What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (1 Viewer)

[Nate Champion]

Finished The Moviegoer. A beguiling, unresolved, frequently intoxicating read. Some of the most beautiful descriptive prose I've read in a while. I reckon I will have to return to this at a later stage. Definitely has a powerful trance-like quality that you get with "Southern" literature. Also, Percy makes some beautiful observations about our relation to progress, media and otherwise.

Just begun with Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Quite pleasant and moving so far, hopefully it won't end up being too slight. He already seems limited with his writing style and I'm only a few chapters in. Seems to be regarded as one of those early 20th Century Literature masterpieces that no one ever actually reads.

 

[Jim Daniels]

Jon McGregor: If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things: Liked it: 4 Stars

 

[Jim Daniels]

About to start Madame Bovary, for a book club. I'm not very good with many of the classics, so am not sure how this is going to go....

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Report back please.

Has anyone read any Balzac?

 

[Jim Daniels]

Report back please.

Has anyone read any Balzac?

I will...!

Never read Balzac. Just looked him up - looks like a French Ernest Hemingway, with an even larger appetite

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Her book Food Politics is a classic
This is a little lighter, but very clear and concise summary of the history, science and politics of the calorie.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Oops double post.

 

[Psycho Punk]

I will...!

Never read Balzac. Just looked him up - looks like a French Ernest Hemingway, with an even larger appetite

Fat cheese eating surrender monkey.

 

[rettucs]

Report back please.

Has anyone read any Balzac?

I started one by him but never finished it (actually only read first 20/30 pages). It seemed fine and I've been meaning to get back to it. All his stuff is out of copyright so free on the kindle

 

[rettucs]

Europe Central by William Vollmann

I've been reading this for the past while. Its a strange book. Quite challenging at times. Impossible at times. Sublime at times.

I'm on the Vlasov story and its the best so far (wasn't mad about all the Shostakovic stuff). Its going to take quite a while to get through though.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I've been reading this for the past while. Its a strange book. Quite challenging at times. Impossible at times. Sublime at times.

I'm on the Vlasov story and its the best so far (wasn't mad about all the Shostakovic stuff). Its going to take quite a while to get through though.

It's a bit of a chore at times alright, some chapters are not as good as others but for the most part I was blown away by this book. Some of the earlier shostakovich stuff i wasn't so mad about, later on I loved it, the last bit about him (i think it was the last section on him anyway) i found very moving, the highlight of the book. the way he gets across the sense of longing is fairly intense. maybe it was just the mood i was in at the time, i forget now.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

the last bit about him (i think it was the last section on him anyway) i found very moving, the highlight of the book. the way he gets across the sense of longing is fairly intense.

yes, i completely agree

 

[jonah]

I'm reading 'Skippy Dies' on someone's (?? you?) recommendation and despite being generally hilarious and sad in equal measure, its taking years.

 

[Jim Daniels]

I'm reading 'Skippy Dies' on someone's (?? you?) recommendation and despite being generally hilarious and sad in equal measure, its taking years.

Ah that's a great book. It is pretty hefty alright. The saddest line was about heroin.

 

[rettucs]

It gets sooo dark. But its a great read, particularly for us as I'm sure we can all relate to quite a lot of it (the school-related stuff I mean)

 

[Jim Daniels]

It gets sooo dark. But its a great read, particularly for us as I'm sure we can all relate to quite a lot of it (the school-related stuff I mean)

Indeed!

The best days of our life.......................... NOT!

 

[Jim Daniels]

Report back please. /QUOTE]

Re. Madam Bovary

It took a little while to get in to, but when I did, I really liked it. The writing is really beautiful, yet quite staight-forward. One of those books, where I had to re-read certain lines, not to understand them, but because they just had to be re read.

I was expecting something along the lines of Jane Austen, but it seemed more modern to me, almost ahead of its time. What I liked about the story itself was that I was unsure where, if anywhere, the writer's sypathies lay.

There are many translations, but I picked one by Lydia Davis, which is the most recent and highly regarded

 

[hermie]

Tried to read A Sentimental Education a few years ago but found the prose very convoluted. Perhaps it was part down to the translation.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I finally finished Proust's In Search of Lost Time last week. Took me about a year. It's fantastic, although hard to summarise why exactly since it took proust about 4000 pages to be that deadly. It's a bit like he holds a mirror up to your mind and goes into minute detail about every little half formed thought and worry that ever crossed it. The best bits are dazzling, page after page of beautifully written prose, some of it quite mental as the narrator is an insanely jealous cunt. The last volume was a bit of a disappointment though. He finally gives in to the urge to include some detailed depravity whereas in the earlier volumes he lets you know its happening but leaves out the details. Then he gives a bit of a bubble bursting description of the intentions and plans for the novel. I'd recommend that anyone starting it should give serious consideration to skipping the last volume, or at least the second half of it - the first half of it is alright.

then I read The Aspern Papers by Henry James. I've heard great things about him but this one is only alright. Very short and quite enjoyable but not amazing. I'll probably try The Turn Of The Screw the next time I read him.

I'm on The Information by James Gleick now. Seems interesting :

The subtitle, A History, A Theory, A Flood, gives the game away. This is really three books: one is about the history of information from earliest times to the present day. It opens with a memorable, beautifully written chapter about the "talking drums" of the Congo and explains how a drum with just two tones was used to communicate complex information quickly over large distances. After that we embark on a journey through the history of writing, the rise of the dictionary, the growth of English, the origins of programming and the arrival of Samuel Morse and his amazing electric telegraph.

The second part centres on the work of Claude Shannon, the American mathematical genius who in 1948 proposed a general theory of information. Shannon was the guy who coined the term "bit" for the primary unit of information, and provided a secure theoretical underpinning for electronic communications (so in a way he's the godfather of the modern world). The trouble was that Shannon's conceptual clarity depended on divorcing information from meaning, a proposition that to this day baffles everyone who is not an engineer.

But the most startling insights in the book come when Gleick moves to explore the role of information in biology and particle physics. From the moment when James Watson and Francis Crick cracked the structure of DNA, molecular biology effectively became a branch of computer science. For the replication of DNA is the copying of information and the manufacture of proteins is a transfer of information – the sending of a message.

And then there's quantum mechanics, the most incomprehensible part of physics, some of whose most eminent practitioners – such as the late John Archibald Wheeler – have begun to wonder if their field might not be, after all, just about information. "It from bit" was Wheeler's way of putting it. "Every it – every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself – derives its function, its meaning, its very existence… from bits."

Finally, Gleick surveys the "flood" – the torrent of data and information that now engulfs us. In this section Gleick switches from history to speculation, which means that he is now in the same boat as the rest of us. This writer welcomes him aboard.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/10/james-gleick-information-interview

 

[jonah]

Well done Shaney!