Book Forum, Anyone?

[+ WilliamM]

I loved "The Magic Mountain." I think I even read it twice.

 

I visited the Nobel Museum in Stockholm just to read the various citations for the Nobel Prizes in Literature, especially Mann's.

[Rudynate]

I visited the Nobel Museum in Stockholm just to read the various citations for the Nobel Prizes in Literature, especially Mann's.

 

Now that I think about it, I think I read "Death in Venice" three times.

[Rudynate]

Now that I think about it, I think I read "Death in Venice" three times.

 

Actually, "Buddenbrooks" is a book I have meant to read for years. I just ordered a copy.

[+ WilliamM]

Actually, "Buddenbrooks" is a book I have meant to read for years. I just ordered a copy.

 

"Buddenbrooks" is the first Mann novel that I read. It's relatively easy to read compared to late Mann. I mostly enjoyed "Doctor Faustus," but it was huge struggle. I found "Joseph and His Brothers" impossible because I know so little about the Bible.

[+ glennnn]

I've always been a reader, too, and read widely and well. After being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I found that deep, or truely thought provoking novels tended to trigger my anxiety, about the ephemeral nature of love and life. I turned to mysteries with gay characters and vivid sex scenes to fill my need to read without stirring up painful philosophical or metaphysical issues. Good writers in this "Gay Detective" genre are hard to find. My favorite is Josh Lanyon, but the poor man can't support my reading habit by himself. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

I'm still trying to treat my Disorder with counseling and medication, and would love to follow some of your suggestions for both rereading and new reading. Maybe this year. I miss it so much.

[+ imagooddog]

Thanks for reminding me of "The Devil in the White City". I started to read it many years ago. Barely got past a few chapters when I was called out of town for work, which turned into four plus years of traveling. It's been sitting on my bookshelf ever since. This thread has inspired me to pull it off the shelf. Thank you. Of the more prolific authors, in my younger days, I loved to read Steven King. John Grisham was occasionally a hit, but mostly a miss for me. Read "The Firm" before it became a movie. I enjoyed it, and if I remember right, the ending is different (and I liked better) than the movie. Currently reading "The Guilty" by David Baldacci, and it's holding my attention very well. When not knowing what to read next, I gravitate to biographies, mostly of famous people during the last century.

I agree that John Grisham is hit or miss reading but quick reading and interesting most of the time.

I have really enjoyed All The Light we Cannot See and one of my favorite is The Signature of All Things (I have read it twice).

Also Greg Iles books are great, especially Natchez Burning and The Bone Tree which should be read in that order.

[+ Charlie]

My favorite novel is Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Jane Austen is my favorite novelist. (Much of the time, Dostoevsky was in need of a good editor.) Somehow I don't think I'll find a lot of people here who share those preferences.

 

I knew we must have something in common: I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on Jane Austen, tried to write a novel once about a lost manuscript by her sister Cassandra, and still re-read her novels occasionally (I recently finished Sense and Sensibility again). I visited her home at Chawton several times, and did some research in the Austen papers at St. John's College, Cambridge. But I never joined the Jane Austen Society, because zealots make me uncomfortable.

 

At the moment, I am working my way through Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, which I was given as a gift when it was first published, but somehow sat unread on my bookshelf for the last half century. However, I don't read much fiction anymore. I prefer history and biography instead. Concurrent with the Styron, I am reading Augustus to Constantine: The Thrust of the Christian Movement into the Roman World, which is dry and academic, but informative. I am learning more about the theological positions of Eusebius and Tertullian than I ever knew before (and I am sure I will have forgotten it by next week).

 

As WilliamM noted, Lucky used to prod us to talk about books we were reading--he is a voracious reader, but our tastes and interests are totally different--but I have seen little about books since he left. He hoped that the Comedy&Tragedy forum would provide a home for book discussion, because it tends to get lost in the Lounge.

[Brian Kevin]

I'm just chiming in unannounced but

 

"Go Ask Alice" is a wonderful read. Will make one appreciate their life and childhood more, no matter how piss poor your upbringing was-- this girl, on her day to day entries just make you want to ball your eyes out. A true inspiration to keep yourself away from drugs. Shows you how truly damaging they are on yourself and those dearest to you. The ending is sure to leave you praying and wanting to help others more.

[AdamSmith]

My favorite novel is Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Jane Austen is my favorite novelist. (Much of the time, Dostoevsky was in need of a good editor.) Somehow I don't think I'll find a lot of people here who share those preferences.

Crime and Punishment! Must re-read. And intend (some enchanted evening) to get into Gogol.

 

Stanislaw Lem's SF novella GOLEM XIV which I mentioned above, cast as a series of lectures by the sentient supercomputer of the title, opens with an "introduction" by an MIT scientist (character), who was one of the computer's keepers, saying in part:

 

...GOLEM devotes its interest to the species rather than to the individual representatives of that species: how we resemble one another appears to it of greater interest than the realms in which we are different. That is surely why it has no regard for belles-lettres. Moreover, it once itself declared that literature is a "rolling out of antinomies" or, in my own words, a trap where man struggles amid mutually unrealizable directives. GOLEM may be interested in the structure of such antinomies, but not in that vividness of torment which fascinates the greatest writers. To be sure, I ought to stress even here that this is far from being definitely established, as is also the case with the remainder of GOLEM's remark, expressed in connection with Dostoevsky's work (referred to by Dr. E. MacNeish), the whole of which GOLEM declared could be reduced to two rings of an algebra of the structures of conflict...

[+ quoththeraven]

I've always been a reader, too, and read widely and well. After being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I found that deep, or truely thought provoking novels tended to trigger my anxiety, about the ephemeral nature of love and life. I turned to mysteries with gay characters and vivid sex scenes to fill my need to read without stirring up painful philosophical or metaphysical issues. Good writers in this "Gay Detective" genre are hard to find. My favorite is Josh Lanyon, but the poor man can't support my reading habit by himself. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

I'm still trying to treat my Disorder with counseling and medication, and would love to follow some of your suggestions for both rereading and new reading. Maybe this year. I miss it so much.

 

I can't think of another writer who writes mysteries with gay characters and sex scenes as consistently as Lanyon, but here are a few who write some mysteries, thrillers and the like whose books also have sex scenes:

 

Harper Fox - her Tyack & Frayn books have all the elements you are looking for plus supernatural/paranormal activity, which I guess makes them urban fantasy even though they're set in the country. One character is a (British) police officer. Her other books are worth reading, too.

 

Jordan Castillo Price - Her Psycops series is about a practice of the Chicago police department to pair people with paranormal abilities with "regular" partners to investigate crimes their particular abilities apply to (truthtelling/mind-reading to dishonesty, communicating with ghosts to homicide). The main characters are not partners at work (one is "normal," one sees ghosts, so the investigations touched on in the books are murder investigations) but meet through work. Everything else of hers, much of which is sci fi or speculative in nature but all of which is set on Earth, is worth reading, too.

 

J.L. Merrow has a couple of mystery/paranormal series. Some of her books are also very funny.

 

Now that I think about it, most of Rhys Ford's books are mysteries or have a mystery element, especially the series (the name of which escapes me) with the PI main character. Her books are action-packed and more violent than most. Many are set in California. (She's from LA.) She also writes some alternate universe stories with paranormal and mythical elements.

 

Then there are the three series by Nava, Hansen and Stephenson mentioned in my original post, but by comparison there isn't much sex in them (keeping in mind I only read the first in Nava's series). They do, however, put more emphasis on the mystery element than most of the work of the authors mentioned above.

 

ETA: If you like mystery/detective novels that don't have a clear gay element but are somewhat sensationalistic, for lack of a better term, try anything by Wilkie Collins, contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens. My favorite of his, Armadale, is vaguely homoerotic (two of the main characters are distant relatives with the same name, Allan Armadale) and features the best female villain - maybe the most interesting villain ever - in all of literature written in English. (Her name is Lydia Gwilt.) But everything else of his is worth reading, too.

Edited January 7, 2016 by quoththeraven

[+ quoththeraven]

Thank you and hi to all you Austen and Dostoevsky fans!

 

AdamSmith - Save yourself time and read Gogol's short story "The Overcoat." (Some wag of a Russian writer - I don't remember who - once said "We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat.")

 

I forget who mentioned Middlemarch, but I disappointed a Twitter/blog friend of mine who is an English professor who teaches courses on Victorian fiction and George Eliot, among other things, by returning it to the library after reading the first two sections. (At the time, I didn't know the library has a policy of indefinite renewals.) I may try again, but not for another year. I have too big a backlog of unread books on my Kindle. Not now, because I need to wrap this up and go pick up needles for my diabetic cat, but at some point I'll post a link to my friend's blog, Novel Readings.

 

And I saw a reference to Go Ask Alice in a recent literary Twitter discussion as one of the few books composed entirely of diary entries. (The main discussion was about Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is partially told through diary entries.)

Edited January 7, 2016 by quoththeraven

[AdamSmith]

AdamSmith - Save yourself time and read Gogol's short story "The Overcoat." (Some wag of a Russian writer - I don't remember who - once said "We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat.")

Thank you! Will do.

I forget who mentioned Middlemarch, but I disappointed a Twitter/blog friend of mine who is an English professor who teaches courses on Victorian fiction and George Eliot, among other things, by returning it to the library after reading the first two sections.

That was me. The thing is interminable, to be sure. I first read it in college, didn't really like it until I got more than halfway through. (Had to read it on account of being assigned to lead the seminar discussion of Book VI, the last section of the novel of course). Now greatly enjoy opening and rereading bits at random.

 

Also enjoyable are Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford novellas (made into a television series by BBC, broadcast here by PBS 2008). I liked a lot Gaskell's frankly amateurish story construction, visibly just making it up as she goes along, bringing in characters and then dispatching them with little regard for normal story arc development. And the picture of 1840s English northwest country society full of, indeed dominated by, many strong women characters.

Edited January 7, 2016 by AdamSmith

[AdamSmith]

Another favorite is Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland, the first significant American novel (1798), a Gothic novel reviled in its time but better received later, as it began to be recognized as an early specimen of "psychological fiction." Must dig that out of the basement.

[+ Charlie]

I think you and I may be the only persons on this site (maybe on the Internet) who have ever read Wieland. When I wanted to teach it in an AmLit course a couple of decades ago, I found it had been out of print for years. (Any other Brockden Brown fans out there?)

Another favorite is Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland, the first significant American novel (1798), a Gothic novel reviled in its time but better received later, as it began to be recognized as an early specimen of "psychological fiction." Must dig that out of the basement.

[+ honcho]

I tend to be functionally illiterate (English and History being my worst subjects in school), but

maybe some members might find some amusement in the mere handful of books I've read

in the past dozen years or so (or longer) - just for fun.

 

Being somewhat obsessive compulsive, once I start reading it's difficult for me to stop.

 

When I was a graduate student (in math, lo these 40 years ago), one evening I started reading

The Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and I didn't stop until I had finished it, about 6am

the next morning.

 

I read the first five of the Harry Potter series, but had to stop about half-way through the fifth one.

It was so unremittingly bleak that I just couldn't finish it.

 

I also read Wicked on the recommendation of a friend (in 2 sittings).

 

The last time I read anything non-technical for fun, was returning from a business trip from D.C

which had a 3 hour layover in Philadephia; in one of newsstands/mini-bookstores a little tome

called out to me from the shelf - another book that the same friend alluded to above had mentioned

titled Interesting Times by Terry Pratchet.

 

It cause me to burst out laughing many times, causing fellow passengers to wonder just what I had

been reading. I finished the novel just as the plane touched down in San Francisco (perfect timing!).

some of what was so funny were no-to-veiled references to other Novels. I'm sure I missed most,

but did catch a reference to Shogun by James Clavell (which I had read so long ago, I've forgotten when).

 

A British fellow was seated across the aisle; I asked him if he had ever heard of Pratchett. He had not,

so I just handed him the book and wished him well with it.

[+ honcho]

In another thread Rudynate wrote:

 

My partner and I just finished binge-watching "Mozart in the Jungle."

 

which suddenly reminded me of one other book read during the past decade. Being an oboe player myself,

I instantly identified just about every one of the colleagues she mentioned by first name.

[Rudynate]

When I was a graduate student (in math, lo these 40 years ago), one evening I started reading

The Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and I didn't stop until I had finished it, about 6am

the next morning.

 

 

I read "The Cancer Ward" also and liked it. As a matter of fact, I think I read it twice, I liked it so much.

 

I remember, in the 70s and 80s I was very big on Jerzy Kosinski. He's been dead for awhile.

[+ WilliamM]

On the ambition pile, Remembrance of Things Past, finally to read all the way through instead of just bits and snatches.

 

I have tried Remembrance of Things Past twice. The first time I made a major effort, all the way to Marcel's complete obsession with Albertine. The second time, I got a bit further, before frracturing many ribs in Milan. I have to wait several days for a plane home all the while looking at the unfinished book in my hotel room. I could venture out for meals.

 

Never sure whether to blame Albertine, or the young man whom Proust based her on, for the fractured ribs.

 

I believe the young man died in a plane crash, so never knew that he became famous.

[+ Charlie]

I have tried Remembrance of Things Past twice. The first time I made a major effort, all the way to Marcel's complete obsession with Albertine. The second time, I got a bit further, before frracturing many ribs in Milan. I have to wait several days for a plane home all the while looking at the unfinished book in my hotel room. I could venture out for meals.

 

Never sure whether to blame Albertine, or the young man whom Proust based her on, for the fractured ribs.

 

I believe the young man died in a plane crash, so never knew that he became famous.

I read only Swann's Way, many years ago, and I don't remember a word of it.

[+ WilliamM]

I read only Swann's Way, many years ago, and I don't remember a word of it.

 

I never made it beyond Swann's Way either until I picked up volumn two and started at around page 100. Somehow that removed the pressure in trying to read a truly great book. But, it seems you have already accomplished much the same thing by reading bits and pieces. For me, the best volumns are three and four. Both are worth reading in full.

 

Once you "get" Proust, it's truly worth the effort.

Edited January 8, 2016 by WilliamM

[Moondance]

Mike Gaite mentioned Richard Ford, who I hadn't read until I recently picked up Let Me Be Frank With You. It's a quartet of longish short stories about Frank Bascombe, a character at the center of three of Ford's novels (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land). So I started at the latter stages of Frank Bascombe's story (when he is in his 60s, retired from the real estate business, living in New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy) and I am hooked. I now have two of the three earlier Bascombe books on hand.

 

Richard Russo. I'll read anything he writes. As great as Empire Falls is, I enjoyed Bridge of Sighs just as much. Over the holidays, I picked up a copy of The Whore's Child (short stories) in a used book shop.

 

Speaking of which--short stories, that is--I loved a collection called You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett.

 

Also recommended: Cost, a novel by Roxana Robinson.

 

And Hawthorne and Melville, over and over again, particularly Hawthorne's short stories and, of course, Moby Dick.

 

I also like reading history and biography. David McCullough's recent book, The Wright Brothers, is an engaging look at two deeply unique, determined men. I'm really glad to know more about them.

 

And since this is QTR's thread, and there was another thread about judges (on which I meant to comment after she mentioned Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor), the book Sisters In Law (Linda Hirshman) led to a lot of interesting over-the-holidays discussion with several of the young lawyers in my family who love RBG and hate O'Connor. I suppose that's the easy liberal take on them (and I'm not ready to forget Bush v. Gore either, nor is the author), but I came away from the book better informed and with a more nuanced view of O'Connor (and even more regard for RBG than I had already).

 

P.S. The other day a friend asked me about the favorite book of my youth. I knew it immediately, and just might read it again: Johnny Tremain.

[+ Charlie]

My spouse loved The Wright Brothers, so it's on my list for the near future.

[+ quoththeraven]

Here's "How to Read a Victorian Novel" from my lit prof friend's blog, Novel Readings.

 

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/how-to-read-a-victorian-novel/

[+ WilliamM]

Robert Caro on political power: Lyndon Johnson and Robert Moses:

 

 

 

I am suggesting Ron Chernow's "Alexander Hamilton" because it has led to significant new interest in one the most important founding father as well an entremely successful show oin Broadway. Warning: Alexander Hamilton's life had so many twists and turns that Chernow's book is fairly long.

 

Robert Caro's book on Robert Moses," "The Power Broker" is one of the best book I've ever read, but it's too long. The same is true of Caro's four volumns of "The Years of Lyndon Johnson." Caro has been mentioned before on this site.

Edited January 8, 2016 by WilliamM

[Becket]

Just wondering if anyone knows of any good gay romance books. Or spy novels where the super spy beds hot guys rather than gals. Or any writer or series that has regular fiction where the characters happen to be gay. PM me if you want. Thanks