Recently Begun Books

[learna]

I read only several stories by him and remember that I liked them.

If I am not mistaken, Vasily Grossman dedicated Life and Fate to his mother.

[Loki]

Yesterday I began Adam Bede. So far I've liked it a lot, I've liked her style: she fills the pages of her novel with lots of minute descriptions, something I most of the time dislike; yet in this case I enjoy reading her descriptions.
The structure is rather simple so far, I think it's a very standard novel formally speaking (not like Wuthering Heights for instance).

At first I was afraid when in the first page, reading the dialogue, I discovered that people do not speak plain English, but some sort of dialect (I don't know what dialect it is though); fortunately however, it's not so difficult to understand as Joseph's dialect in Emily Bronte's novel.

Also, I've learnt something about methodism.


I forgot: I liked the beginning very much, it struck me.
With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.

[pesahson]

I have just read several paragraphs of the essay "Центрально-східна ревізія" (2000) by Ukranian writer Yuri Andrukhovych. Like more than expected.

Could you give us your English translation of the title. I didn't find it in Wikipedia, I don't think it was translated into English or Polish yet. But I really enjoyed his "The Moscoviad" and "Recreations".

[learna]

Pesahson, this is a literal translation - Central-Eastern Audit (Revision).

I have read nothing by him before, so this is my first experience. He writes in West-Ukranian, if you know it you can read this essay here:

??????????-?????? ??????? - ????-??????????

And thank you for recommendations.

[pesahson]

Unfortunately I don't. But Andruchowycz is quite popular here in Poland, so it might appear translated somewhere (or maybe it already have appeared). I'll look out for it.

[Refus de Sejour]

Jan Neruda - Tales of the Little Quarter.
Trans. Edith Pargeter.

Picked this one up at a Library sale a few months back. According to the intro, "Neruda is to the Little Quarter of Prague as Dickens is to London." Anyone here familiar with him?

[lenz]

Elizabeth Jolley, The Vera Wright Trilogy

Very strange style, hypnotic in a way, even while annoyingly vague. The story emerges out of a mist of fragmentary memories. That's just the first novel. Two more to go - things may become clearer.

[JTolle]

Just started Luis Goytisolo's only novel in English translation: 360 Degree Diary, only about twenty pages in, but I like it a lot. L. Goytisolo is very lucid, and the multiple perspectives of the diary are all interesting, original, and sometimes a tad eerie, but the fact that there are so many isn't confusing, he achieves something very natural.

One passage I especially liked:

Friday, April 23. IN HEAT. If the spoken word comes from song, from the sounds that the first humans imitated from the birds in their desire to communicate with each other, the behavior that determines erotic impulses was likewise inspired by the most visible aspects of certain animals in heat: birds, dogs, deer. Dances, movements, seductive exhibitions. A festive exercise that suddenly becomes a fundamental attitude: process of approximation of one body to another, of integration, of liquefying, to the point that the loss of reason becomes the ultimate reason. An exercise that, as much as life itself, transmits to us the life of the elements: the wind, the rain, the earth's tremors, the spark that ignites. Forces present in the origins of literary creativity just as they are in the darkness of love.

[Loki]

I've just started The Old Man and the Sea, and I'm starting to understand way it is so praised.
Anyway, as soon as I started it I couldn't help thinking about a song by an Italian singer, Guccini: Il vecchio e il bambino (The old Mand and the Child). The theme of the song is not linked to what the novel is about. Here's a link to the song with English subtitles:
YouTube - Francesco Guccini - The Old Man and the Child

[Stevie B]

I made it about 25 pages into Cormac McCarthy's The Road last night when I had to stop to decide whether to continue with the book. Two things put me off. The first was the countless times words like dark, dirty, grey, ashen, cloudy, muddy, semi-opaque, grainy, and blackness were being used - seemingly per page. Okay, I get it. It's a post-apocalyptic world. By the way, is it possible to be semi-opaque? Isn't something either opaque or not opaque?

The other thing I didn't care for was the caveman-like communication between father and son. Is neither capable of speaking more than a fragmented sentence in one breath?

I realize I'm sounding hyper-critical (especially since I haven't made much headway in the book), but my initial impressions of the novel have been less than positive. I'm curious if anyone else started off with similar reservations only to find their outlook change by the end of the story.

[Stiffelio]

The other thing I didn't care for was the caveman-like communication between father and son. Is neither capable of speaking more than a fragmented sentence in one breath?.

This kind of dialogue is IMO McCarthy's best achievement in this novel. It purposedly acts as a counterpoint to the descriptive passages of desolation and it reinforces it. Please hang on to this novel; don't give up!

[Sif]

Three Pairs of Silk Stockings by Panteleimon Romanov, one of the authors I discovered from the The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire collection of short stories.

[Flower]

I just started my first James Joyce book this afternoon " A portrait of the artist as a young man".

I must say I am happily surprised. Boy could that man write! I had feared that it would be loooong heavy stuff but no way. I sat with a blanket holding my breath with my heart in my throat....!

On the flip on my book, there is a common from one of Denmark?s well known writers "Tom Kristensen", maybe some of you know him? Anyway he said, in my translation, of Joyce?s book:
"The book almost feels fysical to the reader with both chill and warm sensations and lust and pain. It goes straight to your blood".
-I couldn?t agree more!

Now I wonder what the mighty "Ulysses" would be like. Maybe I have feared nothing but a ghost where there was none.

[Anton]

Have started on The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. As with most scifi books, the reader has to first settle in with the world/premise the author is trying to present. Granted this is true of all novels but I find this to be particularly the case with sci fi.

Anyway, the premise is interesting so far and I hope it turns out to be good.

[Daniel del Real]

This weekend I started Casanova in Bolzano by Sandor Marai. So far it's been amazing. This is my third book from Marai, all of them this year, and I have to say he's been one of my greatest discoveries in 2010. This man wrote absolutely delicious prose full of questions about daily life. He is able to embrace a huge variaty of topics with a really simple outlook.

[Daniel del Real]

Reading what many people claims to be Kadare's masterpiece, The Palace of Dreams. Right now, at page 100 I start thinking they're right. This is an amazing works reminiscent of hell in a Kafkaesque way. It reminds me so much about Kafka's The Trial. Still, it is very distinctive of Kadare's previous works I've read with such topics as Albanian identity and function under the Turkish dominance& the Albanian epic poems.

I'm also enjoying a lot the poems of Mexican poet Al? Chumacero, so I'm very thrilled to keep reading this week after a poor one last week

[JTolle]

Just started Don DeLillo's The Names. It will be the seventh novel of DeLillo's I'm reading/have read this year and it's shaping up already at only 70 pages in to be one of my favorites. Significantly more lyrical than any of the other books I've read by him, it's so different from one of his early works like End Zone or even one of his late novels like Point Omega, but nonetheless he seems to be describing and defining more of that same universe of thought which permeates all his work. I find the trajectory of his style fascinating. I'm sure I'll have read all this man's novels in no time at all, I feel driven to read him.

[Stiffelio]

I've read two stories from Wells Tower's debut collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned and I'm already more than impressed. The guy can write unbelievably beautiful prose and some punchy dialogue. He seems to have some real talent supporting all the recent hype. We'll see how the rest of the stories follow up.....

[Daniel del Real]

Yesterday I started with two books: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk and La Sombra del Ciprés es Alargada by Miguel Delibes.
The Pamuk books is huge, probably the longest he has written. I had that book waiting in my shelves for months and finally decided it was time to tackled it. However I have no big expectations about it since a professor I truly respect and that has read all Pamuk's works told it's his weakest novel so far, even weaker than The New Life. He claimed that this 650 pages book in my edition could've been written in less than 200 pages and would made an excellent novel. He really liked the last 150 pages but told us the first couple of hundreds were crap. I'll have to check it ouy by myself, but after reading 70 pages it is a common narration of a love relation with nothing interesting to highlight. Let's wait and check how it develops.

Delibes book is his first one. He wrote it when he was 28 years old and immediately succeed by winning the Nadal prize. It is a different novel from what I've read from him before. This novel has a strong load of pessimism, dealing a lot with such topics as death and expectations in life; not very usual in the rest of Delibes works. Still good so far.

[peter_d]

Yesterday I started with two books: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk and La Sombra del Ciprés es Alargada by Miguel Delibes.
The Pamuk books is huge, probably the longest he has written. I had that book waiting in my shelves for months and finally decided it was time to tackled it. However I have no big expectations about it since a professor I truly respect and that has read all Pamuk's works told it's his weakest novel so far, even weaker than The New Life. He claimed that this 650 pages book in my edition could've been written in less than 200 pages and would made an excellent novel. He really liked the last 150 pages but told us the first couple of hundreds were crap. I'll have to check it ouy by myself, but after reading 70 pages it is a common narration of a love relation with nothing interesting to highlight. Let's wait and check how it develops.

Delibes book is his first one. He wrote it when he was 28 years old and immediately succeed by winning the Nadal prize. It is a different novel from what I've read from him before. This novel has a strong load of pessimism, dealing a lot with such topics as death and expectations in life; not very usual in the rest of Delibes works. Still good so far.

So you are reading two books at the same time? Is there any system in the way you read it, e.g. Pamuk every other day and Delibes in between?
I haven't read the books you mentioned, but good to know that Museum of Innocence is not recommended. Think I'll start with Snow soon, which will be my second Pamuk. It's been on my shelf for some time now...