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10-13-2007, 05:39 PM
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#16 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Threads: 86
Posts: 807
| The Myth of the Rational Voter | 
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10-13-2007, 05:55 PM
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#17 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2007
Threads: 47
Posts: 222
| I normally do not read fiction, but on recommendations here I just finished "Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Now I will go back to my favorite genre, autobiographies/memoirs, since I just bought Eric Clapton's.... | |
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10-13-2007, 06:48 PM
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#18 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Threads: 16
Posts: 132
| Quote: fendrock wrote:
I also read The Lost. . . .
It . . . includes long passages of biblical exegesis, plus just plain long sentences.
An interesting book, but not light or easy reading by any means.
| I agree that Mendelsohn often uses long sentences. (In part this seems to be a stylistic debt to Proust.) That said, I think that these sentences are long for a reason: because he has many different images or ideas that he wants to juxtapose before coming to a full stop with a period. And I found him to be an extremely graceful writer, so his prose never seemed (to me, anyway) swampy.
As for "long passages of biblical exegesis," at the risk of sounding a bit like Bill Clinton, I guess this depends on what you mean by "long." It is true that stories from the Hebrew Bible (specifically, as I recall, the Torah) are one of the strands that Mendelsohn uses in weaving together his story. But for me these sections worked well and I don't think that any of them are longer than, say, five pages. (And while I don't think that this is necessarily too relevant here, when I say that these sections "worked well" for me, I do so as someone who is not Jewish, nor even much of a believer at all - more on the Buddhist/agnostic part of the spectrum, if anywhere.)
As for its not being "light" reading - yeah, I agree with that (but then that sort of goes with the territory - the Holocaust, that is).
As for its not being "easy," well, for me the "easiest" reading is that which yields the greatest pleasure - and I found this book deeply pleasurable. | |
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10-13-2007, 07:02 PM
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#19 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Oct 2006
Threads: 5
Posts: 264
| I really enjoyed Wild Trees by Richard Preston, about the undiscovered ecosystem atop the giant redwoods in CA. Now I want to go see them! | |
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10-13-2007, 07:45 PM
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#20 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Threads: 16
Posts: 132
| Since I started this thread with something - a nonfiction book relating to the Holocaust - that another poster found "dense," I'll add one more book that offers a very different sort of reading experience. A book that is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, and that is one of the best, most brilliant short-story collections that I've ever read: Lorrie Moore's Birds of America. I don't know of anyone whose writing - sentence for sentence - offers more pure pleasure. (Yes, her humor is often dark, but, uh, so is life - right?)
Last edited by epistrophy : 10-13-2007 at 07:56 PM.
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10-13-2007, 08:28 PM
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#21 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Threads: 0
Posts: 125
| Seeing in the Dark by Timothy Ferris
I can never get over our incredibly magnificent universe. How elegant and....ordered. And I get to be part of it - how cool is that? | |
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10-14-2007, 10:15 AM
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#22 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Threads: 13
Posts: 465
| I'd also like to second Eat,Pray,Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. As a bit of a skeptic about many things spiritual, I found this book really sparked a curiousity I didn't feel previously.
However, my favorite part was the "Eat" section, centered in Italy  | |
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10-14-2007, 11:53 AM
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#23 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Threads: 82
Posts: 775
| I'm spacing here but its the book "One thousand ??" whatever by the author of the Kite Runner. I think about the characters so often....can't get them out of my mind. Middlesex, on the other hand, has been donated to the library. I just couldn't get into it and gave after about 80 pages.I just didn't get it at all. | |
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10-14-2007, 12:25 PM
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#24 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
Threads: 22
Posts: 946
| ^^^^^
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
I second the recommendation. | |
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10-14-2007, 01:27 PM
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#25 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: South Florida Gender: Female
Threads: 98
Posts: 1,208
| I third "A Thousand Splended Suns". It is the best book that I have read since "Water For Elephants". I couldn't put the book down...read it in two afternoons! | |
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10-14-2007, 01:41 PM
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#26 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Threads: 82
Posts: 775
| What's Water for Elephants about, seiclan? | |
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10-14-2007, 02:23 PM
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#27 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: South Florida Gender: Female
Threads: 98
Posts: 1,208
| Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is (told in flashback) about a man's life with a traveling Circus during the depression. It was well written, well researched and an original story. I highly recommend it...another page-turner! | |
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10-14-2007, 02:29 PM
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#28 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: South Florida Gender: Female
Threads: 98
Posts: 1,208
| Also on my short list of books to read before 2008:
The Short Bus
Snowflower and the Secret Fan
Eat, Pray, Love
Amy Tan's book: Saving Fish from Drowning
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
and The Other Boleyn Sister | |
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10-14-2007, 02:30 PM
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#29 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Atlanta suburbs
Threads: 59
Posts: 1,577
| My D just told me yesterday that I needed to read Water for Elephants. She read it in her English class and enjoyed it.
I also enjoyed The Book Thief, and The Thirteenth Tale. It seems I read another book also about death, because my kids asked me why I kept reading books about death. Can't remember what book it was. | |
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10-14-2007, 02:31 PM
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#30 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Nov 2005
Threads: 58
Posts: 293
| epistrophy, The Lost is a very unusual book. Mendelsohn uses (experiments?) with a variety of approaches to tell his story.
Biblical exegesis is one of them, and I can't think of any other book that uses it in this way.
I also read A Thousand Suns, and comparing the reading of these two books is like comparing apples to pomegranates.
I just wanted to give some sense of how I found the book. | |
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