What BOOK are you reading right now?

Gotta second any good Trollope choice (love them all, almost indiscriminately). Have started De Lillo's Underworld which, if it goes on as it began, is going to be a great, great read.

Listened to a book on tape over the past couple of weeks, intermittently, to get me through chores and a long, boring car trip. Scott Turow's Personal Injuries. He writes well and even when he doesn't, he writes endearingly. His characters are marvelous and the story is quite picaresque, longish, full of handsome and humorous and loving details. A surprisingly enjoyable "read."

I keep battered copies of Anton Chekhov's Short Stories and Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver in my car for waits in doctors' and dentists' offices and Jiffy Lube and places like that. Keeps one well grounded in reality.

I ran, okay walked fast, at lunchtime on Friday into the "mystery/crime fiction section" of Booklegger's, my fave used book store, and picked up something called Foreign Exchange by Larry Beinhart (1991) paperback. Set in the Austrian Alps. Not bad, not bad at all.

And Bone in the Throat by Anthony Bourdain, the fellow who wrote Kitchen Confidential, a memoir that I liked. I liked Bone in the Throat, though it would not be good for the squeamish. For non-squeamish-when-reading me, it was a "good read", described on the back cover as a thrilling caper. Yes, and the rest of the food was good too.

<adding Anthony Bourdain to the reading list>

Wy - I also liked Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I bought an extra copy and gave it to my father for Christmas last year.

Currently reading The Fourth Hand by John Irving...I'm not sure what I think of it to this point.

In reading through this thread, I've added four more books and authors to my list! I love it...

Finally finished Grisham's The Brethren.

Just got the third installment of Robert Caro's turgid biography of LBJ, Master of the Senate.

Big Lies, by Joe Conason, and Jim Hightower's Thieves in High Places are on the way.

Oh, PDiddie. Comments, please, on the Conason book when you've read it!

I want to hear what you think of it too, PDiddie...

Sozobe, good to bump into you again. The Life of Pi is a book well worth reading. Martel has a charming, almost beguilingly innocent style of writing in which he tells a harrowing tale of survival at sea under difficult conditions. Some parts seem real, some fantastic, and some perhaps illusionary. Yet, even the illusionary parts, if that's what they are, are anchored to the real parts, so that you are never sure what's real and what's not, which may be the point of the story. It also seems to me that he raises interesting questions about the nature of human kind in the world.

If you read the book, I wish you'd check back with me for a little exchange of opinion.

Tartarin, it's interesting that you like Carver and Chekhov. There are several good stories in the Carver book. On the negative side, I find his obsession or at least preoccupation with alcohol a little tiring. My favorite story in the book is Elephant, about the guy whose relatives are always sponging off him. Other good ones are Nobody said Anything, Bicycles..., What Do We Talk About..., and So much water... I have yet to decide whether I really like him as a story writer. I guess I do. He writes in such a deep sad way about love and family, so that it all seems so transitory and subject to dissolution for reasons that are never apparent.

With Chekhov, I think we see a little clearer how people get to where they are by the end of the story, but again he always shows us how ephemeral human relationships can be and how painful the memories.

I love short stories. They are an art form that, like poetry, carry a great deal of truth, or at least thought, in a very compact space.

Which of Di Lillo's novels do you recommend?

The Cooperman Variations, by Howard Engel.

I love that he's brought Benny to Toronto. Recognizing the coffee shops etc. that he frequents adds a bit of fun. Anyone who listens to the CBC regularly will recognize a lot of the gossipy bits of the book.

I've enjoyed all of the Benny Cooperman mysteries so far.

Hazlitt-- This is my first foray into DeLillo. I'll keep you posted. So far, Underworld almost has the heft of a 19th century novel, slow to build, fascinating in every detail. If you like Trollope, you know what I mean. What is it about Trollope! Certainly very different from Dickens and offering a very different kind of satisfaction! I'd be hard put to choose among Trollopes, except in general I think I find the politicals more interesting than Barchester, but just barely! The Way We Live kind of lies in between. Have you read Can You Forgive Her?

Carver: I don't know why I love him so -- he is also facile and annoying sometimes, with a slathering of faux naivete. But I do, to the extent that I went to his memorial service in NYC -- the kind of thing I never do!

Richard Ford is another one I went nuts over and may still be.

I used to be a person who had cats and read a lot. Having (also) dogs now, I've found it more difficult to climb into a book, go deaf, dumb, and blind, live in another world. I was warned about this, this aspect of dogs. They always have that "okay, what's next?" expression which makes me leap to my feet... away from the book. Dogs prefer TV which they keep an eye on, hoping a dog will come onscreen and bark. That keeps them happy.

Tartarin, I have not read Can You Forgive Her. Next on our list is The Last Chronicle of Barchester. Then we read Rememberance of Things Past.This is the influence of Lightwizard who is a Proust enthusiast. After that it now looks like we'll read Can You Forgive Her. Yes, Dickens, Hardy, and Thackery are all better than Trollope. What Trollope has over the others is that he is enjoyable to readCarver . In comparison to Dickens, I think Trollope's characters may be more realistic. For example, when Dickens does a villian, he is really bad. Likewise his heros and heroines are really good.Trollope's people seem to have more normal faults and virtues that are in line with what we might find in real life. His worst characters have redeeming qualities so that you usually wish that there were some way for them to pull themselves together and turn out okay, but they don't, and you can't feel too sorry for them.

Carver comes up with some really funny juxtopositions. In So Much Water So Close to Home, he has those three guys going fishing in the remote mountain stream where they set up camp and then discover the dead woman in the water where they are going to fish. They have a little pow-wow and decide that having hiked all the way into this out of the way location, they ought to go ahead with their three days of fishing and camping and then call the cops after they hike out again. So they go ahead with the fishing with the dead woman in the water just a few feet from their camp. Can you fathom the doppy mentality of three guys who would do something like that? I thought that was and excellent story.

You must have thought a lot of him to want to attend his memorial service.

One guy I want to read more of is Tim O'Brien. I read What They Carried, and thought it was one of the best short stories I've ever read.

When it comes to the dog, I know what you mean. Maybe you could rent a couple of old Lassie tapes to keep the dog company. Ought to work for a day or so.

Tartarin--I love "Underworld"! What you say is true about the heft of a 19th Century novel. A sweeping epic! Unfortunately, I was so blown away by it that I've found DeLillo's two subsequent novels really underwhelming.

I just picked up "To the Finland Station" and read the intro by Lewis Menand. He, of course, is one of the writers Larry R loved to bash, but I'm trying not to let that spoil my appreciation of Wilson's book...

2/3 + of the way through "The Last of the Mohicans", it is so different from the movie. Aren't they all - character development, more character, different scenes, better depiction - gees, another book I can't put down but I don't want to finish!

I'm glad you're still enjoying it, Bill. Check in when you're done, because I'd like to discuss the difference in endings between the book and the film. I know how the novel ends, and I think I know how the film ends, but since you saw it, you can contrast 'em better than I can...

Menand is terrific. Don't be put off by Larry. Really... The Metaphysical Club... and his New Yorker articles...

I like DeLillo's ability to write about movement -- the baseball, Cotter running, jumping, spinning...

I am reading The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen. Quite entertaining.

I REALLY REALLY want to read the new Jhumpa Lahiri, "The Namesake." "Interpreter Of Maladies" is one of my top ten favorite short-story collections, if not top ten books, period, and I really liked the excerpt that was published in the New Yorker.

Veblen entertaining??!! Hmmm!

You don't like his wit?