"Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies" by Maddie Mortimer.
"Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies" by Maddie Mortimer.
"The Devil in Silver" by Victor Lavalle. I'm on a Lavalle kick. I'm reading "Lone Women," his newest book, now.
Lady Onogaro
"Be yourself--everybody else is already taken." --Oscar Wilde
Bob
Making the world a more peaceful place, one fine art print and one handwritten letter at a time.
“If ‘To hold a pen is to be at war’ as Voltaire said, Montblanc suggests you show up in full dress uniform, ready to go down like an officer and a gentleman among the Bic-wielding hordes.” - Chris Wright
Paper cuts through the noise – Richard Moross, MOO CEO
Indiana Jones used a notebook in the map room, not an app.
www.bobsoltys.net/fountainpens
Kaputnik (June 6th, 2023)
Just finished Lone Women. Having lived in a remote shack with wood stove, handpump well, etc., I found the practical details unconvincing. Likewise, I was not persuaded by the monster sibling. Not even a monster can spend decades locked in a steamer trunk with no food or water.
Lady Onogaro (August 1st, 2023)
Before that, I read an alternate-future sci-fi novel, Babel by R. F. Kuang.
The imagination is impressive, with a 1600s era society revolutionized by the magical properties of silver bars engraved with pairs of words from different languages, which gives rise to an institute of translators based at Oxford in a tower. It's a metaphor for colonial domination, and the opium trade, which provokes a subversive resistance movement.
I enjoyed it, but tripped at times over lapses in diction, as the characters conversed like Gen-X students, using terms such as narco-state and the workers protested the lack of transparency in government (yeah, right). That's the sort of goof authors make, but editors correct (or should). But too many editors these days seem to know more about the business and the market, and nearly nothing about history or literature.
In an otherwise well-crafted piece of fiction, dumb goofs like that are inexcusable.
Update (this isn't the most active thread here, is it?)
I finished The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, by John Barth, ultimately finding it rather tedious. No point in expanding on that. Finished Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie. I liked it quite a bit better than Barth's book, but thought it did unravel a bit toward the end.
I took another stab at a book that I've been trying to get into for a while, The Ark Sakura, by Kobo Abe. The thing is, I can't quite figure out why I can't get into it. It's not a matter of simply disliking it, the premise and the characters seem interesting enough.
On a more positive note, I finally got around to C.S. Lewis's memoir, Surprised by Joy, and was not completely surprised to enjoy it. Not a Christian myself, I am still interested in how religious people feel about and justify their beliefs. But more than that, his memoir, concentrating heavily on his youth before the first world war, is a visit to a very different world, and a very different way of life, now gone. Incidentally, the title does not refer to his soon to be wife, Joy Davidman, who he had not met in the period covered by the book, although she apparently helped him edit it.
And continuing to be positive, I just finished Life: a User's Manual, by Georges Perec, which I enjoyed more than any other work of fiction that I've encountered in the last few years. Trying to describe it in detail would have me rambling on a great deal longer than I should. But among other things, I found it a very visual book; it does not have illustrations, but it has many very minute descriptions of spaces and their contents, including pictures. If that sounds boring, it isn't, and of course there is much more to it than that. But perhaps my present obsession with trying to create art of my own made me more appreciative of that aspect of it. I've had this book on my shelf for some years now, and could regret not getting to it before now, but perhaps this was a good time for me finally to do so.
The only work of Perec's I'd previously read was his shorter novel, A Void; it has an ingenious aspect in the original French (which I can't read) that was ingeniously duplicated in the English translation. And now I've started on Three by Perec, a collection of three shorter works of his.
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
G.K. Chesterton
Little Dorrit. I do love Dickens. All the humour, the characters, the descriptions - even the sentimentality. It's all there and not dated a bit.
I finally finished this. It's a paperback that I've had for many years; if memory serves, it was a present from someone close to me who passed away more than twenty years ago now. Procrastination seems to be a big thing with me.
As I said, an interesting enough premise. The narrator/protagonist is a survivalist convinced that nuclear war is imminent. He has outfitted an abandoned rock quarry as a long term fallout shelter. He thinks of it as an "ark", and plans to recruit other crew members for it, with himself as captain. The problem is that he really doesn't get on very well with other people, and keeps putting off asking anyone specific to join.
There's a lot here that's interesting, and no doubt the author is saying something important and worthwhile, but I really can't say that I liked this.
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
G.K. Chesterton
Nowadays I am into reading Dracula by Bram Stoker. However, I know that analyzing this classic masterpiece can be quite challenging. That's where a literature review writer comes to the rescue! Hiring professional help can provide valuable insights and interpretations of the book, enriching my understanding of its themes and symbolism. Plus, with their expertise, I can confidently navigate through the complexities of the plot and characters. Can't wait to unravel the mysteries and horrors of Dracula with the help of a skilled literature review writer!
Last edited by Kobaken; July 28th, 2023 at 02:13 AM.
I have begun re-reading Faulkner. Back in the late '70s, I read everything I had missed, read during long, long trips on the subway to Times Square and then out to the end of the 7 Train in Flushing. And back.
It is time to read all of it again. I am about 3/4 of the way through "Absalom, Absalom", and, wow, I can see why I gave up when I tried it a couple of times years ago. Now I can follow it. And, wow, a complex but great, great novel.
I just read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is nothing original to say that I found it brilliant.
But I am trying to remember if I ever read it before, and I simply don't know. I have a sort of memory of reading it in high school, some fifty years ago, but it is not a memory that includes anything about the book itself. Perhaps it was simply mentioned in an English literature class, or was on a suggested reading list. And I certainly read much more on my own than was "assigned" in school, but I don't know if this was part of my reading.
Anyway, I have read it now. The last book of Conrad's that I finished was The Secret Agent, also quite good, but I bogged down part way through Under Western Eyes, and haven't yet returned to it. And I have some others lying around that I know I haven't read, and will have to get to at some point.
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
G.K. Chesterton
Current: What an Owl Knows, by Jennifer Ackerman. Outstanding book about owl biology, looking for owls, the spiritual side of owls, and how to save them.
Next in line: Joie - A Parisian's Guide to Celebrating the Good Life.
Bob
Making the world a more peaceful place, one fine art print and one handwritten letter at a time.
“If ‘To hold a pen is to be at war’ as Voltaire said, Montblanc suggests you show up in full dress uniform, ready to go down like an officer and a gentleman among the Bic-wielding hordes.” - Chris Wright
Paper cuts through the noise – Richard Moross, MOO CEO
Indiana Jones used a notebook in the map room, not an app.
www.bobsoltys.net/fountainpens
dneal (July 18th, 2023), Lady Onogaro (August 1st, 2023), Robert (July 18th, 2023)
Just started the audio book A Private Spy about John le Carré's handwritten letters.
David Harewood reads some of the letters, and Florence Pugh narrates the biographical questions.
Bob
Making the world a more peaceful place, one fine art print and one handwritten letter at a time.
“If ‘To hold a pen is to be at war’ as Voltaire said, Montblanc suggests you show up in full dress uniform, ready to go down like an officer and a gentleman among the Bic-wielding hordes.” - Chris Wright
Paper cuts through the noise – Richard Moross, MOO CEO
Indiana Jones used a notebook in the map room, not an app.
www.bobsoltys.net/fountainpens
Just finished William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, another book I had skipped. Faulkner is the greatest.
"Give Unto Others" by Donna Leon.
Lady Onogaro (August 1st, 2023)
I have just finished Resurrection Day by Brendan Dubois. In places it was outright boring and in other places it was a tough read. However it taught me something about what the Cuban Missile Crisis could have been like and I would give it 4 out of 5 stars for that.
Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens
Midnight News by Jo Baker. So far, I have enjoyed everything of hers I have read.
Lady Onogaro
"Be yourself--everybody else is already taken." --Oscar Wilde
Lady Onogaro
"Be yourself--everybody else is already taken." --Oscar Wilde
Lately I seem to be getting around to a lot of books that I've had on my shelves for years but never read. Now I'm about two thirds of the way through Xenophon's Anabasis.
It's a bi-lingual edition with Greek on one side of the page and English on the other. Although I did have a couple of semesters of New Testament Greek decades ago in college, I have completely forgotten it, and am sticking with the English. Supposedly though, from what I remember, the later version of the language that I studied would be close enough to enable understanding of texts from centuries before. If I could remember it, that is.
Anyway, I'm finding it interesting. There are things in it which, while they are not exactly surprising, I had never thought much about previously. There is the fragmented nature of power within the Persian Empire, for example, with much local autonomy, even before the ten thousand reach the Greek settlements along the periphery. There is the near constant warfare between regions within the empire. And there is Xenophon's matter of fact and unapologetic attitude toward acquiring supplies by looting, when trade or purchase proves impossible.
It's a very straightforward narrative with few literary flourishes, although the speeches and dialog on important occasions are clearly made up. Xenophon apparently wrote this many years after the actual events, and I wonder if he had taken any written notes at the time, consulted any documents, or relied entirely on his memory.
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
G.K. Chesterton
I've just finished the latest Patricia Cornwell book "Livid". Like many other readers I started reading her books years ago but somehow they seemed to fall off and I stopped reading them for a while. "Livid" is a return to how good a writer she used to be and was an unusual concept. I really enjoyed it.
Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens
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