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What are we reading? 9th November 2021
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck is quite a chore of a read, i keep losing my interest and then it returns a page later. As i love the Berlin lake country and Brandenburg, i will persevere but for a very short novel, its a slow readLol....just saw Georgs comment on Erpenbeck!
Georg wrote: "
A story about a 72yo woman, who has recently been widowed, acquired an abandoned puppy, sold the marital home (in some neck of the woods) to move to a more ..."
That sounds very much like my few attempts to read Spanish novels. Aaaargh, so many flowery adjectives, its as if they are all octopuses being beaten, long past their untimely deaths, in order to tenderise the untender-risible!... p.s. I don't have a problem at all with the Latin American novels that I have read. I wonder what has got 'lost' in translation?
I finished When we cease to understand the World this afternoon. It has left me with much to think about.Mach’s objections to the book as a kind of anti-science eco tome were borne out in part but the bulk of the book is an account, loosely fictionalised, of the interaction - or you could say non-interaction- during the development of quantum mechanics by Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Einstein and de Broglie, each playing a part.
If one stops to think for a while about the enormity of this scientific breakthrough which Einstein never accepted, the realisation that when considering sub atomic particles, one only becomes real when it is measured, one can get an inkling of the enormity of these discoveries. If you measure an electron as a wave ( Schrodinger) it appears as such but if measured as a particle it adopts this form for it is both. An electron isn’t in any fixed place until it is measured and between one measurement and the next there are a whole range of possibilities, no one can say how it moves or where it is ( Heisenberg’s Uncertainty)
If you are interested in how these ideas came forth this is the section of the book that you should read. As I tap away on my iPad I know that I am able to do so because of these men’s struggles, just as when I use a smartphone and in countless other ways.
We may not know exactly where an electron is as it travels around a nucleus, sparking off protons on the way, we may not know how fast it is travelling, for it is not real until we measure but we can use these measurements for our benefit.
AB76 wrote: "Russell wrote: "AB76 wrote: "...World of Strangers ..." Thanks, AB. I'm asking the library if they can find a copy."hope you enjoy it as much as my other recommendations Russ, you clearly have an..."
I'm not sure if worldcat.org will work for you where you live. But this morning I found that 'Spin Your Web, Lady' by the Lockridges (of Mr. & Mrs. North fame) is available in several US libraries. I have already asked online for it from my local library ILL folks.
Worldcat.org looks for books (and other library-type items) based on postal code.
By the way, Spin Your Web, Lady is the 2nd of a 20+ series starring Captain (and later Inspector) Heimrich of the NY State Police. He is stationed in the bucolic country just north of NYC not far from the Connecticut border. I have some of the books but have decided to work my way through the series - re-reading as necessary.
scarletnoir wrote: "I know many of us like maps, but what to make of maps and locations which are imaginary? I became aware from a piece in the local rag that Aberystwyth-based author Rhys B. Davies and Matt Brown hav..."I am a big map fan. Recently, I began a book about Mexico (probably history) which very quickly had references to several of the Mexican states. Not a map in sight! I was so mad, I gave up.
Don't editors have checklists? If so, they should a 'would a map work well for the reader of this book' item to be checked.
I particularly like the old mystery paperbacks that have a map in the beginning - whether it's a village, Shrewsbury and environs (Cadfael), or The Riddle of the Sands which has several. The Riddle of the Sands is one of my two absolute favorite books!
MK wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I know many of us like maps, but what to make of maps and locations which are imaginary? I became aware from a piece in the local rag that Aberystwyth-based author Rhys B. Davie..."i loved "The Riddle of the Sands" too, a much under-rated novel, maybe the best novel of that genre in the period before WW1
Visitation....ughh...was Erpenbeck deliberately writing to annoy, such an odd lifeless style....dumped....
SydneyH wrote: "Reen wrote: "Colum McCann’s Everything in This Country Must. Apeirogon defeated me."I hope you enjoy it. I've read all of McCann's short story collections and I think they're all pretty solid, th..."
I'm eking out the contents of Everything in This Country Must; two stories in, I thought the first one, stellar, and the second, superb. To what extent a knowledge of The Troubles is helpful, I'm not sure, but it gave them an added layer for me certainly.
Though looking back on what I have said I would be very pleased to be pointed in a better direction for some less flowery prose in a Spanish novel. I really don't know the field very well, as most of the novels I have read, of Spain, have been written by outsiders, such as C J Sansom, or Hemingway etc. Some of my favourite films have been Spanish films, such as Luis Buñuel's 'Exterminating Angels', or 'Pans Labyrinth' by Guillermo del Toro. I'd be pleased to find something new to shed some light, to me, on Spanish culture...? I am a huge fan of Goya for instance, so a really mixed (but limited, so far) bag, from my own personal experience, I guess...
Tam wrote: "Though looking back on what I have said I would be very pleased to be pointed in a better direction for some less flowery prose in a Spanish novel. I really don't know the field very well, as most ..."As far as Goya goes, if you get this far, this is one of my favourites in our National Gallery...
https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-an...
Reen wrote: "Tam wrote: "Though looking back on what I have said I would be very pleased to be pointed in a better direction for some less flowery prose in a Spanish novel. I really don't know the field very we..."fabulous portrait... he really does know how to do 'pensive' somehow...
Reen wrote: "Tam wrote: "Though looking back on what I have said I would be very pleased to be pointed in a better direction for some less flowery prose in a Spanish novel. I really don't know the field very we..."Years ago in the Santander Art museum I walked into a long gallery and there at the end was a Goya . The painting depicted a man by a door. I don’t know what it was called by at that moment I thought it was fantastic as though it was three dimensional, he was really coming out of the painting.
Tam wrote: "Though looking back on what I have said I would be very pleased to be pointed in a better direction for some less flowery prose in a Spanish novel. I really don't know the field very well ..."Same here - I have read few novels by Spanish writers, and none that I can especially recall or recommend. On the other hand, I share your admiration for Goya and a good number of other Spanish painters, as well as film directors such as Buñuel, Victor Erice, Almodòvar and Carlos Saura.
Goya's most famous work, 'The Third of May 1808', is shown here along with a couple of others:
https://www.theartpostblog.com/en/goy...
Mod
I've read some books by Victor Del Arbol (he's Catalan). He studied history then worked in the police. I've read them in French translation, the publisher Actes Sud is always a recommendation for me. The books I've read are crime novels, for example La Tristesse du Samouraï but I see he has written other types of books, The latest is about child soldiers in Africa. Apparently he is one of the most translated Spanish authors.
I haven't read much of anything from Spanish literature either, beyond the most obvious of all, Cervantes. But as far as the late-19th to early-20th century period goes, I'm interested in Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, the author of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916), the novel the Rudolph Valentino movie, which I haven't seen, was based on. Apparently, several otherbooks of his were made into films, so he must have been quite successful in his day. But before his best-seller phase, I read on wiki, he produced some well regarded naturalistic novels in the 1890s and early1900s, so I'd like to find one of those as well. I fear none of this stuff, even from his most popular-at-the-time period, will be easy to find in English but I haven't really started looking yet.
From a generation or two earlier, I have a Penguin ppb of Pedro Antonio de Alarcon's The Three-Cornered Hat and Other Stories. I recently read a couple other short pieces by Alarcon that I liked, so looking forward to this as well.
Can't recall anything from Spain in the later decades of the 20th-C that I have on my to-read list off the top of my head but I'm sure there must be something out there that I'll want to find eventually.
Kepler is the eighth Banville novel I’ve read, and it’s my new favourite. The protagonist, Johannes Kepler, was a 17th century German astronomer, known for his laws of planetary motion. The novel depicts his struggles to make mathematical sense of the universe while also contending with the challenges of his time, such as religious prejudice, warring rulers and smallpox. This is the first concept that has really captured me among Banville’s texts. Stylistically, while The Sea might have an edge over it, I think the writing has a great texture, with central-European names for people and places, and Latin names for the titles of scientific texts and the chapters themselves. This is the first of Banville’s books I’ve read that breaks with his familiar style of first-person narration, which at times resembles Nabokov, at other times Beckett or Joyce. I think I’m going to keep an eye out in future for other books about great scientists and polymaths. Doctor Copernicus is in the post.Now turning to Golden Hill by Francis Spufford.
AB76 wrote: "Visitation....ughh...was Erpenbeck deliberately writing to annoy, such an odd lifeless style....dumped....""Lifeless" is exactly the word I would use as well. The people, the setting, the historic context. Even the weird sex scene.
How far did you get before dumping it?
Georg wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Visitation....ughh...was Erpenbeck deliberately writing to annoy, such an odd lifeless style....dumped....""Lifeless" is exactly the word I would use as well. The people, the setting..."
about 60 pages in, when i suddenly thought "life is too short" lol
i am amazed it has got so many positive reviews, something so mannered and calculated should have been cancelled by the publishers. Short novels that dull are rare indeed
Berkley wrote: "I haven't read much of anything from Spanish literature either, beyond the most obvious of all, Cervantes. But as far as the late-19th to early-20th century period goes, I'm interested in Vicente B..."the list of great spanish authors is long, especially the 19thc ones like Galdos, Pardo Bazan and Alas. Add to that the Catalan writers Rodoreda and Bonet, plus Camilo Cela
The Franco years are rather barren but Cela and Sanchez Ferlosio did write in the 1940-1975 period
I would start with "La Regenta" by Leopoldo Alas, a 19c classic set in cool, damp Oviedo
I loved books by all these authors but Ferlosio as i havent yet read "The River" its on my pile
AB76 wrote (#177): i am amazed it has got so many positive reviews, something so mannered and calculated should have been cancelled by the publishers. Short novels that dull are rare indeedAB, on Oct 25 you wrote:
Just started Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, i think i didnt finish on my commute about 5-6 yrs ago but so far i am finding it an interesting read, in the great Erpenbecks famous style
Germany has always been a great nation of writers and i think Erpenbeck is a real talent.
On Nov 9:
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck.
The great german tells a strange tale with lots of detail and so far i'm savouring it.
So you've called her "great" (twice) and "a real talent".
I would be very interested how and why you came to that opinion. And, consequently, do you think "Visitation" was only a dud?
I remember 2 regular posters here recommending "Visitation", though without going into details.
AB76 wrote (#178): about 60 pages in, Just an afterthought: you probably didn't get to the sex scene then, did you?
It was a bit gross as such, imo, but in a fairly "harmless" way. The really bizarre thing was that it stuck out like a sore thumb, because it didn't fit in with the story and was excruciatingly contrived and artificial.
AB76 wrote: "I would start with "La Regenta" by Leopoldo Alas, a 19c classic set in cool, damp Oviedo."Thanks, will have a look for that one, especially as it fits in with my slow reading progression through the late-19th century (which has somehow meandered backwards into the early and mid-19th century, but no matter, just a temporary abberation).
In the old days there was still a considerable literary community in our country, and medicine and law were still "the learned professions", but in an American city today you can no longer count on doctors, lawyers, businessmen, journalists, politicians, television personalities, architects, or commodities traders to discuss Stendhal's novels or Thomas Hardy's poems. You occasionally do come across a reader of Proust or a crank who has memorized whole pages of Finnegans Wake. I like to say, when I am asked about Finnegan, that I am saving him for the nursing home. Better to enter eternity with Anna Livia Plurabelle than with Simpsons jittering on the TV screen.
Saul Bellow, Ravelstein
Popular culture: 0 -- Highbrow lit: 1
Slawkenbergius wrote: "Saul Bellow, Ravelstein"You're reading Ravelstein? How are you finding it?
I'm having one of my "aren't I a philistine" moments. Reading so many of the posts here talking about authors I haven't even heard of, let alone read!
SydneyH wrote: "You're reading Ravelstein? How are you finding it?"Very Bellowesque: not much plotwise but plenty of character development. I'm enjoying it like one enjoys a good glass of Porto wine; as the French say, Bellow's style is "une valeur sûre" :)
Georg wrote: "AB76 wrote (#178): about 60 pages in, Just an afterthought: you probably didn't get to the sex scene then, did you?
It was a bit gross as such, imo, but in a fairly "harmless" way. The really bi..."
thankfully no!
as for my previous praise for Erpenbeck it was based on her other novels which i didnt find so strange and dull, though i now look back and think, would i enjoy them again? I dont think Visitation is a dud but possibly it has been over-hyyped, so i expected far more from it
i have found bad books among many authors i love, though i didnt expect the style of Visitation to continue driving into my skull until i couldnt bear anymore of it!
Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I would start with "La Regenta" by Leopoldo Alas, a 19c classic set in cool, damp Oviedo."Thanks, will have a look for that one, especially as it fits in with my slow reading progres..."
Alas is worth the time, its a long novel but well constructed and with a very specific feel of Asturias, the northern weather (much wetter and greener, Asturias being part of "Green Spain"), plus the galaxy of characters amid the scenery of Oviedo and its different classes
Slawkenbergius wrote: "Saul Bellow, Ravelstein"I find that I don’t know what to make of the musical references in Bellow; I was waiting for some kind of payoff to
I see by Walter Winchell that J.S. Bach put on black gloves to compose a requiem mass..
Bill wrote: "Slawkenbergius wrote: "Saul Bellow, Ravelstein"I find that I don’t know what to make of the musical references in Bellow; I was waiting for some kind of payoff to Alan Bloom’s Abe Ravelstein’s tailor being named Gesualdo, but it never came. Also, in starting Herzog, I found I couldn’t get past
I see by Walter Winchell that J.S. Bach put on black gloves to compose a requiem mass. "
Is there something in the the novel to explain why Walter Winchell would be looked to as a source of information about Bach?
I had to look up Gesualdo, and skimming through his dramatic life history makes me wonder, is there any equivalent to Vasari's Lives of the Artists for Renaissance composers? For later eras I'm sure there must be biographical dictionaries and the like.
AB76 wrote (#187): "Georg wrote: "AB76 wrote (#178): about 60 pages in, Just an afterthought: you probably didn't get to the sex scene then, did you?
It was a bit gross as such, imo, but in a fairly "harmless" way...."
Donning my Paxman hat: my question was
you've called her "great" (twice) and "a real talent".
I would be very interested how and why you came to that opinion.
"her other novels which i didnt find so strange and dull" is not an answer.
Berkley wrote: "is there any equivalent to Vasari's Lives of the Artists for Renaissance composers?"None that I'm aware of.
Bill wrote: "I was waiting for some kind of payoff to Alan Bloom’s Abe Ravelstein’s tailor being named Gesualdo"You're overinterpreting, Swelter. If you ask me, Bellow must have taken the firts Italian name he found when he randomly opened the Chicago phone book.
Berkley wrote: "I had to look up Gesualdo, and skimming through his dramatic life history makes me wonder, is there any equivalent to Vasari's Lives of the Artists for Renaissance composers?"I know of no contemporary compendium of biographical information on Renaissance composers - as far as I know biographical summaries of musicians are generally pretty sparse until around the turn of the 18th-19th century.
If you want more context on the Herzog excerpt, here's the opening of the first chapter, at the end of which the Walter Winchell quote appears. As I say, so far I haven't gotten any further.
https://www.npr.org/2009/05/18/103846...
Slawkenbergius wrote: "You're overinterpreting, Swelter. If you ask me, Bellow must have taken the firts Italian name he found when he randomly opened the Chicago phone book."Here are two podcasts about Ravelstein and Alan Bloom that I found informative - it also provided some interesting context for Bloom's reading of The Republic of Plato, one of the books I had in a college course that influenced my reading of the Greeks. (I'm including both podcasts because I don't recall at this point which one contained which information. If you listen only to one, I'd suggest the second, from the "Know Your Enemy" series.)
https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/podca...
https://know-your-enemy-1682b684.simp...
Do you have any plans to read Ravelstein's, er, I mean Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (which has a short introduction by Bellow)?
giveusaclue wrote: "I'm having one of my "aren't I a philistine" moments. Reading so many of the posts here talking about authors I haven't even heard of, let alone read!"It's been a bit esoteric here for me as well.
I've just started Zoo Station on audio. First in a series - Nazi Germany before the war. It's early on so I'm not committed to go further yet.
On the physical book side, I'm swapping between Felonious Monk which is truly weird - a monk with anger management issues, the Mafia, and taking place in a crystal-gazing part of the SW and Fiona Hill's There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century which the FT has listed as the first of five best political books of the year.
I wish my libraries (I have two systems to call on) had not discontinued their fines (an equity thing which I understand) as I am old school and getting fined for late books was an incentive for me.
MK wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I'm having one of my "aren't I a philistine" moments. Reading so many of the posts here talking about authors I haven't even heard of, let alone read!"It's been a bit esoteric..."
I thought you meant the jazz pianist at first!! I am in full agreement re library fines. Where I worked for a while it was surprising (not) how many children or their parents started bringing back their books on time once they reached the age of 12 when fines began.
I have just read
set in Brittany featuring a maverick (aren't they all?) detective. I now know more about the harvesting of sea salt than I ever dreamed there was to know! I have now moved on to
I am working through the series which is set in the Lake District. It is always nice to read about an area where you have visited. I also read in the paper that they are thinking of banning cars in some areas of the Lakes which is probably much needed:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...
I then plan to move on to heavier tomes in Dan Jones's latest:
Fortunately for my fingers and thumbs it is, as usual, the ebook that I will be reading.
Mod
I've got Zoo Station, but haven't yet read it.
At the moment, I'm reading a Nigel Strangeways mystery, Head of a Traveller by Nicholas Blake, and have just finished the latest in the Bill Slider series, Cruel as the Grave.
Zoo Station looks interesting. I will make a note for future reading. Good job my tbr pile is digital!
Mod
set in Brittany featuring a maverick (aren't they all?) detective...."
I've just looked this writer up, not having heard of him before and see that he is in fact German.
Gpfr wrote: "MK wrote: "I've just started Zoo Station on audio..."I've got Zoo Station, but haven't yet read it.
At the moment, I'm reading a Nigel Strangeways mystery, Head of a Traveller by..."
Thanks for the Bill Slider reminder. I've just put this latest on hold at 2 libraries. Can't wait. These are my all time favorite police procedurals. I wish more devotees in the States knew how good this series is.
Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I have just read The Fleur de Sel Murders (Commissaire Dupin #3) by Jean-Luc Bannalecset in Brittany featuring a maverick (aren't they all?) detective...."
I've just looked th..."
Yes, that's right. The detective is a bit of an outlier but I enjoy the books as much for the descriptions of Brittany and the Bretons. Here is another one who is German and has written a couple of books set in Provence:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/r/ca...
and M L Longworth is an American:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/m-...
Bill wrote: "Do you have any plans to read Ravelstein's, er, I mean Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (which has a short introduction by Bellow)?"Don't know. After what I read about it on Wikipedia I'm in two minds.
Many thanks for the links!
Slawkenbergius wrote: "Don't know. After what I read about it on Wikipedia I'm in two minds."The LRB review of Ravelstein by Christopher Hitchens ("The Egg-Head’s Egger-On" linked to in the "Know Your Enemies" podcast) quotes an early review of The Closing of the American Mind which suggests, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that Bellow himself is the author:
Now Saul Bellow has demonstrated that among his other well-recognised literary gifts is an unsuspected bent for daring satire. What Bellow has done, quite simply, is to write an entire coruscatingly funny novel in the form of a pettish, bookish, grumpy, reactionary complaint against the last two decades. The ‘author’ of this tirade, one of Bellow’s most fully-realised literary creations, is a mid-fiftyish Professor at the University of Chicago, to whom Bellow gives the evocative name ‘Bloom’. Bellow appears in the book only as the author of an eight-page ‘Foreword’, in which he introduces us to his principal and only character.
Possibly my last modern fiction read of an inevitably mediocre modern fiction 2021(only 25% of the modern novels read were any good), will be a late novel by Ulster writer Brian Moore.I have read two of his novels previously, a 1950s classic set in Belfast "Judith Hearne" and a 1990s novel set in Southern France.
Black Robe(1985) is set in French Canada in the 17th century, involving Jesuit missionaries in what was then an outpost of the French empire. I should start it in the next week or so
Berkley wrote: "I haven't read much of anything from Spanish literature either, beyond the most obvious of all, Cervantes. But as far as the late-19th to early-20th century period goes, I'm interested in Vicente B..."The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is World War I French propaganda, interesting enough as a curiosity. It was filmed again as World War II allied propaganda, I believe.
Robert wrote: "Berkley wrote: "I haven't read much of anything from Spanish literature either, beyond the most obvious of all, Cervantes. But as far as the late-19th to early-20th century period goes, I'm interes..."The 'Four horsemen of the apocalypse' was one of the options for my O -level art subject. I duly painted my version of what I thought it was about. Alas I had mis-titled it, and submitted it as the 'Four horsemen of the Acropolis'. I got a grade 1 for my efforts, but many years later, whilst climbing up to visit the actual site of the Acropolis, I found myself looking out for the four horsemen, and was very disappointed to see that there was ne'er a shred of the poor chaps to be seen...
A good biography in graphic form by a Norwegian artist. He makes clever use of Munch's paintings and drawings, interviews with Munch, and contemporary quotations from Munch and his associates.https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/...
Tam wrote: "The 'Four horsemen of the apocalypse' was one of the options for my O -level art subject. I duly painted my version of what I thought it was about. Alas I had mis-titled it, and submitted it as the 'Four horsemen of the Acropolis'. I got a grade 1 for my efforts, but many years later, whilst climbing up to visit the actual site of the Acropolis, I found myself looking out for the four horsemen, and was very disappointed to see that there was near a shred of the poor chaps to be seen...."That Lord Elgin probably took them away somewhere, I'll bet you.
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate: Vol. 1, 1764–1772 (other topics)Herzog (other topics)
Ravelstein (other topics)
Herzog (other topics)
After Colette (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Charles Willeford (other topics)Willy Vlautin (other topics)
Ahmadou Kourouma (other topics)
Roy Jacobsen (other topics)
hope you enjoy it as much as my other recommendations Russ, you clearly have an excellent library service where you are!
Gordimer is certainly in a category of her own with her sentence style and detached approach of writing, will be interested to see what you think. I came to that novel after disliking her debut novel "The Lying Days" but i really liked "World of Strangers"