That’s funny, I too have not finished it, even though I remember it being well written. AMERICAN PASTORAL, on the other hand, was absolutely incredible. As soon as I finished it I thought: I want to read it again. Roth is phenomenal. WHEN SHE WAS GOOD I think is also great and very underrated.”
I also did not finish The Goldfinch. It started strong but then just went off the rails… I think I skimmed the last third of the book just to see how it ended.
I thought THE GOLDFINCH was fascinating, compelling, bizarre, with some fairly far fetched story lines, but I very much liked it. I read it when it first came out. Good for you!
I really enjoyed this book when it first appeared (2013?). It's about the relations among a small group of students majoring in classical Greek at a small liberal arts college -- a topic all the more interesting to students and teachers at a time when the liberal arts and small private colleges are both endangered economically, in the U.S. as in the U.K.
I just reread it this year with Cams Campbell’s club and it’s still after decades my top 5 of all times. No other like it. Glad to see folks are reading it.
Completely agree, in the past I’ve been rereading it every year, usually in May. I am rereading it again this year as part of read-along on Substack. I lost count how many times I’ve read it by now. The only book I’ve reread this many times. The most incredible thing is that no matter how many times I’ve read it there is still some part of it that catches my attention and I go - oh I don’t recall this bit! I am a bit obsessed with it and try and get illustrated Russian editions of it for my small collection.
Many thanks for the recommendation Simon! And it’s a pleasure to be in company with the great @Cams Campbell. The Master and Margarita is a wild wild ride and a great book to read in company.
It is... but it's working in my favor because it's forcing me to be slower and more intentional about my reading time. I'm also finding that I'm retaining more of what I read since I'm reading smaller bits at a time.
My current take on Asimov, having just finished the "robots" books, is yes, with the caveat that I think Asimov's biggest strength was world building over... narration? I really can't say that I've had a point yet where I felt like any of his novels have had an "I don't want to put this down" effect on me (yet).
I am not particularly a science fiction fan, but I love, love, love Asimov’s 3 huge volumes of autobiography. I’m sure many people might find it boring (and horrifying - he’s full of flaws) because he goes into minute detail of almost every day of his life, but I find it takes me viscerally into 40’s and 50’s literary New York as if I had been there. I did like Robots of Dawn, though. And his short story The Last Question, about entropy, my favorite word.
Loved BRAIDING SWEETGRASS. Read it twice and listened once. The author reads it and it is beautiful. We're doing it for my monthly women's group later this year,and did read it for Couples'Group when it first came out, and then again for Close Readers' Group a couple of years ago.
I’m almost finished reading ‘THE DIVINE COMEDY’ by Dante Alighieri. So far I’ve really enjoyed it but the last section ‘Paradise’ is a slog to get through. 😴
I’m up to date with all the books in the slow read 😁
And I’m currently doing the slow read of ‘DOCTOR ZHIVAGO’ with Cams Campbell 🇷🇺
I just finished Canto XXX of Paradiso. I’m almost there. It is a slog, and I know I don’t know what I read, but the experience has been mind expanding. I hope to read a couple of companion books by Robert Hollander and Prue Shaw, and then tackle The Comedia again.
Thanks for the Divine Comedy update. I just read PURGATORIO, which I really enjoyed, but it was also slow going. I thought I should read the rest of the work, but maybe I will take a break before heading to Paradise. The translation makes a big difference. I started with one translation and couldn't get anywhere, then switched to a different one that had minimal but extremely helpful endnotes, and it greatly enhanced my reading.
WAR AND PEACE all year long - really enjoying this! Definitely very different from “I read it in high school” hehe
WOLF HALL TRILOGY saying goodbye to Wolf Hall… but not for long - five days, Wolf Hall!
REGENERATION and the poetry of Owen and Sassoon from Gutenberg Project - amazing - I have most of Barker’s books ready for continued reading.
BROTHERS Karamazov - absolutely love the serialized approach. It’s a intense modern style book with many great ideas…
THE ENIGMA OF ARRIVAL by Naipaul - just finished and it turned out to be a beautiful very different story - a novel, a fictional memoir with a lot of room for interpretation. It takes quite a bit of slow reading to really appreciate.
And talk about “discovery voltage” - after finishing Midhight’s Children, the Naipaul read came up, and completely unsolicited in a random book review - my current big read:
THE BOOK OF EVERLASTING THINGS by Aanchal Malchotra - that has to do with:
- India at the end of Colonial Age
-Partition
- the trauma of WWI and the times of WW2
- smell, a unique nose and perfumery
- magic of emotion between a Moslem child and a Hindi child
- Malhotra, from a younger, different generation, is a historian, like Rushdie, not a writer first, and is known for her historical narrative projects. A female voice recounting these stories!
Also queued up on that same discovery thread is MY BELOVED LIFE by Amitava Kumar, who led our Naipaul read with APS - a friend of Rushdie’s and a historical writer with roots in India, the story has snakes and ghosts of the past ….
THE FRAUD Zadie Smith - finished it with my library book club and presented. Good book with a lot of characters and literary and historical figures, colonialism history, very lightly and deftly written. Surprisingly, most people in my club did not find it engaging and didn’t finish …Oh well….
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Montgomery - just started with The Reader and The Writer - a classic with a lot of positivity and something from my shelves.
I love it so. My first time through, I was 20-ish, and read the last 400 or so pages in a day. It's a great miniseries, too. (Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.)
AI scares me in a work setting and on a creative level. I love there are people on here that are a wee oasis in what feels like a very backward way we are moving forward. I have to say I am loving REGENERATION by Pat Barker and as it was friend's bookgroup choice I am also loving MIDNIGHTS CHILDREN and your notes Simon. Other books I have read in April are LOBSTER AND OTHER THINGS I AM LEARNING TO LOVE by Hollie McNish, TRAINING FOR YOUR OLD LADY BODY by Elizabeth Davis and CLEOPATRA by Saara El-Arifi
Yes, I've mostly avoided AI discussion so far, as it seems so far removed from what we do. But then I am seeing AI used to write about books, and now it feels important to say explicitly that this is a space made by messy, imperfect humans!
I LOVED that book, my introduction to Murakami. Only one part could I not stomach, but the rest was fascinating. I remember exactly where I was when I was reading it . . . watching my mother slowly slide into dementia . . . reading it in the middle of the night helped me stay awake to watch her sleep so she wouldn't get up by herself and fall. Memorable for the book and the circumstances.
I love how a book can put you back in a place. I remember exactly where I was during a certain part of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. If you like Murakami, I’d recommend Killing Commedatore and IQ84.
This April will be marked as more of an insane book-buying month than book-reading month, although I did get a few in. Between visiting family back in Croatia and Independent Bookstore Day (which, in Chicago, is marked with a joint event called Book Crawl that involves 82 independent bookstores in Chicagoland area) I returned home with over 50 new books and exactly 0 clue as to when or where am I even going to get the time to read them all. This month's list includes:
ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME II by Solvej Balle / TRAVERSAL by Maria Popova / VERTIGO and AUSTERLITZ by W.G. Sebald
I don't know why I pushed off reading Project Hail Mary for so long because I love The Martian. Now, I will have to get his third book and read it too after Project Hail Mary and yes, I'm also really digging Heartwood.
Just started THOMAS CROMWELL by Diarmaid MacCullough. Read THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS by Rebecca West for my IRL book club. Highly recommend STRANGERS by Belle Burden. Trying to manage MASTER AND MARGARITA. Not doing so well. Slow reads of BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, BRING UP THE BODIES, and WAR AND PEACE. Also loving REGENERATION.
I'm currently rereading WOLF HALL and hoping to start BRING UP THE BODIES with you. Also reading SEEING OURSELVES: WOMEN'S SELF-PORTRAITS by Frances Borzello. In April I read IF YOU MUST GO, I WISH YOU TRIPLETS; THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE; PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER: A LIFE IN ART; and METALLIC REALMS by Lincoln Michel. And continuing to read along with the W&P slow read!
I am reprising a "summer of Walter Scott" that I did about 20 years ago, when I was a grad student (very non-traditional in terms of age) and had access to the university library. Now I am purchasing them in Penguin editions (used). So far I've read Rob ROB ROY, GUY MANNERING (my favorite), almost finished with IVANHOE, and next on the pile is THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN. On the way in the mail are WAVERLY, THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, and THE ANTIQUARY. What I love about Scott is the intricacy of his plots and how the lives of the characters interweave. His narrative style is also skillful, and shifts from third-person point of view to letters to conversations to move the story along, with the occasional narrator intervention to explain something. Language is charming and complex, requiring attention to keep the sometimes long sentences straight. Good practice, I think, in this age when so much prose is stripped to its minimal utilitarian purpose.
Ah I have both Rob Roy and Waverley on my tbr pile. I've never read any Scott but come across him *a lot* in my work at the moment. I'm going to go and visit Abbotsford soon, something I've been meaning to do for ages, since I found out that he hosted some French PoW officers there during the Napoleonic wars.
I've just finished a re-read of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, which is just as brilliant as I remember it being 10 years ago, when I first read it. I've also been slowly making my way through ANNA KARENINA for the last month or so. I'm just over halfway through. And, for pure joy, I have been reading THE INIMITABLE JEEVES, which never fails to get a chuckle out of me.
The Neapolitan novels, yes! I remember reading them shortly after they came out, they were my summer read and my family was not pleased because I was completely unreachable for the entire holiday. I wonder how they would hold up now as a reread. Still that good? Anna Karenina is one of my favourite novels of all time and I have the same irrational fear about rereading it, that it won’t be as good as I remember, which is of course absurd. It will almost certainly be better, but there is something about a first reading that feels too precious to risk.
Just started THE GOLDFINCH - Donna Tartt. In April, I read CAT’S CRADLE, AMERICAN PASTORAL, and LOST LAMBS.
Still holding strong in the W&P slow read. I’ve had so much fun!
Great! Now there's a book I once started and never finished! Wishing you better luck than I had.
That’s funny, I too have not finished it, even though I remember it being well written. AMERICAN PASTORAL, on the other hand, was absolutely incredible. As soon as I finished it I thought: I want to read it again. Roth is phenomenal. WHEN SHE WAS GOOD I think is also great and very underrated.”
Same!
I also did not finish The Goldfinch. It started strong but then just went off the rails… I think I skimmed the last third of the book just to see how it ended.
I thought THE GOLDFINCH was fascinating, compelling, bizarre, with some fairly far fetched story lines, but I very much liked it. I read it when it first came out. Good for you!
I loved The Goldfinch!
THE GOLDFINCH was loooonnngggg, and slow. It had its flaws (some pretty improbable plot twists), but I wound up enjoying it overall.
Oh, I loved THE GOLDFINCH, even though it made me suffer😢
I really enjoyed this book when it first appeared (2013?). It's about the relations among a small group of students majoring in classical Greek at a small liberal arts college -- a topic all the more interesting to students and teachers at a time when the liberal arts and small private colleges are both endangered economically, in the U.S. as in the U.K.
THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt - I also enjoyed it, especially having had a short stint at a similar college in the 80s
CAT'S CRADLE is a blast. Was impressed with GOLDFINCH as I read it, but it soured on me in retrospect.
Oh, Cat's Cradle I loved it!
I just finished THE MASTER AND MARGARITA by Bulgakov. Wild ride.
I just reread it this year with Cams Campbell’s club and it’s still after decades my top 5 of all times. No other like it. Glad to see folks are reading it.
Completely agree, in the past I’ve been rereading it every year, usually in May. I am rereading it again this year as part of read-along on Substack. I lost count how many times I’ve read it by now. The only book I’ve reread this many times. The most incredible thing is that no matter how many times I’ve read it there is still some part of it that catches my attention and I go - oh I don’t recall this bit! I am a bit obsessed with it and try and get illustrated Russian editions of it for my small collection.
It’s one of my favorites also. I get more out of it with every re-read.
I just started it for the slow read/read-a-long over on another Substack! Loving it so far.
I read M&M for the third time recently with Cams Campbell, and I’m looking forward to Henry Elliot’s upcoming discussions on the book.
Aye aye!
I don't know this book. Point me to a Substack reading group. It clearly has a passionate following!
@Cams Campbell and now @Henry Eliot – both highly worth subscribing to.
Many thanks for the recommendation Simon! And it’s a pleasure to be in company with the great @Cams Campbell. The Master and Margarita is a wild wild ride and a great book to read in company.
Thanks!
Cats with guns, Satan, a ball, romance, magical Christianity, Russian society satire…what more could a person want?
A wild ride indeed!
My current "ongoing" list is a bit large right now...
1984 (for a local bookshop's book club)
THE STARS, LIKE DUST (my goal is to read Asimov's robot/galactic empire/foundation books this year)
DEATH OF AN AUTHOR (audio version because my husky needs ALL the walks!)
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS
THE HOBBIT
And of course, WAR & PEACE.
Haha, your list is out of control! Would you recommend Asimov? I tried a few years ago but got nowhere...
It is... but it's working in my favor because it's forcing me to be slower and more intentional about my reading time. I'm also finding that I'm retaining more of what I read since I'm reading smaller bits at a time.
My current take on Asimov, having just finished the "robots" books, is yes, with the caveat that I think Asimov's biggest strength was world building over... narration? I really can't say that I've had a point yet where I felt like any of his novels have had an "I don't want to put this down" effect on me (yet).
I am not particularly a science fiction fan, but I love, love, love Asimov’s 3 huge volumes of autobiography. I’m sure many people might find it boring (and horrifying - he’s full of flaws) because he goes into minute detail of almost every day of his life, but I find it takes me viscerally into 40’s and 50’s literary New York as if I had been there. I did like Robots of Dawn, though. And his short story The Last Question, about entropy, my favorite word.
Oh interesting!
Loved BRAIDING SWEETGRASS. Read it twice and listened once. The author reads it and it is beautiful. We're doing it for my monthly women's group later this year,and did read it for Couples'Group when it first came out, and then again for Close Readers' Group a couple of years ago.
So far it's amazing! I love the way she writes; I'll have to check out the audio version!
Haha it’s nice to be among other hyper-multi-readers
I’m almost finished reading ‘THE DIVINE COMEDY’ by Dante Alighieri. So far I’ve really enjoyed it but the last section ‘Paradise’ is a slog to get through. 😴
I’m up to date with all the books in the slow read 😁
And I’m currently doing the slow read of ‘DOCTOR ZHIVAGO’ with Cams Campbell 🇷🇺
I just finished Canto XXX of Paradiso. I’m almost there. It is a slog, and I know I don’t know what I read, but the experience has been mind expanding. I hope to read a couple of companion books by Robert Hollander and Prue Shaw, and then tackle The Comedia again.
Thanks for the Divine Comedy update. I just read PURGATORIO, which I really enjoyed, but it was also slow going. I thought I should read the rest of the work, but maybe I will take a break before heading to Paradise. The translation makes a big difference. I started with one translation and couldn't get anywhere, then switched to a different one that had minimal but extremely helpful endnotes, and it greatly enhanced my reading.
Virgil makes it so much more interesting and so far he is not in Paradise
Continuing with our
WAR AND PEACE all year long - really enjoying this! Definitely very different from “I read it in high school” hehe
WOLF HALL TRILOGY saying goodbye to Wolf Hall… but not for long - five days, Wolf Hall!
REGENERATION and the poetry of Owen and Sassoon from Gutenberg Project - amazing - I have most of Barker’s books ready for continued reading.
BROTHERS Karamazov - absolutely love the serialized approach. It’s a intense modern style book with many great ideas…
THE ENIGMA OF ARRIVAL by Naipaul - just finished and it turned out to be a beautiful very different story - a novel, a fictional memoir with a lot of room for interpretation. It takes quite a bit of slow reading to really appreciate.
And talk about “discovery voltage” - after finishing Midhight’s Children, the Naipaul read came up, and completely unsolicited in a random book review - my current big read:
THE BOOK OF EVERLASTING THINGS by Aanchal Malchotra - that has to do with:
- India at the end of Colonial Age
-Partition
- the trauma of WWI and the times of WW2
- smell, a unique nose and perfumery
- magic of emotion between a Moslem child and a Hindi child
- Malhotra, from a younger, different generation, is a historian, like Rushdie, not a writer first, and is known for her historical narrative projects. A female voice recounting these stories!
Also queued up on that same discovery thread is MY BELOVED LIFE by Amitava Kumar, who led our Naipaul read with APS - a friend of Rushdie’s and a historical writer with roots in India, the story has snakes and ghosts of the past ….
THE FRAUD Zadie Smith - finished it with my library book club and presented. Good book with a lot of characters and literary and historical figures, colonialism history, very lightly and deftly written. Surprisingly, most people in my club did not find it engaging and didn’t finish …Oh well….
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Montgomery - just started with The Reader and The Writer - a classic with a lot of positivity and something from my shelves.
Vera, you've been busyyyyyyyyyy!
And likewise - good on that Book crawl! 🙌
😂😂😂😂
Anne of Green Gables! I read it for the first time a few years ago after a friend mentioned. A great book!
LONESOME DOVE
I love it so. My first time through, I was 20-ish, and read the last 400 or so pages in a day. It's a great miniseries, too. (Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.)
AI scares me in a work setting and on a creative level. I love there are people on here that are a wee oasis in what feels like a very backward way we are moving forward. I have to say I am loving REGENERATION by Pat Barker and as it was friend's bookgroup choice I am also loving MIDNIGHTS CHILDREN and your notes Simon. Other books I have read in April are LOBSTER AND OTHER THINGS I AM LEARNING TO LOVE by Hollie McNish, TRAINING FOR YOUR OLD LADY BODY by Elizabeth Davis and CLEOPATRA by Saara El-Arifi
Yes, I've mostly avoided AI discussion so far, as it seems so far removed from what we do. But then I am seeing AI used to write about books, and now it feels important to say explicitly that this is a space made by messy, imperfect humans!
Here here to messy and imperfect
I’m 300 or so pages into Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle!
I seem to remember something about spaghetti...
I LOVED that book, my introduction to Murakami. Only one part could I not stomach, but the rest was fascinating. I remember exactly where I was when I was reading it . . . watching my mother slowly slide into dementia . . . reading it in the middle of the night helped me stay awake to watch her sleep so she wouldn't get up by herself and fall. Memorable for the book and the circumstances.
I love how a book can put you back in a place. I remember exactly where I was during a certain part of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. If you like Murakami, I’d recommend Killing Commedatore and IQ84.
I found WIND UP BIRD very interesting to read, but when I finished it was a big "eh?" for me. Magical realism is just not my jam.
This April will be marked as more of an insane book-buying month than book-reading month, although I did get a few in. Between visiting family back in Croatia and Independent Bookstore Day (which, in Chicago, is marked with a joint event called Book Crawl that involves 82 independent bookstores in Chicagoland area) I returned home with over 50 new books and exactly 0 clue as to when or where am I even going to get the time to read them all. This month's list includes:
ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME II by Solvej Balle / TRAVERSAL by Maria Popova / VERTIGO and AUSTERLITZ by W.G. Sebald
REGENERATION - it’s even better than I remember. Also, THE WAR POEMS by Sassoon, again. Just finished ANNIE BOT by Greer.
Since watching the movie I am reading PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir and also, I am reading HEARTWOOD by Amity Gaige.
Really liked Heartwood! Project Hail Mary is fantastic
I don't know why I pushed off reading Project Hail Mary for so long because I love The Martian. Now, I will have to get his third book and read it too after Project Hail Mary and yes, I'm also really digging Heartwood.
I listened to PHM on audio - HIGHLY recommend!
Just started THOMAS CROMWELL by Diarmaid MacCullough. Read THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS by Rebecca West for my IRL book club. Highly recommend STRANGERS by Belle Burden. Trying to manage MASTER AND MARGARITA. Not doing so well. Slow reads of BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, BRING UP THE BODIES, and WAR AND PEACE. Also loving REGENERATION.
Are you following a program for Brothers, or just going slowly on your own?
I’m reading BROTHERS KARAMAZOV with Read the Classics with Henry Elliot. He’s an excellent moderator
I'm currently rereading WOLF HALL and hoping to start BRING UP THE BODIES with you. Also reading SEEING OURSELVES: WOMEN'S SELF-PORTRAITS by Frances Borzello. In April I read IF YOU MUST GO, I WISH YOU TRIPLETS; THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE; PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER: A LIFE IN ART; and METALLIC REALMS by Lincoln Michel. And continuing to read along with the W&P slow read!
I am reprising a "summer of Walter Scott" that I did about 20 years ago, when I was a grad student (very non-traditional in terms of age) and had access to the university library. Now I am purchasing them in Penguin editions (used). So far I've read Rob ROB ROY, GUY MANNERING (my favorite), almost finished with IVANHOE, and next on the pile is THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN. On the way in the mail are WAVERLY, THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, and THE ANTIQUARY. What I love about Scott is the intricacy of his plots and how the lives of the characters interweave. His narrative style is also skillful, and shifts from third-person point of view to letters to conversations to move the story along, with the occasional narrator intervention to explain something. Language is charming and complex, requiring attention to keep the sometimes long sentences straight. Good practice, I think, in this age when so much prose is stripped to its minimal utilitarian purpose.
I enjoyed Waverly last year. Very baroque and picturesque.
I'm finding myself drawn to the baroque these days, in literature and also in music. And architecture.
Have you ever read Dorothy Dunnett? I find she's the best when I want something intricate and beautiful.
I was just trying to remember this author while thinking about historical fiction and I remembered you recommending her!
I'm always recommending her! 😅
I have not! I’ll look her up. Thanks.
Ah I have both Rob Roy and Waverley on my tbr pile. I've never read any Scott but come across him *a lot* in my work at the moment. I'm going to go and visit Abbotsford soon, something I've been meaning to do for ages, since I found out that he hosted some French PoW officers there during the Napoleonic wars.
I've just finished a re-read of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, which is just as brilliant as I remember it being 10 years ago, when I first read it. I've also been slowly making my way through ANNA KARENINA for the last month or so. I'm just over halfway through. And, for pure joy, I have been reading THE INIMITABLE JEEVES, which never fails to get a chuckle out of me.
The Neapolitan novels, yes! I remember reading them shortly after they came out, they were my summer read and my family was not pleased because I was completely unreachable for the entire holiday. I wonder how they would hold up now as a reread. Still that good? Anna Karenina is one of my favourite novels of all time and I have the same irrational fear about rereading it, that it won’t be as good as I remember, which is of course absurd. It will almost certainly be better, but there is something about a first reading that feels too precious to risk.
Another P.G. Wodehouse fan!
I just started The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. I really liked Fair Play and I think I’m going to enjoy this one!