What'cha read lately? Anything you'd recommend to others? Not me, I'm too wrapped up in "novel research" books. Though I did sneak in Don Quixote, which I'd never read before. I was stunned, frankly, to discover that 400-year-old prose could still be funny. I actually laughed out loud a few times and hardly ever wanted to put it down -- and finished it.
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I just re-read both Time Will Darken It and So Long, See You Tomorrow, because I had convinced myself that a line of prose in my book was something I must have lifted from one of these sources (turned out not to be in either one; I must be making myself crazy again). But they're so good, so deceptively simple, and written almost 40 years apart.
Also Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus is so brilliant, I was blown away.
Van Gogh's letters are interesting.
Grendel, are we Babies allowed to post here? Anyway, I have a recommendation, and I'm recommending it to anyone who will listen and to many people who won't:
"The Line of Beauty" by Alan Hollinghurst. It's the most recent Booker Prize winner, and it's really fabulous - even the average throw-away sentence on the page is vivid and insightful. I'm almost done with it, and I suppose my opinion could change if the ending stinks, but I've been profoundly impressed by this book in a way that I haven't been in ages - and it's also quite entertaining.
A current Workshopper offered me a compelling recommendation of "Cloud Atlas," which I plan to read next.
Of course Babies are allowed! I issued an invite somewhere on BAF. Anyways, yes, and thanks -- that's a strong recommendation. It goes on the List.
I finallly got around to The Magus over the holidays, and for a book that takes a good 200 pages just to get going and that would cause the giver of any brief plot synopsis to sound like a dolt for having liked it ("Well, there's this guy, and he's on an island in Greece, and there's this other guy, and some people in masks..."), it really is quite compelling and memorable. I read it on a vacation I'd been trying to save Cloud Atlas for (but couldn't hold off); either one is suitably balllsy and fantastical and gripping.
I've also spent the last six months falling madly in love with William Kennedy's Albany novels. I'd be happy to harp on those for a long while.
Cloud Atlas is pretty fun & interesting. Had a few good conversations w/ Monsieur Segall about why it fails. But I found it entertaining and an interesting and fairly ambitious failure. A ballsy book, indeed.
Anyone read Orhan Pamuk's Snow? Amid all the hype, I've been reading it for six months now, and keep dropping it for other things, then giving it another try. I'm beginning to think Pamuk may be the most overrated Great Author Future Nobel Prize Winner I know. Obviously nobody edits his stuff - the plot, though intriguing as an idea, circles and dead ends and reverses itself over and over again. He's obviously a brilliant guy, but is this just a book of big important ideas? or high modernism that goes way over my head? Or self-indulgent pontificating by a brave Muslim author everyone's too afraid to critique (say, because we need more of them). I guess I'm wondering, Is he any good?
Der Rosenbergs: I read the first two or three dozen head-scratching pages of "My Name is Red" and then promptly returned Mr. Pamuk to store from whence he came. Couldn't agree with the assessment more (if I might judge on so meager a sample, which I will). After reading Margaret Atwood getting all hot and bothered over "Snow" in the NYTBR you'd think the form of the novel had reached its apex. I just found it elliptical and unrestrained. Good call, y'all.
Far as Mr. Fowles goes, I am surprised he doesn't have more of a following, but that might have something to do with the fact that he spends his time in a Tesco parking lot in the Newcastle suburbs spooking the schoolchildren, or something. "Both frogs and oxen are very well by themselves; but the syzygy is fatal." Right on, bruh.
The Collector????
Has anyone other than Ian and Pete read that book? It's pretty silly . . . and the "creepy" ending, where he sees another cute girl? Lame indeed. Maybe there's a reason Fowles doesn't have a following. Just maybe.
(Okay, that was way too bitter. Sorry, guys.)
Has anyone read any of these books by Jonathan Lethem? I had to read a few recently . . . and apparently, Fortress of Solitue and Motherless Brooklyn were best-selling 'literary' works (the latter won a national award). I'd love to hear what other people think of them, if they've taken a look.
Solitu(d)e
[Dunkeys, dressed as Lucy van Pelt, sets up the ball and waits... Grendel, head shaved, in yellow shirt with zig-zag, starts running...]
Well, I enjoyed the hell out of Motherless Brooklyn. Talk about establishing a voice! Good God. But I don't know that I'd call it literary. It's a detective novel after all. With a narrator who has Tourette's. More fun reading that book, though, than any I can recall from recent reading. Fortress I anticipated eagerly, but was disappointed in the end. It was slower and more "writer-y" and just wasn't up to the Motherless standard.
(quickly: has anyone read Bend Sinister? Aside from Vampiro, and sir, please don't reveal me)
Yeah, maybe I let the ending of The Collector sway my reading too much . . . but isn't that like saying that it's only the ending of "Signs" that ruined the movie? Isn't the ending almost the point of a book? Aside from that, Senor Froeb, arguing that something is 'convincing' -- even while allowing that it's just your opinion -- is a bit of circular reasoning. Convincing to whom? "Convincingness" is like "beautiful." Or "tasty."
Anyway, Motherless Brooklyn. You guys liking that book surprises me; I was expecting boos and hisses, to be honest. There are moments when he puts in a double-space break in the middle of a scene; he doesn't break scene or shift pov or go into flashback: he just picks up where he left off. It's like a bad solo by CeCe DeVille -- ANYthing for effect. Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress seem so 'written,' even that shiny prose -- moreso that shiny prose. Everything shouldn't be Stop-Time . . . but the story should be good, at least. And the characters should be . . . well, characters. Did you guys honestly care about the people in Motherless Brooklyn? If so, my apologies. Maybe my inhumanity makes me hate all people, making mere literary apparitions the easiest to dismiss.
And wait -- I'm Kevin now?
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