reading 2011
1.) Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle (Ancient Greek - English)
2.) Confessions - St. Augustine (Latin - English) (Though it should be said that this volume was only books 1-10, I don’t know why)
3.) The Dean’s December - Saul Bellow
4.) Mr. Sammler’s Planet - Saul Bellow
5.) The Conquest of Malaria - Frank Snowden
6.) Luces de Bohemia - Ramón Valle-Inclán (Spanish) (Play)
7.) Bodas de Sangre - Federico García Lorca (Spanish) (Play)
8.) Humboldt’s Gift - Saul Bellow
9.) Beethoven was 1/16th Black - Nadine Gordimer
10.) By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolaño (Spanish-English)
11.) Elizabeth Costello - J. M. Coetzee
12.) The Changeling - Kenzaburo Oe (Japanese - English)
13.) Bullet Park - John Cheever
14.) Last Night - James Salter
15.) Light Years - James Salter
16.) A Book of Common Prayer - Joan Didion
17.) Steps - Jerzy Kosinski
18.) In the Beauty of the Lilies - John Updike
19.) Kant - Roger Scruton
20.) The Counterlife - Philip Roth
21.) The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
22.) Open City - Teju Cole
23.) Emerald City - Jennifer Egan
24.) About a Mountain - John D’Agata
25.) A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
26.) How Fiction Works - James Wood
27.) David Golder - Irène Némirovsky (French - English)
28.) Snow in Autumn - Irène Némirovsky (French - English)
29.) Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí - Javier Marías (Spanish)
30.) A Secular Age - Charles Taylor
31.) Swann’s Way - Marcel Proust (French - English)
32.) Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb (2) (Hungarian - English)
33.) The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
34.) Aspectos de Mito - Mircea Eliade (French - Spanish)
35.) Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche (German - English)
For the last two years or so I had been reading wildly enthusiastic praise for Roberto Bolaño. I read a short novel of his that I got from the public library in translation. I felt that I should probably read the original, but I got it off the shelf in the library and decided to read it anyway. It was good and its form (the brevity, the tone of the narration) was successful.
The Changeling was a very disappointing and bad novel. I had read the first chapter when it was published as a short piece in Granta and I thought it was excellent, had an excellent central idea, and I was looking forward to reading the whole novel. It was much longer than it should have been and the writing was lackluster and some of the things that you sensed were supposed to be shocking or intriguing or powerful were just boring. In addition the translation seemed bad. I say “seemed” because I don’t know what was there in the original, maybe the original was just as bad and the translator was being faithful to its badness.
I began to read James Salter because the Paris Review website was doing a tribute to him and had all sorts of praise. First I read his newest book of short stories and found it okay. Then I read his novel “Light Years” and found it almost unbearably tedious. Halfway through I already knew that I didn’t want to be reading it, but I thought, “halfway, damn, better struggle through to the end.” I wished that I had come to this realization a quarter of the way through because then I could have justified quitting. Everyone praises his crystalline cold style but I think it is much better suited to short stories. I guess this novel has become somewhat better retrospectively. One odd thing about James Salter is that if you look at what people write about him online, I’m talking about amateur critics, amazon pages and so on, they all tend to use the same phrases and stuff, above all, the epithet “a writer’s writer.” What does this say? Maybe that the people who repeat such a phrase want to identify with the critic, the writer? That they are a writer because they appreciate a writer’s writer? Secondly, I have to say that the Paris Review’s brand is really sullied by their online staff. I mean they can write whatever they want but it seems like if you have an identity (or brand) as the magazine that publishes some of the most serious author interviews of all time, you might want to maintain it.
“In the Beauty of the Lillies” was just bad. Badly written, not a good plot. I had read some comments that made it sound good and I was disappointed.
“About a Mountain” was another book I saw praised, and so I was surprised when it was also pretty bad. It’s non-fiction, and the factual information in the book is interesting but it just doesn’t work out in the end. And the writing isn’t as good as it needs to be, either. Scott Esposito’s review is here http://criticalflame.org/nonfiction/0510_esposito.htm
So after all my complaining, what was actually good? Saul Bellow for one. Some people seem to find The Dean’s December boring or wanting, but I enjoyed it. Mr Sammler’s Planet is one of his better novels, I think, and its short length is a strength. Humboldt’s Gift, on the other hand, is much too long for its plot. A lot of Bellow’s novels tend to have a large “retrospective” element to their plot, and this pensive/reflective tone works best in a shorter work. Augie March, finally, was excellent; its fame is fully justified.
Steps was unlike most things I have ever read and for that reason I found it very interesting.
Javier Marías’s novel was really good and I hope to read some more of his writing soon.
A Secular Age was great and really interesting.
Journey by Moonlight I read for the second time in two years. There are some books that stay in your mind and grow bigger and better in retrospect. This is one. It seems simple, silly, farcical, and the writing is charming and smooth, but it deals with so many weird and deep topics. The first time I read it, I came to the end and thought, “OK, that was all right, short, odd, kinda funny…” but I just kept on thinking about it. One example. At the very beginning, the main character is on his honeymoon in Venice. One night he spends the whole night absent-mindedly wandering the streets, thus terrifying his wife. The next night he tries to explain to her certain secrets of his past. After a few paragraphs of exposition he says, as an aside, “I’m putting this rather well, don’t you think? Perhaps it’s this excellent bottle of Sangiovese…” I think this is a really amusing way to excuse a character’s excessive eloquence, and is characteristic of the light and charming tone of the book in general. But actually throughout the book, wine comes back repeatedly, linked to anti-rational death-wish which is one of the major themes of the book. I only realized this after finishing the book for the second time.
2.) Confessions - St. Augustine (Latin - English) (Though it should be said that this volume was only books 1-10, I don’t know why)
3.) The Dean’s December - Saul Bellow
4.) Mr. Sammler’s Planet - Saul Bellow
5.) The Conquest of Malaria - Frank Snowden
6.) Luces de Bohemia - Ramón Valle-Inclán (Spanish) (Play)
7.) Bodas de Sangre - Federico García Lorca (Spanish) (Play)
8.) Humboldt’s Gift - Saul Bellow
9.) Beethoven was 1/16th Black - Nadine Gordimer
10.) By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolaño (Spanish-English)
11.) Elizabeth Costello - J. M. Coetzee
12.) The Changeling - Kenzaburo Oe (Japanese - English)
13.) Bullet Park - John Cheever
14.) Last Night - James Salter
15.) Light Years - James Salter
16.) A Book of Common Prayer - Joan Didion
17.) Steps - Jerzy Kosinski
18.) In the Beauty of the Lilies - John Updike
19.) Kant - Roger Scruton
20.) The Counterlife - Philip Roth
21.) The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
22.) Open City - Teju Cole
23.) Emerald City - Jennifer Egan
24.) About a Mountain - John D’Agata
25.) A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
26.) How Fiction Works - James Wood
27.) David Golder - Irène Némirovsky (French - English)
28.) Snow in Autumn - Irène Némirovsky (French - English)
29.) Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí - Javier Marías (Spanish)
30.) A Secular Age - Charles Taylor
31.) Swann’s Way - Marcel Proust (French - English)
32.) Journey by Moonlight - Antal Szerb (2) (Hungarian - English)
33.) The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
34.) Aspectos de Mito - Mircea Eliade (French - Spanish)
35.) Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche (German - English)
For the last two years or so I had been reading wildly enthusiastic praise for Roberto Bolaño. I read a short novel of his that I got from the public library in translation. I felt that I should probably read the original, but I got it off the shelf in the library and decided to read it anyway. It was good and its form (the brevity, the tone of the narration) was successful.
The Changeling was a very disappointing and bad novel. I had read the first chapter when it was published as a short piece in Granta and I thought it was excellent, had an excellent central idea, and I was looking forward to reading the whole novel. It was much longer than it should have been and the writing was lackluster and some of the things that you sensed were supposed to be shocking or intriguing or powerful were just boring. In addition the translation seemed bad. I say “seemed” because I don’t know what was there in the original, maybe the original was just as bad and the translator was being faithful to its badness.
I began to read James Salter because the Paris Review website was doing a tribute to him and had all sorts of praise. First I read his newest book of short stories and found it okay. Then I read his novel “Light Years” and found it almost unbearably tedious. Halfway through I already knew that I didn’t want to be reading it, but I thought, “halfway, damn, better struggle through to the end.” I wished that I had come to this realization a quarter of the way through because then I could have justified quitting. Everyone praises his crystalline cold style but I think it is much better suited to short stories. I guess this novel has become somewhat better retrospectively. One odd thing about James Salter is that if you look at what people write about him online, I’m talking about amateur critics, amazon pages and so on, they all tend to use the same phrases and stuff, above all, the epithet “a writer’s writer.” What does this say? Maybe that the people who repeat such a phrase want to identify with the critic, the writer? That they are a writer because they appreciate a writer’s writer? Secondly, I have to say that the Paris Review’s brand is really sullied by their online staff. I mean they can write whatever they want but it seems like if you have an identity (or brand) as the magazine that publishes some of the most serious author interviews of all time, you might want to maintain it.
“In the Beauty of the Lillies” was just bad. Badly written, not a good plot. I had read some comments that made it sound good and I was disappointed.
“About a Mountain” was another book I saw praised, and so I was surprised when it was also pretty bad. It’s non-fiction, and the factual information in the book is interesting but it just doesn’t work out in the end. And the writing isn’t as good as it needs to be, either. Scott Esposito’s review is here http://criticalflame.org/nonfiction/0510_esposito.htm
So after all my complaining, what was actually good? Saul Bellow for one. Some people seem to find The Dean’s December boring or wanting, but I enjoyed it. Mr Sammler’s Planet is one of his better novels, I think, and its short length is a strength. Humboldt’s Gift, on the other hand, is much too long for its plot. A lot of Bellow’s novels tend to have a large “retrospective” element to their plot, and this pensive/reflective tone works best in a shorter work. Augie March, finally, was excellent; its fame is fully justified.
Steps was unlike most things I have ever read and for that reason I found it very interesting.
Javier Marías’s novel was really good and I hope to read some more of his writing soon.
A Secular Age was great and really interesting.
Journey by Moonlight I read for the second time in two years. There are some books that stay in your mind and grow bigger and better in retrospect. This is one. It seems simple, silly, farcical, and the writing is charming and smooth, but it deals with so many weird and deep topics. The first time I read it, I came to the end and thought, “OK, that was all right, short, odd, kinda funny…” but I just kept on thinking about it. One example. At the very beginning, the main character is on his honeymoon in Venice. One night he spends the whole night absent-mindedly wandering the streets, thus terrifying his wife. The next night he tries to explain to her certain secrets of his past. After a few paragraphs of exposition he says, as an aside, “I’m putting this rather well, don’t you think? Perhaps it’s this excellent bottle of Sangiovese…” I think this is a really amusing way to excuse a character’s excessive eloquence, and is characteristic of the light and charming tone of the book in general. But actually throughout the book, wine comes back repeatedly, linked to anti-rational death-wish which is one of the major themes of the book. I only realized this after finishing the book for the second time.