Books: Book(s) you are Currently Reading | Part II

[ORRFForever]

Oh I know you weren't and even if you were, that's okay, I'm just saying I've never really come across that sentiment myself. Actually, I don't even know that I've heard of someone disparaging McCarthy. He's pretty much on the Mount Rushmore of American letters. For my money, he's the best out of all the American novelists I've read, and my second favorite after Franz Kafka.

Fair enough.

 

[ORRFForever]

P.S.

I don't even know that I've heard of someone disparaging McCarthy.

Kihei is known as a movie guy, but he is also well read. He didn't like Blood Meridian and quit part way through, so we have one here.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

P.S.



Kihei is known as a movie guy, but he is also well read. He didn't like Blood Meridian and quit part way through, so we have one here.

Didn't know that (I mean, I know he reads but about Blood Meridian). That's unfortunate. I hope he gives it another shot sometime.

 

[Babe Ruth]

I'm about 100 pages in (book is about 450 pages). Very detailed accounting of how eugenic philosophy (& practice) developed in early 1900s' America. And how that philosophy borrowed from, & then redistributed, to European eugenics. Details individual scientists & financiers involved. Really good read so far..

 

[Thucydides]

I'm about 100 pages in (book is about 450 pages). Very detailed accounting of how eugenic philosophy (& practice) developed in early 1900s' America. And how that philosophy borrowed from, & then redistributed, to European eugenics. Details individual scientists & financiers involved. Really good read so far..

This sounds interesting. Let me know what you think.

 

[Thucydides]

 

[Babe Ruth]

This sounds interesting. Let me know what you think.

I'm really digging it. It's a subject I'm left reflecting on every time I read more. It's written for an audience that already has an interest/curiosity about eugenics. I say that bcuz of all the minutiae related to the individual players involved, reports on early eugenics conferences, etc. I think a reader w/no prior interest in eugenics would be bored by it (?).. but I do think there is a valuable takeaway to a casual reader: how groups become marginalized within a society.. gradual erosion of rights, sporadic test cases, cumulative court decisions, etc.

It's a fair accounting so far.. bcuz the eugenics advocates are represented (mostly) by their own words & actions. The author adds some subjective judgements, but..
My opinion, it's a good history book.. it's objectively recounting the complexities of a historical subject.
/peace

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Love the cover art and the collection's title.

 

[kihei]

Rereading for the umpteenth time Heart of Darkness, not because I am a big fan of the novel, but because I have a long term love/hate relationship with it, and I somehow seem to feel that that particular pulse needs to be taken from time to time. There are things about the novel--the narrative framing, for instance--that drive me crazy, but there are a lot of compensations, too. So I will see where the chips fall this time out.

 

[Thucydides]

 

[kihei]

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz--a modern mystery in "Golden Age" style, or so I am told.

 

[Ceremony]

It is very enjoyable. That is not the issue.

Like I said, the writing is unique. A lot of run on sentences - grammar be damned. Example :

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”

That is ONE sentence.

This is a very effective means of displaying why the novel must be read by anyone who can recognise the symbols of the English language when they're written down, well done.

 

[Babe Ruth]

GB, thanks for posting/(making us aware of) this. I'm currently reading it.. I'm really in to American history; it's a cool read.

 

[GB]

GB, thanks for posting/(making us aware of) this. I'm currently reading it.. I'm really in to American history; it's a cool read.

It's exactly in my wheelhouse, I really enjoyed it. I'm glad you're liking it too.

 

[Datsyukian Deke]

 

[Spring in Fialta]

 

[GB]

Have you read Bulgakov's Black Snow? I thought of it when I read you mention your distaste for method acting.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Have you read Bulgakov's Black Son? I thought of it when I read you mention your distaste for method acting.

No, I have not. What's it about?

 

[GB]

No, I have not. What's it about?

A writer adapts one of his novels to be staged at a theatre. It does not go well. It's based on Bulgakov's efforts in having one of his own novels adapted and staged. Everyone in the theatre is satirised but Stanislav's stand in comes in for more than anyone else, except perhaps for Bulgakov's stand in. There's a great scene where the writer witnesses a rehearsal of method acting that he finds totally incomprehensible. It's possibly an unfinished novel but either way I think it's worth reading.

 

[Thucydides]

Pulitzer Prize winners announced last week:

Fiction : Richard Powers - The Overstory

General non fiction - Eliza Griswold - Amity and Prosperity

History - David W. Blight - Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

Biography - Jeffery C. Stewart - The New Negro

 

[Thucydides]

 

[GB]

I love On The Beach, it's a great book.

 

[Thucydides]

I love On The Beach, it's a great book.

Halfway through and it is some excellent , apocalyptic fiction.

 

[Thucydides]

 

[Elias Stewart]

This book is very good you all should definitely read it.