In my opinion, C.S. Lewis is the most eloquent Christian theologian of the 20th century.

Omgomg



I just started #3

Unfamiliar with the work of Karl Barth? His Epistle to the Romans is an 800-pound gorilla of theology, a Protestant sledgehammer of a book. Hugely influential even on non (overtly) theological thinkers such as Martin Heidegger.

Barth's 8000-page Church Dogmatics is a modern Summa Theologica, a titanic work of systematic theology.

CS Lewis was like, a nice guy who wrote pretty well.

And if we're taking a poll, no, I wasn't underwhelmed by Crime and Punishment, it's sublime.

I think Lewis is more of a pop theologian, he was formally trained as a philosopher and lit critic and isn't in the same class as Barth or other heavy hitters. His best stuff is the fantasy books--esp narnia and till we have faces.

Crime and punishment is pocket kings imo, the brothers karamazov is pocket aces

What are The Idiot and Notes From the Underground?

...eloquent Christian theologian...eloquent is the operative word. Lewis wrote exceedingly well and succinct. The difference between Barth's writing and Lewis's is the difference between 800 pounds of salt and 8 ounces of saffron.

It has been a hundred years since Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie in Sarajevo igniting the First World War, an event that splintered most of the twentieth century into chaos.

If you are interested in some perspective, may I recommend Florian Illes 1913, The Year Before The Storm, Frederic Morton's Thunder at Twilight - Vienna 1913/1914, Otto Friedrich's Before The Deluge, Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday, Joseph Roth's What I Saw, as well as his follow-up, Report From a Parisian Paradise and of course, William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

CS Lewis is a beautiful writer.

I have never read Barth.

re: Dostoyevsky - The Brothers is his totemic work in my view. Although comparing works is fun - I wonder at the value of doing it.


A Passage To India really gathers steam in Part 2. Perhaps Forster could have been more modern with his depiction of women but overall his critique of early 20thC India really stands up quite well to contemporary eyes. Although I am 50 pages from the finish - I would happily reccommend this work to the thread.

You got me

Notes from the Underground is pocket threes. Sorta ugly but gets the job done.


The Idiot is A7sooted. Pretty in certain spots, but can get you into trouble.

Its brilliance is readily apparent, but it does take 2-3x to get the full extent of Vivian Darkbloom's genius.

Also, perhaps the best epic poem ever written to start off. Gets my vote [for English] at least.

Sadly, God Delusion repeats arguments that were debunked ~1000 years ago, like assuming materiality. You'd think he could have come up with something original at least, very disappointing book.

Jacob deZoet is the nuts. 5*

Man in the Holocene confirmed great.

Cosmopolis confirmed still terrible. Esp for my #3 author.

I just finished Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, which was short-listed for the Booker. It starts slow and I found myself at first resisting the book, but I wound up liking it very much. It raises moral issues in an intriguing way, and its structure was fascinating: it sets up a complicated counterpoint between its portrait of a young Japanese girl suffering culture shock and re-entry problems on returning to Japan after some years in the US and a dramatized author in North America reading what she has written.

The depiction in the novel of the girl's father as conscientiously refusing to design weapon software that was too much like computer games because it threatened to make warfare fun struck me as—quite possibly deliberately—positioned against Ender’s Game.

Currently listening to Collected Stories of William Faulkner. God damn. Haven't been this engrossed in a short story collection in a long time. Maybe since Nabakov. The narration is really good. Each story has a different narrator who captures the piece brilliantly. Two stories that standout so far are Barn Burning and The Tall Men.

Started Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.

I might have posted about it itt some time last year. I was a bit disappointed. I felt as though it was too serious in places that made it ponderous, and flippant in places that needed a bit more attention. In particular I disliked the middle half of the girl's story - it felt wilfully cruel. And 'characters in books with the author's name that might be or might not be the author' feels almost as gimnicky to me by now as unreliable narrators.

It might be that I'm too close to the subject - I'm a historian of Japan. I also was a bit disappointed by Jacob De Zoet - I thought it started very strongly, but that it drifted away from its strengths. Iirc the general UK literary take on that book was that Mitchell should be winning the Booker at some point, but this wasn't the book to do it.

who's read Appointment in Samarra?

I'm late for that Appointment.

It's next up on my "to read" stack.

I read it, and quite liked it, when I was in grad school. The prof in the course said it was by far O'Hara's best book and I took him at his word. (He also thought O'Hara's fiction wouldn't endure ...)

I liked BUtterfield 8

Nobody knows who O'Hara is anymore, like Runyon. [Almost nobody - obvs. this thread a large exception to any discussion of who gets 'read' these days.]

They are no longer 'popular' and sadly they ain't coming back to popularity either. Anyone who's even heard of Little Miss Marker thinks of it as the movie.

I finished Ian McEwan's most recent novel, Sweet Tooth, which was quite a good outing. I'd previously read and enjoyed his Solar, but I think this is a better book. I haven't got around yet to the critics' choice, Atonement. (I find myself wondering if having seen the movie will have spoiled it for me.)