What are you currently reading?

[San Antone]

Just finished Cormac McCarthy's excellent first novel -

The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy



And then started the first in Faulkner's Snopes trilogy (3rd or 4th time around) -

The Hamlet by William Faulkner

[Papy Oli]

Finished Hemingway's The Old Man & the Sea on Tuesday...

since then, devoured Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to completion late last night - What a stressful ride that was!!

In need a change of scenery today: started Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). Very funny so far.

[Ganondorf]

I have almost finished Mccarthy's Broder Trilogy. Started Cities of the Plain recently. So far it has been extremely captivating. All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing contained some of the most gorgeous prose i've ever read and Cities of the plain has been the same so far. I really like the bitterly ironic contrast between the beginning and the ending of The Crossing: at the start of the book Billy risks his life trying to save life of a wolf - at the end of the book he cruelly drives away an unoffending dog - although considering what he goes through in the book, I still remain sympathetic towards Billy.

[Klavierman]

I just finished this novel. It was deemed "Thriller of the Year" by a New York Times critic. Thrilling? Hardly. It was a rather dull mystery that was at least 100 pages too long.

[ritter]

Two short monographs issued by the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris.


A short overview of Boulez's presence in that house. The second version of Le soleil des eaux was premiered there by Roger Desormière, later Boulez made a sensation when conducting Stravinsky's Sacre on the 50th anniversary of it premiere in that same house in 1913, and so on. BTW, the book confirms that Boulez was not among the audience when young music students disrupted performances of Stravinsky's music in 1946 (the Four Norwegian Moods, conducted by Manuel Rosenthal).


An overview on the "Festival of 20th Century Works " held in Paris in 1952, organised by Nicolas Nabokov for the Congress for Cultural Freedom. An impressive number of performances took place at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, including the stage French premiere of Wozzeck with the Vienna State Opera company under Karl Böhm, Stravinsky conducting Oedipus Rex with Cocteau as narrator, etc., etc.

[hopefullytrusting]

Just finished this: A classic - Greenberg's Neurosis is a painful style of living

[ritter]

And now, starting a book I've been meaning to read for many years, Georges Bernanos' Les grands cimetièressous la lune (published in English as A Diary of My Times).



Bernanos, one of France's leading catholic authors at the time, was living in Majorca when the Spanish civil war broke out in 1936. From what I've read elsewhere, he was sympathise to the "National" cause (his son enlisted in Franco's army). But when he started witnessing the indiscriminate repression conducted by the victorious rebels on the island, he soon became disenchanted, and this (influential) book is the denunciation of what he saw.

[hopefullytrusting]

Next up on my docket is Norbert Blei's two novels: The Second Novel (his first novel) and Adventure's in American Literature



Interestingly, both of my copies are unique. Both copies were gifts to his friends (the messages inscribed inside the books makes that clear), but the second novel comes with, as near as I can tell, a 1/1 watercolor (Blei was also a painter) of a character from the book!

[SimonNZ]

A detailed account of the 35-day reckless occupation of the site by the Russian army in 2022 (and bringing the story of the site up to date since his first book on the subject).

[Papy Oli]

Completed Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) last weekend. Great fun.

Last night, finished An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.



From wiki:
An Artist of the Floating World (1986)[1] is a novel by British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an ageing painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once-great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions, rendered politically suspect in the context of post-War Japan. The novel also deals with the role of people in a rapidly changing political environment and with the assumption and denial of guilt.



Quite an engrossing read, particularly the intergenerational exchanges between Ono and his daughters/Sons-in-law/grandson. the book is entirely built on a series of interwoven memories and recollections. Ishiguro indicates in the foreword that he was strongly influenced by particular segments of Proust's Swann's Way when deciding on the type of structure he wanted prior to writing this book.

Recommended. I have added Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day to reading pile as a result.

[Florestan]

Finished:



Started:

[Iota]

I have added Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day to reading pile as a result.

Both excellent. There's no other book quite like The Remains of the Day, imo.

[Florestan]

There's no other book quite like The Remains of the Day, imo.

I haven't read the book but I loved the movie.

[Iota]

I haven't read the book but I loved the movie.

The movie was excellent, though imo not close to reaching the level of intensity and singularity of the book.

[Florestan]

The movie was excellent, though imo not close to reaching the level of intensity and singularity of the book.

I trust you and actually I wonder: is there any movie which is equal to, let alone better than, the original book? I am not aware of such instance.

[Iota]

I trust you and actually I wonder: is there any movie which is equal to, let alone better than, the original book? I am not aware of such instance.

No indeed, very few I agree (there was a discussion about this very subject somewhere here not so long ago). But I think this book would be particularly difficult to realise in filmic form, if you ever read it I imagine the problem would become clear.

[JBS]

I trust you and actually I wonder: is there any movie which is equal to, let alone better than, the original book? I am not aware of such instance.

Witches of Eastwick.
The book is a misogynistic mess in which the women are simply a bitchy trio and the climactic revenge a bloody mess. The film cuts out the misogyny and bitchiness, has Jack Nicholson as the devil-tempter, and plays the revenge sequence for as much farce (and in the end, pity) as it can.

[Florestan]

Witches of Eastwick.
The book is a misogynistic mess in which the women are simply a bitchy trio and the climactic revenge a bloody mess. The film cuts out the misogyny and bitchiness, has Jack Nicholson as the devil-tempter, and plays the revenge sequence for as much farce (and in the end, pity) as it can.

I trust you too. Haven't read the book and don't remember much, if anything at all, of the movie. All I can recall otomh is that it features Jack Nicholson and Cher.   

[Brian]

Both excellent. There's no other book quite like The Remains of the Day, imo.

There is a different movie like it. Ishiguro once told the Criterion Collection in an interview that he watched The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, went home, and wrote The Remains of the Day. Very similar and moving theme of someone looking back on their life, minimally capable of self reflection but wondering if it has been worth it.

I trust you and actually I wonder: is there any movie which is equal to, let alone better than, the original book? I am not aware of such instance.

The most insightful comment I have read about this subject is that it is better to adapt a book where the characters' interiors are not explored too deeply. You cannot replicate interior monologue, but you can add visual cues to an otherwise cryptic character. Thus movie adaptations reward books where the character is secondary, is dictated by the plot, or is an object of parody (e.g. Barry Lyndon and Doctor Strangelove).

For these reasons, many of the movies that are better than their original books are noir or crime. They may be tragic but you don't want to explore their soul in a novelistic fashion. Double Indemnity, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Jackie Brown, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the James Bond novels, The Maltese Falcon, all of them pulp fiction for a quick thrill, transformed into great movies.

The best example of all adaptations might be "King's Ransom," a 1959 crime thriller novel by Evan Hunter that would probably be completely forgotten except that its core plot idea was adapted by Akira Kurosawa into one of the greatest dramas in film history, Heaven and Hell a.k.a. High and Low.

[Iota]

There is a different movie like it. Ishiguro once told the Criterion Collection in an interview that he watched The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, went home, and wrote The Remains of the Day. Very similar and moving theme of someone looking back on their life, minimally capable of self reflection but wondering if it has been worth it.

Very interesting to read. I've known the name of that film for most of my adult life and almost watched it once about ten years ago, but never actually did. Sounds like its time to redouble my efforts, its a gap I've always felt I should fill, and Powell and Pressburger were after all always pretty much a hallmark of quality in whatever they did, so I can hardly go wrong.