What Are You Reading

[Benzadmiral]

REcently finished 11/22/63, and moved on to Joyland. For my money, Stephen King is one of the most gifted living novelists globally, and deserves to be more highly valued. Probably will be after his death; popular authors rarely get the critical acclaim they deserve (as literature, as distinct from entertainment) during their liftetimes, especially if they are perceived as 'genre'.

I personally think King will be read for generations, and that a future portion of critics will rank him as America's Dickens.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Reading a collection of Daphne DuMaurier's short stories, Don't Look Now. The collection has the title story, of course, and "The Birds" (which I first read at age 11, long before I saw the Hitchcock film). One story in particular strikes me as amazing: 1959's "The Blue Lenses." A woman has undergone an operation to restore her fading sight, which includes the installation of special blue lenses under her lids. She's horrified to discover that everyone around her in the hospital (and, it turns out, outside as well) now appears to have the head of an animal. They speak just as they always did -- but one nurse has the head of a cow, a doctor looks like a terrier, people on the street have the heads of frogs or boars. And there are more surprises to come.

Would have made a good episode of Twilight Zone, if they'd had today's CGI tech.

 

[Harp]

a review of Dr Zhivago & the dissident faith of Boris Pasternak, Crimes against culture, Gary Saul Morson, The New Criterion, Sept 2017

Pasternak's Tolstoyan reality and his innate ideals mixed with mysticism are enchanting.

 

[Fading Fast]

a review of Dr Zhivago & the dissident faith of Boris Pasternak, Crimes against culture, Gary Saul Morson, The New Criterion, Sept 2017

Pasternak's Tolstoyan reality and his innate ideals mixed with mysticism are enchanting.

"Doctor Zhivago" one of the few times where I think I enjoyed the movie over the book.

 

[totallyfrozen]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Edward]

I personally think King will be read for generations, and that a future portion of critics will rank him as America's Dickens.

Dickens is an excellent comparison - I actually had him in mind when I was typing that last post.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Dickens is an excellent comparison - I actually had him in mind when I was typing that last post.

Both wrote very long books and were very prolific; both have had their works adapted to other media (in Dickens's case, he read from his works on tour, as well as having movies and stage plays based on his novels). Both were enormously popular in their own lifetimes. Both experimented -- King has written more than horror and SF, and Dickens attempted a detective novel, though he died before completing it.

(I might find my other comparison -- Neil Simon and William Shakespeare -- a little harder to defend, though. . . .)

 

[AmateisGal]

Well, I put aside The Last Convertible for a few days because I snagged the new Daniel Silva book at the library - House of Spies - and I finished it last night. I LOVE his Gabriel Allon novels.

 

[Harp]

Well, I put aside The Last Convertible for a few days ...

I recently gave TLC to a gal pal and told her to brew hot chocolate, grab some oatmeal raisin cookies and put on a Glenn Miller CD.

 

[Fading Fast]

Well, I put aside The Last Convertible for a few days because I snagged the new Daniel Silva book at the library - House of Spies - and I finished it last night. I LOVE his Gabriel Allon novels.

So now it's time to get back to TLC - were you enjoying it?

 

[Fading Fast]

I just started "The Makioka Sisters" by Tanizaki as I read an article that said many consider it the greatest Japanese novel of the 20th Century. With a billing like that, I had to give it a go.

Only a bit in, but other than struggling to keep the not-familiar-to-my-English-ears Japanese names straight (I have a similar challenge with Russian novels, but those are even worse as many Russians have three nicknames and they tend to be the same or similar names to other characters - sigh), I'm enjoying it. I'll report back afterwards.

 

[Harp]

A two-day old New York Times scrap peeled off the internet this afternoon: Disquieting Times in Chicago as the Cubs Cling to a Lead by Jeff Arnold.

The recent sweep of the struggling Mets showed some consistency to Chicago's batting order, but the line itself is not so much about its construction,
rather the composition. Bryant has proved splendid and Schwarbs is more poised and assured. Heyward remains a concern.
If Arrieta returns to the pen in reasonably good shape, this weekend against the Cards should augur post season reality.

 

[Harp]

If Arrieta returns to the pen in reasonably good shape, this weekend against the Cards should augur post season reality.

Yesterday's 9th inning duel between Davis and Fowler definitely aced my hopes.

 

[Benzadmiral]

More short stories by Daphne du Maurier.

 

[HadleyH1]

For the last year, or rather the last two years or so, I have been stuck with the topic of the last days of the Tzar (Nicholas II) and his beautiful family.

I just can't let go, I have at least 19 biographies of their lives, but particularly of their last months.

I'm obsessed with this topic, I know every move they made and every breath they took... LOL!

Sadly I am running out of books.

But I won't give up! and will continue searching for new titles.

 

[Fading Fast]

For the last year, or rather the last two years or so, I have been stuck with the topic of the last days of the Tzar (Nicholas II) and his beautiful family.

I just can't let go, I have at least 19 biographies of their lives, but particularly of their last months.

I'm obsessed with this topic, I know every move they made and every breath they took... LOL!

Sadly I am running out of books.

But I won't give up! and will continue searching for new titles.

While not even close to your passion, I, too, find the story of the last Czar and his family fascinating. I've read several books as well, but the one that stands out in my mind is "Nicholas and Alexandra" by Massie.

Part of the appeal, I think, is the extremes of their life: from beyond-comprehension wealth and power to the ignoble shot-in-a-basement end (with bullets bouncing off the sewed-into-the-daughters'-undergarments jewels). And it helps that what followed - the Communist killing machine nightmare - made his rule seem moderate.

I've gone to several Imperial Faberge' Egg exhibits over the years as, one, they are cool things to see (love the crazy detail and high-tech-of-its-day "surprises" etc.) and, two, there is that touch to history, to the last Czar's family. Well worth going if you ever get a chance.

 

[HadleyH1]

While not even close to your passion, I, too, find the story of the last Czar and his family fascinating. I've read several books as well, but the one that stands out in my mind is "Nicholas and Alexandra" by Massie.

Part of the appeal, I think, is the extremes of their life: from beyond-comprehension wealth and power to the ignoble shot-in-a-basement end (with bullets bouncing off the sewed-into-the-daughters'-undergarments jewels). And it helps that what followed - the Communist killing machine nightmare - made his rule seem moderate.

I've gone to several Imperial Faberge' Egg exhibits over the years as, one, they are cool things to see (love the crazy detail and high-tech-of-its-day "surprises" etc.) and, two, there is that touch to history, to the last Czar's family. Well worth going if you ever get a chance.

I absolutely agree with you! their story is fascinating, haunting, terrible, almost unreal.... all mixed together.

Massie's " Nicholas and Alexandra" is a classic and one of the best bios out there. There are several others very good too.

I have never been to any Imperial Faberge Egg exhibits but for the amazing photos I have seen I know they are exquisite

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Makioka Sisters" published in 1949, written by Junichiro Tanizaki

Set in Japan in the inter-war years*, the novel follows the lives of a now-fading, but once important, family - the Makiokas. Using their everyday family triumphs and tragedies - similar to how Tolstoy does - Tanizaki show us the similarity of the human condition across countries and cultures while also enlightening us to the specifics of this upper-middle-class Japanese society trying to hold on to the past as modernity and a pending war forces it into a much-less-secure future.

There is way too much here to really summarize, but the novel focuses on two branches of the family, first and mainly, on the still-successful sub-branch of the family near Osaka which takes on the all-important task of finding suitable husbands for the two of four still unmarried daughters and, less so, on the downwardly mobile "main" branch in Tokyo struggling to keep up its name and face as financial woes undermine those efforts.

Everyday modern life - paying bills, finding a good doctor, advancing at work - is entwined with old customs - having a miai (a formal introduction ceremony for potential husbands and wives) or hosting the proper reception on the anniversary of a relative's passing - to limn a portrayed of this particularly part of inter-war Japanese society. At its best, there's a Edith Wharton vibe as we recognize and connect with this foreign-to-us world through its familiar struggles and successes.

More a journey than a plot-driven novel, I enjoyed being lost in "another" world and caring about the characters, their problems, their triumph, their lives. As noted - while not, IMHO, quite at these authors' level - if Tolstoy and Wharton work for you, I think you'd enjoy the "Makioka Sisters."


*One of Worf's favorite periods I believe.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Re-reading Sinclair Lewis's SF novel, It Can't Happen Here, as part of research for a short story I'm doing. Yes, I call it science fiction, as in "alternate history" . . . though when he wrote it in 1934 and published it in '35, it concerned the '36 Presidential election (which hadn't happened yet) and its aftermath. At that point it was a kind of predictive, "If this goes on --" kind of SF.

 

[Harp]

For the last year, or rather the last two years or so, I have been stuck with the topic of the last days of the Tzar (Nicholas II) and his beautiful family.



Sadly I am running out of books....

Welcome back beautiful.