What Book Are You Currently Reading?

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秋風の記 (Record of the Autumn Wind). Rereading. One of the best Tokugawa-era poetic travelogues, and it doesn't get anywhere near enough love.

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The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, and frankly, I'm excited. There are some poems that don't work for me at all, but others are pretty close to poetic perfection as far as I'm concerned.

Elaborate, do! I have strong and occasionally somewhat conflicting opinions on Stevens.

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Do you have any thoughts on The Auroras of Autumn or Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour?

My favorite early/short Stevens poems are Earthly Anecdote, Indian River, and Depression before Spring. I never really liked The Emperor of Ice-Cream all that much for some reason I can't really pin down.

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Does anyone have any good suggestions that I could bring up for the next meeting of my international book club? The last book we read was a looping polemic that turned out to have been chosen solely so that the libertarians in the club could use it as a jumping off point to spread their gospel. The next book is Niall Ferguson's "The West and the Rest", and I can already tell that I won't like it. I desperately need to be equipped with a good suggestion the next time around. We want some more women to attend the book club so ideally it would be a book that would attract some more women. I am thinking of Nicholas Kristoff's 'Half the Sky' but I wonder if that is too explicitly feminist. Another book that I like is Mara Hvistendahl's 'Unnatural Selection'.

Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, The Makioka Sisters. Though I'm biased towards this book and author.

Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing. Same problem as Kristoff?

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Just finished Atlas Shrugged. Amazing book

no.  say whatever you want about the 'theme', she is a formally terrible writer.  read some real literature.

I thought her writing was "ok". Keep in mind, I am only a 9th grader who has not read anything really amazing besides a few Orwell books and a bunch of Ron Paul/Barry Goldwater books.

Seriously, my friend, read some George Eliot or Alexander Pushkin and you'll realize that Atlas Shrugged is an egregious waste of paper. Take my word for it: I've read Atlas Shrugged three times.

I will consider it I just read Ayn Rands Anthem in a day, and it was pretty good. Its only 90 something pages, and of course, the rest of my English class is complaining about it. I can't wait to see them try and read Atlas Shrugged

Sanchez, you're a smart guy; you really do need to get some good literature into you. If you were able to get through Atlas Shrugged you should be able to get through at least some of the shorter Dostoevsky, for one thing, or Tanizaki. You also might like Ayako Miura, particularly Freezing Point.

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I just finished The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco. It was exactly as terrifying, disgusting, and evil as everybody (including Eco) told me it would be. A work of genius that I couldn't in good conscience recommend to anybody and will never read again.

I'm starting on The Violent Bear It Away, the only Flannery O'Connor book I haven't yet read. I also have to reread St Augustine's Confessions over the summer, and want to try to parse Yoshiya Nobuko's Hana monogatari and Onibi.

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Hana monogatari by Yoshiya Nobuko, the first whole text in Japanese I've attempted to read. I'm understanding about a third to half of it.

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I'm reading the Sword Art Online light novels. Just finished the first one this morning.

Oh! How are they? I've been meaning to pick up the anime, since it has my favorite soundtrack composer.

I'm meaning to start a reread of St Augustine's Confessions some time soon.

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Just got it today. Been on my reading list for a while.

isn't this a Nazi book?

Imperial-style conservative German, not Nazi.

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isn't this a Nazi book?

Imperial-style conservative German, not Nazi.

Also known as 'Nazi-enabling.'

After a certain point, certainly. I'm not familiar enough with Spengler's life story to know if and when he got to that point, and I've only read parts of the actual book, which is massive.

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Rereading both Floating Clouds and Augustine's Confessions. Both excellent in different ways. It's a testament to what a great writer Hayashi was that I love Floating Clouds despite hating every major character, some of them on a deeply personal level.

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The Captain and The Enemy by Graham Greene.

How is it? I'm rather fond of Greene but I've not read that one.

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V. S. Naipaul

My deepest condolences.

Still working on my reread of Floating Clouds, and have added a concurrent reread of Kawabata's Snow Country.

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V. S. Naipaul

My deepest condolences.

Still working on my reread of Floating Clouds, and have added a concurrent reread of Kawabata's Snow Country.

Have you ever actually read Naipaul?

I have.

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And you didn't like him? How strange!

He's a formally talented writer, obviously, but I don't like the perspective from which he approaches his (themselves at times quite admirable) themes very much at all because I think his famed personal nastiness, unlike that of some other writers, does come across in his work.

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Right; no, I understand and agree with a lot of the political criticisms of Naipaul but it's not really why I don't like him. I suppose I'm just not especially fond of Naipaul's particular individuality; it's a particular kind of critical, vaguely antisocial individualism that I don't respond well to, even though there are other kinds in literature that I do.

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I think one of the main objections to him is that so many people seem to be under the impression that's he's just another colonial apologist, the Trinidad wing of the Tory party, if you like. But it's important to keep in mind Naipaul's own comment that he doesn't care for politics.

That just proves that he is, indeed, a colonial apologist from the Trinidad wing of the Tory party.

This too. It's impossible to take a comment about not caring for politics from someone in Naipaul's position at all seriously.

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Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Didn't know you were an emo girl.

Neverwhere is actually a good book, Mr North American Literature.

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Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Didn't know you were an emo girl.

Neverwhere is actually a good book, Mr North American Literature.

lol, read more Morrison or Moore and less Gaiman.

You don't want to start an argument with me about this type of writing. You seriously don't.

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Going over Tale of the Heike again. I'd also really like to read A Tale of Flowering Fortunes some time soon if I can.

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Titus Groan

I have read it before, but that was ages ago.

Oh, I love Peake. Especially--not 'even'--the endless description.

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The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco

Good luck.

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The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco

Good luck.

I've read probably a dozen other books of Eco's already- he's probably my single favorite author.  I can't imagine it being difficult to get through in any way, except possibly in the way the subject matter shines a light on some of the darkest aspects of our history and human nature.

But I knew that going in.

That's what I meant. I love Eco too, and I'm glad I read The Prague Cemetery, but it took me weeks and weeks and I never want to read it again.

Anyway, I'm rereading The Silmarillion, out of order this time. I skipped ahead from the Flight of the Noldor to Beren and Lúthien and am now going back to the Dagor Bragollach.

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氷点 (Freezing Point), by Miura Ayako. Reading for the second time overall, attempting to read for the first time in Japanese. I'm also reading a translation of her 塩狩峠　(Shiokari Pass) and looking for ones of her 道ありき　(The Wind is Howling) and 細川ガラシャ夫人 (Lady Gracia).

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I'm trying to balance Stanley Hauerwas, Henry James, and Diane Duane, and have been for some time. I'm also thinking of rereading the Quixote.