Ha-ha on me. Who the hell is Jeff Wilson? (Winston)

All good points (especially Zeno's rewrite ).

A further problem (for me) was that I thought at first that poor old Jeff was looking forward to dying.

Finished The Absolute Perfection of Crime by Tanguy Viel.

This novella (121 pp.), or novel as the author prefers to call it, is an exercise in writing style. The plot is surprise free and based on segments from other novels or movies. Viel is popular in France and seen as a proponent of a new approach to novel writing wherein the style becomes the message and more important than the plot. If watching someone work on trying to advance writing interests you or if you like predictable noir novellas, read this.

Thanks phellas, I'll report back once I get to Birkerts.

A remarkable essay by Adam Thirlwell in the recent fiction issue of The NYR on the Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia whom I have not yet read but will very soon.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/201...-conspiracies/

Piglia...”The certainty that fiction depends not only on the person who constructs but on the person who reads it...fiction as a theory of reading” .
There is the meta of Borges of whom Piglia/Renzi was a friend and expert on...but who takes the entanglement of self/author much deeper. The last words of the essay are profoundly disturbing.
“These conversations and demonstrations and rumors represent a conspiracy of details that would eventually lead to the junta, and the years of the disappearances. But power has this magic trick in its repertoire: only allowing itself to be noticed when it is too late.”
If you read with any serious intent, or even THINK seriously about reality read this.

Finished Missing Person by Patrick Modiano. I have this four or five times now, it keeps getting better.

Also, finished a re-read of Something Said by Gilbert Sorrentino. Sorrentino had strong opinions and wasn't afraid to say he had made mistakes, always an interesting read.

I was just rereading Sorrentino's Steelwork, one of my favorite novels.

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Sorrentino quotes (of which he later admitted he was frequently wrong, parantheses are my addition):

Mr. Gardner (John Gardner) . . . is one of those writers who cannot write . . .

There is no sexuality in Raymond Carver’s stories—or, I should say, his story.

To believe that “life isn’t fair” is to believe that there is a kind of contract between us and life, and that bad luck, unhappiness, misery, illness and so on “unfairly” break the contract. But there is no contract, and life is, simply, there.

Finished Beyond Suspicion by Tanguy Viel. The main character, a conniving, calculating, cold-blooded killer wilts under the slightest pressure: Can you say out of character behavior? Viel wanted a "Hitchcock" conclusion regardless of the melodrama required to force that result.

The best things about the book are Viel's exceptional prose, and that it is small (5X7) and short (170 pp.).

I just finished listening to Woman in the Window on tape. It's one of those bestselling thriller books aimed at the ladies, a lot like Gone Girl and The Woman on the Train. I enjoyed both of those, despite being a very masculine man myself. This one is pretty good too. This psychologist lady is a drunk agoraphobic pill-popping hot mess of a narrator, plus she's a bigtime voyeur, spying on all her NYC neighbors.

Lots of old movie talk, recycling a lot of Hitchcock and film noir tropes. At times it seems a little manufactured, a little more like thriller book product than a piece of art itself, but perhaps that's to be expected. After I finished, I found out that the author was a publishing executive and a man to boot, hiding behind a nom de plume. Good for him, I say. You go, guy!

On tape? Wow, grandpa, catch up with the 2000s!

I just finished a book that should be burned. So ill written. Not worth anyone's time to read so this sloppy work will not even be called out.


This reminds me; I'll be instigating a book burning at the Fall Equinox this year. Look for my thread on this in the near future. Shalom.

Any other Potterheads on here? Currently re-reading it for like the 10th time lol.

I’ve read them all one and liked them. It’s on the horizon for a full re read. Prob 3-4 years out

Did a re read of the dark tower last year


Still need to read the ken follett series first.

Listening to The Troubled Man now, one of Henning Mankell's excellent Kurt Wallander books. I was a big fan of these a few years ago and read most of them but haven't been back for awhile, love me some Wallander. Don't really care for the tv version with Branagh though, not how I picture him at all.

I feel like ive gotten lost in the modern media consuming frenzy and lost my love for books. Does anyone have a recent scifi which is good?

I really the Three-body problem by Liu Cixin

The expanse series is great. It’s more space opera. But it’s fun.

I liked Blake Crouch's Dark Matter, despite being a little slick.

I Finally Purchased: Lucky Jim. Lucky Me.

This would be my first vote as well.

2nd would be The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie.

I should get around to reading this. I have enjoyed other academic novels, such as Small World and Straight Man, but never got around to this one. Michael Frayn's Skios also sounds interesting.

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Kingsley Amis’ son Martin has written many fine novels with less academic moss on them
‘Money’ comes to mind

I think London Fields is his best novel.

Agreed

Finished Bring Up the Bodies and can't wait for the third installment. I didn't like this quite as much as Wolf Hall because I miss Wolsey and his conversations with Cromwell, but I guess history can get in the way with historic dramas sometimes. I really did not think I'd enjoy this series as much as I am due to the lack of fights/battles but it's wonderful. Hilary Mantel is an amazing writer.

Since we talked about the "he, Cromwell"s I copied down the two ones which stood out the most to me:



It's an interesting writing style imo. It seems like a mess of pronouns, but I somehow know exactly which character each "he" belongs to.