What Books Are You Reading in 2019? Part 1

My Amazon cart is currently filled to the brim.

Still reading The Witch Elm.

The Dakota Winters, Tom Barbash

The Body Keeps the Score (about trauma)

Clarice Lispector's short stories

Diane Williams's stories (bizarre; not sure if I like her but she writes as if she's translated out of and then back into English)

I am reading the Eddie Flynn legal thrillers by Steve Cavanagh. I got them all from the library before Christmas. The author is from Belfast and almost gets away with writing the New York setting convincingly, something most people from the UK struggle with. The paciness and suspense reminds me (and this isn’t a backhanded compliment) of The Da Vinci Code. It seems to be written for the screen.

And also - has anyone read any Orhan Pamuk?

I read 'Snow' and 'Museum of Innocence' - both excellent however I think the latter a bit more accessible.

Thanks r5. I own the Black Book by him as well, but always feel like I must familiarise myself with Turkish history.

I received The Zahav Cookbook, by Michael Solomonov. Zahav is one of his Israeli restaurants in Philadelphia. I'm going to try to make his version of hummus first, using tahini from Soom, which Mike says makes all the difference.

And here's the book.

The backwards baseball cap look dates back to 1951?

Just finished reading all of Madeleine St John's novels. Very breezy, but seems to pack a lot in her very witty and clever dialogue. Not much happens in the books. St John is in the same vein as Muriel Spark - short novels, small little worlds, but with more focus on dialogue rather than story-line.

[quote]story-line

No hyphen is needed in "storyline."

R6 this is true of 'Snow' as well - best to get familiar with Turkish history, especially Kemal Ataturk reforms in order to understand the novel.

I received WARLIGHT by Michael Ondaatje.

I listen to audiobooks that are on the lighter side, and do not require great attention while I clean.

I have been listening to the audiobooks of Georgette Heyer. She wrote historical fiction, most famously in the Regency period. They are witty, engaging, with great care taken to reflect historical accuracy, a strong female heroine and had many entertaining side characters. Her romances are very chaste, and often unconvincing and out of the blue. I think it was because she had no love or romance in her life. The novels are still wonderful, and they really put me in a buoyant mood.

I’m reading Buddhism for Beginners.

Which audiobooks by Heyer have you read r14? I was interested in the Richard Armitage ones but they’re are abridged. Abridged! In this day and age.

I’m reading Whit Stillman’s LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. I guess it’s Jane Austen’s LADY SUSAN with the movie ending.

Did Kim name her baby or will she take 2 months like Hayley?

My reading challenge for 2019 is divided between some classics recommended to me on the 'What Are We Reading in 2018' topic thread, and my now larger "To Be Read" list. I wonder if my library branches will notice my less frequent visits this year.

About one-third of the way through [I]Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Ruled an Empire[/I] by Julia Baird. Part of an online read-along through the end of this month. Hoping to start another (shorter!) January group read: [I] Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains Under Sail[/I] soon.

(Reccomender of Armadale, etc. last year)

I was given a Richard And Judy Book Club selection.

I am missing Oprah.

Barbara Pym's EXCELLENT WOMEN.

I'll be reading whatever Reece tells me to read.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove. I was in the Amalfi coast and Sorrento in December.

I suppose we need to migrate to this new thread so.

I'm still waiting for Russel's new novel. Swamplandia was a big dissapointment to me. I love the start of the novel and i really like her writing but the whole story didn't connect with me at all

Just started this free audiobook from my local library:

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance

R25 I believe there is the consensus she writes well, conceives interesting premises, but isn't a storyteller, and can't wrap up a story.

I agree, I loved St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves but didn't finish Swamplandia. I'm not going to give up on Karen Russell until her latest is released.

I'm reading an early Richard Price novel, The Breaks.

I previously read The Wanderers, Bloodbrothers, Ladies' Man and Clockers, and I've seen his miniseries The Night Of.

But this one is kind of challenging to get through because the main character is such a clueless asshole.

I'm reading an early Richard Price novel, The Breaks.

I previously read The Wanderers, Bloodbrothers, Ladies' Man and Clockers, and I've seen his miniseries The Night Of.

But this one is kind of challenging to get through because the main character is such a clueless asshole.

I am going to read a previously unread classic every fortnight. I’m starting with DON QUIXOTE.

R31: OH, i'm spanish and only read parts of Don Quixote (the spanish title is way longer). Some day that'll need to change

I love Richard Price.

Based on the advice of DL I will read Bad Blood, the Theranos story.

R16 I listened to the eAudiobooks available through my library. There are none of the abridged ones, which I usually try to avoid if I can. Though Heyer's books could sometimes do with a little trimming.

I listened to The Grand Sophy, probably her best regarded one, it has an exuberance due to the character of Sophy, a capable and independent woman.

The Masqueraders, a Georgian era one, that has cross-dressing. Borrowing heavily from Twelfth Night. It certainly is on of her more adventurous ones.

The Corinthian, another adventure one, also with cross-dressing and being on the run.

Venetia is about a rake, and is one of the most convincing and mature of her books. It is the closest to approach heat between its characters.

Cotillion has a delightful hero, who reads more as a gay best friend than partner.

Sylvester has the heroine as a writer, in the vein of Lady Caroline Lamb. Writing unflattering stories of people in society, anonymously.

Arabella is about the heroine accidentally hoaxing society into thinking she is an heiress.

I am currently listening to Frederica, which may be my favourite. Every character is distinct, well-drawn and engaging, especially the side characters. It may also be my favourite, because of the adage of my favourite is the last one I read.

It's not the heaviest fare, but in the background as you do other things it is perfect. They all have something to enjoy, though some more than others. It may repeat some elements through the stories, every story has been distinct.

I am about to start THE PRINCE OF TIDES. Seems like good weekend reading.

I am not R34 but I did the same and read 'Bad Blood' - a great book, I could not put it down.

I also read a book that I saw in many Best of 2018 rankings - 'Educated' by Tara Westover which turned out to be supremely bad. The story does to hold up to scrutiny, the family description as isolated survivalist is overblown and it has to be the least personal memoir I have ever read - I coukd not get a sense of who the author was. The worst book I've read in the last 3-4 years.

I found WHO BETRAYS ELIZABETH BENNET? in a box my father let me.

John Sutherland posits questions and “solves” them of a bunch of 19th century literature.

(The “betrayal” is someone telling Lady Catherine De Burgh about Darcy paying off Wickham).

* and “solves” a bunch of them from 19th Century lit.

Disappointed to read that about “Educated” - it was next on my list.

I just finished “Gilead” which was good but not as good as “Housekeeping” and I’ve just started “Less” which is moving along but so far, not the laugh riot the book jacket promises.

I'm going to read A monster calls after finishing Oranges are not the only fruit. I loved the beginning of the film (here in spain tv people seem to think nobody needs to wake up early and the movie ended at 2 am so i couldn't watch it finish) and young adult novels are easy to read (and i need easy books right now)

Tell us how it is - Patrick Ness is supposed to be one of the better YA authors.

I just finished Edith Wharton's "THe House of Mirth" because you bitches recommended it. I just can't get into the desolation felt by brainless social climbers.

I'm reading Michelangelo Antonioni's The Architecture of Vision. He comes off as very humble and NOT pretentious. He's incredibly perceptive (as I imagined he would be) and that's what draws me to his movies too.

R44 Thanks for this, adding to my 'to read' list. Have you read any Passolini's nivels by any chance?

R45, no I haven't. I actually haven't watched that much of Passolini or Fellini. But Italian movies definitely hold my attention more than French ones.

R45, and thanks, you should read the book by Antonioni. IT's very readable and he comes off very well in it. His reasonsing for shooting scenes the way he does and telling stories in an untraditional way makes complete sense and histhinking doesn't seem convoluted.

[QUOTE] The story does to hold up to scrutiny, the family description as isolated survivalist is overblown and it has to be the least personal memoir I have ever read

You meant Educated "does NOT..." right? I disliked the book as well, but it seems to be a smash hit overall. I couldn't suspend disbelief that a young woman who had literally never had any education beyond desultory homeschooling could write papers hailed as genius material within a couple of years at faking her way into college.

I haven't yet read "House of Mirth", but did appreciate the modern story "Everybody Rise" which is often compared to Wharton's novel. The mother reminded me quite a lot of my aunt.

TJ Smith

R36 I read it recently and really enjoyed it. It had a lot of praise on Datalounge, so I got straight to it. Whilst some tough subject matter, it is a warm and hopeful reader. Donna Tartt wishes she could write something as epic, sweet and real as this (I feel this is what she was trying to go for with The Goldfinch).

R48 Yes 'Not' is missing. I do agree it is not plausible to go ffom zero to hero jn such a short span of time when academic excellency is considered. My boyfriend is doing his PhD in Oxford (history) and humanities here require proficiency of argumentation that is difficult to achieve without schooling in English. The competition for scholarships in enormous and successful applicants are seldom from non English speaking countries, whereas in science the proportion is very different. The art of essay writing is really fundamental to success here, most of Oxbridge students started learning it while in school and then perfected it through 1-2-1 tutoring they get. It is not something you can master in half a year.

R51 I am working at Oxford (with students), but I did my undergrad at the university of London in Art History and Archaeology. There, I had to write tons of essays too on topics as diverse as Japanese visual culture in the XVIII th century; Chinese archaeology of the Han dynasty; glazing in Chinese ceramics; Korean celadon wares; African textiles; Islamic architecture, and I must say my mother tongue is not English, so what you say about essay writing is not exclusive of Oxford and it can be done.

Yes but in the book a girl who had not written an essay till she got to the University suddenly was capable of writing one of the best essays a professor with 30 years of teaching experience had seen. This plus other miracles that seem to happen every time she has an exam (from barely understanding fractions to acing an exam in couple of weeks) just make it all look like fantasy.

I see what you mean R53

I am reading "Inside book publishing" and Tina Brown's "Vanity Fair Diaries", I am obsessed with business, journalism and publishing and dislike fiction, I sometimes throw in a bit of art theory in the mix, but I am keen to read a lot more this year. So, less DL and internet for me and more chain reading that I used to do in my teenage years. One of those things I should have never grown out of.

What art history do you like, r55? In fact, where is a good place to start?

I'm not very conventional when it comes to art history. I don't take the eurocentric canon of the 'masterworks' with the usual suspects (you know the DaVincis, Velazquez's and Berninis, Fragonards, Goyas, and Rubens and all that jazz) as my starting point. I prefer an interdisciplinary approach and so consider art objects within their economic, ideological, social, political contexts that produced them, rather than emphasising the traditional view most ppl have about art as sacred objects produced by special, misunderstood 'snowflakes' — the artists. For that reason I'm more into the Philosophy of art and the Sociology of art.

[quote] In fact, where is a good place to start? If you want to start reading art theory, I recommend something very light in a comic book format

R56, in addition to what I have just mentioned, I'm also of the opinion that art and commerce have always gone hand in hand; I therefore enjoy books that delve into the art market, for instance "Art Business Today - 20 key topics". I still have to finish it; I started it in 2018. I got it from Sotheby's but I believe you can get it from any good bookshop. And growing up, as a teenager John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" blew my mind and has influenced how I see art ever since.

Thank you, r55/etc! I watched (bits) of Berger’s WAYS OF SEEING at uni. Your personal response was just what I was after.

I'm going to beat the dead horse of Educated a bit further as I am astounded that others can write off the fantasy aspect so easily, declaring it a brilliant book by a brilliant author.

She decided to apply to Brigham Young University, explaining her lack of transcript as having been home-schooled; her brother more of less did the application for her. Whatever homeschooling she received consisted of very basic math skills; she pointedly mentions having only read one or two books before BYU (on Mormonism found around the house). Basically, at the age of 17 she had never written anything much more complicated than a brief note, or grocery list.

She came from a lower class background where it wasn't as though she'd heard NPR discussions regularly either.

I remain convinced that there's something more to the story, unless it's possible to be some sort of literary savant, the way that some people can pick up music perfectly by ear right away?

Well I could maybe believe that but out of 7 kids 3 have PhD! One savant could be fine but 3?

Other thing I am not convinced about is the religious rigour of the house - despite her father calling women whores for a skirt two inch over the knee and claiming women's place at home he does not oppose her daughters working, dating and spending time with their boyfriends unsupervised. It does not look to me like crazy religious family isolating her daughter from normal live. It looks like the author really wants to tick all the boxes of opression in order to make the story bigger, but it just does not add up.

*his daughters

I had thought that By definition most LDS were at least a decent middle-class families, but the ones in this story, not just hers, are definitely lower class.

The Grapes Of Wrath.

I read a few books at a time, in general. Usually, autobiographies, as you can see.

Fame - Justin Bateman, very disappointing. Has its moments. But not what she promises it to be in her interviews.

The Parker Posey autobiography. Also disappointing. She doesn't reveal herself. Hides behind her quirkiness. If she interests you get it, otherwise, don't bother.

Reckless - Chrissie Hynde. Highly recommended. I'm not even a fan -so it says a lot that I'd enjoy her book so much. Very dry wit.

Gloucester Crescent.

I'm reading Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Claudia Rankine. So far I like it very much. Somewhere between essays and prose poems.

The Word Pretty, Elisa Gabbert. I had higher hopes for this collection of essays but holy shit she misuses words! Language is a living thing and so on but why use "subsume" if you don't know what it means?

The House of Mirth thanks to a recommendation here. LOVE it. Thank you, whoever recommended it.

I usually buy books through Amazon but found myself at a suburban Barnes and Noble over the weekend.

I was amused that other featured novel seemed to have either the word GIRL or LIGHT in the title.

R68, have you read LIGHT GIRL yet?

Not "The Good..." r68, as in "The Good Light Girl."

I started reading Once Upon a River - interesting start, then becomes a real slog - not sure if I can finish it.

Starting—slowly—the first of the Rachel Cusk trilogy.

"Morality Play" by Barry Unsworth.

I didn't realize until today that it was the inspiration for the film "The Reckoning," with Willem Dafoe and Paul Bettany, which I enjoyed.

R71 Damn, I've been looking forward to reading that.

I had to force myself to finish "The Witch Elm," and skimmed a LOT of the final chapters.

Foundryside. Fantasy novel taking place in a world where writing runes on object can manipulate their properties. For example, writing the rune for stone on a piece of wood will make the wood harder and resistant to water. Fun story with great world building

I couldn't get through the second book, R72.

Finished THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND. Absolutely terrifying, and we're living it now.

Hello to all. I'm the old guy who posted on the last thread asking for advice on shorter books and you were so gracious and kind to provide me with a lot of titles. Doing my best with The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash, new name to me. I think it might have been mentioned here. We'll see how it goes.

In addition to losing concentration, my eyesight's not as acute as it used to be but dear lord, the books that are out in large print are enough to scare anyone away from reading. James Patterson, a slew of sticky sweet lady writers, biographies of people I'd avoid at a dinner party let alone read about their lives.

Someone on the other thread kindly asked what I would recommend and of course to each his own but the books I return to again and again are E.F. Benson's Lucia series, a smattering of Waugh, Nabokov, Powell's Dance to the Music of Time is sadly second-rate but oddly compelling, T.S. Eliot, Anita Brookner, and for those who haven't read The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary, hop to it. One of the greats.

I continue to be so impressed to your discussions here. Wonderful to hear of people reading and enjoying Dickens. And to Poster #10, I'm intrigued by your description of Madeleine St. John's books. New name to me and I'll pursue. Pardon my rambling here, carry on your discussion. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all get together for a lovely cocktail party and talk about our favorite books? I guess this is the online equivalent.

r78: Am also a fan of the "Horse's Mouth" novel and especially loved the 1950s/60s? movie adaptation with Alec Guinness in the Gully Jimson role. A delightful film and Guinness is hysterically funny in the lead role. You can probably find it in your local library; at least worth a try if you haven't seen it.

Re larger print, you might want to get a Kindle, or an IPad loaded with the Kindle app (which I use because I can set it to read with white print on a black background and I don't think you can do that on Kindle). You can adjust the font to your preferred size, and basically everything is now available in digital format. They are not terribly expensive (especially the Kindle) these days. Or you can buy a used IPad from Craigslist for example. Used to also read a lot of Anita Brookner's books BTW (though they were basically slightly changed versions of the same story); her prose was so superb. And Nabokov!

You might enjoy Jane Gardam's books--not especially long and really charming, sort of Dickensian English characters. The best one is called "Old Filth"--don't be turned off by the title (it's an acronym for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"). There are two follow-ups I think--not as good as the first but not bad.

Cheers!

Penelope Lively and Barbara Pym's novels are not long. And wonderful.

To Poster #79, thank you so much for taking the time to write. Greatly appreciate your thoughts on large print devices and if I had any sense I'd probably have one by now but you know, I'm so basically incompetent with electronics I'm not sure I'd even know how to get it to function. I feel lucky I know how to turn on my computer and I hate asking for help with things. But I've jotted down your advice and one day will undoubtedly get something like a Kindle.

It seems we have a lot of similar tastes. I so agree with you about Brookner writing the same book, but I love her sense of sophistication and she writes about loners so well. Thanks for the reminder of Horse's Mouth which I believe I started watching once but why would I stop? Who knows, I'll keep an eye out. My dvd player is broken, another contraption I'm considering is a portable dvd player. More electronics!

Thanks so much for the Jane Gardam recommendation. Old Filth has a familiar ring but don't think I've read it. Onto the list it goes!

just picked up Joe Ide's 3rd novel "Wrecked". can not wait to start (and finish it tomorrow)

Well my darling Poster #80, you certainly hit the nail on the head with the words Barbara Pym. I remember reading her oeuvre back in the '80s and absolutely adored her. Those quiet, slightly odd do-gooding Church of England ladies with their cats and homemade morsels. Thank you for reminding me of her. She is a rare pleasure.

Penelope Lively is one of those writers I always feel I should like more than I do. I read her books and think ok, well, that was good I suppose but I'm in no hurry to scurry on to her next book. I must be missing something, which title would you recommend?

R82, I'm #2 on the library waitlist for the e-audio version of Wrecked. I really enjoy Ide's main character IQ and his recurring side characters. The plots are just above average but the characters are damn likable. I do question Ide's cred when he described the Asian gangsters from the hood known as...Arcadia! For those who don't know, Redfin or Zillow Arcadia. I'm not saying Arcadia doesn't have problems but it's not the hood and it's not gang-infested.

Emily Watson's translation of The Odyssey

Ivy Compton-Burnett's A God and His Gifts (not her best, but I already read Manservant and Maidservant, The House and Its Head, and A Family and a Fortune.)

r84 "Wrecked" opens with a BANG! last sentence of prologue is truly WTF! OMG!

R78 Teacher here--I'm the one who suggested connected stories and wrote about moving through Little Dorrit slowly. I was bemoaning (to one of my former teachers, who just retired a year ago at 75--I will retire next year at 62, so my generation is losing stamina!) that I have a difficult time getting my junior and senior students in college to read anything long and somewhat complex. Next year, I'm teaching my course in 20th century fiction one more time and said I didn't think I could get students to read Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" with any confidence that most of them would do it--a shame, as I love Faulkner. She suggested I consider "Go Down, Moses," which is typically classified as either a collection of short stories (connected by their location in Faulker's Yoknapatawpha County--may have misspelled that there and am too tired to double-check--and some characters who appear) or a kind of episodic novel. It includes "The Bear," which may be Faulkner's most challenging prose in his short stories/novellas, but is a terrific read (in my day, we read it in American Lit in high school--O tempora! o mores!), and more "do-able" than Absalom! Absalom!, say, or even Light in August, his two greatest novels written in 3rd person, IMO (Sound and Fury and As I Lay Dying, the latter of which I might use, as it is more manageable, if less deeply moving to me, than the Compson family narrative, are told by multiple character narrators). So, if you are looking for short stories that nonetheless have some meat to challenge your reading teeth, maybe Go Down, Moses would be an interesting challenge. And I know some people hate Faulkner--either for his style/technique or for his admittedly dubious racial politics--so if he's on your "Never Again" list, ignore this.

It's just fun talking about books with people who WANT to read!

Absalom! Absalom! and Light in August are two of the most insanely great novels I have ever read. Still haven't gotten around to The Sound and the Fury of As I Lay Dying, though.

I always confuse Penelope Lively with Penelope Fitzgerald. And then there's Margot Livesey.

I like all these ladies.

Dear Old Guy,

I second the recommendation of Old Filth, and wanted to suggest Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.

A Glass of Blessings is my favorite Pym. Her usual droll mix of milieus and mild scandal includes a far subtler and more casual treatment of gay themes and characters than any other book published in the 50s.

Pym's Quartet in Autumn is devasating. Deeper than her other books, all of which I love.

I have listened to Pym as audio books, being rather startled with a character introduced as Ever Hard Bone!

r78 Get a Kindle. I don't know what I'd do now if a friend hadn't bought me one several Christmases ago. Being able to embiggen the font size makes all the difference, and I didn't realize it. It's truly one of the wonders of the age.

My fave Pyms are The Sweet Dove Died and Excellent Women, but all have significant virtues.

I don't know Lively as well as I know Pym, but Moon Tiger won her the Booker, I liked Passing On and Heat Wave. Her new book on gardening is supposed to be lovely, even if you don't garden (and I do not!). And I haven't read her short stories, collected as Park of Cards.

And it's always worth bringing up Elizabeth Taylor, for Angel, Mrs. Palfrey at The Claremont, and others.

Old guy, make it the Kindle e-reader and the Fire. The latter is a tablet but the former uses e-ink technology and reads more like a book.

I have seen the Old Filth recommendation over the years on DL but my library Overdrive never a had copy. Checked last night and now there are at least a dozen Jane Gardam titles, including Old Filth. Waitlisted and looking forward to it.

Could anyone recommend a good Elizabeth Taylor biography? I especially need her "The Little Foxes" run on Broadway to be covered with as much detail as possible. Thanks in advance.

Poster #87, what a delightful person you are. I bet your students like you very much. Well, I wish I was one of your students because I must embarrassingly admit I've never gotten the hang of Faulkner. Read him in a college Southern lit class and was utterly bewildered; I needed you there to guide me. That shows you what a lightweight I am when it comes to books and I've always thought it a failure of mine because I never grasped his genius.

Poster #90, thank you for recommending Towles. He's one of those writers I keep meaning to read, in fact I've picked up both his books at the library then put them down. Why do I do that? Have heard nothing but good things about his writing so perhaps your encouragement will inspire me to finally sit down and read him.

And to all of you who've read Pym and enjoyed her, I'm doing a metaphorical little jig around the room. She really needs to be re-rediscovered.

Is anyone here a fan of Sarah Waters? I was utterly engrossed in The Little Stranger, found it a most enjoyable book, and saw the film which I thought was quite good although it didn't last long in the theater. I think the story was better served on the page.

I gave up on The Dakota Winters, just not my thing, not my bag as we said in the '60s. Soldiering on and wishing all of you a pleasant evening.

You realize you've become our thread mascot, Old Guy?

Might I suggest Elizabeth Bowen's "The Death of the Heart" for your growing TBR (to be read) pile? I listened to it as an audiobook, hearing the word Wai-Kee-Kee each time I think about the book; a perfect name for so un-tropical an establishment!

I saw THE LITTLE STRANGER just this week, and enjoyed it also. Domhnall Gleason was perfectly cast.

Now here's a question for the crowd: what books do you think would make a good (not necessarily commercial) musical theatre piece?

I've enjoyed several of Sarah Waters' books but actually found The Litle Stranger somewhat disappointing. My favorite of hers is her last book The Paying Guests, set in the 1920s and about a doomed lesbian relationship (much better than that sounds!).

I also enjoyed The Night Watch, which is sort of a chain of stories all related by middle-class characters during the London WWII bombings.

R81, you say you hate asking for help. Can you suck it up and do it anyway? Ask for help with this! It's life changing to have the books you want on a device with adjustable font size. I'm a librarian and if you came in to the library with your new (or used) Kindle or ipad, I or the tech tutor would love to help you set it up, download a shitload of free books (and then tell you how to download more free with your library card.

I am enjoying the City Noir series. Boston Noir and New Orleans Noir are excellent. Noir short stories by wonderful crime writers set in a particular city. I am also going to wade back into Patrick White this year, starting with The Tree of Man. The Bond novels are lots of fun if you want some escapism. Thunderball, Dr No and From Russia with Live are particularly good. They make for great beach reading too.

I just finished Armadale by Wilkie Collins based on a recommendation on either this or the 2018 thread. It has a great plot and the intense devotion of the two Allan Armadales is very moving. Why hasn't there been any film adaptations of this novel ? I thought this as well after I'd read The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. Maybe the nastiness of the central female characters (Lydia Gwitch and Undine Spragg) makes them unappealing. Vanity Fair does seem to attract frequent screen adaptation even though Becky Sharp is no angel.

Now go read No Name!

About to start The Overstory by Richard Powers. Heard excellent things about it.

R104 Typo : should be Lydia Gwilt not Gwitch (am typing under the influence of Chardonnay). R105 Thanks, I'll do so.

I found THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY (so far) very funny and Undine Spragg is pigheadedly empathetic. And thanks for recommending it!

Where as I never managed to get into VANITY FAIR at all.

Wow, this is the first time in 2019 this topic showed in the Recent listing WHILE I was allowed to post.

I finished [italic]Eunoia[/italic] by Christian Bök. Not a novel, but an Oulipo-style of poetry playing with vowels. Prose poems with words where the only vowel is A;E;I;O;U. Some anagrams of Arthur Rimbaud poems, and other wordplay.

R101 THE NIGHT WATCH is what got me into Elizabeth Bowen and Elizabeth Taylor, thanks to one of Sarah Waters’ interviews. And later, via the Virago Press* imprint that publishes a lot of mid-century women’s authors such as the above, Barbara Pym.

And Sarah Waters is one of the few authors whose books I buy a physical copy of with each release, always a signed first edition hardcover.

* I have PEYTON PLACE on my TBR pile!

My gayborhood has a distinguished independent bookstore, so although I buy ebooks, I still buy real books, to support them.

Despite the efficiency of ebooks, when it comes to browsing, nothing on the interwebs or Amazon beats being in a real bookstore. And as a result of bookstore browsing, this is what I’m reading:

The Unrest Cure and Other Stories, by Saki; novel — satirical stories of Edwardian life, published before WW1; never heard of the author before, but he’s supposed to be like Oscar Wilde, ok, I’ll try that

Tell Them of Battles, Kings, & Elephants, by Mathias Enard; historical fiction; English translation — living French author I never heard of before, so I googled the book while in the bookstore, slim novel based on an incident in the life of Michaelangelo; ok, I’ll try that

The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu & the Rise of Chinaphobia, by Christopher Frayling; nonfiction — I previously read the story of a Hawaiian detective who was the inspiration for the fictional detective, and this book goes into the xenophobia associated with this fictional evil genius

Gay Lives, by Robert Aldrich; nonfiction — portraits of gay people, famous and not; there aren’t enough gay stories, both fiction and non, and gay history is virtually non-existent, so the more we can read and learn, the better

I adore PEYTON PLACE and read all of Grace Metalious' novels (NO ADAM IN EDEN, THE TIGHT WHITE COLLAR, RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE) while in my teens (I ordered used paperback copies from the long-gone Passaic Book Center and still own them today). I should give them a quick read and see how they hold up today.

I've tried so hard to get into Elizabeth Taylor's novels, started about 4 of them, but only thoroughly enjoyed Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. And I kind of liked At Mrs. Lippincote's.

Same with Muriel Spark. Loved Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means and Memento Mori but have not been able to get into any of her other books.

I read Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart last year but found it rather effete and uninvolving. But I'd still like to tryThe Heat of the Day .

And what do you all think of Fay Weldon?

I'm reading The Invention of Science by David Wootton

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

I thought TIPPING THE VULVA....uh, VELVET was excellent (Sarah Waters), even if, as a gay man I had to work through the "ick factor" of the lesbian sex scenes (not the book's fault--zamyatin limitations as a reader).

Has anyone read any Richard Russo?

R87 A lot of people's minds have changed with the advent of the smart phone and internet. Short and punchy seems to get people stimulated because that's what their brains are now use to. Sad.

R113 Have you read Spark's Driver's Seat? I found it such a strange little book - so against the grain, like the protagonist. It's easy to follow, unlike a lot of Spark's other books where there is a high degree of plotting for such short little books.

I keep a copy of Elizabeth Taylor's short stories out on the dining room table and read a few pages here and there. I loved Angel (a DL fave in the making about a delusional hack writer) and The Soul of Kindness, which should be made into a movie.

She's the mistress of devastating insights coupled with mercy. I don't know how she does it.

R117: I did. I think i'm the reverse of his hardcore fans, i liked Nobody's fool but i loved Empire Falls

I read three of Sarah Waters novels, i loved Fingersmith and Tipping the velvet and i hated The little stranger (it would be because my beloved cat dissapeared when i was reading this, but the truth is that i disliked the novel even before that). I suppose i will read The night watch this year

I second No Name.

That is the Collins novel that would make a great film.

Does anyone have any recommendations on biographies on Elizabeth Taylor? Especially one that covers her 1981 Broadway run of "The Little Foxes"?

I'm talking about Elizabeth Taylor the actress, not the novelist being mentioned in these threads.

Love Excellent Women from Barbara Pym . Currently Reading a book from Wim Kayzer “ Een schitterend ongeluk “ . Have seen the docu in 1993 but never the book which was also very good .

I've read a number of Richard Russo's novels, r117. I liked Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs most. I know I've read a few others, but the names run together. I think I'll try one soon.

I saw Richard Russo speak at the National Book Festival last year. He was "in conversation" with Lorrie Moore. One book of his that I don't see mentioned a ton is Straight Man which my book club and I really enjoyed.

[QUOTE] I think i'm the reverse of his hardcore fans, i liked Nobody's fool but i loved Empire Falls.

That would be me and John Irving. I've only read one book of his, which I really liked, but his fans don't as they think it's weird and atypical: A Son of the Circus (it has some gay content).

Remember that back when the Dickens' stuff first came out, folks read them in serialized versions, not the tomes we face today.

For Spark, I liked Memento Mori (gay plot point).

R127: well, most Irving's novels have gay content (he has a lot of recurren themes, bisexuality, transgenders, old woman - young man relationships, car accidents, bears, etc). I didn't read A son of the circus, but my less liked Irving's novel is The cider house rules (i don't know if it's a fan favourite).

My last Irving was In one person, and that was two years ago, so i hope to read A prayer for Owen Meany this year

owen meany is an incredible book. loved it. son of circus, sort of odd, but if you like irving, you'll like ircus

[QUOTE]he has a lot of recurrence themes, bisexuality, transgenders, old woman - young man relationships, car accidents, bears, etc)

Enjoy In One Person because it has all of these! One of my recent favorites of his.

R130: The part of the aids crisis is amazing

It really is, R131. There was a discussion in another thread about contemporary AIDS fiction set in the 1980s and I think that book has a very strong section. It's heartbreaking.

I really must give John Irving another go.

Like some of the above posters I LOVED Son of the Circus and Cider House Rules but could never get into any of his other books. Garp and some of the others are so twee, quirky just to be quirky.

I adored the EMPIRE FALLS mini-series, so I must try out the book.

I wanted to ask, what is people's take on Zadie Smith? Why is she that popular?

Zadie Smith could be a brilliant novelist with a stronger editor. I always think her books could be so much better.

R135: I read three of her books. First i read On beauty and i hated it, then i read White teeth and i love it, and finally i read Swing time and i liked it (but way less than White teeth)

Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man is one of the worst books I have ever read. Truly a piece of shit.

R138: I think even her hardcore fans hate that novel

Getting back to the original cover illustration for Cathcher in the Rye in the OP post, isn't Holden wearing a red deerstalker cap, as sported by Sherlock Holmes? Not a backwards baseball cap.

I read the novel so long ago I don't remember.

R139, I confess I tried reading her, but didn't finish it. I am a bit puzzled at the moment by how revered she is and I don't know why

R140 Yes, I believe you're right--I think it's identified as such in the novel.

There are very few contemporary novels (and novelists) that generate enough interest for me to keep me reading. I've tried with so many of them, some mentioned above, but the stories just. don't. interest. me. I don't know who they're writing for, but it ain't me. For example, I was determined to finish Franzen's FREEDOM since the reviews were so spectacular and, though I got through it, damn, if it didn't almost kill me, it took every ounce of will power to spend time with these characters. I won't ever do that again.

I don't read that much literary fiction myself, but I have liked two quirky novellas by William Trevor: THE BOARDING HOUSE and MISS GOMEZ AND THE BRETHEREN. The latter story features a character who is a cross between Sybil Fawlty and Hyacinth Bucket.

If you're looking for something to read, try the memoir INSOMNIAC CITY by Bill Hayes, Oliver Sacks' widower. Definitely recommended!

R127 I found Momento Mori undercooked and all over the shop. I usually love Spark's books. Nothing really happened in it, and there was a sprawl of characters. I didn't get a sense of a point to the story - perhaps I didn't read it properly and missed some deeper insight.

I recall having liked it a lot, but I could be mistaking it for another book. I think I was hooked by the idea of those intimidating, threatening phone calls.

Also, I have added Graham Greene's STAMBOUL TRAIN to my TBR pile recently. Anyone have any thoughts on it?

READ BY STRANGERS, a collection of short stories that came out last year. At times hilarious, at times eerie and monstrous. Very complicated people often acting quite badly. Well written literary fiction that definitely takes risks. There’s a story that imagines the beginning days of a modern urban gay holocaust that is unforgettable. I read it the book in two days.

I read two books that were recommended on these threads and enjoyed them both. Mysteries. Best Friends Forever by Margot Hunt and Something in the Water by Catherine somebody. Page turners. Keep em coming.

Just wanted to pop in and say hello to everyone. As always, I'm reading your comments and enjoying the discussion.

To Poster #101, we are on opposite ends of the Sarah Waters spectrum as I found Night Watch wanting and didn't finish Paying Guests, but wouldn't it be fun to sit together somewhere, have a cocktail, and discuss our interest in this marvelous writer? I think we would find much common ground. I do enjoy a good discussion and am always eager to hear what the other fellow thinks.

To Poster #111, your words thrilled me. How exciting to discover Saki, he's superb. I greatly admire your eclectic taste.

And to the poster who recommended Madeleine St. James, I read about her online and she sounds right up my alley: "minutiae" and "comedy of manners" were tossed about, magic words to my ears. I have reserved two of her novels, A Stairway to Paradise and The Essence of the Thing at the city library so I should have them in a week or so. They're not large type but I have a big magnifying glass (always feel like I should be wearing a deerstalker and Inverness cape when I use it) I will use.

If you don't mind my gabbing on for just a second more, want to share something that happened today. Our little burg is bracing for snow so I scuttled off to the market for supplies this morning. While waiting in the check-out line I picked up the latest copy of the National Enquirer to pass the time. Guess who's photo was inside? Thomas Pynchon. A dogged reporter staked out his haunts on the Upper West Side and sure enough got a photo of him with his son on Election Day. How did that young genius from Cornell turn into a fellow old guy? He looks quite Biblical now. It tickled me that it was the Enquirer, of all periodicals, to nab a photo of the illustrious hermit.

Oh, just one more thing. The Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn. Miracles of the written word. I bid you all a good and lovely evening.

Yes r4 and I find him incredibly boring.

R81, get a Kindle or any other ebook reader. The are extremely easy to use. If you know how to post on DL you can operate a Kindle. They are easy to hold and you can enlarge the text.

R98, I used to read all Sarah Waters' novels as they came out but I admit I started to get bored with her by the time of The Little Stranger. She has a tendency to go on and on, but I would definitely recommend her previous books, especially Tipping the Velvet,

Just started Lethal White, the new Cormoran Strike book by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling). It's great so far.

This year I want to catch up with "my" authors, i.e the ones I want to read everything they've written but still have several books to go. Authors like Robert Goddard, Robert Harris and Jonathan Coe. I'm also plowing my way through all of Agatha Christie.

Also want to read some non-fiction, mostly about classical music and les/gay history. Need to get off the internet.

I'm a big Graham Greene fan, have read all the heavy hitters, but I was sorely disappointed with STAMBOUL TRAIN. r146. That might have been because I was hoping for the glamour and exoticism of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and that clearly wasn't GG's intention.

To Poster #102, meant to thank you for your words. If I knew my librarian was as generous and caring as you I might get a Kindle and ask for help. I have some hearing trouble also and often have to ask people to repeat themselves, which I find embarrassing.

Old Guy, if you mention upfront about you'd hearing the librarian will understand.

Old Guy, put r in front of the number instead of #.

The Bible

My niece gave me Our Sally's auto-bio, In Pieces. Can't wait to read it. It was on my wish list.

Right now I'm reading Walking with the Muses. it's Pat Cleveland's auto-bio. She may not be a household name, but she was a big deal model from NYC, and her account of the NY fashion world in late 60s/early 70s is just fascinating. This was before disco, before Studio 54, before Saturday Night Fever, Interview Magazine etc, although the she covers that too. If you like real 70s disco and high fashion, here's a fun runway compilation clip with her, set to Gino Soccio's Dancer.

OP, I was one of the millions who read Catcher as a high school senior (in 1978) and it was life changing. I've shared about it at length on another thread. Always wanted to re-read it as an eldergay.

Fun Catcher Fact: My best friend from high school was kibbutz born and raised in Israel but only up to age 15. She was very very smart but her english wasn't always super-fluent. She read Catcher after I did, and kept on referring to "Foe-ebba." And I said "Foe-ebba? Foe-ebba? Who's that?" And she said "You know, Foe-ebba, Holden's little sister!" And i said "Oh! Phoebe!" But we always called her Foe-ebba after that.

r153, I went on a Jonathan Coe binge last year because The Winshaw Legacy (which I read years ago) is a big favorite.....but sadly, Number 11, The Rotter's Club and The Rain Before It Falls were all disappointing to different degrees. I think I also tried Expo 58 but didn't finish it.

Sometimes I think that many novelists just don't have more than one or two great stories to tell. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is one of the best books I've ever read but I've never been able to get into any of his others.

I highly recommend SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray, a very funny and moving coming of age novel about school boys and their faculty at a Catholic boarding school in England in the recent past.

R161: The only Jonathan Coe novel that i read was The rain before it falls and i was a bit dissapointed. It's not a bad book by any means but the beginning is better than the end. It's a good touch to chose a lesbian narrator, it gaves a different perspective from other similar stories.

I ended A monster calls and it's a really beautiful and sad YA novel

I am reading THE MIRROR CRACK’D by Agatha Christie. I’m on holiday and it is ideal for picking up and putting down.

I'm reading THE POWER OF THE DOG by Don Winslow. It's the first novel in a trilogy about Mexico and the U.S. drug trade. (The second is titled THE CARTEL. The third, THE BORDER, is being published next month.)

I have Kate Atkinson's newest but haven't started it yet. I love all her books, the serious ones and the mystery ones. Has anyone else read her? Very inventive and clever.

Kate Atkinson is one of my favorite writers; I love her Jackson Brodie series but also Life After Life, A God in Ruins, and the earlier Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Human Croquet (my absolute favorite).

But her latest, Transcription, was a real disappointment. Not awful, I guess, but not up to her standard.

'Don't Suck, Don't Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt' by Kristen Hersh. It's beautiful, funny and sad.

R168 If you get a chance, read the Lou Reed biography by Anthony DeCurtis - whilst not as arty as Hersch's writing, a balanced read from a solid musicologist and passionate listener.

I've started to read Chekhov's plays. Wish me luck!

Save THE CHERRY ORCHARD (the best) for last. It's devastating.

R171 Thanks, will do. Just needing to get back into the flow reading a play. Should I take stock of the character list at the beginning of the play, or skip that and go from there?

I'm reading a play now, too. The York Realist, which Jonathan Bailey starred in. I read about it here.

Just read Horseman, Pass By, Larry McMurtry’s first novel and the basis for the film Hud. I had no idea that the character Patricia Neal plays was black in the novel.

Da, r172. Trying to keep track of Russian names and their diminutives, patronage, etc can be exhausting and frustrating, so copy the character breakdown and keep it front of you while reading.

I saw The York Realist in London last year and probably posted about it on DL. Lovely production of a very sweet play and Jonny Bailey was adorable close up and in person. And Mrs Patmore from Downton Abbey (spacing on her real name!) played the other gay's mum.

I remember reading Chekhov's major 4 plays when I was in drama school but laid up in hospital having a hernia operation many years ago. I loved them and have reread them many times. Oddly, The Seagull was my least fave.

I will be reading Cecil Beaton's diaries after I finish Nemesis- an historical biography of Alcibiades who was one of the most fascinating figures in Ancient Athens.

After that I want to get hold of James Pope Hennessey's gossipy stuff and his work on the royals.

Why does no one ever mention Mary Renault and her books about Alexander the Great, etc.? I go back to them every few years. I have loved them for decades.

Our less lofty literature excursion at present is Mabel Maney's [italic]Ghost in the Closet: A Nancy Clue and Hardly Boys Mystery[/italic]. My husband is very tickled with it -- Doc Savage pulp novels just don't have as ample description of manly fashion sense and not as much cheeky/nutty humour.

Beaton's diaries are delicious and vicious.

Jean Toomer, Cane

Vitamin D2: contemporary drawing

r179 would a flyover gay such as myself be able to appreciate the characters/references? I've always wanted to read them, but thought I'd just become frustrated with inside references.

I've read them, too, r180. Beaton lived in a time when gods walked the earth. Just to be able to peek inside their world, even if you don't get each and every reference, will be an enriching experience. And you always have the 'Net to reference any name-dropping.

I've read Hugo Vickers biography of Beaton. R180 if you're a fan of celebrity culture and social history from a bygone era, He was born in 1904, and he photographed celebrities and high society types often in unusual settings, and he was also a set designer. If you're interested in cultural history, then yes, read his diaries. The only thing I can compare them to is Andy Warhol's diary, which is fabulous if you're interested in that time.

And by all means check out LOVE, CECIL, a bio doc of the old queen (and the phrase fits him to a T). On Amazon Prime.

Beaton's diaries (like most others) are very easy to skim. You can skip around to the parts you like without losing too much of the gist of his life.

The chapter about the making of Coco on Broadway is the best. He was very paranoid by then about not being taken seriously enough by everyone on the creative team and hated Katharine Hepburn, who played Coco Chanel. He spares no words about her.

The other best chapter is about the making of the film of My Fair Lady.

The queeny behavior and gossip, sometimes overshadows the fact that Cecil was a remarkable artist and really did some amazing things with light and with his settings photography was truly an art form for him, and his portraits of the Royal family are sensational. They were innovative and in some cases shocking for their time. He painted too, and yes the sets he designed for My Fair Lady were pretty fabulous. When he was designing for film you could always tell his style. He had a signature look. Same with his photos. Cecil may well have been the first of the celebrity photographers.

For those of you discussing Beaton's diaries, I envy you entering his world. He had a sharp eye and an even sharper tongue/pen which is delicious. I will add that if you enjoy him you might want to seek out Chips Channon's Diaries. Somewhat hard to find and expensive, perhaps you're lucky enough to live near a university library that has them. He was a Beaton contemporary (ex-pat American living in London) and some feel his gimlet eye and rapier wit surpass Beaton's.

Hugo Vickers recently said the unexpurgated multi-volume diaries will be issued later this year. Hoping I live that long.

R175 I had to do this with Dr. Zhivago. Scads of characters are introduced in the first chapters with each addressed in a variety of ways. One example: Pavel Pavlovich Antipov, Lara's husband , might be referred to as Pavel or Pavel Pavlovich or Antipov or Pasha or Pavlik.

I don't recall War and Peace as being anywhere near as confusing as Dr. Z.

I'm exhausted reading your post, R187, and realizing this is exactly what has kept me from reading the Russians.

I've just finished Trevor Noah's autobiography "born a crime". Holy shit that guy has been through some stuff.

R186 I discovered that my local library has Chips Channon's diaries but he is listed in the catalogue as Henry Channon.

R187: I remember a friend reading Crime and punishment on high school and complaining about the same

[quote]I saw The York Realist in London last year and probably posted about it on DL. Lovely production of a very sweet play and Jonny Bailey was adorable close up and in person.

Well, thank you for posting about it. I'm about halfway through reading it, and I can tell it's a play I'd love to see in production. And with Jonny Bailey, OMG.

Did he play George or John?

r192, Jonny Bailey played John, who is the director of the play being performed in the Yorkshires. Ben Batt played George, the young farmer. He was also very sexy (and earthy).

And here they are, r193. I think you may have posted this earlier.

Any Mary McCarthy fans here? Never read her and wondering whichof her novels is best.

R190, yes, his real name was Henry but Chips was a nickname. Might've been a sly dig bestowed on him by Brits wary of his extreme Anglophilia. Lucky you to have the book so accessible.

McCarthy's are very intellectual, very dry. THE GROUP was her huge best-seller and probably the one to start with.

OK , I just ran into this by way of search error at my library website

Dawn Langley Simmons ?

I was searching for Blithe Spirit thinking I wanted to read that play and up came : "Margaret Rutherford- A Blithe Spirit" and fondly remembered her Miss Marple so I put it on hold and then read up on the author(transgender ground zero and VERY bizarre story of her own)) who had been adopted by Margaret and her husband. Its her biography. Anyone?

I read it. Quite amazing story .

R161, I've read The Rotters Club and really liked it so I'll see how the rest go. The House of Sleep is one crazy book.

Agree about Eugenides. Middlesex is massive, The Virgin Suicides a bore.

Well, The Rotters Club was the best of those 3 I mentioned but still (for me) rather disappointing. Don't know if you're British, r153, but I suppose if I was, it might have had more resonance. Then again, I LOVED The Winshaw Legacy.

r195: Mary McCarthy's books are not really worth reading IMO. The Group is upscale chicklit from the late 1950s or early 1960s--doubt you would like it. She wrote a lot of reviews in intellectual journals (New York Review of Books) but was not a great writer of fiction.

Thanks to the responders for the opinions on Mary McCarthy. I think I'll take a pass.

I really trust you guys on this thread.

R203: If you're McCarthy-inclined, you might instead read Randall Jarrell's Pictures From an Institution, a novel about college life that is very funny. One of the characters is based very closely on McCarthy. She comes across as a kind of delightful terror.

You know, I've tried reading Jarrell's book about 3 times and have just never gotten into it. I don't remember why. Maybe I'll give it another try....

My favorite academic satires are all part of David Lodge's trilogy: Small World, Changing Places and Nice Work. I also love the little known The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes.

Another fan of David Lodge here. I read them a long time ago though. Wonder if they're all too dated at this point?

McCarthy's The Groves of Academe and The Company She Keeps are still worth a read.

R206 David Lodge work holds up really well. Ego and power plays are timeless.

R156, sorry to nag, but you pay for your local libraries. It's for your sake that librarians went into public service. I wish I lived near you and could get you set up with your Kindle and free books using your library card. Please reconsider. It pains me to think embarrassment for needing some help closes you off to books! I went to library school to help readers like you and I bet your local librarian did, too.

Someone here recommended the delightful book The Serial. Thank you! I'm reading that now.

I recommend Nicole Krauss's The History of Love if you want a recent novel with the ambition of a classic. It's wonderful. Give it a shot.

I started the Sarah Schulman novel Maggie Terry but I couldn't get very far into it. God does she do more than a first draft? I love her politics but her writing is so dashed off.

And lastly I got a sample of a new one recommended in the other thread: The Evasion English Dictionary. What a funny, smart book! If you like language, I recommend this one too. I heard the author reading categories of the word like. The book covers "actually" and some other clever equations like "but = bu(llshi)t" as in "I should, I really should work out... but I can't think about that right now."

I went to library school with the author of Evasion English Dictionary and she's gay.

Oh, I loathe Nicole Krauss. One and a half of her works were enough for me.

I recommend THE GROUP. Quite a dense cast of characters and one of the first looks at working educated women of that age.

Chick Lit is used as a pejorative - and someone on the previous thread ask if Elena Ferrante (!) was Chick Lit - and as such I would call that a misnomer and unfair to classify every work about 20-something women and sex Chick Lit, regardless. Even if Canadace Bushnell does write the introduction for the newest edition.

My closest friends know that I am a big ocean liner geek so I got several books on the subject. I’m literally like a kid on Christmas Day.

Finished "Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Ruled an Empire" by Julia Baird. Recommended for those like me who are interested in literature of the period, but didn't have a grasp of The Sovereign herself, with detailed analysis of her relationships with John Brown and the Munshi, as well as Albert - Victorian prudery was his idea, and today he'd be the stay-at-home dad taking the kids to the zoo with snacks of carrot sticks and organic cereal.

I still wanna read Lytton Strachey's bio though.

John Boyne - Hearts Invisible Furies. Beautiful, gripping, emotional storytelling about being a gay man from 1950s to 2000s. Fiction, set in Ireland, Amsterdam and NYC. Best book I’ve read in a while.

Also John Boyne’s more recent Ladder to the Sky is good. Not as good as Hearts Invisible Furies - but a good read. So glad I discovered him - great storyteller

R211: I only read The history of love and i found it naive and childish. NOt what i was expecting at all

R215, I'm just starting another one by John Boyne, The Boy at the Top of the Mountain. French orphan goes to live with his aunt, who just happens to be a maid in the Hitler household. Said orphan is taken under Hitler's wing. A different approach, I suppose, but I realized last year I'd hit Holocaust overload.

Thanks R217. He seems to have a thing for the Holocaust. I agree, I actually can’t do Holocaust anymore. Too much darkness in the real world right now. Apparently his most famous book that was made into a movie - “Boy in Striped Pajamas” or something - was all about the Holocaust too. He needs to do more gay storylines. The last two were really good. Of course as an Irish gay man, I’m biased but....

[quote]Apparently his most famous book that was made into a movie - “Boy in Striped Pajamas” or something - was all about the Holocaust too

I actually worked in a Jewish owned bookstore when TBITSP was released and the shop owner adored it. I don't know if it were just the subject matter or her penchant for the dramatic that attracted her (she loved African American fiction like THE COLOR PURPLE as well). I hated it, resented it, and found it massively offensive.

Why did you hate and resent it, r219?

Halfway through Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies, Michael Ausiello's memoir of his husband's struggle with cancer. Well-written and moving so far. Not treacly or manipulative.

Two I'm reading now: The Body Keeps the Score (about how trauma manifests (the subtitle: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma) and Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector. Both are great for different reasons.

I love this thread.

I must be heartless but I hated Boyne's Heart's Invisible Furies and I did give it a go of 150 pages or so. I thought it was completely manipulative and silly.

sorry to hear that r223. i loved that book. and Spoiler Alert the hero dies is a grrat love story. and yes, i cried all the way thru it.

I can't stand any books with Nazis to begin with, but you couldn't pay me enough to read Striped Pajamas!

In bed with a cold and so I am reading GONE WITH THE WIND for the first time since I was 12. I have seen the film many times since.

I am ripping through it. Mitchell had a great ear for dialogue and character. Because Scarlett was such a can-do character I am surprised at how anti-intellectual she is. And she’s not just lacking in wisdom but is actually quite unintelligent. She misunderstands and misses altogether straightforward events and social cues.

I am surprised at how sanitised the movie was from the novel! The omniscient narrator is completely reliable and is utterly disgusted by blacks. There’s some viscerally nasty stuff: describing their sleeping quarters as emanating a “niggery smell” and repeatedly describing Mammy as an dumb ape is the least of it.

The lumber business and Ku Klux Klan stuff is dragging, hopefully it picks up again.

Oh! And I am surprised at want a cunt Ashley is. He really isn’t honorable.

R226 The other thing about Scarlett that doesn't seem to ring true to the rest of the character is not only how dumb she is, but her revulsion by sex (even with Rhett, who obviously turns her on) doesn't gibe with her vivacious, earthy nature. I think it's a case of the author's personal issues interfering with the writing.

"Earthy" is a great description, r 227, especially since the story is so deeply "rooted" in the mythic realm of Tara, and the sacredness of the land.

I’m not American, so It’s also amusingly bizarre having to research the various groups of non-rich white folks in country Georgia that I breezily ignored in my childhood reading:

[quote]In the beginning, the Troop had been recruited exclusively from the sons of planters, a gentleman’s outfit, each man supplying his own horse, arms, equipment, uniform and body servant. But rich planters were few in the young county of Clayton, and, in order to muster a full-strength troop, it had been necessary to raise more recruits among the sons of small farmers, hunters in the backwoods, swamp trappers, Crackers and, in a very few cases, even poor whites, if they were above the average of their class.

Sons of small farmers vs crackers vs poor whites? And “Crackers” were implicitly superior to “poor whites”? As were backwoods swamp people? And what the hell is a cracker anyway and what does he do?

The introduction is a gushy piece of memoir by Pat Conroy. It is mostly a love letter to his (unstable?) mother who lived throught the Depression, worshipped Scarlett O’Hara and read him Gone With The Wind as others read their children the Bible. Thought I make fun of him, it did make me want to read The Prince Of Tides and see where his mommy issues lead him.

I am a John Boyne fan - I am going back to read some of his first novels, and I loved THE ABSOLUTIST.

In a possibly futile effort to better understand the place, I've started "God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State" by Lawrence Wright (The Looming Tower, Going Clear, etc.), but even though he's a native, I don't think he'll have a lot positive to say.

has anyone read Laff by john Boyle? is it a gay story?

I got one of those $2 kindle complete works of Emile Zola. Happily this edition has minimal typos. I am going to read some of the 20-strong Rougon-Macquart series. There is a suggested reading order and the publication order. I have watched and loved two different adaptations of THE HUMAN BEAST so I will start there.

Do DLers have any faves?

Re: GWTW, I also appreciate Melanie more than in the movie. She isn’t sickly sweet or beatific like Olivia de Havilland, just low-key and decent.

R233, I loved Therese Raquin and Germinal. Therese Raquin starts out with a bleak description of a woman in a shop so if you find it boring, consider plowing on because holy shit it pays off. A great novel about that lonely, desperate interior life of a person wanting to bust out of dreary domesticity.

Therese Raquin is a horror story. Reminded me of Poe's work. I'm getting ready to read Dracula by Bram Stoker. I read it long years ago as a college freshman and loved it.

Speaking of Therese Raquin, I really think Balzac wrote Cousin Bette with Datalounge as his target audience.

I'll check it out, R237. A "They Would Have Been DLers" list would include Saki (what a delightful bitch he was), Wodehouse, the Mapp & Lucia author, and Wharton.

I love Edith Wharton. Love her. The writing is so exquisitely descriptive, and her characters have such dimension and detail. Lily Bart is my favorite heroine. House of Mirth one of my all time favorite novels.

I'm reading that now, R239. LOVE it so far. Which Wharton should I read next? I can't go wrong, I imagine.

Have you Wharton fans read The Bunner Sisters? A century ago, the RC angle was absolutely pat of the tragedy.

Haven't but will read it. Thanks.

R239, you could be me. I feel the same way.

The title comes from this:

Ecclesiastes 7:4: “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”

Dataloungers so eager to discuss books that we're 1/3 through the first thread in two weeks - how awesum (sic) is that!

Could we have a book club? House of Mirth, first 100 pages by Feb 1 and then we discuss it?

I love the idea of a book club and The House of Mirth is as great as any book to begin it with._

Shout out to r104 and anyone else who recommended ARMADALE by Wilkie Collins!!

I'm about 200 of 665 pages in and so loving it. What a plot and what great pacing. And as was said upthread, how has this not been made into a film, or better yet a BBC mini-series? Incredible scenes and characters. The hint of homo-eroticism alone.....

While the story line is filled with wacky coincidences that stir the plot, it's done with an elegance and style that only those mid-Victorian novelists could master. But unlike Dickens and Trollope, Collins' writing is so much more reader-friendly in its simpler prose.

I've already bought No Name which I (coincidentally!) found in my local 2nd hand book shop. And weirdly, though I've read THE WOMAN IN WHITE, I'd never heard of ARMADALE or NO NAME before they were mentioned in this thread.

r235 Thank you, I will start with Germinal.

R248

I was among the first to mention Armadale and No Name, recently throwing in Poor Miss Finch as well via Librivox. The main character's frustrating experience playing "grown up in the room" is hilarious!

As mentioned by another fellow re: Armadale - they pout and spat like a same sex couple.

i'm 200 pages plus into Armadale. what no one is pointing out: every page of the 600 plus book has as much verbiage as a modern typical mystery novel has on 4 or 5 pages. dense small type. but worth the journey. lots of quiet humor. lots of occasions for eye rolls.

We were talking about AIDS novels in the last year's thread and i remember that one part of Anne Enright's The green road is about the impact of AIDS at the beginning of the 90's. The gay character is the favourite son of the main character, who was supposed to be a priest, then had a girlfriend but he ended coming out. The first part of the novel are stories about the four children in different years, and the last one is a reunion with their mother on christmas

Armadale is a long lush FUN read with dozens of incredibly drawn characters, and if you love Victorian novels, you're more than up to the challenge.

As I'm reading, I find it very easy to see it all as a Masterpiece Theatre mini-series with a fabulous cast of British character actors. Though the plotting is intrictate, the gist of it is also somewhat simplistic like Hitchcock's "McGuffin" - the details are not as important as the effect it produces on the actions of the characters.

I've tried to do a little research about the subtext of homoeroticism in the story but haven't found anything very interesting, except some musings in academic blogs. Also, I've read that Wilkie Collins kept two mistresses in separate dwellings even though he supposedly preferred the company of men. Do any Armadale/Collins fans here have any insights?

I tend to divide the men I am attracted to into two groups. They are always either an Allan Armadale or an Ozias Midwinter.

I’m finally reading Jane Eyre and am quite enjoying it.

I tried reading Wuthering Heights and couldn't get into it, but I guess I shouldn't hold it against the Charlotter Bronte and give Jane Eyre a try. And what of The Tenant of Wildefell Hall?

R256: I did it, and i hate it. I hate Katherine and i hate Heathcliff (i must have a thing for big romances because i hated Elio and Oliver too)

I don't often remember the books I read in any detail, which includes Wuthering Heights. All I know is that I listened to the entire unabridged audio reading, and managed to get through it.

Jane Eyre is a much better book than Wuthering Heights. Charlotte Bronte is a much better writer than Emily. But the Wuthering Heights movie with Olivier as Heathcliffe at the height of his youthful beauty is worth seeing.

I found Jane Eyre utterly compelling in high school (1960s). I recently got a kindle copy, which I have yet to start. I hope I like it as much, 50 years on.

This thread interests me because it is only in 2018 that I've turned to Charlotte and Emily Bronte and Wilkie Collins and only after years of Dickens as my 19th century writer of choice. Also, I've turned to Edith Wharton and read four novels in succession.

I'm now reading Collins' No Name - thanks to a DL contributor's recommendation - because it wasn't previously known to me. Also, I think Armadale is very interesting and am perplexed that no one has adapted it for the screen.

I thought I had read Wuthering Heights while a teen but, when I got around to reading it in 2018, nothing in the plot came to mind. I find it dark, but fascinating none the less. I suspect that the Olivier movie isn't a reasonable substitute and it appears that it ends with the death of Catherine.

"I AM Heathcliff!"

Have you read any Trollope, r261?

The Palliser and Barsetshire novels always seem to get all the attention but the stand alone books The Way We Live Now, Orley Farm and He Knew He Was Right are all far superior IMHO.

And Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Return of the Native are so much better than the more well-known Tess and Far From the Madding Crowd.

The Mayor of Casterbridge was outstanding.

Scary skimmington though!

r254, your post makes me wonder if I should avoid knowing you or marry you.

I'm not R254 . However, one thing I do find amusing in Armadale is Lydia's dissing of Alan - she thinks he's a real dimwit.

Well, Lydia thinks everyone is a real dimwit, even old Mother Oldershaw.

R263 To answer your question. The only Trollope I've read is The Way We Live Now. I was inspired to do so after watching the excellent tv adaptation with David Suchet as Augustus Melmotte. I tried to watch the Pallisers on tv but the series never grabbed me.

The only Hardy novel I've read is The Return of the Native. I like his poems.

I'm not a fan of the Pallisers as a series, but the first one is pretty good, and The Eustace Diamonds can easily be read as a stand-alone; Lizzie Eustace being rather a b itch, a trait admired by Dataloungers.

Small House at Allington is also a stand-alone from the Barchester list. Lily Dale is the opposite of a b itch!

Thanks R270. I'll keep those in mind. You're right : if Lizzie Eustace measures up to Undine Spragg, Becky Sharp, Lydia Gwilt et al. it'll be a great read.

Still on GWTW. I am having trouble reading the Ebonics, but Prissie might be one of my favourite characters. She’s a riot. Butterfly McQueen actually toned her down.

Look for Women Talking by Miriam Toews, coming in April. It's a stunner.

[quote]the Wuthering Heights movie with Olivier as Heathcliffe at the height of his youthful beauty is worth seeing.

I may be one of the few people who thinks the version of Wuthering Heights with Tom Hardy is better than the one with Olivier.

I finished Bob Woodward 'Fear' - At first I was reluctant to pick up this one as I did not feel I could possibly learn more about Trump as the chaos in the White House had been sufficiently covered by various newspapers and other books, but then my boyfriend bought and I read during very long Christmas travel. I would say for anyone following major news regarding Trump's administration there is indeed not a lot of new stuff, but what fascinated me was the extent to which various groups within administration manipulated him so that he does not make any decision which would be disastrous for the country and certainly beyond grasp of his intellect. The steel tariffs process was especially fascinating (well maybe not whe you remind yourself this is president if United States). What surprised me was how invisible Ivanka and Jared are in this book - whilst they do have physical presence they failed to influence major political decisions Trump made.

I bought the Kindle edition of FEAR at a reduced price. However, I couldn't get very far into it, so set it aside. Thanks for letting me know that it doesn't contain much new information, because at this point I really don't have any interest in picking it up again.

r276: Ditto. Just a boring writer (and speaker--OMG--is he retarded?). I gave up after a couple of chapters.

R272 I know you are trying to be clever, but let's call the language of the slave characters what it is--not Ebonics, but Margaret Mitchell's imagined white version of black speech--a kind of blackface. I suspect it is not an accurate rendition of how black people spoke in antebellum Georgia. BTW, young white men were often sent north to college because they spent so much of their childhood with black slaves that their speech sounded more black than white. Young women were not, of course, sent to such colleges and, apparently, their speech was often an embarrassment to their families, as it was often indistinguishable from that of the slaves.

Any fans of Booth Tarkington? I read The Magnificent Ambersons last year and was a little disappointed. There was a kind of crassness about the writing and characterizations that didn't quite connect with me.

But I'm still thinking about picking up Alice Adams.

The Library of America has just brought a volume of Tarkington's fiction. I liked the Penrod and Sam stories when I was a kid (the movie, which had been shown on a local station, inspired me to read them). I think Tarkington's writing hasn't aged as well as some of his peers, like Willuam Dean Howells or Wharton, but still worth reading.

SPOILER: The film of "Alice Adams" (which may be one of KH's genuinely great performances) changes some of the plot is ways that make it a very different creature from the novel.

I just finished reading Mrs. Palfrey At The Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor and greatly enjoyed it. Today I put a library hold on the dvd version with Joan Plowright as Mrs. P. and Rupert Friend as Ludo Myers. I decided to move next to another Taylor - Angel - the only one available in my local library 's collection at present. The central character is a young girl without any redeeming features as far as I can tell (at this point in my reading). I rooted for Mrs. P. and hoped for her happiness. Angel needs a swift kick but maybe I'll change my mind as I read more.

Good for you, r281! I'm the one who brought her up earlier.

I'm fascinated by Tarkington. He won two Pulitzers, but is almost forgotten today. Please report back, r280. I have yet to read him, so glad to know that the LoA has honored him.

Thanks for bringing Elizabeth Taylor to my attention. I'm also pleased to acknowledge the Wilkie Collins posts. I knew he was much admired by Dickens but if it hadn't been for this thread I wouldn't have turned to his novels.

This continues to be a great thread. Refreshingly civilized for DL.

Please don't hesitate to post what you're reading and also thoughts and questions about what you'd like to read.

I dropped a couple of Audible credits on two TBR books: Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham, which I know is supposed to be tough to get through; also, a modern American story "600 Hours of Edward", where I've been warned of its slow start.

In preparation for a trip to Austria this spring, I've been dipping into Stefan Zweig's THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY. Just to read glancingly about pre-WWI Vienna and its cultural milieu is enough to make you weep copious tears when you compare it to the unbelievably stupid, crass and ugly world we inhabit today.

I read Cakes and Ale just last year and don't remember a thing about it.

R286 I loved the book Danubia regarding the Hapsburgs, although I admit that the author's style might not appeal to everyone. Zweig's book has been on my TBR pile for a while!

Thanks. R287!

My favourite Elizabeth Taylor novel, following MRS PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT, is THE SOUL OF KINDESS. It's about a young wife, who destroys the lives of everyone she knows because people let away with her destruction because "she means well", "she didn't mean any harm" and "she's so kind'. For instance she insists her friend date a clearly gay man and pushes he talentless brother into a destructive acting career.

It was a purging read for me. Having read of so many people like this (and especially when attending a Catholic school) I love Taylor all the more for dramatising the havoc they cause.

I've pre-ordered the new Marlon James novel, and I'm going to sit next to the door until it arrives.

The Message to the Planet by Iris Murdoch. One of her more obscure novels, but very good. I’m surprised it’s not read more.

finally finished Armadale. took me over 14 days. but such a sweet boy meets boy love story.

I'm about 400 pages (out of 675) into Armadale and I don't want it to end!

I have No Name on my bedside table. Will I be disappointed if I read it next or do I need a few others in between to parse out my Wilkies?

"Parsing out my Wilkies" is going to be my new euphemism for something.

As a follower of recommendations on this thread, I too read No Name right after finishing Armadale. I enjoyed it but I think now that I should have "parsed out my Wilkies" as R293 says; maybe something lighter similar to E.F. Benson's Paying Guests or Secret Lives.

Thanks for the quick responses, r294 and r295!

for r293 about 100 more pages "NO! MR. MIDWINTER!

So, none of you have tried Poor Miss Finch yet?

It's on the end table, along with ARMADALE and NO NAME, r 298.

Just a reminder in case anyone is looking for a more modern novel, I appreciated EVERYBODY RISE, which has been likened to House of Mirth. The main character's mother reminded me of my aunt.

I remember liking EVERYBODY RISE, but I barely remember anything else about it.

People in Trouble by Sarah Shulman.

R298 I also have Poor Miss Finch in my sights. Also E. Taylor's The Soul of Kindness and Trollope's Small House at Allington. Right now I'm reading The Eustace Diamonds so that will occupy the next week or two.

Just my opinion but Trollope's Small House at Allington is one of his most boring novels. There are so many better ones:

The Way We Live Now , He Knew He Was Right and Orley Farm for the stand-alone (not part of the Barchester or Palliser series) longer ones. All brilliant reads.

The Vicar of Bulhampton, Doctor Thorne and The Belton Estate for the stand alone shorter ones.

Thanks R304. I've already read The Way We Live Now. I'd be interested to know from others on this thread about their must-read Trollope novels. So far The Eustace Diamonds is holding up well - my first Palliser.

I love the Barsetshire novels, all of them. but I get hung up on the Pallisers, especially Phineas Finn. All that Victorian politics!

Lizzie Eustace is a witch with a capital B. Allington is somewhat campy.

R305 the first Palliser story was good, but aside from Eustace the others never interested me.

My recommendation for a shorter Trollope would be Dr. Wortle's School.

If you're interested in a lesser-known Victorian novel try Miss Marjoribanks (Marchbanks) by Margaret Oliphant via Project Guttenberg if necessary.

r295 "something lighter similar to E.F. Benson's Paying Guests or Secret Lives. "

I have 1980s paperback reprints of both of those, saving them for special occasions. I just finished E.F. Benson's [italic]The Blotting Book[/italic] (1908) which was okay. A Benson fan might like it more than a fan of 20th century English murder mysteries would.

r304 Thank you. I'd been undecided about which Trollope novel to read this year. My reading challenge is my book shelf and classic novels, giving priority to novels my friends and I plan to co-read. A good buddy is reading [italic]The Prime Minister[/italic].

I found the first half of The Eustace Diamonds to be highly engaging but felt the second half really dragged. And Trollope's undisguised anti-Semitism in describing Lizzie's last husband was depressing as well as discouraging in a writer I admired.

Not that it excuses Trollope, but anti-semitism was a given among the English upper class in the 19th and early 20th century. Find someone who was NOT anti-semitic. Probably still true, also in US.

I recently listened to one of the "In Our Time" podcasts devoted to Edith Wharton and at one point her attitude towards Jews comes up in the discussion. One member of the panel of Wharton experts observed that her depiction of the parvenu Simon Rosedale is nuanced and that he is one of the more sympathetic characters in The House of Mirth. As for a 19th century writer who can safely be judged pro-Semitic I suggest George Eliot whose Daniel Deronda exhibits positive sentiments in droves.

If memory serves, Wharton also throws a very subtle anti-Semitic shade on the character of Julius Beaufort in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE.

And IIRC, Trollope, himself, paints a fairly sympathetic portrait of the Jewish businessman Brehgert who marries wealthy spinster Georgiana Longestaff in The Way We Live Now. But he goes to extreme lengths in The Eustace Diamonds, describing the Jewish character as grotesquely vile in the worst physical terms.

And I love most of Trollope's novels, so believe me, this was hard to take.

BTW, if you're so inclined, the BBC film of TWWLN with David Suchet, Cillian Murphy, Matthew Macfadyen and Shirley Henderson is spectacular.

If Charles Dickens' reputation was based on his portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist he would be labelled anti-Semitic. However in Our Mutual Friend he created a "saintly" Jewish character Riah who many critics think is far too virtuous to be believable. You can't win.

I second r314's recommendation of the BBC film of TWWLN. Rob Brydon's also in it, and he's funny as Mr Alf.

I have been known to recommend that people watch the Suchet video first, and then later read the book which goes into more depth and detail.

just finished Hold Tight by Bram. so enjoyed it i ordered his "bio" Surprising Myself. looking forward to reading that one next week.

I got 100 pages into the new Steve Cavanagh novel, Twisted, when I realised it is not in the Eddie Flynn series.

I'm going to find the guy who tell me The inmortalists was funny and we'll get my vengeance.

I'm liking it, but it's sad sad sad, at least the first 150 pages

Slow Horses, from Mick Herron. It is a spy series, vaguely Le Carré moodwise. It is about a group of spies who have bern dowgraded after falling in disgrace for several reasons (they are the slow horses) . It is the first of a series and it is insanely good.

Finished Lethal White from Robert Galbraith/ jk rowling. Nice but way too long and over plotted. It would be better with less 150 pages and half of the secondary characters.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza. It’s quite good. SJP has good taste.

[italic]Shut Up, He Explained[/italic], a selection of short stories by Ring Lardner.

I admit, where I am at present I am misanthropic (how can you look at America from within and not be?) , and borderline cynic, if not borderline despondent. To read something written 100 years ago by a satirist who could be simultaneously disappointed and amused by people, is invigorating. I'd known about Lardner for years, I'd stayed away for fear he was hopelessly archaic, no one seems to read him nowadays. PG Wodehouse's [italic]Leave it to Psmith[/italic] couldn't attract me, that's how I could tell how far down I am. The second selection, "The Immigrunts," is uproariously funny, either despite of or because a family roadtrip 100 years ago from Michigan to Connecticut was more arduous.

I just need to know what a "coarse gesture" was 100 years ago, as it's a motif in the story. It wasn't the middle finger.

OMG, r323, I own--and LOVE--the Ring Lardner! I'm partial to the Short Nonsense Plays.

R323 "Haircut" is one of my favorite stories! I wonder if the gesture is the thumb on the nose with waving fingers. I remember my mother, who would be 102 this year, told me how, as a junior high student, she got in trouble for waving at a friend--and her teacher thought she was making the gesture in question (knowing my mother, I'm inclined to side with the teacher!)

r325 I know the term for that gesture! It's called "cocking the snook" (yes, instant hilarity on DL).

Master snook-cocker

I'm going to read My year of rest and relaxation (i love that title). I was not a fan of Eileen but i hope to like this one better

R328 It's an interesting read. I think it is shocking in the way female friendships get critiqued.

Currently reading 'Trainspotting' by Irvine Welsh. Wanted to read a novel which was a collection of stories loosely tied together, and also take in the local Scot vernacular.

R330 I really liked the movie but i disliked the novel, i found it very confusing

R328, The main character in My Year of Rest and Relaxation is supposed to be the opposite of Eileen. The book is just as good as Eileen, I am going to read Homesick for Another World next.

Anyone read last year's "The Woman in the Window"? There's a wild profile of the author in this week's New Yorker. He's a piece of work!

I watched the novel everywhere but i didn't read it. It seems perfect for the beach (of course The girl on the train seemed perfect for a beach read and was an awful experience)

He sounds like a little bit of a con. And he's gay?

Claims to be, R335. But that could be a lie just like every other bit of the narrative he constructed about himself.

I read “The Women in the Window”. It was mediocre. It is a mix of “Girl on the Train” and “The Woman in Cabin 10”. Very predictable and not original. The ending is ridiculous, and I found myself rolling my eyes. As always with recent thrillers, there’s an unreliable narrator. It’s a decent beach read, but nothing more.

I read Woman in the Window last year not long after it came out. It is obviously written with every cliche of the genre, as if constructed with a computer program for how to write a bestseller in 2018--it has every cliche of Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, just slightly modified so it seems like an original novel. I will say that it is reasonably suspenseful and I did keep reading, but I knew while I was reading that this guy, because of his job as an editor in a publishing house, had methodically studied how to do it. He's not a natural writer at all. I would be surprised if he writes another one or at least another big seller. He just wanted to get rich (and I'm sure he has). So good for him. He did what he set out to do.

I'm interested in learning of the unhappy lesbian relationship in Sarah Waters' The Paying Guests. In E.F. Benson's comic novel Paying Guests the fate of the two women friends is a happy one. It seems to me that Waters title must be a nod to Benson.

I think "the paying guests" was a familiar British phrase way back then, referring to tenants in one's own home or in a home one might be subletting. After WWI, many aristocrats couldn't afford to keep up the costs of running their huge estates and began renting out the smaller houses on their property and even sections of rooms within the big house.

I was feeling depressed last night and wanted something comic to read so I picked up a copy of "Pigeon Pie" by Nancy Mitford which I had bought long ago but never started. I'm a fan of "Love in a Cold Climate" and "The Pursuit of Love" and "Pigeon Pie" is somewhat in the same vein although the setting is England in WWII. It's damn funny and has a lot of that understated, cutting type upper-class humor that is so wonderful in her earlier novels.

I was on the library waitlist for months for Witch Elm (based on recommendation here)and just returned it after only 20 pages in! Yikes, how dreadful. I think I will delve into some Willkie Collins to take the taste out of my mouth. I really have been struggling with contemporary lit. Back to the prior centuries I go!

r342: I downloaded Witch Elm on Kindle and found it so meh that I returned it within a day and got my money back.

For those who believe there are no coincidences, I ended up getting the first in a mystery series set in post-war Brighton: The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths. IHG hotels group members have a free Kindle book benefit each quarter; when I went to tap for further plot information, all of a sudden my choice had been made and the book was mine, no do-over (selection reversal)! The main character policeman realizes that he has a murder related to magic and magicians, so enlists the help of someone from his wartime "illusions" squad.

Edgar, the cop I find incredibly likable, while Max the magician comes off as both dashing, and a jaded curmudgeon - perfect Datalounge composite!

I just finished "The Traitor Baru Cormorant"

It takes place in a fictional setting much like the Mediterranean world when Rome started conquering it. The book is about a young woman from a small poor country which was recently conquered by a fictional empire. The empire brings a lot of benefits like medicine and dentistry but tramples on native rights. Particularly stressed is a strong, violent prejudice against gay people. It's is forbidden in all conquered territories on pain of death.

The main character came from a family with one woman and 2 men all living together as her parents, one of her fathers was brutally murdered. She is talented and intelligent so is is schooled by the conquerors and is placed at a high level in the bureaucracy. Her goal is to destroy the empire from the inside.

Very fun read, it reminds a bit of Enders Game if you like that sort of thing.

Anyone read the one about Michelangelo accepting a commission in Istanbul? (I'm too drunk and lazy to look up the title).

Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants by Mathias Enard. In 2010 it was awarded the Prix Goncourt des lyceens. Michelangelo gets a letter from Sultan Bayezid to build a bridge across the harbour of Constantinople. I haven't read it but I did review a review in the Jan. 11 2019 issue of TLS.

Meant to say "read a review".

I've just finished reading The Eustace Diamonds. It's my first Trollope Palliser and I may read The Prime Minister sometime soon. In the meantime I have started reading The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary based on a recommendation made by an earlier respondent to this thread. So far so good - I expect I will enjoy Cary.

So, what did you think of Lizzie Eustace?

I've started Skippy Dies, on the recommendation of Marlon James. So far, I'm really liking it.

R351, I enjoyed that.

R350 I think that Lizzie Eustace is a woman without a conscience. To everyone who knows her she is a dissembling hypocrite of the first order. If Lord Fawn had married her he would have surely killed himself or lived in misery. No one in the novel thinks otherwise except for Glencora Palliser and she strikes me as someone who revels in societal mayhem. I wonder about the fate of Lizzie's son by Sir Florian Eustace. He will be as unloved and neglected as Becky Sharp's Rawdie ( or Undine Spragg's son). Lizzie's marriage to the Reverend Joseph Emilius is interesting because he's as much a dissembler as she is so nothing good can come from that liaison.

I loved Skippy Dies! I might have even recommended it on one of these book threads.

R351: I wanted to read it, unfortunately his novels are not translated to spanish.

I'm ending The inmortalists and i liked it, but i find the stories of the two younger siblings more powerful.

And i remembered other novel who has a part about the AIDS crisis, Anne Enright's The green road, the part of the gay sibling (the one who wanted to be a pastor and had a girlfriend) is about the AIDS crisis at the beginning of the 90's (even if it doesn't affect directly to the character who is in the proccess of acept he is gay)

Just started Ma'am Darling by Craig Brown. (Published here as 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret). Delightful.

The Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I want to slit my wrists.

Thanks for the rec, R355. I have The Immortalists on my shelf and have been looking for a reason to finally pick it up. It has a very intriguing, original premise.

I heard that there's a follow-up to At Danceteria and Other Stories potentially coming out next year. I know some folks were discussing that book alongside Christodora, The Great Believers, The Angel of History, and other recent " 1980s AIDS fiction" possibly in the thread before this one.

IN COLD BLOOD is chilling and innovative - I read THE EXECUTIONER's SONG before it and Capote is a much better storyteller.

80's are back in literature (which is understable because a lot of writers were teens during the 80's). The angel in history was not translated here either (i have his previous novel An unnecesary woman but i didn't read it yet.

I'm losing faith in Christodora being translated, but sometimes first novels make you wait (We need new names was just published last year). I have more faith in The great believers because her previous novels were translated.

Has anybody read The Gustav sonata?

R360, have you read At Danceteria?

The Great Believers will definitely be translated. As you said, Makkai's previous work has been widely translated.

R361: Not translated either.

One of the frustrating things of following award literary season is that you get aware of a lot of novels that won't be translated. There are curious cases like We are not ourselves which had a lot of buzz but never was translated.

Sometimes they got published just when i just lost hope, it happened with A constallation for vital phenomena.

It happens with french novels too. When The end of Eddy became a hit in France it was fastly translated, but one of the hits of that year, Arden, never happened in Spain (i don't know the reasons but it never got translated). If you are a french writer you are only sure you are going to be translated if you win the Goncourt (or of course, you are a big name).

And talking about french writers, i love Mend the living. It's curious because i always liked better one of the books on the longlist than the winner of the Man book international. I loved Swallowing mercury

You seem to have quite the facility with English, R362. Have you just tried reading the English versions?

I can relate a little. Some of my favorite novels are Japanese. They can take years to come out in English, it's very frustrating. Strangely, Swedish translations come out much quicker.

I'm currently reading a book in Spanish, originally written in German, because it's come out in several translations - except English!

¡Que viene el lobo! by Leonie Swann. The first book "Three Bags Full" was terrific, especially as an audiobook with the talking animals.

R363: My english is pretty basic (like some DL members remind me constantly), i suppose i can read a book in english if i try (and if the novel is not too complex) but i read for pleasure so i prefer reading in spanish

I was tempted to read Swann, her novels look like a lot of fun

I don't think I've seen it mentioned in this thread but one of my favorite novels of last year was PACHINKO by Min Jin Lee, the multi-generational story of a Korean family throughout much of the 20th century and into this one.

I'm not Korean but found all the info about the culture and history of Korea and Korea's relationship to Japan quite fascinating. Really brilliant writing.

Is this thread about literature books? Should I start one regarding commercial fiction?

It's about any book that you want to post about. The 2018 thread had a wider variety of books represented.

I'm Reading Shake The Devill Off and next in line is Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts.

I just got Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France by Christophe Guilluy and will read it soon.

A passionate account of how the gulf between France’s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an “American society”—one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on “the periphery.”

As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.

DL has been pretty shitty lately so thank you to everyone posting on this thread for keeping up some great standards. This is practically the only thread I come here for any more.

xoxo

I'm starting Marlon James' new book "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" tonight.

R373 I started it yesterday! Loving it so far!

I don't know that we need to have highbrow, classic or heavy-duty literary fiction, all the time here?

I feel that this is a space for literate people to discuss what they are reading, what types of things they would like recommendations on, or folks to recommend titles they find worthwhile.

I'm reading "My Pet Goat" and "A la recherce du temps perdu" at the same time.

Everybody happy now?

Recherche

r376: In other words, "A la Recherche du Mon Petit Chevre Domestique." or "In Search of my little Lost Goat"?

Le Datalounge, c'est le temps perdu

And if you don't mind, just add (at least) a one sentence description of the book, not just the title!

TIA!

Actually, the name of the story was The Pet Goat, I believe.

I'm currently reading Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" a philosophical novel riffing notions of childhood; adulthood and meaning; as well as "The Very Hungry Caterpillar', also a philosophical work (albeit a much shorter work then Proust) that also riffs notions of childhood, adulthood and meaning.

After you finish Proust, how about moving onto Madeleine?

R383 I've only read the Appendix.

R383 Madeleine coupled with Where The Wild Things Are?

R383 Or couple it with "Everybody Poops?"

Or try eating madeleines.

Not sure what possessed me, but I picked up a copy of Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita” in an airport. It’s a fascinating read: Stalin meets magic realism. And quite funny in a slapstick way.

R388 I found it to be a slog to read. Maybe it would have been better as a novella, more compact? I'm of the same thinking with Catch-22 - stretched out novelty that drags on.

Gustavo Gorriti's "The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru."

Ron Perlman's autobiography. Not sure what to make of this guy. Lots of issues and his constant need to drop F and MF bombs, along with his creepy fascination for Marlon Brando and permanent complaints about unemployment when in fact he has over 200 credits on IMDB.

Oh did I say lots of issues ...

[QUOTE]F and MF bombs

You must be a frau. A gay man could just say "fuck." Go back, frausalina.

What are some of the F and MF bombs, r391? I'm not sure what you mean.

They would be Fat Bombs and Mega Fat Bombs, r393. Obviously, Ron is on the keto diet.

I say fraus are welcome here. All my friends who read fiction are women.

On the off chance r393 is serious, "F Bomb" is what the pussified type or say instead of the word "fuck." "MF" = motherfucker.

I was picking up a cookbook at my local library and someone was being arrested at the self-loan machines (!) so I wandered into the aisles.

I borrowed Southern Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving Badly, HHhH by Laurence Binet and a Louise Penny mystery.

HHhH is a great book!

I HATED HHhH. A big disappointment after all those ass-kissing reviews. Such pretentious, post-modern, self-reflexive nonsense. Just tell the frickin' story, bro.

Re R111's "Not that it excuses Trollope, but anti-semitism was a given among the English upper class in the 19th and early 20th century. Find someone who was NOT anti-semitic" I'd say Daniel Deronda was very atypical of novels from that time with its sympathetic portrayal of Judaism.

Sorry, I see someone already mentioned Daniel Deronda upthread. I didn't search well.

Hugh Dancy gets my special six-pointed salute for his role in the BBC version of Daniel Deronda.

Thank you to whoever recommended Bill Hayes's 'Insomniac City'. it is really well written and his and Olivier Sacks's story is so sweet. I loved Sacks's books and his autobiography has had big influence on me, so too see him so lovingly described by Bill is a treat.

I was the Insomniac City guy - thought folks here would really like it. One thing that troubled me was that marriage was legal in New York state at the time Oliver died, but obviously they never went through with it.

Any great recommendations for contemporary (last 40 years) British satiric fiction in the SKIPPY DIES and ROTTER'S CLUB vein?

David Lodge, John Mortimer, etc?

I'd like a recommendation for some low-key contemporary crime in the Agatha Christie mould.

I don't want it necessarily to be Hallmark channel mysteries levels of "cozy" (the cupcake cafe mysteries!) unless it is particularly good or funny. But I don't want to read vivid descriptions of drains blocked by the victim's hair and rendered fat from when the villain boiled his remains, nor neo-psychological Ruth Rendell/PD James stuff with the compulsory subplot of pathetic spinster who tries cosy up to the widower when it very clear the author despises their characters.

I have WICKED AUTUMN by GM Malliet and was thinking of Jackson Brodie? Or maybe Simon Brett?

R405: John Mortimer's Paradise postponed is one of the most positive surprises i had in recent years, i bought the novel thinking it would be a funny read full of british humour and it's that a a lot more. I loved it.

I liked HHhH and i wanted to read The kindly ones because there was some controversy between both novels with similar themes and lot of critics praise, but Littel's novel is a monster.

Back in the day it was released with a lot of fanfare wtih bombastic critics like it was the masterpiece of the millenium. Then the buzz fade away, but i read some vindication of the novel recently

I don't think I can read anything more about the Holocaust, which is what I call WWII. I started, but could not finish, at least one movie and two books, the most recent book being [italic]The Tattooist of Auschwitz[/italic]. I have probably read and seen more Holocaust-themed works than most people, so it's not that I don't want to know. And it's certainly not that I'm one of those who, incredibly, would have us believe it never happened. I'm simply burned out. Or perhaps too depressed. Or maybe seeing too many parallels with life today.

[italic]HHhH[/italic] and (especially) [italic]The Kindly Ones[/italic] do pique my interest, though. Maybe someday.

Kindly Ones is a extraordinary book. I am from Poland and what we call '(Nazi) camp literarue' is a part of school curriculum so one is exposed to it from a pretty young age. I read 'Kindly Ones' twice and I still feel there is more to discover there. I like the intellectual core of it, I liked it was not smoothened to make an easier read. It was just a great treat to be challenged by the book not only in emotional but also intellectual and analytical way. The description of Stalingrad mayhem is one of the finest passages of war literature I've ever read.

John Mortimer's Paradise Poastponed is one of my favorite books of all time, r407. I've read it twice though, now, not in about 25 years. I also enjoyed his sequel Dunster. And The Sound of Trumpets.

Somehow, I never got into his far more popular Rumpole series.

r406, check out this year's A SHOT IN THE DARK by Lynne Truss. Set in Brighton in the 1950s it's clever, funny, and first of a series. She's the author of EATS SHOOTS & LEAVES, and SHOT is her first mystery. A paperback original, it's pretty cheap on Amazon.

I love the Jackson Brodie mysteries by the brilliant Kate Atkinson, r406, but I wouldn't exactly call them "cozy" though they are not grisly either. More like a quirkier and funnier Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine.

IIRC my favorites are the first in the series Case Histories and the last Started Early, Took My Dog.

And the best news is there will be a new one published in June called Big Sky.

MAGPIE MURDERS by Anthony Horwitz perhaps, R406?

Excellent recommendation, r413!

Neil Patrick Harris loved it, r413!

just finishing A Gentleman in Moscow. whoever recommended it. THANKS! better than his first one. really loving it.

R416: Thanks. I'm recovering from a reading crisis so it's a little too soon to start someone so big as A gentleman in Moscow, but i have the book at hom and i love The rules of civility, so i will read it in a near future

I bouth My absolute darling, i heard positive and negative things about the novel so i'm very curious.

And i'm going to read the Stone sky, i hope it finish the trilogy as well as this story deserves

Any good, new non-fiction recommendations? All of my favourite authors have gone corporate (Michael Lewis) or lost the plot (David Grann).

I stay away from all the polemics/political books. Science, tech and business recs would be welcome. TIA

I tried reading Amor Towles Rules of Civilty and even got through about 2/3 of it before giving up. There just wasn't anything happening there for me except for some lazy period details of location, decor and wardrobe.

So I'm wary of trying Gentleman in Moscow. Has anyone read both and can compare and contrast?

One thing's for sure: his editors sure know how to pick a fab period photo as cover art.

I read a fair amount of nonfiction, but it's mostly travel-related, not much in the way of science and business, sorry R418.

Here are a few lesser-known fiction suggestions for folks to consider: "The Boarding House" and "Miss Gomez and the Brethren" by William Trevor; "The Captain and the Enemy" by Graham Greene.

"The Interpreter" by Suki Kim is especially strong for its metro NYC setting.

If you'd like a challenge, try "Pond" by Claire-Louise Bennett. I liked it, but am very much into quirky. Those who hate it will pray the author dies in a proverbial grease fire.

R209 does Nazi Camp Literature go something like this: "Oh that uniform looks hideous on you Mr SS, grey certainly isn't your colour!" "Please go die in a gas chamber."

[QUOTE] Any great recommendations for contemporary (last 40 years) British satiric fiction in the SKIPPY DIES and ROTTER'S CLUB vein? David Lodge, John Mortimer, etc?

Not British, but translated from Italian: "The Parrots" by Filippo Bologna. Send-up of literary awards (prizes).

From a book exchange at a cafe: [italic] River God [/italic] by Wilbur Smith, fiction set in Ancient Egypt. It's long, but boy, it moves fast!

Hardly contemporary, but I'm loving LETTERS FROM AN ACTOR by William Redfield (you'd know him from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and other movies). The entries deal specifically with the production of HAMLET, headlined by Richard Burton and directed by John Gielgud, in which he performed in the 60s, but also branch out with other observations and anecdotes about the theatre, all breezily and entertainingly written.

Speaking of Egypt, I can enthusiastically recommend the first hundred pages of Norman Mailer's ANCIENT EVENINGS. That excerpt narrates the boat journey up the Nile of a court official and his family for a sudden audience with the Pharoah, and it is immensely gripping and powerful. Shortly thereafter, however, the novel goes off the rails and concerns itself with reincarnation, dung beetles and anal intercourse, all to diminishing effect.

r419 i've read both. Moscow, i expected to be a downer. but it is very funny, sweet look at a man trapped in a strange prison. way more interesting than Civility from my point of view. lots of heart. go for it.

R392, Perlman can't utter one sentence without swearing, it's almost like he has Tourette syndrome. After decades of brainwashing by his shrink he found god.

Oh yes, and I did say he has issues

Reading The Inner Circle, by T C Boyle, which somehow makes the life of Alfred Kinsey dull. Perhaps that's its point?

Ike's Mystery Man: the Secret Lives of Robert Cutler, by Peter Shinkle. Good "Lavender scare" reading. One of its architects was himself as lavender as Lilac Fiestaware. Bio by his nephew.

However, the font is so tiny, I'm going to have to get the Kindle copy if I'm to read it at all.

Same R419, I liked both but Moscow really stayed with me and I really looked forward to diving back into it. As R426 says, it has heart. Plus I love hotels.

So why do straight men not read fiction? Is it a macho thing?

Michel Houellebecq "La Carte et le territoire"

Usually his nihilism is off-putting but combined with self-regard I don't know.

[QUOTE]Reading The Inner Circle, by T C Boyle, which somehow makes the life of Alfred Kinsey dull. Perhaps that's its point?

Have you ever read "World's End" by T.C. Boyle? It's been years for me but I remember really enjoying that one. It won the 1988 PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction. I also love a short story of his called "Killing Babies" that was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 1997 edited by E. Annie Proulx.

A Gentleman in Moscow is the book i've been chasing - i read it about 2 years ago and have yet to find anything i've loved as much as that book.

R433, try CHARITY GIRL by Michael Lowenthal.

It's about the internment of young American women with venereal diseases post-World War I. Harrowing, yet fascinating look at an oft-ignored chapter in American history. The main character is very compelling and rootable. An unforgettable novel.

Starting the poisonwood Bible by Barbara kingsolver tonight.

Circe..just about finished...liked Song of Achilles better for obvious reasons.

I found Song of Achilles barely readable but I loved Circe

I'm halfway through The Secret Life of Bees by Sur Monk Kidd. Is it chick lit? Don't kill me, snobs! I'm finding it very interesting reading about Black Madonnas.

Any other Thomas Mallon fans here?

I loved Bandbox, Fellow Travelers and Dewey Defeats Truman but I haven't kept up on his later books.

I'm just finishing up Christopher Hibbert's "The Borgias and Their Enemies." The more I learn about the medieval Roman Catholic church, the more I understand why Henry VIII said "Oh FUCK this" when the Pope refused to anull his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and just started his own church and gave himself a divorce instead.

Finale is great, R439. I met him at a writers' conference in Vermont a few years ago and he was really lovely.

I loved [italic]Bandbox[/italic] and [italic]A Book of One's Own[/italic] (about diarists). Mallon's political differences curtail my reading further.

What is Finale about?

[quote]Any other Thomas Mallon fans here? I loved Bandbox, Fellow Travelers and Dewey Defeats Truman but I haven't kept up on his later books.

I loved Fellow Travelers. I read Watergate, but didn't think I got it. I want to read it again. I'm not sure I want to read his book with Reagan on the cover. Mallon is a Republican. (Did he vote for you know who?)

Mallon is not a Republican but he is gay.

He used to identify as a Republican.

Mallon's HENRY AND CLARA and DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN are among my favorite books, especially the former. (Loved FELLOW TRAVELERS, too, but haven't read the others; already an opera, it would make a great movie.) FINALE is about the Reagan era, and I see that he has a Bush-era novel coming out next week, LANDFALL. He must be making his way through the decades in DC. Met him years ago; sweet man, and a pocket gay.

Ordered LEADING MEN after the rave in the Times this morning. About Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo.

[quote]Openly gay—and recently describing himself as a "supposed literary intellectual/homosexual/Republican,"

I guess a "supposed" Republican is not the same as an actual one.

I've enjoyed some of Mallon's novels but found that I was not always as well-informed about the various historical events surrounding them to have a fuller appreciation of the plots. This was especially true in Fellow Travelers where I wish I knew more about McCarthy and the Blacklist. Mallon assumes the reader is better educated than I am.

I really enjoyed Mallon's WATERGATE.

Currently reading Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure". Talk about brutal!

I couldn't get through Jude but I LOVED The Mayor Casterbridge and also liked Return of the Native and Far From the Madding Crowd. Still always thinking about reading Tess.

Anyone read DREYER'S ENGLISH to find out all the writing mistakes they've made in like, forever?

The Original Sinners series.

R453 I was at Northwestern with Benjamin (or Bruce as he wanted to be called then) Dreyer. he was insufferable then and I gather, from friends who have known him throughout the decades, continues to be. He once recommended, to a very well-read friend of mine, that he might enjoy the poetry of "Gerald" Hopkins. So much for his encyclopedic knowledge and discerning taste.

The audio sample of Bruce's book that he narrates himself was awful, but I did buy the ebook.

Flailing around trying to find something new to read and came upon an old paperback I have of The Remains of the Day. I don't know why I never read it but looking forward to it now.

Just finished a book I found very touching. The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Nightime. The author does an amazing job of bringing the reader into the mind and imagination of a kid somewhere on the very high functioning end of the autism spectrum. Without the author being maudlin in the least, and his unfolding some rather harrowing events which are presented in very matter-of-fact manner , the reader understands more and more how terrifying the world must be outside of the places and rituals which make life endurable for people who live with this - yet, in a strange way, it has a very uplifting and optimistic ending. It's a book unlike any I've ever read. I can't recommend it more highly.

r458, you might be interested to know that there was an incredible award-winning stage production of Curious Incident that began in London and was then done on Broadway and a US tour.

I appreciated it even more than the book. I've enjoyed Mark Haddon's other novels as well: The Red House and A Spot of Bother.

R458 I enjoyed Curious Incident very much, too. I just finished a novel (a much longer one) that, while not about autism, you might also enjoy--"Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray. Set in a Dublin Catholic boys school, it is a wonder--some school-book humor, much heart-break, savage critique of Catholic hypocrisy, a bit of magic, and great insight into the adolescent experience. I was totally gob-smacked by it--it took me three weeks (600 pages), but worth it. It will stay with me a long time.

Has anyone read any Samuel Richardson?

I hated Dog in the Night Time as the kid was obviously a "danger to self and others" as they say in the shrink trade.

R461. Pamela is fun and not as daunting as Clarissa (which I've never had the valor to give a try). In Pamela, you see the birth of one strand of the English novel--the epistolary form gives it a certain gossipy quality. The heroine is, needless to say, too good yo be true ("Virtue Rewsrded," indeed) and if you get through it, you should reward yourself by reading Fielding's "Shamela," a nasty and funny parody of the Richardson--Fieldinf's "Joseph Andrews," while it stands on its own, is also a rebuttal of the Richardson--the title character is Pamela's brother. The film of it isn't nearly as good as "Tom Jones," but it features Ann-Margret as an exquisite Lady Booby!

"I was totally gob-smacked by it--it took me three weeks (600 pages), but worth it. It will stay with me a long time."

I abandoned it after I read the dust jacket.

Other than A SEPARATE PEACE, I have yet to read another novel that truthfully and honestly deals with the male adolescent/male friendship/prep/boarding school experience without dragging all sorts of nonsense into it.

I'm not r460 but I also adored SKIPPY DIES. Not only because because it was a truthful portrayal of male adolescence but because it was hilarious and heartbreaking. And I don't even remember it as being a particularly long read.

OTOH I remember A SEPARATE PEACE as a mawkish and sentimental (and humorless) bit of juvenalia; and I read it in high school when it was first published.

60 years on, I think it's time you re-read A SEPARATE PEACE from an adult perspective, r465. For mawkish and sentimental I'd substitute devastatingly honest and painful.

I'll give you that, r466. Maybe I should reread it.

But you should get beyond the dust jacket and give SKIPPY DIES a go.

Actually I got a little past the dust jacket, r467...but it just wasn't what I was looking for. But since I keep reading that it's "heartbreaking," perhaps I'll try again.

Not to overstate the case, but ASP is brilliantly written. Its theme, plot, imagery, metaphorical resonances and interpretive ambiguity are so artfully woven it boggles the mind. Don't get me wrong, there are elements like the Leper subplot that are less effective for me, but, as a whole, that book cuts right to the very core of me.

Thanks for these suggestions!

R458: That's on my top 3 of books i hated that people usually love. The other two are Shotgun love songs and Call me by your name

I started Skippy Dies about a month ago, but haven't gotten back to it. I didn't dislike it. Books kept piling up from the library that weren't renewable, so I read those first.

r453, I think that Bruce is his given name, and that he became Benjamin to sound more sophisticated.

I like the name Benjamin much more than the name Bruce.

"Ben" is becoming as popular as "Justin." Every time I turn around, I'm meeting a new Ben or seeing one as a character in a movie, TV episode, or book.

Skippy Dies is a grat read. laugh out loud funny and then of course (spoiler alert), Skippy dies and not so funny any more. but a look at adult behavior and "blindness" to the lives of those around them.

Please know that you learn that Skippy dies in the first page of the book. So it's hardly a spoiler.

that's the joke ^

It's a joke if you've read the book but off-putting if you're considering reading it.

The main character of Everything i never told you dies in the first page and it hurts like hell when you reach the page she really dies (no matter you knew she was going to die from the beginning).

I started My absolute darling, and i understand why it was controversial

It’s like when you discover that Bunny is murdered (and by whom) in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History on the first page. The book is about the “why” he was murdered.

Bunny deserved to die, i would kill him with my bare hands if i could. I hated him from the first page he appeared

I just realized I don't remember a thing about The Secret History.

Me neither. All I remember is that it wasn't at all about what I thought it was going to be about.

R482 I think of The Secret History as one of those books that seem really cool when you are an undergraduate, but, upon revisiting it a decade or two later, it seems overheated and pretentious. I actually liked The Secret Friend well enough, even though it seems derivative of Harper Lee and Flannery O'Connor (and not as original as the latter). I still haven't read The Goldfinch--too many other long books ahead of it in line. Is it better than her first two?

This is why I'm loathe to reading overhyped contemporary novels (or attending overhyped movies, theatre, exhibits, etc). You just instinctively know the actual quality is in inverse proportion to the hype.

I read Ruth Rendell 's Wexford séries without following the chronology and waiting for the publication on the 21st of february of SODOMA a book by Frédéric Martel a journalist about Homosexuality in the Vatican. Frédéric Martel is gay, has written about mainstream culture and politics and the gay community. The book is a work about the gay community inside the Vatican and how it shaped the policy of the catholic church towards gay people, sexuality etc... And something of a debate : how is it that the Vatican being home of numerous gay people is such a bastion of homophobia ?

Hey, thanks everyone, this thread is very inspiring if you don't know what to read...

Can anyone recommend a good bonkbuster in the vein of Jackie Collins? I love me some saucy read which is not too dull :+)

Frank Bruni wrote a rather skeptical column about the SODOMA book, r485. Thinks it might be bad for the gays.

R480: totally agree with you. Bunny was such a fucking user-loser pig. I actually cheered when I read the bit where they pushed him over into the ravine, not a moment too soon.

Thanks R487 for the link, yes it's a danger. But it's also a tyranny, an hypocrisy and a nonsense to prevent people from having a sexuality and there we are. I'm not too sure about the agenda of the pope : technically, he allowed the book.

“The Goldfinch:” a Dickensian story that begins with an act of terrorism and offers more than you ever wanted to know about period American furniture and adolescent angst. I found it fascinating and utterly engaging, despite its excessive length.

Not far into "I Capture the Castle", which is provind easier to get into than I'd feared.

Favorite Jane Austens besides Pride and Prejudice? I've read it twice as well as Northanger Abbey and Emma.

I Capture the Castle made a pretty charming movie with Rose Byrne and Henry Cavill.

R492 I love Persuasion--not as witty, but lovely and moving.

I want to Raf the Andrew McCabe book.

I want to READ...

And I want to raf Andrew McCabe.

I set aside "I Capture the Castle" fairly early on; I may try again, though unlikely. The family were too much a brood of self-centered idiots.

I just finished reading Trollope's The Prime Minister. At the end I read the preface by Leo Amery who essentially said that there are better novels than this one on the theme of Victorian politics citing Disraeli's Coningsby and Sybil as two examples. I'm now watching the two PM episodes of The Pallisers, the 1974 BBC series on YouTube. Philip Latham is very good as the PM and Stuart Wilson is excellent as that sexy bad boy Ferdinand Lopez.

I've just begun reading Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread which I think is her most recent novel (2015).

I was a big fan during the height of her popularity in the 1980s, especially Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist, but gave up on her as each book seemed to suffer from the same tweeness and same.....sameness.

But this book caught my eye as the spectacular reviews and some awards were very impressive and I thought it might be interesting to revisit her 30 years alter.

So far, though I'm only about 50 pages in, I'm enjoying it.

Never understood the appeal of Anne Tyler, but I know she pleases a lot of critics and readers.

I like some of Anne Tyler stories, but others I just couldn't get into, as I'm not interested in heterosexual relationships being analyzed, or intergenerational sagas.

My partner and I have been reading to each in the evenings when we find time. We've gotten through Barbara Pym's "Glass of Blessings", one of Benson's "Mapp and Lucia" books, and are now almost done with Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore."

They have all been satisfying in their own way.

For all you smart people, this can be enjoyed on several levels...

R502: Curiously i love the "straight marriage in crisis" novels, even my last experiences (Dept of speculation and Fates and furies) weren't too satisfying (i hope The fire sermon stops this trend). Loved Salter's Light years

I think The accidental tourist was a nice and light novel but i didn't enjoy that much the last part of the novel (not on the levels of Brooklyn which i was absolutely in love till the last part when i end hating the main character). A spoon full of blue thread was quite a hit or miss when it was published, some people love it, some people hated it. Anyway i think Tyler's last novel is Vinegar girl

R505, a "straight marriage in crisis" novel that I really enjoyed was 'The Marriage Plot' by Jeffrey Eugenides. Also, "The Book of Ruth" by Jane Hamilton who wrote the modern-day King Lear "A Thousand Acres." Both of her novels have been made into a TV movie and a feature film, respectively.

There are a lot of "straight women and hetero marriages in crisis" in the short story collection Read by Strangers by Philip Dean Walker (who is gay, but writes women really well).

Off-topic, but I would also like to recommend What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, another short story collection by Nathan Englander. The title story is fantastic.

'Straight Marriage In Crisis' gems also include 'Revolutionary Road' by Richard Yates, and 'Stoner' by John Williams. Riveting and recommended. (Don't be put off by the so-so film of RR, in fact avoid if possible.)

(Polite correction to R506, it was Jane Smiley who wrote 'A Thousand Acres.' I know because the book's been on my 'must-read' list for far too long.)

Many years ago, I took a writing class where the syllabus included weekly readings from "The Book of Ruth" as examples of her quality writing. Unfortunately, most of the class including yours truly disliked what we'd read enough so that feature was called off for the term.

I later went back and tried reading the novel to see if maybe it got better, but such was never the case.

Thanks, R507. I clearly got my "Janes" mixed up!

Another great "Straight Marriage in Crisis" is Easter Parade by Richard Yates (perhaps read it in tandem with Revolutionary Road?). I've always been surprised that this has never been adapted into a film. It's quite grim, but there are two really meaty parts for women.

Those 2 Ricahard Yates novels are wonderful, indeed!

Which Jane wrote A Map of the World? I loved that one. It was made into an unmemorable film with DL fave Sigourney Weaver.

Another great novel of "suburban family gone wrong" was Before and After by Roselen Brown, made into another unmemorable film with Meryl and Liam Neeson.

Btw, I finished Remains of the Day. Devastating!

R511: I remember starting The remains of the day and thinking oh god he can stop talking about being a majordomo, but then you can feel the pain and the loneliness, and that end, sad and beautiful. I loved that novel

R511 Hamilton wrote Map. At one time, Meryl Streep was interested in filming it--it would have been a very different film with her in the lead.

I went to high school with Hamilton. She's not only a fine writer, but a wonderful person. DLers should read her novel about a gay teenager in the 1970s, "The Short History of a Prince." It's excellent.

I’m reading History Of Love by Nicole Krauss and am thus far not impressed.

I just finished The Incendiaries. I thought it would be an amuse-bouche after finishing both Skippy Dies and Little Dorrit (the combination of which took me over a month--and I used to be a fast reader). I hated hated hated The Incendiaries and found even its modest 210 or so pages an absolute short to get through, with absolutely no payoff whatsoever--I never became interested in the characters (I don't have to like characters, but I have to find one or two interesting ones to sustain me) and I didn't care what happened to anyone in it. Plus the author's photo made her like a really pretentious Millennial, with the raccoon eyeliner.

I think I'll revisit To the Lighthouse and some of Isak Dinesen's tales next. Oh, and the novel about Tennessee Williams, which I have from the library, and "In the Closet of the Vatican."

R514: I generally like novels with teenage or old main characters, History of love has both but i was not impressed either

I liked one of Nicole Krauss' books. I don't remember which. She is obviously quite intelligent.

Does any of her books deal, at least semi-autobiographically, with her life with and divorce from Jonathan Safran Foer?

R514 If it wasn't for the misleading / sensational title of 'I Love Dick', would Nicole Krauss have a mainstream writing career?

I just read Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman in one sitting. Beautiful written and heart-breaking.

Just finished a book called NO EXIT by Taylor Adams. Very cinematic and suspenseful, like reading a movie.

Has anyone read LEADING MEN by Christopher Castellani? It's fiction, but apparently features Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Frank Merlo. I'm picking it up from my local library tomorrow.

What's Waiting for Eden about? Fiction??

Reading Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned, the one novel of his I didn't read as a teenager. The world seems really, really distant now. Way more than it did 30 years ago.

Also, no one else writes like Fitzgerald--everyone reads The Great Gatsby in school, but he's very much his own thing--an odd writer in a quiet way.

Waiting for Eden is about a disabled soldier, in a comatose condition, horribly burned, in a hospital, told from the point of view of his best friend, a fellow soldier, who died in the same accident. It's far better than that summary might suggest.

Were they gay, r523?

No, nor we they queer. The barely-alive soldier has a wife who is there every day. To say more would be to spoil what there is of a plot (it is the language and the perspectives that matter more than plot per se).

R525 But they were gender fluid, right?

No, not gender fluid either. I guess you need to just go back to your Janet Mock readathon.

I'm going to start Jaime Quatro's The fire sermon (more straight marriages in crisis)

Rereading what may be my favorite book. "John Dies at the End"

It's both comedy and horror. Imagine the old movie Clerks, but also with Cthulhu

R518: "I Love Dick" is by Chris Kraus (one ' S').

Currently reading Leading Men - love the subject, love the era, but i'm not exactly captivated. A Ladder to the Sky was much more involving.

Boy erased is going to be published in Spain. I'm tempted but it looks depressing as hell

r532: Didn't read the book but found the film quite tedious, though not especially depressing. Maybe the book is better though.

Films and novels are two very different animals, i loved The hours (the novel) but i didn't like the film, i loved L A Confidential (the film) but didn't like the novel

I think readers who are innately visual and have strong imaginations (like me!) will always prefer reading the book to seeing the film version.

I't very difficult to capture a book essence maybe because that essence is different to every reader. Sometimes you tell exactly the same but the tone is very different.

People are very attached to their books and it's easy to see in young novels adaptations. While the ones that were very faithful to the original (Harry Potter, The Hunger ones) were big hits, the ones that differ a lot for the original source (Eragon, Shadowhunters) flopped big time.

I recognize that i had trouble watching Under the dome, there were so many absurd changes that i just can't get into the story.

One thing is give the story a bit of the personal touch of the director and other very different transform the story in something totally different, if a director wants to put on film his personal universe he should use original material

I saw the 2018 BBC production of "The Woman in White" soon after reading the novel. I understand some creative license was needed instead of cramming every character with a chapter narrative, but the adaptation was for people who'd either not read a Victorian novel before, or can't read anything beyond ten years in age without getting tweaked at the lack of social justice and equality. I had the idea Professor Pesca was much smaller, and Count Fosco much thicker, and Sir Percival Glyde struck me as the sort of character Alex McQueen ("Hunderby") would play. Charles Dance was the main reason I watched, but I couldn't make it beyond the third instalment.

Also reading Ladder to The Sky. Really enjoying it. Well written. Irish writer. If you lie the gossip and snark on this sight you will love this book. I found it because of Maureen Corrigan's review.

Liked Ladder to the Sky. Loved Hearts Invisible Furies. Not sure why I never discovered Boyne until now. Love his stuff. One of the few writers I’ve found in past 5 years that I really like. Finally!

I just checked out Ladder to the Sky from the library. Looking forward to reading it. Reading The Dakota Winters now.

^^^ I wondered if his other stuff is good. I think I'll go down the rabbit hole.

Just picked up "Death is Hard Work"--As I Lay Dying set in Syria with a father rather than a mother.

My father is a camel.

amazon has 13 Mark Twain ebooks available for $0,

Amazon, and Project Gutenberg, also have free downloads of Miss Marjoribanks (Marchbanks) by Margaret Oliphant. If you're looking for a Victorian novel with a strong female lead I'd easily recommend it.

Some of you may have heard of the film "The House with the Clock in Its Walls"? I decided to try the author's YA series featuring Johnny Dixon, a 12 y/o boy in 1952 Massachusetts (the books were written in the 1980s); his mother is dead and his father is off in the Air Force in Korea, so he lives with his father's parents.

The first couple of books were magical realism type of Hardy Boys - Scooby Doo hybrid. A bit heavy on the religion (pre-Vatican II), but vaguely credible. I'm most of the way through the third one "The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull" in which Johnny's good friend, the 70 year old bachelor professor who lives nearby, has vanished! APB's abounding, but no sign of him! Readers know that's because he was captured by a demon though Johnny knows not where the professor is now.

So, the parish priest takes Johnny (and Johnny's best friend Fergie) off to Maine to rescue the guy, based on his interpretation of a message from St. Anthony. I haven't been paying the strictest attention, but think I would've remembered the "purchase" cited below, where "you" refers to 12 year old Fergie:

"Yes, dumb it might be," muttered Father Higgins. "However, I have a plan in mind. Do you remember that bottle of brandy I had you buy?"

I used to read "Thomas Convent, the Unbeliever" every couple of years. Haven't read it in about twenty years. It's insufferable. My twenty-something self saw something my fifty-something self doesn't.

just into my 3rd book of Louise Penny's Gamache series of mysteries. fun lihgt reads. finished Steve Cavanagh's Series last week. great lawyer/con man series. both authors recommended by this and earlier threads.

R546, it's Thomas Covenant Unbeliever.

I read all the books when they came out and took them as a reasonable facsimile of the Tolkien kind of thing wihthout the Tolkien magic. They served as "more" for those who wanted it.

I also remember that there was a race of warriors who were apparently--it wasn't clear--black and that the author himself seemed to have a crush on. Do you remember them?

I bought the first one because the cover art was so intriguing, then I became hooked.

[quote]just into my 3rd book of Louise Penny's Gamache series of mysteries.

I just read the last one (15th). It was my first one. Some of the plotting is so obvious, but they play it as if it's some really super-duper misdirection. It just didn't work. And it had at least five too many characters. Maybe if I'd started at the beginning, I'd've liked it.

I think a few years ago I tried Louise Penny, thinking maybe I'd like her as I had Ruth Rendell. Uhh, no. I stopped reading after a few pages. There's nobody like Ruth Rendell, including P.D. James, who is a much stodgier writer than Ruth was. At this point I've read all of Rendell's books, and although some of the later ones aren't as good, she was a master. Her prose is so perfect, and her knowledge of the psychology of crime has no peer IMO. Anyway, the first one I read (about 20 years ago) hooked me--The Bridesmaid. I had never even read a crime novel before. (I was a literary snob in my younger days.) I wish I could find a writer whom I liked as much--I have read a few writers I've enjoyed--Jo Nesbo, Michael Connelly (big fan), Lee Child (surprised me how addicting they are), but none are as gifted writers as Rendell IMO. Any suggestions?

I checked LibraryThing for you, r550, and collected the names Minette Walters, Elizabeth George, Reginald Hill and Colin Dexter.

r550, I absolutely agree with you about Rendell. I assume you've read the books she wrote under pseudonym Barbara Vine, which were often among her best?

Though not quite the same as her, I would also recommend Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse books (all great!) and Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe mysteries -- three of my favorites are A Killing Kindness, Dead Heads and Exit Lines.

LEADING MEN was a HUGE disappointment; it was clunky and very hard to slog through. Don't bother - it was exhausting.

Maybe I read the weakest Louise Penny book, it was about a murder in a monastery, but it turned me off of her forever.

The monastery murder was the first Louise Penny one I read. The one where a 9-year-old goes missing and is found dead stopped my reading further: the situation climax was not believable and the PTSD-stricken assistant to Gamache bores me silly.

i'm reading Penny in order, and i find her characters quite enjoyable and human. especially the love between the inspector general and the inspector.... all above board and non-sexual-- but well thought out and interesting. and she always includes gay characters.

What is LibraryThing, r551?

Thanks for the review, r553. As a person who toils in the theater, I was interested in reading LM, but I am so happy not to waste my time, as I feel I do on most contemporary fiction.

I love the C.J. Sansom series set in Tudor England. Detective is a hunchback lawyer. Very long, but if you like historic fiction, he's among the best at recreating that era.

I never understood why PD James became so much more popular and well-reviewed than Ruth Rendell. Only James broke out of the mystery genre and onto the general bestseller lists.

Or maybe that was more in the US than the UK? They were often compared but it was only with their deaths that Rendell has emerged the superior writer with a stronger lasting reputation.

LibraryThing is an online service for people to catalog their books. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.

Link to voluminous but not exhaustive nor complete listing of popular authors, each linked to a numbered list of 'readalike' authors:

P D James seemed to inhabit a more self-consciously 'literary' realm in her fiction and public persona. More upmarket, if you will.

Ruth Rendell was more an everywoman type, in her persona and interests. Also she was more prolific, which can snobbishly be seen as dilution.

Doubtless the above might have fed into their critical responses. I'd opt to read a Rendell over a James any day.

Wasn't P D James an homophobe? I thought she voted against every pro gay law in UK

I read two of her novels and frankly they were very entertaining but nothing more than that

Rendell wrote several gay characters into her books over the years and they were always sympathetic portrayals.

I wish the BBC or some other Brit producers would do new TV versions of some of her best books, there would be many to choose from.

Complete newbie: first, best Ruth Rendell book?

So many great Rendell books!!

My favorites under her pseudonym Barbara Vine (which I think are her very best): A Fatal Inversion and A Dark-Adapted Eye and The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

Of the early Inspector Wexford books I loved: A Guilty Thing Surprised and A Sleeping Life and Murder Being Once Done and No More Dying Then and

Her last books were not always quite up to par but I did like The Girl Next Door (2014) which is a non-Wexford and I think was her next to last book.

Wanted to start with A Doon to Death, but there's a 4 week wait, so I downloaded Not in the Flesh as it was the first to show as available. Assuming the Wexford books can be read non-chronologically.

Thank you, r565. I have taken out The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, and put a hold on A Fatal Inversion. I'll get to the rest after that. I have a number of books to read ahead of Vine, but maybe it'll end up jumping the line.

Let us know your thoughts after reading them, r567. I hope you enjoy them.

I do wonder if some of the very first Rendell books from the early 1970s, like From Doon With Death, might seem a little archaic now.

I want to read some of Bertrand Russell's work. Is there a good monography of him that could be a good starting point begore I dive into his writings?

I got a Kindle Voyage! My roommate got a Kindle Oasis so sold me his Voyage for $50. I had the Paperwhite for years. It wasn't broken in any way so I couldn't justify the price of the upgrade to myself. But I love the Voyage!

Any other Kindle fans?

R570, I read exclusively on the Kindle PW. Initially it was for the portability but now it's for the font size and lighting functions. I can't read periodical and paperback print anymore. I can muddle through hardback but portability is an issue. I should look into reading glasses but just not ready to go there.

I send longer articles and features to my Kindle so I can cut down reading online or spending time online in general. FYI, check out Send to Kindle and Push to Kindle extensions for Chrome.

I have Paperwhite and I love it. Last time we moved I packed 22 boxes with books so since then I try to buy more ebooks.

R571 Thanks for that tip about Sending to Kindle from Chrome!

R573, I use both because neither is 100% in converting all articles/sites. Send to Kindle always truncates NYTimes for example.

And on my mobile, Amazon's STK under "Share" doesn't work, period. I use a 3rd party app also call Send to Kindle. It's free with ads and $.99 without. I've just starting using it and if it continues to work, will buy. Push to Kindle is $3.49 and I haven't tried it because they require you to buy straight away. I wish they would allow a free trial period.

R570, what makes the Kindle Voyage better than the Paperwhite?

R575 The screen is completely flat. It's not set into a plastic border like the paperwhite. This makes it easier to clean because nothing can get trapped at the edge of the screen.

Also the back light can be set to auto and it will adjust itself based on light around you. It's a small thing but nice to never turn it on at night and find the screen too dark to navigate the settings.

And it has physical page turn buttons in addition to the touch screen. I missed the buttons from the Kindle Keyboard (my first Kindle) so It's nice to have them back

Years ago I started with a couple of models of Sony e-readers, 1 is the same size as a Kindle Paperwhite. and while the other is a 5-inch screen more like the Kobo Mini, no backlighting same as older Kindles.

I put those aside a couple of years back, deciding to try reading on my Kindle Fire and phone with a combination of side-loaded ePub books via the Aldiko app and downloaded Kindle books. I found that reading on the phone is good for shorter items that I can pick up and put down as needed, but not ideal for a full-length book. Reading on the Kindle Fire was okay, but something was missing. Recently, I broke down and purchased a refurbished Kindle Paperwhite (previous generation without Audible and waterproofing) to see what all the fuss was about. The latest Paperwhite model also has a flat screen, but I kind of prefer this indented version instead.

I found I liked the Paperwhite quite a bit, including the ability to return Kindle format library books directly from the device rather than mucking around with my Amazon account to do so. Biggest drawback for me is that I like reading books in Spanish for vocabulary practice, which was a big thing with the Sony readers and their great Spanish-English dictionary. The Paperwhite uses the same Collins Dictionary, but I have to say I find tapping the Spanish words to be clunky, where I end up either annotating the sentence, or changing the page, instead. So, I compromised and would use the Paperwhite as my primary eBook reader, and the small Sony to read Spanish books and ones that I've selected for it that I can use as "pick up and put down" books as it were. The Sony has physical page turn buttons, but I'm indifferent to those versus tapping the screen.

Just curious if anyone here has read and could recommend James Jones' From Here to Eternity? My interest has piqued because of a current DL thread on the film.

Wasn't this another case (like Margaret Mitchell and Ross Lockridge) of a relatively young novelist writing a blockbuster bestseller and then dying soon after without a follow-up?

R578 From here to eternity is one of my favourite books - make sure you get uncensored edition.

Ohhh, life is bigger...

To anyone who is struggling please tell a friend or call 116 123 from any phone.

Jones also had successes with Some Came Running and The Thin Red Line, both of which were made into well-received films. He died at 55--not as young as Lockridge, I think.

Thanks for the From Here to Eternity encouragement, r579, I'll give it a try!

Yes, looked up James Jones after I posted, to see he did have some success after Eternity.

I'm always so curious about those huge bestsellers from my childhood that were in Book of the Month Club editions on our suburban shelves during my childhood: Eternity, The Nun's Story, Raintree County, The Chapman Report, The Balkan Trilogy, Exodus, All the King's Men, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, etc. etc.

I'm thinking on reading J M Coetzee, so if someone has any advice about which book will be good to start i will apreciate

We had the Readers Digest Book Club editions in my house. :( I always laugh when I see them decorating the set of some TV show. Wonder if anyone collects them as kitsch, like paint-by-the-numbers artwork.

Also the Literary Guild, which sent smaller-size editions with cheaper paper. ADVISE AND CONSENT. THE MOONSPINNERS. All the Thomas Costain books, like BELOW THE SALT and THE TONTINE.

Coetzee takes some getting used to, but, at his best, he's wonderful. I think Age of Iron, Life and Times of Michael K., and Disgrace are about his best--and each is accessible in its own way. Waiting for the Barbarians is also a masterpiece, but I founded it harder to read, for some reason.

[quote]Wonder if anyone collects them as kitsch, like paint-by-the-numbers artwork.

My dad used to collect Pan paperbacks in the 90s.

Re Coetzee-- He was a big deal--one of the literary masters of the '90s (was it?). Disgrace--which is quite devastating--might be his best. Was made into a film that I don't remember much about.

R586 You take me back to my high schools years when I devoured the Thomas Costain series The Plantagenets on the medieval English monarchs. I was fascinated at the time with the events of the period and wonder if they still hold up as popular history.

R590 They are! I am an English history buff. That's the era that most interests people when I talk about it. Unfortunately Hollywood greatly prefers the Tudors but the Angevins dealt with much more wild events. I have a soft spot for Henry II even though he was a terrible father

I'm listening to the collected works of Saki; homosexual sensibilities detected.

I googled Coetzee because I hadn't thought much about him in recent years. He may be the only writer to have won two Booker Prizes--one for Life and Times of Michael K. in 1983, and the second for Disgrace in '99. He won the Nobel in 2004 I believe. Certainly one of the great living writers--lives in Australia for the last 20 years or so, but born in South Africa.

Hilary Mantel won two Bookers.

Hilary Mantel also won twice--for both books in the Wolf Hall sequence.

Does anyone have any guesses as to what might be nominated for a Lambda Literary Award (a "Lammy") this year? The nominations are supposed to be announced this week.

I've tried Wolf Hall twice and both times didn't make it far. And I live and breath british historical novels, Sharon Kay Penman, Ken Follet, and many others are my favorites but Wolf Hall wasn't very compelling

Adored Wolf Hall. It took some time to get into the rhythm of it, but it grabbed me completely. I still marvel that Mantel managed to make me root for Thomas Cromwell, of all people. Bring Up The Bodies wasn't as good, but still head and shoulders above most histfic.

R597 I was Penman who turned me off historical fiction as a genre. I got about half way through The Sunne in Splendour about King Richard III and could go no further. It was at the point when she introduced a fictional character as a companion for Anne Neville. I thought - why not read a good book of popular history, like those of Barbara Tuchman's, as a more worthwhile alternative.

I'm another failed Mantell reader. Just couldn't get into either Booker winner. Maybe I'll try again some day.