rolling book thread

[xfer]

seems like we could use one of these! inspired by the sizable chunks of reading I got done while flying to/from Texas.

* Don Quixote (P.A. Motteux 1701 translation)

I was supposed to read this in my honors class in college but kind of didn't. so I read the first volume on the way there. kind of unbelievable how modern Cervantes' sensibilities are, including a lot of meta stuff vis-a-vis the writer/reader relationship. for a book written in 1605 it's awfully postmodern. and it's seriously hilarious at times!


* Dead Souls (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation)

this is a re-read, and I'm actually not quite done yet--still in the second volume. I love the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation team--every translation of theirs I've read has been easier to read/more interesting than other translators' versions, yet still highly idiomatic and with tons of interesting footnotes. which are necessary for Gogol, because he does such punny stuff with language here and there.


I also read the Nabokov part of Reading Lolita in Tehran last week--pretty good book!

 

[goatschool]

alex, i have been reading dead souls for a about 4 years now; i think the last time i picked it up was last summer. somehow between then and now i have forgotten it existed, much like the reagan years.

i most recently finished

* The Turk (Tom Standage)

which details the "life" of the then infamous, now forgotten and supposed 17th-C chess-playing automaton.

currently reading:

* His Master's Voice (Stanislaw Lem)

and the Eberhardt Cryptozoology 2x set

 

[deadair]

i've heard good things about Don Quixote, i've always wanted to read it.

i recently finished Old Mr. Flood, which is a short story (well, actually it was three different articles that were run in the New Yorker with the same main character) by Joseph Mitchell. it's a really great, fun short read. perfect for a weekend, if not one night.

it all focuses on one man, Hugo Flood, and his quest to live to be 115 years old just by eating seafood.

EDIT-it's not as quirky as i'm making it seem

 

[xfer]

i read The Chain of Chance by Lem, but nothing since. it was pretty good.

3 times out of 5, i skip New Yorker short stories. i dunno why! i love short stories. and i often read the "best of" anthologies at the end of the year. i guess they don't fit well into my ny-reading pattern.

 

[avi]

I feel like I only have the requisite attention span for short stories. I blame the internet.

 

[deadair]

alex, these were originally run in the 30's... so it's not like you passed them up.

 

[xfer]

that ain't such a bad thing. feel free to post some impressions on this thread.

i read Nabokov's "Ultima Thule" over the trip, too--it's a short story which was intended to be first chapter of a novel. but then he quit writing in russian and never went back to it. some of the themes of the story can be seen in english works of his like Pale Fire! however, as a short story, i would not put it among nabokov's best.

i also read Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" recently and holy shit.

(here's the full text of it):
http://aegis.ateneo.net/fted/tlontext.htm

 

[mindspell]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon

Story told from a first-person perspective by a 15 year old autistic kid whose is extremely gifted at math and physics but unable to socially function because of many factors. This is sort of a murder-mystery, emphasis on the sort of. This could have been extremely condescending, sappy, inacurate or anything you can think of but Haddon somehow makes it work. Not quite finished yet but very good none the less.

Read some comics for the first time in many years recently too with some supposed classics: Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Dark Knight Returns. Watchmen is pretty great, very chatty and very well written, same goes for V for Vendetta. Dark Knight Returns is very interesting graphically but I felt the story lacking in parts.

Also read Pilgrim by Tim Findley that I barely could finish, it goes on and on for 250 pages to get anywhere, and not especially captivating writing at that...

 

[exciar28]

I was reading Octavio Paz days ago. The book was really great but I cannot finished and returned them to library. I'm gonna purchase them.

Rencently I'm reading Walter Benjamin's Moscow Diary and the classic Changtzu.

 

[Sandfire]

Just read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominque Bauby, editor of Elle magazine, who suffered a stroke that left him with a rare neurological disorder called Locked-In Syndrome; in his case, LIS left completely paralyzed but spared motor control of his left eyelid. The book was dictated to a close friend using a communication system created by Bauby's speech therapist, who he refers to as his "guardian angel." The book is made up of reminiscence, reflections on the limitations imposed on him by his condition (most of all, he misses the luxury of being able to engage in witty repartee), the hospital and its denizens, etc. and his hopes for the future. Also to be made in a movie starring the incomparable Johnny Depp.

 

[NAD]

Currently reading Life of Pi and working my way through the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Probably going to tackle Slapstick by Vonnegut and Unfinished Tales by Tolkien next.

 

[FuSoYa]

well i was reading this book called Audio Culture: Blah Blahbitty Blah by some former profs of mine, but i got too irritated and shelved the fucker

 

[minxnim]

weird, i just reread 'dead souls' about two weeks ago. such a good book.
for my birthday i got the book "beautiful losers" so i've been looking that over lately. it's weird to see your friends on books? books seem so "OFFICIAL" somehow?
i also got "never let me go" by Kazou Ishiguro and i thought it would be a snoozer but i read the book in a few hours and wished it kept going. it's really a strange story and you dont realize it until you're about halfway into it, that it's completely f'd up and NOT what you thought it was about at all.

 

[lizard]

just read Leo Frankowski's Radiant Warrior book which is a collection of his three fantasy novels about an engineer time traveled back to 13th century Poland.

1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeaux Tapestry

The Sharpe Companion, designed to provide historical background to Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels of mayhem in the napoleonic wars

 

[xfer]

i've only read "remains of the day" by ishiguro but i thought it was great!

 

[minxnim]

alex i think this one is even better, seriously. i loved it. i can send it to you when my friend mia is done with it, if you want. it's hardcover tho.

 

[xfer]

maybe i'll read it sometime this summer!

 

[minxnim]

it's a super quick read you could finish it in an afternoon