What BOOK are you reading right now?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xJFsFIvsDyY

Not sure I want to see this movie.

I know I don't. The book could not have been bettered, in my view - though I've sometimes liked a movie as well as a book (Cutter's Way/Cutter and Bone is the book). Not in the range we've been talking about re Berlin/Paris/wartime diaries, but Cutter, etc., made both a good book and movie, for once the movie ringing more bells than the book the movie writer worked off of, for me anyway.

To Tak, when I said the book A Woman in Berlin was thick, I didn't mean its size as isn't actually very think in size - I meant that it was rich and dense, one I'll keep on my shelf and in my head. Same with the Nimerovsky book, Suite Francaise, in that it is richly written, though with more pages than Woman in Berlin.

Adds, then there were Christ Stopped at Eboli, by Carlo Levi, the book, and the movie of the same name by Francesco Rosi. I liked them both a lot.

Maybe I'll change my mind re the movie re Woman in Berlin.

I think Christ Stopped at Eboli is a good book. But I find the author somewhat self-serving.

I have read so far 7 of 9 stories of Six Tales of the Jazz Age and Other Stories, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
So far I find two of the stories to be great: "The camel's back" and "O russet witch!". The others are between good and readable.

Oh my! I'd love more on how you see Fitzgerald! What a fascinating meeting

Can you say why you like some stories and others not so much?

I might agree with you, have a glimmer of memory of that, but it's been a long time since I read the book or even seen Rosi's movie.

I'm reading a book about the trials and tribulations of a male dog being raised in the modern world.

What everyone should read right now....The End of America, by Naomi Wolf
Shes basically describing how everything our government is doing to us right now has been done in either WW1 or WW2.
There are 10 crucial steps used to break down a democracy into a dictatorship. And we see these unfolding unto us more every day

As a teenager I read a couple of Fitzgerald's stories ("A Diamond as Big as The Ritz" was great) and The Great Gatsby (a masterpiece, none of the movies have done to it ANY justice). A few years later, I read Tender is the Night and considered it OK, but forgettable.
As for the stories I'm reading, the ones I liked a lot are poignant and fun, and perhaps both of them have a little "magical realism" put into them. The other ones I found either lacking the final knack, or too moralistic or too sad. And "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" falls short of its great premise.

I've read articles by her or about her, not sure re their contents. I can't categorize her except by these glancing looks that I didn't memorize over years, but I'm not very interested, because of those. I might use the word 'hysteric', but that would be double or even triple trouble, and I'm not clear that is what I think of her in the first place, just that the word occurred to me.

Not to talk you out of liking her - tell us more about why you do..

I am reading By the Book, Pamela Paul's selections from her NYT column. It is a great deal of fun. The selections are short, which makes it a great bathroom book. It is also good for those who teach creative writing.

I'd taken a break of sorts after the serious memoirs I talked about on this thread earlier, both recommended by Olivier5, both among the strongest books I've ever read (at least they hit me that way), Woman in Berlin and Suite Franchaise. So, I had a time out for present day New Yorker Magazine reading for a while.

I've come back to being a book reading maniac lately. I'm probably extra weary of all the world and local news I've been reading, thus diving into fiction.

I read a nothing special to me book that got more special as I read along - Nobody's Fool, by Richard Russo. Good characters, interesting situation, set in New York State. I may have mentioned it earlier in this thread.

I think I mentioned on some other thread that I'd read two Alan Furst novels, set in Paris in the about to be wartime years. Now I too am a Furst fan. Just plain excellent. Furst was recommended by Tsar and maybe another a2ker.

Next was This Night's Foul Work, crime fiction set in France in a more recent time. Took me some time to get into, since it starts out with some apparent woo-woo stuff, and I'm the last person to be intrigued by woo-woo, but it turned out to hold my interest, not least by the array of traits the differing characters had, plus wondering what was going to happen..

And now I'm reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow. Of course it's good, the man can write and I always learn a lot from him. I'm only on page 103, so who knows what will come next.. likely something not good.

To quote from the back cover, a place I rarely look at when picking books, just seeing it now,
" Profound and frequently brilliant . . . Illuminates the confrontation between secular and extremist Islamic worlds better than any work of none-fiction I can think of." The New Statesman

Next in line: Isabel Allende's novel, Ripper.

I got books for christmas AND I borrowed one from the library!

I'm browsing (and stopping occasionally) through English Poetry and Prose of the Romantic Movement.

"My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky."

I forgot to add the titles of the Alan Furst books I liked (I think I added them elsewhere, but where is elsewhere): Mission to Paris and The Foreign Correspondent.

Finished last week rereading Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood so I can finally get around to MaddAddam.

Also sped through (2/3rds done) the graphic novel, Seconds by Brien Lee O'Malley.

I just bought a book titled "Imposter." It cost only $1, so I couldn't resist. It's sitting on the kitchen table, and will eventually get to reading it.

It's good stuff Roberta .... also the earlier work of the so csalled cavalier poets, especially (in my view) including the works of Robert Herrick.

There's also Edward FitzGerald's wonderful translation of Omar Kahyyam;s 12th century Rubaiyat. The original involved about 500 quatrains, which ole Fitz reassembled and distilled into about 45. My favorites are;

I sometimes think that never blooms so red
the Rose as where some buried Caesar bled
That every Hyacinth the garden wears
Drop't in her lap from one once lovely head

And that herbage whose tender green
Fledges the river lip on which we lean
Ah, lean upon it lightly, for who knows
From what once lovely lip it springs unseen

Heya George, I knew about Robert Herrick. But I appreciate the reminder. I hadn't heard of Fitzgerald. Thanks for letting me know about him. I always appreciate learning of a newby--even if the newby is an oldie.