Currently Reading...

[Wyndham]

Just finished reading 'The Greatest Story Ever Sold', a holiday read. Pretty good, but essentially consolidates everything we've been talking about in 'Current Events', here and elsewhere, for the past five years. What a mess! Just confirms my suspicion that I really, really wouldn't want to be the next President of the US. So much inglorious cleaning up to do, with no doubt, so much blame to go around.

[Aravis]

I'm just starting on My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk. It's a mystery set in 16th century Istanbul in which a Sultan commissions artists to illuminate a book dedicated to celebrating his kingdom. This is a dangerous task because it was a sacrilegious undertaking, an affront to Islam. When the most talented of his artists disappears, the only clues to be found are in his miniatures.

It's not bad so far. The narrative voice in the first chapter is actually a corpse. I'll see how it goes.

[wordswordswords]

Aravis, it's really good to see you back!

Wyndham, I just noticed that back in March you asked my opinion of A Whistling Woman by A. S. Byatt. I had to refresh my memory by looking at my books blog, and I might as well quote what I said there at the time:

BYATT, A. S.
A WHISTLING WOMAN (2002)

Maybe A. S. Byatt and I are just not kindred spirits. I've read one or two of her other novels and felt the same irritation that I felt with A Whistling Woman....
There are too many characters in the novel to keep track of. The author herself doesn't keep very good track of them, either. But then she's dealing with the vast panorama of a university in the 1960s, with an anti-university springing up in its vicinity. On its property, as a matter of fact, and wouldn't you know? The university wins out over the little band of rebels in their encampment.
A. S. Byatt is rather emphatically on the side of the university in spite of her attempts at making satiric thrusts at both sides. The implication here is that the rebels' "real" objective is to ease their own lives by forcing the university to soften up its foreign-language requirements.

My biggest problem with this novel is that the characters don't come alive. They aren't fleshed out enough. There is too much going on here, and Byatt is apparently eager to show off her knowledge of just about everything under the sun.
The result is a novel that is showy but without much depth. Perhaps I would care more about the main character, Frederica, if I had read the rest of the quartet of novels involving her. But I doubt it.
(25 March 2006)

[RobertGraves]

I've only read Possession and some nonfiction.

[wordswordswords]

I've just finished reading Nicholson Baker's Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (2001). Is anybody here familiar with this book?

The author is very perturbed about the way in which libraries are rushing to put so many books and newspapers on microfilm and, in the process, destroying the original works. Of necessity, the libraries maintain, since to microfilm a volume entails "disbinding" it and thus rendering it useless, for all practical purposes.

Baker points out that a microfilmed version is NOT an exact copy of the original, that the reader needs special equipment to read it, and that it is almost always much less readable than the original.

He also disputes the notion, often stated in the library world in recent years, that books will "crumble" and turn to dust. He sets about to prove that the kinds of paper most books are printed on will never crumble or turn to dust. He stops just short of accusing librarians and archivists of conspiring to rid the world of books in their zeal to save space (and therefore money).

I thought this was an absorbing and provocative book. By the way, the author has bought up the runs of several US newspapers with his own funds and seems to have rescued them from the discard pile, for a while at least....

[RobertGraves]

Not read it W3. The odd thing, in our digital age, is that paper tends to preserve much better than anything binary.

[wordswordswords]

Thanks for replying, Robert. Yes, I've noticed how often people feel more secure if they have a "hard copy" of a document--and with good reason, seemingly.

Nobody has posted here in the last 6 days. I read a post a while back saying that one person was going back to the other board. Is that where everyone else has gone?

[RobertGraves]

I've been with a school excursion camping for the last wee. We snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef and had a good time around Airlie Beach.

Generally, my life as a Deputy Principal and father of 2 small children means my posting has become more and more infrequent. I like it that this place still exists whenever anyone feels like saying something but it is not exactly a hive of activity.

Also, I tend to be less opinionated nowadays ;O)

[pinkozcat]

There seem to be only three regular posters which is a shame. I drop in most days to see if there is anything new but since the excitement surrounding the US elections things have become very slow here.

So ... currently reading a rather weird book called "The New Jeruslem" by Adrian Gilbert. It is "The extraordinary true story of how a secret society rebuilt London". It is, of course, riding on the coat tails of "The da Vinci Code" and although he appears to be sound and well researched on his history he extrapolates in a rather alarming manner.

I have just finished reading his rendition of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia which were new to me and thus very interesting but Bohemia is a far cry from London after the great fire and I have not yet reached any secret societies or esoteric planning of the new London.

[wordswordswords]

Glad you checked in, pinkozcat! I like your signature line, by the way.

I'm now reading The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell. It's an absorbing account of the six Mitford sisters.

I often wondered how Jessica Mitford, whose American Way of Deathwas a trail-blazing book that I thought well done and very much needed at the time it was written, could have got along with a sister like Unity, who had a crush on Hitler and even cozied up to him for quite a while...

[RobertGraves]

Best book I've read this year is Junot Diaz', 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' which earned a Pulitzer in 2008.

I am looking for copy of 'Infinite Jest' by David Foster Wallace - anyone read it?

[pinkozcat]

I try to avoid reading prizewinning books; I read Oscar and Lucinda and hated it and I couldn't finish March - it turned my stomach and irritated me. A very funny insight into the selection process for literary prizes is a book by Ruth Dudley-Edwards called Carnage on the Committee.

I read a great deal now that I am retired and have joined an online book place called bookcrossing.com where one can register books, read them, review them and leave them around for other people to pick up, read, review and release etc. Some of my books have turned up in very distant places, especialy as there is a backpackers' hostel just down the road a bit.

I joined to get rid of books prior to moving in a couple of years ... and now I have more than I ever had before. *sigh*

[pinkozcat]

Hi WWW. I have read Nancy Mitfords autobiography and, of course, The pursuit of Love is autobiographic and very funny. It was a totally dysfunctional family and it is no wonder that the girls all turned out rather oddly.

If you haven't read The Pursuit of Love I would highly recommend it.

[Wyndham]

Hi Pink. I read the 'love' books years ago -- in Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate years ago. They are hilarious. I particularly like her depiction of her dad, especially when some Germans come to visit . . . all the while he has an entrenching tool covered in hair and blood hanging over his fireplace.

[RobertGraves]

Peter Carey does not do it for me either (not since Bliss anyway).

Best (most satsifying read) book that won a prize was 'Possession' by AS Byatt that won the Booker in the early 90s.