Recently finished books?

[Colonel Green]

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is one of those novels where the historical significance dwarfs any discussion of its literary merit, which is still considerable. It's a slim, effective story that hits pretty much all the right notes within its premise of giving us a single day in this guy's life. The artistic nerve required to even publish it just adds to it. Like a lot of stories, I suppose it has lost a bit of its impact with time, since its description of the gulag doesn't have the same novelty it did in 1962.

[AmieJane]

I'm having to go back in time and read a notable list of classics from American Authors for the American Literature class at university. So the books I've just finished are:

The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Surprisngly I had never read any of these books as yet, but I would have to say my two favorites amongst this lot would be, The Great Gatsby and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

[Peeping Tom]

The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

What an interesting list! Of those I’ve read, my favorite is The Great Gatsby (I haven’t read The Scarlet Letter, for which I a duly embarrassed).

Back on topic, some of my recent reads:

Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira 1/2
Starts out like a well-written travelogue, but explodes into something more.

Number9Dream by David Mitchell
My least favorite from David Mitchell, but still worth a read. Lots of winks at Haruki Murakami.

Varamo by Ceasar Aira
Started out better than Landscape Painter, but the ending fizzled for me.

The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst
My first Furst. A very good thriller. He has a sophisticated prose style. His dialogues are exceptional, crisp and telling, and he captures the atmosphere of pre-WWII Europe.

[Hamlet]

I'm having to go back in time and read a notable list of classics from American Authors for the American Literature class at university. So the books I've just finished are:

The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Surprisngly I had never read any of these books as yet, but I would have to say my two favorites amongst this lot would be, The Great Gatsby and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I found The Scarlett Letter quite hard going, in terms of its appeal, and that's a shame because I admire Hawthorne and have tried some of his other works.
How did you get on with it, Amie? Did you have any input on the Puritan tradition and historical aspects, to assist with comprehension?

[Stiffelio]

Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira 1/2
Starts out like a well-written travelogue, but explodes into something more.

That's a good description. All of Aira books explode into many different things from what they started off being.

[Colonel Green]

In Canada, it's quite common for government figures (including the various viceroys) to be involved in stuff like that.

The Singapore Grip by J. G. Farrell

The only novel in the "Empire Trilogy" to not win the Booker Prize, but it's my favourite of the three. All three novels have the same basic formula (various characters fiddling while figurative Rome burns, and various follies and tragedies are exposed), with this being the most overtly political of the three, in the sense that one of the characters periodically gets into arguments with everybody else about the nature of British economic policy and its effects on the locals. I'm seen some reviews that found this a bit heavy-handed, and that's probably not inaccurate, but I didn't really mind; I don't mind a bit of tract in a novel (consequence of all those big 19th century ones I've read). Farrell successfully juggles a large cast of characters, including a number of historical figures (his depiction of Arthur Percival is especially compelling). Ends on an effectively ambiguous note (unlike the other novels).

[kpjayan]

To get back to the original intention of this thread....

Fermat's Enigma - Simon Singh : If you have seen the BBC Documentary on Andrew Wiles achievement in proving the Ferma't Last Theorem, this is a kind of elaboration of the same. However Simon Singh progresses the book neatly from the Pythegoran times through the history , alexandria, the Arab-Indian works around the Mathematics to the medieval Europe ( OMG, there we go again to Medieval times). Smooth reading, not un-comforting you with those Mathematcal equations, I found it rather neatly presented.

[Daniel del Real]

Joseph Roth, Radetzky March
Miguel Delibes, Five Hours with Mario +
Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
Eduardo Mendoza, The Amazing Journey of Pomponio Flato +
Cees Nooteboom, Tombs of Poets and Thinkers

[Colonel Green]

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Amusingly, my mother bought tickets for a stage version of Travels With My Aunt without my knowing on whose work it was based, so this is has been a very Greene-oriented period.

[kpjayan]

Since I last posted here.

1. The Magic Flute - Part 1 of the Krishnavatara Series : K M Munshi

- Slightly text bookish language in the beginning ( probably due to the translation). Difficult to write a novel based on scriptures. But I thought, he did a commendable job.

2. The Monkey King - Timothy Mo : his first book. Family saga, of a Hongkong rich post WWII. Beautiful first part , dull and boring second, before a decent finish. Very oriental styled writing with lots of 'chinglish' phrases and local idioms. Good book, not great. I might not have grasped the connection to the Chinese folktale of 'Legend of the monkey King' , as intended.

3. The Rival - Sheridan : I think, on screen version of this had better appeal. The dramatic effects aren't as evident in the words. Not forgetting that it was written almost 3 centuries ago.

[Eric]

Unlike Colonel Green I've not finished any book about intelligence operative Graham Greene (though he's mentioned in one I'm reading), but have just finished a pleasant volume called "The House at Pooh Corner" by A.A. Milne (who is also mentioned there, as asked after by Wodehouse-in-Exile), which book was recommended to me some 35 years ago. I've finally got round to reading it, as I was wondering for those three and a half decades who Tigger was.

[Daniel del Real]

Tariq Ali, The Book of Saladin

[Flint]

Leaving the Atocha Station (Ben Lerner)
Clever, intellectualish, with a sense of humour. Contains (among other things) scenes that illustrate wonderfully the struggle for communication between people who speak different languages.
You don't have to know the place (Madrid) where, and the time (the terrorist attacks in March 2004) when the story takes place, but it helps.

[kpjayan]

Tariq Ali, The Book of Saladin

I'm curious.. Could you give us a hint. Especially when you have rated it so high...

[Daniel del Real]

I'm curious.. Could you give us a hint. Especially when you have rated it so high...

Well, after reading The Crusades Through Arab Eyes last month, a new whole world came to my eyes. One of the most fascinating characters mentioned by Maalouf in that chronicle was the Sultan Salah-Al Din, who was able to reconquest Jerusalem in 1187 after almost a hundred years of Christian dominion. Ali takes this mythic figure and explores his life without distancing himself from history but filling the blanks the books didn't tell with fiction. I just love novels getting deep in the skin of historic characters, but it's not an easy task. This is the case where the reader has a perfect mix of history and fiction. Great great book.

[sirena]

Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope

[Hamlet]

"Voices from the Great War" by Peter Vansittart
Pimlico.


divided up into each year, following a prelude, 1914-18, the voices belong to poets and politicians and variious other figures, many well known, many completely forgotten now, make this a very vivid and worthwhile (and fairly brief !) read on the path and insanity of WW1. I found it immensely useful for setting writers such as Hemmingway, Ford Madox Ford, and many others into context. Generally, I tend to think "some" historical background is useful for literature,but for the early 20th century, I'm beginning to think that it is key, to try and understand that generation, or the lost generation without it seems, almost, but not quite, impossible.

Oh, and I've just picked up John Steinbeck, A Life in Letters.

I'd also like to get hold of Working Days, his journal detailing his writing of The Grapes of Wrath, but that wont happen anytime soon.

[Mystic Melody]

i recently read "Disgrace" by J.M.Coetzee.....beautiful.......

[Colonel Green]

Shame by Salman Rushdie

The first of the two Rushdie novels I read is essentially a companion piece to Midnight's Children, focusing on Pakistan. It has a similar level of quality and inventiveness; Rushdie in his prime is definitely one of the most interesting prose stylists of the last 40 years.

Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene

The professor at UPEI who taught the course on John Milton was a big Greene fan, and espoused the virtues of this novel on a number of occasions (particularly the scene with the half-sized Holy Spirit bottle, which came up when we discussed the concept of the Trinity). It's a very pleasant read, even if it lacks the epic quality of earlier novels. Greene still can't be beat for his depiction of the questioning Catholic mind.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol 1/2

Having read a collection of his short-stories recently, I also read his main novel, part of unfinished trilogy (he burned the second part shortly before his death, apparently), has a lot to like, but it's, well, unfinished, and it feels like it.

Grimus by Salman Rushdie 1/2

Salman Rushdie's first novel, which from what I've read he is apparently not that fond of. Rushdie's skill with prose is evident, but it's messier than his later novels; it doesn't feel like he has quite the same handle on the extremely convoluted plot. There are some really amazing pieces of writing here, though (the description of Gorf civilization is especially neat), and for people like me mainly familiar with his famous 80s novels this is an interesting departure.

[Daniel del Real]

Magda Szabo, The Door
Sandor Marai, The Stranger +