What are you currently reading?

[aligreto]

Anhalzer: Ecuador Panoramas





This book contains wonderfully atmospheric panoramic photographs of the highlands of Ecuador. The texts also explain how the images were taken along with a lot of other illuminating information.

[aligreto]

Does it say inside on the copyright page if that slim Penguin 60s selection is taken from the larger Italian Journey? Or are the letters something separate?

Yes, it says that these selections are taken from Italian Journey. This in turn would make me curious to read Italian Journey. Thank you for pointing that out.

[Ganondorf]

[SimonNZ]

Anyone here read any Annie Ernaux?

Annie Ernaux: the 2022 Nobel literature laureate's greatest works
Writer and critic Catherine Taylor explains how the French writer became the 'great chronicler to a generation'

[aligreto]

Kiely: A Cow In The House & Other Stories





This collection of short stories tells of everyday life, young love and lust and all of this with the backdrop of the historical Northern Ireland conflict in the background. It tells all of this, however, with quick wit and quirky Irish humour. The various characters are very human, readily understandable and one can easily relate to them. The writing style is very easy to read; it is almost of the storyteller ilk. One can almost hear Kiely sitting beside you recounting, in his mellifluous tones, a host of stories and tales to you.

[Mandryka]

The Bear is written in what people call Faulkner's Stream of Eloquence style, where an anonymous voice takes control. I read that Red Leaves is the summit of this style so . . . .

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

https://ia803206.us.archive.org/28/items/nicolae-iorga-byzance-apres-byzance-1935/Nicolae%20Iorga%20-%20Byzance%20apres%20Byzance%20-%201935.pdf

There is a music CD with the same title. I am curious about the music!

[foxandpeng]

The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors
D Martyn Lloyd Jones
Banner of Truth

This is a great read. A fine analysis of the history and impact of the Puritans.

[vers la flamme]

Been a while since I've participated in this thread but I have been reading a good bit lately. Currently Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's Some Prefer Nettles. I get the feeling that a good bit of subtlety is being lost in translation, something that happens all too often of course when reading translated fiction, but especially so in this case. But I am coming away with the impression that Tanizaki is a very odd guy with lots of unusual psycho-sexual hangups. The kind of guy Freud would have a field day with. Psychological elements aside, it's a fascinating story about marriage, and aesthetics.

[ritter]

First approach to the work of René Crevel, the "archangel of surrealism" and a literary "meteor" who committed suicide (ha was also I'll with tuberculosis) in 1935, just a month before he would have turned 35.



La Mort difficile is a largely autobiographical novella, and has been described as a critique of bourgeois conventions from the perspective of the main character, a bisexual young man. Crevel, who was considered ravishingly handsome, came from a well-off Parisian family, was close both to the surrealists and Dada, joined the communist party, and frequented the beau monde (e.g. Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles). So, in a sense, he embodied the artistic milieu of the roaring twenties in Paris. Let's see...

[aligreto]

Bentley: The Brontes and their world





Having recently read/re-read the major novels of the three Bronte sisters I decided to get some background information from this book. It was both an enjoyable and informative read. It paints good portraits of each of the sisters and of the people around them and it also certainly paints a good picture of the time and environment in which they lived.

[Spotted Horses]

The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway.

I read this book long ago in high school, and I remember being unimpressed. I thought I might find more depth to it now, but not the case. I find it hard to relate to the silly self indulgence of the American and British expatriots in Europe, the anti-semitic depiction of the character Cohn is distasteful, and the adoration of bullfighters ridiculous.

[Mandryka]

This is the one that has been the most recommended. Recommended by Americans who I've met in real life; by a French guy I know who is very very keen on Faulkner, and who in fact has written a book on Faulkner; by Americans I've met on internet forums. I can see why. It is a pleasure to read: well written linear prose written with  more or less schoolbook grammar and punctuation. The characters are characterful. Their physical description is masterfully graphic. For once we're not in someone's deeply troubled head.

I can't quite see what the point is yet -- I can't see whether it is only a series of stories well told. I'm half way through Part 2 -- Labove has just graduated in Law, and he has  to deal with the 11 year old Eula.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Been a while since I've participated in this thread but I have been reading a good bit lately. Currently Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's Some Prefer Nettles. I get the feeling that a good bit of subtlety is being lost in translation, something that happens all too often of course when reading translated fiction, but especially so in this case. But I am coming away with the impression that Tanizaki is a very odd guy with lots of unusual psycho-sexual hangups. The kind of guy Freud would have a field day with. Psychological elements aside, it's a fascinating story about marriage, and aesthetics.

Tanizaki used to be my favorite author decades ago, but not any more.
I'd like to recommend this book. The author is very popular in Japan and he writes historical novels. 

[vers la flamme]

^Do you not like him anymore? Or has he simply been replaced as a favorite by someone else?

That book looks awesome. I don't know anything about the Russo-Japanese War. But dang, it looks huge! Multiple volumes, each around 400 pages. Have you read all of them?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

^Do you not like him anymore? Or has he simply been replaced as a favorite by someone else?

That book looks awesome. I don't know anything about the Russo-Japanese War. But dang, it looks huge! Multiple volumes, each around 400 pages. Have you read all of them?

I still like Tanizaki, but now I prefer Kawabata and Mishima. I personally think that his early short stories are the best. The book below is vg, imo. "Secret" is about a cross-dresser in Tokyo before WWI, and "Children" is about a sado-masochistic play by children. These sick stories were translated and published by a prestigious academic press! 

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/books/sensation.html

https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/tanizaki/gourmet_club.htm


Japan transformed from a feudal country to one of major powers through R-J war. The novel above is magnificent.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

My current (fun) reading.
Autopilot: The Art & Science Of Doing Nothing. Andrew Smart.


 

[SimonNZ]

Knocked off this quickie:



Half way through this biggie:

[aligreto]

I began reading "The Wings of The Dove" by Henry James recently.

I could not get past the first ten pages due to the unwieldy text and writing style.
This rarely happens with me but perhaps I will return to it again at some point in the future.

[Mandryka]

inear prose written with  more or less schoolbook grammar and punctuation.

Spoke to soon. Just look at this sentence.

If he had lived in Frenchman's Bend itself during that spring and summer, he would have known no more—a little lost village, nameless, without grace, forsaken, yet which wombed once by chance and accident one blind seed of the spendthrift Olympian ejaculation and did not even know it, without tumescence conceived, and bore—one bright brief summer, concentric, during which three fairly well-horsed buggies stood in steady rotation along a picket fence or spun along adjacent roads between the homes and the crossroads stores and the schoolhouses and churches where people gathered for pleasure or at least for escape, and then overnight and simultaneously were seen no more; then eccentric: buggies gone, vanished—a lean, loose-jointed, cotton-socked, shrewd, ruthless old man, the splendid girl with her beautiful masklike face, the froglike creature which barely reached her shoulder, cashing a check, buying a license, taking a train—a word, a single will to believe born of envy and old deathless regret, murmured from cabin to cabin above the washing pots and the sewing, from wagon to horseman in roads and lanes or from rider to halted plow in field furrows; the word, the dream and wish of all male under sun capable of harm—the young who only dreamed yet of the ruins they were still incapable of; the sick and the maimed sweating in sleepless beds, impotent for the harm they willed to do; the old, now-glandless earth-creeping, the very buds and blossoms, the garlands of whose yellowed triumphs had long fallen into the profitless dust, embalmed now and no more dead to the living world if they were sealed in buried vaults, behind the impregnable matronly calico of others' grandchildren's grandmothers—the word, with its implications of lost triumphs and defeats of unimaginable splendor—and which best: to have that word, that dream and hope for future, or to have had need to flee that word and dream, for past.