What are you reading? Topic

Not a book review, but a fun article from today's NYT on reading, literary spats, existential emptiness, etc.:

The Strange Case of the Missing Joyce Scholar
6/13/2018 12:01 AM
Posted by crazystengel on 6/13/2018 12:01:00 AM (view original):
Not a book review, but a fun article from today's NYT on reading, literary spats, existential emptiness, etc.:

The Strange Case of the Missing Joyce Scholar
Very cool article -- thanks for posting. Seems fitting that he ended up alive & well in Rio. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
6/13/2018 1:43 AM
Lots of quotable passages in that article. My favorite:

Right off, he wants to talk about that Boston Globe article with the pigeons. His outrage is still raw. He’s particularly miffed that he was called “broke.” He wants me to know he’s flush and always has been. He has, at the ready, a notarized letter from Fleet Bank in Brookline dated 14 years ago, stating: “six months avg balance in this checking account has been $15,618.00.

The "at the ready" is the icing on the cake there.

Sticking with my recent Russia kick, I just finished One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the story of an inmate's day in one of Stalin's labor camps. It's a quick read, a novella really, with decent writing and characters, but maybe a bit overrated because people judge it in light of the conditions under which it was written and published (the author himself spent eight years in a gulag, and was able to see his words in print only because Khrushchev didn't mind sticking it to the late Stalin).

Best line in the book to remember when someone's singing the praises of gainful employment to you: "Work is what horses die of."

6/13/2018 12:21 PM
About Alice (2006) by Calvin Trillin. Decently written but not terribly gripping memoir, essentially a valentine/eulogy to the author’s wife written a few years after she passed away. I like Trillin's humor pieces, love his murder reportage (collected in the great book Killings), but this one just didn't do it for me. If it weren't so short (under 80 pages) I wouldn't have finished it.
6/21/2018 10:44 PM
The Fixer (1966) by Bernard Malamud. Novel based on the real life case of Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jew framed, arrested and imprisoned in Russia in 1911 for the ritual murder of a Christian boy. Great book, especially the opening sections prior to the main character's arrest (the last third of the novel gets claustrophobic with the unrelenting suffering and cruelty heaped on the unjustly imprisoned man). There’s plenty of misery here, but also sardonic wit and ultimately hope. Highly recommended.
6/24/2018 1:30 PM
Currently reading:
'The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America'
I've found it to be be wildly entertaining and am looking forward to finishing it in the next couple of days so I can then go read some of the original sources. (as well as probably other books by Larson the author)

Also have
'The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President' going as well, though I stopped it to read the one above. I grabbed this after finishing Chernow's 'Hamilton' in the hope of better understanding why Hamilton and Madison became such bitter enemies after working together on the Federalist Papers. While I've not learned what I'd hoped to learn, it really is amazing to see many of the bitter clashes of those days reoccurring today.
6/26/2018 12:12 AM (edited)
combalt, The Devil in the White City looks interesting. I'll try to find a copy somewhere.

Not so interesting was The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Volume I (1967). It was shockingly bad, in fact. Mitigating circumstance: written when the writer/philosopher was pushing 100 (and he wrote two more volumes before he passed away three years later—I won’t be reading those). Incoherent anecdotes that lead nowhere and are connected to nothing, gossip about people who (I guess?) were famous in England in 1895 or thereabouts, quite a lot about his ***** (masturbating with it, falling on it, etc.), and at the end of every chapter several pages of dusty old letters written by, and to, Russell (very dull, I skipped over these sections almost right off the bat). A few chuckles here and there, mostly unintentional, kept me reading. For example, how Russell came to decide that he wanted to divorce his first wife: “I went out bicycling one afternoon, and suddenly, as I was riding along a country road, I realised that I no longer loved Alys.”
6/29/2018 1:04 AM
"suddenly," is pretty much a author killer every time in my book

unless its in a comic book or old time radio maybe
7/2/2018 8:26 PM
The Bartender's Tale, Ivan Doig

kinda cloying, kinda john boy waltonish, kinda wonder years. autobiographical more or less i bet

awesomely dated in its politics--so right down my alley

would make a great PG13 big hollywood movie
7/2/2018 8:47 PM (edited)
Just finished The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (2003) by Erik Larson, which skilfully employs the techniques of literary journalism found in works like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. This was a lively read centred around two groups of people during the lead up to the 1893 World Fair in Chicago: the architects responsible for the fair, and a serial killer and his victims who seem straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. The author obviously did his homework, and there are loads of fascinating period details here. My one quibble with the book is I would have liked a little more from the "lurid murders" half of the story, and a little less about, for example, the kinds of flowers Frederick Law Olmsted considered too tacky for the fair. Great book overall, and I'll be looking for more from this author. Thanks to combalt for the heads up.
7/3/2018 11:28 PM
Crazystengel ... COOL! glad you liked it. I just finished 'Dead Wake The last crossing of the Lusitania' by the same author which is about the sinking of the Lusitania. (duh) Lots of period detail and information on life on a German U-boat as well as the involvement of large historical characters like Churchill and Wilson. It really was amazing all the things that had to happen 'just so' for that tragedy to occur.
7/4/2018 2:44 AM
A New Life (1961) by Bernard Malamud. Loosest, jokiest work of the author I’ve come across yet. Good set up, some decent laughs here and there, but the main character and his mini essays on love, art, education, etc., eventually got a bit wearisome. I missed the oppressive atmosphere found in Malamud's other novels and stories.
7/10/2018 11:59 AM
"The Coldest Winter----America and the Korean War"----David Halberstam
7/10/2018 12:04 PM
Posted by bronxcheer on 7/10/2018 12:04:00 PM (view original):
"The Coldest Winter----America and the Korean War"----David Halberstam
Thanks for posting this it reminded me that I want to read it now got a hold on it at the library.
7/10/2018 6:45 PM
"I am Keith Hernandez" So far I learned that Seaver didn't have his good fastball the night of his no hitter, and how close the 74 NL East race was, guess since the Dodgers had it wrapped up in the West and Steve Garvey's good year nobody in my neighbor hood cared
7/15/2018 3:34 PM
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