What are you currently reading?

[milk]

I heard the audiobook of Me Talk Pretty One Day and loved his voice (which I'd never heard before) and delivery.

What made me especially glad to have "read" it that way was that at one point he talks about doing TV jingles in the voice of Billie Holliday - in a misguided attempt to impress a music teacher - and here we get to appreciate the perfection of his impersonation as he launches into it with gusto.

yeah that's funny. He did that on NPR for a Christmas maybe twenty years ago. That's what got me started on him. Some thing about elves and Billy Holiday.

[Brian]

Does Florestan read this thread? A Romanian novel was recently sent to me - The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter, by Matei Calinescu - and I have no idea what to expect from it.

[Florestan]

Does Florestan read this thread?

He does, when he is able to access GMG.

A Romanian novel was recently sent to me - The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter, by Matei Calinescu - and I have no idea what to expect from it.

I haven't read it but I remember it having been praised rather highly by the Romanian literary critics --- which is perhaps unsurprising and doesn't mean much. Bear in mind it was written in 1969 so it probably contains arcane allusions to, and hidden criticism of, the political regime back then. I'll try to read it myself.

[Brian]

He does, when he is able to access GMG.

I haven't read it but I remember it having been praised rather highly by the Romanian literary critics --- which is perhaps unsurprising and doesn't mean much. Bear in mind it was written in 1969 so it probably contains arcane allusions to, and hidden criticism of, the political regime back then. I'll try to read it myself.

Thanks! It is very short, only 140 pages, so I will read the whole book even if it is not good.  will report back to you - hoping that this translation has an introduction for English speakers since the book is indeed subversive.

[Draško]

[NikF]

Today at the gym, reading material while waiting for a bench.

[Brian]

Thanks! It is very short, only 140 pages, so I will read the whole book even if it is not good.  will report back to you - hoping that this translation has an introduction for English speakers since the book is indeed subversive.

So far - after 32 pages - it's not my cup of tea. It's a philosophy parody, and as such the novel has no plot and just one "character" whose job is to have nonsensical metaphysical ideas. (Sample: he believes the devil invented stupidity as revenge on humanity - funny - but the revenge is because he does not exist and is displeased about his nonexistence.)

I got a good laugh at the reveal that Lichter is a beggar, and a smirk from his terrible, terrible poetry, but so far the ratio of one brief reward every 10 pages is not great.

[bwv 1080]

One of the best accounts of WW2 from the German side I have read - following AG Center through 1941, it combines modern scholarship on the failed overall strategy with on the ground experiences of ordinary soldiers and does not skirt the issue of the Wehrmacht's war crimes and the general enthusiasm of the Lanser for the Nazi mission of Lebensraum.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

I guess I never told my final opinions about Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead. In short, I hated it. This is the first Dostoyevsky book I really disliked.

[JBS]

So far - after 32 pages - it's not my cup of tea. It's a philosophy parody, and as such the novel has no plot and just one "character" whose job is to have nonsensical metaphysical ideas. (Sample: he believes the devil invented stupidity as revenge on humanity - funny - but the revenge is because he does not exist and is displeased about his nonexistence.)

I got a good laugh at the reveal that Lichter is a beggar, and a smirk from his terrible, terrible poetry, but so far the ratio of one brief reward every 10 pages is not great.

Sounds as if it is in the league of At Swim Two Birds.
Which was assigned to us in spring semester of my junior year by a visiting prof as part of a course on 20th century Irish literature, and which the entire class refused to read more than the opening chapters.  It says a lot when you have a roomful of 20/21 year olds, and can not find one who thought the book at least moderately interesting. 
The professor was furious, but being a visiting prof, and being the end of the academic year, there was little he could do about it except display some bad temper.

[aligreto]

I am about one third of the way through Balzac's The Abbé Birotteau and am enjoying it thus far.

[Florestan]

I guess I never told my final opinions about Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead. In short, I hated it. This is the first Dostoyevsky book I really disliked.

Why?

[Florestan]

So far - after 32 pages - it's not my cup of tea. It's a philosophy parody, and as such the novel has no plot and just one "character" whose job is to have nonsensical metaphysical ideas. (Sample: he believes the devil invented stupidity as revenge on humanity - funny - but the revenge is because he does not exist and is displeased about his nonexistence.)

I got a good laugh at the reveal that Lichter is a beggar, and a smirk from his terrible, terrible poetry, but so far the ratio of one brief reward every 10 pages is not great.

Hah! I've been reading the first three chapters online and I found it to be utterly and irredeemably rubbish. As for subversive, I'll take The Emperor's New Clothes, thank you.

This book is pure escapism, a genre which was succesfully --- and understandably --- cultivated back then but that today can have no relevance, importance or value whatsoever.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Why?

Boring, full of sentences that make no sense whatsoever, that seem contradictory. Can't believe a masterful writer like Dostoyevsky wrote this.

[Karl Henning]

I sort of fell into re-reading The Two Towers.  Appreciating all over again how beautifully it is written.

[Florestan]

Boring, full of sentences that make no sense whatsoever, that seem contradictory. Can't believe a masterful writer like Dostoyevsky wrote this.

Are you sure you really read Dostoyevsky's The House of The Dead? (Actually the original Russian title is Memoirs from The House of The Dead) That's not how I recall it, not by a long stretch. Dark, disturbing, morbid, sometimes as if taken straight out of Dante's Inferno --- yes, by all means. But boring and absurd? Sigh. Could it be a matter of translation?

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Could it be a matter of translation?

It could be, I read it in Finnish and the translation was definitely poor - full of typos, for example.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

The finnish translation of the title actually translates roughly as Memoirs from The House of the Dead as well.

[Florestan]

It could be, I read it in Finnish and the translation was definitely poor - full of typos, for example.

Ah, well, that might explain a lot.

Have you read The Gulag Archipelago? Compared to it, The House of The Dead is a description of a walk in the park.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Have you read The Gulag Archipelago?

Not yet.