Summer Reading

the steig larsson triology that starts with the "the girl with the dragon tatoo" is awesome if you like crime thriller genre.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I suggest Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. Brilliant, funny, brilliant, funny, beach, brilliant, funny.
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Just saw the Graham Greene movie with Alec Guiness movie the other night. Don't miss it -- one of the great Burl Ives performances!
 
Uncharacteristically, I'm not reading anything consequential for the moment, but for a suggestion how about Gravity's Rainbow? Long, absorbing and doesn't need much intellectual input.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Joe Dressner:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I suggest Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. Brilliant, funny, brilliant, funny, beach, brilliant, funny.
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Just saw the Graham Greene movie with Alec Guiness movie the other night. Don't miss it -- one of the great Burl Ives performances!
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I watched this movie about three weeks ago - great flick. The Havana police chief was pretty good too.

As to Pynchon, I didn't like Gravity's Rainbow at all; for my 2 cents, V is much better.

Moritmer's Rumpole stories or any P. G. Wodehouse are good, mindless fun.
 
Gravity's Rainbow doesn't need much intellectual input? Can we possibly be referring to the same book?

I've never quite figured out how to go about reading it. And I've tried on a couple of occasions.

Way over my head.

A recent engrossing read: The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr.

Right now I am pursuing Shirer's The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940.

It's long and structured in such a way as to make it a compelling history.
 
Anticipating the final volume, I've been re-reading Tim Mackintosh-Smith's travel books where he follows Ibn Battuta's footsteps, Travels With a Tangerine & Hall of a Thousand Columns. Landfalls should be released this summer. These (and his earlier book, Yemen, Travels in Dictionary Land) are some of the best travel books I've read: erudite, full of puns, very much the product of the eccentric gentleman. But you must have an interest in the history of the Near East.
 
Oh, also, Caro's Johnson biography volumes make a good sink-in read. Master of the Senate also incorporates a fair amount of institutional analysis and history, as well. Caro's earlier work, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses in New York, is also a good 'forget the the world for a while' read.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Oh, also, Caro's Johnson biography volumes make a good sink-in read. Master of the Senate also incorporates a fair amount of institutional analysis and history, as well. Caro's earlier work, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses in New York, is also a good 'forget the the world for a while' read.
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Totally agree about Caro's LBJ trilogy, Ian. Have you heard whether he's planning any additional volumes? Master of the Senate leaves off a few years of his life in which a few interesting things happened.

re: V v. GR -- I like them both, but Gravity's Rainbow is more typical beach reading to me.

Mark Lipton
 
Stacked up for Door County in July:

John Sandford Storm Prey
F. Paul Wilson Harbringers (Repairman Jack)
Larsson as noted above
Dr. Neal Barnard Foods That Fight Pain (getting old is a bitch)
 
Europe Between the Oceans, by Barry Cunliffe, is one of the more beautiful history books I've had the pleasure to read in the last couple of years. It is well written, interesting and seems to present a lot of original material, as well. If you order off Amazon, it's a real bargain.
 
When Master of the Senate was published, I believe Caro was planning two more volumes. We'll see if he lives to complete it.

I have enjoyed the three volumes so far since I shared its 60s left perception of Johnson at one time and can still revel in it. I must say that that evaluation has seemed less and less nuanced with time and Caro's skepticism about the sincerity of Johnson's civil rights commitment, held in the face of research that seems to show it of very early date (though never held in such a way as to endanger his ambition, but who expects that of working politicians?), while fun to read, looks less and less tenable.

On Graham Greene, all the novels that he classed as entertainments are literate and engaging suspense-spy novels and Our Man in Havana is indeed very funny. If you want contemporary versions, I'd suggest the novels of Alan Furst set in the years around WWII and from the perspective of Europeans caught up in a war between totalitarianisms that left very little maneuvering room.

The best part of Gravity's Rainbow is the first half, which is indeed, hard to read, but worth the effort. As the plot clears up, the novel also dries up. In this vein, I'd also suggest Infinite Jest.

I don't think Pynchon, Wallace or Caro is really beach reading, though.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
When Master of the Senate was published, I believe Caro was planning two more volumes. We'll see if he lives to complete it.

I have enjoyed the three volumes so far since I shared its 60s left perception of Johnson at one time and can still revel in it. I must say that that evaluation has seemed less and less nuanced with time and Caro's skepticism about the sincerity of Johnson's civil rights commitment, held in the face of research that seems to show it of very early date (though never held in such a way as to endanger his ambition, but who expects that of working politicians?), while fun to read, looks less and less tenable.
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Thanks, Prof. Your take on LBJ revisionsism is interesting, and I do think that it's important to take into account how long ago it was that Caro started this project. From what I've read of the LBJ re-evaluation, he has become a more complex and conflicted figure: as Caro noted, he worked hard for the electrification of poor, rural Texas early on in his career, but seems to have taken on the Civil Rights Act as a way of honoring the memory of JFK's intentions. I find it fascinating that a man as accomplished and (apparently) self-confident as LBJ seems to have been so beset by guilt/inferiority in his relationship with JFK and his ghost. That trait was, of course, also his fatal flaw, to adopt the terminology of Greek tragedy, as it led him to continue and escalate JFK's war in Vietnam even though he had no personal confidence in its viability (as recent revelations from his private tapes have revealed). This is what I'd hope Caro would explore in future volumes.

The best part of Gravity's Rainbow is the first half, which is indeed, hard to read, but worth the effort. As the plot clears up, the novel also dries up. In this vein, I'd also suggest Infinite Jest.

I don't think Pynchon, Wallace or Caro is really beach reading, though.
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Perhaps it's my technical training that gives me a different perspective, but, apart from learning a bit of the history of German SW Africa and keeping track of dizzying numbers of characters and story lines, I didn't find GR hard to get through at all. Pynchon's fiction I find clever, but his characters tend to be cartoonish to me, with little complexity and even less emotion. Knowing of your chosen field of study, I'd be surprised if you felt favorably inclined about his fiction.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Oh, also, Caro's Johnson biography volumes make a good sink-in read. Master of the Senate also incorporates a fair amount of institutional analysis and history, as well. Caro's earlier work, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses in New York, is also a good 'forget the the world for a while' read.
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Totally agree about Caro's LBJ trilogy, Ian. Have you heard whether he's planning any additional volumes Master of the Senate leaves off a few years of his life in which a few interesting things happened.

re: V v. GR -- I like them both, but Gravity's Rainbow is more typical beach reading to me.

Mark Lipton
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GR fell apart for me at some point, although I finished it: maybe that says more about me than about the book. Although I still think about the final rocket ride from time to time.

Caro is still working on the series, as far as I know. I heard a presentation he made a couple of years ago that was broadcast on the radio. He spoke, among other things, about the difficulty of replicating the quality of the earlier volumes as fewer and few key people who were involved in Johnson's career are available to assist with the research. What John wrote makes sense in view of the structure of Caro's approach: two volumes would allow Caro to cover his period as Vice-president and then as President.

So John, what's the dictionary definition of beach book, and how do you determine which tomes do and don't qualify?

There is also the Civil War history: Shelby Foote's series; Grant's or Sherman's memoirs; Wills on Lincoln. Or musical biography: Marek's biography of Beethoven, or Schonberg's Lives of the Great Composers. Once you get started with this, it's hard to stop. There are also some decent books on wine.
 
The Power Broker would seem to provide a lot of local color to Fire Island and adjacent parts.

The 4th edition of "Infections of Leisure" is out, and it would seem to be on point.

I really loved "Present at the Creation," but the love has not been universally shared by others.
 
Sorry I crossed messages with you, Mark. I think one of the things that makes Johnson's life story worth the effort Caro has put into telling it is its Faustian quality. To do good, he needed power; to attain power, he sold much of his soul.

By the way, I didn't read Caro as skeptical about Johnson's commitment to civil rights. I'd also suggest that some democrats are using Johnson's approach to civil rights legislation as a model, of sorts, for their approach to health care reform legislation. But this topic is probably too political.
 
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