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Post by chexbres on Jul 23, 2016 7:17:26 GMT
I'm alternating between a French translation of Pablo Neruda's "Memories" and "N'oublier jamais" by Michel Bussi. The first is a collection of snapshots during his lifetime which makes me stop reading and think my own deep thoughts. The second is a twisted mystery which involves a red scarf and a high cliff... ]
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Post by mossie on Aug 10, 2016 11:03:14 GMT
I'll lower the tone, having just finished "We'll Always have Paris", by John Baxter. The subtitle says it all "Sex and love in the City of Light".
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Post by mossie on Aug 12, 2016 20:12:11 GMT
On a more serious note I am now reading "A Travellers History of Paris", by Robert Cole. This is one of a series of over 20 similar titles aimed at travellers interested in gaining background history of the places they visit. This one is nicely concise, first published in 1994 and updated several times since, but this is a paperback published in 2005.
I buy most of my books from secondhand bookshops or charity shops for a £ or 2. I keep ones that really mean something for me and recycle the rest back to the charity shops, who are always grateful for stock.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2016 10:22:01 GMT
Well, I read HP and the Cursed Child and I found it rather disappointing -- as expected.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2016 22:15:40 GMT
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Post by whatagain on Oct 20, 2016 22:32:34 GMT
I didn't finish the cursed child - my daughter did - strangely in French - and was disappointed. Having more experience I didn't feel bad discarding the book. I finished the war of the roses book 2 (or 3?) - trinity - by Conn Iggulden. I liked it but it is not the best of C Iggulden (his series on Genghis Khan is fabulous). Now I have to find a new book - I like and dread that moment when Icome out of one (or two) book(s) and must immerge in a new one.
But I chose wisely (copyright Indiana Jones) : The Empty throne - Bernard Cornwell - the 8th book about Uhtred of Bebbanburg - I have loved the 7 first tomes. A guy raised by the Danes, fighting for Alferd first king of England and convinced christian, whilst Uhtred is a pagan. Lovely, well depicting the epoch (10th century) and Uhtred being often politically incorrect.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2016 13:01:10 GMT
While on holiday I read a lengthy, very well documented biography of the artist Lee Krasner, the overshadowed widow of Jackson Pollack. Her intrepid and steadfast battle existing as a not only a gifted artist in her own right in a male dominated milieu is more than admirable. Also, it serves as a phenomanal history of NYC in the 1930's through the 1970's.
I am now onto Patti Smith's M Train. Another chronicle of life in NYC from a truly gifted writer.
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Post by rikita on Nov 4, 2016 23:24:10 GMT
Well, I read HP and the Cursed Child and I found it rather disappointing -- as expected. i am currently reading it and while the story is not as exciting as the one of the original books and i am not that much into reading plays, i still find it alright so far (am about two thirds done).
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Post by bjd on Nov 5, 2016 6:54:52 GMT
A recent New York Review of Books has a review of The Arab of the Future! they don't often write about graphic novels.
I am almost at the end of a re-read of Jan Morris's Europe. Also halfway through Tony Judt's Thinking the 20th Century. I just read Martha Grimes' The Grave Maurice, in French unfortunately, but I like her books. And I have Nick Hornby's How to be Good waiting for me. The last two I bought second hand for less than 1€ -- together.
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Post by mossie on Nov 27, 2016 18:48:22 GMT
Well for light relief I picked this up in a charity shop recently. 1614 pages, of which 126 are devoted to the Louvre. Little point in going there any more, just plough through this.
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Post by Kimby on Nov 28, 2016 1:24:44 GMT
A friend gave me for my trip to Florida a book she and her husband had both enjoyed: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. It tells the story of a retired man who sets out to mail a letter to a dying friend from his past, and keeps on walking past the postal box, with the idea of walking all the way across England from South to North to see her. Only 35 pages in, but it's charming so far in an awkward, quirky way.
Has anyone else read it?
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 28, 2016 4:06:33 GMT
It was recommended to me and I have a copy, but have not yet read it.
Right now I am reading "The Divine Husband", by Francisco Goldman, mainly because I'd not read him before. Nor shall I again. I find his writing shallow in the extreme. Even though he's very inventive, he flits like a butterfly from one thing to another, with little or no depth to the characters. Really, I'm far enough into the book that I'd hate to abandon it now, but reading it is getting very close to an irritating chore.
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Post by bjd on Nov 28, 2016 6:20:39 GMT
I'm re-reading "The Balkan Trilogy" by Olivia Manning, halfway through volume 2. It's the story of a young English woman who in 1939 marries an Englishman teaching English in Rumania. It describes what was going on with the British expat/diplomatic community in Bucarest when the king abdicates, the Germans have ever greater influence, the Iron Guard comes to power, etc. Quite autobiographical and interesting.
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Post by breeze on Nov 28, 2016 13:37:10 GMT
bixa, too bad about The Divine Husband. The first book by Francisco Goldman I read was The Long Night of the White Chickens, which I loved from the very beginning. I caught his longing for his beloved quasi-sister. But then The Divine Husband and another one, about men trapped working to repair a derelict ship in Brooklyn, I definitely did not like. If there's a way you can try The Long Night without paying for it, maybe taste it and see if the beginning grips you.
I'll look for The Unlikely Pilgrimage, Kimby.
Have fun, Mossie. When you finish the book you'll know more about Paris than anyone else except kerouac.
Let's hear it for used bookstores! My whole life I've been such a library devotee that only recently did I start to buy books for us (we've often bought new books for gifts), and then only secondhand, usually paperback mysteries.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 28, 2016 15:35:29 GMT
Thanks, Breeze. Yeah, the reason I started DH was because of the good reputation of White Chickens. Once I get over sulking about Divine Longwinded Fluff, I will take a run at LNotWC.
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Post by rikita on Nov 28, 2016 23:22:15 GMT
today i read a "monde diplomatique" from 2013.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2016 23:18:00 GMT
That is considered to be one of the most esoteric periodicals that you can read in France.
I recently reread Kill Your Friends which is perhaps one of the most offensive novels ever written but totally spot on for the things described. If the author has never been sued, it is amazing. (The reason I reread it was because I watched the movie and needed to refresh my memory.)
Right now I am reading Mysterious Skin because I sort of need to see how anybody could decide to make a movie out of it -- since the movie was perhaps one of the most shocking ones that I have ever seen.
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Post by rikita on Dec 4, 2016 23:31:27 GMT
why esoteric?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2016 23:46:00 GMT
Because all of the special publications by Le Monde are considered to be quite high brow. Naturally, there are far more esoteric things that one can read, but the ones by Le Monde are the easiest of which to get hold. If you have any interest in such subjects, I would recommend Le Courrier International, which is a French language digest of publications from everywhere in the world. Of course, you might find some of the translations of German articles to be, er, inappropriate/incorrect.
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Post by rikita on Dec 4, 2016 23:50:48 GMT
i read the german version though, wouldn't be able to read such articles in french ... what interests me in le monde diplomatique is the background information, like the articles about the history of various conflicts etc. - though the reason i was reading one from 2013 is that i haven't really had time to read since then, so that was one of hte ones i still had without ever having read that, so while interested, i would probably not get around to reading it until a few years later ...
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Post by bjd on Dec 5, 2016 6:42:22 GMT
After I lived in France for 2 years as a student I returned to Canada and was given a subscription to Le Monde Diplomatique for the year I was in Canada. I used to read it at work when I wasn't busy. Some years later, in France, my husband bought me a collection of Le Monde's articles covering several years which included the upheavals in Eastern Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s. Before I recycled them, I looked through them and realized how often Le Monde's forecasts were totally off, how tendentious they were.
I would agree with reading Courrier International, which covers international news as seen from local news providers, not just from a French point of view. We had a subscription for years and my kids still buy it occasionally. Nowadays I get my news analysis from The New York Review of Books.
As for current reading, I'm nearly at the end of the last volume of The Balkan Trilogy mentioned above.
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Post by mossie on Feb 20, 2017 14:35:06 GMT
Currently reading "The other Paris"by Luc Sante and subtitled an illustrated journey through a city's poor and bohemian past", the blurb says "the finest book I have ever read about Paris". It certainly covers a lot of ground and has many illustrations.
I have just finished "Paris Reborn, Napoleon III, Baron Haussman, and the quest to build a modern city", which I would thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in the history of the city. While Haussman is the name everyone recalls when Parisian architecture is mentioned, Napoleon III should really get the credit for the ambience of Paris today.
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Post by whatagain on Feb 20, 2017 16:43:59 GMT
Napoleon 3 shares the name of Napoleon 1 so those who don't like the first don't like the other. And Napoleon 3 generated the catastrophic Mexican expedition and worse went to war with Bismarck and lost 2 provinces, for which he will be hated throughout eternity. Whatever good things he may have done (and he did) will be forever forgotten, tainted by his blunders. So Hausmann it is ;-)
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 20, 2017 17:17:45 GMT
I'm reading Desert by Jean-Marie G. Le Clézio -- in English of course. A friend of mine with excellent literary taste found is slow going, but I am enjoying it so far. www.goodreads.com/book/show/6318283-desertThe other book I have going is Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It is a novel and takes place on the day the tightrope walker made his trek between the Twin Towers, and tells some of his story along with that of several onlookers whose stories intertwine. The book garnered all kinds of awards and critical praise, but it took me @a third of the way to really start getting into it and even now I don't find it a book that carries me away. www.goodreads.com/book/show/5941033-let-the-great-world-spin
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Post by bjd on Feb 20, 2017 19:21:11 GMT
While we were away, I bought a few of my 20c specials at the junk store. Mostly detective stories, translated into French. I read 3 of them and took them back for resale. We are also trying to get a complete set of Simenon's Maigret books -- so far we have about 12. I enjoy them because they are a picture of Paris that no longer exists, they are uncomplicated and a bit old-fashioned. I don't like anything else by Simenon though.
I am also reading a book by a Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez. I have read two of his other books, this one is his latest: La Forma de las Ruinas. A mix of memory and Colombian history. It's well written but I am sort of pooping out after 350 pages so am taking some time out by reading a book by C.J. Sansom in the Shardlake series, set in Henry VIII's time in England.
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Post by whatagain on Feb 20, 2017 20:37:35 GMT
Same for me. Only Maigret from yesbutno. I'm reading the last Jason Bourne - a piece of garbage. With not a hint at humour.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2017 22:36:18 GMT
I just finished reading La Tour de France exactement (The exact tour of France) by mountain climber/adventurer Lionel Daudet. He walked/climbed/bicycled/rowed/swam along the exact border of France for more than 400 days, starting and finishing at the summit of Mont Blanc. I do not at all consider it to be great literature, but I still found it very interesting, and the author is now a Facebook friend of mine.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 8, 2017 23:45:21 GMT
I just finished reading a three book series (I won't say trilogy, because it really needs a 4th book to wrap up the loose ends) by Franklin Horton called The Borrowed World Series, "A Novel of Post-Apocalyptic Collapse." I believe it was self-published.
I usually like dystopian world novels like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but this one is so dark and violent that I'm still distressed a week and a Sue Miller novel (While I Was Gone) later.
The protagonists who work for a state agency are at a meeting at the state capital of Richmond, Virginia, when terrorists target multiple power grid transformers and oil refineries and pipelines, dams and bridges in a well coordinated but dispersed attack using multiple sleeper cells all over the US. Realizing that without electricity, fuel or communications, things are going to get pretty bad pretty fast, and stay that way for a long time, they high-tail it for home, 2 hundred miles away, driving till they ran out of gas and hoofing it the rest of the way. Leading man Jim had been preparing for just such an event for years, and always travelled with a "Bug Out Bag" that included food, water, and weapons and ammo. He ends up using all of it, on his way home.
Meanwhile his wife and children back at home, realizing that the shit has hit the fan, begin preparing to shelter in place until Jim gets home and things (maybe) return to normal. I won't go into specifics, but the notebook Jim left for them is an excellent primer for anyone who wants to become a "prepper".
The problem is, and what has me so discouraged, is that no matter HOW well-prepared you may be to weather a prolonged absence of electricity, refrigeration, etc., it won't matter a bit unless you are armed to the teeth and skilled in the use of lethal weapons. Because those who are less well-prepared will be coming to take what you have, and they'll kill you for it if you aren't willing to kill them first. This discouraged me so much that I told the neighbor who loaned me the books that I might need to get a gun, but only one. To kill myself just before things go to hell. Even if I could outlast the bad guys and hang on for the several years it might take to get the power back on, who'd want to live in that world anyway?
We've had some very good discussions about this subject, my neighbor and I, and he's even offered to take me to a shooting range and teach me how to defend myself (which he thinks is essential even if there isn't societal collapse).
Not often I read a book that punches me in the gut like this one does. I need the 4th book - if there will be one - to bring hope back to the world...,
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2017 21:05:51 GMT
I see that the autobiographical novel by Edouard Louis The End of Eddy has finally appeared in English after being published in 20 other languages. For anybody interested, it really explains a lot of what's going on in the minds of all of those people now voting for the Front National.
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Post by bjd on Mar 23, 2017 14:30:28 GMT
Did you ever read the Elena Ferrante book, Bixa? I just bought the first one (Two Friends?) to read on the plane. I flipped through it in the store and it looked better than I had expected.
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