What Are You Reading

[Fading Fast]

Good to know. I probably won't bother with it, then.

Yes, I've picked up "Everyone Brave is Forgiven" at Barnes and Noble and looked through it, but haven't bitten the bullet yet and bought it. I do want to read it, but may wait to just get it at the library.

Amazon's "look inside" feature started working and I just read the first page - seems written with some skill and texture. I put it in my cart and will buy or not as the spirit moves me when I next order (80% of what we buy to keep our apartment going comes from Amazon as they crush NYC prices), but it will probably get bought before long. I have little resistance to intriguing WWII historical fiction.

 

[AmateisGal]

Amazon's "look inside" feature started working and I just read the first page - seems written with some skill and texture. I put it in my cart and will buy or not as the spirit moves me when I next order (80% of what we buy to keep our apartment going comes from Amazon as they crush NYC prices), but it will probably get bought before long. I have little resistance to intriguing WWII historical fiction.

I am the same. WW2 historical fiction is primarily what I read.

 

[Harp]

Fantastic, I look forward to hearing your impressions based on family history versus the presentation in "Brooklyn." After you have read it, you might want to check out the movie. It does a reasonably good job capturing the vibe of the book, but as almost always, the book brings a lot more to the story.

I placed Brooklyn down-until such time as I can read Toibin's paean to Henry James, The Master. I sensed Brooklyn's erstwhile protagonist, Ellis Lacey
was a round trip expatriate by the lack of any literary advocatus diabelli reviews from the southpaws-jaded cynicism I know, but his James tome sealed it.
The fifteen or sixteen pages of Brooklyn I read were fine, though Toibin is obviously not Joyce caliber but good and deserving further effort.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Much as I like Joyce Maynard of To Die For fame, I actually tossed aside her earlier novel, Baby Love, once I realized it was going to be about nothing but unwed mothers in the late 1970s. Not my speed at all.

Currently on a re-read of John Varley's SF novel Mammoth. I've picked up another couple of Varley volumes from the library. And I'm going to try Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, though I know it's unfinished.

 

[Fading Fast]

Much as I like Joyce Maynard of To Die For fame, I actually tossed aside her earlier novel, Baby Love, once I realized it was going to be about nothing but unwed mothers in the late 1970s. Not my speed at all.

Currently on a re-read of John Varley's SF novel Mammoth. I've picked up another couple of Varley volumes from the library. And I'm going to try Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, though I know it's unfinished.

Have you read other Fitzgerald (besides TGG), as I'd recommend "Tender is the Night" ahead of "The Last Tycoon" and if you want to see Fitzgerald before he matured into the writer of "The Great Gatsby," I'd recommend "This Side of Paradise," which made him a mini-sensation.

The "Beautiful and the Damned" is a good roman-a-clef of his early marriage to Zelda. It's been a long time since I read "The Last Tycoon" (and I probably should give it another go), but I thought it dragged a bit and felt unsure of itself.

Anyway, a not-good Fitzgerald is still a darn good read. And if you do read "The Last Tycoon," Amazon recently put out a not-bad pilot episode of a series loosely based on the novel that you could check out.

 

[Fading Fast]

After a couple of meh books, I grabbed a never-read Edith Wharton off the shelf - "The Buccaneers." She is probably my favorite author and rarely lets me down. "House of Mirth," "Summer," "Ethan Frome" and "The Age of Innocents" are some of her best that I can read time and again. However, some are just good and, so far (50 pages in), "The Buccaneers" is just good.

 

[Harp]

After a couple of meh books, I grabbed a never-read Edith Wharton off the shelf - However, some are just good...

Henry James was something of a mentor to Edith; whose Ethan Frome was once required grammar school reading.

 

[Fading Fast]

Henry James was something of a mentor to Edith; whose Ethan Frome was once required grammar school reading.

Those whose only exposure to Wharton is through the "The Age of Innocence" or "House of Mirth" might think she only wrote about that small slice of society that is insanely wealthy. "Ethan Frome" and "Summer" shows she "saw" how regular people lived and struggled and that she could present that in an emotionally impactful, timeless way.

I was never assigned "Ethan Frome" in school, but read "Summer" in college and was blown away by it. I've probably read it four or five times since. I can viscerally feel Charity Royall's pain and anguish.

 

[Harp]

I was never assigned "Ethan Frome" in school, but read "Summer" in college and was blown away by it. I've probably read it four or five times since. I can viscerally feel Charity Royall's pain and anguish.

Summer is hot.

 

[Fading Fast]

Summer is hot.

Oh yeah, very palpable sexuality in a surprising-for-its-day-and-from-this-author way.

 

[Harp]

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway. A seemingly chaste summer tale.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Have you read other Fitzgerald (besides TGG), as I'd recommend "Tender is the Night" ahead of "The Last Tycoon" and if you want to see Fitzgerald before he matured into the writer of "The Great Gatsby," I'd recommend "This Side of Paradise," which made him a mini-sensation.

The "Beautiful and the Damned" is a good roman-a-clef of his early marriage to Zelda. It's been a long time since I read "The Last Tycoon" (and I probably should give it another go), but I thought it dragged a bit and felt unsure of itself.

Anyway, a not-good Fitzgerald is still a darn good read. And if you do read "The Last Tycoon," Amazon recently put out a not-bad pilot episode of a series loosely based on the novel that you could check out.

I enjoyed Last Tycoon quite a bit, and was startled when I turned what I didn't know was the last page and -- that was it! There's something about stories of the Hollywood of the Thirties (as I'm sure we all agree) that strikes a chord with me. It was an early draft, of course, and if he had finished it and revised it properly, as he was known to do, it would probably stand up quite well in his work.

I read "Benjamin Button" (never have seen the film), and it's clever, but I have to ask: what happened to his mother, Mrs. Button? She apparently lived after he was born (and I'd like to know how that went down), as FSF mentions Benjamin's "parents," plural, a couple of times later in the story.

His long short story "May Day" would make a good film.

 

[Fading Fast]

I enjoyed Last Tycoon quite a bit, and was startled when I turned what I didn't know was the last page and -- that was it! There's something about stories of the Hollywood of the Thirties (as I'm sure we all agree) that strikes a chord with me. It was an early draft, of course, and if he had finished it and revised it properly, as he was known to do, it would probably stand up quite well in his work.

I read "Benjamin Button" (never have seen the film), and it's clever, but I have to ask: what happened to his mother, Mrs. Button? She apparently lived after he was born (and I'd like to know how that went down), as FSF mentions Benjamin's "parents," plural, a couple of times later in the story.

His long short story "May Day" would make a good film.

"Benjamin Button" never worked for me - nor did the movie. "May Day" did - I'd have to think about how that could be a compelling movie today / but really enjoyed the story. One that I loved as a kid and still enjoy (I read it about every ten years) is "The Diamond as Big as The Ritz." On a rainy Sunday, I'll pull a collection of his short stories of the shelf and lose most of the day to them. "Babylon Revisted," is hauntingly sad, but wonderfully written.

 

[Touchofevil]

Ross MacDonald's The Goodbye Look

 

[Stormy]

I've just started Charcoal Joe. So-far-so-good.

 

[Harp]

Proust In The Dreamtime, Matthew Spellberg, Yale Review/April 2016

in search of lost time while commuting to the office

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just finished Arnold Rampersad's 1997 biography of Jackie Robinson. This is currently considered the definitive book on the life of the ballplayer/racial pioneer, and it's a rather refreshing alternative to the modern-day reduction of its subject to a plastic saint. Rampersad spends about half the book on Robinson's increasingly tragic post-baseball years, and this section is actually a lot more interesting than the same-old-same-old Robinson-and-Rickey drama that's been written about in great detail by a great many authors. Robinson was an increasingly unhappy, frustrated, chronically disillusioned man as he aged, and when he received recognition for his accomplishments he did so grudgingly, because he felt that both baseball and America in general had failed to make anywhere near enough progress on the issues important to him.

Rampersad also brings out that Robinson was not an especially likeable fellow. He disliked most of his teammates, and absolutely hated Roy Campanella's guts during most of the time they played together. He was prickly with media, had trouble with any manager whose name wasn't Chuck Dressen, and any executive whose name wasn't Branch Rickey. He didn't even always get along with his family. And has been well-documented elsewhere, he had one of the filthiest mouths in the National League, especially when directing his remarks to Leo Durocher. But Rampersad also brings out incident after incident to indicate that in most cases, Robinson had good reasons for feeling as he did. You come away with a portrait of, not of a sainted figure out of a children's book, but of a real man who lived a remarkable life.

 

[belfastboy]

Just finishing "Hillbilly Elegy" by JD Vance. A good read.....could have and should have been much better.
Next, starting "The Secret History of Water", Craig Childs. Looking forward to this one.

 

[Fading Fast]

... You come away with a portrait of, not of a sainted figure out of a children's book, but of a real man who lived a remarkable life.

Which sums up what has happened to most of our whitewashed heroes of an earlier age. They are all flawed, all did some not wonderful things, but also did some heroic things that helped to change the world for the better.

I remember when a small brouhaha came up over Martin Luther King's dissertation (I think) and whether parts were plagiarized. I believe it was investigated and general believed that he did plagiarize parts (if I'm wrong, please tell me, I am going on memory and could be very wrong and will gladly acknowledge so if I am).

But to me, it doesn't really matter if he did (if he didn't, his name should be cleared) because, what he did right changed the world for the better and what he might of done wrong was a moral shortcoming that didn't change the world for the worse. I feel the same way about the revisionist history of the Founding Fathers - by all means, let's be honest about their flaws, but everything in perspective.

We can either tear every single hero down - few have no faults / did nothing wrong / can withstand intense scrutiny and moral judgment based on shifting standards over time - or accept them as flawed human beings who changed the world for the better.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston," by Howard Bryant. Published in 2002, this book confronts head-on the skeleton that lurked in the closet of the Boston American League Baseball Club for more than seventy years: the legacy of institutional racism actively practiced by the team under the ownership of the Yawkey family and its estate from its purchase of the club in 1933 to its sale of the club in 2002. Thomas A. Yawkey himself is largely a phantom presence in this story -- he had little day-to-day involvement in the operation of the franchise. But the men he hired to operate the team, who were largely his drinking companions and old cronies, had a far more malignant influence on the team and its racial policies.

Even guiltier, in Bryant's view, are the Boston media, which, he contends, willfully ignored problems that by the 1970s were painfully obvious to outside observers. The Boston Globe, and its reporters Will McDonough and Peter Gammons, are given particular criticism -- McDonough for his chumminess with team officials that consistently blinded him to their sins, and Gammons for his evident obliviousness to the huge story festering right under his nose. Just because you don't want to write the story doesn't mean there isn't one.

Several Boston players are interviewed over the course of the book, including Tommy Harper -- who seemed to have a co-dependent relationship with the franchise over the years, returning time and again despite the abuse heaped upon him by the front office -- and Reggie Smith, the immensely talented switch-hitting outfielder of the 1960s and 1970s who was driven out of Boston by racial hostility and remains bitter about the experience to this day.

The book is rather dated in that it came out just before the advent of David Ortiz -- the most popular player of color ever to wear a Red Sox uniform, and one of the franchise's true immortals. I'd like to see a sequel or an updated edition which discusses Ortiz's impact on the team, its fanbase, and New England as a whole.