Welcome to this week’s blog, and our roundup of your comments and photos from last week. There TommyCockles1 provided a fascinating recommendation:
I’m about half way through Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger. A soldier’s memoir of his experiences on the Western Front in the First World War, it’s the first account I’ve read from a German perceptive. It also differs in its tone; while all around him is broad destruction and arbitrary death, young Ernst is seemingly having the time of his life. He does convey the fear and the horrors endured by the men, although none of it seems to make a lasting impression on him ... it’ll be interesting to see what impact the final two years of the war will have on him (if any).
As you might expect, the immediate follow-up to that was a recommendation for EM Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front. “Truly,” says MildGloster, “one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking, delicate pieces of work concerning the Great War I have ever read.” machenbach also recommended the astonishing Schlump.
One of the week’s most intriguing questions came from katcalls, who named Keri Hulme, Abraham Verghese, Erin Morgenstern and Chard Harbach as offenders:
What of those authors who are painfully slow in their output? There are a few authors that come to mind whom I wish would just hurry up.
Answers so far have included George RR Martin (obviously), Donna Tartt, and Rohinton Mistry. BerlinBirdie also says:
JK Rowling apparently still has hundreds of Harry Potter ideas in her head, though she obviously feels she’s written down enough of them. It made me quite envious to hear that - you’d never get bored, would you?!
For all sorts of reasons, that thought leaves me feeling curiously bereft.
Elsewhere, SydneyH has been mulling over Hermann Hesse:
I loved Steppenwolf, and Narcissus and Goldmund is on my reading list. Are there any other good ones? The only other one I’ve read is Siddhartha, which I found kind of mellow and nice without having a strong connection to.
A reader called kmir recommended Knulp: “It always makes me think of the ‘swing scene’ in Kurosawa’s Ikiru.” The mighty Glass Bead Game also got favourable mention, while conedison told a suitably revelatory story about discovering one the 1960s counter-culture’s favourite authors:
I was introduced to Hermann Hesse’s work when in the mid 60’s on a plane going to LA, Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary was strolling up and down the aisle handing out copies of Magister Ludi like they were gumballs. I guess she was proselytising. I guess I was converted.
Another kind of enlightenment was discussed in lovely post from Sara Richards:
We were in Shropshire for a three day break - Travelodge + dog - and it rained relentlessly for our first full day. So we went to Hay on Wye, a dangerous place for book addicts. We were careful and managed to limit our purchases for once.
Among the titles that caught my eye was Loves Work by Gillian Rose. Rose was born into an orthodox Jewish family, was dyslexic but learnt to read so well that she read philosophy at Oxford. About this she writes, “The oppressive opulence of Oxford was married to a vision of philosophy which would have induced me a lifelong alienation from it, had I not already made the pact with my daemon.” Later, in New York, she was to discover contemporary continental philosophy which rekindled the flame.
This is a book that I know I will return to many times because it covers so many of the themes that concern me, Judaism, philosophy, love, loss and suffering. This isn’t a misery memoir but rather a reflection on those themes which is moving and ultimately hopeful. Rose wrote, “To live, to love, is to be failed” but those failures are magnificent in the lessons to be learnt.
The last line in this short book reads, “I will stay in the fray, in the revel of ideas and risk, learning, failing, wooing, grieving, trusting, working, reposing...” Gillian Rose was only to stay in the fray for another year.
James Ellroy gets a mention just about every week here on TLS, and generally (and justly), a pretty favourable one. But here to redress the balance is paulburns. He loved LA Confidential and American Tabloid. But, White Jazz, less so:
75-95% of it is almost incomprehensible garbage. The trashiest writing that I’ve read in years. How the same author who wrote The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, and L.A. Confidential could produce this dog of a book is absolutely beyond me.
The only reason I’m persisting with it -and believe me, it’s a struggle trying to understand most of this great big steaming pile of waste, is because some of the characters appear in American Tabloid, which is next on my TBR list. (I’m not even game to take a peep at it, lest it turns out to be similar.)
Ouch! Even Homer nods and even Ellroy goes down to the dumps. Although, VelmaNebraska did put in a few good words for the book: “Despite some niggles, I dug White Jazz at least as much as, if not more than, the rest of the LA Quartet.”
Finally, here’s murderofone who is in the enviable position of reading the great Philip Roth for the first time:
I’m reading American Pastoral by Phillip Roth. It’s my first book of his and I’m startled by the depth in which he gets into the mind of the protagonist. Moreover, Roth’s mastery as an author is his ability to jump around the various timescales in the novel with total ease - he doesn’t require a new chapter to go back or forward twenty years in the narrative. Sometimes, he doesn’t even need a new paragraph! I’m about two thirds of the way through and really enjoying it: a beautifully AMERICAN novel in the same way as Steinbeck’s East of Eden.
There are many more fine novels where that one came from...
Interesting links about books and reading
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A controversial claim that audio is a better way to consume books than print.
- The New York Times expresses surprise at wi-fi free British bookshops.
- A display of sarcastic titles on classic Penguin covers.
- Catch up on President Obama’s summer reading list.
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