What BOOK are you reading right now?

Although I just finished reading this book, I am going to post it, with a caveat.

I was rather thoroughly criticized for writing that I did not read The Da Vinci Code because the one review I read of it, shortly after its publication, told me it wasn't literature. I seldom read fiction that is not in the literature category -- except, of course, by accident.

Having seen DVC the movie, I was curious as to why the plot rotated on the church of Mary Magdalene in southwestern France and not the great Medieval basilica and pilgrimage site dedicated to La Madeleine at Vezalay.

I did a little research and found the book, "The Church of Mary Magdalene; The Sacred Feminine and the Treasure of Rennes-Le-Chateau," by retired Sorbonne professor of Celtic Studies, Jean Markale.

Now, Harvard advises that Markale should be read with caution. Furthermore, the book's American publisher is the highly suspect Inner Traditions, in Rochester, Vermont.

I had a bit of swallowing to do in order to read the book.

The problem with it is exacerbated by the publisher's poor copyreading and Markale's insistence on including himself in all of his commentary.

That said, I recommend this book to anyone who feels like I do about Dan Brown and Mrs. Brown and their book.

I am now reading Mallory's Morte d'Arthur, which I hadn't scheduled for this summer.

Brother's just got The Thorn birds for me from his school library. I'll probably start it tomorrow in the morn before going to college.

Has anyone read it?

In the last few weeks:

"Making History" - Stephen Fry
"My Sisters Keeper" - Jodi Picoult
"The Devil Wears Prada" - Lauren Weisberger
"The Husband" - Dean Koontz
"Twelve Sharp" - Janet Evanovich
"The Italian Secretary" - Caleb Carr
"Rage" - Jonathan Kellerman

I've read Rage, and have considered reading Italian Secretary..

I like reading Kellerman, in a pass-time-but-not-entirely-waste-it way. The books are generally set in my old neck of the woods in the Los Angeles area, and I like the protagonists that Kellerman has developed over the whole series.

Have just finished, as in an hour ago, reading Men Giving Money, Women Yelling by Alice Mattison. Liked it a great deal. It's a collection of short stories that work as a coherent whole. I haven't heard of Mattison before and will look her and reviews of the book up shortly. I gather she's had stories in the New Yorker, but I haven't been keeping up with the NY'er for about a year.

Also read Laurie Colwin's Happy All the Time. Seemed familiar, and, dang, it was, I'd read it about ten years ago. I finished it the second time anyway. I've enjoyed her writing, which is why I picked this one up in a quick foray into a store having a 4 Used Books for $10. sale. Colwin used to write food articles for Gourmet magazine, which was a trigger for why I ever picked up a book by her in the first place. She died young of a brain aneurysm, which I remember feeling badly about when I saw that in the news, whenever it was.


Less recently finished The Long Suit by Philip Davison, a nice terse crime writer who makes me think with his wording every so often in whatever of his books I'm reading.

Haven't finished The Lost Glass Plates of Wilfred Eng, by Thomas Orton, yet, but intend to... it just got lost in the book pile.

Read Killing Cousins by Alex Minter, a well written crime-mystery set in Manhattan. Would buy other books by Minter.

On tap -
Blue Spruce by David Long. Says on the back cover that "the twelve stories in Blue Spruce earn David Long a place alongside the likes of Wallace Stegner, Cormac McCarthy, and Tom McGuane. (Jere Real in the Richmond Times-Dispatch).

-- and,
The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty, more on that one after I've started it.

Daniellejean wrote:

To be fair, the person who recommended it to me (another student in the English Department at my school) claims that he loves 20th Century American Literature and has never read The Catcher in the Rye or The Great Gatsby! I was astonished. I guess it just goes to show that there is just so much to read and not enough time.

end of quote

What a profound thought on this thread about reading!!! There is so much to read and not enough time---and life is short and there are thousands of books--Why not read the best and the greatest and leave the dross behind?

Thai for Beginners.

Hey Wilso, that trip to Thailand a while back certainly got you going! You thinking of moving up there?

Years ago, spide. I enjoyed it rather guiltily, like eating a whole box of chocolates at once. Somehow it doesn't fit into my received ideas of 'good' books. I hope you enjoy it!
I liked the dramatisation of it on tv too. I think I just have a thing about priests falling by the wayside - Emile Zola's 'La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret' was great like that!

I'm looking for my next good book. I have a number piled up & ready to go, just waiting .... It's hard to know exactly what will hit the spot!

In the meantime I'm listening to a talking book,(the 2nd time around, straight after the first hearing) ..... as I hit the bed each night. This book sort of demands a second hearing! Tim Winton's The Turning . That fellow certainly can write!

I've since been back to Thailand 3 more times, and got engaged to a Thai girl. You could say it had an effect on me.

Wow Wilso! You went to Thailand on a trip and got engaged! I am sure it must have been love at first sight! :wink:

Today, I visited a used bookstore in Concord, MA called The Barrow. I was told that it is the project of a retired professor from Brown. I know one of the women who works there is a former librarian turned children's book author.

Anyway, the store is about 14 feet wide and maybe the twice as long. It has rather good material, after all, this is Concord, and specializes in the Concord authors.

High on a shelf at the back of store was Harold Bloom's The Western Canon. I asked the woman tending the store is there was much call for Bloom. "No, not at all," she answered. "When a book of his comes in, it tends to remain." I took the book down and looked carefully through it. "My feeling about him is that he's rather negative. That he opposes every 20th Century school of criticism in a sort of shoot from the hip way but hasn't really founded a coherent school of criticism of his own."

She laughed and said that is exactly how she feels not only about him but about most critics. I then told her why I was considering the book and she laughed at the antics of writers here on a2k.

While I did consider purchasing a book co-written by Jung's widow on Grail legends, I left it. I purchased a book on Carl Larssen's home. As she wrote out my receipt, she said, "What! You aren't buying Bloom?"

I answered that I couldn't spoil such a lovely summer day with someone so bombastic. "Amen," she answered.

BTW, does anyone see a difference between The Great Gatsby and People Magazine. Gatsby has to be one of the most over-rated books ever written.

Gatsby certainly isn't a book you'd name drop on a public blog in order to convince the other members of your genuis, but I don't understand the comparison to People magazine.

What makes you say so, aversion to Bloom (which I share) aside?

When I was a graduate student in English and American lit -- June, 1969 through September, 1975 -- no one was reading F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was ignored as a footnote to American writing.

I went with an acting student to see the Robert Redford Gatsby movie and my date was so disgusted with it that he wanted us to leave the theatre. I hadn't read the book at the time, so I had no way to judge how accurate it was.

A year or two later, I saw Robert DeNiro in a filmed version of THe Last Tycoon. I thought it and DeNiro were both brilliant. So, I maintained an open mind about Fitzgerald.

I read it while subbing for an English teacher during academic 2004-05. I thought, "Is that all there is? No wonder no one was reading Fitzgerald in the 60s and 70s." Honestly, I thought it was like People magazine. A man with brains and ambition, no, more than ambition, ruthless single-mindedness who wanted a woman. But, because she was beautiful and of the right social class, not because she had anything of merit about her.

Should anyone want to reshoot the movie, Paris Hilton could be the female lead and lots of people would think it was just her television show.

That's what I mean by People Magazine. Crying over beautiful shirts why we watch through the window.

Very entertaining and informative.
Best day of the week to go to a seafood restaurant? Tuesday

Oh, yeah, Panz, I really liked that one...

I've read more Bourdain since: another memoir type book, and a few crime thrillers. Kitchen Confidential was the keeper.

I wasn't claiming that the Great Gatsby is any sort of masterpiece. I do like it, though, for it's accurate portrayal of the American Dream (which I guess is the most common interpretive thread for that novel). My point was not to make myself sound well-read or intelligent. But now, most people would agree that Fitzgerald is definately part of the Canon of 20th Century American Lit. So I was a little bit surprised that a fellow literature student, who claimed to really like American Lit had never read it. I didn't think you could graduate hs these days without Gatsby. But then, he thought you couldn't graduate hs these days without the Brontes. Alas, I think high school english students are not required to read as much as they used to be. My grandmother hates literature and I'd venture to say she's read more of the classics than I have (or at least she had when I was in the 12th grade).

You are correct, Danielledejean. Gatsby is in the Canon of American Literature. Harold Bloom, in his definitive book-"The Western Canon" writes:

What intimately allies the three most vibrant American novelists of the Chaotic Age- Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner--is that all of them emerge from Joseph conrad's influence but temper it cunningly by mingling an Conrad with an American predecessor--Mark Twain for Hemingway, Henry James for Fitzgerald, Herman Melville for Faulkner"


You are also correct that American students are not required to read as much these days as they were in the fifties and sixties.

But, paradoxically, the Canon has been expanded by the pretentions of the teachers today since what is being taught is by no means the best writers who happen to be women, African, Hispanic or Asian, but rather the writers who offer little but their resentment they have developed as their sense of identity.

daniellejean -- I graduated from high school in 1965 and, yes, we were required to read more than kids are today. We had to read and report on a book each month of the academic year, ten in total, in addition to required reading for English class. The school provided us with a recommended reading list, but, there was no requirement for sticking to the list and most kids just browsed about in the public library or followed something like "The Five Foot Shelf" for their recommendations.

We also had to read and report on six books during the summer. The reports were due by the end of the first week of school. Kids today read one or two books -- sometimes three for honors and AP courses. Here, in New England at the present time, vacations are shorter than they were in the Midwest in the mid-60s. We had no February vacation and were never in school later than the 8th of June.

I also liked the way my own high school, a Catholic school that was essentially a prep school, structured its English program: General Lit for 9th grade; American in 10th; English in 11th and World Lit in 12th. At the school where I have been employed, the English program is chaotic.

The chairman of the English department is slightly crazy and not as well educated as a chairman should be.

Please, do not think I was attacking you on Fitzgerald: my intention was to relate my experience with him.

He was not required reading at my high school and he was definitely denigrated at my grad school.

The university where I earned my master's in English had a rather open program.

While the state of Michigan mandated prospective teachers take Shakespeare, American Lit 1830-65, and one upper level course each in grammar and expository writing, the university simply demanded an assortment of courses in both American and English writers.

Of course, 100 level courses were for freshmen and in this largely (perhaps solely) consisted of expository writing classes. 200 level classes were broad survey courses taken by sophomores who were not lit majors and generally had descriptive titles like 18th C. English literature or English Romantic Poets or Contemporary Drama.

English majors took 400 and 500 level courses that narrowed those fields. Graduate level courses often focused on a single writer, like Shaw, or on a topic like, American Jewish writers, 1950 to the present.

While you could constuct a graduate program in poetry or drama or Elizabethan writers, students were encouraged to take a range of classes at the master's level and specialize during their doctoral studies.

CONGRATULATIONS!! DON'T THINGS MOVE FAST AROUND HERE?!