What are you currently reading?

[SimonNZ]

[Elgarian Redux]

I'm a great admirer of the wood engravings of Gwen Raverat, and when I discovered that she'd designed the jacket for the original edition of Elizabeth Goudge's The Bird in the Tree (1940), I bought one mainly for the sake of the dust jacket (though it is not typical of Raverat's work).

But now I'm halfway through reading the novel, and it's quite unlike anything I've ever read.  It's written in lovely, lyrical prose that took me 20-30 pages to get used to, but I have the feel of its rhythm now, and I'm reading more slowly than I normally would. Certain sentences stand out, and I have to stop and think about them, and the insight they offer. The tale itself seems to be about a special house, a family who've made it a deeply loved home, and an intrusion into this seeming perfection by one member who has fallen for a woman who, in a number of ways, does not fit. How it ends I can't say, but it is a haunting read. Not quite unputdownable, but I carry it away with me in my head in between reading sessions.

[Florestan]

Anatole France - The Red Lily.

Between The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, The Gods are Athirst and this one, my favorite writers list has a new entry.

[SimonNZ]

Finished:



Started:

[AnotherSpin]

A high-stakes thriller that plunges reader into Russia's latest covert attempt to destabilize the West, a campaign born of the chaos of a failing state grasping for relevance. At the center of the storm stands Mitch Rapp, relentless and unflinching, striking back against the Kremlin's shadow games with surgical precision.

A quote from the book: "The Russians aren't people who play to win. They play to make everyone else lose. They don't do anything useful. They don't make anything useful. If you gave a Russian a Ferrari, he wouldn't drive it — he'd use the key to scratch the paint on everyone else's car."

Another one: "Rapp couldn't help but smile. Russia was unique in that it was an almost entirely destructive force. The human race would be infinitely better off if the whole country just slid into the ocean."

[Todd]

Hemispheric Defense Is Back, by Joseph Ledford and Ryan C. Berg.

[Mandryka]

[hopefullytrusting]

[Spotted Horses]

Douglas Adams, The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.



The main character, Dirk something, gets his now broken. Now for the rest of the novel his dialog is intelligible because of his broken nose. This lead to the metaphysical question, "why am I reading this crap?"

This is a one in a hundred books that I can't find the motivation to finish. Abandoned about 1/3 of the way thoough.

[steve ridgway]

Douglas Adams, The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.



The main character, Dirk something, gets his now broken. Now for the rest of the novel his dialog is intelligible because of his broken nose. This lead to the metaphysical question, "why am I reading this crap?"

This is a one in a hundred books that I can't find the motivation to finish. Abandoned about 1/3 of the way thoough.

LOL it clearly raises at least one very important question .

I am reading Matt Kaplan, David Attenborough's First Life about the history of life on Earth, that I found in a charity shop. Three cheers for reality .

[Elgarian Redux]

Started:

Kott's discussion of The Tempest (recommended to me back in 1998) gave me food for thought for many years to come.

We have a room in our house whose walls are almost entirely covered with pictures relating to The Tempest, and the artist who made them was the chap who recommended Kott to me. Brilliant.

[Spotted Horses]

I've read a lot of Roth, but not that one.

[Mandryka]

I've read a lot of Roth, but not that one.

If you're Jewish and brought up in New Jersey/New York then I'd love to know what you think about it.

[Spotted Horses]

If you're Jewish and brought up in New Jersey/New York then I'd love to know what you think about it.

I'm from New York, but not Jewish. I don't think you have to be Jewish to appreciate Roth.

[JBS]

If you're Jewish and brought up in New Jersey/New York then I'd love to know what you think about it.

Roth's Jewish characters are like Woody Allen's Jewish characters and the cast of Seinfeld: their Jewishness is merely a superficial feature. I'm Jewish and grew up in South Florida, meaning I knew plenty of Jews from New York and New Jersey.  Some of them resembled Roth's characters in outside circumstances of money, etc. But nothing deeper.  Roth's characters are 20th century American types; they reflect general middle/upper class experience, not Jewish experience. If you want 20th century American Jewish types and American Jewish experience, look for Herman Wouk and Chaim Potok.
(And if you want a depiction of angst/neurosis that make Roth and Allen look like novices, read Chaim Grade's The Yeshivah, which is set in pre-war Europe and reflects Grade's experience as a rabbinical student.)

[Spotted Horses]

Roth's Jewish characters are like Woody Allen's Jewish characters and the cast of Seinfeld: their Jewishness is merely a superficial feature. I'm Jewish and grew up in South Florida, meaning I knew plenty of Jews from New York and New Jersey.  Some of them resembled Roth's characters in outside circumstances of money, etc. But nothing deeper.  Roth's characters are 20th century American types; they reflect general middle/upper class experience, not Jewish experience. If you want 20th century American Jewish types and American Jewish experience, look for Herman Wouk and Chaim Potok.
(And if you want a depiction of angst/neurosis that make Roth and Allen look like novices, read Chaim Grade's The Yeshivah, which is set in pre-war Europe and reflects Grade's experience as a rabbinical student.)

My family (on my mother's side) came from a neighborhood called Belmont, in the Bronx, New York. It is also called "Arthur Avenue," after one of the main streets where there was an Italian Market. If you watch the film "Marty" you will see that culture depicted, including an opening shot which included the Arthur Avenue Market, just a block away from where my Mom lived. When I see Facebook pages of Jewish friends from the Bronx, New York I see almost identical photographs taken in neighborhoods a few blocks away. (Incidentally, the film Marty was written by a Jew.) The Cathoics and Jews didn't mix so much in those days but their cultures strike me as having a lot in common.

If you want to appreciate Roth's take on Jewish-American culture in the mid 20th century you might read American Pastorale, and it's depiction of a glove factory in Newark.

[Mandryka]

It's just that Alex Portnoy's mother in Portnoy's Complaint seems a fabulous caricature, but maybe not!

Re Woody Allen, I once heard a radio programme about Roth where someone said he invented the Woody Allen  type of character in Portnoy's Complaint.

 @Spotted Horses @JBS

[AnotherSpin]

Of course, Tabucchi's remarkable book contains much more than descriptions of a journey through southern India. Yet for me, that aspect is also of particular interest, as it resonates with my own impressions from similar travels. Some of the parallels are strikingly precise.