading now, I'm realizing how much of it went over my head, particularly its deep strains of homoeroticism. In any case, its masterful treatment of the tragedies of aging and decadence left a strong mark on me at the time, and it's exciting to revisit this beautiful work. It's such an easy read, too. Anyone could pick up this book and fall in love with it. I reckon it would make a perfect introduction to Victorian literature.



This edition contains tons and tons of notes, including many references to an earlier version of the novel, from which Wilde both toned down some of the more explicit homoerotic elements, and added several chapters and even characters.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Rereading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. I first read this as a teenager and loved it, though rereading now, I'm realizing how much of it went over my head, particularly its deep strains of homoeroticism. In any case, its masterful treatment of the tragedies of aging and decadence left a strong mark on me at the time, and it's exciting to revisit this beautiful work. It's such an easy read, too. Anyone could pick up this book and fall in love with it. I reckon it would make a perfect introduction to Victorian literature.



This edition contains tons and tons of notes, including many references to an earlier version of the novel, from which Wilde both toned down some of the more explicit homoerotic elements, and added several chapters and even characters.

Masterpiece by the genius. Elegant and sophisticated writing with occasional irony. It was interesting to read that some characters frequently smoked opium. I love his other stories, such as the Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan, as well.

There is a movie about him titled "Wilde." It is an enjoyable/interesting, if not excellent, movie.

[vers la flamme]

Masterpiece by the genius. Elegant and sophisticated writing with occasional irony. It was interesting to read that some characters frequently smoked opium. I love his other stories, such as the Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan, as well.

There is a movie about him titled "Wilde." It is an enjoyable/interesting, if not excellent, movie.

I think I need to read some of his plays next. As much as I loved this book when reading it in my younger life, I never went on to check out anything else by Wilde.

[Mandryka]

Enjoying this poem by John Donne

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown'd no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

[steve ridgway]

Enjoying this poem by John Donne

That's a very well written and expressive poem but the concept of "sin" has done its damage. I'm getting my spiritual fix for the day by considering the Spring Equinox (Northern Hemisphere). 0:)

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Love Among the Haystacks, D.H. Lawrence. I like the subtlety and nuance of the story.

[Artem]

Unfortunately, it was nowhere near as good as Convenience store woman. Wouldn't recommend it as a starting point with Murata.

[vers la flamme]

I started two books yesterday, Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore:



and Leonard Bernstein's The Joy of Music:



Both are very good so far.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Unfortunately, it was nowhere near as good as Convenience store woman. Wouldn't recommend it as a starting point with Murata.

I heard about Convenience Store Woman, and was going to get a copy.  The below are some works by other female writers in Japan. I haven't read Strange Weather, but many people told me good things about the book. Kitchen and Housekeeper are enjoyable works.

Kitchen/Banana Yoshimoto
The Housekeeper and the Professor/Yoko Ogawa
Strange Weather In Tokyo/Hiromi Kawakami

[aligreto]

I haven't read the work. The plot sounds very interesting. I will get a copy!

I am sure that you will like it.

Love Among the Haystacks, D.H. Lawrence. I like the subtlety and nuance of the story.

Interestingly, the other day I was pondering what to get my teeth into once I have finished reading through my Somerset-Maugham collection and I was considering my DH Lawerence collection.

[Artem]

I heard about Convenience Store Woman, and was going to get a copy.  The below are some works by other female writers in Japan. I haven't read Strange Weather, but many people told me good things about the book. Kitchen and Housekeeper are enjoyable works.
Kitchen/Banana Yoshimoto
The Housekeeper and the Professor/Yoko Ogawa
Strange Weather In Tokyo/Hiromi Kawakami

I will add Strange Weather to my wish list. I think I saw it in a book shop here. Thank you for pointing it out.

I've been in the mood for reading contemporary Japanese and Korean female writers. Most of the books that I've read in that line like Ogawa's Memory Police or Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs were good, but not like life changing of anything. They do give a good snapshot of their time and concerns, I suppose.

However, Hiroko Oyamada is really good. Her two books, The Factory and The Hole, are very much worth reading.

[SimonNZ]

Covering the ten years between acting in her first student production to her first Academy award. A little light and gossipy in briefly covering her pre-drama years, but once in a solid almost oral history from everyone who remembers her on the challenges and development of her early years. An especially well detailed recreation of the brutal trial by fire dictatorial years that were the Yale Drama School of the time.

[ritter]

Starting Louis Aragon's 1944 novel Aurélien:



The book, widely regarded as its author's most successful novel, is supposed to be about the "impossibility of the couple", is also a depiction of the "lost" leisourly bourgeoisie of the interwar years in France, and I've read also permitted Aragon to look back at his surrealist years "without bitterness".

I'm only about 20 pages into the novel, but so far it is beautifully written and very engaging, and already I've detected two or three really worthwhile quotes.

[Florestan]

Starting Louis Aragon's 1944 novel Aurélien:



The book, widely regarded as its author's most successful novel, is supposed to be about the "impossibility of the couple", is also a depiction of the "lost" leisourly bourgeoisie of the interwar years in France, and I've read also permitted Aragon to look back at his surrealist years "without bitterness".

I'm only about 20 pages into the novel, but so far it is beautifully written and very engaging, and already I've detected two or three really worthwhile quotes.

Could you please share them?

TD

Luigi Pirandello --- The Old and the Young



Two chapters in. The setting and atmosphere is quite similar to Lampedusa's The Leopard. Love it.

[vers la flamme]

I will add Strange Weather to my wish list. I think I saw it in a book shop here. Thank you for pointing it out.

I've been in the mood for reading contemporary Japanese and Korean female writers. Most of the books that I've read in that line like Ogawa's Memory Police or Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs were good, but not like life changing of anything. They do give a good snapshot of their time and concerns, I suppose.

However, Hiroko Oyamada is really good. Her two books, The Factory and The Hole, are very much worth reading.

I just found a copy of The Hole in one of those take a book, leave a book boxes at a local park. Excited to read it. I've heard good things about Oyamada.

Really enjoying Kafka on the Shore. Compared to the other Murakami I've read, this one is a truly sprawling epic.