What are you reading? - Page 315

I'm usually not a reader of contemporary novels, but I guess I'm on a summer kick. Finished A Gesture Life (1999?), which I picked up for a dollar at a used book store. Not great, but not bad.

Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellows

enormous changes at the last minute by Grace Paley

I started reading it at B&N recently and really dug it. Not sure why I didn't buy it though. Started Master & Margarita just couldn't get into it.

Went to the Strand in NYC on Weds. Wow. I was looking for several books that had been out of print for a while and with almost all of them, multiple copies in paper and hardback.

Nor me.

Going to read Jupiter's Travels again I think, love that book.

I like Master and Margarita quite a bit, but am not finished yet. Have a lot of stuff to do the next 4-5 weeks and will not be able to read as much as I'd like to. Have you guys read Faust perchance? I have not lurked the book-threads here so I do not really know how Goethe and the likes are perceived here.


„Nun gut, wer bist du denn? - Ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.“

I've been reading a book of essays 'arguably' by, I believe, christipher hitchens, and I am really enjoying it. I don't read enough essays.

I read God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything 5 or 6 years ago and was not speechless with admiration, to say the least. Unfortunately, I can't remember most of it, but that is saying something as well. Have you read it? Seemed to be a big deal in the US at that time.

didn't read it, what I am enjoying is the essay structure, it is great for stoping and starting

I love essays.

Read "Dear American Airlines" and "The Outlaw Sea" the other day, started "Native" by David Plante last night, will finish it tomorrow is the plan.

I've read Agatha Christies "Murder On The Links" and Alan Moores "V For Vendetta" last weekend

Finished Jane Eyre and Tell it to the Mountain, reading Norwegian Wood 

+1. Beside the bed and I dip into it a few times a week. He could certainly put together a decent turn of phrase.

I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Shone a spotlight on the absurd claims of the monotheisms. Done with humour too.

Just finished Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer. A modern variation on Death in Venice.

Just started The Pale King , David Foster Wallace.

From what I understand not his best work but holy hell was it fantastic.

I'm now reading The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. I've read a couple of his works and his stuff utterly exhilarating. He is, IMO, the greatest essayist of the last 10 years. Hitch was too often just a blowhard who wanted to hear himself speak and try to impress everyone with his wit. De Botton instead creates an intimate universe with the reader and take him along with him on his journey and offers an insight into thinking and world. That's what a great essayist should do.