What Are You Reading? Chapter 7

[walto]

[Sergio Zamora]

This was so much fun. I imagine much of the medieval arcana made this book more difficult to read on its release, but it benefits from having access the internet and wikipedia.

[gonzo]

sergio,
okay movie great read

[Pete C]

[Sergio Zamora]

sergio,
okay movie great read

I saw the movie years ago, but it didn't leave much of an impression either way.

[Sergio Zamora]

I got that as a Kindle Daily Deal.

[Monte Smith]

The Whore of Akron by Scott Raab. Fine book. Cleveland versus fat Jewish writer versus Old Testament versus Lebron James. It was redemptive.

[clinthopson]

I just finished Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mankel. It's a fine continuation of Wolf Hall. Her treatment of Cromwell is very different than most of the writers who have dealt with the Tudor era.

They were a nasty bunch.

[Dr Dave]

I read a profile of her years ago in the New Yorker, and just the other day happened upon a copy of the book that made her reputation. I like the idea of there being "regular" Christianity and also secret back-room Christianity for "mature" believers.

[Sergio Zamora]

Two masterpiece-level amazing stories, several good ones, and only one weak one.

[gonzo]

aleph-paolo coehlo

[Sergio Zamora]

[walto]

A bunch of Hilary Putnam.

[Sergio Zamora]

A bunch of Hilary Putnam.

Ha ha, that dude has a girl name!

[Sergio Zamora]

I loved this:

[Monte Smith]

You know, I have never read Wodehouse. He's probably too good of a fit for me.



Scandal by the Japanese Christian, Shusaku Endo. This is the fifth Endo I have read this year and it was a strange experience because it took me three months to read despite there being startling revelations of a personal nature awaiting me on seemingly every other page. I must be deeply unself-curious. A famous old Tokyo novelist with a religious bent finds his life disrupted by the appearance of a physical double who frequents bars and sex clubs. What will his readership say? What does it mean about the nature of man and the universe? Oh boy.

[Sergio Zamora]

You know, I have never read Wodehouse.

That's very surprising. I figured he'd be right up your anglophile alley.

[Monte Smith]

That's very surprising. I figured he'd be right up your anglophile alley.

I think that's exactly the problem. It'd be like injecting heroin into my arteries.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

She's not dead, my good man, she's British!

[walto]

They're funny. But if you read too many of them at one time it's kind of like overdosing on doughnuts.

[Pete C]

First time since high school French. My favorite part is where Meursault browbeats the priest.

[Monte Smith]

Ha! I am currently reading Camus as well. You and I are such brothers from other mothers, Pete. I'm 3 stories into the 6 story compilation EXILE AND THE KINGDOM. So far the stories have been (in order): boring, bone-shakingly horrific, and a bit maudlin. Camus, though.

[Pete C]

I'm 3 stories into the 6 story compilation EXILE AND THE KINGDOM.

I can't remember if I ever read the book. I think maybe one story in a French anthology, also for school.

I like The Plague (originally read for college French). There was an interesting Argentine film adaptation not so long ago.

[Monte Smith]

I read and re-read THE FALL.

[Tom Storer]

I'm reading "New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families," by Colm Toibin, a collection of lit-crit essays. I'm enjoying it immensely. Toibin has a fine and serious analytical mind and deep psychological insight. He also does his research most thoroughly: it seems probable, for example, that he has read every scrap of correspondence that has ever been published, as well as a fair bit that hasn't, between Irish and English literary figures and their peers, friends, and family. Reading Toibin makes me feel like I'm an English major again, but in a good way.

[Sergio Zamora]

First time since high school French. My favorite part is where Meursault browbeats the priest.

A propos of nothing really, but years ago I checked out from the library 'A Happy Death'. I don't remember much it except the main character was also named Mersault, and the copy was a hard cover which must have been doused with an extremely pungent sickly sweet perfume. It was nigh unbearable to physically open it but it was the only Camus they had, so I soldiered through it. Since then I've read other works (with mixed impressions), but that nauseating sweet smell is what I most associate with him.

[Monte Smith]

A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud. Not sure why I read this or what it means. It's short, as was the author's career.

[Pete C]

Since then I've read other works (with mixed impressions), but that nauseating sweet smell is what I most associate with him.

How very Proustian.

[baksheesh]

This was so much fun. I imagine much of the medieval arcana made this book more difficult to read on its release, but it benefits from having access the internet and wikipedia.

I heartily second gonzo's take on this one, I think the book is marvelous - endlessly entertaining, brings you into a different world, as close perhaps as can be to the queerly constrained world of that time. The film however, although passably entertaining, was terribly weak overall. Connery was well cast even Christian Slater was passable as the young puppy at his heel given that that was all he had to portray (apart from being pretty enough to draw the peasant girl into damning criminal conversation), but IMO the Achilles heel of the film version is the outrageous bow to sentiment represented by the rescue of the accused witch. In the book the telling line is William's "Leave her, she is burned flesh!" roared into the face of an appalled Adso.
Reading this I was equally appalled (the depiction of their earlier copulation had been eloquently expressed, powerfully moving, and consequently this prospect of her immolation was distressing in the extreme)

In the film however, the last hectic few minutes resolve into an unimaginative and cliched rescue of the girl (however laudable in principle).

One of the things that makes the book so absorbing is the ability to draw the reader into the mind set of that period (in at least as much as we fancy that to be possible), which includes a fair amount of idiotic, yet absorbing theological argumentation. I.e. Following the logic, and smiling fondly at the anachronistic reasoning behind it.

But it doesn't hold a candle to Patrick O'Brien. He's the true master as far as historical fiction is involved. Time travel almost seems to be reality when reading his work.

I have yet to read Mary Renault's work, but I believe she also has much to recommend her.

[Monte Smith]

I've just finished a collection of short stories by Shusaku Endo called Stained Glass Elegies. These stories span much of Endo's career, except the very late years, and if anything I enjoyed them more than his novels. Reading them was a more sublime treat than any of his longer works except Deep River and Wonderful Fool. Endo is the real thing. His vision of life is completely his own, individualistic. His body of work is one unified piece of art. I guess I will read everything by him (that's been translated). I read Silence on a whim before I went on this year's current Endo kick, but the reason I have been on such a kick is the podcast IN OUR TIME with Melvyn Bragg. Bragg did a program on the topic of "redemption" and one of the participants said that modern literature has very few successful examinations of redemption but the ones he could think of were RIDERS IN THE CHARIOT by Patrick White, DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Golding, and all the works of Shusaku Endo.