Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
Fiction I'm thinking about reading (in the near future in no particular order):
ReplyDeleteNaked Lunch by William Burroughs
Generations of Winter by Vassily Aksyonov
The Riders by Tim Winton
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche
Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
''Curtains For Three'' by Rex Stout:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NA6M5O/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B002TCT2KG&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0XXZFAYJ1N7DAD2CVYPZ
these three are not among the very best in the series
Fat man Wolfe is one of my favorite characters as he and I have so much in common: both love to eat, read, and sit around. The difference being he was a lot wealthier than I am and he didn't particularly like women (shame on him!).
I can vouch for Generations of Winter. Excellent book.
ReplyDeleteThat Tree of Codes looks amazing! The Foer family must all be geniuses. One brother just published a book on becoming a champion memory contestant (I'm assuming that's one sign of some sort of genius).
ReplyDeleteI keep saying I want to take a break and read some fiction, but I've been reading a lot of correspondence and 19th c. reports. Books I've picked up recently include Parini's Last Station about Tolstoy and his Passage of HM about Melville. And the Carey that I just ordered last week. I have a couple trips coming up so would be nice to have a novel along for a change of pace.
And I still have that new translation of Dr. Zhivago on the stack. Somewhere in my subconscious there's still a strong connection to Russian literature.
I've been on a non-fiction run of late but my fiction to read plie has a slim short story collection by James Salter"Last Night" a collection of Barry Hannah short stories"Long,Last,Happy"The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson.Grinos by Charles Portis and my first Austen"Mansfield Park" I also have a jones to reread "Recapitulation" by Wallace Stegner.All but the Hannah I bought myself.Hannah was a X-mas gift from a brother.
ReplyDeleteThat's Gringos.
ReplyDeleteJAbel: I have an unread copy of Recapitulation. I take it you think highly of it since you contemplate reading it again.
ReplyDeleteMy wife started reading a Lithuanian translation of "The Shack." I was disappointed to find out this is primarily a Christian tract disguised as a horror story,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/books/24shack.html
This and the Millennium series, which I promised myself not to read, top the bookseller lists here.
I'm sure they top the lists here too.....
ReplyDeleteRick, if you haven't read Big Rock Candy Mountain you should start with that (this one picks up the same characters). Until I became so stuck on Moby Dick, I was sure BRCM was the great American novel (i.e., American story) people always talked about but could never identify.
I didn't know Recapitulation was a kind of sequel.
ReplyDeleteYes it takes place years later involving one of the sons returning to Salt Lake City for a funeral.It jumps between the psent and the past seamlessly.It was the first Stegner I read but Avrds is probably right in reading BRCM first.
ReplyDeleteI read Recapitulation per your recommendation, and sort of vaguely recall that you liked this one better than BRCM.
ReplyDeleteI'm the first to admit that Big Rock Candy Mountain isn't necessarily a great novel -- it's a big messy old fashioned novel -- but I still think it's a great book about America. I've read it three or four times and love it more each time. But then I live in the West, and actually lived in Great Falls as a kid for awhile, which is where some of the book takes place.
There's something that really gets at the idea of the American Dream in it that's hard to resist.
I like Stegner a lot. I particularly liked Angle of Repose. Haven't read Recapitulation though.
ReplyDeleteAngle of Repose is a beautiful book.I've read all the Stegner novels and for some reason that one wound up last several years ago.I'm glad I waited to read that one last but it wasn't by any design on my part.
ReplyDeleteAvrds,I don't know that I like it better but it was my first Stegner and as you say BRCM is a big messy book and the sequel is a much neater package.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if this will show up for you(most recent books on Goodreads website):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.goodreads.com/review/list/335523-marti-lewis?shelf=read&sort=date_read
This week I've been reading Walter Mondale's memoir. It was a Christmas gift from my brother and my first paper book read in a while. Font is light and smallish, which makes me miss reading on the kindle. I put it down for a couple of days.
Find myself reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami, who is all the rage in Vilnius. I think every one of his books has been translated into Lithuanian. Not quite sure what the fuss is all about, but I am enjoying this book much more than I did Norwegian Wood.
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