Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, by D. T. Max (2012) Really weird to read a literary biography about a dead writer born just a bit before I was. Pretty good book. Max does a good job of dealing with the brutal effects severe depression had on DFW's life and those around him. Also does a pretty good job dealing with the work, though he spends more time on unfinished projects (not including Wallace's last novel, published posthumously) than any bio I can think of off the top of my head.
I've decided it is high time I give this series a whirl: Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, starting with Master and Commander and almost certainly going on from there. I'm 100 pages or so into the first one, and O'Brian certainly doesn't dumb down the language about the ship(s) and a life a-sea in the early nineteenth century. Or about music for that matter. I can't remember when I've used my dictionary so often whilst reading. Not that I mind; it's definitely worth it so far.
You've just made one of the most important decisions of your life. Heh. I'm using hyperbole--but only a little bit....
My best friend from college read that series straight through two years ago. His only regret was that he didn't discover those books before he was married with his first kid. He found them very hard to put down.
Walter Kirn, Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever, 2010 I'd never heard of Kirn, but his name popped up in the Wallace biography and I saw this on the shelf at the public library. Some decent writing about his life going from rural Minnesota to Princeton, where he studies literary theory that he doesn't understand and takes way too many drugs in that specific Ivy League way (i.e., it's transformed into a shamanistic experience rather than an adolescent way to kill time). Some really bad writing, too. I almost bagged it when he described a nose bleed and used the phrase "ruptured nostril." Apparently, he wrote the novel Up in the Air which was made in to a George Clooney vehicle.
I don't know if this is a good idea to read or not (amidst down times in the Aubrey/Maturin series), but here goes nothing: John Rawls political theory on Justice as Fairness. I've never read this school of thought, and never read anything like it without having to for some long-past course. But I am intrigued. And there are places called "libraries" where one can indulge a curiosity without having to buy a book. What a deal!
Finished this about 3 weeks ago. A must read for any fan of American history. Political intrigue, consolidation of presidential power, and what can be considered the first admonishment against the South. This guy had Congress by the balls...
Count Hermann Keyserling: Travel Diary of a Philosopher, vol one (1925). Very strange book. Part philophical speculation, part probably fiction, not really much travel (the places he "visits" reflect his state of mind, and vice versa. It's two volumes, but it might go down as a DNF. We'll see. My copies look like this, incidently: They're not as long as they appear. They're printed on thick paper, and it's holding up well for it's age. I guarantee I won't have that much structural integrity if I make it to 87.
Cleopatra - A Life Stacy Schiff Bought this for my wife quite a while back; she couldn't finish it due to the author's voice. I just started it and it may suffer the same fate at my hands. Fascinating, if over-written. Hopefully I can fight through it.
Recently finished "The Lock Artist" by Steve Harrison. Excellent Book. I am currently reading Michael McCambridges' book : " Lamar Hunt, a Life in Sports" and I get several mentions in the book as does The Dallas Tornado and the NASL years. McCambridge even mentions my memoir in his notes at the back....calling it "eminently readable though as yet unpublished"...(I gave him a Kinko's bound copy when he was in town interviewing me and other former Tornado players for his book on Lamar)....Gotta get off my ass and get the thing out there.
If you like historical novels and can read Spanish, this is fantastic. Not sure if it's available in English.
An amazon.com search suggests there's NOTHING by Nieves in English. So, how are your literary translation chops? I'm rereading this. Today I Wrote Nothing by Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms. You have to be in the mood for them, but these short... pieces can be pretty funny. Damn shame the cover isn't bigger. It's one of the best designed paperbacks I have. Here's an example There was a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears. Neither did he have any hair, so he was called red-haired theoretically. He couldn't speak, since he didn't have a mouth. Neither did he have a nose. He didn't even have any arms or legs. He had no stomach and he had no back and he had no spine and he had no innards whatsoever. He had nothing at all! Therefore there's no knowing whom we are even talking about. In fact it's better that we don't say any more about him. Given that that was written in Stalin's Soviet Union, there might be a few different interpretations of it beyond just absurdity.
The further adventures of Sir Bascot De Marins, Knight Templar, as he solves crimes in Medieval England.
The second chronicle of Hugh de Singleton, surgeon. Medieval mystery set in Bampton, about 15 miles from Oxford, in 1365.
Just finished... "State Fair" (1932) by Phil Stong. My wife and I are watching Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, and this novel was turned into their first musical written directly for film. Pretty decent novel. There's a lot of hokey, aw-shucks folksiness in the narrative, but that doesn't change the fact that the son and daughter in the family are spending a good bit of time at the fair getting laid for the first time. In fact, it works to make that seem like pretty much what kids do at that age, which didn't go over well in his native Iowa. That stuff is hinted at pretty obviously in the musical, but it's quite clear in the book. A good contribution to the field of rural midwestern fiction if I may say. About halfway through... F.M.D.'s "From the House of The Dead." Better than I remember it on previous attempts when it went down as DNF. It just occured to me that these two books actually have one thing in common: they were both turned into musical dramas, one as an American movie musical and the other as a Czech opera.
Just finished Washington Square by Henry James: Now reading When She Was Good by Philip Roth: You're not going to find healthy family dynamics in either of these two.
Every word, save for classifieds and ads. My son and I have been having an ongoing discussion on the future of print media and he claims that I'm not reading the paper like I used to. I think I don't read the sports as much lately, but I do get sports from the internet, but we have a bet going. So, I will read everything today. Even Classic Peanuts
Yeah, hijacked by a supporting character. Bloom County similarly regressed as Opus grew in importance...
There's a ...hmmmm, what to call him... Let's go with conceptual artist... Named Kenneth Goldsmith whose schtick is something he calls uncreative writing. One of his books is called "Day." It consists entirely of a transcription of all the words in one day's NYT. (upon closer research, it turns out the "day" is sept. 11, 2001). no, I haven't read it. As far as the daily paper goes, I prefer the dead tree edition. You can't beat the fact that reader comments are restricted to 1/3rd of one page.
The Mark of Athena -- Rick Riordan Riordan wrote the Percy Jackson series, and this novel is the 3rd book in his Heroes of Olympus sequel. He did a great job in this triology, in terms of keeping his characters fresh, and Percy largely in the shadows, but this book is dragging. I read every day to my son and we've been looking for other books while we're still in the middle of this one. Not sure why, it's just... slow....