Oh, I forgot two other books I read in Sept.

Lev Grossman The Magicians
Very interesting book, but I think I have mixed feelings about it. It draws comparisons to Harry Potter since a good bit of it takes place in a school setting...but Jesus, this is not Harry Potter. Well, say the characters from Harry Potter graduate. They then go to Magician College, where Ron becomes a belligerent drunk, Hermione gets a train run on her by the Quidditch team, and Harry becomes a smarmy know-it-all douche. This would give you a sense of the tone of The Magicians. I thought there was a ton to love about this book. It offers a smart social criticism on the nouveau riche. It definitely has a neat story. But I don't know, something about it didn't quite leave me satisfied. But that may have been the point. Either way, if you enjoy fantastical settings in literature, this book is fast enough that it is worth a read.

Jonathan Frandzen - The Corrections
Definitely a masterpiece. Great characters, compelling story. I wouldn't call it a page turner, but the world the characters live in is so complete that you feel like you really know them. It's The Winter of Our Discontent with the volume turned all the way up. In a time where writing about suburban malaise has almost become cliche, this book is the class of the genre, IMO.

After responding to your post yesterday, it occurred to me that any garden enthusiast ought to enjoy Patrick Lane's _What the Stones Remember: A Life Rediscovered_ (2006). Lane is a fine poet who finally went to a treatment center for his life-long alcoholism (plus some other things such as coke). This is his story of devoting a year to gardening in his Vancouver Island home while recovering and of his day-by-day finding in his gardening tasks a way to keep himself from falling back into his old life--intertwined with his memories of a harrowing past. The writing is lovely and his sense of the small beauties of nature is deeply moving.

While I'm on this afternoon, I wanted to mention some recent non-book reading. I just finished the October issue of _Harper's_ and in this era of rapidly declining magazine titles I wanted to give thanks for the survival of such fine journalism. The feature article on private fire departments in Calif. was not only astonishing (what has free-market capitalism come to?) but also wonderfully well-written. And the piece that followed, "Tokeville," on pot-entrepreneurship in northern Cal. was a funny balance to that one. Plus a great piece on the attempts to control the weather and a nice review article on J.G. Ballard ...

I love Harpers. Many years I've had a subscription to both Harpers and The Atlantic. They're great magazines and a welcome balance to quick and shallow newsmedia product.

Added to the cart, thanks

James

Also regarding the Magicians --- there is a lot of truly great writing in there. Sometimes it feels like Grossman loves his own writing a little too much, but it's hard not to shake your head and smile at a lot of the great sentences he pulls out.

Just ordered The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. sounds like a fascinating concept, anyone here read it and have some thoughts?

Currently reading Hemingway's A Movable Feast, and I love it so far, he has such a talent for making the words his sentences into so much more than the sums of their parts.

Recently finished The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Jesus it is a crazy book. They basically took every piece of conspiracy, mysticism and political opinion they could think of and joined the dots, and the book is no less bonkers than this would suggest. They also make the point that the past present and future form a continuum, and are all "now" in some sense. Accordingly the plotlines of the (oh so very many interweaved but it often takes 600 pages to figure out how) characters are all over the place temporally, but treated equally in respect to actually being the now.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, laughed copiously, had my mind opened in places, but it took me a while to realise that sometimes you have to just accept that you are really confused and keep reading anyway.

The other book I recently finished was Invitation to a Beheading by Nabokov. It was another head****. The protagonist is a prisoner on death row in some huge castle in a fictional european state, and it is unclear what he did. As the story progresses it becomes clear there is something not quite right with . . . anything. Nabokov described the book as a "violin in the void" and this is about as sensible description as any I can think of. It was one of the few books where I sat just thinking and riddling for a good half hour afterwards. I would really like to talk to someone else who has read it to get another perspective on it, but its one of Nabokov's more obscure works, so I am struggling.

I read Invitation to a Beheading a little while ago, though I don't think I made too much more of it than you did. The problem I think is that I get the impression that Nabokov very much wants to avoid being didactic or putting some sort of moral/lesson/message in his works, and yet still tends to dance around themes. And since I think most people tend to read things and try to extract some sort overarching opinion or whatever (in order to make the work relatable/relevant/sensical/etc.), it makes it seem like there's more intended. In this case, there's a lot of stuff about obscurity/inscrutability/openness; iirc, the dude is charged with "gnostic turpitude" and the description of him stresses his unwillingness to let others in and his ability to see through others. It seems like Nabokov is hinting at some sort of social criticism or satirical point about people intruding in the lives of others and demanding that their own voluntary (or involuntary) openness be reciprocated, that no one hold an advantage over them by remaining secretive/individualistic/etc. But then there's all the ranting he does and I don't really remember it well enough to fit that into the overall theme. In general, I think Nabokov resists making any point explicit (though I think one can probably be pulled from it). That was my impression (and I got a similar feeling from Lolita), at least.

i definitely agree that he was being careful not to be preachy, although i was lost even for a particularly good literal interpretation:

Yeah, I have no idea tbh. The ending was weird, as were a few other parts, but I didn't really feel like putting the effort into figuring them out. I read it mostly for the style of writing, and pretty much just accepted the really bizarre parts. Maybe try googling around a bit; I'm sure someone's pumped some time into that sink.

Invitation is one of my favorites. I liked this article:

I http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nabokov...8.1langen.html

Another good article (albeit long and not freely available) which talks quite alot about Invitation is http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journ...nderovich.html

Let's see if John Cole will weigh in on this one. This sounds right up his alley.

I finished Invisible Cities yesterday. Didn't like it as much as I had hoped. I thought the descriptions of each city would be a little longer, like 4-6 pages instead of 1.5, and quite a bit less metaphorical.

Looks like fiction is gonna have to take a short break because I've got

The Ancestor's Tale

Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

and last and least (for Entertainment Value, most for the other EV)

The Mathematics of Poker

Anyone have experience with Asimov's Foundation series? I'm thinking about starting them relatively soon.

[QUOTE=Xaston;13756250]
The Mathematics of Poker

Chen and Ankenmann. This is an essential addition to a multi-tabler's library!

The cities are only reflections of fear, desire, and imagination anyway. The stories are about storytelling, and every city is in large part simply a mirror of the teller, if not fabrication outright. The traveler carries his cities with him and the listener never knows if he is hearing about a place or a soul. There are some parallels with Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" there.

Wasn't aware of this one, but would be interested in hearing your review.

Well, I finished The Road. Sort of wondering what all the fuss is about? But I have to think it over and turn the last 10 pages or so over in my head before I decide. I read it really quickly...possible I missed something.

James

Hmm, as I sit here considering, a few things strike me.

What I liked:

The language and style. In a book about a wasted Earth, who has time for chapters and proper punctuation? The writing was perfectly evocative. The conversations were what conversations would presumably be like in a hopeless situation. The descriptions of bleakness were truly troubling.

Little father and son moments...the whole "where did you hear that?" idea that parents both adore and dread.

That this book made me appreciate that life is not like this.

The obvious - the heart-wrenching father son relationship depicted here. I can't imagine another novel painting the singular focus of a father with an endangered son any better.


What didn't I like?

I feel bad, I don't know. I never felt like it was a page turner by any means. The story with this book isn't the story. I get that. But I would have liked a little more meat on the bones of the story itself.

A few inconsistencies in some of the things they did:


and a bit about the 2nd half of the book(and ending):



Overall I will call it a satisfying read. There is a lot to take from the story. I am very glad I read it. But if I'm handing someone ten books that they must read, The Road stays on the shelf.


And I can't imagine that this movie will fly in its current form on the big screen. It feels like they will change something and thus destroy the whole weight of the novel. We'll see, I guess.

And here I am saying a book is "not a page turner" when I read it in 2 sittings. Whatever.

The evocation of such a desolate world with just the weakest flickering ember of hope is what the fuss is about. the way the father is taking his son to a promised land that he knows full well probably does not exist, but he keeps going because they have nothing else. so beautiful.

True. The flickering ember imagery is perfect. They are carrying the fire. It would be interesting to see how their ability to create fire ebbs and flows with the hope present at the given moment in the novel. Specifically re:

I'm reading The Stories of John Cheever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sto...f_John_Cheever

All Wasps, all the time. My plan is to read 1 or 2 stories a night to build my reading endurance back up. I've reread The Swimmer, The Enormous Radio, and Goodbye My Brother so far. The real test will come with unfamiliar stories, but I believe that I'm up to the challenge.

Lulz, yeah, that can sap my endurance too.

Blarg, if you dislike both John Updike and John Cheever, I'm going to have to start praying for your eternal soul.

Blarg has a soul?

I always thought his real name was Deep Thought...

I like them both in small doses. Updike had moments of, if not brilliance, certainly rare skill.

I just feel about them like I feel about Ann Beattie, except I like both of them much more. In the midst of the greatest recession since the great depression, she was writing about rich people feeling morose sitting around in their lawn chairs. I feel that Updike often failed to engage the world, and Cheever, as you intimate you may somewhat feel, was a good bit narrow.

Of the three, I've read Cheever the least, and he's the only one I've remotely considered reading any more of.