Just finished the last of the 'Karla' Le Carré books, Smiley's People. Definitely my favorite of his I've read so far. It is very tight, satisfying, with this strong melancholy and feel of ending. It was especially nice after the Honorable Schoolboy was a bit too unwieldy, with casually racist characters I wasn't as attached to.
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall A long but extremely satisfying journey through the political netherworld of the Tudors. There's something giddy about following the guy who effortlessly outwits the other guys. And my god it is written SO WELL. I know everyone says this about Mantel but it really is amazing how she can just master a completely new style for each new book. It's a completely different beast from Beyond Black, which is also a masterpiece.
Now onto something much shorter:
Alessandro Baricco - Silk I loved his recent novel The Young Bride so this is my first dive into the back catalogue
Last edited by HotFingersClub on Fri May 17, 2019 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
Still my least favorite Orwell of what I read but had some really great bits. The ending was pretty good.
My second Kipling and I liked it but a lot less than Kim where I was shocked by how good that was. I was also sort of surprised how much this was about the British army in India than the Indian people themselves that I thought from reading Kim/knowing about Jungle Book. Still, a quick page turning fun read
I've recently been really getting into cricket so I thought I'd read this. Really loved it, from the Daily Mail blurb on the front I was a little worried that it would be pretty fluffy/Merrie England but it was surprisingly a pretty left-take if obviously a lover of Cricket and esp. after hearing so much about W.G. Grace (and his shamateurism still) I was ready for it to be elegaic about him and you can tell the author doesn't really think much of Grace. Fun book, though when it got to the post-WWII stuff I lost a little interest maybe because *I'M* a little interested in a Merrie England
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Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
HotFingersClub wrote: Alessandro Baricco - Silk I loved his recent novel The Young Bride so this is my first dive into the back catalogue
This was okay, a haiku-esque fable about a silkworm trader torn between his wife in France and his contact's concubine in Japan. Difficult not to notice in 2019 that the concubine fantasy woman is an Asian girl whose "eyes did not have an oriental slant, and her face was the face of a young girl" and also she can't speak
[Extremely dehydrated Butt-Head voice] Uhhhh... this sucks. The only compelling thing about it is its setting in the climate-destabilized U.S. of the near future. Aside from that it's a mediocre thriller written without style. Many things here irritate me in small ways: we learn how the main character pronounces his own name only after ~200 pages. Sentences are repeated almost word-for-word in different chapters because Bacigalupi writes in clichés. Corny tough-talking dialogue, much of which occurs at gunpoint. Constant double-crossing, to the brink of comedy. Characters are constantly "shooting looks," shaking their heads, fiddling with objects etc. while they talk. This is just filler. Yes I am jealous that this guy probably churns out pages quickly. He's eager to see his female characters socked, restrained, tortured and painfully fucked but I don't read it as ♫ misogyny ♫ so much as a tedious quota of sex and violence.
Der Richter und sein Henker - A fun, simple detective story that isn't too trying on my admittedly poor German. Although I feel quite comfortable with the material, I'm still a bit confused by how directional German prose fiction can be. I'm not really sure if this is a failure of my understanding, imagination, or what. I figure a native speaker is using the hinauf(s) and davon(s) to really construct the space in their head, but I usually end up feeling a sense of spatial disequilibrium.
sam was a guest on the antifada podcast i'm pretty passionate about housing and urban planning so if you're interested in that along with capitalism and real estate, i highly recommend this book!
The Once and Future King is one of my absolute favorite books of all time, tbh
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
Kenny wrote:The Once and Future King is one of my absolute favorite books of all time, tbh
That's what i knew TH White from but I never read it through all the way. Apparently he wrote this book right before Once and Future King but it didn't get published until way later
it's about how he moved to a house in the middle of the woods during the 30s and tried to train a hawk using a manual from the 1600s without knowing anything about hawk training. So he stayed awake for 3 days with this thing perched on his arm
I love Simenon but have only read his roman durs. This is my first Inspector Maigret and I'm really enjoying it. Maigret is almost like a proto-Philip Marlowe in his calm inscrutability.
I've only read Krull House by Simenon but I didn't really like it at all :-/ maybe I just didn't get it
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ