I remember Mile End as being quite rough. Maybe it is no longer so.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 30 July 2015 10:33 (eight years ago) link
it's not beautiful per se, but it also probably has a lot of millionaires living there. many very fine houses in mile end.
― doing my Objectives, handling some intense stuff (LocalGarda), Thursday, 30 July 2015 10:41 (eight years ago) link
I'm assuming the Mile in the name is the borders of the City, the financial district.
I'd always thought that, and of course it's true, but not in relation to the modern district of Mile End. The original 'mile end' was apparently the turnpike situated at the junction of Whitechapel Road and Cambridge Heath Road. That is exactly one mile from Aldgate. The original hamlet of Mile End ('Mile End Old Town') would appear to have been somewhat to the east of that, in the vicinity of Stepney Green tube station. That's about two miles from Aldgate. Even further away, Mile End tube station is about 3.5 miles from Aldgate.
― dubmill, Thursday, 30 July 2015 11:04 (eight years ago) link
yeah it's quite a big kind of netherzone around there. even the footpaths aren't particularly well connected.
― doing my Objectives, handling some intense stuff (LocalGarda), Thursday, 30 July 2015 11:06 (eight years ago) link
Josep Pla - Life Embitters. Finally getting into the swing of things and now its sorta unputdownable - a cat gets as much attention as hyperinflation in Wiemar-era Germany. Pla is not only a traveller, but a poor one so he hardly seems to make it to Paris or anywhere with any glamour, so he ends up in backwaters like Calais (and there is much of it being a border town, which is going to feel different today, given the news) or Ostend. Sometimes he meets family but often its other single people, the odd encounter, and very little that is amorous. He is a chronicler with no end to anything in sight, and little interiority or background.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 30 July 2015 20:09 (eight years ago) link
re: Mandeville and Marco Polo - this is similar and awesome
I was amazed by The World Jones Made when I read that, far more than I was by The Transmigration of Timothy Archer which I read at about the same time. Don't think I've ever seen anyone else Stan for the former
v different books, I would stan for both. World Jones Made is one of his better mid-period works.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 30 July 2015 20:14 (eight years ago) link
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY !
― the pinefox, Friday, 31 July 2015 13:20 (eight years ago) link
Finishing up (and enjoying) John Hawkes' Blood Oranges; virtually impossible to read it and not have the Will Ferrell / Hot Tub Love-ahs in mind for the narrator, Cyril.
― ヽ(´ー`)┌ (CompuPost), Friday, 31 July 2015 13:53 (eight years ago) link
"Oh,Lov-ah."
― dow, Friday, 31 July 2015 14:08 (eight years ago) link
Sorry---love is catching, is it not?
― dow, Friday, 31 July 2015 14:09 (eight years ago) link
^^^^^ this is basically Cyril's diction fwiw, when he's not talking about the colors he'll weave into his sex tapestry. Fun book.
― ヽ(´ー`)┌ (CompuPost), Friday, 31 July 2015 14:58 (eight years ago) link
Should I get this don't have any other CLhttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/books/review/the-complete-stories-by-clarice-lispector.html?_r=0
― dow, Sunday, 2 August 2015 23:43 (eight years ago) link
story collections - joyce carol oates - high crime area & ethan coen - gates of eden&adam rapp - know your beholder&norman mailers marilyn book but i may stop reading this cuz mailer kinda sucks imo
― johnny crunch, Monday, 3 August 2015 00:05 (eight years ago) link
Asking myself similar question, don.
― Archaic Buster Poindexter, Live At The Apollo (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 3 August 2015 00:10 (eight years ago) link
Mailer's best book is Harlot's Ghost. Read that one.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2015 00:31 (eight years ago) link
* Peter Handke - Short Letter, Long Farewell* Shakespeare - Richard IINikolaus Wachsmann - KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration CampsJohn Dinges - The Condor YearsRobert Browning - Poems
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2015 00:33 (eight years ago) link
xp maybe sometime
― johnny crunch, Monday, 3 August 2015 02:12 (eight years ago) link
I only started DORIAN GRAY.I also started REALITY HUNGER.
But most of my reading is still Kafka: an old hardback starting with DESCRIPTION OF A STRUGGLE then a bunch of shorter pieces. The very short ones (like 'the top', 'the helmsman') are new to me.
DESCRIPTION OF A STRUGGLE is a remarkable piece of work - a missing link, if one were needed, between Dostoyevsky and Beckett, or Hamsun and 1960s metafiction.
― the pinefox, Monday, 3 August 2015 09:37 (eight years ago) link
Ellmann's JoyceUlyssesV1 of Roy Foster's YeatsBit of Aquinas on the side.
― woof, Monday, 3 August 2015 12:32 (eight years ago) link
I've had The Apprentice Mage in my closet for years.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2015 12:34 (eight years ago) link
I've started it before, but more in the mood this time. Foster's great imo - great marshal of information, thoughtful, subtle, obvs great on context - but he can be a bit of a slog, not often a lively writer.
― woof, Monday, 3 August 2015 12:42 (eight years ago) link
i would agree with all of that tbh
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 3 August 2015 12:55 (eight years ago) link
i think i've had that book literally half my lifetime and not got much beyond p100
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 3 August 2015 12:56 (eight years ago) link
I've started it twice!
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2015 13:00 (eight years ago) link
I admit I have not properly read THE APPRENTICE MAGE either - and I have BOTH VOLUMES a couple of feet from me - but actually by many standards of historical scholarship, I think RFF *is* a lively writer. Maybe less so in this work, but certainly in MODERN IRELAND, LUCK AND THE IRISH, THE IRISH STORY, VIVID FACES. A tremendous historian.
I have read Ellmann's WBY biography in full.
― the pinefox, Monday, 3 August 2015 13:31 (eight years ago) link
i am reading about morality : (
― j., Monday, 3 August 2015 14:24 (eight years ago) link
i am reading the Dispossessed. Did I already mention that?
― (no offence to people) (dog latin), Monday, 3 August 2015 14:27 (eight years ago) link
agree, by the standards of most contemporary historians (low bar maybe) he is a good writer, especially over shorter distances - part of what sent me for another go at MBY V1:TAM was his DNB entry on Yeats. But I remember MODERN IRELAND being a bit of a grind - I have it around more as reference than reading (haven't read his others).
― woof, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 09:25 (eight years ago) link
Hrabal - Harlequin's Millions. About half-way through and today was just thinking how good this is. Its very Eastern European (really Hungarian) in the way it handles nostalgia for a past that has been crushed by ugly historical forces, but how Hrabal writes about people and what they do - how they embrace and drink together at a pub over a football match - that says much about how they go on whatever is happening in the background.
The writing shapes up as different from Krudy et al. tho' in the way it unravels and expands, each chapter is one paragraph. Ultimately he likes to show-and-tell in streams and recount other stories and experiences instead of character and dialogues.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 09:54 (eight years ago) link
Lately, I've been reading Jane Bowles's play In the Summer House and the stories Paul excised from Two Serious Ladies (the narrative thread following Senorita Cordoba, originally the third serious lady), René Crevel's My Body and I (interesting so far for its gracefully winding prose and the vigor of its disgust, as well as its reflections on queer life in 1920s Paris, although so far those are elliptical and couched in much the same perhaps defensive tone of disdain as are the comparable scenes in Sodom and Gomorrah), Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others (remarkable for Chiang's ability to revolve conceptual problems, although so far his prose and his characters are typically blander), Shirley Jackson's late fiction in Come Along With Me, and Lyndall Gordon's biography of Charlotte Brontë.
― one way street, Tuesday, 4 August 2015 17:19 (eight years ago) link
I am back from the mountains. While there I read The Painter of Signs, R.K. Narayan, and O, Pioneers!, Willa Cather. I'm also partway into King Leopold's Ghost. Because I drove 350 miles today, I think I'll wait and write a few comments on these tomorrow or the next day. I'm tired.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 04:11 (eight years ago) link
I really like Narayan. Also like that his full name was Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami.And Cather is usually marvellous. The Neglected Books Page just today mentioned a book of hers I had never heard of: http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3395
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 05:41 (eight years ago) link
Love narayan! Never met anyone else who's read him tbh
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 13:30 (eight years ago) link
- Jack Spicer - My Vocabulary did this to me (also Peter Riley's essay on The Holy Grail)- Ovid's Erotic Poems trans Peter Green- Kierkegaard - Either/Or- Langland - Piers plowman
― glumdalclitch, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 13:39 (eight years ago) link
I found the Narayan book very engaging. He does not subject his characters to painstaking psychological dissection, but tells a brief but solid story with simplicity and assurance. In the end, you know the characters at least as well as you know most of the real people who surround you, and you have seen them undergo a complex and perplexing life-altering experience -- which is how many life-altering experiences seem to happen. I think I would have appreciated it even more if I were familiar with the Ramayana and the traditional stories of Hinduism, and so could better understand the passing allusions to them. Would recommend.
The Cather was also a fine book. It is one of her earlier novels, written about 1914. She is especially strong in her descriptions of the prairie and succeeds in making it a leading character in her story, since its presence and the need to respond to it drives many of the actions of the people and inescapably shapes them. The plot builds up to what her contemporary readers would have comfortably accepted as a melodrama, but she deftly raises the bar and converts her story into something with more depth and dignity, more on the order of tragedy. The payoff in the final few pages is both subdued and powerful. Would also recommend.
I'm only a quarter of the way into King Leopold's Ghost, and while it is not really necessary to write an expose of colonialism, this book does a great job of digging under the surface of the nineteenth century's pretensions to morality and progress and showing the dirty details of greed, self-preening, and ambition of the powerful, and the hugely ugly consequences for the powerless they took as their targets. The history of the Congo makes an excellent exemplar of colonialism as it really worked.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 19:07 (eight years ago) link
Cather is wondrous. She should get the kudos and writing lab recs that Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner do.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 19:09 (eight years ago) link
I think I would have appreciated it even more if I were familiar with the Ramayana and the traditional stories of Hinduism
Narayan actually did a version of the Ramayana in prose--very readable
My own recent reading:
Hafez: Faces of Love -- Medieval Muslim/Persian bisexual love/sex/booze poetry -- delightful, reallyMalthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population -- so far so OTM; surprisingly and pleasingly clear prose style, too
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 23:11 (eight years ago) link
Checked, and Penguin publishes the Narayan Ranayana
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0143039679.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 23:12 (eight years ago) link
He's def my favorite indian novelist. Understated, subtle and v evocative of and sympathetic towards his subjects.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 6 August 2015 00:01 (eight years ago) link
Best entry point imo is malgudi days.
Malthus' math didn't bear out iirc
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 6 August 2015 00:02 (eight years ago) link
that's my impression, but he still makes a persuasive argument
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Thursday, 6 August 2015 00:21 (eight years ago) link
Although not about everything, having read some more. And people were itching for the Singularity even 200 years ago. "The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late years in natural philosophy, the increasing diffusion of general knowledge from the extension of the art of printing, the ardent and unshackled spirit of inquiry that prevails throughout the lettered and even unlettered world, the new and extraordinary lights that have been thrown on political subjects which dazzle and astonish the understanding, and particularly that tremendous phenomenon in the political horizon, the French Revolution, which, like a blazing comet, seems destined either to inspire with fresh life and vigour, or to scorch up and destroy the shrinking inhabitants of the earth, have all concurred to lead many able men into the opinion that we were touching on a period big with the most important changes, changes that would in some measure be decisive of the future fate of mankind. It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement..."
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Thursday, 6 August 2015 04:59 (eight years ago) link
I thought King Leopold's Ghost fascinating and need to reread it. Since Joseph Conrad had dealings with the regime as a sea captain it does seem to be a source for Kurtz. The Leopold Congo that is. &all in the supposed name of eradicating slavery?
― Stevolende, Thursday, 6 August 2015 05:49 (eight years ago) link
I just picked up a book called Season to Taste an autobiographical work by Molly Birnbaum. It's about her dream of being a chef being effected by her losing her sense of smell in brain injury caused by a jogging/car accident.I've only got as far as her physical recovery from the damage to her legs and torso so don't know what the rest of the story is.She can't taste and has defered the start date on a culinary college place so could be permanent.I have a feeling I read an excerpt from this in either Guardian or Observer magazine when the book came out. I just found this ina charity shop so didn't make the connection immediately but do recognise the story.
Also got Simon Reynolds' Energy Flash for 25c. It's the only one by him I'm aware of and haven't read. Story of Rave and Dance Culture.
I also started Alan Clayton's bio of Serge Gainsbourg which I've had for a while without reading.
― Stevolende, Thursday, 6 August 2015 06:11 (eight years ago) link
Nice score on the Reynolds. Reading Maurice Shadbolt's Danger Zone (abt the crew of a boat protesting French nuclear testing on Mururoa atoll),it's good and interesting but so riddled w printing errors I'm having real problems enjoying it
― albvivertine, Thursday, 6 August 2015 07:52 (eight years ago) link
That Reynolds book is probably my favourite music crit book of all time
― tayto fan (Michael B), Thursday, 6 August 2015 13:48 (eight years ago) link
Currently mired in a crew of books that will take months more to finish:
Capital in the 21st Century - Thomas PikettyMindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening - Joseph GoldsteinThe Recognitions - William GaddisEsalen: America and the Religion of No Religion The Egoist - George MeredithHark! A Vagrant - Kate Beaton
All are great!
― Yelploaf, Thursday, 6 August 2015 18:14 (eight years ago) link
Elizabeth Gaskell has been a hugely fun first read.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 6 August 2015 18:18 (eight years ago) link
Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps : the opening essay is the most profound reflection on Dylan I've read.
― droit au butt (Euler), Thursday, 6 August 2015 18:24 (eight years ago) link