What are you currently reading?

[Mookalafalas]

The odd Poe short story. It's been decades since I read most of them, and I'm starting with obscurities of which I remember next to nothing. "Thou Art the Man" and "The Sphinx."

  Remarkable coincidence. I too am reading Poe short stories. I assigned several to a student as part of an assignment, but figured I'd better reread them as well (it's been decades).

[Henk]

[Ganondorf]

Almost finished with Mann's Joseph in Egypt. I had almost forgotten how magnificently Mann writes here. Mann may very well be the first writer to portray Potiphar's wife in a sympathetic light, even giving her name and instead of old BS about portraying her as a simple temptress, he describes how she was basically sold in marriage and then Joseph comes along and instead of turning her down or avoiding her, the narcissistic prick actually cruelly plays with her feelings because, secretly, he enjoys such attention. No wonder he gets thrown into the pit, so to speak, twice!

[DaveF]

Holiday re-reading.  If not quite my favourite novel, it's the one more than any other that I would like to have written myself.  One of the very few perfect novels in English, IMHO (which is perhaps why it's been called "The greatest French novel in English).

[SimonNZ]

Put some other things on hold to knock this off quickly.

Answered a couple of questions I've had about the film in each of the many viewings. Firstly: why a force of nature like Chigurh let himself be taken in by a young cop at the start. In the book he tells Woody Harrelson's character that he did it as a test of his own abilities. Secondly: if, as I suspect, there was a missing scene in the film explaining how they ultimately caught up with Llewelyn, and how that went down - which there certainly is in the book.

There's also more of a tension in the book about the Sherriff's belief that things have gotten so much worse in recent times and a lot of other information suggesting that the only change is that we've gotten better at noticing and calling things by their true name.

[San Antone]

Put some other things on hold to knock this off quickly.

Cormac McCarthy is one of my top three writers, and I regularly re-read his novels.  However, this one is the last one of his work which I can enjoy.  The group of novels from 1973-1994 however, I find his best, and the ones I re-read about every year.

Child of God
Suttree      
Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West         
All the Pretty Horses      
The Crossing   

Cities of the Plain is also good, but not as good IMO as the other two in that series. His last three books, beginning with The Road, lose me entirely.

[SimonNZ]

Cormac McCarthy is one of my top three writers, and I regularly re-read his novels.  However, this one is the last one of his work which I can enjoy.  The group of novels from 1973-1994 however, I find his best, and the ones I re-read about every year.

Child of God
Suttree      
Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West         
All the Pretty Horses      
The Crossing   

Cities of the Plain is also good, but not as good IMO as the other two in that series. His last three books, beginning with The Road, lose me entirely.

Which of those would be your desert island McCarthy?

[San Antone]

Which of those would be your desert island McCarthy?

Easy: Blood Meridian.

[ritter]

Cesare Pavese's 1946 collection of short stories / prose poems / essays Feria d'agosto (August Holiday).



This paperback edition has been in my library for more than 40 years, but it's only now that I've started reading it...   

[foxandpeng]

I have recently abandoned Proust. Dreadful nonsense. Cornerstone of literature, maybe, but a tedious and narcissistic mess of drawn out dross.

In the packing of books in crates to move, the entire series of books in his magnum opus is headed for the Charity Shop. Never to return. This was lost time for which I will be glad to not search again.

I'm clearly a Philistine.

[JBS]

Came across this at the library today


Publisher's blurb

Louisa Siefert was a prolific poet, critic, playwright, and novelist who published many works that were bestsellers in nineteenth-century France. This bilingual critical edition of Siefert's Les Sto ques (1870) aims to restore Louisa Siefert's intellectual legacy while providing ample material for further scholarship on her unique poetic voice.

Siefert's intellectual power and aesthetic originality are especially pronounced in her Les Sto ques, a volume that exemplifies her transdisciplinary mind and rich sonnet practice. The more than forty poems collected here are presented in the original French with masterful translations into English by Norman R. Shapiro, one of the most highly regarded English translators of French poetry. Shapiro's inspired translations of Siefert's texts give readers gain a sense of her prosodic mastery and flair as well as the way she uses poetry to think about the relation between mind and body. In her introduction, Adrianna M. Paliyenko reconstructs from original archival research the reception of Les Sto ques from May 1870 to the present, describing how many nineteenth-century readers considered Siefert's philosophical verse to be central to her contribution to French poetic history and, in turn, how the gendering of poetic expression and the canon sidelined Siefert's intellectual accomplishment.

A monumental achievement, this book brings the work of a major French poet to a broader audience. Siefert's poetic primer on the Stoic way of thinking about why humans suffer or find serenity and joy, and other big questions of life, will strike a chord with modern readers.

[Florestan]

I have recently abandoned Proust. Dreadful nonsense. Cornerstone of literature, maybe, but a tedious and narcissistic mess of drawn out dross.

In the packing of books in crates to move, the entire series of books in his magnum opus is headed for the Charity Shop. Never to return. This was lost time for which I will be glad to not search again.

I initially liked it, but as I read on my interest dwindled until it vanished altogether (I have zero interest in the amorous tribulations of a pseudo-intellectual dandy in love with a semi-imbecile escort girl).  I never finished the first volume and it's highly unlikely I will ever attempt to start it over again, let alone read the whole series through.

I'm clearly a Philistine.

That makes two of us.

[ritter]

That makes two of us.

No está hecha la miel para la boca del asno... 

Good day, Andrei!

[foxandpeng]

No está hecha la miel para la boca del asno... 

Good day, Andrei!

There is definitely no miel found in this asno!

[Brian]

I have recently abandoned Proust. Dreadful nonsense. Cornerstone of literature, maybe, but a tedious and narcissistic mess of drawn out dross.

In the packing of books in crates to move, the entire series of books in his magnum opus is headed for the Charity Shop. Never to return. This was lost time for which I will be glad to not search again.

I'm clearly a Philistine.

I had to read the first volume in college and never picked up the second. Very happy to listen to this instead:



By the way - are you moving far?

[Spotted Horses]

Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie



The story follows a Japanese woman who survived the atomic bomb attach in Nagasaki, and whose family connections lead her through other periods and places of violence and inhumanity, India during the partition, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and New York after 9/11. It contrasts family ties and loyalties with harsh political conditions. I found it a compelling read. (I had previously read another book by Shamsie, Home Fires.)

[foxandpeng]

I had to read the first volume in college and never picked up the second. Very happy to listen to this instead:



By the way - are you moving far?

Has to be better than reading Proust.

25 miles north from where we are now. Not far in the grand scheme of things, but far enough!

[Spotted Horses]

I have recently abandoned Proust. Dreadful nonsense. Cornerstone of literature, maybe, but a tedious and narcissistic mess of drawn out dross.

In the packing of books in crates to move, the entire series of books in his magnum opus is headed for the Charity Shop. Never to return. This was lost time for which I will be glad to not search again.

I'm clearly a Philistine.

I actually made it though the second volume, and my notes said I found it less interesting than Swan's Way. I did find something interesting in the psychological  drama, but I don't have the time or feeling of repose necessary. The third volume doesn't seem to be in my future.

[foxandpeng]

I actually made it though the second volume, and my notes said I found it less interesting than Swan's Way. I did find something interesting in the psychological  drama, but I don't have the time or feeling of repose necessary. The third volume doesn't seem to be in my future.

You are a better man than me 😀

[ritter]

Well, this is the shelf in my library with books on (or by) Marcel Proust (and Reynaldo Hahn). The "canonical" works, in the Pléiade editions --6 volumes--, are elsewhere in my library, as are the oversized items (e.g., facsimiles of the annotated galley proofs of Combray or of the manuscript of the madeleine episode).

25 miles north from where we are now. Not far in the grand scheme of things, but far enough!

Good luck with the move. I hope you get nicely settled in your new home...