What are you reading?

[California Dreamer]

Just finished "The Night of the Milky Way Railway" by Miyazawa Kenji. The idiot translator gave away the only plot twist in her introduction, the b*tch.

Almost finished Shirley Hazzard's "The Great Fire", which boasts the wimpiest wartime hero since the Sword of Honour trilogy (mind you he was played on TV by Daniel Craig, so he must have had a bit of cred).

Am about halfway through Roger MacDonald's "The Ballad of Desmond Kale". It's one of those 'convict Australia' sagas about an escaped convict sheep breeder who rustles some sheep and establishes the merino industry. It's a good yarn, has all the relevant convict slang ("traps, "grog",etc) and touches all the right cliches (flogging parson, drunkard governor, washerwoman with the heart of gold, inscrutable black tracker, etc). It won the Miles Franklin Award last year, which is our top literary prize.

 

[nioh]

Originally Posted by Dormouse

How do you like it?

So far about ~120 pages in, sadly nothing like her masterpiece The Secret History. Hopefully it will pick up some pace though.

 

[Britalian]

Just started Sciascia's 'The Day of the Owl'. Mafia in Sicily. Great dialogue.

 

[JetBlast]

Just for general interest?

Yea, just to have some prior knowledge on the subject. I haven't seen any good fiction that has stuck out at the library so usually when there is nothing there, I'll browse nonfiction for some general stuff.

JB

 

[alexei]

Russka by Edward Rutherfurd

 

[Britalian]

Has anyone here read 'The Age of Wire and String'? Strange and provocative. Strangely provocative.

 

[aportnoy]

Goldsworthy's "Caesar, Life of a Colossus"

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by aportnoy

Goldsworthy's "Caesar, Life of a Colossus"

Let me know if it's good when you're done. I love all things Roman.

 

[aportnoy]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

Let me know if it's good when you're done. I love all things Roman.

Will do GQ. About 50 pages in and it seems quite promising.

 

[johnapril]

"Fires," by Raymond Carver

 

[rdawson808]

I'm about half-way through Conspiracy of Fools, by Kurt Eichenwald, about Enron.

At this point it is getting boring. It's just more of the same page after page. I'm about to give up on it.

bob

 

[JBZ]

Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon. A murder mystery set against the backdrop of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, NM. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it and so far would give it a B/B-.

 

[designprofessor]

Ross King's

Judgement of Paris

covers the Salon's and the beginnings of Impressionism

King is very readable!

 

[Fabienne]

SUITE FRANÇAISE, by Irène NÃ

mirovsky, having a hard time finishing it.

The style is passable. She's very good at portraits, but it remains rather boring, despite the subject matter. Simplistic novel overall. I hear a film is in the works.

 

[jpeirpont]

For light reading, Manhattan Monologues by Louis Auchincloss and for heavier reading, The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.