What are you reading now?

[Sparafucile]

Hi,
Currently re-reading Dracula. Next up is probably going to be The Mill on the Floss.

[aeolium]

I have recently started, and am enjoying, The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. It's good to see a very different way of life portrayed and from a very different perspective. The only problem is that it is 1300 pages long and I have it out on a library loan which I cannot renew as there are others waiting for it, so it may be quite a while before I complete it.

[LeMartinPecheur]

After some 35 years I'm rereading Henry Miller's Rosy Crucifiction trilogy (Sexus, Plexus, Nexus). I think it was Miller's attempt at the The Great American Novel... At 1230-odd pages it surely has to be the longest novel ever written...with no story-line Curate's-eggy - wonderful in parts.

Difficult to be sure but it seems so much more lucid now that I'm wondering if last time I read the volumes in the wrong order

[johncorrigan]

<<It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice — there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.

(Zappa 21/12/1940 - 4/12/1993)>>

Paperwork ain't what it used to be.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/753cbd11df671a94ff2d86119d72aa2-images.redstamp.com/product_images/78545/AT1110-Paperwork-Sticky-notCS_original.jpg

[hackneyvi]

Samurai William by Giles Milton.

I was given a copy of Shogun by James Clavell which I expected to be a thin potboiler book and which therefore daunted me by its 1200 pages. It proved to be one of the most purely enjoyable books I've ever read and is a fictionalised account of a character based on 'Samurai William', William Adams. Clavell, I was astonished to see, was also screenwriter of The Fly, The Great Escape, 633 Squadron and both writer and director of To Sir, With Love! A remarkable man with a remarkable background.

The Milton book though is a disappointment because it doesn't tell the story it purports to, that of William Adams' life and times in Japan at the start of the 17th century. It doesn't tell that story because there isn't a 400 page book in it and so it's mainly about the difficulties of English sailors, merchants and factors in Japan at the time. This is interesting enough but a good deal of it is - in essence - 400 year old gossip about shops and their wholesale suppliers.

Milton can be repetitious of the same point and sometimes strays towards dramatic prejudice in his characterisation. The book strikes me as a modest, undemanding contribution in popular history, good for holiday reading.

I would though unhesitatingly recommend Shogun as an extraordinarily enjoyable and elegantly-organised melodrama with vivid, impressive characters and events.

[Richard Tarleton]

I have just abandoned, half way through, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go". It sort of dawns on you gradually as you go through what's going on (if you didn't know already) - and I did re-read the first couple of pages just before tossing it on the Oxfam pile, which made slightly more sense - by the middle of the book I was so bored I'd forgotten how it started. Fortunately it was part of a 3 for 2.

Anyone else read it? Clearly a lot of people think it's very good.

[hackneyvi]

I have just abandoned, half way through, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go".

Anyone else read it? Clearly a lot of people think it's very good.

I read it after seeing the film from which it differs slightly but both are a maundering mope through the youthful lives cut short. Quite adolescent in its atmosphere.

It has quite a Japanese passivity but I found it unbelievable that these children would simply accept being live organ donors. There (corrected a month later to, their. Shame on me!) behaviour wasn't human. Perhaps that was a part of its point; I couldn't really judge what the point was because to me it made none. A long, doleful fantasy.

This is the 4th Ishiguro book I've read - A Pale View of Hills, Artist of the Floating World, Remains of the Day were the others, 25 years ago. Remains of the Day seemed to have 'something' but I think what surprises me about these books is that regardeless of their length they make only a single point and don't contain even 1 joke between them. Are they distinctly Japanese is this respect? Can anyone tell? I've read little or no other Japanese fiction.

[Mandryka]

I read it after seeing the film from which it differs slightly but both are a maundering mope through the youthful lives cut short. Quite adolescent in its atmosphere.

It has quite a Japanese passivity but I found it unbelievable that these children would simply accept being live organ donors. There behaviour wasn't human. Perhaps that was a part of its point; I couldn't really judge what the point was because to me it made none. A long, doleful fantasy.

This is the 4th Ishiguro book I've read - A Pale View of Hills, Artist of the Floating World, Remains of the Day were the others, 25 years ago. Remains of the Day seemed to have 'something' but I think what surprises me about these books is that regardeless of their length they make only a single point and don't contain even 1 joke between them. Are they distinctly Japanese is this respect? Can anyone tell? I've read little or no other Japanese fiction.

I'm not sure Ishiguro could be classified as a 'Japanese' novelist....he writes in English and was (I think, but I may be mistaken) born in the UK.

Never read anything by him.

The last book I abandoned was James Kelman's A Disaffection.

Currently reading Orlando Figes: A People's Tragedy.

[hackneyvi]

I'm not sure Ishiguro could be classified as a 'Japanese' novelist....he writes in English and was (I think, but I may be mistaken) born in the UK.

Never read anything by him.

It transpires he moved to the UK when he was 6 years old (I imagine this was with the assistance of his parents, by the way). The subject of Never Let Me Go and Remains of the Day, seem to be of passive accedence, even deference to oppressive societies which act against the interest of the person and the atmospheres are ones of waste, loss and thwarted gloom. There's something detached and flat in both perspective and response that seems alien to me. I think because his first 2 novels both took Japanese subjects, I simply assumed he was writing about a familiar culture, though he seems to say he knows little about the literature.

[hackneyvi]

Just finished A Midsummer Night's Dream after seeing the new ENO production of the Britten opera ("Hmm ... ", about that). I didn't know the story beyond the fairy subject and a few names, the transformation. It was very easy going for Shakespeare who I usually find a bit of a challenge and I have noted for future use a magnificent piece of abuse by Lysander after he is bewitched out of love with Hermia. He completes his rejection of her by insults of her stature, saying:

Get you gone, you dwarf,
You minimus of hindering knot-grass made,
You bead, you acorn.

The next time someone really annoys me, 'you bead, you acorn' will be the substance of my disdainful rebuff.

[Norfolk Born]

"Mr. Briggs' Hat" by Kate Colquhoun. It's about the first recorded murder on a British railway train.

[hackneyvi]

I was greatly struck by a Wallace Stevens poem, Earthy Anecdote, a week or so ago. Simple, clear and funny, it seems to be very much the introductory moment to his poetry (if unrepresentative). It's the opening poem of his first collection and therefore of both his Selected and Collected Poems.

Subsequently, reading the sublime and mysterious The Snow Man, this poet has impressed himself on me as an idea, though I'm no reader of poetry as a rule, being generally blind to it. I am afraid that his poems may be instrumental music to me because most of those I've looked at so far are beautifully phrased and formed but rather abstract. I should like to 'understand' him without having to resort to a critical study and will continue to read; his verse is currently dragging me into Foyles and Waterstones every couple of days.

All read a couple of poems from Ted Hughes' Moortown Diary of which there's a cheapish copy in a Charing Cross bookshop. The earth and air really are a force on the several pages I eyed.

Forgive me, I've bumped this up the thread from a previous page because I'd love to know if Stevens (I almost typed 'Simpson'; that error must arise a fair bit!) is dug by others here.

[vinteuil]

wallace stevens - yay!!!



Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

[vinteuil]

... and again,

The Virgin Carrying a Lantern

There are no bears among the roses,
Only a negress who supposes
Things false and wrong

About the lantern of the beauty
Who walks there, as a farewell duty,
Walks long and long.

The pity that her pious egress
Should fill the vigil of a negress
With heat so strong!

[Chris Newman]

John Constable, A Kingdom of His Own a bioraphy: Anthony Bailey (Vintage)

Six Czech Poets: Alexandra Buchler (Ed), (Arc)