Recently finished books?

[Mirabell]

Sorry for the silly question but how do you do to get the flags in the message?

Below your message you can choose a country from these options

Post Icons You may choose an icon for your message from the following list:

[fausto]

Thanks, mirabell, but I think that would assign an icon to the message, not to specific lines of your message. I think I will use Sybarite's work around.

[Stewart]

Thanks, mirabell, but I think that would assign an icon to the message, not to specific lines of your message. I think I will use Sybarite's work around.

I'll look into adding the flags to an extended smilies box.

[abecedarian]

I'll look into adding the flags to an extended smilies box.

Make em big...some of us are going blind here

[fausto]

OK, so here is what I read in June:

Donald Barthelme - Flying to America
Thomas Bernhard - Le naufrag? / Der Untergeher
Lutz Bassmann - Ha?kus de prison
Various - Lexique Nomade
William H. Gass - Test of time
Paul Verhaeghen - Omega Minor
Alexander Theroux - Laura Warholic
Yasunari Kawabata / Yukio Mishima - Correspondance
B.S. Johnson - Chalut / Trawl
Robert Coover - Noir

[Mirabell]

cool. any details? haven't read half of them.

[Mirabell]

Der Blinde Reiter, Juan Goytisolo (German translation of Tel?n de boca)

[fausto]

OK, so here is what I read in June:

Donald Barthelme - Flying to America
Thomas Bernhard - Le naufrag? / Der Untergeher
Lutz Bassmann - Ha?kus de prison
Various - Lexique Nomade
William H. Gass - Test of time
Paul Verhaeghen - Omega Minor
Alexander Theroux - Laura Warholic
Yasunari Kawabata / Yukio Mishima - Correspondance
B.S. Johnson - Chalut / Trawl
Robert Coover - Noir

Couple of words reviews for my homie Mirabell:

Barthelme -- fun and well constructed as any Barthelme, less good than the previously collected work.
Benrhard -- You know I prefer to remain silent and listen to the music.
Bassmann -- Background info: this is the pseudo of Antoine Volodine, a French writer in the process of acquiring more heteronyms than Pessoa. He actually created a school called "literature post-exotic". All its disciples are avatars of himself. Dark and unpleasantly funny. This is a 100 pages book, a narration entirely made of ha?kus. Not a fantastic book, but a great read nonetheless.
Gass -- I don't know if you've read any essay of his, this collection is like the rest: beautiful insights on the themes he is examining -- among which why some book do stand the test of time, and what is that test -- and marvelous writing.
Verhaeghen, you know all about already.
Theroux -- reactionary, non-pc to the max. If you're into that kind of humour, laughing out loud funny and Theroux is a master of the word. His main character made me think of Bellow in his grumpy phase (Sammler, Herzog). Maybe too long.
Kawabata / Mishima -- letters of a fanboy to his master. Fanboy later turns into master's equal.
Johnson -- A sort of Bernhardian version of good ole B.S. Beatifully desperate.
Coover -- His take on the Noir movies and lit. Vintage Coover, great fun. Not his best work. Published in French, not in English yet. Name of main character: Phil M. Noir. Fantastic pun, as you can see.

[Mirabell]

Published in French, not in English yet

written in french?

[fausto]

Nope. In English. Coover wanted it to be published in France first as a tribute to the inventors of the "film noir". No US publisher at the moment. Coover himself said it could take a year or so beofr it's published in the original.

[saliotthomas]

The remain of the days-Kazuo Ishiguro

I guess most of you read it,(i though i did).I enjoyed it but not has much as i hoped i would.Somehow this all story of the hight standard in butlering left me a bit cold.It is very well writen and the atmosphere is charming but i kept try to figure out what hiden meaning laid out of my reach.The only thing i could get is the very similarity betwin this English decency and the Japanese sense of honor and unselfishness.Something that occured to me in earlier readings.
I shall try others of his books it might help me to see the bigger picture.

[Stewart]

The remain of the days-Kazuo Ishiguro

I've taken this post and made a new thread on the book.

[Mirabell]

Der Gast, Hwang Sok-yong

[iiris]

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

[ions]

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

What did you think? I recently won a galley of her next book The Flying Troutmans for filling out a survey for Random House. A Complicated Kindness has blipped across my radar a few times but I've ignored it as an aberration for no real reason.

[ions]

Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. Heartily recommended. Fun stuff. Amusing, non-linear and clever.

[Mirabell]

Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. Heartily recommended. Fun stuff. Amusing, non-linear and clever.

care to write a shortish review in a thread of its own? i am very interested.

[Irene Wilde]

Just finished Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen. Sucked. Just terrible.

Sucked is rather strong...disappointing with an interesting perspective perhaps? I do adore Leonard's "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" but I have to admit, Beautiful Losers isn't what I was hoping it would be.

[fausto]

Jorge Luis Borges - Obras Completas vol. 1

[iiris]

Playing with the Grown-ups by Sophie Dahl. Painfully raw, lyrical story of young Kitty growing up. I really loved this one.