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Summer Reading
- Thread starter JasonA
- Start date
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I'm going to repop, for Jason, my Trollope recommendation. You don't know what a compulsively readable book feels like until, to quote Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, you've taken a little Trollope to bed with you of an evening.
Classic!
Mark Lipton
I'm reading that now, even though I've already read just about half of it in the original published form. Reading DFW is not unproblematic for me, unfortunately, because I like to think I have some skill in an area...and then I read DFW, and realize that I'll never, ever, ever be able to do that.Just read it this week. Excellent company.Wallace's, "Consider the Lobster"
Maybe I need more footnotes and interpolations?
originally posted by Thor:
I'm reading that now, even though I've already read just about half of it in the original published form. Reading DFW is not unproblematic for me, unfortunately, because I like to think I have some skill in an area...and then I read DFW, and realize that I'll never, ever, ever be able to do that.Just read it this week. Excellent company.Wallace's, "Consider the Lobster"
Maybe I need more footnotes and interpolations?
No doubt you do. We are talking here about the collected essays of DFW rather than the original article? If so, I read it last year and loved it. DFW's death was a loss indeed but we are richer for having read him.
Mark Lipton
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The Eustace Diamonds. One of Trollope's best novels and you won't run out of it before the vacation ends.
I have The Way We Live now on deck for my maiden Trollope voyage.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by Lyle Fass:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The Eustace Diamonds. One of Trollope's best novels and you won't run out of it before the vacation ends.
I have The Way We Love now on deck for my maiden Trollope voyage.
Unless you have The Way We Live Now, you must have a Grove Press special edition by Trollope's evil twin, Skippy.
Yes.We are talking here about the collected essays of DFW rather than the original article?
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Lyle Fass:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The Eustace Diamonds. One of Trollope's best novels and you won't run out of it before the vacation ends.
I have The Way We Love now on deck for my maiden Trollope voyage.
Unless you have The Way We Live Now, you must have a Grove Press special edition by Trollope's evil twin, Skippy.
Corrected in original post. Is this a good first choice for Trollope?
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Lyle Fass:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The Eustace Diamonds. One of Trollope's best novels and you won't run out of it before the vacation ends.
I have The Way We Love now on deck for my maiden Trollope voyage.
Unless you have The Way We Live Now, you must have a Grove Press special edition by Trollope's evil twin, Skippy.
BTW it took me 30 seconds to realize my mistake, correct it, and in that time you posted. I need to be more on point here.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by Lyle Fass:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Lyle Fass:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The Eustace Diamonds. One of Trollope's best novels and you won't run out of it before the vacation ends.
I have The Way We Love now on deck for my maiden Trollope voyage.
Unless you have The Way We Live Now, you must have a Grove Press special edition by Trollope's evil twin, Skippy.
Corrected in original post. Is this a good first choice for Trollope?
I think it among Trollope's best novels (there are probably 20 of his more than 50 that I would say this about, though). But it is also among his darkest and least charming, so I don't know whether it is the best place to start. To absolutely fall in love with Trollope, probably you'd start with Barchester Towers. But one might dismiss him as a merely charming, minor novelist, if that was all one read. I suggested the Eustace Diamonds because it combines dark and socially expansive with comic Trollope. One could also argue for He Knew He was Right as showing an uncommon ability to describe obsession. And the Prime Minister will give you a stunning portrait of a marriage based on calculus that grows from partnership into something perhaps stronger than love. So there's probably no perfect place to start, as long as you keep going.
Saina Nieminen
Saina Nieminen
I've only read two from Trollope, but they were good enough that I certainly feel I should read more. The Warden, the first of the Barsetshire Chronicles, was cute; The Way We Live Now is great satire.
Today some fiction for me for a change: Condrad's Nigger of the Narcissus. I think I rather like Conrad. For some reason I've only read his shorter novels, so maybe I should try Lord Jim or Nostromo for a change.
Today some fiction for me for a change: Condrad's Nigger of the Narcissus. I think I rather like Conrad. For some reason I've only read his shorter novels, so maybe I should try Lord Jim or Nostromo for a change.
Cole Kendall
Cole Kendall
originally posted by Ken Sacks:
originally posted by Cole Kendall:
I enjoyed Wolf Hall but I was predisposed as a huge H Mantel fan. As I have been spending a lot of time in the 15th/16th centuries recently it was interesting to see things from across the channel.
Oh yes!!! Wolf Hall is brilliant, though not entirely easy to get into. Give it 100 pages, as I've friends who've given up on it before then. Still trying to read her French Rev. book: will attack it again this summer.
Consider the Lobster is something very, very special: a cultural building block...a spiritual meditation...something that makes us realize that we're human and, for all our shortcomings, maybe more.
I too loved the French Rev book and I passed it on to Prof Loesberg who seemed to enjoy it as well.
And on DFW, Infinite Jest was better than the early fiction.
originally posted by Ken Sacks:
Caro's wife, Ina, his only research assistant and a professionally trained historian, is a fabulous writer herself (very different style). Road from the Past, her book on France--history, anthropology, and food--has been widely praised. It's an utterly charming account of her and Bob's French travels and discoveries. I think she would approve of drinking something like Rimbert Saint-Chinian's Le Mas au Schiste with it.
Road from the Past is truely an amazing book. Anyone who visits the Loire or Provence should read it, or even have a copy along, but it would be a worthy beach read as well.
Dan Donahue
Dan Donahue
Granted the Trollope Barsetshire and Palliser sequences need not be read in order, but I'd still read Can You Forgive Her? and Phineas Finn (Palliser 1 & 2) before Eustace Diamonds (Palliser 3) just to grow into the full milieu.
BTW as much as I enjoy Trollope he isn't my idea of vacation reading. I once spent a summer reading Proust, but not during my vacation.
BTW as much as I enjoy Trollope he isn't my idea of vacation reading. I once spent a summer reading Proust, but not during my vacation.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by Lyle Fass:
I will check the others out. I live for dark. My favorite Hardy, by far, is Jude the Obscure. Thanks for the reccomendations. May I pick your brain again? Just read Sister Carrie by Dreiser and loved loved it. Where do I go from there?
American fiction isn't my strong point. But I remember liking Dreiser's An American Tragedy as well. You might take a look at Frank Norris's McTeague. But I have to say that American Naturalism isn't what I like best. I much prefer Zola since I like it when they actually have some sense of prose and literary form, and Dreiser, for me, doesn't.
I agree with Cole about Mantel, who he turned me onto and about Infinite Jest being the best thing DFW did and a major achievement by any measure.
ok, I'll throw my two cents in here (by the way, I agree with Jonathan's view of what good beach reading is - it must be fun, engaging, and by all means well-written).
"The World as I Found It" by Bruce Duffy - a fictional telling of the life of Wittgenstein, with a little Bertrand Russell thrown in on the side - alternately silly, intense, philosophical, action-packed, romantic, and thoughtful.
"Dr Criminale" by Malcolm Bradbury - a former writer for a London Sunday literary newspaper, fired for saying on camera what he (and others) really think of the Booker prizes, chases "a great thinker of the 20th century" from soiree to soiree in an effort to profile him for a tv series. If you liked the tone of the film "Cold Comfort Farm" you've got Bradbury (he wrote that script, albeit based on a 30s novel)
"Ten Days in the Hills" by Jane Smiley - her take on the Decameron, set in Hollywood just after the invasion of Iraq. Unbelievably readable and interesting, considering it's all talking, eating, and fucking.
"The World as I Found It" by Bruce Duffy - a fictional telling of the life of Wittgenstein, with a little Bertrand Russell thrown in on the side - alternately silly, intense, philosophical, action-packed, romantic, and thoughtful.
"Dr Criminale" by Malcolm Bradbury - a former writer for a London Sunday literary newspaper, fired for saying on camera what he (and others) really think of the Booker prizes, chases "a great thinker of the 20th century" from soiree to soiree in an effort to profile him for a tv series. If you liked the tone of the film "Cold Comfort Farm" you've got Bradbury (he wrote that script, albeit based on a 30s novel)
"Ten Days in the Hills" by Jane Smiley - her take on the Decameron, set in Hollywood just after the invasion of Iraq. Unbelievably readable and interesting, considering it's all talking, eating, and fucking.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
A mention of Chancery on another thread reminded me of another great novel, Bleak House, everybody, Bleak House. And as long as we're on Victorian classics, Middlemarch. OK, I've gotten that off my chest.