Constant Reader discussion

As we head into a new month, I'm still reading Bruce Feiler's Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan. I'll definitely post a book review of this one when I finish!

Cateline wrote: "I've finished Stephen King's Under the Dome, and while I am not a fan of every King novel, the several I've read have all been interesting.
I had to give this one a 5 star rating, although it didn't start out that way.....my review. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"

Cateline, I greatly appreciate your review of the Stephen King novel. I like good Stephen King a lot, but I do find his longer efforts uneven. So it's especially good to know about the longer novels that are worthwhile reading.

I have a terrible memory for specific details, Larry. However, I do recall having coming away liking Feiler's book. A book I found as an interesting take on living in the country was by the wife of an Israeli diplomat, including her experiences there as a vegetarian: Shalom Japan: A Sabra's Five Years in the Land of the Rising Sun.

I finished Bruce Feiler's Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan about his experiences as a junior high school teacher for a year in Sano, a town in the prefecture of Tochigi. It's really a wonderful book with a lot of insights about his experiences as exchange English teacher. I recommend it for anyone who may wish to understand more about Japan. I'll post a separate review today.

I have read two other books by Feiler, The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me and Looking for Class: Days and Nights at Oxford and Cambridge. Bother were enjoyable.

John wrote: "I have a terrible memory for specific details, Larry. However, I do recall having coming away liking Feiler's book. A book I found as an interesting take on living in the country was by the wife of an Israeli diplomat, including her experiences there as a vegetarian: Shalom Japan: A Sabra's Five Years in the Land of the Rising Sun."

John,

I just checked and our library doesn't have a copy of the SHALOM JAPAN book, but Amazon has used copies for $.01. It looks good and I ordered it right away. Many thanks for suggestion.

Larry

Started Sworn Sword--take on Norman Conquest of England, from the Norman POV, for a change.

Jane wrote: "Started Sworn Sword--take on Norman Conquest of England, from the Norman POV, for a change."

A lot of my ancestors were Norman. I guess I've taken their point of view all along. ;-)

Starting The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake. Actually the first of the trilogy, Titus Groan for a discussion on another forum this month.
If I get along with it, I'll continue with the rest of course. :)

I'm going to need to decide between continuing with two complementary books or switching to a different pair.

I'm currently about a third of the way through both Murakami's 1Q84 and Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained. They both, in very different ways, examine our relation to the external world and make an interesting pairing. The problem is that I've already read quite a bit of both authors and, particularly with the Murakami, it seems like too familiar territory. The dialogue in 1Q84 seems especially forced and the plot could be moving a lot faster. Does this book improve in the last two-thirds?

I'm tempted to put the Dennett on hold, retire the Murakami, and pick up another pair of books in conjunction with my upcoming return to Spanish classes in a couple weeks. I'm thinking of starting Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Sound of Things Falling alternating chapters with the Spanish version El ruido de las cosas al caer. Spanish chapter first and English chapter second.

Reading Colette's The Vagabond for something like the 4th time! Book club pick for this coming Tuesday. A pleasure as always.

Brian wrote: "I'm need to decide between continuing with two complementary books or switching to a different pair.

I'm currently about a third of the way through both Murakami's 1Q84 and Daniel Dennett's Consci..."

I admire your Spanish proficiency. I'm reading a Spanish novel at the rate of about one page every few weeks :). Interesting book, though, won some literary prize in the 1940s. Nada, by Carmen Laforet. I'm not reading it fast enough to put it into my Currently Reading list, though.

UGH! We had to read Nada in college Spanish class.

Thank God someone out there is assigning women writers. The stuff I was made to read in Spanish class, you'd think a pen was a direct extension of the cojones.

Kat wrote: "Thank God someone out there is assigning women writers. The stuff I was made to read in Spanish class, you'd think a pen was a direct extension of the cojones."

LOL

While visiting Mammoth Cave this summer, I observed old newspaper clips about the trapped caver Floyd Collins and claustrophic that I am, went on to write a poem about him. So then I was interested in finding out more of the story which was a sensational episode of the mid-1920's. Just finished this one.
Trapped by Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Brucker. The second book I’ve read on the Floyd Collins entrapment. This, by a caver and a historian, is more in-depth than the one written by Homer Collins. The authors interviewed numerous sources and researched materials published at the time, covering not only the plight of the trapped caver, but the conflict between the natives and the “outlanders” on the proper methods to use in the rescue attempts. The story went national which ultimately caused the National Guard and the state of Kentucky to get involved as well as various mining companies, but by the time a decision was made to sink a shaft it was too late. Had that been attempted early on, it’s possible Collins may have been saved. A carnival aspect developed around the site with upwards of 30,000 people milling about and various hawkers of items such as balloons, soft drinks and patent medicines joining the fray. The local community also profited from the story, with people boarding newspapermen in their homes and providing them with food. Over 50 news reporters gathered at Cave City, the nearest town to report the story which was a front pager, not only in the Kentucky papers but in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. Wildly exaggerated stories were printed, rumors abounded, a hearing was held to determine fact from fiction. Following the discovery of Collins’ death, various participants, including Collins’ father and brother went on the vaudeville circuit to recount tales of his last days. The brother, Homer’s, motives were not for personal gain, but to raise money to extract his brother’s body from the cave for a proper burial. Murray and Brucker obtained permission to go into Sand Cave, which has been closed to the public since the tragedy, along with a party of investigators.

Just finished Cold Case Cowboysand am still reading The Accursed(about three quarters of the way through - it hasn't been a quick read),"The Warrior's Journey" and No Apples in Eden: New & Selected Poems. I think if I read fewer book simultaneously I might finish more of them in a shorter time :-(

But don't you think, J.S, that you need to have different books to read at different times and places throughout the week? I almost always have 3 or 4 in process at the same time.

Mary wrote: "But don't you think, J.S, that you need to have different books to read at different times and places throughout the week? I almost always have 3 or 4 in process at the same time."

Indeed, Mary, I do and it's good to know that I am not alone.

Not even a little bit, J.S. and Mary. I routinely have five or six going.

Just finished up Eça's O Mandarin. Did anyone see the movie The Box. From what my children said of it the story sounds very similar. Not that this is an unusual theme. A mysterious man tells Teodoro that by ringing a bell with in this box he can end the life of a particular dying Mandarin and inherit all his wealth. Teodoro eventually does so...Faustian.

Oh my goodness! I have found that the movie The Box and Eça's O Mandarin are indeed connected! The movie is based on a Twilight Zone episode called "Button, Button." It was inspired by a parable of sorts in Chateaubriand's Genius of Christianity, published in the early 19th century. The parable poses the dilemma Teodoro faces, Mandarin and all. Eça's novel seems to have fully elaborated Chateaubriand's slight illustrative dilemma. I was reading the Eça from an ebook since Portuguese books are hard to come by here. The ebook was without notes or forward or such, which probably would have noted the source. Fun research!

I also always have several books going at one time.

Currently reading THE ARMADA BOY by Kate Ellis (good mystery); IKE'S BLUFF (nonfiction re Pres. Eisenhower); JUST ONE EVIL ACT by Elizabeth George 700+ pp); and DOCTOR SLEEP by Stephen King.

Among other things, I've begun Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune which looks to be fascinating. It gives the story of what turns out to be one of the wealthiest families in American history, one that I'd never heard of before.

Sue wrote: "Among other things, I've begun Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune which looks to be fascinating. It gives the story of what turns out..."

By coincidence, I just finished reading a long article in the LA Times about Clark's mansion in Santa Barbara, which she willed to the city arts organization.

I haven't read much about that house yet except for it's size and the pristine cars left there with their 1949 license plates intact.

I started Dennis Lehane's Moonlight Mile. This is essentially a sequel to Lehane's Gone, Baby, Gone, set approximately ten years after that book. The missing child who the private detectives found in the first book is now missing again.

Larry wrote: "I started Dennis Lehane's Moonlight Mile. This is essentially a sequel to Lehane's Gone, Baby, Gone, set approximately ten years after that book. The missing child who the private detectives found ..."

Hope nobody here wants to read Gone, Baby, Gone.

I'm reading Fever, a novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary."

Joan, Billy Wilder based Ace in the Hole on the Floyd Collins event.

Read Daniel Kimmel, I'll Have What She's Having. Behind the scenes looks at Romantic Comedies. Good read.

Enjoyed Balzac, Pere Goriot. Much richer than when I was in high school. I must have learned a few things...

Picked up the first Nero Wolfe book, Fer-de-Lance. Read most of the series a few years ago. Looking for some details for a talk about law in the Thirties media.

DonnaR wrote: "I'm reading Fever, a novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary.""

I liked that one.

I rarely read mysteries anymore (not sure why), but back in the day I read all the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Wolfe and Archie are such a pair!

I listened to most of the Nero Wolfe series as audiobooks earlier this year.

We usually think of Nero Wolf as being absolutely huge, but by today's standards, his weight, at 1/7 of a ton or about 286 pounds, looks increasingly like that of a lot of American men.

I finished Dennis Lehane's Moonlight Mile. The moral choices and dilemmas of GONE BABY, GONE come back into play and then there are new ones for the protagonists to grapple with. A thoroughly satisfying read. Lehane does dialogue well also. Maybe not as good as Elmore Leonard, but there are scenes where he comes close to the master.

I started Poul Anderson's The Time Patrol. There are several editions of this book. This one contains all the short stories about Anderson's Time Patrol except for the last one ("Death and the Knight") which was published in a Katherine Kurtz edited collection of short stories.

I'm greatly enjoy Spilling the Beans, autobiography of Clarissa Dickson Wright, surviving member of the Two Fat Ladies cooking duo.

I've read The Time Patrol stories too. Fun!

I just finished "Collected Stories" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His earliest were surreal, but he moved into realism mixed with the surreal (his notable magic-realism style) as he progressed. The stories don't equal the novels--Love in a Time of Cholera is his masterwork in my view--but nonetheless an interesting read.

Great collection!

I'm thinking one of the great missed opportunities of all time was not casting Orson Welles as Nero Wolfe and Paul Newman as Archie Goodwin in the Fifties/Sixties.

Just threw in the towel on Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Reads like a plodding uninspired list of all the research she did. Where was her editor?

Where did you give up, Ruth? The parts that had to do with the prison camps were pretty riveting, if sometimes repetitious. Hillenbrand's style, as in "Seabiscuit" is to conflate her material so that the threads of the stories take on a heightened aspect. I know she's doing this for dramatic effect, but what happens, for me at least, is that it arouses my suspicions about her credibility.

I got to page 113. I just tired of her detailed, but flat descriptions of every single damn thing that went on. And on. And ON.

Robert wrote: "I'm thinking one of the great missed opportunities of all time was not casting Orson Welles as Nero Wolfe and Paul Newman as Archie Goodwin in the Fifties/Sixties."

Dude.

I've just thrown the towel in on Titus Groan, the first of The Gormenghast Trilogy.
Review here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Dudette?

Cateline wrote: "I've just thrown the towel in on Titus Groan, the first of The Gormenghast Trilogy.
Review here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

I lasted maybe 50 pages when I first tried to read it. And you are right in your review ... there is some good writing there. But there are too many books that I really want to read just waiting for me to open their pages. From your review: "If one is a fan of stories of Tolkien, or similar fantasy this is for you." But not necessarily, Cateline. I liked Tolkien a lot. And TITUS GROAN still was not very interesting to me.

Larry Wrote: From your review: "If one is a fan of stories of Tolkien, or similar fantasy this is for you." But not necessarily, Cateline. I liked Tolkien a lot. And TITUS GROAN still was not very interesting to me.

Very interesting, Larry. I haven't tried to read Tolkien since I was very young. Didn't like it then, but your remarks have made me want to at least pick some up and take a look.

Also, this morning it came to me that I found the characters in Titus Groan too one dimensional, and therein lies the problem. No edges, no nuances.

Cateline wrote: "this morning it came to me that I found the characters in Titus Groan too one dimensional, and therein lies the problem. No edges, no nuances. ..."

Yep, the characters are like the black-and-white drawings. Too starkly drawn.

I picked up Ace Atkins's Robert B. Parker's Wonderland at the library today and read it in one fell swoop. This is the second book that Atkins has written about Spenser since Parker died and Parker's estate turned over the character of Spenser to Atkins. I honestly would think that Parker had written this book himself if I didn't know better. It's not one of the best Spenser books, but those occurred about 30 years ago, in the form of the early novels like Early Autumn or Looking For Rachel Wallace. But it's probably as good as any Spenser novel over the last 15 years. Thoroughly enjoyable.