What BOOK are you reading right now?

marc/mach
Now I know how I want to die...not in my sleep but in a black hole. This book goes on my list...

Just finished Quarantine by Jim Crace. Odd, curiously compelling...I'm still pondering the ending.

Now into Josephine Humphreys' Nowhere Else on Earth. Can't put it down. Excellent writing.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Sooooooo New Orleans

yup

PLOT SUMMARY: One night in the town of New Haven, a young Clockmaker apprentice named Hethor Jacques is visited by the Archangel Gabriel and charged with a duty: To find the Mainspring of the Earth and rewind it using the Key Perilous, saving the world. Thus begins a long and dangerous journey from the Northern Earth, across the Equatorial Wall, and deep into the South Pole as an innocent young man seeks to fulfill his mission in the face of overwhelming odds with only the aid of unlikely allies and the power of his faith…

so the world is a giant clockwork, and this kid is charged with a mission to save the world and........., it's not a great book, but it was on sale

George, that is one of the best of all time. A side-splitting farce..

Lovin it so far

I'm back to reading Danube by Claudio Magris. I'll read anything else first (hand me that police procedural) because of its complexity, but it is a very very rich read.

There's a good explanation of it in the amazon link above, and another here:

from the back cover of the book - if I read it right, the quote by Nicholas Shakespeare, another writer I like... (N.S. for The Dancer Upstairs)

" in this fascinating journey Claudio Magris, whose knowledge is encyclopedic and whose curiosity is limitless, guides his reader from the river's source in the Bavarian hills through Austro-Hungary and the Balkans to the Black Sea. Along the way he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments - from Ovid and Marcus Aurelius to Kafka and Canetti - and in so doing sets his finger on the pulse of Central Europe, the vital crucible of a culture that draws on influences of East and West, of Christendom and Islam."

"Certain books, as you read them, have the power to make every other book dispensiable. They contain all life witin their pages... It is a masterpiece of timing, leading us into a forbidden Europe that is suddenly free.

I'm only on page 41, so far so interesting. I'll be baaaaaak.

Is that the publisher's blurb osso?

I'm toying with reading Moby Dick. It has sat on my shelves for years, thick and intimidating. I half believe it is as bad as some say it is, depressing I mean, and I half believe it is a masterpiece which I ought to have read.

Has anybody here read it and can inspire me to take it on. Is it the exploration of psychosis? You can't get mad at a whale surely? Whatever it has done. Is it a symbol of something?

I just finished reading a book by Robert Heinlein.
Its a classic I read years ago, and a good one if you just want to put your brain in neutral and read.

Its called "Glory Road".

walking past the used bookstore earlier this week :
"each book in these boxes 50 cents each - 5 for $2 - no bags - no tax " .

kind of sad to see a lot of good books that sold originally for $ 20 - $ 40 .
bought 5 real good books .
next day : " 5 for $ 2 and one free " - so i bought 6 for $2 .

right now reading : " the rothschilds - a family portrait by felix morton " .
really a most interesting book , but smells a bit musty .
hbg

A Local tv repair shop just went out of business, and sold a bunch of books for a quarter each.
I bought several, including a couple of old ones.

"Cobbs Cavalcade", A selection from the writings of Irvin S. Cobb.
It was published in July 1945.

I also got "The Best known works of Anton Chekov", published in 1929.

I havent read them yet, but they are next on my list.

No, N.S is a reviewer, though his bit was quoted on the book back cover. Look at the amazon link, which agrees with me, this is one dense thicket of writing, but perhaps worth it for the hardy who are already knowledgeable. That doesn't describe me.. I'll tell you more if I ever wade through it all.

I do guess that if I looked up all his referencing I might end up in a yarnball of confusion - remember those kid things that had toys wrapped within them? - but I'd get more background than I have now. Or, maybe I'd understand him.

Right now, this fits my interests.

To answer a second time, I'm not sure if that is a separate blurb from N.S., maybe or maybe not.

On Moby Dick, somehow I've avoided it, but hey, open the book.. read the page, carry on.

I'm now mad at myself for getting rid of a book (well, I got rid of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds), that one from my aunt, some compilation of Zola.

i remember reading that one years ago, i liked it, i should maybe re-read it

Spendi, I am not a particularly critical reader. I don't search for deep underlying meaning or deconstruct the author's underlying motivation in terms of marxist dialect etc.

But Moby Dick was a thoroughly enjoyable read. It draws you in, the people are well drawn, real. I read it way faster than I expected, due to it flowing beautifully and me being unable to put it down.

Surprised if you don't love it.

Spendius, this is one of 340 reviews in Amazon for Moby Dick:

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Now the Lord prepared a great fish...", April 14, 2003

By "conrad_verloc" (California) -

This review is from: Moby-Dick (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)
I first read Moby Dick; or The Whale over thirty years ago and I didn't understand it. I thought I was reading a sea adventure, like Westward Ho! or Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. In fact, it did start out like an adventure story but after twenty chapters or so, things began to get strange. I knew I was in deep water. It was rough, it seemed disjointed, there were lengthy passages that seemed like interruptions to the story, the language was odd and difficult, and often it was just downright bizarre. I plodded through it, some of it I liked, but I believe I was glad when it ended. I knew I was missing something and I understood that it was in me! It wasn't the book; it was manifestly a great book, but I hadn't the knowledge of literature or experience to understand it.

I read it again a few years later. I don't remember what I thought of it. The third time I read it, it was hilarious; parts of it made me laugh out loud! I was amazed at all the puns Melville used, and the crazy characters, and quirky dialog. The fourth or fifth reading, it was finally that adventure story I wanted in the first place. I've read Moby Dick more times than I've counted, more often than any other book. At some point I began to get the symbolism. Somewhere along the line I could see the structure. It's been funny, awesome, exciting, weird, religious, overwhelming and inspiring. It's made my hair stand on end...

Now, when I get near the end I slow down. I go back and reread the chapters about killing the whale, and cutting him up, and boiling him down. Or about the right whale's head versus the sperm whale's. I want to get to The Chase but I want to put it off. I draw Queequeg with his tattoos in the oval of a dollar bill. I take a flask with Starbuck and a Decanter with Flask. Listen to The Symphony and smell The Try-Works. Stubb's Supper on The Cabin Table is a noble dish, but what is a Gam? Heads or Tails, it's a Leg and Arm. I get my Bible and read about Rachel and Jonah. Ahab would Delight in that; he's a wonderful old man. For a Doubloon he'd play King Lear! What if Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of The Whale? Would Fedallah blind Ishmael with a harpoon, or would The Pequod weave flowers in The Virgin's hair?

Now I know. To say you understand Moby Dick is a lie. It is not a plain thing, but one of the knottiest of all. No one understands it. The best you can hope to do is come to terms with it. Grapple with it. Read it and read it and study the literature around it. Melville didn't understand it. He set out to write another didactic adventure/travelogue with some satire thrown in. He needed another success like Typee or Omoo. He needed some money. He wrote for five or six months and had it nearly finished. And then things began to get strange. A fire deep inside fret his mind like some cosmic boil and came to a head bursting words on the page like splashes of burning metal. He worked with the point of red-hot harpoon and spent a year forging his curious adventure into a bloody ride to hell and back. "...what in the world is equal to it?"

Moby Dick is a masterpiece of literature, the great American novel. Nothing else Melville wrote is even in the water with it, but Steinbeck can't touch it, and no giant's shoulders would let Faulkner wade near it. Melville, The pale Usher, warned the timid: "...don't you read it, ...it is by no means the sort of book for you. ...It is... of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book..." But I say if you've never read it, read it now. If you've read it before, read it again. Think Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, and The Bible. If you understand it, think again.

Thanks Kara. I'll read it after that.

But I have a few books on the go at the moment and I have resolved not to start anything until I've finished with them.

Your last para did it.

A. Merritt: The Moon Pool (Overlook Press)

Featuring a new introduction by Lynnette Porter, Ph.D., bestselling author of Unlocking the Meaning of Lost,.

Dr. Walter T. Goodwin is sailing back to New York after a botanical expedition to the South Seas when he meets his old friend, Dr. David Throckmartin. The heartbroken Throckmartin relates a haunting tale to Dr. Goodwin"a tale of a tropical island and a strange stone door through which a hypnotic otherworldly light shines. Throckmartin tells of how the light had captured his companions and of his own powerlessness to stop it.

When his friend disappears, Dr. Goodwin sets out to find the source of the mysterious moonlight. Little does he realize how formidable a foe he has pitted himself against. First published in 1918, The Moon Pool is commonly considered to be the inspiration of the ABC series LOST.

A. Merritt (1884-1943) was one of the original authors of science fiction. The editor of The American Weekly and a hugely successful journalist, Merritt wrote thirteen novels over the course of his life and originated many of the conventions of the genre.

currently listening to



the narrator is top notch

Spendius, the last paragraph of that review did it for me, too! Now I have to find a copy...

The reviewer is himself a dab hand at writing....eh?