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This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

Sammy Jennings

...continued from this thread

A Good School by Richard Yates

Slight, but some great moments

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IvyTheTerrible

Einhard wrote: »

Just finished Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch. Quite enjoyed it. It's very much a bok of two halves though- there's quite a shift in tone between the first part and the latter chapters. Would recommend it though. Now on to HHhH by Laurent Binet, which apparently is a fictionalised account of the plot to kill Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the wartime Gestapo. Have heard great things about it, so here's hoping.

I'm afraid I absolutely hated HHhH. It seemed to be more a vehicle for the ego of the author rather than to tell the story. A good half of the 200+ chapters are about the author's girlfriends and his dilemmas over how to tell the story.

Callan57

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

I'm afraid I absolutely hated HHhH. It seemed to be more a vehicle for the ego of the author rather than to tell the story. A good half of the 200+ chapters are about the author's girlfriends and his dilemmas over how to tell the story.

That's amazing - what you disliked is exactly what I loved about the book.

Merkin

SusanWhite wrote: »

I am looking forward to start with The Mocking bird. Please give me a feedback for the same.

Thanks

I presume you mean To Kill A Mockingbird?I've just finished it and it is both heartwarming and beautifully written. Well worth the read.

SarahBM

Merkin wrote: »

I presume you mean To Kill A Mockingbird?I've just finished it and it is both heartwarming and beautifully written. Well worth the read.

Great book.

MagicMarker

Merkin wrote: »

I presume you mean To Kill A Mockingbird?I've just finished it and it is both heartwarming and beautifully written. Well worth the read.

I assumed she meant mockingjay, the 2nd hunger games.

SarahBM

also a great book

emeraldstar

MagicMarker wrote:

I assumed she meant mockingjay, the 2nd hunger games.

The third Hunger Games

emeraldstar

SarahBM wrote: »

also a great book

Hmm, I don't know. Undoubtedly the worst of the three.

SarahBM

emeraldstar wrote: »

Hmm, I don't know. Undoubtedly the worst of the three.

Mockingjay is great, but I tend to think of the Hunger Games all as one.

IvyTheTerrible

Children of Men by PD James.

The film differs a lot from the book, but I like both.

Saorenza

Einhard wrote: »

Just finished Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch. Quite enjoyed it. It's very much a bok of two halves though- there's quite a shift in tone between the first part and the latter chapters. Would recommend it though. Now on to HHhH by Laurent Binet, which apparently is a fictionalised account of the plot to kill Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the wartime Gestapo. Have heard great things about it, so here's hoping.

I have Jamrach's Menagerie, might give it a go over Christmas. I want to read HHhH, interested to hear what you think.

I have been reading mostly stuff about the 1913 Lockout for my final essay this semester....so close to finishing.

Otherwise I read Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones for escapism. Also the Wildflower Path by Sarah Harrison, the third in a family trilogy. I read the first two and loved them twenty or so years ago. I enjoyed this one, but I didn't love it.

I also started Cockroaches by Jo Nesbo. I think I prefer his earlier books, the later ones are too grim.

Monkeybonkers

Finished Don Quixote and am now on to Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky. I'd been putting off reading it because I thought it was really long but after three days I'm 78% of the way through it (Kindle)

Call Me Jimmy

I usually have an aversion to reading anything translated, it just feels wrong in my head to be reading what is effectively an interpretation rather than the original words of the author. The only real exception was Crime and Punishment which I really got sucked into and felt the feeling of claustrophobia.

Is Notes on the Underground worth traversing back into translation for?

MagicMarker

Started on Moby Dick, so far it's really good... So far.

Gamayun

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

I usually have an aversion to reading anything translated, it just feels wrong in my head to be reading what is effectively an interpretation rather than the original words of the author. The only real exception was Crime and Punishment which I really got sucked into and felt the feeling of claustrophobia.

Is Notes on the Underground worth traversing back into translation for?

Can you remember the translator? Because if you liked it with the older, now shunned translations (Garnett/Magarshack) you'll surely enjoy his work with the latest Peavear and Volokhonsky translations, widely considered the most accurate and faithful to the original style.

Here's a link from an earlier post I had on the subject:

Also I read this New Yorker piece from 2005, about the English translations of the classic Russian novels. After reading this I checked my old copy of Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics) to find it bore no mention of a translator! A quick google told me that it was translated by Constance Garnett who is completely vilified by the article. Comparisons with other translations show how she bent the meaning of the works to suit her, and even omitted parts (!), bilingual authors such as Brodsky and Nabokov hated her translations and made it known. This is probably why she's not credited on my copy. Interesting stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pevear_and_Larissa_Volokhonsky#Bibliography

Call Me Jimmy

Cheers for that very interesting. It was only about 2 or 3 years ago max that I read it so it could have been either I suppose. I will actually get the one you mention for christmas come to think of it.

Callan57

SusanWhite wrote: »

How about starting with Atlas Shrug?
I am not a very big fan of Ayn Rand after reading The Fountainhead. That is a cult novel and I am expecting lots of people here to advocate about that novel..:P

Have you read We The Living?

implausible

emeraldstar wrote: »

I've just started "The Shining". Only my second King novel. Let's see how it goes.

Recently read "Different Seasons", a collection of his novellas, for work and it blew me away. I was a teenager when I last read King and back then, I doubt I was focusing on the quality of his writing, but reading "The Body" took my breath away. There are a few sentences and passages in it and "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" that bear memorising. Absolutely fantastic. Am raving about it to anyone who'll listen (and some who won't)

SarahBM

Reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. Not sure I really like it. About half way through. there is a lot of jumping back and forth in time which I am not too fond of. I dont like any of the charaters even in the slightest. Going home for Christmas so bringing My Cousin Rachel which I have been dying to read for ages. and Im am going to try read the Kite Runner.

implausible

Also read "The Gathering" by Anne Enright and while I was looking forward to it, I found it didn't live up to its potential. I found the overly detailed diversions into the imagined details of her grandmother's life very distracting and frustrating, which is a pity as some of her treatment of memory and its fallibility was very accurately portrayed. It could have been so much more.

Am on "The Spinning Heart" by Donal Ryan and so far, would highly recommend it. Some of his portrayals of Irish rural life and its characters are painfully close to the bone.

Callan57

Traitor's Field by Robert Wilton

Wyldwood

Just finished Colum McCann's TransAtlantic and loved it. I don't normally like books that hop backwards and forwards in time but McCann managed to pull it off with minimal disruption to the flow of the narrative. Fact, fiction and history all combine to make an excellent read.

Saorenza

I felt the same about The Gathering.

The most recent thing I have read is Letters from the Doig River School: To My Dear Ones in Ireland, 1955-1958 by Charlotte Groake. I probably wouldn't have encountered if the author was not a family member, but I am interested in immigrant, memoirs and frontier life so I enjoyed it (the references to people I know helped as well:))

I also read Who Betrayed Elizabeth Bennet? by John Sutherland, also enjoyed it.

I'll probably go back to Cockroaches or The Maias next.

(OT and apologies for it, but this is the only book thread I post in here - I am expecting my Kindle Fire to come any day, hopefully tomorrow

)

Aenaes

I started The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson last night and stayed up til 4am or thereabouts so I think you can guess I'm finding it enjoyable.

Ipso

SusanWhite wrote: »

I have been reading Atlas Shrug and it seems to be a never ending novel.:(

That's the problem with all you takers, you want the givers to do it all for you.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Eventually finished Let The Great World Spin. Thought it was pretty poor, to be honest. It felt like a bunch of short stories very loosely tacked together by one irrelevant event. Can't believe all the praise it got.

Moving on to either Serena by Ron Rash, or What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.

emeraldstar

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Eventually finished Let The Great World Spin. Thought it was pretty poor, to be honest. It felt like a bunch of short stories very loosely tacked together by one irrelevant event. Can't believe all the praise it got.

Same. Really thought it dragged.

Merkin

emeraldstar wrote: »

Same. Really thought it dragged.

Me too - very disjointed and totally overrated. Started off quite promising but didn't really go anywhere.

Book Lover James

I have just read the new novel A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland (available initially in Australia and New Zealand). I think this novel is likely to create some debate in Ireland and I have a friend here in Australia who somehow liked it and yet didn't like it???

I loved it!! And I loved its captivating voice. It tells the story of the IRA sniper Johnny Donnelly, a passionate young man in love with Ireland and the beautiful Cora Flannery.

It’s told from a unique angle, a tale on the troubles from south of the border, and the story meanders through the island, history, folklore, and peoples of Ireland. It’s a powerful piece of work, uplifting as it is real, and, at times, hard. And there are many pockets of beauty in the writing.

The ending too is unusual and again links to ancient tales of Irish mythology. But there is magic there.

A Mad and Wonderful Thing isn’t, perhaps, for all. But it was for me. I recommend it. :cool:

Swiper the fox

I finally got around to the Thing about December last night, about 80 pages in now(finished April for those who've read it). This guy is an extraordinary writer IMO, nobody has ever written contemporary Ireland as well as he does, the Spinning heart is my favourite book of the year so far but this will run it close I think. It's a heartbreaking story but the text is littered with dark humour and a few real belly laughs.
My wife who is a big reader finished it a few weeks ago, she said something interesting, she wondered why a writer with such talent could bring such a sad story to life.
Another poster has said the main character reminded them of the Pat Shortt character from Garage, I'm getting that also. What a book!