What are you reading?

[WAB]

My own favorite short story, at the current time, is James Joyce’s The Dead.

Yes! That is definitely in the top ten, perhaps even five.

But my favorite short story is The Naked Nude, by Bernard Malamud.

 

[pood]

Another in my top five is Library of Babel, by Borges.

 

[southernhybrid]

Is the book you're reading different from the one written by Sloan Wilson? Or are the titles just very similar?

Yes, by Sloan Wilson. I have always known about this book but for some reason never read it. My reading of 1950s writers is mainly the beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc.) and stuff Hemingway wrote in the 50s like Old Man and the Sea. Not a huge Hemingway fan but Old Man and the Sea is quite good. My three favorite works of his are all short stories: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, A Clean Well Lighted Place, and The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber. James Joyce called A Clean, Well Lighted Place the best short story ever written, iirc. I wouldn’t go that far.

Reading a book I actually somehow never read before, Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, from the 50s. Picked it up free at the library where every day they give away books, though usually they are terrible. Just read the first 18 pages and it’s … really good.

I’d recommend to anyone interested the collected fiction of Cormac McCarthy, who unfortunately died a few years ago.

That was also a movie made in 1956 by that name. I know I saw it when I was very young, but I don't remember any of it. My guess is that I saw it on "The Million Dollar Movie". If you grew up in the NYC area during the 50s or 60s, you might remember that was a local station that played the same movie over and over for a week, assuming it had made at least a million dollars at the box office, which was a big deal back in those days. The movie description reminds me of my own father who suffered from severe PTSD related to combat and who then entered a professional sales job which he always referred to as extremely stressful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Gray_Flannel_Suit

[th]
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit​

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[td]

Theatrical release poster

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The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a 1956 American drama film starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, with Fredric March, Lee J. Cobb, Keenan Wynn and Marisa Pavan in support. Based on the 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson, it was written and directed by Nunnally Johnson, and focuses on Tom Rath, a young World War II veteran trying to balance the pressures of his marriage to an ambitious wife and growing family with the demands of a career while dealing with the after-effects of his war service and a new high-stress job. The film was entered at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.[4]

Now I want to see the movie after I finish the book.

I also enjoyed the same poets as you, when I stil enjoyed poetry. I am also not a fan of Hemmingway. I read one of his books many years ago, and was very disappointed. I may have mentioned that I majored in English for 3 years before I realized I wanted to study something that would provide me with a career. Nursing was much more difficult compared to any liberal arts course I ever took. As time went by, I lost my love of fiction and now almost always read non fiction, primarily about animals, the brain and other aspects of science. I did read 1984 for the second or third time when Trump was elected for the second time. Orwell had the year wrong, but we are living in an Orwellian nightmare these days.

 

[southernhybrid]

@pood

"Now I want to see the movie after I finish the book."

You can rent it or buy it at Amazon. It's also streaming at a couple of places. You almost made me want to buy the movie. I can get it for 9.98 if I use my digital credits.

 

[pood]

@pood

"Now I want to see the movie after I finish the book."

You can rent it or buy it at Amazon. It's also streaming at a couple of places. You almost made me want to buy the movie. I can get it for 9.98 if I use my digital credits.

I am up to the part where Tom takes the job with United Broadcasting and his wife is hatching get-rich-quick schemes. It’s all very engaging, even if it is seven decades old. And the truth is, I doubt things are much different now in that milieu, which is depressing. The fact that his job life is set in NYC makes it more engaging. But still depressing.

 

[pood]

What I glean from the novel so far is that Tom felt most alive when he was constantly facing imminent death as a World War II paratrooper. Now he’s just … bored. So is his wife. How do they deal with that? By fantasizing about a bigger better house, a better job, more money, and a better brand of gin. IOW, the very things that are boring the shit out of them in the first place. This sort of thing is what gave rise to the beats, who rejected all this rat-race crap and helped launch the 60s counterculture.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Currently reading Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

Everyone's heard the expression "Couldn't put it down!" But with this book, it's true. I plowed through the first 200 pages very quickly, and I usually read slowly. Totally engrossing.

Thought you might be, when I saw your tag line change.

I had a rash of Solzhenitzen after year 12 and he formed some of my morality, if I think about it. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (which I think is exerpted from this) was on the curriculum and for about 6 months I read everything of his I could get my hands on.

 

[pood]

Interestingly, Sloan Wilson is the father of evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson.

 

[pood]

It’s interesting how the wheels are always turning in Tom’s mind in the wasteland of corporate America — what shall I say? How shall I respond to that? What’s in my best interest? What’s in it for me?

Yet his thoughts always keep drifting back to his days as a paratrooper, when he was ever on the knife’s edge of death. His thoughts then were, “It doesn’t really matter,” and “It will be interesting to see what happens.”

More alive on the edge of death and more dead on the edge of life.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries, by Donald R. Prothero

My Cult Your Cult: How Cults Destroy Truth and Bolster Authoritarian Power by Sean Prophet

Nemesis Games (The Expanse Book 5)

Sourcery (Discworld Book 5)

 

[Wiploc]

Why I Am Not an Atheist. I enjoyed it. It's mostly a review of philosophy, but also the life story of someone studying philosophy.

For most of the book, the author is a seriously depressed atheist. I never understood existential angst, but it means something to to this guy.

Eventually, he meets a girl, gets happy, no longer needs atheism, and reverts to Catholicism. It's possible that he wouldn't see that as a fair synopsis, but I tried to be fair. His point of view is really alien to me.

The book reads well, and seems to me more in depth than Russell's history of Western Philosophy. Or, maybe I just don't remember that much of Russel's book, given that I read it when I was a youngster.

 

[WAB]

Why I Am Not an Atheist. I enjoyed it. It's mostly a review of philosophy, but also the life story of someone studying philosophy.

For most of the book, the author is a seriously depressed atheist. I never understood existential angst, but it means something to to this guy.

Eventually, he meets a girl, gets happy, no longer needs atheism, and reverts to Catholicism. It's possible that he wouldn't see that as a fair synopsis, but I tried to be fair. His point of view is really alien to me.

The book reads well, and seems to me more in depth than Russell's history of Western Philosophy. Or, maybe I just don't remember that much of Russel's book, given that I read it when I was a youngster.

Not going to mention the author's name?

 

[Wiploc]

You make a very good point. It turns out there are several books by that title. This one is by Beha.

by Christopher Beha and Penguin Audio

 

[Mediancat]

The Revolutionaries, a book about the revolutionists of the 1970s, primarily centered around Europe and the Middle East.

Rob

 

[marc]

Been a while since I've posted. Just wanted to talk about Dungeon Crawler Carl

It comes off as light reading with crass humor and plenty of action, but as you go along the series has several themes about unrestrained capitalism, government corruption, facism, media, and some great character development with scenes that may make you cry. There are currently 7 books, with the 8th coming out next month. I did a check on the page count, and those 7 books have 650 more pages than the 7 Harry Potter books.

Now the story. It starts off with aliens ending civilization. All buildings and many man made structures are instantly sunk into the ground. For the survivors the aliens make an announcement of how to reclaim their world. Some worlds get gladiatorial games, other like Earth get Dungeon Crawler World. Basically it is like an RPG video game, except going through it for real. The technology is advanced enough to make 'magic' real within the dungeon. And all of this will be broadcast to the universe as a reality show. Of course it most closely resembles the Hunger Games, as most of the people who go in will die horribly. It is an 18 floor dungeon, but a guide lets Carl know that in the hundreds of times this game has been played, only one person has ever survived to the 13th floor. Carl, left outside in the middle of winter with just a leather jacket and boxers, has no choice but to go in. Oh, and he has his ex-girlfriends cat, who on eating a pet-enhancement biscuit gains intelligence, the ability to speak, and decides to learn magic. Princess Donut may seem a bit of a diva, but she understands the game enough to know to play to the audience, that popular crawlers have a better chance of survival.

 

[Wiploc]

Tunnel Vision, by Sara Paretsky.

I don't like it. About private eye V.I. Warshawski. I saw the movie by the name V I Warshawski. I didn't like it overall, but I loved the witty dialogue.

The only reason I'll finish listening to this book is because I'm in a group that will discuss it.

It's a slog.

 

[ideologyhunter]

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics edition)
I must have read a selection from this in high school or college, but I came to it fresh, with no preconceptions, after a lifeguard at the Y, who is currently in community college, mentioned it. The Penguin is a good edition, with an introduction that is as long as the text. It explains the rediscovery of the epic, which was recovered from archaeological digs in the Mideast, beginning in the mid-19th century, which recovered thousands of clay tablets, among which were the legends of the warrior king Gilgamesh. Over a period of a century, the various Gilgamesh fragments were compared and collated. They comprise a story cycle, not a sustained narrative like Homer's works. They are considered the oldest known literary work, some 4000 years old, predating the oldest books of the Bible by a thousand years, and Homer and Virgil by many centuries.
The repetition of phrases and extended lines of narrative reflect that the epic came from an oral tradition, and was transmitted by storytellers. In places the narrative is patchy or confusing, which is no doubt due to the incomplete record from the tablets and the lack of a single, full-length rendition. Basically we are told of the life of a gallant king, whom the gods provide with a loyal friend, the enigmatic Enkidu, who starts life as a wild man living with the wild beasts. Gilgamesh and Enkidu have their main adventure in journeying to a forest where they intend to challenge the giant Humbaba and harvest the cedar wood that he guards. This action is followed by the death of Enkidu, which throws Gilgamesh into throes of grief, and sets up the second movement of the epic, Gilgamesh's quest to find the secret of everlasting life. He journeys into a dark mountain range and sails over waters of death to find Utnapishtim, a man whom the gods have given eternal life.
At this point, all Bible readers of whatever stripe no doubt focus on the tale Utnapishtim tells of his gift from the gods, for he tells Gilgamesh the story of a catastrophic flood that destroyed mankind. This Mesopotamian flood story includes the gods conspiring to send the flood; directions to U. (I'm tired of typing his name) as to what sort of boat to build, and how big to make it (it has a distinctive roof 'like the vault that covers the abyss'); the instruction to carry the seed of all animals, both domestic and wild (this is one of those patchy places that leaves the reader hanging on what exactly that means and how it would be carried out); a massive flood that goes on for a week; the boat coming to rest on a mountain top; and U. using birds which he releases to find out if the land is now clear and able to provide sustenance. It concludes with the god Ea chiding the gods who sent the flood, telling them that they must not punish humans too severely.
This is not my favorite text from antiquity, but it can easily be read in a day and, where there were sufficient verses recovered, it creates the enchantment of an early world and man's ideas of the community of gods. (Beowulf's Grendel beats Humbaba for an evil foe, and the Odyssey is a more memorable quest narrative. But this is where it all started. Being a silent film buff, I had the same feeling as I read some of the more obscure passages as I get when I'm watching a film from the 1910s that comes to us incomplete, with nitrate decomp muddying the images.)
Worth reading. Highly unusual fare compared to a lot of what I've taken up recently.

 

[DBT]

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics edition)
I must have read a selection from this in high school or college, but I came to it fresh, with no preconceptions, after a lifeguard at the Y, who is currently in community college, mentioned it. The Penguin is a good edition, with an introduction that is as long as the text. It explains the rediscovery of the epic, which was recovered from archaeological digs in the Mideast, beginning in the mid-19th century, which recovered thousands of clay tablets, among which were the legends of the warrior king Gilgamesh. Over a period of a century, the various Gilgamesh fragments were compared and collated. They comprise a story cycle, not a sustained narrative like Homer's works. They are considered the oldest known literary work, some 4000 years old, predating the oldest books of the Bible by a thousand years, and Homer and Virgil by many centuries.
The repetition of phrases and extended lines of narrative reflect that the epic came from an oral tradition, and was transmitted by storytellers. In places the narrative is patchy or confusing, which is no doubt due to the incomplete record from the tablets and the lack of a single, full-length rendition. Basically we are told of the life of a gallant king, whom the gods provide with a loyal friend, the enigmatic Enkidu, who starts life as a wild man living with the wild beasts. Gilgamesh and Enkidu have their main adventure in journeying to a forest where they intend to challenge the giant Humbaba and harvest the cedar wood that he guards. This action is followed by the death of Enkidu, which throws Gilgamesh into throes of grief, and sets up the second movement of the epic, Gilgamesh's quest to find the secret of everlasting life. He journeys into a dark mountain range and sails over waters of death to find Utnapishtim, a man whom the gods have given eternal life.
At this point, all Bible readers of whatever stripe no doubt focus on the tale Utnapishtim tells of his gift from the gods, for he tells Gilgamesh the story of a catastrophic flood that destroyed mankind. This Mesopotamian flood story includes the gods conspiring to send the flood; directions to U. (I'm tired of typing his name) as to what sort of boat to build, and how big to make it (it has a distinctive roof 'like the vault that covers the abyss'); the instruction to carry the seed of all animals, both domestic and wild (this is one of those patchy places that leaves the reader hanging on what exactly that means and how it would be carried out); a massive flood that goes on for a week; the boat coming to rest on a mountain top; and U. using birds which he releases to find out if the land is now clear and able to provide sustenance. It concludes with the god Ea chiding the gods who sent the flood, telling them that they must not punish humans too severely.
This is not my favorite text from antiquity, but it can easily be read in a day and, where there were sufficient verses recovered, it creates the enchantment of an early world and man's ideas of the community of gods. (Beowulf's Grendel beats Humbaba for an evil foe, and the Odyssey is a more memorable quest narrative. But this is where it all started. Being a silent film buff, I had the same feeling as I read some of the more obscure passages as I get when I'm watching a film from the 1910s that comes to us incomplete, with nitrate decomp muddying the images.)
Worth reading. Highly unusual fare compared to a lot of what I've taken up recently.

I like Robert Silverbergs version, Gilgamesh the King.

"Silverberg, presenting the Epic of Gilgamesh as a novel. In the afterword the author wrote "at all times I have attempted to interpret the fanciful and fantastic events of these poems in a realistic way, that is, to tell the story of Gilgamesh as though he were writing his own memoirs, and to that end I have introduced many interpretations of my own devising which for better or for worse are in no way to be ascribed to the scholars." - Wiki.