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Have You Seen the White Whale Wednesday
Jul. 20th, 2016 01:20 pmArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
( The Whale: A Love Story: A Novel )
Speaking of the apocalypse, The Girls of Slender Means is a good book.
I read it all on the same day I got it and when I got to the end I read it again. Then I spent a lot of time trying to describe it to people, but maybe it's best just to say it was a good book and you should probably read it if you haven't.
What I'm Reading Now
I started Nana before I left, but didn't get very far. It's good! The young courtesan is such a likable ordinary character: frustrated with her aunt, hopeful about her baby, always struggling to keep her clothes clean (those long skirts and those streets and stairwells soaking with filth! You can count on Zola to notice the difficulty). The back cover promises me an ignominious downfall, which is too bad. I like Nana.
I've actually finished A Buyer's Market, but I'll probably get through The Acceptance World and the end of the volume before I say any more about the world of Anthony Powell. Well, I will say that he loves his gigantic clunky metaphors! The rest can wait. I'm enjoying them a lot.
What I Plan to Read Next
I still have to get the first Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight book somehow. Other than that, I'm not totally sure! Oh, right, C. P. Snow. And Balthazar, the next novel in the Alexandria Quartet! I'm looking forward to that one.
What I've Finished Reading
"I am talking about you and me. I am saying that, right now, sitting by this lake together, we both would earn our scarlet A's. And deserve them."
"But we're both men."
Hawthorne smiled mirthlessly. "That is not lost on me."
( The Whale: A Love Story: A Novel )
Speaking of the apocalypse, The Girls of Slender Means is a good book.
The May of Teck Club stood obliquely opposite the site of the Memorial, in one of the row of tall houses which had endured, but barely; some bombs had dropped nearby, and in a few back gardens, leaving the buildings cracked on the outside and shakily hinged within, but habitable for the time being. The shattered windows had been replaced with new glass rattling in loose frames. More recently, the bituminous black-out paint had been removed from landing and bathroom windows. Windows were important in that year of final reckoning; they told at a glance whether a house was inhabited or not; and in the course of the past years they had accumulated much meaning, having been the main danger-zone between domestic life and the war going on outside: everyone had said, when the sirens sounded, 'Mind the windows. Keep away from the windows. Watch out for the glass.'
I read it all on the same day I got it and when I got to the end I read it again. Then I spent a lot of time trying to describe it to people, but maybe it's best just to say it was a good book and you should probably read it if you haven't.
What I'm Reading Now
I started Nana before I left, but didn't get very far. It's good! The young courtesan is such a likable ordinary character: frustrated with her aunt, hopeful about her baby, always struggling to keep her clothes clean (those long skirts and those streets and stairwells soaking with filth! You can count on Zola to notice the difficulty). The back cover promises me an ignominious downfall, which is too bad. I like Nana.
I've actually finished A Buyer's Market, but I'll probably get through The Acceptance World and the end of the volume before I say any more about the world of Anthony Powell. Well, I will say that he loves his gigantic clunky metaphors! The rest can wait. I'm enjoying them a lot.
What I Plan to Read Next
I still have to get the first Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight book somehow. Other than that, I'm not totally sure! Oh, right, C. P. Snow. And Balthazar, the next novel in the Alexandria Quartet! I'm looking forward to that one.
