What Are You Reading

[Derek Cavin]

Currently reading "West Point '41". A book about the class of 1941 at West Point and how WWII and beyond affected their lives.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just finished my annual re-reading of John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," probably the greatest American novel of the last fifty years. Burma Jones is the Man. Ooo-wee!

 

[Harp]

Just finished my annual re-reading of John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," probably the greatest American novel of the last fifty years.

George Eliot's Daniel Deronda; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; and Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.

A triple out.

But I recognize Toole's comic genius.

 

[HadleyH]

This is the last residence of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, sister of Tsar Nicholas II. She passed away in Toronto (in the apartment over the travel agency) in 1960. A long, long way from St. Petersburg.

Thank you so much for that info DNO! .... I have not read bios of Olga, the Tzar's sister... I might very well do in the future.

I think that despite all the tragedies she had to endure during her lifetime ... she lived her life in exile with dignity and courage.



- her final years of exile in Canada



- from long long ago, in another time and another world.

 

[LizzieMaine]

But I recognize Toole's comic genius.

That's my greatest joy in reading the book -- Toole's command of comic phrasing is on a par with that of Fred Allen, the twentieth century's other great unsung genius. No matter how many times I read "Dunces," and I've read it many times, I always find something I never noticed before. "Miss Trixie was never perfectly vertical; she and the floor always met at an angle of less than ninety degrees." Just brilliant.

The great tragedy of Toole's life is that he didn't live to write in the twenty-first century. Ignatius J. Reilly could be alive and well and posting on Internet forums today.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just finished "Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill" by Barry Singer. A neat book for Fedora Lounge fans as it focuses on Churchill's lifestyle - clothes, homes, cars, cigars, food, etc. - but uses the basic arc of his public and (less so) personal life for structure so it serves as a very simple biography of him as well. Having read several Churchill biographies already, this was fun as a refresher, but the real fun is all the lifestyle elements from, mainly, the first half of the Twentieth Century. And, my God, could this man spend money that he didn't have on luxury items.

Currently, I'm ready "An Officer and a Spy" by Robert Harris which is a historical fiction about the Dreyfus Affair. Early on, but so far, well done in the page-turner style of enjoyable fiction that is also bringing in some decent historical detail. I'm also reading "Fordlandia" by Greg Grandin which recounts the Ford Motor Company's (but really Henry Ford's - as they were one and the same in the 1920s when this story mainly takes place) attempt to convert a massive amount of the Amazon jungle into a rubber plantation. Also early in, but seems like an interesting / crazy historic curio.

 

[Harp]

Having read several Churchill biographies already, this was fun as a refresher, but the real fun is all the lifestyle elements from, mainly, the first half of the Twentieth Century.

William Manchester's The Last Lion is a magnificent portrait of this exceedingly complex man.

 

[Fading Fast]

William Manchester's The Last Lion is a magnificent portrait of this exceedingly complex man.

I read "Churchill: A Life" by Martin Gilbert many years ago and thought it was outstanding, but want to read "The Last Lion" at some point.

 

[Hercule]

William Manchester's The Last Lion is a magnificent portrait of this exceedingly complex man.

Churchill: Taken From the Diaries of Lord Moran: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, I found, was a very interesting read. Quite insightful as to just how self absorbed and self important he was.

 

[Fading Fast]

Churchill: Taken From the Diaries of Lord Moran: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, I found, was a very interesting read. Quite insightful as to just how self absorbed and self important he was.

His beyond-the-pale self-absorption comes through loud and clear in "Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill" and the Gilbert book. Sometimes his self-centeredness is stunning even when you know he is that way. If you don't like Churchill, "Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill" will be just more grist for your mill; if you do like him, you view it as all part of what made him great - i.e., he was a force of self-absorbed nature that moved countries and people to his will, overall, for the better.

Regardless of one's view, the "Art" book is fun for its "Fedora Lounge" Era peak at his lifestyle.

 

[scarletgrenadine]

I've been wanting to re-read Confederacy of Dunces. I need to dig up my copy. It's been a few years since my last reading.

I've been re-reading The Great Gatsby. I don't know why it's taken me until my third reading to realize how sleekly and elegantly it is constructed. And the prose is pure and limpid and original throughout.

 

[Fading Fast]

I've been wanting to re-read Confederacy of Dunces. I need to dig up my copy. It's been a few years since my last reading.

I've been re-reading The Great Gatsby. I don't know why it's taken me until my third reading to realize how sleekly and elegantly it is constructed. And the prose is pure and limpid and original throughout.

I've read "The Great Gatsby" several times over the last several decades - the first time in high school - and, like you, I appreciate it more each time. It did make a big impression on me the first time, but it was only later that I came to appreciate the, as you said so well, elegance of the prose and construction.

That said, I always struggle with Daisy as a character of such infatuation as she is so vapid; however, I get that she represents an idealized world that a young Gatsby felt locked out of. I struggle to accept the passion he brings to his obsession. But I also understand that making her vapid was probably Fitzgerald's commentary on the world she represents. Even so, I still find her character as the fulcrum of the obsession challenging.

 

[Harp]

That said, I always struggle with Daisy as a character of such infatuation as she is so vapid; however, I get that she represents an idealized world that a young Gatsby felt locked out of. I struggle to accept the passion he brings to his obsession. But I also understand that making her vapid was probably Fitzgerald's commentary on the world she represents. Even so, I still find her character as the fulcrum of the obsession challenging.

Catherine and Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights may have inspired Fitzgerald; though Zelda herself invites comparison.

 

[Frk.W]

I'm drawing out reading the very last stories of Tove Jansson's The Summer Book, because I don't want the book to end, and going through Heinrich Böll's The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum very fast, because it's engulfing and slightly horrifying. Both are very good, and I'm reading both in Swedish, which makes me think of language - Tove Jansson wrote in Swedish, but was Finnish and her Swedish has a distinctly Finnish taste, peculiar and beautiful. Böll is dryly funny, even when the subject matter is not, and I can hear the German words, rhythm and turns of phrases resonate through the translation. I like that.

 

[alsendk]

Just finished a book called Vattenslottet..the watercastle by swedish author Per Wastberg. A wonderful book. Actually a trilogy. Can't wait to read the remaining two. It's a little tough for me to read in swedish language, but with both my parents living in Sweden I ought to give it a try

 

[Hercule]

Regardless of one's view, the "Art" book is fun for its "Fedora Lounge" Era peak at his lifestyle.

Yes indeed. I quite enjoyed my time with the "Art" book. It would be great if there were similar books for other historical personalities.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Rereading Manning Marable's weighty biography "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention." My impression the first time I read this, right after it came out, was that it offered a skimpier job of research than Bruce Perry's exhaustive "Malcolm: The Life Of A Man Who Changed Black America," but on rereading I think it's more of a complement to the Perry book than an attempt to supplant it. The definitive Malcolm biography has yet to be written, and probably won't be for a long time yet, but combine Marable and Perry and you'll get a pretty good approximation of one.

 

[Harp]

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan
A chronicle of Edward Curtis' documentation of the stories and rituals of more than eighty North American tribes.

 

[Retro Spectator]

Not really a big book, in fact, it's very tiny. It's called Don'ts for Golf, and it's from 1925. It basically tells you golf etiquette.

 

[PADDY]

Parades End