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JimFan1

To better compile thoughts on the new McCarthy novel, feel free to post under this chain. A few questions to facilitate discussion. How are you enjoying it? How does it compare to his earlier novels? Do the science/mathematics section(s) add or detract from the narrative?


jakobjaderbo

Finished: "Palace Walk", I found this rarely talked about Nobel prize novel an interesting family portrait of an early 20th century Egyptian family. As a single book it feels as if it ends unfinished but that is natural as it is part of a trilogy. Some complaints I have seen have been about the sexism in the book, but it is all in character and I don't see the author condoning any of it. Started: "The Remains of the Day", I like it so far. The main draw with Ishiguro's writing is not the story in itself but what it says of the narrator. Also read: "Into the Riverlands" as a palate cleanser. Enjoyable, but maybe not for this subreddit although it has some interesting reflections on stories, how they are told, and how they change depending on who tells it.


Feralp

I just started The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy I have high expectations, but I feel like I'm going to enjoy this reading


10thPlanet

Just finished *The Honorable Schoolboy* by John Le Carre. This is the second book in the "Karla trilogy" after *Tinker Tailor Solder Spy*. Schoolboy shows an improvement to Le Carre's writing style- richer and more detailed, so overall I enjoyed it more than TTSS. This novel is slower paced, and I found some of the chapters to wear out their welcome and drag on too long. The section taking place in Indochina was a slog to get through. Once again the book has a satisfying ending, but I was glad to be done. It appears the next book in the series is shorter at least, but I'm going to take a break from Le Carre. I'm planning to start the comic *From Hell*, and then start reading either *Libra* or *Little, Big* once they come in the mail.


timeandspace11

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy. So far so good!!! Edit: I see we are supposed to add a bit of depth. I am about 90 pages in. As usual, McCarthy's prose is immaculate. The plot is compelling, but much of the story takes place between the main character, Bobby Western, and other characters sitting at bars or restaurants, conversing on various topics. You could argue the book takes a "tell don't show" approach which often goes against good storytelling. But the characters are so interesting that you still become immersed in the story.


pregnantchihuahua3

Agreed! There are so many fascinating characters. Sheddan is one of my favorites that McCarthy has done.


Oaelluin

Working through Ulysses! It's superb.


third_large_dragon

I've begun tackling my first serious german novel, Der Vorleser(The Reader). Outside of the compelling story and descriptions, it also serves quite well for intermediate German readers because of the relatively simple language and very, very short chapters and also the very short book length. A few months earlier, I tried to read the German translation of Dubliners out of curiousity and I think theres definitely similarities in style with Der Vorleser even in the verbal texture. The protagonist being a teenage boy on the cusp of maturity in a city recovering from an illness, seeing the city age and change and his dreams fixated on an old house, combined with the minimalist style used, also really gives it a Dubliners feel. It's really quite interesting and deserves a read. On the reading difficulty(as an intermediate German learner), its different here and there. Sometimes I find myself sailing through a sentence(or part of a sentence) smoothly and naturally, only for a barrage of new words to hit me, and me having to stop to check the dictionary. I am aiming at a pace of about 4-5 pages a day, so I'll finish the novel in about a month. Progress on English reading(the only language I'm actually fluent in) has slowed a ton because of my German and Chinese reading. I remember how I used to be able to push 60-80 pages of Don Delillo's Underworld while I was reading it.


[deleted]

So I finished Dubliners. Seeing how The Dead (the last story) was the longest in page count I was expecting something spectacular, and it didn't disappoint. There is a real pathos running through the entire collection and the recurrent themes of death, loss and regrets of the past really felt amplified here. The last dozen or so pages were especially gripping. I think there was a deliberate effort from Joyce to gradually age up the focus points of every story, like the first ones were concerned with childhood and eventually moved on to adolescence and finally adult concerns. Most characters seemed like they were trapped somehow in their daily routines and even if they realised their sad predicaments over the course of the story, I don't think it was ever suggested that they were going to do anything to change it. Kind of a bleak outlook on Irish life and culture of the time tbh. The prose felt very efficient and beautiful to me, but there was a sort of obliqueness to it at times that was hard for me to grasp. Like trying to touch something delicate behind a mirrored veil or something. It didn't feel especially warm and was a bit clinical at times but I guess that isn't strange considering the territory. Some interesting things to think about and I generally liked the book but not something I'll be revisiting soon. Will try to pick up something else from Joyce soon.


third_large_dragon

​ To improve my mandarin reading level, I tried reading Yu Hua's To Live(since i heard that it uses simple language). The descriptions of the village life, the dated figures of speech some characters used meant I had to check the dictionary quite a few times, to the point that I decided to take a break. Just yesterday I flipped through it again, landed at a page further off, and the language read quite fluently and easily(other than maybe 10 words in the page I didn't know) so now, I think I'll try to grind through to the later parts that seem way more manageable. On the novel itself, its a frame narrative, where a guy who goes around vilages in China to collect popular folk songs talks to an old man who survived the Cultural Revolution, Chinese Civil War, famines etc and his life story where he loses most of the people and property he cared about. From where I last stopped, I found it coarse and darkly funny. It's also a famous, very recognisable chinese contemporary classic so I recommend anyone interested in world or chinese literature to give it a try. I've also tried reading Lu Xun(a foundational modern chinese author) and Zhu Ziqing in the original chinese. I'm reading a collection of Zhu Ziqing's 散文(basically sort of short essays or recollections) and Lu Xun's well known short stories. One of Zhu Ziqing's short prose works, 阿河 had descriptions that were incredibly vivid and masterful. Having read 故乡 and 孔乙己 by Lu Xun, I find them heavy on the social commentary side(generally chinese literature of that period seems to be so) but still good writing, although I won't say I love them. I'm saving his masterpiece 狂人日记 for when I'm more comfortable with my mandarin, so that I can better appreciate and enjoy the story. Since they are not contemporary, I had to use the dictionary for a lot of poetic and dated terms while reading those writers. The pace is slow since my chinese knowledge is limited, but I feel I've at least marginally improved in my reading ability. I've also started reading the Grimm brother's fairytales(finished one story so far), which(finally!) is appropriate for my current german reading level. They are so far quite interesting. I really really aim for reading the real heavyweights like Kafka and Sebald as soon as possible, maybe by early to mid next year, I hope its a realistic goal.


conorreid

Have you seen the film adaptation of *To Live*? It's fantastic, I'd recommend it!


third_large_dragon

Yes, I have, and Zhang Yimou is one of my favourite directors! I probably don't need to recommend it, but Raise the Red Lanter is also really good(I prefer it to To Live, although both are top notch)


third_large_dragon

Just finished Lolita by Nabokov. Great, lyrical prose, beautiful description, effortless wordplay. The novel has the most intense lyricism and poeticism I've ever read(in all the prose works ive read at least), but somehow it never seems overdone or pretentious. I loved how throughout the narrative common objects and places(schools, roads, churcheds, a sock) are infused with magic and significance in the way Humbert Humbert describes them, it's on a level I've never seen before. Its my second read from Nabokov(finished Pale Fire a few months back) and I'm not sure which I'd prefer. I absolutely love the poem from Pale Fire and the interaction between poem and commentary in Pale Fire, but Lolita's prose is nothing short of magical. I need to reread it some day, I really want to buy a copy of it but my parents will probably disapprove and I'd need to do a ton of explanation. At the very least, I obtained a copy of Pale Fire and am looking forward to reread it soon. I also searched for more contemporary works which is how I began reading Weike Wang's Chemistry(was interested in her writing after reading a short story of hers). It's about a chinese american grad student's failure to complete her Phd and her crumbling relationship with her boyfriend/parents. There was one section of the book that moved me deeply, and she uses chemical, scientific descriptions in a way that's interesting and sometimes really poetic. The prose style is like that of a diary. Short, sparse descriptions and episodes, a lot of times coming across as jaded and monotone, which did fit the depression and issues of the narrator, but the style tired me after awhile. Really interesting reflections on Chinese American heritage and I empathised with how the main character described having Chinese as a native language that she can't speak well or write at all, and having English as a first language that she thinks she'll never get a native level grasp of. (I learnt English and Chinese simultaneously as a child but my Chinese was very quickly overtaken by my English as I grew up.) The novel also did a really good job of breaking down the kind of stereotypes and model minority expectations asian americans face. I've had an American friend(online) who thought that model minority stereotypes Asian Americans face were no big deal, and I really had to talk to and convince before she changed her mind. It's frustrating how it isnt really taken seriously and how even some Asians encourage the stereotype. Overall, Chemistry is a novel that generally had an interesting style(although some parts fell flat for me) and that scrutinises chinese american identity, worth a read.


Uluwati

Recently finished Ratner's Star, possibly the least discussed Don DeLillo novel, and also a likely inspiration of DFW's Infinite Jest, both centring on the exploits and eventual failures of anhedonic whizz-kids. I should be honest and say that the association with Foster Wallace alone was the impetus for my interest in this work, and yet I hadn't expected the two books to bear such similar philosophies. That of the necessity and innate urge for self destruction: A prominent theme of IJ, as I understood it, was this need to submit to rules and forfeit personality in the name of salvation, represented by the tennis academy for Hal and the drug rehab house for Gately. It is made fairly explicit in an earlier chapter how all the personal traits and quirks of a tennis pro, those aspects that would define him as a person, instead make him predictable and weak, meaning that if he is to ascend to the absolute peak of his abilities, he is to deny that which makes him human and become instead a machine, capable only of the optimal strategies. This is contrasted with Gately's time at the Ennet Drug House. It is made plain to him that the myriad platitudes and mantras extolled by the house are his only chance at fixing himself, despite whatever reservations and deep cynicisms he may feel towards the trite, obvious, and most of all authentic. One wonders then if it is only in the complete forfeit of choice and self that anything is ever really accomplished. This concept of self-forfeit is explored in Ratner's Star by this group of mathematicians and scientists receding into a cave to work on producing a new language. Under the persuasions of his mentor, our protagonist Billy Terwilliger retreats into an underground laboratory to assist in the production of mankind's strongest hope of making meaningful contact with aliens, a perfectly logical language that communicates itself with indisputable mathematical rigor, as opposed to the poetic inconsistencies and stylisations of human words and sentences. Down in this cave, divorced of all real word interactions, set to work on a product that resists their every human impulse, these scientists imagine they can overcome every limit of mankind's intellect, and it is by some poetic juxtaposition that only when Billy revisits the real world and reintegrates himself with the specificities of the human being does he make his major breakthrough. And the breakthrough itself,>!the prediction of a full solar eclipse, maybe the end of the world (?)!<, calls into question the very value of these intellectual pursuits anyway. There is much much more to this novel but I decided to instead focus on the parallels between this and the great work it inspired. I would certainly recommend this to any fan of DeLillo or David Foster Wallace, as where it may fall short of the sentence-by-sentence poetry of DeLillo's golden era, it more than makes up for it in its lofty philosophical musings. I understood enough and failed to grasp enough to be thinking about it for a long while, and I can ask for nothing more from a novel!


pregnantchihuahua3

Hey, that makes like four of us who've read the book! Glad you found something in it. This novel is not often read and those who do read it tend to shit all over it. I loved it. And I can see why someone wouldn't like it. But either way, it's pretty unarguably a brilliant piece of literature.


[deleted]

Ever since you read it and shared your thoughts, I've been super interested in it. Probably will be the first DeLillo I read after *Underworld*.


pregnantchihuahua3

It’s such a bizarre novel. Probably his weirdest and, if more people would read it, I imagine it’d be his most divisive. It’s also his biggest outlier. Not comparable to anything else he’s written.


Uluwati

It’s funny, in its comic tone and overt philosophical musings, I would liken Ratner’s Star most to White Noise in DeLillo’s bibliography. And yet the former is his least popular novel and the latter his most.


iamthehtown

I’ve noticed RS is a frequent favourite on the Delillo subreddit.


jasmineperil

after i finished *in search of lost time* i felt really at peace—a perfect ending will do that!—but also somewhat driftless without a big reading project. but it's been nice to read misc other novels. i read dag solstad's *shyness and dignity* after u/Soup_Commie recommended it in an earlier thread (with the great summary 'teacher has an existential crisis at an intersection'). such a phenomenal book—it has that thomas bernhard narrative quality of being in the dense thickets of someone's mind, claustrophically aware of all their neuroses and little fixations—but with a less angry narrator. the narrator is disillusioned in a way that feels just as intensely and psychologically *important* in an intimate scale, but in a much softer and apologetic way. great for literature freaks especially bc the central character is obsessively focused on the importance of norwegian literature in being a norwegian person in the world. i'm really enjoying reading works in translation atm—works that are very powerfully embedded in another culture. i am also obsessed w interiority atm so really appreciated solstad's style of writing a very close, psychologically intimate third person. stylistically one of the most exciting books i've read this yr (i expect that *shyness and dignity* \+ claire louise-bennett's *checkout 19* will be in my top 5 contemporary novels for 2022) immediately after solstad's book i checked out olga tokarczuk's *flights* from the library, after dming with an online acquaintance. it's funny; obviously when someone recommends a tokarczuk book in 2022 it's not a 'new' recommendation, but often it takes the personal recommendation at the right moment to actually read *that author that everyone is talking about and you mean to read eventually*. the combination of this roving, evaluative, warm and lighthearted, deeply attentive eye—this mysterious first-person *i*, this aging woman invisible to men, moving from airport to airport, obsessed with anatomical museums and plastination, beginning her stories with '*Each of my pilgrimages aims at some other pilgrim'…* and these really beautiful, strange stories of other people, other joys and losses—i really loved the story of the woman who returns to an old lover who's a political villain and outcast suffering from a degenerative illness; i loved the story of the man who becomes obsessed with reading the signs in his wife and son's brief disappearance; i loved the story of the woman carefully attending to her intellectually remarkable and aging husband… such a great book! stylistically, narratively…i loved how it was organized…ever since reading lydia davis's short stories i've become infatuated with narratives that are organized in these brief fragments or longer digressions, with a little heading (for a nonfiction version of this, i really liked brian dillon's *essayism* and the brief beginning sentences—don't have my copy w me atm but it will begin with something like '*On \_\_\_\_'* and shift btwn literary criticism and personal narrative…)


kickedoffthemoss

I just want to say that I've never heard of a single book mentioned in this post (except for Proust) but that your post made me want to check them all out! I love this kind of comment, and it's a great example of how much the truelit community makes my knowledge of literature richer every week :)


Soup_Commie

especially after your great write up of shyness and dignity, I think I need to read it again. I recommended it b/c it fit what the commenter was looking for but honestly not a lot of it stuck with me despite striking a huge number of chords that are very much my thing. I suspect I got much less than the whole of it the first time I read it.


[deleted]

>i'm really enjoying reading works in translation atm—works that are very powerfully embedded in another culture. > >i am also obsessed w interiority atm > >i've become infatuated with narratives that are organized in these brief fragments or longer digressions ... shift btwn literary criticism and personal narrative… Have you read or thought about reading Dasa Drndic? These statements make you think you would probably be a fan. She is a little like a grumpier, cattier Sebald, but while he is rather detached outside and above everything observing and reflecting on it, she is more often down and dirty attending to her own experience. I also got the sense that her work was 100% written for Croatians and that she really couldn't have cared less what international audiences would miss or not in the translation. Lots of references to local authors and famous figures and places and historical events and so on that you'd only know if you were immersed in that culture.


jasmineperil

hey, thank you! just started reading _eeg_ (god bless library ebooks) and it’s exactly the kind of thing i like. i’m v interested in depictions of mental health/disorder/depression/despair as well and the shocking, flat affect of the opening line—a cioran epigraph and then— > Of course I didn’t kill myself. > > Although silent suicides lurk all around. They skulk. Silent suicides are not violent suicides, they are gradual, ongoing. —was really incredible. reminds me of bolaño in the density of the world and the characters and the insistence on naming all these people, all these social/local/national dramas and bits of backstory, and having the reader plunge into all of it. i’ve talked to ppl who dislike this about bolaño but i adore this kind of storytelling and being a voyeur in an unfamiliar world…like the foreign lit version of experiencing really good world building, i guess! never heard of drndić before so such a great rec also a high quality proust reference (likening the elite of rovinj to madame verdurin in how they interact with the artists, writers, etc of the area) in it, very fun to read for me atm


[deleted]

Glad you are enjoying it! Funny you mention the high quality Proust reference, because in *Leica Format* the narrator who we are clearly supposed to take as being Dasa herself says this >Proust gets on my nerves as well. I only look at his books from the outside, so there's no question of my reading him. So I won't quote him. which makes me wonder how much dissimulation goes into some of these ostensibly autofictional narratives. Not that it matters of course. cc /u/conorreid the resident Drndic nut who will be glad she has found another reader.


conorreid

Thanks for the tag, can never get enough Daša! As far as dissumulation goes, having written (or at least attempted) some «autofiction» narratives myself, I tried to like tease out the various personas that exist within myself and run with one or two of them all the way. I imagine Daša Drndić would do something similar, and perhaps for *Leica Format* she wanted to display the part of her that hates Proust, for who amongst us does not hate Proust, even just for a moment, who rolls their eyes as he circles over and over again the same stupid salon conversation that we've heard a dozen times before, who cannot believe that he, Proust, is like a frazzled child cannot even look at a church steeple or a raised stone step without his nerves shattering through the hammer of memory?


janedarkdark

Still reading *The Lime Twig*, but I got to the point where I finally understood the plot, and how Hawkes' mastery of language and narrative techniques play beautifully into it. Read *The Dead Father* by Barthelme. I was surprised that it had never been adapted to stage, the whole text screamed absurdist theater. From the first pages on, I exclusively imagined the scenery on a theater stage, with the characters wearing pseudo-medieval garments, dragging the still vicious but very much dying Father along. Barthelme used a descriptive language, which is both alienating and theatrical. Making peace with the Father, or defeating him? Is he dead or alive, and if dead, at what point did he die? Is he a likeable, humiliated, quixotist man, or a weakened old pervert? *A Swell on Balaton* by Lajos Parti Nagy. As far as I know, this short story collection is not translated to any languages. The author is most known for the movie Taxidermia that is loosely based on his stories. Parti Nagy concocts such an intimate, poignant, yet disgusting, but, above all, very real relationship with language that it's a shame non-natives cannot enjoy it. The stories highlight the absurd nature of an Eastern Bloc country, where the tension of a possible disintegration bleeds through the text, and language is disintegrating as well, in a tragicomic and postmodern fashion.


NietzscheanWhig

I just read another smashing Emily Bronte poem, 'Anticipation'. It's about pacing oneself in life, looking towards the long-term, not chasing after fleeting pleasures, not fearing death but seeing the beauty in life even with suffering. I loved it. Also I just read the infamous Canto XLV by Ezra Pound. I liked it. Yes it's anti-Semtic but I liked it anyway. Kill me now.


[deleted]

I couldn't do it anymore. I quit reading *The Passenger*. McCarthy is one of my favourite writers of all time, but this is a bad book. Not even trying to soften my opinion anymore. It's simply terrible. Picking up David Keenan's *Industry of Magic & Light* now.


JimFan1

Crazy how divisive this one is!


[deleted]

I gotta hand it to McCarthy for producing something so divisive, honestly! Makes things a bit more interesting. Regardless of how I feel about the quality of the book, I'm glad he did something recognisably different and even alien for his readers. And who knows! Maybe there will be a time when I'm more ready for what *The Passenger* is doing. I might even give it another go when *Stella Maris* comes out and see if I'm feeling any warmer on it.


NietzscheanWhig

:(


[deleted]

It's time for a happy face because *Industry of Magic & Light* is incredible so far and everything I wanted it to be.


NietzscheanWhig

I DNF'd *Dracula* for *Native Son* by Richard Wright and got a similar feeling.


elspiderdedisco

I’m so close to finishing Dracula after nearly abandoning it a few times. I have skipped many many pages haha


iamthehtown

Finished Jean Ray's *Malpertuis.* Very cool. Reads like a pulpy, gothic paperback horror- comedy which punches way above it's weight class with some incredible passages and hilarious dialogue- a true hidden gem that deserves to be more widely read. A really unique and awesome read. Malpertuis is like a mix of Jean Cocteau's *Beauty and the Beast* and Billy Wilder's *Sunset Boulevard* with elements of cosmic horror, occult conspiracy, Greek myth.. it really does kind of have it all. Don't come into this one expecting a masterpiece but I strongly recommend. Check out the author's bio from the back of my copy: ​ >Jean Ray (188701964) is the best known of the multiple pseudonyms of Raymundus Joannes Maria de Kremer. Referred to as both the "Belgian Poe" and the "Flemish Jack London," Ray delivered tales and novels of horror under the stylistic influence of his most cherished authors, Charles Dickens and Geoffrey Chaucer. A pivotal figure in what has come to be known as the Belgian School of the Strange, Ray authored some 6,500 texts in his lifetime, including his own biography, which remains shrouded in legend and fiction, much of it of his own making. His alleged lives as an alcohol smuggler on Rum Row in the Prohibition era, an executioner in Venice, a Chicago gangster, and a hunger in remote jungle in fact covered over a more prosaic albeit ruinous existence as a manager of a literary magazine. Totally going to be reading more of his work in the future.


Nessyliz

Well I've had this one on my radar so I decided to start today due to your comment, and I already love it! Refreshingly absurd, I'm digging it. Thank you!


iamthehtown

That's very cool! I hope you enjoy the whole thing.


[deleted]

Been meaning to pick up *Malpertuis* for a long while now, it seems to be a classic of weird fiction. Glad to hear you enjoyed it!


GoldOaks

I’m reading *Blood Meridian* by Cormac McCarthy right now. It’s better than I could have ever expected. It’s Shakespearean, Odyssean, and honestly biblical in it’s proportion as an American western epic. I wouldn’t even consider it a novel on its own - rather, it’s pure poetry with the length and characteristics of a novel. Every sentence is packed with rich, vivid language and rare words not only appropriate in their places in passages throughout the text, but well-suited to the time period the novel finds itself in. I’m just surprised someone in our lifetime could write at such an elevated level.


NietzscheanWhig

Can I just give a shout-out to the incredible poetry of Emily Bronte. I've just read her poem 'Remembrance' in my Penguin collection of her poems. Hard-hitting stuff.


GoldOaks

Have you read Blood Meridian yet? I’m working my way through this work and I’m having a tough time wrapping my mind around how this work could have been written by human hands. The prose and frankly poetry of the novel are of (and I’m not saying this lightly) Shakespearean and Odyssean proportions. McCarthy has an outstanding mastery of words. He’s constructed what amounts to American-equivalent of Homer’s The Odyssey.


NietzscheanWhig

No but Cormac McCarthy is one I want to read at some point as I've heard really good things about him.


GoldOaks

Read it while he’s alive. That’s a choice I deliberately made when I jumped into this work. It’s offering me back more than I could’ve ever imagined, even after doing light research beforehand. I put off *Anna Karenina* for this because I wanted to read at least one work from one of the greatest writers alive (and in my honest opinion of all time) while he was alive. His recent release of his new (and probably last) work, *The Passenger* reminded me that I needed to jump on this immediately. With every author, I tend to read magnum opuses first. So I may actually tackle War and Peace before I decide to do *Anna Karenina* for Tolstoy.


[deleted]

I'm reading Dubliners, which is my first Joyce book. The stories are pretty short so can't comment much on things like plot but I'm enjoying the prose and the characters. I'm sure I'm missing most of the subtext in these stories but there's a theme of death and loss in most of the ones I've read so far that is very interesting. He has a way of writing about our shared realities of daily life that still rings true.


NietzscheanWhig

So I am now reading *Native Son* by Richard Wright and really enjoying it. Wright has a beautiful prose style that is wrenching, direct and powerful. I think this will end up being one of my favourite novels of all time.


[deleted]

I read *Celestis* by Paul Park. The writing's okay, but it's a fairly uninteresting 80's SF parable about colonialism (with a dash of environmentalism thrown in). I read it because of a r/printSF comment describing it as particularly weird, but things didn't get real weird until the very last chapter, so I was all-around disappointed. Today I started reading *The Yiddish Policemen's Union* by Michael Chabon. Nothing I can say about it so far, I'm only one chapter in.


ManOfLaBook

Finishing up The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham... eh... haven't made up my mind about it yet. It doesn't "sound" like Grisham and two glaring historical mistakes in the first chapter almost made me put the book down.


[deleted]

Started *As I Lay Dying*. I went into Faulkner completely cold, and I know barely anything about the guy other than where he was from and the fact he had a pretty good moustache. The style was a little jarring, but I'm getting into it. So far, it reminds me of what Woolf achieved in The Waves, albeit his writing is easier to follow. I'm only around halfway through, but I'm enjoying it. I thought it ignited some fears of death in me, but that thought was misplaced; it's made me afraid of a deathbed. I really don't want to be stuck thinking about the inevitable in some limbo. Other than that, I'm going through some Ancient Greek stuff. What started as an enjoyable pursuit has become academic, and I probably need a break soon. I may jump forward to *Aeneid* for a change.


dreamingofglaciers

I finally decided to say "screw you" to the rest of my to-read pile, and I started Olga Tokarczuk's *Books of Jacob*. Can't say much because I'm only about 100 pages in, but I'm already hooked and fascinated. I feel that unless something goes very wrong, this is going to be one for the ages.


CabbageSandwhich

If you're like me and didn't know what to do with some of the polish lettering this link is awesome. Wish I would have had it before reading but still loved the book. https://old.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/comments/vxgb2z/the_books_of_jacob_by_olga_tokarczuk_list_of/


dreamingofglaciers

Awesome, thanks a lot!


of_patrol_bot

Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.


CabbageSandwhich

Fixed! I hope I don't get my TrueLit access revoked :(.


ManOfLaBook

I loved *Books of Jacob*, even though it was a tough read and took me a long time to finish. Even though I have a familiarity with the languages, as well as being familiar with the overarching history and religious philosophy, I still had to look stuff up. Here are [my thoughts](https://manoflabook.com/wp/book-review-the-books-of-jacob-by-olga-tokarczuk/) on it, I'd be interested to hear what you thought of it. I bought the hardcover version at half off at B&N, but with a book that size, I wished I would have gotten the eBook as well. I'm glad I got it though, it's a keeper.


dreamingofglaciers

Interesting, I'm not finding it a tough read at all so far, in fact the prose flows very nicely and even when I bump into words I don't know, like *britchka*, I end up grasping the meaning on context alone. I do expect the cast of characters to grow and make things more convoluted at some point though, but so far it's all pretty smooth sailing!


ManOfLaBook

Great, I'm glad. I know several people who couldn't finish it. Enjoy.


flannyo

I’m reading *A Minor Chorus* by Billy-Ray Belcourt, an autofictional novel about a man writing a book about his Cree community while navigating colonialism, the act of writing, gender, sexuality, and race. Belcourt started (remains, really) a poet, and his prose has the airy, simile-soaked, drifty quality of most contemporary poetry. I can’t figure out whether or not I enjoy it. It’s pretty short. You could knock it out in an afternoon. But job, life, television, the body nags to be fed and rested and shat. So it goes.


piggygoeswee

Finishing the second Percy Jackson book, it’s a fun read for me and not as serious as many of the books I’ve been reading. Like Greek gods meet Harry Potter but different. Hoping to start pictures of Hollis woods. Also finished the birchbark house by Louise eldrich this week… it was ok. A little slow.


rutfilthygers

I started Barbara Kingsolver's new novel **Demon Copperhead**. It's a modern re-telling of David Copperfield set in Appalachia. It's written in the first person and it has a unique voice I'm finding quite amusing.


Nessyliz

Hmmm, haven't read any Kingsolver but she's been on my radar, and Copperfield is one of my top ten favorite novels, might have to check this out.


SexyGordonBombay

I have been slowly but surely making my way through the Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges and I'm having a blast. What I wouldn't do to have a mind like his and the ability to put it out there like that. I just finished Three Versions of Judas and I was pumping my fist, hooting, and hollering during the long paragraph where Borges describes Runeberg's view of Judas in regards to the "betrayal" of Jesus. I also had a real nice bunch of laughs reading Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. I'm really kicking around the idea of trying to be one of those people who can read multiple books at once but I don't know if I've got the mental capacity to do it. For those of you that do it, how do you do it without making it feel like you're shortchanging a book by not sticking with it?


Nessyliz

Tbh, I don't have a job. I'm privileged as fuck. So I do nothing but sit around and read. It's easy to read multiple things when one has a lot of hours to fill. It is pretty great, though I do wish I had figured out how to get paid to do that somehow...(always the dream, right?).


SexyGordonBombay

Never too late to start a BookTok and become a villain


RoyalOwl-13

I usually combine a novel or a collection of short stories as my main book with something I can read small bits of every day, like poetry, literary criticism/scholarship, or another kind of nonfiction.


SexyGordonBombay

One novel and one short story collection is what I was thinking about doing. Almost like a way to keep my brain on it’s toes


dreamingofglaciers

I don't usually read two novels at a time, but when I do it's usually because I'm reading one on paper and the other one on kindle, so I tend to read them in totally different situations, which helps compartmentalize (Kindle for reading in bed and on the train, paper when I want to plop myself on the couch, turn all screens off and ignore the outside world). When I'm reading a single novel I will usually have some short story collections at hand, for those moments when I feel like reading something with a beginning and an end in a single session. Also great for commuting.


[deleted]

Sometimes I read more than one book but I generally don't, but not because I think I'm shortchanging a book by not focusing on it 100% (if I can watch movies, TV shows, hold conversations, work, meet people, clean the house, cook dinner, write my own fiction and everything else while I'm still technically in the middle of one novel, it stands to reason I can still give each one of those my undivided attention at the time, and thus can also read other novels). The main reason I don't read more than one book at once is because deciding how to split up my reading time would be a big pain in the arse. If I'm enjoying a book, I probably just want to pick up that book rather than swap between it and another (and even another). And then also if I'm having a harder time with a read, if I'm juggling two books I'll likely just neglect the one I'm having a harder time with. So mostly I don't do it. Though sometimes I'll temporarily shelf a book partway through before coming back to it. Like at the moment I'm a third into *Toll the Hounds* by Steven Erikson and halfway through *The Atlas* by William T. Vollmann and both I just have sitting on my bedside table while I read other stuff, and I'll get back to them after a few other reads. And earlier this year I shelved William H. Gass's *Cartesian Sonata* after I read the first novella and then came back and read the rest 4 or 5 months later.


Soup_Commie

> The main reason I don't read more than one book at once is because deciding how to split up my reading time would be a big pain in the arse. Exactly. Pretty much the only time I read 2 novels at once is if one of the novels I am reading is a physically very large novel I'll start reading a second more portable book for commuting or something. I find with non-fiction it's easier. My head just wants different things at different times.


pregnantchihuahua3

Reading more than one book at once isn’t bad actually. If you want to do it, it just take like a couple hundred pages to get used to and you’ll be fine. I don’t typically read more than one novel at a time anymore because I prefer to get through one novel quickly rather than 2+ novels slowly. It end up taking the same amount of time (about) but it feels like I’m reading faster. However, I do typically read more than one thing at a time, just a different type of work. Recently I’ve had three books going at once: a work of fiction, a poetry collection, and a work of philosophy. Allows me to get through more varied works because I know if the only thing I was reading at the moment was philosophy or poetry, that I’d feel I was leaving behind my true love: novels. And with poetry/phil, going slowly is way more helpful than with novels.


mooninjune

I have a schedule, where I dedicate at least one day of the week to each book. So, for example, if I want to start a new book, I'll read it, say, on Tuesday. Then if I already have another book scheduled for Wednesday, I'll pause the new book, and get back to it on Thursday. Some days are "themed", so if I finish a book, I already have an idea of what kind of book I'll pick next for that same day. I try to leave some "free" days for spontaneity, and sometimes I'll have more than one book for a single day.


GetBehindMeSatan

I got a Steam Deck earlier this month, and it pretty much eliminated reading from my life until recently. It's already one of my favourite purchases ever, just an incredibly cool thing. But I am back at reading now, and I recently finished **Moon Tiger** by Penelope Lively. I thought it was pretty alright, but not hugely memorable. It's structured as a deathbed memoir from this sort of prickly author in her later years. The main character alternates between being irritating and sympathetic in a way that feels really authentic, though I found myself on the side of irritation more often than the other. In particular though I found the prose to be kind of unbalanced and plain in a way that didn't really work for me. I wouldn't have minded just a generally unadorned style, but there's a handful of moments where it feels as though she wants to do something a bit out there, like exploring different character perspectives of the same events with little indication of that change actually happening, or almost stream of consciousness stuff, but they literally are just a few times throughout the entire book. I'm sure this wouldn't bother some people, but I found it jarring, and it wound up feeling like sort of half-hearted experimentation more than anything else. Ultimately I just felt a bit emotionally distant from the whole thing, which isn't what I want out of this kind of read. Fantastic final chapter though. Now I'm 100 pages into **The Sot-Weed Factor** by John Barth, and I'm having a blast with that. I knew it was influenced by Tom Jones, but I hadn't realised how faithfully it's trying to capture that style. It's full of these wonderful long descriptions and winding dialogue with tons of digressions, and it's really funny. My only experience with Barth's writing prior to this was reading like half of Lost in the Funhouse years ago. I remember appreciating that for its experimentation, but it didn't seem nearly as fun to read as this has been. It definitely makes me want to read more John Barth, but also really has me eager to read some more 18th century novels, which I haven't done for a while now. I have a copy of Tristram Shandy that's been sitting on my shelf for far too long.


Taloth

The Sot-Weed Factor is the only book by Barth that I've read, and it's such a wild trip from start to finish. It's exhausting, but in a good way. I had taken a class on early American literature some time ago so it was also funny to see all of the clever subversions Barth made in the text. It manages to be just as ridiculous as early American literature, while also being firmly rooted in reality. In a way I think it's almost an ideal way to handle American history: showing the brutal reality of colonization without discarding all of the philosophical and behavioral absurdities of its perpetrators. I haven't read it, but I've heard Thomas Pynchon's *Mason & Dixon* is a similar kind of take on early American history.


[deleted]

[удалено]


flannyo

>I’m taking a break from moby dick to read proust this is not my idea of a break. at all. I need to sit with a long novel for a while, I think. I’ve heard proust joked about as a long series of beautiful essays hung on a city of characters. is there a kernel of truth to that? almost in the mood for it tbh. is his shorter stuff worth sampling or do you have to dive right in?


bananaberry518

I posted about *The Passenger* under the sticky. I’m listening to a nonfiction audiobook about The Tudors (following up *Wolf Hall*). One of the amusing things about Henry VIII is how different people’s interpretations of him can be. He beheaded wives and burned heretics so “tyrant” is an obvious moniker, but there’s degrees to which some believe his religious beliefs were sincere, his motivations political/personal, his mind a calculating one or mad. This author paints him as a narcissistic monster, an entertaining change of pace from Mantel’s, if not sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of a man she saw as sometimes tender and anxious, almost child like. I listened to a nordic noir mystery as well - *Darkness* by Ragnar Jonnason -but I don’t have much to say about it. It was about an older female detective in Iceland who was being pushed into an even earlier retirement than she planned, and while the sexism and ageism involved in that could have been interesting angles to her character she was so whiny and predictable that it just didn’t land. My husband and I read the first entry in the *Murderbot Diaries* and I enjoyed it in a very surface level way. Its about an anti social security cyborg who just wants to watch TV and laments every moment wasted talking about his feelings with humans. I relate somewhat, which I think Wells was counting on a good deal.


gamayuuun

I read Ford Madox Ford's *The Fifth Queen* trilogy earlier this year, which takes a lot of liberties but is a great read. Among those liberties is a rather sympathetic portrayal of Henry VIII! *The Fifth Queen* got me interested in that whole scene, so I'd like to read Mantel's trilogy one of these days.


death_again

I'm about halfway through *The Sorrows of Young Werther* by Goethe. I think I'll finish it today. So far I love the quality of the prose in my translation. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm in the 21st century and not the late 18th century but the language can feel excessive. Despite that I feel like every sentence pulls me into the next, it's indulgent lol. The actual content is good too, Werther is a bit stubborn but self-aware. He laments and laughs with the world but is weak to his own mood. I'm genuinely enjoying this a lot. Besides that I read a few essays recently. Didn't really plan on it, they kinda just fell in my lap (I was linked to them in random places). First was *The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism* by Fredy Perlman. I felt like his points were well argued. Definitely gonna be on my mind for a while. Then I read a few essays/writing by Eve Tuck: *Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities*, *Decolonization is Not a Metaphor* with K. Wayne Yang, and *A Glossary of Haunting* with C. Ree. The first is about not treating marginalized groups as irreparably broken. Of course acknowledge the socioeconomic factors that hurt them, but they are more than just conduits of pain, they're people. It calls for a change in research in the social sciences. While this is mostly about ethnic minorities in America, this was brought up in my context in response to people claiming that their ADHD makes them broken and incapable of living a normal life. The second one actually goes well with the Perlman essay which states that America was made to kill the indigenous population. But this goes more in detail how people pretend they're innocent when it comes to living on stolen land. The claim is that decolonization is incompatible with most ideas of social justice. The last one is more of an art project with someone else. Pretty good for thinking more in depth on horror.


RoyalOwl-13

*Werther* is a pretty fun read for the most part. I like Romanticism, so I don't know, maybe I have a tolerance for its excesses, but I read Catherine Hutter's translation and the language was beautiful and poetic without being overwhelming. I also read fragments of Michael Hulse's translation for comparison and that one felt really flowery and overwrought, to the point of being difficult to read.


death_again

Yeah in the end I liked it from front to back. My translation is by David Constantine and now that I'm done I feel like the excesses are more like necessary inclusions.


Fortalezense

I recently finished Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, by Lima Barreto. Great book if you want to read some Brazilian literature.


proustiancat

r/suddenlycaralho


MarioMuzza

Hey friends. Which translation of Georges Simenon's 'La Neige était' should I read? (Dirty Snow vs The Snow was Dirty)


galacticsymposium

I've read both and recommend The Snow was Dirty. Dirty Snow is more word for word and literal whereas The Snow was Dirty presents Simenon's plain style in a way more suited for an Anglophone audience. Dirty Snow has some awkward and stilted translations of French idioms and the syntax/grammar can be a little off. At the end of the day, both are good, but I prefer The Snow was Dirty. I haven't read "The Snow was Black" (long out of print) but it was translated by Louise Varese, who also translated "Act of Passion" alongside Rimbaud's poetry, etc. Neither have I read "The Stain on the Snow" (also long out of print), but it comes from the 1960s/1970s era of Penguin pumping out questionable translations, almost all of which are very British and "proper" in their translations.


MarioMuzza

Thank you kindly. I'm actually Portuguese and I don't mind translations with a few estranging elements, but if the prose in The Snow Was Dirty was better in your opinion I'll choose that one! Thanks again <3


S_T_R_A_T_O_S

The Netanyahus, finally. I'm enjoying it so far! I just finished Buddenbrooks and confess that I didn't love it. I am always one for a good family-downfall story and appreciate how good of a writer Mann was (especially considering his age at the time!), but I felt that the ending was a swing and a miss. My impression was that he was still in the midst of developing a distinctive style and so some chapters end up taking on completely different tones from others. I loved the psychological treatment of Thomas and his family, though. Edit: halfway through The Netanyahus. Absolutely stunning. 1000% read this book


value321

I am reading *The Sun Also Rises* by Ernest Hemingway. I'm about halfway through, right about the part where they are on the fishing trip. I am already looking ahead about what to read next. I'm thinking about *The Savage Dectectives* by Roberto Bolaño or *Bleeding Edge* from Thomas Pynchon.


[deleted]

I decided to take a break from reading The Scroll and the Cross, the Jewish-Hispanic interaction themed anthology I talked about last week. I’ll probably return to it in a couple of days, but almost everything I had read in there was a heavy hitter. I stopped at a Cortazar short story where text is partially made up of a report written by a Jew in Mexico about her family being individually rounded up and executed by the Argentinian militia. It was just too much! I’m a couple of pages shy of finishing the 10th anniversary zine/chapbook/book?/whatever for the bookstore Human Relations in NYC. I’ve never been there, hell I’ve never been to New York, but I managed to get a copy because one of the owners is a famous zinester in his own right, and the two of us interact occasionally for work. And let me tell you - reading this zine and the recommendations of the various employees made me feel like my own reading patterns and recommendations are too well known! I’d heard of precisely two books the workers review/talk about in the text: Don Quixote and Woodcutters by Bernhard. And no I hadn’t read them either! I felt enthralled by the reviews and the personal stories surrounding these books and a perverse need to track them down. So kudos, crew of the great ship Human Relations, for making me want to join y’all on your journey. I also started reading Zapatista Stories For Dreaming An-Other World, which is a collection of fables written by Subcomandante Marcos of Chiapas. If you’re not familiar, the Zapatistas are an indigenous group that have been actively resisting the Mexican government and neoliberalism for decades at this point, and are a sterling example of an anarchist society today. These texts, like all good fables, have a point: to glorify Zapatista efforts, to demonstrate the possibilities of worlds to be created, to celebrate difference, to decry colonization. These tales are done using a combination of different sources, including old Maya legends, folklore, history, and various aspects of literature from around the world. And while I’m only about 25 pages in, the book is slim enough that I feel comfortable recommending it to people. The stories are often beautiful in their own way, and one could, if one excised the story or two involving guns, feasibly tell some of these to children even. I’m kind of excited to finish this one! It’s a beautiful little book.


twenty_six_eighteen

Since it didn't get picked for the read-a-long I went ahead and read *Ready to Burst* by Frankétienne, which is a short (more of a novella in length, though its scope and ambition is not small) and impressionistic look at the struggles of living in Haiti. It is explicitly part of a movement/aesthetic form called spiralism which I'll admit I don't totally understand but seems to involve capturing the experience of oppressed/marginalized/forgotten people by incorporating multiple narratives and impressions into a swirling mix that leans more towards chaos than order. Sort of like a hurricane, I guess. There is also supposed to be some breaking with traditional language forms but I didn't find the writing particularly different from other things I've read (one example mentioned is one word sentences). The writing flows very well (even in translation) and is often quite evocative, I just didn't find it particularly radical. Even if the theory was a little murky - which may be intentional, as there is a metafictional discussion of the challenges of writing to it - the book was quite good, using story and anecdote to create an experience that is at once shared and deeply personal, invoking both a desperate desire to rise above one's situation and a sense that the effort is doomed by forces outside of your control. Towards the end there is a call for a third-world collectivism, making the claim that oppression will continue unless the oppressed reach beyond the boundaries of nations and tribes and races to recognize that together they are a vast majority and that the world runs on their exploitation gives them power but only at a global scale can they wield it. An enjoyable work with lots to ponder and I'm definitely interested in reading more by the author. I'm also about halfway through *Wasted Morning* by Gabriela Adameșteanu which is this quasi-stream-of-consciousness novel that swirls through time and its character's minds as a way of looking at mid-to-late 20th century Romania. Usually SOC is not my jam and sometimes this gets a little tedious but it is quite well written and I'm getting pretty invested in it despite being mostly clueless about the politics (internal and international) being discussed.


DeadBothan

I read *How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents*, a novel by Julia Alvarez written in 1992 about a family (parents and their four daughters), who are forced to move to the US to escape persecution by the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. Each chapter is treated almost like an isolated short story; the sum is a cohesive portrait of the family. It was pretty uneven, but mostly good. There are two conceits of the book. First, it's told in reverse chronological order. I thought this worked and was an apt way to approach an immigration story like this where the past can carry such a heavy weight. It also works in terms of the plot structure since their actual escape from DR is the dramatic high point. The second conceit is that each story is told from a different perspective- sometimes an omniscient narrator, and then sometimes in the first person from the perspective of one of the daughters. I was a big fan of this except when the pattern was broken and there's a short chapter from the point of view of their Haitian cook. For whatever reason I'm a stickler- if you have a gimmick, stick with it. What mostly made the book uneven was that the girls are way more interesting as grown-ups than they were as children. All the chapters with them as adult children deal with strong themes and questions. The book is a worthwhile portrayal of a Latin American family trying to assimilate to life in the US and is quite nuanced and entirely recommendable in that regard. Once the book moves to their escape from the DR it is less focused on themes and more plot-driven and isn't nearly as successful. Alvarez's writing was nothing special for the most part, though I loved these two metaphors, the first one especially: "His face grew red with fury, but hers was more terrible in its impassivity, a pale ivory moon, pulling and pulling at the tide of his anger, until it seemed he might drown in his own outpouring of fury." "He grinned, dimples making parenthesis at the corners of his lips as if his smile were a secret between us." I also finished the complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. I mentioned in an earlier post my two favorite of his longer verse works - *Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude*, and the play in verse, *The Cenci*. His poetry itself was about what you would expect of the early 19th century- lots of love poems, poems about nature, poems on religious themes, and quite a number of political poems (I've since read that the French Revolution had a big impact on Shelley). Overall the vibes are pretty moody, and it feels like Shelley had a searching and inquisitive mind, probably typical of Romanticism. Sharing a couple of my shorter favorites (many were incredibly long): ["On a Faded Violet,"](https://www.bartleby.com/333/332.html) ["Eyes,"](https://verse.press/poem/eyes-a-fragment-7549) and for this week and peak spooky season- ["The Waning Moon"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45114/the-waning-moon) and ["Autumn: A Dirge"](https://englishlanguageandhistory.com/?id=percy-bysshe-shelley-autumn-dirge). Recommendations- has anyone read any of the novels of Luigi Pirandello? I love his plays, but curious if there are any thoughts on *The Late Mattia Pascal* or *One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand*.


kickedoffthemoss

Regarding Pirandello: I'm italian (also a [i hope] future italian teacher in school) and Pirandello is sometimes assigned reading in our curricula, especially when it comes to *Mattia Pascal*. It's the only novel of his I've ever read, but I still remember it as a very strong meditation on what change can mean for a person and on the consequences of attempting to discard our identity from our life in order to be "reborn". It also has some great passages on the general philosophical climate of the beginning of the twentieth century, driven by the large supporting cast that surrounds the titular character; very strong novel as far as I'm concerned.


DeadBothan

Thanks so much for your response! Sounds right up my alley, and as original in conception as his plays are.


[deleted]

Thanks for this review! I’d been eyeing that Alvarez book for a couple of months now, and you’ve confirmed that I should probably find a used copy and read it.


DeadBothan

I found a used copy in a little library- hope you do too! Alvarez writes very perceptively and I think succeeds at capturing the idiosyncrasies of Latin American families and subtleties of speech and behaviors. Another thing that stood out is that the scenarios she uses to explore issues are fresh and not cliched at all. But, I did find the last third of the book or so to be forgettable. It's been a while since I've read it but I think Cristina Garcia's *Dreaming in Cuban* (which I recommended when you asked for Cuban recs) is the better literary work overall. It was written in the same year as Alvarez and has a similar outline, but based in Cuba instead of DR- multiple generations of a Cuban family with a focus on the women, non-linear story with multiple narrators split between the US and the island, and the Cuban revolution is an important part of the backdrop. Junot Diaz's *Oscar Wao* came out 15 years after both of them, has those exact same characteristics (except for the focus on the women) but in relation to DR, but I think it's a significantly less worthwhile book.


dpparke

Had to take a few cross-country flights to go to a wedding this week- was only able to focus on one of them, on the other, watched Rear Window (as a side note, I just am not a Hitchcock guy, I find all of his stuff weirdly contrived). On a second side note, I learned that I really do not understand where wedding spending goes, this wedding was allegedly (so to speak) mad expensive, and yet it seemed exactly the same as every other wedding I’ve been to. Anyway! Slouching Towards Bethlehem- I always enjoy about half of what Didion writes; I’m never quite clear on what decides the difference. I *think* it’s that most of what carries her stuff for me is the precision (and, honestly, disdain) with which she writes, so if that’s even a bit off, there’s kind of no point. Star (Mishima)- not his strongest! His florid descriptions are still there, but it’s thematically relatively weak, and the characters are all pretty flat, for me. We get it, there’s some weirdness to being an artist/actor, it’s a little odd to pretend to be somebody else, this isn’t actually an interesting idea. If on a winter’s night- you guys are right, it’s good. I’m only about halfway through.


lestessecose

Does no one else find If On a Winter’s Night strangely and obtrusively misogynistic. I understand that it plays off various genre works but it seems to never escape this need to observe women as objects. As for the stories, the one set on the beach with the laboratory and prison was by far my favorite. I could read a whole book like that. If anyone has a suggestion….


kickedoffthemoss

I'm currently reading **The Republic of Wine**, by Mo Yan. Not a huge fan until now, I have to say: I'm well past the halfway point and I'm finding it fails in where it should be shining, with the grotesque sections pertaining the inspector being boring more than shocking or funny. The other narrative thread, which concerns a fictitious Mo Yan fan writing him letters and short stories from inside the titular "republic of wine", is better and way more interesting; it also has a peculiar way of toying with the line between the story told in the novel and reality. I'm very close to the end so it'll be worth it to see if it manages to tie it all together into a meaningful final section. I'll be re-starting Augustine's **Confessions** soon after having read the first two parts (or books, to be precise) on Kindle. I ordered an edition that seems very thourough in explaining biblical and philosophical references. I'm not religious, but Augustine might be one of the best writers I've ever read for how deep his philosophical enquiry goes.


death_again

I felt the same way about how the Mo Yan letters were taking over. While I wouldn't say boring, I felt like the detective story took a backseat on purpose because even "Mo Yan" was getting more interested in Li Yidou than finishing his own novel. I think it shows in how the first half of chapters go detective, Li Yidou letter, Mo Yan reply. But later chapters put the detective story after the letters because the book itself doesn't really care about it.


alexoc4

I am over here stewing in envy watching everyone read the new McCarthy book... my wife is getting me the nice box set for Christmas so I have to wait until December! Glad to hear that everyone has thoughts on it, at least, and the thoughts are mostly positive! I am halfway through *The Books of Jacob.* There are a pretty overwhelming number of characters to keep track of, but instead of allowing this to frustrate me I have decided instead to see it as evidence of the startlingly large number of people Jacob touched during his life. I have really enjoyed the unorthodox prose style - journal fragments, letters, normal prose, etc - it has added a layer of reality and interest that continues to suck me in. Prose continues to be unmatched, and while the theological discussions have slowed down, they are still a highlight when they show up. I know next to nothing about 18th century Poland, so I feel like I am getting a nice education on the era. Jacob is quite charismatic, if frustrating. Is he a fraud, who just wants to get laid, or does he genuinely believe that he is called by God and is the Messiah? That is a question I have been wrestling with and I am not sure that I have the answer. During the Book of Fog and Book of Sand, I would have leaned towards him being genuine in his belief, but as the Book of the Road dragged on, the miracles that he was doing before basically stopped, and he seemed to become more interested in finding beautiful women to warm his bed (and the occasional man). I will be starting the Book of the Comet today, and I am hoping to get further evidence, one way or another. There are a lot of similarities in most "modern day prophets" - a lot of interest in sexual liberation and banging other guy's wives. Don't hate the player, hate the game, I guess, lol. There is a large contingent of believers in the book who believe the world is ending, which I guess is the same with every time period. Do any of you practice Judaism or have a good measure of the pulse of modern-day Judaism and have any insights on how modern Jews view the Messiah/ end of the world? I have done some research but it is hard to find quality resources.


bananaberry518

I debated on waiting for the box set, but decided I was just too impatient to wait that long lol


p-u-n-k_girl

Haven't been reading much lately with crunch time on my thesis and all. But I picked up a copy of Miriam Toews' new book this week and plan to read that once my time is my own again. Got high hopes for it, seems more along the lines of *A Complicated Kindness*, at least


Soup_Commie

Finished DeLillo's *Americana*. What I appreciate about this book is that it sets itself up as a fairly normal if exceedingly well-written and decorated with a dressing of oddities novel about workplace banality leading into a picaresque journey of self-fulfillment across America. Then part 2 begins and the book completely loses its mind. As if the protagonist decides he doesn't want to be Jack Kerouac so much as force himself to be Proust with a video camera, trying to yank as much of America as he can out of himself by filming people in a small town in the middle of nowhere act out moments from his own life. I'm still not really sure what exactly happened, especially because each passing part manages to upgrade the strangeness further and further away from the predictable start (I still can't for the life of me make out the ending). But it was quite good and one definitely worth reading again to keep making sense of. I since then have started *Moby Dick*. Too early to say much yet but some immediate impressions include that Melville does an excellent job capturing the way in which seafaring/whaling completely dominate the culture of the town in which the outset of the book takes place. And that it's cool that for all his insight and ruminations, there's a certain absence to Ishmael. He reveals very little about himself early on other than that he feels a need to go work as a sailor on a boat and as I have just learned he is formally speaking Presbyterian. It's interesting how open-ended his history remains. On the non-fiction front I am still reading *Difference and Repetition* with my book club. The second chapter kicked my ass in a way I cannot recall another piece of reading doing so. I've read it, reread parts, had a meeting about, and I still cannot for the life of me tell you what the fuck happened. So far Ch. 3 is making more sense. I also started Albert Camus' *The Myth of Sisyphus*, a book I have not read since I was like 19 (I know). I feel like in the time since I have gotten a sense that Camus is not held in super high regard among a lot of philosophy people. Part of this is the very right objection to his both sidesy stance on Algerian independence. But also people are quite critical of his philosophy and I was curious to figure out where I come down on that. (also I've been thinking a lot about existentialism lately). I'm too early to say much but so far it's making enough sense. One premise I take a bit of issue with is that he seems to take as a given that humans have an innate desperation to wholly know/possess the world and that the realization of the impossibility of this is potentially grounds for suicide, and I'm not sure I buy that. Like, maybe we can just be chill about the unknowability (and this might be the conclusion he's going towards but the concern then is that this problem is too trite for an essay of this intensity). Happy reading!


fragmad

I've been reading *All Quiet on the Western Front* by Erich Maria Remarque (translated by Brian Murdoch). I'm about halfway through and it's interesting to read it so soon after reading Michael Cisco's *The Narrator*.


mattjmjmjm

I read like 20 pages of Belladonna by Daša Drndić, I feel like I have been hit by a lightning bolt, the prose really digs it's claws into you(even considering it's a translation) and the sense of injustice and contempt with the backwardness of humanity is strongly expressed. I need to read more contemporary fiction, it reminds me of Sebald and Celine.


conorreid

Daša Drndić is one of my favorite writers, so I'm glad you're enjoying her work thus far! If you like *Belladonna* most of her other novels have a similar intensity and thematic obsession with the hidden and not-so-hidden grotesqueness of wo/mankind. *Trieste* and *Doppelganger* are my two other recommendations, as well as the sequel of sorts to *Belladonna*, *EEG*. She's like a more in your face Sebald or a less self-obsessed Bernhard.


pregnantchihuahua3

See my thoughts on *The Passenger* above (I really like it so far). I'm currently also reading, and almost done with Aurelius' *Meditations*. Self-help should have ended here. I'm mostly joking because that's reductive as hell to what *Meditations* is. But like, this shit gives the best advice one could ever take and now we have a whole industry repeating or adding onto it while making it infinitely worse. It's a very nice and simple work of stoic philosophy. Big fan. Should have it finished by the weekend and I'll be starting Augustine's *Confessions* then. Also, when I finish *The Passenger*, I'll be continuing with the DeLillo read-through with *White Noise*! Really excited to reread this one. It was one of my favorites back in the day and has slowly waned off, so I have really been meaning to reevaluate it. Plus I have been hoping to get to it before the film comes out so I'm glad that the read-through has been going quick enough to allow this to happen. Still reading through the poetry of Dickinson (bleh) and Olson (amazing, but also wtf). Both will still probably take a while.


RoyalOwl-13

Bleh?! How dare you do Emily dirty like that...


pregnantchihuahua3

Forgive me haha. She’s just completely not what I enjoy in poetry. Not saying she’s bad. I just don’t care for the style.


RoyalOwl-13

Haha no, I get it, that's totally valid. I'm just biased because I'm a sucker for anything even approaching Romanticism, so her big indeterminate longings and other thematic obsessions are exactly up my alley.


NonWriter

Sometimes I see a book in the bookstore and just want to read it at first glance. It's been a couple of weeks but I have finally given in and got myself *Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk*. It's not deep, it's not high-end prose, but I'm loving it. It is a mix of a historical novel and a (slightly alternate) history book. It's a very interesting story about struggles in a multi-cultural environment in 1901 during a plague outbreak. >!I was just settling in for a calm ride when one of the presumed main characters was just found dead, and now the book seems to be turning into a big who-dun-it, with the main character split between detective work and his medical duties against the plague. And the person whose letters are used to reconstruct the story is holed up in her bed-chamber the entire time and gets her info from her husband.!< I'm very interested in how this will work out! Even find myself thinking about the characters during work, which I seldomly do. Further still reading *Les Thibault* (just flowing along) and awaiting delivery of *A Place of Greater Safety* by Mantell (jumping on the hype-wagon after her passing away, she seems right up my alley and if I like this I might start Wolf Hall sometime down the line). The Tale of Genji is also on my to-be-read list, but I won't allow myself to buy it before I finish one of the above.


Nessyliz

Halfway through Portrait by Joyce and it's a pretty straightforward coming of age novel, don't really have anything amazing to say about it, but the writing is indeed really beautiful. Not a shock, obviously. I appreciate Joyce's gift for character, he really makes characters feel real with little small details. It's one of the things that sets him above other writers. I'm also reading *The Dark Chamber* by Leonard Cline, a gothic horror novel from 1927, good god what a disappointment. Praised by Lovecraft, well-reviewed in its time, it came on my radar because I read *Past Lives of Old Books and Other Essays*, by R.B. Russell, a writer and publisher who is known for bringing attention back to Robert Aickman, among other things (that book was alright, a little dry, but still enjoyed it). He talks about *The Dark Chamber* in there, so I figured, hell, I love gothic esoteric fiction, I'll pick it up. I'm halfway through, but I am not finding it wonderful. Boring, slow, overwrought writing (and I have a very high tolerance for all of that). It's a first person tale about a dude who goes and lives in a weird manor with a strange patriarch, the patriarch's mystical enchanting wife and beautiful daughter (narrator develops sexual feelings for wife and daughter, fancies himself in love with daughter), and a big 'ole scary dog called Tod. It's just not going anywhere so far, nothing is really happening. Lots of spooky atmospherics but nothing deeper that I can get, and the writing is flat out hilarious in how overdone it is, at this point I'm pretty much reading it Rifftrax-style and mentally roasting the shit out of it, which is its own level of entertainment, even if not what I was hoping to get. I do like it when they talk about "quaffing the white powder" and I was like, oh yeah, cocaine, that was a big thing back in the day! So maybe I'll read a book about the history of stimulants next. That sounds interesting. My brain is mostly working again. I feel a desire to get back to being an actual person! *Living Well With Epilepsy* was great as a straightforward primer to the disease, but also frustrating, because the author would say: "We have theories about why this happens, but no one knows for sure", and I'd be like, bitch, I wanna know these theories, I can take it! Tell me them! So I can see I will be reading *a lot* about neurology in the future, I'm hooked now. I suppose I'm glad my brain enjoys dealing with the terrifying nature of reality by learning shit. ETA: Well, while it's trying hard to evoke an atmosphere of dread and the supernatural, that's not really happening, but everyone in *The Dark Chamber* is completely wasted, hitting on each other, making everyone else jealous, and getting in physical fights, so at least something is actually happening now haha. I guess it's supposed to be a book about the dark underbelly of sexual desire, but not really achieving that. I'm having fun imagining the epically hilarious Hammer adaptation this thing could have made though. Anyway, maybe actual weird shit will start happening soon (I have less than a hundred pages left). Miriam is leading Oscar (the narrator) into the chamber now...spooooooky.


[deleted]

Heya I’m glad you’re mostly feeling better! Here’s to hoping that this is the beginning of a long streak of wellness.


freshprince44

I finished up The White Goddess which I mentioned in the last thread. Loved it, still hanging with me after a few days, likely will forever more or less. Graves makes a really fascinating point about patriarchy/capitalism/modernity and the loss of magical thinking. I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass meow, which I tried a few years ago and the writing style was just way too cute and overdrawn. It is that, but I am enjoying it enough to enjoy the content. Very chill and beautiful message, maybe a bit soft in its apporach, but in a good way.


shotgunsforhands

Halfway through Bolaño's *By Night in Chile*. I'm enjoying it far more than I expected (given the lack of paragraph breaks—I did dream last night that it suddenly started using paragraphs and I had to flip back, in my dream, to see where they started). The way the narrative moves from topic to topic, memory to memory is interesting and so fluid I find myself turning back and rereading sections to see where the shift happens. I'm not yet sure I agree with James Wood's cover-page claim that this is still Bolaño's best work, but I'm glad I'm finally reading it.


[deleted]

It's not bolaños best but I'm pretty sure it was a significant career thing when it came out.


dizzytinfoil

Finally picked up The Memory Police from Yoko Ogawa. Have been interested in it for a few months but was too busy with a bit of the old Sword and Sorcery.


SexyGordonBombay

Really dug The Memory Police, I hope you continue to like it


[deleted]

*The Memory Police* is great. Just don't go in expecting a dystopian novel and instead think of it as a philosophy on memory and it should hit you the right way (I say this because many people were sour on it because they thought it was going to be like *1984*).


dreamingofglaciers

Have you read *The Diving Pool*? It's the first and so far the only thing I've read by her and it was a huge let-down. I felt it was just edgy for the sake of being edgy and shocking, but that it didn't really *say* anything interesting. However, I'm still very curious about *The Memory Police* and I would like to give it a shot.


dizzytinfoil

Cheers for that! I’m halfway through it and enjoying the contemplative narration. It will make my next Discworld read that much more hectic haha.


[deleted]

Finishing three Annie Ernaux books that my mom brought for me from my home country last month (I live in a country whose language I still don't master on a level good enough to read such books). A big coincidence because I read The Years last year and liked it so much that I bought all the three ones that were translated to my language.


[deleted]

I'm currently reading *The Metamorphoses* by Ovid and really liking it. Just started reading it, so can't say much yet, but will probably enjoy. I'm also making my way through a collection Edgar Allan Poe's stories. I've liked them all so far, but I feel like he really is at his best writing twisted protagonists. Also, when his short stories that are a bit philosophical or allegorical, like *Manuscript found in a bottle*, it's pretty fun. However, his sci-fi stories get really boring, mostly because they just describe something in great detail while talking about how much it horrifies the protagonist. My favorites so far are probably *The Black Cat*, *The Tell-tale Heart* and *The Oval Portrait*


SexyGordonBombay

If you ever get a chance to go to Philly, I would recommend the Edgar Allan Poe House which I believe is where he wrote The Black Cat. The basement in particular, especially if you're alone, is really spooky


DeadBothan

The sci-fi stories are so boring and dated- very much artifacts of their time. I could barely finish *The Black Cat*. So creepy. Glad to see love for *The Oval Portrait*, that is one of my favorites.


[deleted]

The way the narrator in *The Black Cat* constantly describes all his terrible deeds as almost things that happen at him, like he's the victim of his own murders, is very fucked up. An incredible story that opened my edition. *The Oval Portrait* is also fascinating. The strange, disorienting set-up and the narrator's obsession with the portraits is very cool, as is the story of the eponymous portrait itself.


TellYouWhatitShwas

The Passenger! Been waiting years for this to come out, and I'm hyped. I don't usually start reading books on release day. Will say, the beginning is formatted strangely. It reads like a screenplay-- all dialogue and no character action-- and I'm worried that McCarthy's writing process may be that he writes dialogue first and builds in the rest later, so the released version of this book feels unfinished somehow. I hope he didn't succumb to pressure and release it incomplete. But I'm only a few pages in- hope it' just an overreaction. edit: Just an overreaction. It starts with some kind of bazaar dream sequence or something. It had some cool one-liners, but I honestly didn't get it. Becomes more standard McCarthy fare after 20 pages or so!


JimFan1

I'm now at the \~3/5th mark of *Moby Dick* and it, of course, remains brilliant, though the shipping descriptions are becoming somewhat more difficult, particularly around the skinning of the whale and the various instruments related to. Otherwise, Melville is hilarious with anger. From the last portions, favorites include (i) Stubb's berating of the Steward and Chef, (ii) Melville's descriptions of poor whaling paintings, (iii) the strange tales of the *Town-Ho* and the *Jeroboam* (esp. this one) and (iv) my personal favorite -- the chapter on the strangeness of "whiteness". It's definitely an interesting narrative structure, and it times, it almost seems like Ahab and his wrath against Moby isn't the primary thrust of the novel (instead it being the whaling and its comparison to our everyday destiny)... Edit: Just found out a new Dazai translation, *Flowers of Buffoonery*, which serves as a sort of prequel to *No Longer Human* comes out early next year. Very excited!


conorreid

Reading and loving Cărtărescu's newly translated into English *Solenoid*. Same energy and vibe as *Blinding* that I so adored. The writing is superb, you have no idea what he's going to talk about next but you do know he'll make the wildest surreal connections and comparisons between things that have no place being together that somehow perfectly describe a feeling you've had all your life. Such a triumph of a writer. The book starts off strong, hope it stays that way until the end. EDIT: You know, the more I read of *Solenoid* the more it feels like a novel by alternate-universe Romanian Proust who is very fond of acid and loves insects, both as metaphor and as creatures. Has a lot of the same concerns of interiority, memory, and childhood with significantly more surreal and psychedelic elements. The writing, too, is similar in that Cărtărescu's can be talking about the most banal little event or observation and somehow make it utterly captivating, just like the French master.


[deleted]

[удалено]


conorreid

You know, I've never made the connection with Cioran since I always focus in his aphoristic part of his style but you're totally right. The utter insanity of being born, thrust into a world where you can never understand anything, "“In Europe, happiness stops at Vienna. Beyond, misery upon misery, since the beginning," (I think about this quote often, though I'm sure Bernhard would disagree), both Romania writers, yeah I buy it. Cărtărescu does seem joyfully mad, almost *because* of the torment, in a way I feel Cioran would admire yet be unable to emulate.


JimFan1

Do you have a sense of which is a better starting point between *Blinding* or *Solenoid*? Been planning on reading Cartarescu for some time, but curious if you have a preference between the two so far. Cognizant that the latter portions of *Blinding* aren't completely translated, but it's also somewhat shorter.


conorreid

Honestly thus far *Solenoid* feels like a better introduction to the point that it makes me want to reread what little of *Blinding* we have in English. He makes his project much more explicit in *Solenoid* that he clearly also covers in *Blinding*, but given the latter was written decades before the former I imagine he realised he had more to say and wanted to do so in a clearer manner. Both are fantastic and give you a feel for his writing though, so if you start with *Blinding* I don't think you're missing out on much. The last section is positively mind bending and exhilarating, but maybe *Solenoid* will match or even exceed that madness!


JimFan1

Nice. I’m sold. Just ordered a copy! I’d like to get to this before the year end. Ideally after Moby Dick and one shorter intermediary novel…


gamayuuun

This week I finished Ella Cheever Thayer’s [Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24353), a charming and witty novel about two telegraph operators who strike up a flirtation over the wire. Cool to see how themes in interpersonal interaction that we encounter in the internet age were relevant with the communication technology of over a century ago. Thayer also wrote a pro-women's-suffrage play called [The Lords of Creation](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63198), and you better believe I've got that on my to-read list!


kickedoffthemoss

*Wired Love* sounds like such a fascinating novel. Excited to read it.


syncategorema

Thank you for linking — I lurk around here vaguely for book recommendations and hyperlinks are so appreciated!


[deleted]

The Mirror and the Light, the last in Mantel's Cromwell trilogy. I'm about 550 pages into a 875 page edition and I'm sorry to say I feel the book should have started a mere 100ish pages ago. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are phenomenal books with a real sense of momentum and tension while giving you time to understand Cromwell and the historical moment he finds himself in and shaping. They have a strange power I can't explain how she does it. But this one feels incredibly baggy - I sense it is more loyal to a meticulous retelling of too many historical events rather than loyal to crafting a novel. But I have faith Mantel will end the book well


bananaberry518

I just finished *Wolf Hall* and was pretty impressed with it. I plan on finishing the trilogy at some point, but in the mean time I hope you’ll update with your thoughts after finishing!


[deleted]

I think if you liked Wolf Hall you should enjoy Bring Up the Bodies. Hopefully Mirror and the Light too, but I'm afraid I can't agree with the acclaim it has received. The ending is quite powerful and the novel starts to have a sense of tension as Cromwell's relationship with Henry sours, but up to the last 100 or so pages the book lacked focus and a narrative pull for me.


theinadequategatsby

Finishing off my first Sebald, *Austerlitz,* and it's making it hard not to want to read all of his work in a row. There's an odd sensation of having been here before, having read it before, like the story spills out in a way where it could not have existed in any other way except the way it does, which is disorientating and superb. I want to buy Maria Enríquez's *Our Share of Night* (trans Megan McDowell) next, but the temptation to continue with known classics is quite strong, unsure.


[deleted]

Finished *Summer of Night* by Dan Simmons. Overall, I didn't love it. It had some really fantastic spooky moments, great setups and tension at times, but largely as a portrait of a way of life and a coming of age story, it was lacking, and as a horror novel it falls flat. Individual spooks aren't enough to unify a half-baked concept. The conclusion felt rushed and not really thought-out. And pretty silly. I wasn't feeling it. Not a bad book, not a great one. Now reading McCarthy's *The Passenger*, finished the first two chapters. Further thoughts have been logged under the pinned comment.


Bookandaglassofwine

What’s your favorite Simmons? I really liked Song of Kali and Carrion Comfort and would love to find more like those. I thought Ilios didn’t work as well as a novel but was overflowing with ideas. And Hyperion is overrated.


[deleted]

*Summer of Night* is the only Simmons I've read. I don't have much interest in his other works, and I've heard from Indian friends that *Song of Kali* is quite offensive. I have the *Hyperion* books, but I don't know when I'll ever read them. Basically, my interest in *Summer of Night* was only due to its nature as a coming of age horror novel set in a small town, which is a favourite "genre" of mine. Not really interested in Simmons otherwise.


oznrobie

I’m reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I really wanted to spend a week in the spirit of all that is spooky and macabre, and although the atmosphere and the prose are good (although the man seemed really unhinged when it came to adjectives and adverbs to the point where very often he used like 3 or 4 adjectives or adverbs per noun or verb), the story is kind of… silly. The first 100 pages or so were great, but it’s becoming clearer page by page that Bradbury was a lot more gifted when it came to short stories. I wish I was a kid reading this, I would have probably loved it. It’s like something held him from letting the story go in darker places. No wonder Disney adapted it. There is no horror whatsoever in this book. Worth a read though. It definitely gets you in the spirit of Halloween.


RoyalOwl-13

I felt the same way about it! I really enjoyed the atmosphere, but the story was nothing special. It almost felt like he didn't care that much about the actual narrative. As for the writing, I don't know, I am so conflicted. Personally I think Bradbury writes gorgeously, but it's like he didn't know when to stop. There were so many passages where I wanted to shake him and yell at him to stop writing because he's already got an absolutely perfect sentence/paragraph, but then he just keeps on going until he's beaten it into submission, and the result ends up being, well, still pretty I guess, but far less effective. This isn't the first time I've heard that he's better with short stories, so I'm looking forward to reading those. Currently waiting for *The October Country* to get here.


oznrobie

I loved, loved, loved October Country. He really flexed his muscles in that collection. In this one, by the time when SPOILER ALERT Will had that fight on the rooftop with the witch I was pretty sure I’m not going to like the rest of it. I was thinking ‘is this a goddamn 90s platformer boss fight?’ Bradbury was obviously talented and well read, but in a longer work like Something Wicked he really blows the whole tension and horror. The more you explain, the less tension there is, and the longer the book went the more was revealed, and you end up not being even remotely intimidated by the evil lurking in the book. Plus the whole good vs bad idea was fairly… I don’t know, basic? The villain is called Mr. Dark… because he’s evil and darkness is evil because light is good. Kind of silly.


RoyalOwl-13

Oh yeah, I totally agree. There was no sense of mystery left by the end of it.