What are you reading?

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  • Posts: 2,917
    Currently reading Moby Dick for the first time. I was flying through the early portions of the book, but I’ve slowed down once it hit the chapter on categorizing Cetology.

    You'll be slowing down several more times, because Melville loves digressions. At times you will be tempted to give up, but hang in there and you'll be rewarded with a thrilling ending and language that is nearly Shakespearian in its beauty and intensity. When (or if) you finish, I recommend the John Huston film of Moby Dick from 1956, despite the miscasting of Gregory Peck as Ahab. It can't capture the interiority of the book and its narrative prose, but it's a fine visualization of the plot.
  • Revelator wrote: »
    Currently reading Moby Dick for the first time. I was flying through the early portions of the book, but I’ve slowed down once it hit the chapter on categorizing Cetology.

    You'll be slowing down several more times, because Melville loves digressions. At times you will be tempted to give up, but hang in there and you'll be rewarded with a thrilling ending and language that is nearly Shakespearian in its beauty and intensity. When (or if) you finish, I recommend the John Huston film of Moby Dick from 1956, despite the miscasting of Gregory Peck as Ahab. It can't capture the interiority of the book and its narrative prose, but it's a fine visualization of the plot.

    It’s been a long time since I’ve given up on a book (good or bad) and I’d hate to break that streak with such a seminal work! I actually was planning on checking out the film once I’ve gotten through the novel, however long that takes.
  • Posts: 17,753
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    Finishing the last few chapters of The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInnes. Very enjoyable read!
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    Just started reading again "The 39 Steps" I'm enjoying it as I haven't read it
    since my schooldays.
  • Posts: 15,111
    Revelator wrote: »
    Currently reading Moby Dick for the first time. I was flying through the early portions of the book, but I’ve slowed down once it hit the chapter on categorizing Cetology.

    You'll be slowing down several more times, because Melville loves digressions. At times you will be tempted to give up, but hang in there and you'll be rewarded with a thrilling ending and language that is nearly Shakespearian in its beauty and intensity. When (or if) you finish, I recommend the John Huston film of Moby Dick from 1956, despite the miscasting of Gregory Peck as Ahab. It can't capture the interiority of the book and its narrative prose, but it's a fine visualization of the plot.

    I first saw the movie then read the novel. The first true piece of literature I read in fact.
    Just started reading again "The 39 Steps" I'm enjoying it as I haven't read it
    since my schooldays.

    I quite enjoyed it when I read it around thus time in 2018.

    Finished Nocturne by Ed McBain tonight.
  • Posts: 4,613
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  • Posts: 2,917
    Here are the 10 books I enjoyed most in 2020, in no real order. Despite lockdown I didn't do as much reading as I expected, since the pandemic caused prolonged weekenditis.

    Julian -- Gore Vidal

    Good Thoughts in Bad Times, Good Thoughts in Worse Times, Mixt Contemplations in Better Times -- Thomas Fuller

    The Fire of Joy: Roughly 80 Poems to Get by Heart and Say Aloud -- edited by Clive James

    On the Nature of Things -- Lucretius

    Moby-Dick -- Herman Melville (this was my first time around)

    The Complete Dick Tracy Volumes 14-21: 1951-1964 -- Chester Gould

    Selected Letters -- Seneca

    The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca -- Emily Wilson

    The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization -- Bryan Ward-Perkins

    The Later Roman Empire (A.D. 354-378) -- Ammianus Marcellinus

    Name your own top 10s!
  • Posts: 15,111
    @Revelator I struggled to read more during the pandemic myself. Still read 28 books, but I read more than 30 during a normal year.

    Anyway, here's my top 10, in no particular order:
    1)Trouble is my Business, Raymond Chandler.
    2)War of the Worlds, HG Wells.
    3)Ax, Ed McBain
    4)Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
    5)All About Ghosts, Usborne Publishing
    6)Dead Leaves: 9 Tales from the Witching Season by Kealan Patrick Burke
    7)Haunted, an anthology of ghost stories (for the record I read Halloween and horror stories from August onwards)
    8)I, The Jury, by Mickey Spillane (part of my #Noirvember reads)
    9)Sadie when she Died by Ed McBain (part of my Yuletide reads and yes I'm a big fan of Ed McBain)
    10)Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
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    I started collecting the Bond books in the early 80s, and by the late 80s or early 90s I had them all (Fleming, that is) except this one. Finally ordered it online.

    I have enjoyed Octopussy and The Property Of a Lady immensely, and am looking forward to The Living Daylights, which is now the only Fleming original I have yet to read. I am therefore saving it for tomorrow, just to draw it out a bit. (Read 007 in New York online a few years ago.) I do know the story, since I have read all the old comic book adaptations, but that is not the same.
  • 20166694032.jpg
    I started collecting the Bond books in the early 80s, and by the late 80s or early 90s I had them all (Fleming, that is) except this one. Finally ordered it online.

    I have enjoyed Octopussy and The Property Of a Lady immensely, and am looking forward to The Living Daylights, which is now the only Fleming original I have yet to read. I am therefore saving it for tomorrow, just to draw it out a bit. (Read 007 in New York online a few years ago.) I do know the story, since I have read all the old comic book adaptations, but that is not the same.

    You are in for a treat! “The Living Daylights” may very well be the best of Fleming’s short stories. It’s certainly up there. (And how I wish there was a collection of four complete and published Fleming stories out there I hadn’t read yet!)
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    20166694032.jpg
    I started collecting the Bond books in the early 80s, and by the late 80s or early 90s I had them all (Fleming, that is) except this one. Finally ordered it online.

    I have enjoyed Octopussy and The Property Of a Lady immensely, and am looking forward to The Living Daylights, which is now the only Fleming original I have yet to read. I am therefore saving it for tomorrow, just to draw it out a bit. (Read 007 in New York online a few years ago.) I do know the story, since I have read all the old comic book adaptations, but that is not the same.

    You are in for a treat! “The Living Daylights” may very well be the best of Fleming’s short stories. It’s certainly up there. (And how I wish there was a collection of four complete and published Fleming stories out there I hadn’t read yet!)

    I feel like it was worth the wait.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited February 2021 Posts: 18,269
    20166694032.jpg
    I started collecting the Bond books in the early 80s, and by the late 80s or early 90s I had them all (Fleming, that is) except this one. Finally ordered it online.

    I have enjoyed Octopussy and The Property Of a Lady immensely, and am looking forward to The Living Daylights, which is now the only Fleming original I have yet to read. I am therefore saving it for tomorrow, just to draw it out a bit. (Read 007 in New York online a few years ago.) I do know the story, since I have read all the old comic book adaptations, but that is not the same.

    You are in for a treat! “The Living Daylights” may very well be the best of Fleming’s short stories. It’s certainly up there. (And how I wish there was a collection of four complete and published Fleming stories out there I hadn’t read yet!)

    I feel like it was worth the wait.

    Glad you've finally gotten a copy. You'll be able to see how much they used in the film versions.

    Yes, I really like that collection of short stories. Some of them are pleasingly off-beat. Fleming's Bond short stories often were. I was thinking of rereading that collection myself.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,172
    20166694032.jpg
    I started collecting the Bond books in the early 80s, and by the late 80s or early 90s I had them all (Fleming, that is) except this one. Finally ordered it online.

    I have enjoyed Octopussy and The Property Of a Lady immensely, and am looking forward to The Living Daylights, which is now the only Fleming original I have yet to read. I am therefore saving it for tomorrow, just to draw it out a bit. (Read 007 in New York online a few years ago.) I do know the story, since I have read all the old comic book adaptations, but that is not the same.

    I love the cover! It's not an edition I possess.
    I'm the proud owner of the entire series in three different editions, but I must confess that they don't look quite as good as yours.

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    The third collection is in my native language. I read those in my early teens. They all have this lady on the cover in some pose or another:

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  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 13,779
    With an introduction by Robert Ryan?
  • Posts: 2,917
    I see this edition has an introduction by Robert Ryan (presumably not the long dead actor)--you'll have to let us know how that is too.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    The cover I posted doesn t belong to the edition I got hold of. I just loved it, so I went with that to illustrate. The one I got is from that second series @DarthDimi posted above. Brilliantly stylised, but not as classically cool and pulpy as the other. This one has an introduction by Sam Leith, which is fine enough. No idea who he is.
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    A friend has given me a load of old Alistair MacLean novels to work my way
    through :) I'm starting with Bear Island.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    ESOTERIC PSYCHOLOGY - VOLUME II
    TREATISE ON THE SEVEN RAYS
    VOLUME II

    BY
    ALICE A. BAILEY

    COPYRIGHT 1942 © BY LUCIS TRUST
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,172
    THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE (2011)
    Why violence has decreased
    Steven Pinker

    9780143122012.jpg

    This is the second book of Pinker's I've read, and as with Enlightenment Now, I found the book impossible to put down. In a world in which it feels as if man is waging more wars than ever before, killing more people in the streets, committing more crimes and spreading more hate, it may surprise us, when faced with hard data, exactly how dramatically violence has decreased, exactly how safe this world has become. But we tend to focus on negative news reports and hearsay rather than wonder about the big numbers behind those individual cases. Pinker shows that even terrorism, despite this being the "age of terrorism", is but a shadow of its former self anymore. He doesn't ridicule the violence that still plagues us, nor does he lull us into complacency, but he manages to effectively demonstrate that while we often say that these are the worst of times, the opposite may very well be true.

    *****
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    Bear Island, very different from the Film. It's more a murder mystery on the boat getting to the island, although they are even a few deaths on the island too, very enjoyable. A good solid thriller.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,617
    Just finished Another Day in the Life, by Ringo Starr with David Lynch. Ringo’s a cool guy!
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    IMG_9670.jpg

    COPYRIGHT © 1951 BY LUCIS TRUST

  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    POLITI OG ANARKI a Jens Bjørneboe anthology.
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  • Posts: 2,917
    So now we know what you'll be reading next year too! I read the first volume in college but was too young to get much out of it. I just remember the Madeline and the final sentence.

    After finishing all six volumes you might have a chance of winning The All-England Summarize Proust Competition, especially you can sum up A La Recherche du Temps Perdu within 15 seconds. Back in 1973 none of the contestants succeeded in encapsulating the intricacies of Proust's masterwork, so first prize went to the girl with the biggest tits.

  • MaxCasino wrote: »
    Just finished Another Day in the Life, by Ringo Starr with David Lynch. Ringo’s a cool guy!

    You were reading it with David Lynch or Ringo wrote it with David Lynch? I'm actually not sure which sounds more unlikely.
    Birdleson wrote: »
    I'm about to undertake Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. 7000 plus pages. Normally, I askew translations because I never feel that I am reading the actual work, but this temptation was too great.zyxrb8gtuv28.jpeg

    The ideas sometimes transcend whatever else may be lost at the level of the prose in any translation. And sometimes translations, however close to or far from the author's original wording they may be, read perfectly eloquently in their own right. I recently read a translation of Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes for the first time and have to say it's the best new book I've read in the past year (maybe even the past few years). The ideas were the most compelling part, but the translator managed to make the prose read enjoyably as well.
  • Posts: 15,111
    Revelator wrote: »
    So now we know what you'll be reading next year too! I read the first volume in college but was too young to get much out of it. I just remember the Madeline and the final sentence.

    After finishing all six volumes you might have a chance of winning The All-England Summarize Proust Competition, especially you can sum up A La Recherche du Temps Perdu within 15 seconds. Back in 1973 none of the contestants succeeded in encapsulating the intricacies of Proust's masterwork, so first prize went to the girl with the biggest tits.

    Funny, one of my literature teachers, specialised in Proust incidentally, used the same... ahem... criteria when marking essays. He was very popular with the female students but the male ones, less so. When #metoo came out, he was exposed by former students, including acquaintances of mine, for sex harassment.
  • Birdleson wrote: »
    I wonder if that APES translation was the same one that I read back in the '70s.

    Translated in 1964 by Xan Fielding. Very likely the same one.
  • Posts: 618
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  • QQ7QQ7 Croatia
    Posts: 371
    Miroslav Krleža - The Return of Philip Latinowicz
    ...and some history books.
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