| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8948 Registered: 05-2005 |
Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz. I cheated though. I have the book, but it's dauntingly huge, so I also have the audio version. I had the book read to me by Diamond and Horovitz, helped out by Snoop Dogg, Bette Midler, Ben Stiller, Kim Gordon, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny, Wanda Sykes, Jon Stewart, Jarvis Cocker, Rosie Perez (the most annoying voice here by miles), Rachel Maddow, Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Kate Schellenbach, Ada Calhoun, Yoshimi P-We, Bobby Cannavale, Spike Jonze and a few I've forgotten. Mostly it's brilliant, though reading a list of instruments used and tracks played works better in print, and a chef reading out a recipe held zero interest for me. But if you buy one audiobook ever, this should be the one if you've ever had an interest in Beastie Boys. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4180 Registered: 03-2005 |
Speaking of dauntingly huge, Stuart it looks like I'll be reading "A Suitable Boy" sometime in the near future. A friend of mine who lives in downtown Los Angeles near our biggest surviving bookstore, called "The Last Book Store" natch, picked up a paperback copy for me. He knows I like hardcover but says that's all there was. Well, I'm not going to neglect such a nice gesture. I hope it hangs together while being splayed open for however many hours it takes for me to read 1500 pages! | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1575 Registered: 10-2006 |
I don't know if there ever was a hardback edition, come to think about it, just a robust paperback; perhaps Hb would have been too costly for a book this size. Well, I hope you enjoy it, Randy: I can remember that, despite its length, I was sorry to come to the end, having been absorbed in its world for so long, and was then unable to settle down to anything else for a while. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1577 Registered: 10-2006 |
Sort of prompted by Randy’s reading of Isherwood’s “Kathleen and Frank”, I finally got round to reading Vikram Seth’s “Two Lives”, the story of the marriage between his great uncle and great aunt – a small, robustly sardonic one-armed Indian dentist and a lanky, lovely, rather haughty German Jewish refugee. As with all marriages, this turns out be a far more complex beast than at first meets the eye, and his interviews and historical investigations reveal, in his cool, measured prose and typical sudden, sharp flurries of humour, a rich and extraordinarily fascinating story set against the backdrop of 20th century brutality. One interesting little fact: it was apparently far more likely for an Indian to encounter racism in 1970s Leicester than in 1930s Berlin. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8971 Registered: 05-2005 |
Adrian McKinty’s new book, The Chain. One of the blurbs, or maybe a review, used the dread cliche “unputdownable” about it. No book deserves that lame description. The Chain is so intense and tense I had to put it down on several occasions to take it all in. If you like thrillers, check it out. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4190 Registered: 03-2005 |
Pádraig, a book that forces you to put it down sometimes in order to absorb it is a very good thing. So, yeah, “unputdownable” is idiotic. Stuart, I have a copy of “A Suitable Boy” in the room awaiting me. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1583 Registered: 10-2006 |
Very putdownable, Randy, if only to flex your forearms. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4198 Registered: 03-2005 |
Beloved -- Toni Morrison. This is a re-read for me, having originally read it about 15 to 20 years ago when I powered through a box set of six of her novels. I recall enjoying the entire set but don't recall specifics. Coming back to this novel at my semi-old age in the era of Trump yields a dramatic response. Superficially this is a ghost story. Really it's an exhumation of the age of slavery in the U.S.. A young runaway slave mother tries to kill her children when her owner tries to retrieve her and her children. She succeeds in killing only one of them and the story flows from that. Morrison brilliantly lays out the truth that even a benevolent slave owner could not overcome the fundamental evil of the "peculiar institution" as people liked to euphemize it at the time. Much like monarchy, the benevolent owner is still self serving and eventually succeeded by a non-benevolent owner. She brilliantly depicts the multigenerational damage inflicted. I used to think that the U.S. benefitted from having comparatively little history. While reading this book I finally realized how untrue that is. In 2019 it is clear that we are still struggling with the legacy--the multigenerational damage--of slavery. This is definitely a book I have to put down from time to time. I am still 80 pages from the finish. But even before finishing it seems clear that the theme of this book is that nothing good can ever come from something bad. I haven't seen the movie. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8984 Registered: 05-2005 |
You make me want to read that book, Randy, which is something I’ve never thought about it before. I was always put off it, for reasons I can’t remember, but probably because of the horror it recounts. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1957 Registered: 08-2006 |
"Beloved" is an all-timer for me. I think I've read it three times and it's always dazzling and fresh. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8991 Registered: 05-2005 |
David Baldacci - The Fallen. A high body count crime novel that tracks the decline of small town, rust belt America better than almost anyone else I've read. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4207 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I'm currently at page 763 of the U.S. paperback edition of "A Suitable Boy." I am a slow reader and it will undoubtedly be quite a while before I am finished. The chapters dealing with Maan in Debaria are a little trying for this urban reader. But, so far, the chapters dealing with the judicial review of the constitutionality of the Zamendari reform act are stunning. I was never a litigator, but I worked for over 35 years as an analyst in a very esoteric and technical legal area requiring review of appellate court opinions in approximately a quarter of the States in the U.S.. The thorough, sophisticated and realistic presentation of the relevant arguments in Seth's book is blowing me away. I imagine that slogging through this part of the book for the ordinary lay reader is three times as challenging as the Debaria chapters have been for me. I assume a lot of this is based upon real events in 1951. It's striking what you can do in a novel with 1,474 pages. Quite an education! | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1587 Registered: 10-2006 |
I don't remember much about the legal aspects in the story, Randy, to be honest, but by now I retain very little from books, as my mind laboriously sweeps clean to make room for the next one. I remember something about shoes, as with Philip Roth, who somewhere told me rather more about Newark's shoe industry than I perhaps needed to know. Shoemaking is also an important part of Ferrante's My brilliant friend, so I guess someone is already busy with a thesis on the subject. But I do remember that, whatever, the topic in ASB, Seth never bored me (unlike his string quartet centred novel, which I found hard going). You might finish it just in time for the sequel! (though he is being very cagey about how far he's got with it...) | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4208 Registered: 03-2005 |
Sorry, Stuart, it was a bit dim-witted of me to think you'd be able to remember any particulars from the book. I am like you and always have been. While reading a book I am totally immersed. After the finish, I'm like the childhood toy Etch-a-Sketch. Flip me over once and the screen is blank again. It's been my running joke for years that I could simply re-read the books I already have in my house for the rest of my life. I checked the brief Wikipedia article about Seth. He cleverly drew upon his own family for material. His father was an executive with Bata Shoes, the Czech company that went global before the Soviets took over Czechoslovakia. His mother was a barrister and ultimately Chief Justice of one of the state High Courts. Checking his mother's Wikipedia page I learn that her father--Vikram's grandfather--worked for the Imperial Railway Service and died when she was only 11, leaving the family to struggle. Voila, a book! I'm now onto the next scene, with Dipankar Chatterji chasing his own philosophical tail at an annual Krishna festival that sounds like the prototype for Burning Man here in the U.S.. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1300 Registered: 04-2005 |
The Scottish writer Andrew Greig’s « That Summer » (2000). Don’t know why but apparently in the States it was retitled “The Clouds Above: A Novel of Love and War” Ostensibly a straightforward WW2 love story, there seems to be so much in it and it’s not a hefty book by any means. Greig juggles with a lot of themes and it all works so beautifully for me. Given the present climate there is even a moment that ties in with Brexit (!)...one of the main characters is a Pole, flying Hurricanes for the RAF and at a dance gets picked on for dancing with an English girl...and faces the usual “go back to your own country” nonsense. A couple of years ago Greig wrote an account of the Incredible String Band with the group’s Mike Heron, which sounds interesting… https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/m ar/25/you-know-what-you-could-be-by-mike -heron-and-andrew-greig-review Regarding “A Suitable Boy”, I had the perfect job for reading it on my arrival in France. I looked after a small art gallery, where I could go for hours without seeing anyone. Must admit that some 16 years down the line I can’t remember too much about the book, so it might be a good moment to reread it! Incidentally for the art gallery job I was paid solely on commission, so it was my lowest paid job ever…even worse than grape-picking in Australia. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4220 Registered: 03-2005 |
Andrew, I wonder if maybe the publisher thought "That Summer" was too common a title. I can't say I find a title that contains the swooping description "A Novel of Love and War" scores terribly well for originality either. I finished "A Suitable Boy" and then blasted through Willa Cather's "My Antonia" a fictional document of the U.S.'s fin de siecle (19th) wave of immigration. This was suggested by a columnist in the New York Times. The title character is a Czech immigrant to the Great Plains in Nebraska. I find it reassuring to read something that celebrates our tradition as a land of immigrants. It is also rather ahead of its time in its depiction of self-actualizing women. And the story's narrator is a man who never marries at all. I had to laugh but also gasp at your story about your first job in France. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1599 Registered: 10-2006 |
The wife has just finished La mia Antonia, weirdly enough, Randy, while the English version is lined up on my bedside table! One of those odd karmic GB fan things? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4222 Registered: 03-2005 |
That is kinda weird Stuart. I'm also a bit touched that there's an Italian translation of the book. I'm so used to reading English translations of great novels from around the world I guess I never really thought of our literature receiving the same treatment. And, yes! I think it IS a karmic GB fan thing. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1600 Registered: 10-2006 |
So, what's next, Randy? Any ideas? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4223 Registered: 03-2005 |
I have a huge stack of unread books Stuart. The fiction pile isn't so bad. It includes John Hersey's "A Bell for Adano," Toni Morrison's "Tar Baby" which actually I did read all those years ago, Nelson Algren's "Who Lost an American?", Stephen Spender's World Within a World and Edward Upward's "The Rotten Elements." I read Upward's "In the Thirties" and resolved to read the two other books that go with that one. I found "In the Thirties" a subtly depressing depiction of non-love sublimated to political activism and I'd like to see what happens as the situation develops. I haven't yet bought, but really want to read, Vasily Grossman's "Stalingrad." I also have a bunch of nonfiction. There's the book on Czech architect Karel Teige that I stopped reading several years ago when I got bogged down in one of those classic boring manifestos that only architects can write--and which I should never force myself to read. The problem part is a section that reproduces some of Teige's (translated) writing. Hard cheese for Tony, indeed. But I feel guilty about not finishing it and I won't permit myself to shelve it until I do finish it. Right now, I'm reading a revised version of a book on Carrozzeria Touring of Milano, the original of which I read maybe 25 or 30 years ago. One of my two remaining old cars is a product of their factory. This, of course, is a very non-GBs sort of subject: automotive coachbuilding and its history. I decided to pick up the corrected and updated version. Believe it or not, car history books can deliver a lot more than expected. A useful chunk of my knowledge of 20th Century history was gleaned from automotive history books. Probably the gold standard for me personally is Dante Giacosa's "Forty Years of Design with Fiat" an autobiography by that big company's technical boss which stretches from Mussolini to kidnappings by the Red Brigades. In the fiction stack I will probably read "A Bell for Adano" next. There's a certain randomness to my reading choices but as you can see the planets are lining up for Italy right now. Maybe Pirandello might appear on the horizon? I'm sure I understood no more than 5% of what he was driving at when I read him at least 30 years ago. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1602 Registered: 10-2006 |
I think the Spender should be in the other pile, Randy! I read Adano a few years ago and was a little disappointed, but perhaps my expectations were skewed - possibly I was expecting something scathing and rich like Catch 22 or glittery and satirical like Private Angelo. In the end, it just seemed a little flat, as if fiction wasn't really Hershey's calling. Maybe you'll see something in it I didn't. Ah, the history of automative coachbuilding! Now there's a subject that would have me politely edging towards the pub door and no mistake. You are full of surprises, Mr Adams. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1605 Registered: 10-2006 |
Have you already read The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa? Now that really is a stunner set in Sicily! | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4225 Registered: 03-2005 |
I don't doubt that most people would start announcing a need to visit the toilet if I started talking about old car stuff. And the climate situation really has taken a lot of the pleasure out of that interest. But that's what I'm reading at the moment. Your warning about the Hersey book is noted. And no, I haven't read The Leopard. I shall research . . . . | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9127 Registered: 05-2005 |
An extraordinarily powerful article about Biafra. I had little to no idea about this. Frederick Forsyth’s rage is undimmed, 50 years on. More power to him. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre e/2020/jan/21/buried-50-years-britain-sh amesful-role-biafran-war-frederick-forsy th | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9128 Registered: 05-2005 |
By the way, I do realise that Forsyth is a Eurosceptic, climate change-denying Tory jerk, but Day Of The Jackal is brilliant and so is the article linked to above. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1319 Registered: 04-2005 |
Came back from Australia with "Boy Swallows Universe" by Trent Dalton. Fantastic. Brisbane in the 1980's...a mute brother, a mum and step-dad heroin dealing, a famous criminal as a baby-sitter, a light touch of magic realism, poetry, lust, journalism and some extreme violence. And body parts. Wonder if Robert F has read it ? The central character dreams of buying a place for his mum in The Gap..."lots of cul-de-sacs" for kids to play in... | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9130 Registered: 05-2005 |
A sad story about the gentrification of the Marais district of Paris. Randy and Andrew, I'm sure you'd both be interested. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/world /europe/france-paris-marais-gentrificati on.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_2 00123?campaign_id=2&instance_id=15300&se gment_id=20564&user_id=cbe1711fb1a9b330c f9b74a05c3e7b1b®i_id=337950710123 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4306 Registered: 03-2005 |
I saw that article Padraig. It was depressing but not surprising. My history with Paris is relatively shallow and recent. I first went there on my first(!) overseas trip in 2003. To see the Go-Betweens at Cafe de la Danse! I stayed at the Hotel Sevigne, in the Marais on Rue Malher almost at the corner with Rue de Rivoli. It was a bargain place where you could get a double room with ensuite for 79 Euro a night. The beds were saggy and the breakfast delivered to my room once gave me a rather inconvenient and insistent digestive bug (just as I was due to check out and board the Eurostar to London), but I stayed there every visit until it was replaced by a soulless glossy modern place with, of course, much higher rates. The bookstore in the NYT article was on a typical wander path for me and I stopped in there on every visit. Because it was a gay-oriented shop and not strictly francophone I bought a few things there over the years. But what I remember more strongly is how many other bookstores there were scattered throughout the neighborhood. I visited most of them. They had great selections of interesting books for a francophone, which sadly I'm not, for very reasonable prices. I watched those bookstores disappear one by one with each visit to Paris. So it was clear that something dreary was afoot quite a while back. This gay bookstore in the Marais actually managed to outlast a lot of things. On one of my early visits I remember going on an art crawl consisting of a string of open houses in individual artists' studios up in Belleville in the 19th/20th. That was a pretty interesting edgy neighborhood at the time, maybe 2004 or 2005. You'd see broody Islamic guys sitting around doing nothing interspersed with small Jewish establishments, a real powderkeg. It seemed like the perfect place for me to live, on the Metro still but cheaper, with a park on a hill and even 1920s vintage houses on hilly streets similar to compact parts of Silverlake and the Hollywood Hills here in Los Angeles. There was one excellent small restaurant that doubled as a bar. On the next visit to town, I returned to Belleville only to be greeted by a yuppie shop flogging artisanal cheese where there'd been a more normal working class business. It's the same story going on in virtually every big city. The flavor is being washed out. I'm sure you've got plenty of similar stories to tell about Sydney. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9131 Registered: 05-2005 |
I figured you’d know that neighbourhood, Randy, though I didn’t know you’d know it that well. Where I live in Sydney still has a lot of owner-run cafes, but there are a lot of clothes and surf shops which seem to be chains (not that clothes or surf shops hold any interest for me). There was one underground record shop (I mean literally underground, it was in a basement, though it did have a good, diverse range) but it’s long gone. Later two discount music shops opened, one had a decent selection, the other was mostly crap, but both are now gone - one replaced by some new age shite shop, the other replaced by a surf shop. There was an excellent newsagents/bookshop, in fact it’s still there, but the magazine/newspaper/book selection has been vastly reduced and replaced by tourist tat and trinkets. I was always astonished the basement record shop didn’t flood, given it was 50 metres from the wharf. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4308 Registered: 03-2005 |
Padraig, your neighborhood basement record shop makes me think of My Vinyl Underground, the physical store in Portland, Oregon run by the owner of Jigsaw Records. Thankfully it is good and far from the coastline as well as the river but it is a secret paradise of indiepop in the basement underneath a children's book store in a predominantly residential neighborhood. A discreet little sign in the book store's window is the only outward notice of its presence. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4311 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I finished "A Bell for Adano" a couple days ago. It was a welcome respite after 2,200 pages of David Kynaston's survey of the U.K. from 1945 to 1962. I am a slow reader but after the density of the Kynaston volumes I wolfed "Adano" down like a snack in three days. I think I understand your disappointment. The book reads like a treatment for a mid-century Hollywood film. All of the American stereotypes of the Italians are trotted out, and while characters are explained, none has any true emotional depth. I suspect that its Pulitzer Prize had to do with the fact that WWII was still ongoing. And I do appreciate the depiction of individual personality as a pivotal force. It makes a very timely point--one I am always banging about the diversity of the U.S. and of places like London and Paris: a country populated by people originating from many other places can use that very polyglot feature to more successfully engage with other nations. I categorize "A Bell for Adano" an interesting period piece. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1288 Registered: 08-2004 |
Just over half way through 'I Heard You Paint Houses' the book 'The Irishman' is based on. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9154 Registered: 05-2005 |
This is extraordinary. Only in the land of the free could this debasement of freedom be possible. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/ru ssian-propaganda-radio.html?nl=todayshea dlines&emc=edit_th_200214&campaign_id=2& instance_id=15978&segment_id=21266&user_ id=cbe1711fb1a9b330cf9b74a05c3e7b1b®i _id=337950710214 | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1330 Registered: 04-2005 |
Michael Chabon’s « The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay » Think it may be the third time that I read this 600 page book. A fascinating and uplifting read, with hell of a lot going on. The language can be pretty verbose but that is part of its charm. A real shaggy-dog story. But there is pure emotion at its heart with characters that you really care for. I didn’t used to like books that mixed fact and fiction, and this is a real offender in that area. The story revolves around the dawning of the comic book era in WWII New York and I have no idea whether the other authors and illustrators cited are real people or not. There is a great account of our hero saving Savaldor Dali’s life at a party. By the end of the book we are in the 50s “moral panic” period over the bad influence on American youth of all those superheroes. And their sidekicks. Over the years since the book was published there seems to be have several film projects mooted, but the book is so cinematic in its style and sweep, that a film would just have to be a disappointment for me. I prefer to invent my own images and the way that the characters look. It’s not as if you don’t get enough detail; there is a lengthy passage for example in which the main female character Rosa is choosing what to wear and fixing her hair up. This is a review that says everything that I can’t articulate... https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter tainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetim e-the-amazing-adventures-of-kavalier-and -clay-by-michael-chabon-6280566.html Now just wondering how long I have to wait before I can read it again. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1977 Registered: 08-2006 |
I love that book, Andrew. You got it just right. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1978 Registered: 08-2006 |
I maintain a small and idiosyncratic lending library at the office, which is mainly represented by books of mine. A 22-year-old co-worker just dived-bombed through Penelope Fitzgerald's "The Blue Flower," which she finished over lunch today and came to me afterward in tears. I don't aim to make my co-workers cry but it was very touching that the book moved her like that. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9165 Registered: 05-2005 |
What a cool idea, Rob. Not that I’ve read Chabon, or any Fitzgeralds not called F. Scott. Sometimes you guys make me feel like a philistine. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1681 Registered: 10-2006 |
I’ve never read Charles Portis, who wrote the novel True Grit, but after sampling some online first pages, I intend to. I never even wondered if that film was actually based on a book, although I usually do check that sort of thing out, and, looking back at both versions, it now seems obvious that the narrating voice would be that of the young girl. From a New Yorker article: “Only a mean person won’t enjoy it” is something a critic once wrote about “True Grit.” In part, I love Portis because I feel less mean when I read him. It’s not just that his novels are gentle and funny; it’s that Portis’s books have a way of conscripting the reader into their governing virtues—punctuality, automotive maintenance, straight talk, emotional continence. Puny virtues, as Portis himself once put it, yet it is a great and comforting gift (in these days especially) to offer readers escape into a place where such virtues reign.” Automotive maintenance! There you go, Randy! | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4326 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I was reading your post thinking "True Grit!" Really? But I've never seen the movie nor read any Charles Portis so what do I know? The "governing virtues" makes me laugh a bit because I remember grumbling something similar as I distinguished myself as the ONLY person on my block to get out and work on his own yard, pulling out the lawn with my own labor and now pulling out the first luxuriant crop of weeds in the native-planted yard's first post-lawn year. It really does seem that a lot of quotidian competence has been forgotten by a lot of the folks surrounding me. Yes, including automotive maintenance (though surely that's soon to be obsolete). Everything is hired out by my intangible white collar worker neighbors. But "emotional continence?" Yikes. I love Rob's office lending library and envy his set of coworkers who actually read. In fairness to my own former coworkers I seldom read while still working. Right now I'm a little more than halfway through Vasily Grossman's "Stalingrad." It's a sweeping novel with a lot of interesting characters. But it's also a thought exercise for me as an American raised during the Cold War. Grossman was by no means an apologist for all of the abuses of Stalinist Soviet Union but he does write with a different set of fundamental assumptions which can sometimes be jarring and I have to remind myself that the first quarter century of the Soviet experiment did actually lift up a lot of people from the backward agrarian expanse that was the Tsarist Russian Empire. For example there is a thankfully short screed that went right up my nose about the virtue of popular folk art--what we know as socialist realism--and the vice of more subjective personal art. But there are believable university educated characters who came from peasant stock. I'm curious to see what Grossman ultimately does with the handful of doctrinaire Party line-spouting characters. I will definitely read "Life & Fate" sometime in the coming year. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1291 Registered: 08-2004 |
Just started 'Grant and I' by RF. Read about the trip to Sydney by the pair to check on their order for the Able Label single. Where they picked up a rare at the time LP by The Monkees. The same LP which I was reading about last night completely by accident. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1691 Registered: 10-2006 |
Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March I could wish I hadn’t decided to share house arrest with this congested bulk of a book, but I enjoyed Mr Sammler a few years back and when the title caught my eye in John Sandoe’s I thought, well, let’s give it a whirl. Damn you, Richards, but I should have guessed a word-heavy songwriter would favour a word-heavy novel, and here it’s like Bellow had got the idea to arm-wrestle Faulkner and Joyce and Gerard Manly Hopkins all at the same time, it’s exhausting, the language put through a wringer and dense newly-minted compound adjectives piling up on every page. In the end, it’s like walking uphill into a headwind on the muddiest path you’ve ever been on. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4341 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, worse than late Henry James? (I've never read any Bellow.) | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9205 Registered: 05-2005 |
I hope that when brilliant Australian band Augie March eventually release an anthology that it’s called The Adventures Of Augie March. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1692 Registered: 10-2006 |
Ah, Randy, I think part of my brain is still wandering without hope around the vaporously palatial abstractions of The Golden Bowl, entered around 40 years ago, never completely to emerge. With Bellow, at least I have an idea of what's going on, and in fact there's been a good stretch now involving a bit of failed criminality and Depression boxcar riding, so you can anyway feel the narrative moving forwards, something that late James seemed to consider as rather vulgar. It's just the style I have problems with; I hope he turned it down in later works. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4342 Registered: 03-2005 |
That's very funny Stuart. I haven't read "The Golden Bowl." But I did read "The Ambassadors" a year or so back. At first I found James' lengthy, elliptical sentences tiring. But after a while I became accustomed to them and found my own thoughts arranging themselves in similarly elaborate and meandering fashion. It was a bit like unconsciously emulating the distinctive speech pattern of a conversation partner. I think I might actually try "The Golden Bowl" some time! It might be just the thing to tangle my mind during this interesting time. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1695 Registered: 10-2006 |
You say that so blithely, Randy, but I cannot help hearing the last words of Captain Oates, ""I am just going outside and may be some time..." | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4344 Registered: 03-2005 |
Pier Paolo Pasolini -- The Ragazzi This is one sobering, depressing book. Pasolini presents eight chronological vignettes in the lives of some destitute street urchins in postwar Rome. The aimless lives proceed from one misadventure to the next, stream-of-consciousness style, showing the reader how his might proceed if he had nothing to do and even less to lose. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4345 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I had to look up Captain Oates. Thank you. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9209 Registered: 05-2005 |
I’ve just started reading The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. It seems an appropriate title, though the book has nothing to do with a disease or virus. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1714 Registered: 10-2006 |
Less of an uppity old sod when he respects the interviewer, or maybe lockdown is just mellowing him... https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter tainment/music/features/van-morrison-int erview-keep-er-lit-book-lyrics-release-d ate-albums-a9435686.html | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1715 Registered: 10-2006 |
Charles Portis – True Grit Finally I have offloaded Bellow’s Augie March, a tormenting read if ever there was one. There are great chunks of richly compelling narrative, fortunately, to sweep you through the book (the part in Mexico above all), but there are an awful lot of characters given to loquacious theorising, several piled up right at the end, so it is quite a relief when Augie’s story, well, it doesn’t so much as end, as run out of steam. Even Augie himself, mainly a listener throughout, starts producing page- length speeches about life and destiny, which tried this reader’s patience at least. Even when he gets stuck in a lifeboat at one point, his only companion turns out to be a half-crazed geneticist who believes he has already created life. He explains his ideas in depth. So switching over to the marvellous True Grit is a relief and a half, with its crisp, funny narrative voice and some of the best dialogue you will ever read anywhere. Randy, you say you have never seen either of the (very good) films – is that because you detest John Wayne or the Western genre in general? (which means you might never have seen the James Stewart/Anthony Mann sequence of movies either? Which is a real shame!) But True Grit is a brilliant, crackerjack delight. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4356 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I'm not a fan of John Wayne. I love Jimmy Stewart. I see my fill of westerns when I'm visiting my mom who has a satellite TV service with one channel reserved solely for westerns. That's what she watches. John Wayne films will certainly be included in that. I can usually get her to agree to watch the non-western classic channel in the evening so the last time I was there I watched "The Breaking Point," a 1950 noir adaptation of "To Have and Have Not." That was a great film and ended with a very subtle but (for me) powerful and haunting illustration of American racism. I'm pretty sure I've never seen either version of "True Grit." But since you enjoy action-interrupting disquisitions in your stories, you might try watching Jean-Luc Godard's "Week-end." | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4357 Registered: 03-2005 |
Right now? I'm reading this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/a pr/03/mask-wars-coronavirus-outbidding-d emand Coupling that shameful report with the Trump administration's insistence that 3M not export any masks--not even to our next-door neighbors!!--as well as send all of their overseas production to the States, it's the sort of thing that can really crush this American's spirit. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1716 Registered: 10-2006 |
He says everyone should wear a mask, but, you know, hey, it's optional, I mean, he says, he certainly isn't going to wear one. Even if it might save a huge number of lives, he won't wear one, not even on TV, just as an example? And his popularity has actually gone up since the crisis began? Incredible. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9238 Registered: 05-2005 |
Last time I buy any 3M products. Seriously. It’s off brand post it notes for me from now on. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1991 Registered: 08-2006 |
From what I've read, 3M is being used as the fall guys for yet another ham-handed and incompetent Trump administration move. They're doing the same thing with GM and ventilator production, BTW. The incompetence and corruption of this administration knows no precedent in our history. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1992 Registered: 08-2006 |
An example: https://nypost.com/2020/04/03/3m-pushes- back-after-trump-orders-it-to-stop-expor ting-n95-masks/ | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9239 Registered: 05-2005 |
Last time I buy and General Motors cars, or GM food for that matter. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4358 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thanks for that link Rob. I've already deleted several possible comments I might have posted here. It speaks for itself. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1721 Registered: 10-2006 |
Or, in this case, "What Robert has read". Is this a new interview? Anyway, another link! https://thequietus.com/articles/28081-ro bert-forster-go-betweens-interview-favou rite-books | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4363 Registered: 03-2005 |
Yay! Stuart thank you for that link. Robert is priceless. I've just shot off orders for two David Malouf volumes, "Johnno" and "Complete Stories." I suspect I'll get "Remembering Babylon" as well but these two will suffice. I've read "Pride and Prejudice" at least twice but it's been decades since. I think I'll be pulling it down from the shelf again soon. I have a friend who's been doing a really poor job of entertaining herself during our near-lockdown in Los Angeles. I'm going to send her the Quietus link with suitable explanation. I think some of Robert's book recommendations will be helpful to her. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1722 Registered: 10-2006 |
Interesting that both volumes of poetry are by women... the early imprinting of a strong loquacious blonde perhaps? | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1723 Registered: 10-2006 |
A cool mix, anyway, some fairly expected (Salinger, Kerouac, Dylan), some less so. That Picasso biog has been on my to-buy list for decades. I too will put in an order for Johnno and maybe something else. The second nutritious interview with RF in as many days... is time hanging heavy on the hands of the world's slowest songwriter? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4365 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, as far as I'm concerned Lindy was The Clarke Sisters all rolled up into one. To my way of thinking, Robert's first relationship with a woman six years his senior says an enormous amount about the man, lifting him head and shoulders over others. In my introductory explanation to my friend--which I confess includes an incredibly long contextual explanation of why his opinion matters to me--I told her to ignore the Salinger and Kerouac entries and keep reading. The world's slowest songwriter may be getting a bit of inspiration right now. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9257 Registered: 05-2005 |
The story of how Washington's lieutenant governor (who is blind) is leaving politics to become a priest. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opini on/sunday/cyrus-habib-jesuit.html | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1724 Registered: 10-2006 |
James Lees Milne – Diaries There is something oddly soothing about these diaries, stretching from the 2nd World war to the late 1990s. I’m only up to volume 4, the late 1940s, so mainly a lot of James buzzing around the stately, and not so stately, homes of England, trying to save as many of those he admires as he can for the National Trust, organising them for visitation, choosing furniture and paintings; while meanwhile commenting acidly or adoringly on the various aristocratic elements still inhabiting them and vividly describing the often vile food he is served there. He parties with the upper crust, although not quite one of them, the Mitfords and so forth, to theatres and restaurants. A night at the opera and dinner at the Savoy can cost as much as four pounds! He falls in love with both men and women and eventually finds a wife who enjoys both women and men, winning her away from a tepid marriage with one of his best friends. Gay life in the British upperclasses seems to be absolutely accepted, indeed almost de rigueur: “Women for true love, but men for real sex” as one of his friends pronounces. The lower classes, meanwhile, are loathed and feared. A Catholic convert, Italy is his promised land: the books flood with sunlight when he arrives there, invariably thankful to be out of freezing, waterlogged England. He meets the pope, his knees trembling, and immediately falls in love with him as well. There is a lot of architectural jargon which passes pleasantly over my head, but otherwise intense amounts of self-honesty, anxiety, gossip, countryside and character. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4367 Registered: 03-2005 |
"Women for true love, but men for real sex." That's hilarious Stuart. It makes me think of all the heterosexual men I've encountered over the years who express such hostility toward women. Maybe they're expecting the wrong thing from them! Meanwhile, speaking of upper class poofters, I am soldiering through Lord Kinross' book on the Ottoman Empire. It's interesting how long something like that could lumber on in a state of decline. Certainly much longer than its rise. Perhaps I'll find some of this useful in navigating the balance of my time on the planet here as a citizen of the US. I also have a fiction volume in progress. I decided to read a set of Thomas Mann stories. Inevitably the first selection is "Death in Venice." Oh dear. I remember reading it many years ago and just thinking it was a snooze. The beauty of re-reading classics at different stages of life is the vastly different response you can have. What is giving me discomfort this time around is the intensity of the secret pederastic obsession that, for me anyway, disappeared with the advent of adult opportunity. The other jarring bit is the over the top revulsion for aging. "Youth is hope; age is corruption!" declared Billy MacKenzie. I have taken delivery of a copy of "Johnno." I'm counting on that being a lighter read, all thanks to Mr. Forster. I'm toying with the idea of ordering one of Klaus Mann's books but perhaps that's not the best idea right now? | ||
| Fred Tadrowski Member Username: Ftadrowski Post Number: 115 Registered: 03-2015 |
Randy, I also just purchased a copy of "Johnno." I do recommend his novels "Fly Away Peter," which was one of Grant's books, and also "Remembering Babylon." I also read his wonderful memoir "12 Edmondstone Street" based upon a recommendation from this chatroom. I love the first paragraph: "Memory plays strange tricks on us. The house I lived in as a child is no longer there. Like most of old South Brisbane it has been torn down and a factory stands on the site, part of a process that had already begun when I first knew the area more than forty years ago." | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1725 Registered: 10-2006 |
Did you buy Johnno second-hand, guys? Hard to find a new copy anywhere, it seems. Meanwhile, moved on to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half a yellow sun I enjoyed her Americannah a few years ago, and am enjoying this one too: she has that narrative knack that brisks you along like a twig down a burn. The subject here is Biafra, one of those “click” tragedy words from my past like Aberfan or My Lai: I remember it as involving a terrible famine, but that’s about it. CNA fills in the terrible details, with a group of convincingly drawn characters and many touches of humour, and her bring-it-alive descriptions of Nigeria which make it sound like the most beautiful country in the world; she will also have you checking out High Life music on Youtube. Her central character is, as with the previous book, a Nigerian woman of extraordinary beauty who spends much of her life dealing sharply with the constant slithery approaches of predatory men. If you google the author’s photo, you will see why. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4369 Registered: 03-2005 |
My copy is second-hand Stuart. I like saving things from the landfill where possible. And I personally try to get hardcover versions wherever possible. I get a LOT of my books off eBay nowadays. "Johnno" came as a very clean first US edition hardcover volume for a modest price of about $20 including shipping. Thanks for your recommendations Fred! It sounds like he's a writer to follow. I did also order a collection of his short stories but that has yet to arrive. Having hoofed it around the inner parts of Brisbane in (their) winter of 2007 I found the city to be very colorful and charismatic. I assume natives might be a bit puzzled by that impression but I fell in love with its series of hills with the Brisbane River snaking around them and the tropical British colonial architecture. I found it extraordinary to ride boats as a primary means of inner city public transport. I loved the "faded glamour" of the commercial area just north of the CBD. I suppose a bunch of that has either been pulled down or gentrified by now. And the centrally located Botanical Garden was exotic and mysterious even in drought. I never got to the Roma Street Parkland, which is maybe where that fabulous inside photo from "Calling From a Country Phone" is taken? The only real buzz kill was that Brisbane in 2007 was clearly in the steely grip of the sort of property speculation bubble this Los Angeleno has lived through several times over. Anyway, my fuzzy no doubt romanticized memories of the place will come in handy when reading Malouf. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4374 Registered: 03-2005 |
I just finished "Johnno," a mere pamphlet of a book at 170 pages in its US edition. Yes, "my fuzzy no doubt romanticized memories of the place" referencing my 2007 visit to Brisbane did indeed come in handy when reading this book. And it was interesting how a book set in decades earlier years echoed so many things described in Andrew Stafford's excellent Brisbane musical history "Pig City." I always felt a special kinship with the mid-70s musical Aussies of Brisbane and likewise the Triffids and their comrades of Perth, all restless and frustrated with their prosaic places of origin. My place of origin was even more devoid of distinction, a dusty, colorless, cultural and physical mirage in the center of California that either enervated you or propelled you out much like the human epidermis either engulfs or forces out a wood splinter. I spent virtually all of my youth in Fresno fantasizing about another life in another place. An early participant of this board who spent some time there after I'd left described the weekend's inaugural coin toss: "the bullet or the beer." This is at least partially what "Johnno" is about. I'll leave the rest to the reader. I wonder when Robert first read the book. And perhaps more crucially, I wonder when Grant first read it. For surely Grant McLennan is "Johnno." | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9290 Registered: 05-2005 |
A New York Times article about how the Covid shutdown is affecting one particular musician. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/nyreg ion/amy-madden-new-york-musician-quarant ine.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20051 0&instance_id=18361&nl=todaysheadlines&r egi_id=33795071&segment_id=27135&user_id =cbe1711fb1a9b330cf9b74a05c3e7b1b | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9295 Registered: 05-2005 |
An NYT article on power pop, which inspired me to seek out the songs mentioned. Well, the ones I didn't have already. Only one track I wanted wasn't available on iTunes. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/arts/ music/power-pop-songs.html | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4385 Registered: 03-2005 |
I'm not even a third of the way in, but this bon mot from Lampedusa's "The Leopard" gave me a good laugh: "Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty. He knew what love was." | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1741 Registered: 10-2006 |
Well, with a few hot cinders stirred up along the way, one hopes. Are you enjoying it, Randy? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4386 Registered: 03-2005 |
Even though it's a small volume I'm going slowly Stuart. I'm only on page 59 out of 185 pages. It's interesting to read an almost 19th Century book written in the 20th Century. The later century peeks through, in the wry frankness of some of the sexual references and in the depiction of class friction. I get the sense that Lampedusa spent a lot of time polishing this novel to get it just right, though surely the translation by Archibald Colquhoun must play a role? The sentences seem so carefully crafted. I've never been to Sicily yet some of the descriptions are amazingly familiar to this Californian. In central California where I did most of my growing up, eucalyptus trees were the trees most frequently chosen because of their rapid growth and drought tolerance. Lampedusa calls them "scruffiest of Mother Nature's children." That's pretty true. They prune themselves by occasionally dropping large branches to the ground below. The oils from their leaves inhibit growth of anything else within their drip line. While published in more or less the same era this book is quite a difference from Pasolini's "The Ragazzi" or the doorstop I just finished, John Rechy's "City of Night." I can't recommend the Rechy book; it has some brilliant moments but mostly it's interminable--the longest 410 page book I've ever read. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1742 Registered: 10-2006 |
I think it's the only book he ever wrote, and he did indeed work hard to get it right. The translation is superb, as far as I remember. It's on my "to reread" list, but I almost never find time for rereading, except some favourite thrillers and P G Wodehouse. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4387 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, when it comes to substantial books, re-reading at different times of your life is a very good idea. I fully intend to read "The Brothers Karamazov" again in the coming months. It will by my fourth reading, the first dating way back to when I was 18 or 19 or so. As you can imagine, virtually ALL of it was over my head then. I've gotten something more out of it each time. The following excerpts from "The Leopard" definitely would not have resonated probably even ten years ago for me, but they certainly do now: "As always the thought of his own death calmed him as much as that of others disturbed him: was it perhaps because, when all was said and done, his own death would in the first place mean that of the whole world?" "The two young people looked at the picture with complete lack of interest. For both of them death was purely an intellectual concept, a facet of knowledge as it were and no more, not an experience which pierced the marrow of their bones. Death, oh, yes, it existed of course, but was something that happened to others. The thought occurred to Don Fabrizio that it is inner ignorance of this supreme consolation which makes the young feel sorrows much more sharply than the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit." These passages would have been dismissed by me as "mere cynicism" if I'd read them when I was 30. Now, I marvel at a fundamental understanding of life that so often seems absent in people. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9303 Registered: 05-2005 |
Wow, Randy. Those quotes are astonishing. I bought The Brothers Karamazov in a Goodwill in Boston in 1989. Might be time now to actually read it. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4389 Registered: 03-2005 |
Pádraig, my messy writing has misdirected you. The quotes are from the book I'm reading now, "The Leopard" by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. I mentioned "The Brothers Karamazov" as an example for Stuart of a book that I've re-read at different stages of life. I'm impressed you've carted a book from North America to Ireland to Australia. | ||
| David Unregistered guest |
Stuart, are you a fan of John Connolly, the Irish Author of the Charlie Parker series of books? My favorite books and he's a big music and PG Wodehouse fan and seems from his intreviews and written words a lovely guy, I have met him briefly when he signed a book for me but i couldnt think of anything to say except "Thanks". Same when i met Stuart Staples of Tindersticks - just shook his hand and said Thanks. Probably best that way. Anyway John C is writing 400 words a day just now of a novella "the sisters strange". Hes started april 1 and is a good tale and nice to get a new page or so every day. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9304 Registered: 05-2005 |
Ah, I see now that you prefaced those quotes by saying they were from The Leopard. Still great quotes. I’m not so certain my copy of The Bothers Karamazov did make the journey to Australia. I gave a lot of books to a charity shop before I left Dublin. That may well have been one of them. David, I did a couple of radio shows with John Connolly in 1999 and 2001. The first was a pilot for a book program that didn’t get picked up for a series, the second was a pop music quiz. After the latter, John, the late George Byrne, Ray Harman from Something Happens, the show’s producer and I went to a bar near RTE for an almighty session. It was a great night of music geekdom. Ray Harman regaled us with hairy tales of touring the US with Warren Zevon. John’s a lovely fella. I interviewed him in Sydney a few years ago too. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1745 Registered: 10-2006 |
Thanks David, I shall check him out! My thriller reading tends to run in well-worn grooves, not easy to skip out of. So there’s Ed McBain, Ross MacDonald, Walter Mosely, Robert B Parker, Rex Stout, Dorothy L Sayers and so on, all of whom I am happy to reread until the cows come home. When I stray away from these, I often get grumpy over style and don’t get very far. Then there are the so-called Nordic Noirs where translation makes allowances for style but story, wit and character are often good enough to get you through anyway, so Mankell, the Stieg Larsson trilogy, Indridasun, Karin Fossum, and of course the masters Sjöwall and Wahlöö, the former dying just recently. Wit is probably a component I over value in thrillers, but if a writer can’t make me grin or produce genuinely funny dialogue in places then I find it hard to get on with them. Parker was the master of this, though he had trouble writing a really satisfying mystery. MacDonald tended more towards melancholy but could craft a puzzle with genius. McBain had it all and in spades. Should I start at the beginning with John C or is there one particular book that will knock my socks off? | ||
| David Unregistered guest |
Good to hear John C is as nice a guy as he comes across Pádraig - couldnt imagine anything else tbh, Stuart - like most authors i think John C was finding his feet a little with his early books. I'd start with the Killing Kind the 3rd and read on from there. He's got a marvelous humorous touch and once you move into Charlie's world with his friends Louis and Angel I think you're going to love it. Id also recommend Robert Crais's Elvis Cole books for witty repartee and there you can easily start with The monkeys raincoat - the first one. |