Books

[StoutAndAle]

Finally finished "Catch-22". It was a long, long slog. Enjoyable for the most part but a slog nonetheless. Trying to remember each character and their eccentricities was a bit difficult. I certainly gets the number one spot for a piece of fiction that has taken me the longest time to read - giving up on Ulysses twice so far notwithstanding.

I haven't read much fiction since I was in my early twenties. Everything I read tends to be factual or biography now. I've read dense history books in half the time it took to read "Catch-22" , maybe my brain isn't wired for novels any more.

Currently reading and enjoying (and already halfway done with) Duff McKagan's first book "It's So Easy" - a brain sorbet if you will. 

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I'd call Catch-22 not an anti-war novel but an anti-war anti-novel, so don't take your experience with it as a reflection of a changing capacity for assimilating novels in general!

[Pedrito]

Rereading The Importance of being Earnest..how great was Oscar Wilde! I've read The Portrait and Lady Windemere's Fan also..would anyone have other recommendations?

[StoutAndAle]

I'd call Catch-22 not an anti-war novel but an anti-war anti-novel, so don't take your experience with it as a reflection of a changing capacity for assimilating novels in general!

That's very true. There are certain parts of the book where I wonder was Heller intentionally messing with the form or if it was it a fluke? Things like having entire, long paragraphs with no punctuation but yet somehow grammatically correct.

Part of what too me so long was having to re-read pages because I was trying to grasp the (fairly feint) narrative.

My old man, who has read it, offered me the following advice "Read it, you'll get a sense of it. Don't over-analyse it or it'll drive you mad. Which is the basis of the novel - they're all being driven mad on that island".

[StoutAndAle]

Rereading The Importance of being Earnest..how great was Oscar Wilde! I've read The Portrait and Lady Windemere's Fan also..would anyone have other recommendations?

Oscar Wilde's stuff is deadly. "Lady Windemere's Fan" is probably my favourite. "De Profoundis" is worth a read, if not a little bleak and I suppose the closest you'll get to Wilde's autobiography.

My late uncle was a Wilde fanatic. He gave me a beautiful hardback edition of his the entire Oscar Wilde bibliography for birthday sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. It still has pride of place on my shelf. My mother told me recently that he'd arrive at our house after a skinful of drink on a Friday night "I have come to read to my nephews!" and then tells us the story of the Happy Prince or the Selfish Giant whlist half demented from Guinness - "And that's your father's side of the family" - to be honest I didn't necessarily see it as a bad thing. 

His party piece was to recite "The Ballad Of Reading Gaol" from memory - if you've read that poem then you know it's a surefire way to ruin a party. Someone would usually tell him to shut the fuck up after a while.

"The Chaplain would not kneel to pray.
By his dishonored grave.
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.....

.... And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"

[Pedrito]

Haha class, my mother's always reciting that too. I need to read some more stuff, a bit of digging needed I reckon. Earnest is just a perfect play in fairness..simply capital old fellow

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

The Picture of Dorian Gray is excellent, especially now in its "uncensored" version. De Profundis is an essential piece of unique human thought.

Years ago I had the pleasure of seeing possibly the best conceivable staging of The Importance of Being Earnest in the Abbey: Alan Stanford (George from Glenroe) played Oscar Wilde, who we open with in an absinthe bar in Paris during his exile. There are various other men there in the bar too and Wilde gets to telling the story of Earnest, using the assembled drinkers as his cast, with Wilde himself taking the role of Lady Bracknell in full drag (the other female parts also played in drag). Absolutely perfect... I couldn't imagine any other way of lifting that play up to another level.

[Eoin McLove]

Loved A Picture of Dorian Grey.  Bleak,  grimy,  timeless and incredibly entertaining.  I must give De Profundis a spin.

[Thorn]

Picked up Machines Like Me,  the new Ian McEwan, today.  I had no idea he had a new one out so it was a very pleasant surprise.  Nutshell was such a fantastic read and this one is shaping up nicely too. I felt he went a little off the boil prior to Nutshell with Solar and Sweet Tooth being merely good,  and The Children Act being merely very good (which is not really good enough by his standards) but it feels like he has tapped into some new wellspring of creativity.

Sniffing around for some authors I haven't read and might interest me and latched onto this , ordered Nutshell from Amazon, arrived last Friday, went to a market Sunday and picked up another four Mc Ewan so that's plenty of him on the shelves to start with. Might be a while til I get there though, currently reading Dickens' Bleak House (and listening to the new Xentrix, kinda like having a fine wine with a Big Mac).

[Eoin McLove]

Excellent.  You're in for a treat.  Enjoy 

[Eoin McLove]

Started into The Sorrows of Young Werther this morning.  I've never read any Goethe before and Faust has been high on my hit list for some time so this will ease me into his world somewhat.

[Giggles]

Has anybody read Ulysses and would you recommend it?

[Kurt Cocaine]

Has anybody read Ulysses and would you recommend it?

It's been on my bookshelf for about 4 years now. I'm going to have to wait till I knock the internet (phone, laptop, etc.) on the head again to delve properly into it.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

For totally arbitrary reasons, I decided at some point to read Finnegans Wake when I was 35 and Ulysses when I was 40. I'm 38 now and still haven't read all of Finnegans Wake, although I have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it I've read. I have Ulysses at home and still intend on sticking to my arbitrary plan for starting it.

[Eoin McLove]

And praying for death at 39?