What are you currently reading?

[stingo]

Started Benjamin Franklin's Bastard: A Novel by Sally Cabot. I picked this up in one of the monthly Kindle sales, and I'm glad I did. I'm about a fifth of the way done, and it seems rather like Downton Abbey - a soap opera with higher production values. Still, it's a good read so far and I am interested to see how it unfolds.

[asin]0062241923[/asin]

[Florestan]

Marxist-Leninist policies

Id est, famine, massacres and terror! 

I am not kidding, --- anyone advocating Marxist Leninist policies is a mass murderer for me!

[ritter]

A recently published biography of Paul Valéry:



Very approachable and entertaining, giving insights into the life of a poet who, even if his star has faded slightly in the recent past, remains IMO one of the greats of 20th century French literature...

[Brian]

I'm beginning my absurdly ambitious summer project: a 3-4 month immersion in some pinnacles of Russian literature. The reading list, roughly in the order I plan to read them:

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Chekhov, collected short stories
Sorokin, The Queue
Tolstoy, collected short stories
Dostoevsky, The Idiot
Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
Bely, Petersburg
Gogol, Dead Souls
Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov

I've read C&P, Brothers K, Eugene, and Petersburg before. The Idiot, and all the Chekhov, Sorokin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Bulgakov, will be new to me.

[Florestan]

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.

[Florestan]

I'm beginning my absurdly ambitious summer project: a 3-4 month immersion in some pinnacles of Russian literature.

Stick with Dostoyevsky and let us know when you finish it... 

[Bogey]

A Dickens' sighting!



Ring that bell, Karl!

[Florestan]

A Dickens' sighting!



Ring that bell, Karl!

Oliver Twist, anyone?

[Bogey]

Oliver Twist, anyone?

Read that one last summer.  Found it decent.  However, much rather re-read David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby.  Your thoughts? 

I also started Barnaby Rudge a while back, but got sidetracked.  I need to go back to this one as I was enjoying it.

[Wakefield]

Derek Parfit: Razones y personas



Spanish translation of Reasons and Persons.

It's a good translation (and quite expensive) , but I'm seriously considering the Kindle version of the original edition in English.

[Florestan]

Read that one last summer.  Found it decent.  However, much rather re-read David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby.  Your thoughts? 

I remember reading Nicholas Nickleby sometimes (ie, many years) ago and finding it much, much better than either David Copperfield. or Oliver Twist].

It might be because of my mother and father adnotating this very book with their own handwriting. be it as it may, I cherish this Dickens book, which is old and weared, more than any other of my library... 

I would re-read these three last novels anytime.

Anyway, I think Dickens is one of the greatest English writers ever, together with Joseph Conrad. 

[Wakefield]

Anyway, I think Dickens is one of the greatest English writers ever, together with Joseph Conrad. 

Joseph Conrad! To me his name it's eternally tied to The Duel, not to his more important stories. 

I recall a Saturday morning almost 35 years ago, when my mother brought me from the market this novel (not from a store, but a street market).

It was so demonically absorbing that I read it, complete, that very same afternoon.

This is an important memory to me as my mother died almost 20 years ago in 1995, just 4 years older than me now.

[Moonfish]

I remember reading Nicholas Nickleby sometimes (ie, many years) ago and finding it much, much better than either David Copperfield. or Oliver Twist].

It might be because of my mother and father adnotating this very book with their own handwriting. be it as it may, I cherish this Dickens book, which is old and weared, more than any other of my library... 

I would re-read these three last novels anytime.

Anyway, I think Dickens is one of the greatest English writers ever, together with Joseph Conrad. 

Methinks that if a Christian read only Dickens, one would read the only English testimony to Jesus Christ!

I must completely agree with you in terms of Dickens and Conrad (although I yet have to tackle Nicholas Nickleby).  It must be quite an experience to have your parents' notes scribbled throughout the novel?

What are your thoughts about Eliot?

[Florestan]

Joseph Conrad! To me his name it's eternally tied to The Duel, not to his more important stories. 

Try Lord Jim[/b, my friend, and you'll find out one of the best novels ever written in English! 

[Brian]

George Eliot! a.k.a. Mary Ann Evans

[Florestan]

George Eliot! a.k.a. Mary Ann Evans

Ha ha ha 

[Ken B]

Id est, famine, massacres and terror! 

I am not kidding, --- anyone advocating Marxist Leninist policies is a mass murderer for me!

Nice to see the change Florestan!

[Ken B]

Try Lord Jim[/b, my friend, and you'll find out one of the best novels ever written in English!

You should try Trollope Florestan. For you I suggest the political novels, the Palliser series.

[Ken B]

Try Lord Jim[/b, my friend, and you'll find out one of the best novels ever written in English!

The man's THIRD language! He didn't even learn English as a child, not until his twenties.

[Cato]

Id est, famine, massacres and terror! 

I am not kidding, --- anyone advocating Marxist Leninist policies is a mass murderer for me!

Amen!  Not to be forgotten: Maoist...not much difference, a variation on a theme: the body count disallows any kind of apologia.