The Book Discussion Thread

[ledfloyd]

all you chabon fans, there was a fantastic interview with him on fresh air yesterday. should be able to find it on npr's site.

[Grouchy]

I'm having trouble finding a reliable site that lists the novels in order while still being able to tell if they're Maigret novels. Any help there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maigret

Lists all of the novels and short stories. I've read like three or four of those in no particular order and, no, I guess that doesn't matter much since they're all self-contained stories.

[thefourthwall]

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel won the Booker, and I'm trying to make myself want to read it because I generally respect that prize, but it just sounds so boring. Maybe the whole historical fiction genre is what I find boring though.

Any one read it or plan on reading it? Or even care about the Bookers?

[lovejuice]

wow, ivanhoe turns out to be quite a fun read. weirdly enough, remind me a lot of Gu Long and Jin Yong. perhaps, this the closest you poor westerners can get to the awesomeness of wu xia.

[Hugh_Grant]

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel won the Booker, and I'm trying to make myself want to read it because I generally respect that prize, but it just sounds so boring. Maybe the whole historical fiction genre is what I find boring though.

Any one read it or plan on reading it? Or even care about the Bookers?

I care about the Booker Prize, but I have to agree with you and say that Mantel's book does not pique my interest at all.

[Hugh_Grant]

after the language instinct and the stuff of thought, i don't think i really like this steven pinker guy afterall. :sad:

My degree is in linguistics, so Pinker is revered in the field. However, I can't say I'm a huge fan. (The same can be said for Noam Chomsky.)

[lovejuice]

My degree is in linguistics, so Pinker is revered in the field. However, I can't say I'm a huge fan. (The same can be said for Noam Chomsky.)

because? i am mighty interested since you surely know more about the field than i do.

also i feel the same way toward chomsky. haven't read any of his linguistic work, but while his research in hegemony or survival is legendary -- haven't read any book so much plauged with references as this one -- on the debate regarding war on terror, his book adds very little to the table.

[thefourthwall]

Hey, you linguists--how big of a deal is George Lakoff?

[lovejuice]

Hey, you linguists--how big of a deal is George Lakoff?

not a linguist by a mile, but he's among those made fun of by pinker. that puts him on my immediately-to-read shelf.

[Duncan]

Finished American Pastoral last night. Not a big fan. It seems almost overly rigorous with its characterizations. Like, the wife wasn't a ditzy beauty pageant contestant even though she won Miss New Jersey. OK, interesting enough, I guess, but then with 20 pages left in the book he's still going on about this. I get it already. The whole book also seems chock full of cliches, and I guess the point is to deconstruct these cliches, but isn't that, by now, kind of cliche in and of itself? I mean, star high school athlete goes through horrible downfall? Really? The whole glove factory thing was alternatively annoying in its quaint Americana-ness, and actually kind of moving when the Swede is going into details about stitch length or whatever. But he takes it too far. It's hard to imagine making gloves melodramatic, but Roth does it. But the thing I really disliked about this book is that it's kind of an embodiment of American self-pity. The whole Dream thing is flawed. Everybody already knows that. Grow the fuck up about it already. Jesus. 425 pages of "rage," which is almost always a cover for self-pity. Poor, poor America. Oy vey.

[thefourthwall]

not a linguist by a mile, but he's among those made fun of by pinker. that puts him on my immediately-to-read shelf.

Thanks!

We've got him coming to speak at a conference I'm co-organizing, and my co-organizers were having a squee-fest when we got him locked in. I'd not heard of him before we were talking about having him come, so I wanted to know if he was a legitimate big fish catch for a speaker or if my co-organizers are just fanboys/girls.

[lovejuice]

Thanks!

We've got him coming to speak at a conference I'm co-organizing, and my co-organizers were having a squee-fest when we got him locked in. I'd not heard of him before we were talking about having him come, so I wanted to know if he was a legitimate big fish catch for a speaker or if my co-organizers are just fanboys/girls.

oh, he's a huge fish. according to pinker, once proclaimed as the savior of the democrat party.

finished ivanhoe. prince myshkin is nearly dethroned as my favorite character. if anything, for sure, rebecca and de bois-guilbert are my literature's most tragic couple. like the book. but some of scott's subplot/subtext, intensionally or not, is amazing beyond word.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Finished American Pastoral last night. Not a big fan. It seems almost overly rigorous with its characterizations. Like, the wife wasn't a ditzy beauty pageant contestant even though she won Miss New Jersey. OK, interesting enough, I guess, but then with 20 pages left in the book he's still going on about this. I get it already. The whole book also seems chock full of cliches, and I guess the point is to deconstruct these cliches, but isn't that, by now, kind of cliche in and of itself? I mean, star high school athlete goes through horrible downfall? Really? The whole glove factory thing was alternatively annoying in its quaint Americana-ness, and actually kind of moving when the Swede is going into details about stitch length or whatever. But he takes it too far. It's hard to imagine making gloves melodramatic, but Roth does it. But the thing I really disliked about this book is that it's kind of an embodiment of American self-pity. The whole Dream thing is flawed. Everybody already knows that. Grow the fuck up about it already. Jesus. 425 pages of "rage," which is almost always a cover for self-pity. Poor, poor America. Oy vey.

Woo Hoo!!! I love me some American Pastoral hate!

[Benny Profane]

New Krakauer = WOW.

A caution: be prepared to feel tremendous rage and sadness if you read it. Still, a must read. The man continues to prove that he is one of the best writers today.

[ledfloyd]

New Krakauer = WOW.

A caution: be prepared to feel tremendous rage and sadness if you read it. Still, a must read. The man continues to prove that he is one of the best writers today.

this is promising. i didn't think the subject matter was that intriguing. but he has yet to write a book that isn't amazing.

[Benny Profane]

this is promising. i didn't think the subject matter was that intriguing. but he has yet to write a book that isn't amazing.

Not intriguing? I can't even fathom that. I was looking forward to this one for over a year.

[ledfloyd]

Not intriguing? I can't even fathom that. I was looking forward to this one for over a year.

the pat tillman story is interesting enough, but i can't imagine it filling a book. i will read it though, because it's krakauer.

in other news, i think at page 500 i'm due for another extended hiatus from gravity's rainbow. it's brilliant in spurts but it is just too unwieldy and all over the place. for every 10 or 20 pages i blow through there is another 30 that are a pain to get through. the work of a genius, but not, i think, a work of genius. i need to try something else from pynchon. crying of lot 49 seems promising.

[Benny Profane]

the pat tillman story is interesting enough, but i can't imagine it filling a book. i will read it though, because it's krakauer.

Well it goes pretty in depth into the clusterfuck that is Afghanistan and the Bush propaganda machine (how they staged the Jessica Lynch rescue and covered up Tillman's death among other embellishments) and it goes into a lot of tactical decision-making processes in the military. But really the best part of the book are the excerpts from Tillman's journal which reveal a very sensitive, inquisitive, and introspective person who was extremely mature for his age.

[lovejuice]

now reading pride and prejudice without zombie. it's been a while since my last austen, emma. and it's quite an interesting read. austen is indeed more than a lot of people give her credit for.

[Benny Profane]

For the first time in a long time I have no idea what to read next.

Tell me.

[Kurosawa Fan]

One of these:

Clockers - Richard Price
Straight Man - Richard Russo
The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr. Hoffman - Angela Carter

[Benny Profane]

The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr. Hoffman - Angela Carter

This is what I ordered, thanks.

[Mysterious Dude]

I read André Breton's Nadja, which was advertised as a great surrealist novel, but I've failed to see any surrealism is it. It seems more like rambling stream-of-consciousness to me. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happens, and there are numerous references to real people and places, which make it seem more realistic. Is is "surrealist" just because the guy was part of the surrealist movement? Franz Kafka seems more surrealist to me, but does he not count if he wasn't part of the movement?

I also read Ryunosuke Akutagawa's In a Bamboo Grove, which was the basis for Kurosawa's Rashomon. I wasn't surprised that the final story in Kurosawa's film, told by Takashi Shimura's woodcutter, is nowhere in the original story. I always thought that part didn't really belong.

[Ezee E]

Going to go to a bigger library and check out Pynchon for the first time.

[lovejuice]

I read André Breton's Nadja, which was advertised as a great surrealist novel, but I've failed to see any surrealism is it. It seems more like rambling stream-of-consciousness to me. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happens, and there are numerous references to real people and places, which make it seem more realistic. Is is "surrealist" just because the guy was part of the surrealist movement? Franz Kafka seems more surrealist to me, but does he not count if he wasn't part of the movement?

melville and i have a wonderful discussion about this novel somewhere back there. totally i agree with you. melville, however, is a fan of the book, and in its defense, "surrealism" as we know it best today -- perhaps from the work of dali or magritte -- is different from what it was back then or what breton believed it to be.

i find it interesting that breton seems to adamantly deny freud and psychological analysis -- claimming it reveals the secret and make banal what should be most mysterious -- while later surrestlist work is, and perhaps can only be, viewed with some freudian perspective in mind.