What have you read lately?

[hmaria1609]

Finished from the library: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally
I read the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition--it's 1,124 pages long.  All I can say: Wow, what a trilogy!

[apl68]

Finished from the library: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally
I read the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition--it's 1,124 pages long.  All I can say: Wow, what a trilogy!

I read the first volume some years back.  It was good, but I never got around to reading the rest.

[Parasaurolophus]

Not much to show for October, but I was busy:

Robert J. Sawyer - Foreigner: More or less dinosaur Freud/Lacan + Leif Erikson, but better? It was pretty good, and made for a neat conclusion to the saga. Happy to report that I have this one as a signed copy, too! These are definitely his best works. They're such a fun romp.

Chris Moriarty - Spin State: Impressive scifi world-building for a debut novel, but the pacing was kind of uneven. It's sort of a noir thriller on an orbital station + space colony, but not all that mysterious or suspenseful. It was pretty OK, but I'm not sure I need to revisit that universe, as impressive as the worldbuilding was (it really was quite intricate!).

[Harlow2]

Finished from the library: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally
I read the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition--it's 1,124 pages long.  All I can say: Wow, what a trilogy!

I read the first volume some years back.  It was good, but I never got around to reading the rest.

I read it when I was 15 at the suggestion of my English teacher. I was enthralled, and I've often wondered if I would like it as an adult. Have seen it mentioned twice in the last months (your post being one).

[hmaria1609]

I read it when I was 15 at the suggestion of my English teacher. I was enthralled, and I've often wondered if I would like it as an adult. Have seen it mentioned twice in the last months (your post being one).

Thanks!  I'd seen older editions of the trilogy at the library and articles written about it.

Tiina Nunnally won an award for her translation for the 3rd and final installment The Cross. She has an extensive background in Scandinavian literature and has translated other Norwegian literary works.
I definitely recommend the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition to enjoy the complete trilogy in one volume!

[Harlow2]

How much does it weigh? 😀

[FishProf]

I just finished (with Smolt) the audiobook of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, read by the author.  A fun Halloween season story.  A nice contrast to the film.

I could listen to Neil Gaiman read the yellow pages and be entranced.

[hmaria1609]

How much does it weigh? 😀

A gallon of milk!  :D

[paultuttle]

Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series.

[apl68]

The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.  It's a rare example of a "literary" novel that I personally found very readable.  It has well-drawn characters, a vivid sense of setting and society, and a writing style that is distinctive without coming across as affected or obtrusive.  It also, despite the author's clearly serious intent, is unafraid to show a sense of humor. 

The Leopard is set in Sicily amid the upheaval of the Italian unification in the early 1860s.  The protagonist is a highly-ranked aristocrat who recognizes that the almost-medieval society to which he owes his power and privilege is unavoidably about to change.  He chooses to accommodate himself to the changes, in what proves a successful effort to preserve as much of the family's wealth and influence as he can.  Although the focus is largely on the aristocracy, there are also insights into how the other half lives.  Lampedusa also speaks his mind about how it was that so many in southern Italy came to regard the government of the new unified Italy, the leaders of which came from other regions, as a kind of permanent foreign occupation.  Lampedusa was himself a titled aristocrat who reportedly based much of the story on the experiences of his own recent ancestors.

The final chapters carry the story on through the protagonist's death of old age, all the way to 1910.  For all that the protagonist is an immensely rich, privileged fellow who more or less succeeds all the way through life, he finds himself discontented a great deal of the time.  Even the most wealthy and powerful of human beings can't make everything in life turn out the way they want.  Toward the end he looks back on his life and figures that in seventy-three years he got a total of maybe two or three years of genuine happiness and satisfaction.  Years later his spinster daughter comes to realize that it was she, and not all the people she spent her life blaming, who was responsible for her failure to marry the man of her dreams.

So ultimately The Leopard has the same theme that I've found running through pretty much all of "serious" fiction--that life is mostly a big disappointment, and you're either never going to get what you want, or will find that it really isn't that satisfying.  Well...yeah.  If we make our own pursuit of happiness and pleasure, however we define these, our main goals in life, we ARE apt to end up spending a lot of our lives feeling disappointed and frustrated.  The thing is, it doesn't HAVE to be this way, if we focus on a perspective that goes beyond ourselves and this life (And I'm not talking about the Zen solution of just learning not to care, either).  I wish we could see fiction that recognizes this, without either the unconvincing pat endings of so much genre fiction, or "serious" fiction's insistence on the misery of life in reaction to that.

[ab_grp]

Now we are reading another book recommended on this thread, Chances Are (Russo).  We're only a couple chapters in but are enjoying it so far.  Russo seems to be pretty consistent (in a lot of ways).

Finished this a night or two ago.  I really enjoy his writing and various turns of phrase.  This was another of his with some pretty dark material.  The plot was quite intriguing, though the story is a bit hard to believe.  I guess that's part of what he means by the title.  Anyway, not my favorite nor my least favorite of his novels.

So we started on the fourth book of a series we've been reading, Iron Gold (Pierce Brown).  Like the previous books, it is taking a bit to get into, and the protagonist is a bit much.  Still, I've enjoyed the others once the story gets going, so I will hang in there.  Without giving too much away, this one seems to focus on rebuilding a society in the aftermath of a great war between the castes. 

[hmaria1609]

From the library...
Finishing: Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson (YA)

Next up: A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry
#3 and finale in the "Fisher & Raven Mystery" series set in 1850 Edinburgh.

[ergative]

So we started on the fourth book of a series we've been reading, Iron Gold (Pierce Brown).  Like the previous books, it is taking a bit to get into, and the protagonist is a bit much.  Still, I've enjoyed the others once the story gets going, so I will hang in there.  Without giving too much away, this one seems to focus on rebuilding a society in the aftermath of a great war between the castes.

I started reading the first in the series (Red Rising, was it?) and had the same opinion, but couldn't be bothered to plough through.

Absolutive and I are now reading Lucy Mangan's Are We Having Fun Yet, which was originally marketed under the title of Diary of a Suburban Lady, a clear homage to E. M. Delafield's delightful, charming, witty, wonderful Diary of a Provincial Lady. I think it's good that we knew that, because it's not something we would have picked up without knowing its origins, and it is just as wonderful and charming and delightful as its predecessor. It's exactly what its (original) title says: the diary of a woman who lives in the suburbs around London, who juggles a part-time job, two kids, a husband who does all the tiresome things that stereotypical patriarchal husbands do--well-meaning attempts to 'help' that just make things harder, for example--and spends a great many pages wishing for things like an opportunity to have a bowel movement in peace.

Much of it reminds me of things my own mother complained about (especially the desire for uninterrupted bathroom time), and my father still does those tiresome attempts to help that just make things harder. It's also extremely, extremely funny. The children are such a hoot.

[mamselle]

The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.  It's a rare example of a "literary" novel that I personally found very readable.  It has well-drawn characters, a vivid sense of setting and society, and a writing style that is distinctive without coming across as affected or obtrusive.  It also, despite the author's clearly serious intent, is unafraid to show a sense of humor. 

The Leopard is set in Sicily amid the upheaval of the Italian unification in the early 1860s.  The protagonist is a highly-ranked aristocrat who recognizes that the almost-medieval society to which he owes his power and privilege is unavoidably about to change.  He chooses to accommodate himself to the changes, in what proves a successful effort to preserve as much of the family's wealth and influence as he can.  Although the focus is largely on the aristocracy, there are also insights into how the other half lives.  Lampedusa also speaks his mind about how it was that so many in southern Italy came to regard the government of the new unified Italy, the leaders of which came from other regions, as a kind of permanent foreign occupation.  Lampedusa was himself a titled aristocrat who reportedly based much of the story on the experiences of his own recent ancestors.

The final chapters carry the story on through the protagonist's death of old age, all the way to 1910.  For all that the protagonist is an immensely rich, privileged fellow who more or less succeeds all the way through life, he finds himself discontented a great deal of the time.  Even the most wealthy and powerful of human beings can't make everything in life turn out the way they want.  Toward the end he looks back on his life and figures that in seventy-three years he got a total of maybe two or three years of genuine happiness and satisfaction.  Years later his spinster daughter comes to realize that it was she, and not all the people she spent her life blaming, who was responsible for her failure to marry the man of her dreams.

So ultimately The Leopard has the same theme that I've found running through pretty much all of "serious" fiction--that life is mostly a big disappointment, and you're either never going to get what you want, or will find that it really isn't that satisfying.  Well...yeah.  If we make our own pursuit of happiness and pleasure, however we define these, our main goals in life, we ARE apt to end up spending a lot of our lives feeling disappointed and frustrated.  The thing is, it doesn't HAVE to be this way, if we focus on a perspective that goes beyond ourselves and this life (And I'm not talking about the Zen solution of just learning not to care, either).  I wish we could see fiction that recognizes this, without either the unconvincing pat endings of so much genre fiction, or "serious" fiction's insistence on the misery of life in reaction to that.

CS Lewis' Perelandra trilogy might appeal, or "Til We Have Faces."

M.

[apl68]

The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.  It's a rare example of a "literary" novel that I personally found very readable.  It has well-drawn characters, a vivid sense of setting and society, and a writing style that is distinctive without coming across as affected or obtrusive.  It also, despite the author's clearly serious intent, is unafraid to show a sense of humor. 

The Leopard is set in Sicily amid the upheaval of the Italian unification in the early 1860s.  The protagonist is a highly-ranked aristocrat who recognizes that the almost-medieval society to which he owes his power and privilege is unavoidably about to change.  He chooses to accommodate himself to the changes, in what proves a successful effort to preserve as much of the family's wealth and influence as he can.  Although the focus is largely on the aristocracy, there are also insights into how the other half lives.  Lampedusa also speaks his mind about how it was that so many in southern Italy came to regard the government of the new unified Italy, the leaders of which came from other regions, as a kind of permanent foreign occupation.  Lampedusa was himself a titled aristocrat who reportedly based much of the story on the experiences of his own recent ancestors.

The final chapters carry the story on through the protagonist's death of old age, all the way to 1910.  For all that the protagonist is an immensely rich, privileged fellow who more or less succeeds all the way through life, he finds himself discontented a great deal of the time.  Even the most wealthy and powerful of human beings can't make everything in life turn out the way they want.  Toward the end he looks back on his life and figures that in seventy-three years he got a total of maybe two or three years of genuine happiness and satisfaction.  Years later his spinster daughter comes to realize that it was she, and not all the people she spent her life blaming, who was responsible for her failure to marry the man of her dreams.

So ultimately The Leopard has the same theme that I've found running through pretty much all of "serious" fiction--that life is mostly a big disappointment, and you're either never going to get what you want, or will find that it really isn't that satisfying.  Well...yeah.  If we make our own pursuit of happiness and pleasure, however we define these, our main goals in life, we ARE apt to end up spending a lot of our lives feeling disappointed and frustrated.  The thing is, it doesn't HAVE to be this way, if we focus on a perspective that goes beyond ourselves and this life (And I'm not talking about the Zen solution of just learning not to care, either).  I wish we could see fiction that recognizes this, without either the unconvincing pat endings of so much genre fiction, or "serious" fiction's insistence on the misery of life in reaction to that.

CS Lewis' Perelandra trilogy might appeal, or "Til We Have Faces."

M.

True, there's always C.S. Lewis.  But he hasn't had a chance to write anything new in a long, long time!  "Christian Fiction" as a contemporary publishing phenomenon consists almost entirely of chastely-written romance novels, usually historical or featuring Amish protagonists.  Which is okay as far as it goes--we buy it all the time for our library patrons who like it.  But fiction that deals with Christian themes and is not all about romantic or close family relationships is awfully rare.  One of the reasons why I've been writing in recent years has been an effort to supply the sort of work that I see missing.  The few people who've read it seem to like it, but I don't know who would publish it.  It doesn't fit the narrow mold of contemporary Christian romantic fiction, and since it's not written like Flannery O'Connor or Walker Percy it's doubtful any secular publisher would ever touch it.