What are you reading the week of Sunday, March 22, 2015?

[scarletwoman]

Good morning, everyone!

I'm doing this post in a hurry again, not because I'm still sick but because I'm on my way out the door to go spend the day with my dad, who lives about 90 miles away, down in St. Paul.

Anyway, after I finished The Sea Runners, I didn't have anything to read for a couple days (the horror!). I was finally able to pick up some books I had on hold at the library on Thursday. The first one I read was The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor, from 2012. Sadly, it was not as good as I hoped. It's a fictional story about a young Irish girl who was a survivor of the Titanic - the story itself was interesting enough, but the writing was so pedestrian and banal and cliche-ridden, it was a struggle to finish it. It was a textbook example of a violation of the first rule of writing; show it, don't tell it. Too bad.

I'm having a much better time reading my next book in line: Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg, a Danish author. It's an older book, first published in 1992 with the English translation out in 1993. I'd been coming across references to this book for some time and finally decided to give it a try. So far, it's been utterly absorbing. I'm on page 166 of 453, so I'll be with this one for awhile.

On deck after Smilla I have some other even older books, including Moby Dick, which kept crossing my mind while reading The Sea Runners. It's been around 45 years or so since I last read Moby Dick - I read it 4 times between junior high and college - and it's always been in my mind that I would read it again someday. It will be interesting to see how it feels to go there again after all these years.

That's it, I've got to get out the door...

What are you reading this week?

[shenmue]

1. "Smilia" was a great book

I'm reading "Clash of Kings," book two of the Game of Thrones series by George Martin.

[TexasProgresive]

2. Well I am glad you found something to read!

And that I am not the only person to reread books. That said, I have tried to read Moby Dick at least 4 times and I just end up putting it down and reading something else. Currently I am in the middle of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was another book that steered me into rereading this Russian novel that I had plowed through in high school. While I read it and was able to pass the test and write an acceptable essay I was just too young and unwise to really get much out of it. This reading is slow because I keep running across passages that make me thing. It is not in error that C & P is considered his great work.

Here's some passages that caught my mind enough that I cut and pasted them. They are not really spoilers.

This one is what I want to say to some here at DU who find one fault with a politician and toss him/her under the bus. Who doesn't have a few faults? Some of us aren't worth a baked onion.

“Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by principles, as it were by springs: you won’t venture to turn round on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that’s the only principle I go upon. Zametov (a clerk with the police) is a delightful person.”
  24
  “Though he does take bribes.”
  25
  “Well, he does! and what of it? I don’t care if he does take bribes,” Razumihin (a former student) cried with unnatural irritability. “I don’t praise him for taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own way! But if one looks at men in all ways—are there many good ones left? Why, I am sure I shouldn’t be worth a baked onion myself … perhaps with you thrown in.”
Part II Chapter IV Paragraphs 24-26
http://www.bartleby.com/318/24.html

Pyotr Petrovitch sounds like he's touting voodoo economics and if this was widespread thinking among RUPPIES (Russian Urban Professionals) then it is no wonder the Bolsheviks got the upper hand in the revolution.

Pyotr Petrovitch went on, glancing affably at Zossimov. “You must admit,” he went on, addressing Razumihin with a shade of triumph and superciliousness—he almost added “young man”—“that there is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name of science and economic truth …”
  54
  “A commonplace.”
  55
  “No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told ‘love thy neighbour,’ what came of it?” Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. “It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, ‘catch several hares and you won’t catch one.’ ( I'm a little slow- if you try to do too much you will do nothing.) Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society—the more whole coats, so to say—the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour’s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it …”
PartII Chapter V Paragraph 56
http://www.bartleby.com/318/25.html

This is from a discussion about crimes committed by upper class persons and one in particular who was a lecturer caught passing counterfeit bank notes. It sounds like mid 19th century Russia was full of republicans out to get their own "without waiting or working!"

  “What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he was forging notes? ‘Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to make haste to get rich too.’ I don’t remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We’ve grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck, 1 and every man showed himself in his true colours.”
Part II Chapter V Paragraph 80
http://www.bartleby.com/318/25.html

ZAMETOV, head clerk St. Petersburg police
DMITRI PROKOFITCH RAZUMIHIN loyal friend of Raskolnikov (the main character)
Pyotr Petrovitch a Yuppie lawyer and a suitor of Raskolnikov's sister
Zossimov a young physician

[Enthusiast]

5. Those Russians sound familiar to some of todays more unsavory characters in the U.S.

[TexasProgresive]

6. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[japple]

3. Still reading Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood, 2nd in the MADAdam

trilogy. What a wild ride. God forbid that the world should ever come to this.

[Enthusiast]

4. Hello, everyone! Thank you for the thread, scarletwoman.

I'm glad you are feeling better, scarletwoman.

I finished Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris. Hey, this was a weirdly unusual book. But I was entertained. That is all I hope for when I pick up a book, nothing more. I plan to check out other Charlaine Harris offerings.

I have yet to decide on a book for this week. I have been consumed with the NCAA basketball tournament.

Mrs. Enthusiast is reading The Fires Of Spring by James Michener. She is reading The Fires Of Spring at my suggestion. I read it many years ago (40?). She is fully involved and seems to be enjoying it. It is a paper back book that my parents read. I see on the cover the price was $1.25! I should re-read this because I remember very little of it other than I liked it very much.

Earlier Mrs. Enthusiast read The Point Of Rescue by Sophie Hannah. She emphatically did not like it. The Point Of Rescue was recommended by Tana French. Mrs. Enthusiast fully acknowledges that others might find the book appealing.

Scarletwoman, since we are on somewhat of a nautical theme I thought I would ask if you have ever read Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Dana Jr. I found it to be completely fascinating. I even developed an interest in sailing ships even though I am inland, far away from any great bodies of water.

[matt819]

7. As usual, a bunch

Last edited Tue Mar 24, 2015, 01:30 PM - Edit history (1)

At the moment, I'm reading A Better World, the second in a series by Marcus Sakey. Series is about people being born, since 1986 with unique abilities. These are the abnorms, and the battleground is set between the norms and the abnorms. Enjoyed the first, enjoying the second.

Just finished listening to Bred to Kill, by French author Franck Thilliez. His first book, at least the first translated, was Syndrome E. Bred to Kill is a mystery, thrill, primer on evolution, a love story, a tragic story. Thilliez is one heck of a writer.

Now listening to I am having so much fun here without you, by Courtney Maum. Just a few hours into it. About love, marriage, adultery. The usual. Not sure if I like it yet. One thing about it that bothers me is that the male character is only 34, married for only 7 years. And so his 7-month affair is not so much a midlife crisis but something a little more opportunistic.

Holy Cow, by David Duchovny. Just couldn't get into it. A bit sophomoric.

[nilesobek]

8. I stumbled upon this old Philip K. Dick story, 1960

"Vulcan's Hammer." Not much metaphysics in this one but one of my favorite books by Dick.

The enigmatic "Father Fields," is a great character, as a electrician and mechanic secretly in charge of the revolutionary movement.

[hermetic]

9. Just finished Ian Rankin's

The Impossible Dead. Rankin is such a great writer. His words just flow. Great characters. This was about Inspector Fox from Complaints, the dept. that looks into police malfeasance.

Yesterday I picked up Grave Site by Charlaine Harris. I'm already half way through it, a real page-turner. A rather unusual premise and I can't wait to see where it finally goes.

I also got P D James Original Sin. I've never read any James before and I decided it was time I did.

[hippywife]

10. The Signature of All Things- Elizabeth Gilbert

Did like Eat, Pray, Love for many reasons, but this is so far a very good novel.

[hippywife]

11. Enjoyed this book from cover to cover.

The initial post was meant to say that I didn't care for Eat, Pray, Love and I wouldn't have read Signature based on my impression of the author. However, this was fiction and historical fiction at that, which is my favorite genre, so that made my decision.

In the end, I was glad I decided to read it, glad it was a large book, read it rather quickly as I was always intrigued as to what would happen next.