|
|
|
Antheil
|
 |
« Reply #286 on: 21:10:46, 02-04-2008 » |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
|
|
|
|
marbleflugel
|
|
« Reply #287 on: 21:47:31, 02-04-2008 » |
|
Being the healthily cynical chap that I am, I don't necessarily expect too much from 'international bestsellers'; but I was given it for Xmas and have just read The Kite Runner by Khalid Housseni (now a major motion picture!).
Well. It's a knockout book. Afghanistan backdrop, gripping, beautiful, genuinely heart-rending, tough, exquisite and sometimes very funny. Extraordinary for a first novel. I'm told the film's pretty good too. Highly recommended.
At the time martle typed that, I hadn't quite finished the book, so did not go to see the film. I thought I'd missed my chance, but the local cinema are screening it again for the next few days, so I went along to watch it this evening. I struggle to think of a film adaptation which is as faithful to the original book; the feel-good opening in Kabul and the way that atmosphere is crushed after Amir's kite tournament victory right through to Amir's return to Afghanistan. Much of the dialogue was in Dari Persian. The child actors were superb, especially the lad playing Hassan. The only significant cut, for me, was in the political, red-tape wrangling to try and get Sohrab into the US and the boy's attempted suicide. Still a very powerful film. Guys, if you have'nt read it you'll also relish Housseni's A Thousand Splendid Suns. It starts very slowly at the pace of village life, then the on-the-ground reality of the Russian withdrawal aftermath on a very human scale. Genius, unflinching and totally empathic. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
|
|
|
|
offbeat
|
|
« Reply #288 on: 22:01:16, 02-04-2008 » |
|
We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Like Janthefan i found this horrible but also morbidly fascinating - the characteur of Kevin is totally negative and nihilistic in nearly every degree - i found it hard to realize this is a novel because it reads more like true crime especially in todays climate !!
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
martle
|
|
« Reply #289 on: 22:11:29, 02-04-2008 » |
|
Re: The Kite Runner
MF, I don't wholly go with that. Here's what I posted earlier in the thread:
'Having been blown away by The Kite Runner, I'm now battling with Hosseini's One Thousand Splendid Suns. Well, 'battling' is too strong. It's good, perhaps very good, but is nowhere near as tight and punchy and eloquent as tKR. Worth reading for the background and Afghan history alone, though.'
...although both books are remarkable, and whilst I wouldn't go with 'genius', yet, I'd certainly recommend them.
Meanwhile, I'm reading James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie. Amazingly for a fan of American literature such as I am, I haven't read any of Cooper's work before, not even The Last of the Mohicans. After having aclimatised to the rather strange, stilted language of the era, filtered through American vernacular (1830-ish) I have to say I find it very impressive, and thoroughly gripping. It's a ripping yarn, but with a shockingly modern sensibility and an acute and (30 years before the Civil War) prescient sense of the injustices of prejudice - he's extremely forward-looking on the issue of native Americans' rights, for example. I can hardly put it down!
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Green. Always green.
|
|
|
|
time_is_now
|
|
« Reply #290 on: 00:29:31, 03-04-2008 » |
|
(once I've located a library in Edinburgh that has any)
I didn't notice the question implicit in that before re availability. There's quite a lot more Johnson currently in print than was the case a few years ago, when his short - and probably most accessible, though certainly still excellent and not unrepresentative - novel Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry was probably all you would have found. The three-novel omnibus listed at the top of this page would certainly be worth having for any library, I would have thought, if they accept recommendations up there. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
|
|
|
|
richard barrett
|
|
« Reply #291 on: 00:47:13, 03-04-2008 » |
|
(once I've located a library in Edinburgh that has any)
I didn't notice the question implicit in that before re availability. There's quite a lot more Johnson currently in print than was the case a few years ago, when his short - and probably most accessible, though certainly still excellent and not unrepresentative - novel Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry was probably all you would have found. The three-novel omnibus listed at the top of this page would certainly be worth having for any library, I would have thought, if they accept recommendations up there. But really, member Harmony should have copies of his very own. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
marbleflugel
|
|
« Reply #292 on: 01:07:52, 03-04-2008 » |
|
Re: The Kite Runner
MF, I don't wholly go with that. Here's what I posted earlier in the thread:
'Having been blown away by The Kite Runner, I'm now battling with Hosseini's One Thousand Splendid Suns. Well, 'battling' is too strong. It's good, perhaps very good, but is nowhere near as tight and punchy and eloquent as tKR. Worth reading for the background and Afghan history alone, though.'
...although both books are remarkable, and whilst I wouldn't go with 'genius', yet, I'd certainly recommend them.
Meanwhile, I'm reading James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie. Amazingly for a fan of American literature such as I am, I haven't read any of Cooper's work before, not even The Last of the Mohicans. After having aclimatised to the rather strange, stilted language of the era, filtered through American vernacular (1830-ish) I have to say I find it very impressive, and thoroughly gripping. It's a ripping yarn, but with a shockingly modern sensibility and an acute and (30 years before the Civil War) prescient sense of the injustices of prejudice - he's extremely forward-looking on the issue of native Americans' rights, for example. I can hardly put it down!
Cheers Martle, I should have looked back first. 'Suns' has a sense of antedeluvian claustrophobia about it that either drags you in or could, sure, be a wader. A bit magic realist maybe? The start of hostilities, domestic and national, ups the pace. My yen for it may be influenced by the terrific anglo-arab woman who lent it to me. Cooper sounds great-books so replete with the zeitgeist kind of find the reader , don't they ? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
|
|
|
|
Ian Pace
|
|
« Reply #293 on: 02:26:11, 03-04-2008 » |
|
Incidentally, during the period when most of B.S. Johnson's work was out of print in English, I think German translations were still available of most of them.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
|
|
|
|
Jonathan
|
|
« Reply #294 on: 16:06:30, 03-04-2008 » |
|
Sorry, I thought this was a refence to Mr.Pratchett's "Bloody Stupid" Johnson!  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Best regards,
Jonathan
*********************************************
"as the housefly of destiny collides with the windscreen of fate..."
|
|
|
|
harmonyharmony
|
|
« Reply #295 on: 18:16:12, 03-04-2008 » |
|
(once I've located a library in Edinburgh that has any)
I didn't notice the question implicit in that before re availability. There's quite a lot more Johnson currently in print than was the case a few years ago, when his short - and probably most accessible, though certainly still excellent and not unrepresentative - novel Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry was probably all you would have found. The three-novel omnibus listed at the top of this page would certainly be worth having for any library, I would have thought, if they accept recommendations up there. But really, member Harmony should have copies of his very own. I was going to say that member Barrett could make donations to the harmonyharmony literacy fund to the appropriate amount but then I clicked on tinner's link and thought 'how reasonable'. Once I return to my accustomed abode I think I will do just that. Sorry, I thought this was a refence to Mr.Pratchett's "Bloody Stupid" Johnson! I rediverted this conversation from this discussion where the confusion was in the other direction (so to speak)! |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
|
|
|
|
|
Ron Dough
|
|
« Reply #297 on: 10:39:49, 07-04-2008 » |
|
You're hopeless with links, Mort, but in recompense would appear to have the gift of prophecy. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Morticia
|
|
« Reply #298 on: 10:56:17, 07-04-2008 » |
|
Oh bugler!  Mr Google will deliver you safely to Guardian Weekend, then click on Review. Miss Pym is there. <exit stage right in a pother of confusion and shame> |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
oliver sudden
|
|
« Reply #299 on: 11:05:18, 07-04-2008 » |
|
Don't know what you're talking about Mort, looks fine to me!  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
