Summer Reading

originally posted by Bill Lundstrom:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Jay Miller:
originally posted by Bill Lundstrom:
i am trying to get through a s byatt's "possession".
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Loved that book.
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I thought it was great too. And compulsively readable--if at times silly. Are you really having a hard time getting through it?
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i am having a hard time with the first 50 pages or so. it's just not grabbing my attention yet. i will continue to read it to the end.

can i ask what you mean by "silly"? i can't imagine mrs byatt getting silly. her writing seems so serious to me.
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When you get to the end, you'll find the slapstick. Byatt's parodies of postmodern academics was broader and less funny than David Lodge's. Most importantly, it is impossible to imagine committed theorists of the kind that the feminist heroine and various other surrounding characters are supposed to represent imagining that a louche biographical event in the lives of two poets would have made a difference to their interpretations of the poetry one way or the other. For instance, in the scene in which the heroine fines the trove of letters by interpreting a poem, she doesn't interpret the poem. She cracks it as a private code. No doubt, it can work that way and she might do that to achieve an end. But she would never think that she was interpreting a poem as a work of art. I understand that the novel works by connecting a seduction to the true lifeblood of poetry with a seduction to love (allowing possession to occur). But, postmodern aesthete that I am, I find the notion that one is possessed by poetry when one finds out something about a poet's life that gives their poetry private significance odd.

But it was a page turner. When the slapstick isn't broad, the depiction of academic rivalry is knowing and the parodies of the Browning monologues in particular are breathtaking.
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:
originally posted by JasonA:
Bump
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Well with the latest book finally out and the HBO series winning raves you could do worse than start George R R Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series.
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Best in kind genre fiction. I read Dance with Dragons in a few days. But I'm a huge dork and not classy like other folks here when it comes to fiction.

Other stuff I really like that didn't get a mention was Richard Ford's Bascombe trilogy.

I just finished a fantastic book by Justin Fox, The Myth of the Rational Market. If you are antagonistic to market fundamentalism, you'll love it. If you're an idiot and believe in market fundamentalism, it might wake you up.

Back to genre fiction, if oyu haven't read Le Carre's Smiley books, you should. I read Our Kind of Traitor recently and liked it quite a bit.
 
Here's a great summer read - won the national book award and the pulitzer but nonetheless fun, hip, and profound:

"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.
 
originally posted by Bill Lundstrom:
i am having a hard time with the first 50 pages or so. it's just not grabbing my attention yet. i will continue to read it to the end.
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do what I did - skip the poetry!
 
originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
David Mitchell's Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas have both provided summer joy. Anyone that side of the puddle read anything of his?
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Count me as a Mitchell fan who has read them all; the Thousand Summers (most recent) was as good as the rest. I also enjoy Jonathan Coe.
 
originally posted by maureen:
Here's a great summer read - won the national book award and the pulitzer but nonetheless fun, hip, and profound:

"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.
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Coincidentally, I am reading a laudatory review of that very book in the London Review of Books while at the beach.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by maureen:
Here's a great summer read - won the national book award and the pulitzer but nonetheless fun, hip, and profound:

"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.
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I read that not long ago, and agree with Maureen.
 
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.
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Did you ever read Alistair Horne's book on 1940? I'm wondering how Shirer's compares...
 
originally posted by Cole Kendall:
originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
David Mitchell's Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas have both provided summer joy. Anyone that side of the puddle read anything of his?
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Count me as a Mitchell fan who has read them all; the Thousand Summers (most recent) was as good as the rest. I also enjoy Jonathan Coe.
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I've only read Cloud Atlas which I liked enough so that I will go on to read the rest.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by maureen:
Here's a great summer read - won the national book award and the pulitzer but nonetheless fun, hip, and profound:

"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.
Click to expand...

Coincidentally, I am reading a laudatory review of that very book in the London Review of Books while at the beach.

Mark Lipton
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I just read it - don't read the novel for awhile - the reviewer seemed determined to tell you everything about the book (despite waiting about six paragraphs to begin talking about it - a practice I find most irritating and one that seems to be calling out "hey, look how smart I am!").
 
originally posted by maureen:
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by maureen:
Here's a great summer read - won the national book award and the pulitzer but nonetheless fun, hip, and profound:

"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.
Click to expand...

Coincidentally, I am reading a laudatory review of that very book in the London Review of Books while at the beach.

Mark Lipton
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I just read it - don't read the novel for awhile - the reviewer seemed determined to tell you everything about the book (despite waiting about six paragraphs to begin talking about it - a practice I find most irritating and one that seems to be calling out "hey, look how smart I am!").
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That's pretty much par for the course with LRB. Given the rest of their writing, I view it more as "putting the book in context" (otherwise known as using the book as a thin pretext for writing an article on whatever topic one chooses). Often they review 2-3 books in one article which liberates them even more from their nominal subject matter. I've taken your endorsement to heart, though, and will put it into the queue (at present, 8 months in length).

Mark Lipton
 
Just went to a Terry Thiese tasting and book signing last night in Portland at E&R Wines...so I have yet another book to get to this summer. Glad for a late harvest, so I can get my reading done.
 
"In The Garden of Yeasts" by E. Larson
"Bad Moon Rising" by R. Steiner
"The Girl with the Guyot Tattoo" by S. Larsson

And other light classics of the genre.
 
Kafka on the Shore by Murakami. Stunning book and I've bought a couple of his other titles, just started on Dance Dance Dance.

The two latest Donna Leon books on Inspettore Brunetti in Venice (very worthwhile as much for their descriptions of Venice as for their mysteries) while summoning up my spirits to make a go at Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre by Ellen Rosand

Edited for typos.
 
Kafka on the Shore is excellent. My favorite Murakami titles are Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and I also quite like Norwegian Wood.
 
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