What BOOK are you reading right now?

There might or might not have been ravens on all the spines.

I just finished the Tana French novel, The Likeness. It was complicated with much explication of what people were thinking about a situation I never believed, or suspended disbelief about, for a second. A grind to the end.

This take of mine is apparently different from reviewers and amazon readers.

The next book I picked up, one I've had for a while and not read, Paul Reiser's Couplehood, was too imbecilic to continue with.

Ah, well.

Finally started reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It's fascinating but for a non-scientist like me somewhat slow going. I have to think about every other sentence to make sure I've understood it. No fault of Hawking's; he's very clear and lucid. It's just me.

You and me both, Andy. To think The Big Bang took something like a billionth of a nanosecond and it's taken me donkies years to try to come to grips with it, all to no avail. It'd take nothing less than a similar flash of insight to enlighten such an astronomical lightweight.

Fascinating subject; banal and boring writing.
Oh well...I plod on.

Sebastian Barry : On Canaan's Side

Without a doubt, some of the best, more precise writing for images and story I have ever read.

Joe(go get it)Nation

What a trooper!
I don't have the patience or the tolerance for boring books.

Speaking of boring (but I know I'm wrong), I've again picked up Henry James' The Ambassadors. Oh dog, I don't think I can make it through. We'll see.

I've just started this book - reading it in tandem with another, but picked it up and the first sentences hooked me in, so decided I could rotate my reading matter for a while! The story of a vet and his two life-changing dogs...

Finally a book I just know I'll like (I'm giving up on The Ambassadors for another year): Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red. The first pages sucked me right in.

Just finished reading this (I think) for perhaps the umpteenth time, and thoroughly enjoyed it, if I'm not mistaken.


(Henderson the Rain King -- Saul Bellow)


The one saving grace in growing old is that you begin each day with a clean slate. Neighbors are still neighbors and friends are friends, still remember all them, but everything else is as fresh as a daisy. Isn't life grand?!

I'm now moving on to this one for the 3rd or 4th time, I suspect.

Excellent book, very clever. I found Snow even better.

I know I've read the Wouk (what was it about?). Know I haven't read that particular Saul Bellow.

I've read about half of his Istanbul; probably put it down to read some damned best seller thriller glop. I've a few books stacked that I already started that I'm saving for when I serious.

Most recently, re Pamuk, this short piece in the New Yorker Page Turner blog:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/memories-of-a-public-square.html

Some of my stacked To Finish books:
Besides Pamuk's Istanbul -
Herodotus, the Histories. I like it, just have to be in a herodotory mood.
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, both interesting and not interesting to me, depending of what part of the book I'm reading.
Frederic Raphael, The Glittering Prizes - needs a second read. That was one of my favorite tv shows ever ever ever, and I've read the book a while ago.

New books bought from the Goodwill book section -

Michael McGarrity's Under the Color of Law. I've read a bunch of McGarrity books; they familiarize me somewhat with New Mexico, where I live now but don't know very well.
The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje
On Beauty, Zadie Smith

osso, that's a difficult question for me to answer. Writing coherent book reviews, even cursory ones, is not my forte. Nor coherent anything, come to that. So I've purloined some snippets from Amazon.

Don't Stop the Carnival: It's the story of Norman Paperman, a New York City press agent who, facing the onset of middle age, runs away to a Caribbean island to reinvent himself as a hotel keeper. (Hilarity and disaster -- of a sort peculiar to the tropics -- ensue.)


I can tell you that Henderson the Rain King is a modern classic.

Again from Amazon: Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson’s awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe—but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.

BTW, when I was in the service, I loaned a guy in the barracks my copy of Henderson. Once he started reading, he stayed up all night and was missing from his duty station the next morning. He was a decent guy, bit of a jerk.

I trust my mentioning these books won't result in your missing a cross-stitch class or a clabber party. Anyway, it sounds as though you already have a large stack to wade through.

I just finished Divergent - I heard the other book is coming out soon. LOVED it. Fun summer read.

Is "clabber" an American version of "natter" or "chin-wag".

Well, yes and no. It's a ladies' card game which is merely an excuse for a chin-wag. And now that I think of it, it's only known in this area of the U.S. Or I could have dreamt it, which I guess amounts to the same thing.

I should have said bridge party to avoid confusion. Unless, of course, one is an Acol enthusiast, which is a horse of a different colour. Still a horse, but a sort of hobby one.