Stewart's recent posts
Recent public posts
(showing 21-40 of 74).
Ah, right. I see it now, tucked away under the Author, where I have to select Role too. Thanks.
After I'd posted a new thread, I realised something, but it's possible for the group moderator to do. How about getting a specific format for the Specific Books section?
What I mean is something like:
0001. Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
0347. Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow
0556. Primo Levi: If This Is A Man
0141. Vikram Seth: A Suitable Boy
That way, when looking for a thread on one of the 1001 books, the number, author, and title are all within the thread title as a reference point.
I can't believe I read this book so long after I probably should have. But, that damage done, reading the book immediately healed that gaping wound in my reading.
My full thoughts are here, if anyone cares to read a longer piece, but I just want to say how the book blew away all expectations I had of it. Over the years I'd built up an clear picture in my head of what it was about. Boy, was I wrong.
A couple more suggestions:Put an option to allow for the book's original title, should it be in translation. Also, the option to add multiple translators (like the authors) has.
Alternative titles. Edward Docx's Self Help was published as Pravda in the US. Salingers's Nine Stories was published as For Esme - With Love And Squalor in the UK. Not to mention that sometimes translators find themselves giving different titles to the same book.
I think there needs to be a rethink on awards and prizes. Am I supposed to separate each one a book gets by a comma? If you start building up an index of prizes, with winners for each year, with links to the titles and authors, then there's more browsing opportunities. And what about authors? There's no box to enter in that so and so won the Nobel Prize in Literare or the Adalbert von Chamisso Prize - i.e. prizes for people, not books.
Perhaps something along the lines of last.fm's Events, where literary events can be listed and people can be gathered under a Yes, I'm attending banner that can be viewed. The option to write a review of the event, of course, (sh/c)ould be there too.
Finally got round to writing up Raymond Queneau's Exercises In Style.
Over agenda-ed? More inept.
I've not read it myself but I don't quite see what you mean when you say "I did not find the narrator a person that you wanted to care about" - who wants to care about a narrator? As long as they are interesting.
A new Michel Faber? Woo hoo!
Surely it's not the content but the overall quality of the book that matters.
No, not read it. This was my first. But it will no doubt be a while before I get round to looking for more as my to be read pile is just too large to keep adding more to.
Thanks Marianne. It certainly makes me want to try more of her work, but there's so few titles in translation.
Some of my choices:
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Dr Haggard's Disease, Patrick McGrath
Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg
The Crimson Petal And The White, Michel Faber
The Ice Palace, Tarjei Vesaas
The Invention Of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Pilgrim Hawk, Glenway Wescott
The Redemption Of Elsdon Bird, Noel Virtue
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima
Brilliant. John Self's reading it at the moment, too. Looking forward to both your thoughts on it.
Read and reviewed The Hour Of The Star by Clarice Lispector. I didn't realise until a few minutes ago that it was even on the list. So a bonus book to tick off.
I don't think I could trust King to pick a good collection of short stories. Also out, however, is The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford. Its reviews seem far more favourable.
'Or are you suggesting that a review of a critically acclaimed work should consist of "people who know better than me say this is good, so I suppose I must have enjoyed it - although it didn't seem much like any other experience of enjoyment I've ever had."'Not at all. I was just a little taken by your comment about The God Boy being "Totally irrelevant to the life of an urban raised teenage girl." It's just that it's not as if you need to identify with the setting or characters to enjoy the book. I'm an urbanite on the other side of the world. It wasn't a barrier and it wasn't an irrelevance. Go on, give it a second shot.
Surely you should take the book on its merits, not your own?
Yeah. They've all been relaunched in the UK, so I thought I'd just buy them all. That way, when it comes to buying more books I won't be swayed or too pushed on a dilemna because I often find myself thinking, "this one for the collection, or this one because it intrigues?" At least by having no need of any more in the collection the problem is solved.
Reading:
Have just finished Agamemnon's Daughter by Ismail Kadare, although there's another two short stories in it I don't know whether to read.
Other than that, I'm reading:
Gentlemen by Klas Östergren and The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany
And swithering over whether to pick up either The Book Of Words by Jenny Erpenbeck or Submarine by Joe Dunthorne next.
