What BOOK are you reading right now?

I was still struggling re Caramelo. I close to hate it, a jumparound play that keeps changing. I was on p. 199.
I think I'm done. Seems like a writing game.
I don't care if it is innovative.

Meantime I've been trying to get rid of stuff. One book was Claudio Magri's Danube. I'm still expecting to find it, but I'd had it wrapped with silver treads and recently tried to get a book grip..

Mad at myself, but I need to cull. The book was torn when I got it, and got more torn. Some air is missing..

Now I have remorse if I tossed it.

I gave up re Sandra Cisneros and Caramelo.
I take her as a good and adventurous writer, but lost interest.

I've gone back to a small and old book and am much more engaged.
I've posted about it before here a short while ago; I had heard of the author before; he redid stuff after some years. I'm
reading the redo.

Ignascio Silone.
BREAD AND WINE.

Best book I've read for quite a while and I'm not done yet.

I just finished Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone, and am still thinking about it. The last pages in my copy were an Afterword by another writer, Marc Slonim, which I'm glad I read, as it straitened out some remaining confusion about the principle character for me, so now I like the book better than I already did.

Looking at Amazon, I see there are other editions, with other commentaries, but I like Marc's comments, copyright 1963. New American Library of World Literature, inc.
My copy is a battered old small paperback from good will, but a keeper even in a time when I am trying to cull books. I'm going to read it again, now that I understand a bit more fully.

I won't try to summarize as I tend to not like to be told what is going on in a book myself before I read it. I'll just say that the book is relevant to our time too.

https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Signet-Classics-Ignazio-Silone/dp/0451529782

I don't find a copy in either Amazon or Abebooks that has my paperback cover, which would probably have the same Afterword pages as mine, but there are lots of others out there. Oh, wait, I found one.. this is at Abebooks.

Finished last week, a less than satisfying ode to sci-fi nostalgia in Ernest Cline's Armada.

Yesterday, a quick graphic novel, Exquisite Corpse by PENELOPE BAGIEU.

A third the way through The Blue Fox, a 2003 novel (more like a novella) by Icelandic writer Sjón.

I started a T. Coraghessan Boyle book of short stories, Without A Hero. Interesting, I'm now on story two, but I'm nostalgic for Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine. I may reread it earlier than later.

I've been reading After Worlds Collide, 1933 sequel to When Worlds Collide - Philip Wylie and Edwin Baumer. I had always intended to read it, but just never did. They are on a planet that died in the cold reaches of space, millions of years ago. Rejuvenated since bumping Earth and destroying it. I thought it quaint that the planes of the people who died off had propellers. I would have thought the writers would have considered jet or some other propulsion, even if it was 1933.

I saw the film when I was a kid, it really bloody depressed me. One spaceship full of people didn't seem nearly enough.

In the novel the movie was based upon, there were several ships made the attempt and at least three or four made it.

But you had to read the sequel to know how many were successful.

I was a kid, and I thought it terribly unfair that Earth was the planet that had to be destroyed, not the alien one.

I saw the movie as a kid. I always wondered how the new planet made its recovery from time spent frozen in deep space quickly enough to already have oxygen and the flora it had by the time they landed.

I wasn't old enough to think something as clever as that.

I didn't think of it the same day I saw the movie, but it came to me when I was pretty small. I finished reading it today. One Russian got knifed to death.

One worry of the people in the story was the orbit of their new planet. It went almost as far as Venus's orbit in one direction and Mars's in the other. But since it had yet to make the first revolution, they worried it might just keep going instead of going back around

We were gone to Hawaii for 10 days, and I had to return the book to the library, so I can't report how the books ends. However, I learned that Simon Winchester has a Japanese wife, Setsuko Sato. That was a surprise to me, because I had always thought Winchester lived in the UK. However, they live in New York.

winchester just cultivates that accent so he can impress nooyawkas.. He can be a pretty funny guy though. I heard him at an invite dinner at Lamont , and though his topic was about Strata Smith, he had the room in tears with some of his observations about what used to be his colleagues

Jever read The Alice Behind Wonderlland ?. like a lot of his books its a weird read but entertaining and informative

I was an odd kid.
I never gave a poo about alice.

Well I married Alice and I never ever would have guessed "Alice" was to be important in my future when I was a kiddo...now I can't live without her fantasy world. She brings life to my stupid realistic natural pessimism. She has a point!

ya got to be a fan of Simon Winchester or the book would mean nothing to you. He aslo wrote the "Professor and the MAdman" about the OED.