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| Marj |
 Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 11:45 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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Jeremy,
I can't tell you how happy I am to see your face! Even if you're here for a short time or long, you must know you've been missed ... a lot! And I'm seriously looking into the book you recommended. It sounds like my kind of book. No wonder Lorne read it. *chuckle*
Mitty,
Look look seriously gorgeous. Now Charles is another matter. [I'm kidding.] Charles you look like the suave cat who swallowed the canary. Hey! Maybe you did!! |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 1:48 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| Thank you Marj. And I missed everyone here too, even if it seems peverse to say so given my wilful absence. And Carrobin, I'm sorry I we didn't get to meet up in Derbyshire. Should you find yourself in New Zealand...you'll probably find I've moved back to the UK. |
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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 2:29 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 921
Location: New Orleans
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Back again, and thanks everyone for your friendly comments and congratulations for Katherine (mitty) and myself. It opens a new chapter in both our lives -- what else in a book forum? -- and we are more happy than you can imagine.
With the possible exception of Gary who is apparently now enjoying his own happiness. Congratulations to you in return, Gary.
And thanks Lorne for capturing the star quality of Katherine, whom I can now sdmire in person every day. She is all that! (Even though she modestly denies it  ).
Best of all, it is very nice for Katherine and myself to receive a friendly welcome from old friends here.
And welcome back, Jeremy, too, who I now find out was away while I was also.
Charles |
Last edited by pedersencr on Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:32 pm; edited 1 time in total
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What we know is not what we think |
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:13 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 921
Location: New Orleans
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And speaking of books, I have recently started Vol. 1 of a three-part series, Your Face Tomorrow, by Javier Marias. It is a slow-paced book with long sentences and challenging syntax, of the sort that I always say I like. But it stilll takes patience and I am sticking with it.
The back-cover blurbs have it as:
Quote: "... a strange and intellectual thriller..." (The London Independent)
Quote: "Javier Marias -- Spain's best bait for the Nobel Prize" (Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun)
Quote: "...the novels of Dostoevsky, Proust and Beckett." (Ian Mitchell, naming it as a TLS Book of the Year)
These are quite possibly all true, based on the 100 pages I have read so far, but they omit to mention "and quite opaque," which I might also be inclined to add.
It follows upon 2666 by Roberto Bolano, which I finished in January. That was another monumental read which was both frustrating and fascinating in its own right.
So, the beat goes on -- and I am getting cross-eyed looking at these sentences.  |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:28 pm |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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I'm [sorta] currently reading 2666, I'd given up on it about halfway through, as it's a strange combination of gruesome and boring, No, I shouldn't say boring, that's not accurate.
It's divided into 5 parts, The Part About the Critics, The Part About Amalfitano, The Part About Fate, The Part About the Crimes, and The Part About Archimboldi.
To me it seems as though Bolano is being purposeful in his unrelenting recounting of the crimes in part 4, he wants the reader to figuratively drown in his words, in the deeds, and in the callousness of not only the police, but everyone that hears of the crimes. It seems to me at this point, one third of the way through part 4, that callousness and eventual indifference to the fates of the victims is the uniting factor of the book, and the point that Bolano is really attempting to make regarding humans and the world in general. Maybe it had to do with his own political background, or the fact that he knew he was dying, but he certainly viewed the world with a jaundiced eye.
It's the sort of book that I had trouble starting, but then it was really difficult to put down, but I did so because it was seemingly affecting my mood, and not for the better. It creeps up on you almost before you notice and pow. Now I'm more ready for the impact.
Charles was more stoic about the whole thing.  |
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:39 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: New Orleans
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ROTFL, mitty!
Maybe "stoic" was indeed the word for my plowing through 2666. But, yes, I think you have it exactly right in saying
Quote: callousness and eventual indifference to the fates of the victims is the uniting factor of the book, and the point that Bolano is really attempting to make regarding humans and the world in general
even after reading the rest of the book beyond where you stopped. Spot on, as far as I am concerned for the whole book. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 11:08 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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Mitty...................I haven't yet read Woman in White.............I think there is a movie version. You may be right about it being first. I'll put it on my list. For now reading women mystery writer's short stories in Elizabeth George's Two of the Deadliest (lust and greed). It's fun.
I will check out the Follett book............historical fiction isn't an area I usually venture into.
The best book I read recently was Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory. It tells the remarkable story of Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinal's football player who joined the army after 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire in Afganistan. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:05 pm |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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Befade wrote: Mitty...................I haven't yet read Woman in White.............I think there is a movie version. You may be right about it being first. I'll put it on my list. For now reading women mystery writer's short stories in Elizabeth George's Two of the Deadliest (lust and greed). It's fun.
I will check out the Follett book............historical fiction isn't an area I usually venture into.
The best book I read recently was Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory. It tells the remarkable story of Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinal's football player who joined the army after 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire in Afganistan.
There is a film version of WiW Befade, I've seen it. I would say it follows some of the book, although as always, the book is so much more.
I'm presently reading The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill, here is the synopsis from the back cover.
Quote: Dr. Siri Paiboun, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the Communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but this independent 72-year-old has an outstanding qualification for it: curiosity. And he doesn't mind incurring the wrath of the Party hierarchy as he unravels mysterious murders, because the spirits of the dead are on his side.
It's light and humorous, in spite of the subject matter. |
Last edited by mitty on Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:08 pm |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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And...Hey there Jeremy!
Nice to see another one come back. |
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| RodneyWelch |
| Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:19 pm |
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Joined: 08 Apr 2007
Posts: 9
Location: Elgin, SC
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I liked 2666, but I suppose like everyone in the end I wasn't absolutely sure the parts cohered, and the title remains a mystery (despite the afterword, which actually only complicates things.) I guess you can call a book anything. I recently read where Faulkner said "Light in August" has almost nothing to do with light in August; he just liked the image.
I greatly liked the book, which proved to be quite a page-turner once you get to the murders. A numbing and exhausting page-turner. I couldn't put the book down. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:11 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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| Rodney - Welcome! And thanks for your mini-review. I'm certainly intrigued. |
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| RodneyWelch |
| Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:44 pm |
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Joined: 08 Apr 2007
Posts: 9
Location: Elgin, SC
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| Thanks. Glad to be here. Or should I say glad to be back. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2010 10:25 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| I'm halfway through a memoir called "Walking Through Walls," by Philip Smith, son of a successful Miami decorator of the 50s and 60s named Lew Smith. The thing is, Lew Smith was also a psychic and healer, which annoyed his self-centered teenage son no end, especially since his father always knew where he was, what he was doing, and whom he was with (even though that awareness saved his life a couple of times). It's a fascinating story, though it's probably not for skeptics, who will insist that it's fiction. I have no doubts, though, having experienced similar situations myself. |
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| lshap |
| Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2010 10:29 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 4246
Location: Montreal
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Hey Rodney - You're looking like one part Paul Giamatti, another part Tony Soprano. Welcome back to both of you.
Edward Rutherfurd's name came up a couple of weeks ago, and since then I read his latest novel, New York. Like all his novels it's big and meaty, blending fictional families with centuries of real history and historical figures. Unlike his other books, New York focuses a little tighter on one family tree, as we meet them in the city's 17th century pre-incarnation as New Amsterdam, and watch their descendants branch their way past the American Revolution, the Civil War and finally into the 20th century, pausing at September, 2001 and continuing up to Summer 2009.
Given New York's frenzied history, maintaining focus is the trick. Rutherfurd does a nice balancing act between telling the stories of the Dutch settlers who became New York's 'old-money' and the immigrants who gave the city its character. He pays basic lip service to the native Indian tribes, but truthfully, by the time the story starts the fate of the Native American is already sealed, so you can make the cynical argument that Rutherfurd's short attention span toward the Indians reflects the era he's writing about.
There's the usual, and always cool, intertwining of many families over generations, but the book spends most of its time with a single Dutch/English family. It makes for a narrower cast of characters, which keeps the story from spinning out of control and allows individual characters to shine a little brighter, and a little longer.
The depth of research into the belly of the city is unbelievable. I doubt most native New Yorkers will know half this stuff. Plus, nobody juggles geneology over hundreds of years like Rutherfurd. It's a great book.
But now, after this book, which followed Follet's two historical tomes, I'm coming off an almost 3-thousand page epic high with nothing to read.
Will investigate 2066. Will also investigate getting a life. |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2010 4:48 pm |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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I've read Rutherford's London and Sarum and enjoyed both, I've been eying New York for a couple of weeks, I think you've convinced me.
I don't know if I could recommend 2666 in good faith. I haven't finished it yet, I keep finding something else to read, anything.
Right now I'm reading Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. I'm not too far in, but enough to know I'll like it. Medieval setting, plague, sinister characters, the whole nine yards. |
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