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Poutling posted:A little late to the party but you might want to try Janet Turner Hospital from Queensland for your Australia fix, I read Oyster and really enjoyed it. David Malouf is another Australian writer that's gotten a lot of praise, I read An Imaginary Life many years ago and liked it (in fact it may be time for a reread). I'd add Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian) to your South American list. Aw heck yes, books. I will add these to the list. I have been sorting through the recommendations I already got and I need to go to the library for some inter-library loan action but I have been lazy and spoiled by the convenience of my Kindle. I did read Things Fall Apart which was awesome and I just got The God of Small Things and also Hunger since it was free and will read both of those shortly. I also just read The Good Earth by Peal S. Buck which was about a Chinese farmer mostly chilling and working the land which is what he understands best but then he gets tripped up by dealing with other people and events but always eventually finds his way back to the land which always provides for him. There are apparently some follow up novels about his kids presumably loving everything up but I kind of liked just following that guy.
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Jun 20, 2014 02:41
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Has anybody here read The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa? It has been intriguing me recently but there seems to be a lot of debate over which English edition is best.
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Jul 13, 2014 12:13
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I read the penguin classics edition with the second Richard Zenith translation and enjoyed it immensely. I can't really comment on comparative quality because I haven't read the other translations, but it struck me as being relatively solid.
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Jul 13, 2014 20:50
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The important thing to remember about reading The Name of the Rose is that Eco front-loads a lot of his crazy description as a test to his reader. If you read in a little ways you'll get to an epic-length description of the monastery doorway. In his postscript Eco talks about how he made that doorway description deliberately intimidating to scare away readers who weren't going to be able to handle the rest of the book. It's a test -- if you get through it, whether by skipping ahead or reading straight through, you can probably handle the rest of the novel, even if you just do it by skipping over all the hard parts and reading for story. What? I really enjoyed the description of the monastery door! I can't understand a mind-set that would find that intimidating. Honestly, the Name of the Rose is a pretty easy book, relatively.
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Jul 13, 2014 21:58
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CountFosco posted:What? I really enjoyed the description of the monastery door! I can't understand a mind-set that would find that intimidating. I didn't have problems with "Name of the Rose" but I confess it took me two tries before I got past the first couple of pages of "Foucault's Pendulum."
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Jul 15, 2014 07:06
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CountFosco posted:What? I really enjoyed the description of the monastery door! I can't understand a mind-set that would find that intimidating. The monastery door isn't meant as a bar to Umberto Eco readers; it's meant as a bar to Dan Brown readers. I did skip it the first time I read the book, but then again, I was like twelve.
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Jul 15, 2014 14:20
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Have anyone else read the Patrick Melrose saga by Edward St. Aubyn? I just finished the fifth and final book and found them awesome. The largely autobiographical series starts out in "Never Mind" with the five year old Patrick Melrose adjusting to his psychopathic father and his absent mother. Halfway through the book, Patric is raped by his father and the later books are largely about how he deals with this childhood, trying to come to terms with it and stop the vicious cycle from destroying his two sons as well. They are very witty and very viscous in describing the people, most of whom are caricatures.
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Jul 15, 2014 17:37
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Dead Man Saloon posted:Has anybody here read The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa? It has been intriguing me recently but there seems to be a lot of debate over which English edition is best. I read this one. Well, part of it anyway. I don't know what made me keep putting it down, but I would read a few pages of it, set it down, stare at it for a few days, pick it up again, make a little progress and repeat the process. The writing is beautiful, and I think the translation is pretty good (take this with a grain of salt because I really have no basis for this other than that it "feels" that way.) I think maybe the intense introspectiveness of it hit home a little too hard for me, because throughout there's a simultaneous and strange feeling of both utter despair and uplifting appreciation of life's beauty. While I read it I wanted the author to break away from the mundane life he lived and go experience the other parts of the world outside of his state, but I'm not sure if he ever actually does it. It's hard to detect a specific tone to the writing without feeling like you're projecting yourself onto it. It's a mysterious read.
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Jul 21, 2014 06:22
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Earwicker posted:The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy from India I just wanted to come back here to post that this was a pro as hell recommendation. I finished reading it last week and it was brilliant, possibly my favorite book of the year. I also read Master and Margarita last month which was awesome. It was lent to me by my friend's Russian girlfriend so she was explaining to me about various things I picked up on but didn't fully understand the context of like housing disputes and foreign currency bans, etc. Otherwise I have been catching up on a lot of non-fic, but I want to continue reading some of the "world tour" recommendations I got in the coming months.
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Aug 3, 2014 19:09
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