What Was the Last Book You Read?

[TSherbs]

Just finished William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, another book I had skipped. Faulkner is the greatest.

word

Go Down, Moses is genius.

Have you read Absalom, Absalom!? This book absolutely devastated me. When I read it in grad school, I went to my professor and said that I was so affected by this novel that I could not write about it. He understood, and let me read another novel and write about that one. I still have never been able to go back to it and re-read it. It's nuclear for me. But you have to read The Sound and the Fury first (Absalom is a kind of prequel, but you must know the other story for its full effect).

[VertOlive]

While rambling through a “Dark Academia” list I came across Babel and mostly enjoyed it for the same reasons, especially the use of language when shaping the “technology”. I felt jolted out of the story though whenever those asynchronous modern terms would come up. Whatever was the editorial crew thinking—or were they Gen X themselves and didn’t notice?

[VertOlive]

Nomadland

The movie was SUCH a disappointment! But isn’t that how it usually goes?

[TSherbs]

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.

oops

just saw this now...my question was already answered... (some threads I read in reverse)....

[dneal]

Been reading Mark Twain's Autobiography. I've read his complete works, letters, speeches (or whatever the compendium is called); but not this.

[Kaputnik]

I just finished Checkmate in Prague, by Ludĕk Pachman. I know that I read this many years before, but had largely forgotten it. Pachman was a Czech grandmaster of chess, once probably the top player for that country. He was also a convinced Communist for many years, but gradually became disillusioned; after his participation in the Prague Spring of 1968, he was imprisioned, but was allowed to emigrate to West Germany in 1972. That is where the book, published in 1975, ends, but he continued to have a fair amount of success in chess, winning the West German championship in 1978. He lived until 2003.

This is not a typical chessplayer autobiography, with annotated games interspersed with reminiscences. There is a fair amount of talk about chess and chess players, of course, but there are no games, and it is mostly about his political and spiritual development. Born in 1924, he had lived through the Nazi occupation of his country, and was once briefly locked up by the SS for some minor display of defiance. He came to Christianity fairly late in life; eventually he and his wife were baptized in the Catholic church.

On the whole, quite interesting, if often depressing. I found it a reminder of how easily humans will fall into suppressing dissent in the name of some ideology or other, often citing the most noble sounding reasons.

[kedimaria]

Mr. Mercedes - Stephen King

My second attempt at reading something by King. I'm not interested in supernatural horror stuff, so I wanted to get a sense of his writing in a book I thought I would enjoy. I have a handful of friends who are fans of King. Good story but with some head scratching moments. Acceptable writing. I won't finish the trilogy. 3/5 Stars.

[Kaputnik]

Just finished Two Leaps Across a Chasm, by Nikolai Aleksandrov, translated from Russian by Anthony Olcott.

Published in 1992, it's an odd sort of work, very much a product of a particular time and place. A bit of a mess, perhaps, and I can't say I'd actually recommend it to someone else, but I liked it.

[Lloyd]

"For the Sins of my Father" by Albert Demeo. A gripping autobiography by the son of a high level member of the 1970's/1980's Mafia, Roy Demeo. Albert is three years younger than me and we lived in the same town at the time (different school). From the age of 5 until I was 20, I lived in Massapequa (NY) which was often called Matzo-Pizza due to the two predominate groups in the town.

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

[TSherbs]

Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians, by Justin Martin

Re-reading this, which I rarely do with any kind of book. So fascinating. A look at the collection of writers and artists at a saloon called Pfaff's (proprietor's last name) on Broadway (Manhattan) in the late 1850s. My next trip to NYC I will will go stand in front of the location (the sidewalk trap-door entrance to the location of the basement saloon is still there). Whitman sometimes read early drafts of his poems there (this is after "Song of Myself" is first published in 1855).

Whitman is a prophet of sorts for me.

[dneal]

I’ve started Walter Issacson’s biography of Elon Musk.

I generally dismissed him as one of the more peculiar of the iterations of tech-billionaires, like Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc… which I find uninteresting. The scope of his businesses piqued some interest. Electric cars are one thing, but he launches rockets and they land again. He has a largely unknown company that digs tunnels (The Boring Company). He bounces in and out of the top spot of “world’s richest man”, as stock valuations fluctuate. He is seriously trying to colonize Mars. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a secret base in some dormant volcano in the middle of the Pacific, but were that announced no one would find it surprising.

He’s like a character from a James Bond novel, in real life. He’s an enigma.

An excerpt was published, detailing an unfathomable horrible experience at a “veldskool” and other shocking details of his childhood; which were hard to read. It amazes me that someone with that background would end up where he is today - regardless of one’s opinions of his politics or private life.

[danig]

There are some great books reading suggestions. To find the most popular books in 2023, I recommend checking bestseller lists, literary awards, and reputable SOPlayer, or conducting an online search for current book trends. You can also visit a local bookstore or library for recommendations from knowledgeable staff. But you will have to use your SOPlayer Free Trial in order to read them!

[calamus]

Currently reading A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor, a travelogue from the '50s about a man visiting, and staying as a guest at, monasteries in Europe. The forward of the '80s re-release was written by a presumptuous moron, but the book itself seems quite good so far. The author describes personal changes in outlook and consciousness as he becomes even just a little bit attuned to the monastic life.

[Lloyd]

"Ode to a Tenor Titan: The Life and Times and Music of Michael Brecker". 👍

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

[TSherbs]

I was reading some of Whitman's journal entries on his visits with wounded soldiers in hospitals and camps around DC in 1862. Very moving accounts. Whitman would work the whole day at his regular job and then head over to the wards/tents and sit with the men, many times until midnight. He exhausted himself, drained his spirits, became depressed....and would not stop.

[TSherbs]

Currently reading A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor, a travelogue from the '50s about a man visiting, and staying as a guest at, monasteries in Europe. The forward of the '80s re-release was written by a presumptuous moron, but the book itself seems quite good so far. The author describes personal changes in outlook and consciousness as he becomes even just a little bit attuned to the monastic life.

Interesting topic. I might even like the preface. 😉 I have posted elsewhere about my respect for the idea of monastic life. I think first I want to read Merton tho.

[TSherbs]

Not a book, but I just read Margaret Atwood's short story "The Dead Interview," in which she conducts an interview with the spirit of George Orwell through the intermediary of a medium (as in a seance). Atwood is no longer writing at her best, but she is one of the writers in my personal pantheon of gods (I will grieve mightily when she dies). This collection of short stories is called Old Babes in the Wood (2023). I'll see what else it has to offer.

I once attended an Atwood public reading. My wife and I sat in the fourth row. Stephen King and his son (spittin' image) sat in the row ahead of us. When Atwood walked onto the stage at the start, I was the only person in the room who stood up to cheer. 700 pairs of eyes looking at the back of my dorky fanboy head. When she was done with the event, Stephen King quickly stood and the whole room followed him. Bastard! Sheep! haha.

[TSherbs]

And back on the topic of Orwell: here is an NPR Scott Simon interview of the woman who has written a novel on the story of the life of Julia, Winston Smith's lover:
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/21/12077...nt-perspective

[kazoolaw]

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
33 years after first publication (don’t like to rush into things apparently) a novel about the Vietnam War, with insight into memory and the role of storytelling.

[Kaputnik]

Just finished The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by W. H. Davies. A Welsh poet who was apparently widely read and popular in his own lifetime, he had been unknown to me until a month ago. I happened to read that the rock group Supertramp had taken their band name from this book, and although I was never a particular fan of theirs, I was curious enough to look it up. I downloaded a copy from Project Gutenberg, along with a collection of Davies' poems.

Before his success as a poet, Davies had lived much of his life as a homeless tramp in his native U.K. and in the United States. In 1899 an accident while trying to hop a train in Canada cost him one of his legs, and he lost his interest in this sort of life. Back in England and Wales, he still spent intervals on the road before persistence paid off and he succeeded in getting his poems published. The "autobiography", published in 1908, covers his life up to that point.

It's an interesting look into a different time, cleaned up to some extent, I suspect, but still honest about the realities of the life he'd chosen. Davies is trying to explain something for a general audience that can no doubt only be fully understood by living it. He does not always come across as an entirely sympathetic character, but one can perhaps sympathize with the restlessness and dissatisfaction with his lot that led to the choices he made.

The introduction to the book is by George Bernard Shaw, and is interesting in itself. Once that Davies was discovered by the literary world, he seems to have been quickly accepted as a genuine talent.

Right now I'm about half way through a book which has been on my shelves for years, but which I'd never more than dipped into, Ovid's Metamorphoses. English translation by Horace Gregory. Although I rather regret not having taken Latin in high school in the 1970s, I don't intend to rectify the omission at this point in my life.

The book is best taken in small doses perhaps. I'm constantly struck by something that has been often noticed by others, the pettiness, capriciousness, and spite exhibited by the Greek/Roman gods. Ovid also seems to revel in graphic violence, as at the wedding feast of Perseus and Andromeda, or in the tale I just finished, the story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela.