What Are You Reading

[Fading Fast]

Parades End

It's a recent addition to my book queue - what do you think so far?

 

[Hercule]

Operation Salam

 

[ChiTownScion]

Father and Son by James T. Farrell. Third volume of the Danny O'Neill pentalogy. Less well known than the Studs Lonigan trilogy, but more interesting in the sense that Danny is clearly meant to be Farrell himself, and it's a priceless resource in studying an author that was so influential to others, including Mailer and Terkel.

 

[Harp]

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.

Sebastian Haffner's Geschichte eines Deutschen was badly translated into English and I am looking for a German edition.

Simon Leys commented on Haffner in The Hall of Uselessness and I am tempted to pit my college German against this memoir
of a young Berliner who left Germany in 1938 on purely moral grounds.

 

[1mach1]

Ben Tripp's second zombie thriller, Rise Again: Below Zero

Niiiiiiiice.

 

[Touchofevil]

Niiiiiiiice.

Have you read it? Both books are a lot more entertaining than I thought they would be.

 

[1mach1]

Have you read it? Both books are a lot more entertaining than I thought they would be.

Agreed. A buddy put me on to them. I had doubts, but was pleasantly surprised. I am sure James has something to say right about now.....

 

[Touchofevil]

Agreed. A buddy put me on to them. I had doubts, but was pleasantly surprised. I am sure James has something to say right about now.....

How could he not?

 

[Touchofevil]

Georges Simenon's, from 1953, Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard. A perfect read for a overcast day.

 

[jamespowers]

Agreed. A buddy put me on to them. I had doubts, but was pleasantly surprised. I am sure James has something to say right about now.....

Zombies = Good book.

 

[Touchofevil]

Zombies = Good book.

And both books were.

 

[John Boyer]

An introduction to Bernard Lonergan: Exploring Lonergan's approach to the great philosophical questions by Peter Beer, SJ

Socrates meets Kierkegaard: The father of philosophy meets the father of Christian existentialism by Peter Kreeft

 

[Wally_Hood]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Read it about thirty years ago, so some parts are familiar, but mostly like a new book to me.

 

[Harp]

An introduction to Bernard Lonergan: Exploring Lonergan's approach to the great philosophical questions by Peter Beer, SJ

Socrates meets Kierkegaard: The father of philosophy meets the father of Christian existentialism by Peter Kreeft

Hi John-
Still stuck on Simone but-I have six vols of Copleston's History, Greece through Kant to plow through this winter.
Another Jebbie, Copleston is a pleasure. If you haven't read I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates, it is excellent.

 

[dh66]

"Tell My Horse" Zora Neale Hurston's 1938 exploration of Voodoo in the Carribean.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Mover and Shaker: Walter O'Malley, The Dodgers, and Baseball's Westward Expansion" by Andy McCue, former president of the Society for American Baseball Research. A new biography of the man who cut down the tree that grew in Brooklyn, which while not the definitive account of The Move, does go into new and interesting detail about all of the political infighting in Los Angeles that came astonishingly close to leaving the Dodgers with nowhere to go but back home. If Only.

 

[Two Types]

Georges Simenon's, from 1953, Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard. A perfect read for a overcast day.

I've just read George Simenon's 'The Mahe Circle': written in 1944, first English language edition 2014. That's the joy of Simenon, it'll take me the rest of my life to read them all!

 

[Two Types]

Currently reading: 'Brothers in Law' by Henry Cecil. It's an early 1950s comi novel about a newly qualified barrister. The film of the book starred Ian Carmichael and is one of my favourite comedies.

 

[Touchofevil]

I've just read George Simenon's 'The Mahe Circle': written in 1944, first English language edition 2014. That's the joy of Simenon, it'll take me the rest of my life to read them all!

I have that on my to read list as well as so many others sitting and waiting. I wish so many more authors who I enjoy were as prolific as Simenon. If Ross MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis, and too many more were able to churn it out as I wish, I would not have to savor and space out reading each and everything they wrote.

 

[Harp]

"Mover and Shaker: Walter O'Malley, The Dodgers, and Baseball's Westward Expansion"...
A new biography of the man who cut down the tree that grew in Brooklyn...

...O'Malley didn't like the book? Always curious about that move to LA. Might give it a look.

Michael Lewis' Moneyball is one of the best baseball books I've read in a long time.
Theo traded Smardj to the As, not a surprise given the paycheck, but it hurt to see him go.