Greg (gsm235) in 2021

2021 SUMMARY

TOTALS
Books: 39
Pages: 13,983

FORMATS
Print: 8
Digital: 15
Audio: 16

CATEGORIES
Literature: 19
Non-Fiction: 10
Genre: 10

JANUARY

001 La Perra by Pilar Qunintana; fiction, digital, 128 pages
002 Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris; non-fiction, audio, 792 pages
003 Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck; non-fiction, print, 244 pages
004 Night Theater by Vikram Paralker; fiction, digital, 224 pages
005 The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carington; fiction, print, 210 pages
006 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky; fiction, audio, 558 pages - reread
007 Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag; non-fiction, audio, 192 pages
008 The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham; science fiction, digital, 256 pages - reread
009 The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds; science fiction, audio, 563 pages
010 The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams; novel, digital, 288 pages
011 Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler; mystery, print, 292 pages
012 The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne; biography, audio, 601 pages

FEBRUARY
013 Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica; fiction, digital, 223 pages
014 Dangerous Religious Ideas by Rachael S. Mikva; religion, audio, 264 pages
015 At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop; fiction, digital, 160 pages
016 The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; fiction, audio, 384 pages
017 JR by William Gaddis; fiction, print & audio, 770 pages
018 Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy by Patrick Hamilton; fiction, digital, 528 pages
019 The Good House by Tananarive Due; horror, audio, 597 pages
020 Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel; historical fiction, digital & audio, 435 pages

MARCH
021 Edge: The Loner by George G. Gilman; western, digital, 110 pages
022 The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts by Scott Anderson; history, audio, 536 pages
023 The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett; mystery, audio, 180 pages - reread
024 Molloy by Samuel Beckett; novel, print, 170 pages - reread
025 The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi; novel, audio, 256 pages
026 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner; novel, print, 378 pages - reread
027 The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time by Huge Raffes; non-fiction, digital, 400 pages
028 Deep River: A novel by Karl Marlantes; historical fiction, audio, 736 pages
029 The Soul of Viktor Tronko by David Quammen; espionage, digital, 480 pages

APRIL
030 Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre; science fiction, audio, 312 - reread
031 Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky and translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; novel, print, 136 pages - reread
032 Like Flies From Afar by K. Ferrari and translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West; crime novel, digital, 204 pages
033 Wretchedness by Andzej Tichy and translated from the Swedish by Nichola Smalley; novel, digital, 185 pages
034 Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris; biography, audio, 784 pages
035 Foregone: A Novel by Russell Banks; novel, digital, 320 pages
036 The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald; historical fiction, digital, 227 pages
037 The High Window by Raymond Chandler; mystery, print, 228 pages

MAY
038 On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason and translated from the Icelandic by Andri Snær Magnason; digital, non-fiction, 290 pages

wow!

welcome Greg. Curious what will show up here.

I finished my first book of the year: The Bitch by Pilar Quintana and translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman. A grim, short novel set by the edge of the jungle on Columbia’s Pacific coast. A childless woman rescues an abandoned puppy and things don't go well. It’s not going to be an easy book for people squeamish about animal suffering. I thought it was evocative of place, poverty, and the decline of mental health. It was a 2020 National Book Awards Translated Literature Finalist and won the prestigious Colombian Biblioteca de Narrativa Prize.

>4 gsm235: That sounds like a very interesting read, definitely going on the library list.

>4 gsm235: Yeah, I'm staying away from that one just because animal suffering/cruelty is something I just won't take on in my reading. But I've heard good things about it from folks with stronger constitutions than mine.

Welcome to the group, Greg. I remember first hearing about La perra during the online ceremony for the National Book Awards last year. I'll keep an eye out for it.

Finished Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. This is the second of three volumes in the Roosevelt biography. Excellent overall, but I have to give a slight preference to the first book. There is a lot of good history and details here, especially on the building of the Panama Canal. Strange as it may be, but I think the life of Roosevelt is more interesting when he isn’t actually the president. I’m definitely going to pick up the third volume.

Welcome, Greg. Will stop in from time to time to see what you are reading. Hope you can get around and find some interesting readers to follow.

Nice to see new folks around this year! You started the year with some interesting read, and I think I'll keep a close look at your thread.

Happy Reading in 2021. I'll look forward to following your thread. Cheers!

>8 gsm235: "but I think the life of Roosevelt is more interesting when he isn’t actually the president" : ) Thinking for a moment and I realize most of what I hear about him in references or notes here or there seem to be on the non-presidential stuff... other than "talk softly..."

>4 gsm235: Not that I'm into animal suffering, but I've taken a book bullet on that one. Looking forward to the rest of your reading.

Diary of Man in Despair by by Friedrich Reck

Mixed bag. There is no doubt the author was both foolish and brave for committing his staunch anti-Nazi statements to paper and there are some parallels to our contemporary authoritarian leanings for the modern reader, but it’s dry history. Mostly plan and matter of fact with a good tidbit of analysis on weakness of spirit that could allow such men to take over a country like Germany. The author is mostly just a witness, often secondhand, to what happened; he did mention going into a bad neighborhood of Berlin in 1932 with revolver in his pocket, encountering a cartoonish caricature man, then leaving without incident. Five years later he regretted not having the foresight to shoot the man. Guess who?

>14 gsm235: Diary of a Man in Despair that looks interesting.

>14 gsm235: I don’t know anything about Reck. Can we trust him? Does he fictionalize? Is that important either way? (You don’t have to answer, just thinking out loud.)

Hi, greg, coming by to "meet" you, and dropping a star, as well. That first group seems a little masochistic to me. I'm very pleased to read your comments on those, but what do you read for relaxation, the light stuff? I read serious and classic authors for my first 40 years or so, but the last 25 I seem to only want to read genre fiction and old favorites. I'll be watching your thread. Happy New Year!

>14 gsm235: That sounds like an interesting book. I will have to check it out. It sounds like the original was written in German.

Hello Greg and welcome. It looks like some interesting books will be discussed here this year. Like Alison, I'm not into animal suffering, but I added your first book to my wishlist as well.

>16 dchaikin: I've read comments elsewhere that Reck may not always be completely reliable. I'm not enough of a historian to say one way or another, but my impression was that he really hated what the Nazis were going to Germany and that was his main focus.

>17 sallypursell: I try to keep a balance between reading serious fiction, genre fiction, and non-fiction, the weight tends to skew towards literature.

Finished Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar. A strange tale of a rural surgeon in India who is visited by a dead family recently murdered. If the doctor can fix their wounds, a rebel angel who, going against established procedures in the hereafter, will restore them to life. There are three general ways an author can write about religion in a novel. Matter-of-factly, this character belongs to this religion and does this or that in accordance or contrary to the faith, proselytizing to the reader, or allegorically. At first, early in the novel, I thought the author might be trying to preach, and I was ready to toss the book aside, but it turned into a bizarre allegory. This is not a novel huge on plot. The descriptions of the surgeon's operations can be visceral. It’s title when originally published in India was The Wounds of the Dead.

>20 gsm235: Is Night Theater a new book? I'm intrigued and curious if it goes into Indian or Hindu mythology.

>21 dchaikin: Night Theater was published in India in 2017 and doesn't go into traditional Hinduism. The author was born and raised in Mumbai, but is currently a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Here is a brief quote from the novel. The dead man is talking to the doctor about the afterlife.

“There are religions in the afterlife, Saheb. Just not the ones from earth. Even those who were faithful believers in life have to wonder how their priests and holy books could have been so wrong. But that has only led to new religions, made by stitching together shreds of the older ones. Some of the dead claim to be prophets and sages—men of God. They say they can hear His voice, that they want to spread His words to everyone who hopes to be reborn. I don’t understand what they get out of this. There’s no money or land or gold to gather there. Maybe it’s just the sense of power.”

>22 gsm235: thanks for the posting the quote!

Welcome Greg.

You mentioned having copy of Clarice Lispector's complete stories on another thread, and I wanted to let you know that a few people are reading it ( 1 story/week). If you're interested, hopover here.

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carington

What a delightfully weird novel. A toothless and hearing impaired ninety two year old woman narrates a story of being forced into a bizarre retirement institution which will lead her to tale of a cross dressing nun, the Holy Grail, the apocalypse, a wolf-head woman, and Lapland. There are few novels, that I can think of, with elderly female characters—only Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead comes to mind—which is a pity because it was a refreshing and entertaining voice.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’ve read the novel two or three times before. I’ve read the Oliver Ready translation which seems like a compromise between the dreadful Victorianism of Garnett and faithfully awkward Pevear and Volokhonsky There are many reasons to consider Crime and Punishment one of the greatest novels of all time. There are also many reasons why some readers experience extreme frustration. It’s not a novel for those who prefer a straight forward movie style story telling. It’s dense, convoluted, melodramatic, and digressive; Dostoevsky is, in many ways, an awful writer stylistically, but his power—his white hot verve hooking like a bear trap—is undeniable and griping. I can only read this novel in complete in amazement even though I hate the ending; I don’t buy into the manic religiousness, but it’s Dostoevsky, and I’ll just have to disagree.

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag

I’ve never read Susan Sontag before. I read the Pulitzer Prize biography, Sontag: Her Life and Work last year, and decided to read sometime. Audible has a few of her works available in the free Plus Premium Catalog including Illness as Metaphor and AID and Its Metaphor . I didn’t know what to accept; but this work is heavily focused on literary criticism about the literature of consumption its Romantic heritage and how cancer doesn’t get the Romantic treatment. (I mentioned this to my wife and she disagreed saying breast can be Romanticized. I’ll to mull over that.) Sontag also laments on how writers metaphorize disease such as (to use a contemporary example): “Trump is a cancer in our government.” I can understand why she doesn’t like the disease metaphor, but I think it’s kind of apt in this case.

>25 gsm235: How about this: The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules



It's little old ladies and little old gentlemen behaving badly.

Just reading your Saturday post. Noting The Hearing Trumpet (>25 gsm235:). I think for C&P (>26 gsm235:) i read a 1960’s translation of some kind. It worked, anyway. Fascinating book. Enjoyed your post. Enjoyed your take on Sontag (>27 gsm235:) and cool that her biography led to this.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

One of my all time favorite science fiction novels. I must have read it four times before. Although it may be somewhat dated, it was published in1951, I think the story is still good, and it has one of the best first chapters in the genre. I also like the way the characters deal with the extraordinary calamity. In a typical modern science fiction novel, most authors would probably make the main character some super heroic warrior battling extremely narrow odds—all flash and action--to come out triumphant fit for a Hollywood blockbuster, but here he’s just a bloke.

The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds.

Perfectly acceptable science fiction, but nothing extraordinary. I’ve read other Reynold’s novel which I thought were better, but I enjoyed listening to this one. I may or may not pick up the second book in the Dreyfus Emergencies; if Audible offers it has a 2 for 1 credit sale, I’ll probably get it.

>28 sallypursell: I added The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules to my wishlist. Thanks for the link.

>30 gsm235: I read it last year and was surprised how good it was. It was during lockdown when there was nothing on the roads outside and I expected to see Triffids marching over the horizon.

The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams.

While reading this novel I was finding words I didn’t know. I clicked on the dictionary option on my Kindle, but it didn’t know the definition either. Then came the chapter on mountweazels: “Fictitious or fake entries are deliberately incorrect entries in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories.” One of the story lines is about a rouge lexicographer in the 19th century sneaking his own fake words into a dictionary. The novel is full of fake words for the reader to ferret out. Marvelous and inventive: a treat for people who love words.

>34 gsm235: clever. (And I’m grateful Nabokov didn’t read it. It’s a 2020 publication.)

>34 gsm235: Have you read Eley's collection Attrib. and other stories? A friend of mine who's pretty much my reading twin raved about it—I just got a galley released together with The Liar's Dictionary and am very much looking forward to both of them.

>34 gsm235: The liars dictionary sounds like a lot of fun.

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Very good hard boiled detective novel. I have read the first Philip Marlow novel twice, but never before have a read any of the sequels despite owning both the Library of America volumes. I don’t have a lot to say about the novel itself, but I think I’ll try to finish some more this year.

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne.

The author died before finishing this book and it was completed by his daughter who also helped him with research; parts of this biography don’t feel fully flushed out (like going from prison to leadership in the Nation of Islam) and maybe the author would have gotten around to filling in the details. However, the polished parts are good. Early in the book, when author describes a lynching and the verve of the mob, it reenforces how the underpinnings of bias that were swarming back then are still alive today.

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica and translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses

Some people categorize this novel as horror—which is understandable, and maybe even partially true, but I think that is an oversimplification. Then basic premise is that a worldwide virus has made all animals poisonous to humans, so all animals have to be killed. These leaves a gap in the meat industry, so people turn to dehumanization and cannibalism. Governments allow people to replace cattle with some strict rules in place. The truly horrific parts are not the grisly descriptions of meat processing, but how quickly dehumanization and cannibalism become normalized. Given that way the world is normalizing authoritarianism, I could almost see this happening.

I’m undecided about the final chapter. There are things I’d like to discuss with anyone who has read the book.

The is also a science fiction short story from 1972, “In the Barn” by Piers Anthony, where humans are turned in milk cattle.

Dangerous Religious Ideas by Rachael S. Mikva

This examination of how religion—especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—should be examined pluralistically with open self- criticism, and the author wants to make the case that the truly dangerous religious ideas are not those of ideological extremism. I’m not sure I really buy into all that, but wish it were true.

At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diod and translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis

"A Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting with the French army during World War I." The main reason I picked up this novel was because I’m trying to read and book or an author from all the countries in the world and Senegal hadn’t been covered yet. I only finished the book a week ago, but nothing strong or memorable remains. I guess that’s not a very good recommendation.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I would have enjoyed this novel more if I were more familiar with the great Indian classics like Mahabharata or the Bhagavad Gita as this story could, rather flippantly, the greatest hits from those books retold from a women’s point of view. I guess it would be like reading Ulysses without knowing the The Odyssey; it can be done, but it’s incomplete. As just a novel, it was okay. I have a gigantic omnibus of the India classic on Kindle and I should try to find the time read some of the works there.

These are all new titles and authors to me and most of these descriptions appeal. Interesting reading.

>41 gsm235: “the truly dangerous religious ideas are not those that ferment ideological opposition but those that seed self-growth.”

This line caught my attention. Trying to make sense of it.

>44 dchaikin: That was just a bad sentence. It made little sense to me and I wrote it.

>40 gsm235: I read Tender is the Flesh last year. I was very ambivalent about the ending. It was very abrupt, with no psychological build-up to it. I feel that exploring the way the protagonist stopped seeing a living being as a "pet" or a semi-peer, and started seeing it as "food" again would have been more interesting. Because for sure, people have close relationships with animals, and then kill them for food, but typically, those relationships are not as close as the one between the main characters. When that happens, they tend to have a special status and are spared. It just looked like the author had to find a way to end her book quickly, before it became too long. I should also state that did not like this novel as a whole: it felt too manipulative...

>43 gsm235: I read the The Palace of Illusions some ten years ago (and it's my first review on LT if I remember correctly!). I loved this book!
It is fairly unique in Divakaruni's bibliography. The Mistress of Spices is also very good if you've not read it (and much better than the film!), but I also like some of her less known works.

>46 Dilara86: I agree with you about the ending. I thought there were so many more insteresting directions to go. Just to shut those all down for that ending was something of a disappointment.

>40 gsm235: Horror does not need to be simplistic and not classifying a book as horror just because it does not seem to have tentacles (or follow some other pattern like that) is an oversimplification of the genre. It is horror - a good example of what modern horror is really. Even if the vast majority of the genre is semi-pulpy, that does not kick out the minority - as with any other genres :) And a book can belong to many genres.

>49 AnnieMod: True, a book can belong to many genres, but if I were back in the early 90s and working at a book store again, I wouldn't be inclined to shelf this book in the horror section. Of course, the book store I worked at had some really strange rules about what books got shelved where -- like Anne Rice's vampire novel being under general fiction and not horror.

>46 Dilara86: I think it was probably due to the death of his father. He was so focused on keeping his father safe that everything came unglued when he died.

JR by William Gaddis; print & audio, novel, 770 pages

--Difficult…? in a voice that quavered.
--Yes, well, just that, but…
--Sounds hard, looks really big and heavy too. Do you think I could hold it for more than a few minutes without my hands aching? How is the print size? I don’t see any chapter breaks, only this unending stream of lines.
--Why would someone want to read a difficult novel when there are so many easy reading books available on the bestseller lists. That’s what I want, no fuss no muss.
--Of course, yes, of course, it’s a long a novel, seven hundred and seventy pages, and the text is dense, forty lines per pages, and no chapters breaks, of course.
--Why didn’t the author use chapters? Didn’t he know that it’s the author’s job to make it easy for the reader.
--You want us to read that?
--Yes, and the author was deliberate with his choice of writing style, he wanted to show the complexity of, of, oh, of life and communications, or something, how it’s not always simple to understand everything that’s going on. He wanted readers to pay attention. From one line to the next scenes and characters could shift, hours or days could pass, and it’s almost completely told through unattributed dialog, naturalistic dialog, too, so characters can often say “ahm”, “hey”, “holy” with stops, starts, and word breaks . All said and told, there are maybe fifty pages worth of narrative.
--The author never says who’s talking?
--I like action. Is there a lot of action? What’s the story about?
--Nope and nope. This novel is a satire of business, banking, and finances, and the author wants to point out the absurdity of how we, society, deal with money. First of all, this novel is a satire of business, banking, and finances, and the author wants to point out the absurdity of how we, society, deal with money. Secondly, is how the artist (painters, writers, composers) function in this environment. The book was published in 1975, but, oddly, it doesn’t seem too dated. The main of the plot revolves around an eleven-year-old boy, the JR of the title, who loves writing away the classified ads for “free stuff” and “get rich quick” schemes. One day his class takes a day trip to New York City to buy a single stock certificate. Then, using the pay phone at his school and a handkerchief to muffle his voice, he is able to convince banks that the one certificate is actually more and is able to start buying unsuccessful business for the tax write off value. Of course, JR has no income to apply the tax write off to, but he has amasses a paper empire theocratically worth millions. Early on, JR loans to broke music teacher ten dollars, and uses that to force the music teacher to appear has the face of the company.
--Doesn’t sound realistic to me.
-- JR sounds like he was doing the kind of this Bernie Madoff was doing. How could a little boy do all that?
--That’s probably the point. Thirty three years before Madoff, the author was saying that the financial industry is so corrupt, debased, and underhanded that it could be open to the manipulations of an ignorant boy. And JR is very ignorant. Later in the novel, when the paper empire begins to implode, JR complains to his music teacher, that he got this importing looking document, but he doesn’t understand what the word subpoena means because he hasn’t learned it in school yet. The book can be brutally funny. There is scene when the music teacher to trying to teach JR about celestial beauty by listening to Bach’s Cantata 21, but JR is unable to hear the soprano singing (in German) “ach nein”, he hears her singing “up mine” and male counterpoint singing “up yours.”

Okay, that’s enough of my amateur attempt to imitate the writing style of William Gaddis. I was captivated by this novel and for the first time in a few years, I’ve a added a new book to my favorites. I can wholly recommend the unabridged audiobook version narrated by Nick Sullivan. He does an excellent job giving all the charters unique voices. I also read the book simultaneously while listening, something I’ve never done before.

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy by Patrick Hamilton; digital, fiction, 528 pages

Actually, this book is a collection of three short novels, but each follows the same characters and basic story. In the first, Bob is young waiter at pub with a little bit of savings and dreams of writing a novel, but everything falls apart when he falls for a pretty prostitute. In the second, the backstory of the prostitute, Jenny, is shown. In the third, Ella, Bob’s co-worker, at waitress at the pub, is pursued by an older gentlemen who loves her, but she doesn’t think it would be a proper relationship. Hamilton does an excellent job examining the parallel inner lives of these three characters. The setting in London in the late twenties.

The Good House by Tananarive Due; audio, horror, 597 pages

The setting is 2001 in a small town in Washington state. A black family owes a magnificent old house, but there is a curse. Angela’s grandmother was a voodoo priestess who tangled with an evil spirit in 1929, but now the evil spirit is awakening. People who read horror novels know what’s going to happen next. Things get bad, characters die: this is a horror novel. For the most part, I liked this book, but few novels, films, or other stories have a worse ending. The end of Blade Runner, the movie, still holds the record for all time unforgivably bad ending, but The Good House is probably coming it second as far as I can recall. I guess some readers would like it or accept it, but I think it ruined an otherwise pretty good horror novel. If the author had ended the book before the finial section, I would have given it 3 ½ stars, maybe 4 stars, but as it stands, 2 stars is the best I can give. I probably would not read this author again.

If you want to know the bad ending: Angela with add from her grandmother’s spirit defeats the evil spirit; in gratitude, a voodoo god grants her a miracle: a wish; Angela chooses to reset time so she can go back and banish the evil spirit before it grows in power and starts all the bloodshed. Bah. A little too Happily Ever After for me.

>50 gsm235: That's fair. :) If I am looking for it, I will look in the horror section first though. I guess it really depends on where one's usual reading falls... :)

PS: Locus put it into their Science Fiction list, not their Horror list (in this year's recommendations)

Enjoyed catching up a bit. >52 gsm235: is a really fun post. Also, curious when Twenty Thousand Streets was written

>45 gsm235: oops, sorry. Edit in >41 gsm235: is clear.

>54 gsm235: I'm not intimately familiar with Blade Runner, and it's been a long time since I saw it, but what's wrong with the ending, in your view.

>57 sallypursell: For the record, I saw Blade Runner on opening night way back in 1982. The Harrison Ford character falls in love with a girl. The girl is an android and is supposed to be programmed to die in ten years (?). But at the end it’s revealed that she’s special and isn’t going to die. They leave together all happy. That’s about as bad as it gets, IMHO.

>58 gsm235: It was a nice segue into Blade Runner 2049, but not all of it made sense to me.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel; digital & audio, historical fiction, 435 pages

I thought it was better than Wolf Hall; I’m excited about starting the last book in May. More thoughts later.

Edge: The Loner by George G. Gilman; digital, western, 110 pages

It’s a western and I rarely read that genre. In the introduction the author, living in England, mentioned he’d never read a western before writing the novel but did so after watching spaghetti western movies. The author was going for a character with a code of conduct that would allow him to kill on the spot any one with a slight taint of badness but remain scrupulously honest about money. I wasn’t impressed. It was cheap on Kindle and there are more books in the series, but I think one was enough.

>61 gsm235: "mentioned he’d never read a western before writing the novel but did so after watching spaghetti western movies."

That's like writing a romance novel after watching porn...

>62 AnnieMod: I bet that's been done before.

I finished The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts by Scott Anderson; audio, history, 536 pages

There’s something about this era that I enoy. Parts if this history were covered in the biography of Edward Lansdale, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot, and the novel, The Company by Robert Littell, and maybe Harlot’s Ghost by Norman Mailer. The stories of what these men did and went through is incredible. Though oddly enough, one of my favorite vignettes was describing an interview by Roy Cohn, working for Joesph McCarthy, investigating a CIA employee, and asking about Communist books in his personal library. The employee replied he had none. Cohn asked if he had any novels by Dashiell Hammett. Yes, he had some of those novels. But, do you see, Hammett was a Communist and so the employee must be a sympathizer. You can’t make this stuff up. In all fairness, I suppose, Hammett was a strong antifascist, devoted to left-wing causes, and a member of the Communist party in the late 30s.

>64 gsm235: "Roy Cohen, working for Eugene McCarthy, investigating a CIA employee, . . . "

Joe McCarthy, maybe? :)

>65 rocketjk: I stand corrected.

>62 AnnieMod:

Let's all do a list of our top 100 porn stars!

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammet; audio, mystery, 180 pages.

I originally read this novel in 1994. I didn't remember anything; it was like a completely new book to me. There was an amazing amount of alcohol consumed by the characters. There was a few brief references to Communism: one person tells the detective that someone else said that the Russian Five Year Plan wasn’t necessarily doomed to failure. All in all, a solid mystery.

Molloy by Samuel Beckett; print, novel, 170 pages.

I think this is the third time I’ve read this novel. I would like to say the novel shows signs and meaning on how into interpret existence or how to find sense in reason, but none of that is true; the book is like a giant gyre that pulls in the reader but doesn’t give an easy answers. The reader can understand it. Or not understand it. Or both. I loved it.

>69 gsm235: my reaction to Beckett's novels apparently applies to posts about them as well -- my mind glazes over, I turn to another (web)page and then realize I have no idea what I just read and go back to the previous...

(I did love Happy Days and Endgame and saw a very enjoyable perfroamce of Waiting for Godot).

JR and Molloy - you don't go for the easy reads. I struggled with the Beckett Trilogy, but Malloy was probably the most rewarding. I have not got to Gaddis yet.

Enjoying your thread.

>70 ELiz_M: I'm getting ready for the rest of Beckett's trilogy. Both will be rereads. Some people love him. Some people think he's pure tosh. Others couldn't care less one way or the other.

>71 baswood: JR is my favorite book of the year so far. I need to make time to read the rest of his novels.

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi; audio, novel, 256 pages.

This isn’t normally the type of novel I would pick up, but I’d read a good review in the Washington Post last summer, and I put it on my maybe list. Last month Audible offered it in a two for one special, so I bought it. It’s a very timely subject. A few days after finishing, I saw a new report on the idiot box about a father pleading for his trans daughter before a state legislation that wants to enact restrictive legislation for trans people. Perhaps, I thought, the law makers should read the novel before passing the law, but then I thought it wouldn’t do a damn thing to change their minds. Mostly because their minds are made up already and they’re entrenched; secondly because it’s not really a great novel. I enjoyed it well enough for what it was, but I’m more or less sympathetic to the cause, though not especially passionate about it. It’s not going to be a novel to move minds.
I do have one strong criticism of the book, which comes at the end, where the mother of the title character picks up a farming tool and does something with it. I chuckled at the histrionics even though the author wanted to portray powerful emotions. The fault is probably mine.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner; print, novel, 378 pages.

0ne of the great novels of the English language. I’ve read it before a few times, so I knew what to expect. The book begins, with the Benjy section; it’s the famously difficult one, but it flows much easier when the reader just goes with it and doesn’t fight with trying to understand everything right away. If I were to read it again, I’d probably read this section last.

If anyone doesn’t know, Benjy is a thirty-three year old severely mentally disable man who can speak only in hoots and howls; he has no sense of time but deeply loves his sister who is the only person who cared for him.
Originally, Faulkner wanted to use different color inks on the page to show the shifts in time, but the publisher said that wasn’t possible. In 2012 the Folio Society published a limited edition of 1,480 copies at $345 with (I think) seventeen different colors. I not sure how much it would cost now on the secondary market.

This isn’t a going to be a novel everybody should read. Readers who want entertainment only can safely skip it and not feel guilty. But it rewards other readers.

Deep River: A Novel by Karl Marlantes; audio, historical novel, 736 pages

This historical novel focuses on the lives of Finnish immigrants around the Columbia river between 1900 to 1932. Most of them were loggers and fishermen, two difficult and dangerous jobs, and desperately poor. The heart of the novel is Aino Koski who had to flee Finland for political reasons: she was a Red, a Communist before the 1917 Russian Revolution. She has a staunch passion for workers rights and gets involved with IWW (the Wobblies) and that leads to a lot of conflict. A guess some people might be put off by her “socialism” but I was rooting for her.

This is a long novel that covers more than 30 years, so reader should be warned to get too attached to all the characters. I did a double take once or twice.

As a direct result of listening, I’ve picked up the novel Joe Hill by Wallace Stegner--Joe Hill was a historical person who was featured in the story--because I want to know more about the early labor movement in America.

The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time by Hugh Raffles; digital, non-fiction, 400 pages

Part geology, part memoir, part history. The author has a wonderful habit of writing long sentences that can creep over a page in length, then stuffing story bits and explanations into foot notes. Poetic prose. It takes the reader to Manhattan, Neolithic Hebrides, Greenland, and Svarlbard. A book for readers who want to explore on the page for no other reason than to see what’s there.

The Soul of Viktor Tronko by David Quammen; digital, espionage.

The author is mostly know for his non-fiction. This is his only novel. The story is supposed to be based on real events; I wonder if the author had intended to write non-fiction book--did research and interviews--but couldn’t coalesce the facts into something verifiable and presentable as journalism, so he turned what he had into a novel. This reads like a very authentic depiction of the espionage world. In the story, a journalist is mostly talking to people who work at the CIA, and gets different side of the story and a lot of contradictory information that he (and the reader) will not immediately understand. It’s not an action packed thriller. There are a few scenes with dangerous situations, but nothing on the unbelievable scale of what Hollywood would throw at you. It was almost a 4 ½ star novel.

>76 gsm235: I have to admit i've struggled with this one. His work is so poetic I have a hard time following the geology. So use to a certain cadadence its throwing me off.

Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre; science fiction, digital, 312 pages

It’s been mentioned that this novel was ground breaking when published in 1978 for it’s frankess about sexuality and reproductive rights, but, as a commenter elsewhere said, it so sad that’s still ground breaking forty years later. When I stop to consider contemporary politics in some regions of the United States, I have to agree.

It’s a good enough science fiction novel, not great, but enjoyable; I do have a fondness for snakes and I liked the fact that the main character, a healer, can succeed in her goals and quests without drawn out fight scenes or other masculine adventures. Some people have called the novel more of a fantasy, but I have to disagree. The author goes to some pains to say that the healer’s art isn’t magic -- though it’s most powerful effects come from a mix of science and snake venom. Maybe not great real life science, but’s I’ve read more flaky stuff in science fiction.

Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky and translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; novel, print, 136 pages

I loved this novel when I first read this novel at University. Subsequent rereads haven’t held the power it first did. It’s uniqueness was stunning and a little mind bending. The first 36 pages are more akin to philosophy with the remaining 100 pages a demonstration of sorts of Dostoevsky’s ideas in action.

Hello, I've been following your thread with great interest. I too read Dostoevsky first when young (possibly too young--I was given his complete works for my 14th birthday) and just had to echo that sensation of mind-bending novelty. I re-read him a lot until my thirties. The older I get, the more trouble I have ignoring his specific religious obsessions. But Notes, I think, are more broadly philosophical. You've inspired me to go look for them.

>81 LolaWalser: I'm probably going to go on a Dostoevsky binge in 2021. I've got Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground done. I'm planning on picking up The Idiot in Q2 (his one major novel I've never read), The Demons in Q3, and finish with The Brothers Karamazov in Q4. Big plans.

>82 gsm235: >81 LolaWalser: i was also a young Dostoevsky reader, although I couldn't tell you how old I was. I have not read the The Demons, and I just can't honestly be sure whether I have read The Idiot. Those others are so memorable, though. Now my daughter is a big fan, and I have not read him for years. Hmmm, I can't decide whether I need to read those again. Part of me really wants to, but there are so many books I have *never* read.

Like Flies From Afar by K. Ferrari and translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West; crime novel, digital, 204 pages

A gritty tale of a despicable businessman who, after a night of cocaine and prostitutes, finds the dead body of a stranger in the trunk of his $200K BMW. Then things go really wrong as he attempts to dispose of the body and figure out who could be setting him up. Not a big surprise, but he has done a lot a bad to lot of people, and there’s no shortage of people who might want to do him harm. Some reviews have said that this novel uses a too many swear words, which is sort of true, but swear word in this kind of crime are like turds in an outhouse – ubiquitous. An entertaining short novel for what it is.

>80 gsm235:, >81 LolaWalser: & >83 sallypursell: My experience with Dostoevsky was a little different. I didn't read my first Dostoevsky novel until I was in my early 30s. Nine years after finishing my undergrad degree, I finally decided to go to grad school. After getting accepted into the San Francisco State English Lit/Creative Writing MA program, I was planning my move from New Orleans to San Francisco when my insecurity about my fitness for such a program arose in the form of a sudden panic that I'd never read Crime and Punishment. I was going to be exposed! Anyway, I made sure that that was the last book I read before starting the drive across country. I found it quite compelling then, and have reread it twice since. I've read and enjoyed The Idiot and also The Brothers Karamazov, as well, though I'm sure there are many themes and issues in the latter that went right by me.

>74 gsm235: Jumping in to say I own the Folio Edition of The Sound and the Fury and absolutely love it. The different colors are both striking on the page and really helpful when reading!

>85 rocketjk: When he's on a roll, Dostoevsky is all passion and intensity. I've spoken to a few people who were Russian or could read him in the original. One gut described his writing style as having "hooks" but I guess that is a way of saying Dostoevsky was an inelegant stylist. A reviewer, probably on Amazon, complained about bad translations into English, because, in Crime and Punishment, a table was described as being “round and oval” and the reviewer thought it should be one or the other, but a native speaker replied that’s just the way it was in Russian. I imagine him writing almost with some kind of brain fever. In the end, maybe some of the themes and issues also were going by Dostoevsky. That’s part of what make him such a unique author.

>86 japaul22: I’m jealous. I want one.

>87 gsm235: Sincere thanks for those great descriptions. As an aside, when my wife and I were visiting Helsinki a few years back, we took the train to St. Petersburg for a 2-day visit, during which we saw (from the outside) both the building in which Dostoevsky lived (it has a frieze on the outside in honor of its famous inhabitant) as well as the building that, according to our guidebook anyway, contains the apartment that Dostoevsky used as the model for Raskalnikof's abode. All in all, a fascinating and memorable two days, though it rained pretty much every second we were there.

Recently I've finished:

Foregone: A Novel by Russell Banks; novel, digital, 320 pages

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald; historical fiction, digital, 227 pages

The High Window by Raymond Chandler; mystery, print, 228 pages

I've created a youtube channel where I talk about books! I've never done it before. Let me know if I'm just plan bad.

Video link: April 2021 Wrap Up

Hi, Greg! I'm listening to your vid as I cheat on computer chess, it's quite interesting. But it's so tantalizing to see shelves and shelves and shelves of books without being able to step closer and see what are they! I've counted the books on some shelves and conclude yours are narrower, but higher than mine, and possibly NOT Billys at all.

I'm not a native Russian reader and have read only one Dostoevsky in Russian (White Nights) but it wouldn't occur to me to say he's a bad stylist... Dostoevsky is Beyond Good and Evil in style, IMO. Otoh, I think P&V are terrible translators (based on what I saw of their work on Bulgakov) and I'd blame them first for anything outright ugly-sounding, they are made of ugly.

I've had Dreamsnake on my mental to-get list for a while--what you say reminds me of a Doctor Who story, Kinda, if you happen to know it...

Suggestion: since you list the books mentioned, consider adding to the list the spots where you talk about them (I think all you have to do is right-click bookmark or something like that).

Hey not bad Greg - I enjoyed your video

>91 baswood: Thank you so much. I'm just getting started and hope it improve. Who knew talking could be so hard.

>90 LolaWalser: Yes, my book shelves are Billys with extenders on top. I have normal breadth and one medium breadth. The mediums are no longer made.

I'm also new to video making. I just jumped into the lake so still figuring things out.

Stopping by to say hi. I had a long catch on about two months of rapid fire wonderful titles. Interesting about Dostoyevsky. I tried a short story collection blind in my early thirties. It was ok, then I got to the Underground Man and was a bit shocked and wowed. It’s one of the few books I have read twice and I remember the first part making sense to me on my second read, and being a little worried about what that said about me.

Anyway, enjoyed catching up.

Hi Greg! Great idea with the video! Keep it up!
Oh, and thanks for putting The Sound and the Fury back on my radar.

Well I'm way late to the party, but great actually seeing and hearing a Club Read member! So nice when you can visualise someone when you're stopping by their thread.

Ditto—I liked it! I hope you keep going with those, Greg.