Recently finished books?

[fausto]

She likes her wrecks, does Joan.

[nnyhav]

Ahwell, Richard Sennett's The Craftsman didn't live up to its promise; not without some interest and curious anecdotal evidence, but the synthesis fails, the metaphor falls to earth (making it a metaphorite?) ...

In other readings:
Amos Oz, A Perfect Peace
Graham Greene, The Quiet American +

[Jan Mbali]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Matha quest by Doris Lessing ,it toke me forever to finish it,i could not get into it.But it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing,more to do with deep incompatibility betwin the book and i.Some of the images i found a bit dated,the tex avery reference to the wolf all along was ennoying.

Her first work, "The Grass is Singing" is the only thing she wrote I can abide. A collection of short stories that express genuine feelings about the spirtual wilderness of Rhodesian colonialism (while set in an actual wilderness). The rest has the shallow feel of the work of many a writer in exile - roots somehow broken.

[Stewart]

I'm sitting giggling sporadically, having come to the end of Gilbert Adair's The Death Of The Author and, knowing there was a twist at the end, I'm glad all the forward thinking I put in to work out what it may be didn't pay off. I've never really followed literary and critical movements, but those that do may notice that the book's title echoes, as I've found out, an essay by Barthes and the book's actual storyline subverts, as I've also found out, the biography of Paul de Man.

Wordplay, erudition, literary theory, satire, and more - and all in just over a hundred pages. I've always liked Adair's work and this one, from 1992, has to be his best.

[Cocko]

Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee. Started a thread elsewhere, however I would some it up by saying 'interesting', both in device and content. Sorry to be a fence sitter.

[Mirabell]

Gentlemen of the Road, Michael Chabon


Finished it an hour ago and I am still happy. His most flat-out enjoyable novel since Wonder Boys, although I haven't read Yiddish Policemen's Union yet.

[nnyhav]

Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
G.V.Desani, all about H.Hatterr +

[nnyhav]

Paul Verhaeghen, Omega Minor: if you liked Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, you'll like this as well (though there's more literary filigree in OM).

[Cocko]

Johnno by David Malouf... a beautifully crafted, yet disappointing, exploration of friendship, love and loss.

[Mirabell]

The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You want a Revolution, Grant Morrison et al.



totally awesome. and whacky.

[nnyhav]

Alan Bennett, Untold Tales: primarily memoir, also essays; UK bestseller US remainder. Good fun.

[Jayaprakash]

A bit of a reading jag took place the last couple of weeks and I finished Javier Marias' ALL SOULS (liked very much), Gabriel Josipovici's GOLDBERG:VARIATIONS (uneven at times but mostly quite interesting), Christopher Isherwood's MR. NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS and GOODBYE TO BERLIN (both very good books set in pre-war Berlin, the first an excellent political parable, the second a very effective semi-autobiographical ficional documentary), Peter Ackroyd's THE LAMBS OF LONDON (where the plagiarism plot seems to run away with Ackroyd to the extent that the titular characters vanish for much of the last third, but a satisfying read in any case) and Georges Simenon's MAIGRET AND THE GHOST (an about average installment in the series).

Now, I'm dipping cautiously into ST LUCY'S HOME FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES by Karen Russell, and it's a slog. The stories often wind up being quite memorable and even moving, but the writing style is a bit of a pain. I suppose it's just too jumpy, modern and perhaps too American for my more sedate Old World tastes and pedantic ways. I suspect that I might have embraced this book quite enthusiastically about a decade back, but one's arteries do begin to harden with time.
Far more in keeping with my emerging taste for sedateness, pedantry and a touch of well-applied pomposity is Thomas Mann's DR FAUSTUS, which I am already halfway through.

[Stewart]

Finished today Micheline Aharonian Marcom's new novel, The Mirror In The Well, which was pretty much a prose poem dedicated to the vagina. Of course, there was more to it than that, such as power struggles, immigration, and an undercurrent of Biblical allusion, but I'm surprised at how much I liked it, moreso on the second reading. Oh, and its very explicit sexually, consistently so, that I was afraid she wouldn't be able to keep it up. {{Groan.}} The style was very reminiscent of Clarice Lispector, and I'll certainly try and chase up her previous novels, being a trilogy of the consequences of the Armenian Genocide.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Sybarite

From A to X by John Berger.

No comment?

[nnyhav]

Juan Goytisolo, Makbara (trans Helen Lane): recently reissued by Dalkey Archive. One of the rare instances where Complete-Review doesn't get it (no sense of humor on evolving issues), but does get that it's a bit much. It's a lot much. Such much! Over the top at times, including in the meta category, but there's rewards to the risks it takes. In some respects an answer to Edward Said's Orientalism; but that's minor compared to the send-up of academic and other modern follies -- more anti-ideological than anything, except sex, which [it] is also all about.

+ (or B+, vs C-R's B-)

[nnyhav]

Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa: Running the gamut (or is it gauntlet?) from A to Z and back again; the constraint (of which one is always aware, or one of them anyway, as others seem to be in force at times, provisionally, checking as one progresses) interacts with the story in curious ways, surprisingly richly; even so, the conceit gets in the way, however ingenious the ways around it (but then something Dictionary Johnson said about dogs comes to mind): All in, +, maybe

Add: I see complete-review has its say along these lines.

[cuchulain]

nnyhav,


Have you read his How German is It? Marvelous book. I haven't read the novel you mentioned, but HGII is among my Top 100 all time.

[Stewart]

I've been through this thread and taken a number of the posts and made honest threads of them.

So, the new threads are:

• Alphabetical Africa, Walter Abish
• Makbara, Juan Goytisolo
• Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
• Larva, Julián Ríos
• Collected Stories, Arno Schmidt
• Foam Of The Daze, Boris Vian

[Mirabell]

Money, Terry Pratchett

meh. Not his best, but not bad. Lots of the usual brilliance, but somewhat...errant. Dullish, even.

[DreamQueen]

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. I enjoyed it but would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read it too quickly.