What BOOK are you reading right now?

ehBeth, I'm reading one like that right now....Lorrie Moore's Gate at the Top of the Stairs. I've struggled almost halfway through the book but closed it today for the final time.

Osso, it is indeed the same area. That photo is the view from the road by our house. That is your painting?

right.. though a person from northern california bought it so it's not mine anymore, off into the universe. Spreading the beauty of the land, I guess (I'd like to fix the part to the right, too smooth a curve past the grasses) and make the water edges a little more rough in general. I fell in love with those photos, which I still have.

There is much similarity, to me anyway, between your area and the very north coast of California.

Started reading Ahab's Wife, which my daughter passed to me several years ago, saying it was semi-literary. The writer, whose name is difficult to remember, opens with quotations from several "big" 19th C book . . . Uncle Tom's Cabin and Moby Dick included.

After a strong opening sentence, "Captain Ahab was not my first nor my last husband," the book takes on a 19th C flavor which fades. It is in the tradition of E. L Doctorow (who I haven't read) with real people meeting and interacting with the fictional characters. There is something anachronistic about the belief systems of the characters and something too pat about their dialog.

I'm on page 79 of the Cooking with Fernet Branca book. Review here by an author I tend to like -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/jun/19/featuresreviews.guardianreview10

I haven't been so annoyed with a book in at least.. months! The set up is moderately amusing, and the author has a way with words. I'm enjoying all the truly horrid food recipes. I'm not sure I'll live through the pages, or, the pages through me. Clever constructs clearly worked out tire me.

Thanks osso wonderful stuff from Leonard

Should I save myself the trouble of reading Fernet Branca, I'm now wondering?
Tell me if it gets any better, osso.

I'm still reading and can see that I might get over my wretched loathing. Diane had the same take, am I'm not sure she finished it.

I admit that I may change my mind: that may be happening.

wonderful stuff from Leonard but also others... if you can bear to read the comments, some are pretty interesting.

Hmmmm ...

Thanks, osso.

I seem to be on this WWII/Holocaust novel kick: Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer; The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald; Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut; and now Night, Elie Wiesel.

I understand why Night is essentially required reading in high school. But at the same time it's a shame the experience of reading it fades over the years, such that we file it in that oblique vault in our consciousness where we keep the Holocaust, nuclear war, and maybe our own death: any concept exhausting to honestly comprehend for too long. Like the sun, we are aware of these things but can't look at them directly. And ****.

I was ten times the jackass I am now when I was fifteen. The only memories I have of sophomore English are Tara's thighs (wipe open view, I swear) and the sensation of the tip of my tongue digging potato chip remnants out of my braces. That guy read Night? My brain could muster enough bandwidth to store for eternity the images of smoke billowing from creamatoriums, emaciated bodies. The phsycial horrors of the concentration camps that get so much attention.

But this time around the greatest tragedy seems to occur before the victims even arrive at Auschwitz. A young Elie watches as all the faces from his neighborhood--including men he had feared, schoolteachers, etc.--shuffle by, unvayring in their despair. Everyone looks the same. The entire texture of existence, which depends upon the personalities, egos, virtues, shortcomings of the perople around you, had been destroyed as the people in his community were no longer allowed to be people.

I couldn't appreciate that fifteen years ago. And I guess what I'm saying is that my memory of the book was much different, and I'm glad I was compelled to pick it up again.

Here's something weird that happened this week. I was reading Wiesel's preface to the new translation, published four years ago I think. I was half-awake, on the train, which was passing a building downtown whose windowless East-facing facade is painted black. Then painted in white is a ten-story list of names, names of influential men and women in the arts mostly, but also religious and political figures: Maya Angelous, Frank Zappa, Buddha, Ginsberg, Rush Limbaugh (WTF?), Mozart, etc. I've passed this building a thousand times. On this particular occasion I glanced slit-eyed out the window, not realizing where I was in the commute, and my eyes landed instantly on the name at the bottom of the list. I swear, with Night in my lap, I just looked dreamily out the window and saw, in huge block letters, "Elie Wiesel."

Gargie . . . that's profound.

There are books for certain times of life. And not every 15 year old is fifteen intellectually. Some are only 9 or 10 while others are 18 to 20.

Gargamel,

Have the seen the recent film "The Pianist?" I've consumed many books and movies about the holocaust over the years but nothing has ever struck me visually and emotionally in the same way that film did. The day-by-day losses of neighbors and colleagues and relatives, the creeping despair, the remorseless tenacle-like reach of those hunting the Jews, and finally the hollow-eyed half-madness and stumbling shuffle of the survivors. Extraordinary film.

Has anyone read "Night Train to Lisbon"?

Well, that was yesterday. I read some more of the book last night and I'm getting used to the writing, even moderately interested in what might happen as the chapters move along.

More than any book read later, I remember a pamphlet with photographs taken at the liberation (well, searching for the right word) of Dachau. It was some official booklet, and I found it somewhere in our house when I was ten or eleven. Still have it, packed in one of two suitcases I keep of my-father-related-stuff. I've read Anne Frank, seen all of the Shoah film (9 hours or something like that), had a neighbor with a number on her arm that my aunt had talked with, read Primo Levi's The Reawakening, a rich book. Still, that pamphlet was my primer. I should dig it out and try to identify it specifically.

No, Kara. I had to look it up since I've read a few books relating in some way or another to Lisbon. That looks like a book written for me - it's going on my wish list.

Oh, lordie, I finished the Fernet Branca book.

I'll have to give it a tour d'force plus.
As I said earlier, the book aggravated me, and it continued to do so to the end.

I'm personally resistant to galloping constructs of words and scenes. At the same time I feel this way, I rather liked the book.

Personally, I wouldn't read it again for love or money, but was ok with just finishing the thing.

Oh, and all the recipes taking up many pages are truly horrible, but more clever than that, are almost good sounding, while continuing to be horrible.

Ok, I finished the Fernet Branca book (nominated for the Man Booker, etc.).

A frenetic book by a verbal pisser. Since I finished it, I can say I liked it, and hope never to read another. I did end up very mildly liking it.

It is as many I try to avoid, written by a smartie expatriate, or it seems so. I don't know where Hamilton lives.

Chhrist, why don't italian writers get published here?