Gargamel wrote:Wind Up Bird Chronicle--Haruki Murakami
I've been extremely impressed with his stories in the New Yorker; haven't read any of his books yet. How is it?
I'm about a third of the way through--it's a long one--and I am very much enjoying it.
The prose is very lucid, and yet the story is very disorienting. So while he stays on the plane of realism, he'll do things like take the reader through alleys and backyards, he'll play with shadows and light, someone will say something totally off the cuff, and suddenly you're in a slightly off parallel universe.
Nabokov and Pynchon come to mind, though I stress that the prose is very simple. But, like in Pale Fire or Crying of Lot 49, I suspect he's throwing red herrings at me--dozens of conspicous images and themes reoccur in different contexts, and your'e naturally inclined to want to construct meaning out of them, but nothing ever quite matches up or makes sense.
Also, he's often very funny.
I am reading 29 picture books, early readers, and chapter books for my next class. I have to carry with me about 20 of them! This should be interesting. Good think I like to read.
"god is not Great" by Christopher Hutchins.
So far, his tone is a little more aggressive and not quite as delightfully witty as Richard Dawkins' "God Delusion"... but enjoyable nonetheless
I'm not reading it yet but my daughter gave me the novel, "Finn," for Mother's Day because the review on NPR sounded so interesting. It's a prequel to Huckleberry Finn and is about Huck's sadistic father.
What a wonderful present: a novel that she had heard reviewed!
I picked up A Suitable Boy again. Stopped at something like page 496 for no good reason. Took me about thirty pages to start to remember the nuances of the characters, but I'm getting into it again.
Meantime, Diane leant me an old Jonathan Kellerman, Time Bomb.
I tend to read his books when I see them, as they are situated in my old neck of the woods, so I like the scenery to start with. Sometimes like the story.
Description heavy; antagonists to our psychologist protagonist may have aspects of real types but tend to be over the top in the seeming furtherance of fiction.
I'm reading (one of the 29) The Stories Julian Tells. Last book was Frog and Toad are Friends. Next up are Amelia Badelia and the Baby nad In a Dark, Dark Room. Wheee!
Amelia Bedelia's great!
I went out to run an errand downtown and got sidetracked by the library (there's a magnetic pull or something) so am ploughing through a stack of (mostly) mysteries. Finished "A Stolen Season" by Steve Hamilton (takes place in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Northern Ontario -- enjoyed the settings!) and "Water Like A Stone" by Deborah Crombie (a murder mystery but also interesting family dynamics).
Just finished it tonight. I loved this book!
Well I wasn't impressed with the last few books I read so I am going to get Orpheus Lost (on msolgas say-so) and if it is not brilliant and fantabulous I will come over there and .....
I've just finished Elsa Morante's La Storia (History), her most famous novel.
It's a very personal, passionate, sentimental, pessimistic view of World War II, as lived by a small Roman family (a woman, a teenager, a baby, a dog): a war that took a hard toll also on the survivors.
This is the third novel of Morante that I have read. Very good book, but not her best IMHO: great parts, wonderful story, and extraordinary and rich style, but about 200 pages too long. And finally too pessimistic on life and humankind.
I think Morante was perhaps the best Italian novelist in the XX Century (better than her husband Alberto Moravia; as good as Umberto Eco, who rides between centuries). And I'm certain ossobuco would love her novels.
Her best, IMO, is Mensogna e sortilegio (House of Liars).
Thanks, fbaezer!!!
I've liked Moravia, but only read short bits in Italian classes.
I'll check out Morante, for sure.
I'm reading Graham Greene's, A Burnt-out Case.
I always forget what a great writer he is until I read him again.
I'm reading Born to Win, classic exposition of the marriage of Gestalt and Transactional Analysis.
Heeven wrote:Well I wasn't impressed with the last few books I read so I am going to get Orpheus Lost (on msolgas say-so) and if it is not brilliant and fantabulous I will come over there and .....
... Yes?
What exactly, Heeven? :wink:
Seriously though, I don't know what your taste in fiction is, but (as I keep saying!) I found it un-put-downable. Not many books lately that I've read in a couple of days flat.
Orpheus inspired me to visit my local library today, in search of her previous book,
Due Preparations For The Plague. And hooray, they had it!
Let's see (reading info on the back cover):
... Lowell tries not to think about the past and the hijacking that killed his mother. Samantha, on the other hand, cannot let go. As a child she survived the hijacking of Air France Flight 64, and as an adult she obsessively digs for answers, seeking a man called Salamander whom she believes holds key information.
It is the death of Lowell's father, and his legacy of a blue sports bag crammed with documents & videotapes, that finally brings Lowell & Samantha together and unravels the interconnections between victims and perpetrators, saved and damned.
But in this murky world of endless aliases and surveillance, who can be trusted? When does the quest for truth become a dangerous obsession? And what difference can the truth make? ....
Hmmmm ...
aidan wrote:I'm reading Graham Greene's, A Burnt-out Case.
I always forget what a great writer he is until I read him again.
I know what you mean. I read Heart of the Matter several years ago and it was immediately one of my all time favorite novels. But he isn't quirky or after the sublime. He's subtle.
I'd really like to read another Greene novel soon.
I haven't had a chance to make much head-way with
Due Preparations For The Plague since borrowing it yesterday, but thought I'd check the revues online (seeing as I know little about it). Here's the first link I came across, below. Looks like I'm in for another ripper read!:
http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/d/due-preparations-for-the-plague.shtml
I read a lot of Greene a long time ago. No specific memories except a kind of pristing writing.
