And for a class I might teach in the spring: In the Freud Archives, by longtime New Yorker reporter Janet Malcolm. Basically about the catfight that erupted over the suppression of some Freud letters by the Freud Archive. Interesting enough. I have to say that Ismitje's cover might have some Freudian overtones to it, if one wanted to go there. I don't.
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay Believing is Seeing by Errol Morris I've long been a fan of his movies, and this has a very similar sensibility.
Done with the Freudians, thank God (well-told story by Janet Malcolm, though). On to Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story By Howard Means. Found out that Mr. Appleseed was introduced to the ideas of Immanuel Swedenborg in the town where I'm currently living. EDIT: Hmmm. An Errol Morris book should be interesting.
I just finished reading Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. It was wonderful. Really, I highly recommend it.
Didn't take long to get through Johnny Appleseed. This might take awhile Blake and the Bible by Chrisopher Rowland.
I just bought this last night. I'm either going to read now or for the work trip I'm taking this weekend.
For reasons unknown, I've been so reluctant to read Delillo, but I've heard some really wonderful things about both White Noise and Underworld. I was really looking forward to reading Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence, but could not pull through it. I'm over half way done, but man, it was starting to really eat at me. Has anyone ever read it in its entirety? Worth to effort to finish?
Mao II is pretty good, too, esp. if you don't mind novels about novelists. The Body Artist is pretty bad. Don't know about the two or three he's published since then.
The Body Artist is the only thing by him I've read. It's probably the worst thing I've ever read by a respected author.
I couldn't remember if that was you or Dr. Jones. I read about 30 pages when you reported that a few years ago, just to see if it was one of those things where you just weren't going to like Delillo's writing or whatever. No. The Body Artist is a piece of crap. In fact, in calling it "a piece of crap," I am grievously insulting feces the world over.
Now that has the makings of being a good thread topic... My wife tried reading Body Artist and never finished, and she finishes everything. Currently reading The Scarlet Pimpernel.
It was so awful. I think the only thing that kept me reading was everybody telling me what a great writer he was and I just kept thinking "WTF are these people talking about?" on every page.
Yeah, in my experience, DeLillo is quite hit-or-miss. As I said, I'd rank both White Noise and Underworld as two of my favorite books. But I didn't enjoy Cosmopolis or Falling Man at all. Haven't read any others-- sounds like I should skip The Body Artist but maybe check out Mao II.
Philip Hannan, author of The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots passed away yesterday and I think I'll have to re-read that book this week. I don't much care for memoirs in general, but this man lived one interesting life.
For my birthday, this arrived from my folks: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 - I look forward to reading it but figure it may take me a year or so. It doesn't look like light reading, but good reading.
OMG, Mark Twain looks freakishly similar to this Bulgarian actor, omg... I don't remember the name, but they are totally alike. Jeez, that is freaky.