Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Summer Reading Time!

Bookies,

Thought I'd make a blog to empty out some of the contents of my brain. What are you planning to read this summer (other than Huck Finn, of course)? My first couple of entries are in the list below. Click on the Comments section below, then Post a Comment to tell me what you're reading and I'll add it to the list. If you don't see that option in the upper right, then you are not signed in. If you don't want to sign in or create a new account, just email me what you're reading and any comments you might have and I will post for you.

sps

3 comments:

  1. I'm signed in, but still don't see a New Post button. I'm reading:

    Eugene Onegin, Pushkin
    Nabokov biography, Brian Boyd
    All Souls' Rising, Madison Smartt Bell

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  2. I think only the blog owner (moi) can actually contribute a post. I shoulda said Click Post a Comment. I'll change it now before anyone else sees...

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  3. Hi Steve
    I finished Huck Finn (not the version that changed wording and has caused so much controversy, but the random house hardback that has endnotes, and inserts 3 new stories from the original manuscript.) I delighted in the quality of the writing and the story, but am still mulling over the comment in the forward that it is profoundly anti-racist, and wondering whether I agree. I am only afraid that I will have forgotten many details by the time we discuss it. It made me want to read more by Mark Twain.

    I just finished "generations of winter" by Vasili Aksenov, which was a really grim but often lyrical and engrossing pageturner of a novel -- mainly about the Stalinist period. Not great literature, but great summer reading, and for immersion in that period from the point of view of an author who experienced the camps first hand. However, comments from reviewers on Amazon make me think that now I MIGHT enjoy reading War and Peace again, which several say is much more masterful. I did not appreciate it when I had to read it for summer reading in high school.

    I am in the middle of "Bailey's Cafe" by Gloria Naylor, which is masterful. I really want someone else in the group to read it, to discuss one of the first vignettes in it, which left me teary, but also mulling over the ending and what it meant.

    Finally, I listen to the Bookworm podcasts and just listened to Michael Silverblatt's interview with John Sayles about his new novel: A Moment in the Sun. I urge you all to listen to it. http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw110707john_sayles_a_moment I am ordering the book and plan to read this summer!

    Steve, I am not up to your level of elegant posts, which read like book reviews. Mine are definitely of the chatty variety! I think I will skip The Room, as good as it sounds.

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