What are you reading?

[dirac]

Thanks for posting, JMcN. I'm not familiar with Childs at all, I fear. Your Harry Potter question is an interesting one and I hope someone familiar with both British and American editions will respond.

[miliosr]

If It Had Happened Otherwise. I'm a big fan of "alternate worlds" stories [Note: Loved the Marvel Comics title What If? as a kid and my favorite storyline on the 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows is the "parallel time" adventure] and this book deals with just that. Originally published in the 1930s, it contains various alternate takes on real historical events (i.e. If the Moors in Spain Had Won, If Booth Had Missed Lincoln, etc.) Fun to read on a cold winter's night.

[artist]

I am reading Paradise Lost by John Milton. I've been wanting to read it for some time now and may I say it's incredibly amazing. This is the kind of stuff I love to read and I don't find myself stuck anywhere as I seem to breeze right through. Of course I am in deep thought when I read such work but it interests me; I seem to 'feel' and understand it. It's quite enjoyable and haven't found a book where I can feel like this. I seem to have gotten tired of the usual story books long ago and now I have found that I don't completely dislike reading.

Does anyone know of any other works that are written like this?

[bart]

I am reading Paradise Lost by John Milton. [ ... ] Does anyone know of any other works that are written like this?

Well, how about moving on to Milton's Paradise Regained, the sequel?

If you are looking for something different, but with a similarly broad cosmology, great scope, and poetic intensity, how about Dante's Divine Comedy. Ciaran Carson has a powerful, relatively new translation of the Inferno, and you can work your way up through Purgatory and Paradise in a variety of other translations after that.

Incidentally, I admire your ability to relate so deeply to PL. Both "Paradises" were on the reading list of a course I took long ago, and I have to admit that I did a lot of skimming and page-flipping.

Satan was my favorite character, as I recall. His seduction of Eve, and hers of Adam, were very interesting and I found myself, as usual, hoping for a different ending than the one that I knew was coming. (Rebels and deviants do make the best literature, I think.) I suppose, however, that Adam spoke for Milton when he said to Eve -- during their interestisng pre-apple debate -- "O woman, best are all things as the will of God ordained them."

It would be very interesting to hear what aspects or elements of this work you liked best.

YouTube has a brief clip of Nureyev and Fonteyn rehearsing Petit's "Paradise Lost" (no relation to Milton whatsoever). Type in "Rudolf Nureyev & Margot Fonteyn Rehearsal Paradise Lost."

[dirac]

If It Had Happened Otherwise. I'm a big fan of "alternate worlds" stories [Note: Loved the Marvel Comics title What If? as a kid and my favorite storyline on the 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows is the "parallel time" adventure] and this book deals with just that. Originally published in the 1930s, it contains various alternate takes on real historical events (i.e. If the Moors in Spain Had Won, If Booth Had Missed Lincoln, etc.) Fun to read on a cold winter's night.

I like that kind of thing, too. It works as comedy also. There’s an old piece by James Thurber called ‘If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox,’ in which the hammered Union chieftain surrenders to a puzzled Lee.

Some time ago I read a thriller by Robert Harris called ‘Fatherland,’ which takes place in a post World War II era after Germany’s overwhelming victory. An entertaining read.

artist, IMO there's no other work 'like' Paradise Lost, but if you are looking for great epic poetry, there's The Iliad and The Odyssey, and you might even have a go at Spenser's The Faerie Queene, not a big favorite of mine, but others love it.

Milton was a fascinating man and his life and shorter works are well worth looking into. You might also try Wordsworth's 'The Prelude,' which was deeply influenced by Milton although very different thematically.

[vagansmom]

In working with a high school sophomore, I've had to reread both the Iliad and the Odyssey recently and enjoyed both so much that I've found myself searching out more and more of my own children's high school literature class readings. I'd forgotten all about such books. To quote a minor character from the film "It's a Wonderful Life", "Youth is wasted on the young!"

[JMcN]

Some time ago I read a thriller by Robert Harris called ‘Fatherland,’ which takes place in a post World War II era after Germany’s overwhelming victory. An entertaining read.

Robert Harris' other books are also very entertaining. Enigma is about the efforts of the British to break the German Codes in the 2nd World War - the Enigma Machine (this was also filmed, starring Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott). Pompeii is about the last few days before the eruption of Vesuvius and the eruption itself. I thought it very well researched and absolutely unputdownable. I've recently started Imperium but am finding that more of a struggle.

[Petra]

I'm reading P.D. James' "The Children of Men". I saw the film adaptation on DVD last week and was so impressed that I immediately went to the library and took out the original novel. The book is written very well and is very engaging, as would be expected from James, but I'm having a hard time reading it for its own sake. The book is different from the movie in so many ways - plot details, physical setting, some aspects are more dramatic/dystopian in the movie and others are more dramatic/dystopian in the novel - and I find that I keep on comparing the two.

Anyone else have this experience with this book or with others?

[JMcN]

I'm reading P.D. James' "The Children of Men". I saw the film adaptation on DVD last week and was so impressed that I immediately went to the library and took out the original novel. The book is written very well and is very engaging, as would be expected from James, but I'm having a hard time reading it for its own sake. The book is different from the movie in so many ways - plot details, physical setting, some aspects are more dramatic/dystopian in the movie and others are more dramatic/dystopian in the novel - and I find that I keep on comparing the two.

Anyone else have this experience with this book or with others?

I often find that if I have read the book first I may not enjoy the film (I'm sounding more Irish by the minute!) but if I have seen the film first I usually enjoy the book more. There are two exceptions that I can think of to my own statement - I finished reading Chocolat the day before I saw the film. For the first 10 minutes of the film, I absolutely hated it but then I just had to try and divorce the two in my mind. Being a Gemini, I was successful in this and I enjoyed the film too.

Discussing with many chums the film of The Da Vinci Code I discovered two trains of thought. People who had read the book when it first came out (like me) or who had not read it at all enjoyed the film but more recent readers didn't.

I am often interested to see what film makers do to books. I could not see at the time how The Name of the Rose could possibly be filmed but I thought it was a very fine film and succeeded because the film told the basic story and cut out a lot of the elements of the book that dealt with the religious politics of the day.

I had read Bridget Jones Diary and absolutely hated it. I went to see the film because I was on a business trip with a spare evening and bored (and also because Colin Firth was in it!). I absolutely loved the film because it cut out all the things I hated about the book!

[dirac]

The book is written very well and is very engaging, as would be expected from James, but I'm having a hard time reading it for its own sake.

I often find that if I see the movie before reading the book, the film has a way of imposing itself on my mind’s eye. This can be true even if the movie itself wasn’t very good (and Children of Men was a very good movie). I don’t always mind, however. I doubt if I will get around to reading No Country for Old Men again, but if I do I will not mind visualizing scenes from the film.

JMcN, I wasn’t a huge fan of The Da Vinci Code in book form, and so I was actually looking forward to the movie, figuring that there was, well, room for improvement. It turned out to be not bad at all and the locations were splendid. Interesting that you noted a difference of opinion between those who’d read it earlier rather than later.

I disliked book and film of Bridget Jones’ Diary (although I might have liked the latter better if they’d gone with Kate Winslet instead of Renee Zellweger).

I could not see at the time how The Name of the Rose could possibly be filmed but I thought it was a very fine film and succeeded because the film told the basic story and cut out a lot of the elements of the book that dealt with the religious politics of the day

True.....but not good news if those elements were what you enjoyed about the book. I liked the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves’ Claudius books back in the day, but the episodes dealing with the reign of Claudius were weak precisely because the series couldn’t incorporate those parts of the book that didn’t push the story forward, such as Claudius’ noodlings with the alphabet.

Robert Harris' other books are also very entertaining. Enigma is about the efforts of the British to break the German Codes in the 2nd World War - the Enigma Machine (this was also filmed, starring Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott). Pompeii is about the last few days before the eruption of Vesuvius and the eruption itself. I thought it very well researched and absolutely unputdownable. I've recently started Imperium but am finding that more of a struggle.

I really enjoyed Enigma (the movie was good, too, although Michael Apted is not perhaps the ideal director for a thriller) and Pompeii too – have not read Imperium although I believe the book came up earlier in this thread.

In working with a high school sophomore, I've had to reread both the Iliad and the Odyssey recently and enjoyed both so much that I've found myself searching out more and more of my own children's high school literature class readings.

I enjoyed the Iliad much better as an adult than a kid. I wasn’t ready for it back then.

[vagansmom]

I accidentally became engrossed in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters the other night while I was sitting in a boarding school library waiting for a student to arrive. Someone had left their book on the table next to me. Before I knew it, I was 86 pages into it and completely enthralled. I read some of Steinbeck's books as a teen and young adult, but in keeping with my current revisitation-of-old-classics stage, I now just have to read his books again.

So many of his letters are gems; he regularly wrote to a couple of the same friends throughout most of his adult life. In them, he puzzles out his own writing style. I'm at the part where he's writing The Red Pony. His mom had had a stroke and Steinbeck and his wife were caring for her. He writes of his lack of concentration and all the attendant interruptions, often every 15 minutes, and comments that this new book he's writing is probably nothing more than an exercise in self-discipline and not very good at all. In reality, he's begun his most fertile period of writing.

[dirac]

So many of his letters are gems; he regularly wrote to a couple of the same friends throughout most of his adult life. In them, he puzzles out his own writing style. I'm at the part where he's writing The Red Pony. His mom had had a stroke and Steinbeck and his wife were caring for her. He writes of his lack of concentration and all the attendant interruptions, often every 15 minutes, and comments that this new book he's writing is probably nothing more than an exercise in self-discipline and not very good at all. In reality, he's begun his most fertile period of writing.

It is interesting to read such things and contrast the writer's circumstances and perceptions at the time with our retrospective view. I love 'The Red Pony.' I don't know that I'll go back to 'The Grapes of Wrath' again but I might have a go at 'Cannery Row' and 'East of Eden.'

[papeetepatrick]

[it is interesting to read such things and contrast the writer's circumstances and perceptions at the time with our retrospective view. I love 'The Red Pony.' I don't know that I'll go back to 'The Grapes of Wrath' again but I might have a go at 'Cannery Row' and 'East of Eden.'

'The Wayward Bus' is worth it too. I only got to it in 2005, only Steinbeck I've read in the last couple of decades. A bonus was that the library copy had a picture that I was sure was Joan Collins on the front, and sure enough I look it up and that's who was in the movie (which I've never seen.)

[Rosa]

I just finished Beauty by Robin McKinley, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I'd heard lots of good things about it and finally decided I would give it a try. I was not disappointed. McKinley breathed new life into the characters from Beauty to Beast to her sisters. The imagery in the book was wonderful.

Now I'm on Jane Austen's Persuasion. I've read all her novels except this one.

[Ostrich]

You're in for a bi-i-ig treat! Persuasion is possibly my favourite Austen novel. It always kills me to think it was also her last one. If that's the way her writing was progressing, what might future novels have been like ?!? In fact I read the beginning of her unfinished last novel (Sanditon, I think). I became fully engrossed in it within minutes. It is much darker. She seemed to be progressing towards a more "tragic" atmosphere (although I believe Austen stated that she intended it to have a happy ending).

[dirac]

Thanks, Rosa and Ostrich.

It is much darker

And the ironic tone is not as evident as previously (not counting Mansfield Park). It's a lovely, tender book.

[Solnishka79]

I also love her books. She writes in a style that enables the reader to visualize her subject matter easily. If you like her, you'll also like Carolly Erickson. She writes both biographies (Her Marie Antoinette, Alexandra, and Josephine bios were wonderful!) as well as historical fiction. I recently read The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette and couldn't put it down. I used Erickson as a source when I wrote my thesis on the revolution of Russian ballet. (My professor was surprised to see her listed on my references; apparently they are friends)

[Petra]

I just finished reading "Engleby" by Sebastian Faulks. It was paced very well, so I didn't stop reading it, but I didn't enjoy it much either. The title character and narrator is a disaffected young man, and I didn't feel that the book had anything new to say that hadn't been said in earlier books like John Fowles' "The Collector". It is the first Faulks book I've read, and for some reason I was expecting more

[dirac]

Thanks, GWTW, for adding to the thread. Totally unfamiliar with Faulks myself - has anyone else read him?

If you like her, you'll also like Carolly Erickson.

Solnishka79, welcome. I read several of Erickson's Tudor bios years ago, but not her fiction.

[Farrell Fan]

I recently finished "North River," a novel by Pete Hamill. I was familiar with Pete Hamill's journalism, but didn't realize he was such an accomplished novelist. This is not great literature, by any means, but it is what in my book copywriting days I might have described as "compulsively readable." That was a favorite phrase of our clients -- a little fancier than calling the book "a page-turner." "North River" is set in lower Manhattan during the Depression, at the beginning of Mayor LaGuardia's administration. The main character is James Delaney, a doctor who is only marginally better off than his neighbors. Delaney's wife has left him and his daughter has gone in search of her politically revolutionary husband. At the outset of the novel, she deposits her three year old son on Delaney's doorstep. He is furious at her for this, but realizes he must take care of the little boy. The boy, Carlito, is an adorable character, as is the woman Delaney hires to help him care for Carlito. Other characters include gangsters, politicians, and various neighborhood types, and I cared about most of them.

By the time the novel ended, it had me in tears, and -- oh yes, it was a happy ending.

[sandik]

You're in for a bi-i-ig treat! Persuasion is possibly my favourite Austen novel. It always kills me to think it was also her last one. If that's the way her writing was progressing, what might future novels have been like ?!? In fact I read the beginning of her unfinished last novel (Sanditon, I think). I became fully engrossed in it within minutes. It is much darker. She seemed to be progressing towards a more "tragic" atmosphere (although I believe Austen stated that she intended it to have a happy ending).

I've been thinking about Austen lately, in part because of the series they're running on PBS. I agree, Persuasion is very different than her other works, and Anne is probably her most interesting character. I had very mixed feelings about the new film, but that's a discussion for a different venue.

Have you read the 'completed' version of Sanditon -- came out in the 1970s? The style eventually breaks down, and the ending is too sweet for the beginning, but it was hard to tell where the authorship changed -- the "Other Lady" did a very credible job with it.

[sandik]

In working with a high school sophomore, I've had to reread both the Iliad and the Odyssey recently and enjoyed both so much that I've found myself searching out more and more of my own children's high school literature class readings. I'd forgotten all about such books. To quote a minor character from the film "It's a Wonderful Life", "Youth is wasted on the young!"

I lead a reading group of 6th graders at my son's school, and so have been rereading old favorites as well as some new 'young adult' stuff -- it's been great!

Right now, though, I'm almost finished with Nick Hornby's "The Polysyllabic Spree" -- it's list of what he bought and what he actually read for a year, with some very snarky comments. We probably all know the difference between what we flirt with in the bookshops and what we commit to when we sit down to read -- he's very funny about it all. I think that it's an anthology of his stuff from The Believer (I don't read it, so can't say for sure).

[bart]

I'm reading P.D. James' "The Children of Men". I saw the film adaptation on DVD last week and was so impressed that I immediately went to the library and took out the original novel. [ ... ] The book is different from the movie in so many ways

I haven't read this particular P.D. James, nor I have I seen the movie. I have read most of the Dalgleish series, and much prefer the books to the various tv films made from them. James's prose conveys a sense of slow motion, sadness, a world in which small things are pregnant with dark secrets or hidden meanings. She accomplishes this with language which is surprisingly spare. In this, James reminds me of another crime novelist who is brilliant at conveying the feel and tragic texture of life, Georges Simenon.

Adam Dalgleish brings an eccentricity (intellectual, elegant, often depressed, sometimes near despair, attracted by the possibility of human intimacy but also afraid of it) really does stick in one's mind. The actors who have played him don't even come close.

The films capture the detail well, but don't convey the texture. You can read James slowly, at your own pace, speeding and slowing down as you wish. You can dwell on things, savor them, even brood over them. It helps if you can imagine yourself gazing out the rain-spattered window as the train moves slowly through a glum, somehow ominous countryside.

Don't, however, wander around Hampstead Heath on a sunny Saturday afternoon, trying to trace a possible locale for the ominous Dupayne Museum from The Murder Room. Reality, in some cases, just isnt' the same.

I often find that if I see the movie before reading the book, the film has a way of imposing itself on my mind’s eye.

I tend to read the book first, probably because it's available earlier and because I prefer reading to watching films. I am almost always less engaged by the film version unless there are fantastic performances or -- in the case of historical works -- lots of beautiful scenery, architecture and costumes.

I liked the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves’ Claudius books back in the day, but the episodes dealing with the reign of Claudius were weak precisely because the series couldn’t incorporate those parts of the book that didn’t push the story forward, such as Claudius’ noodlings with the alphabet.

And don't forget the great performances, especially Derek Jacobi in the title role and Sian Philips as the arch-villainess Livia. I can still see and hear Livia, now a very old lady who has survived almost her entire family, most of whom she has secretly killed, whining to Claudius (who knows precisely what she has done): "Claudius ... I want to be a g-o-d-d-e-s-s."

The performances in the I, Claudius series were very much from the period, and in the style, in which Graves himself wrote. (Early 20th-century dramaturgy, I would think.) The much more contemporary tone and manner in which historical classics are now performed -- more naturalistic, more like people one might actually know in one's own life -- don't work as well with me.

[Petra]

bart, you wrote

James's prose conveys a sense of slow motion, sadness, a world in which small things are pregnant with dark secrets or hidden meanings. She accomplishes this with language which is surprisingly spare.

That's exactly what I meant, but you said it much better. In 'The Children of Men' James invented a world whose texture is even more tragic than our own (for most of us, anyway). I think she succeeded because her touch is so delicate. The movie was much more emphatic and therefore needed to end on a much less ambiguous note than the book.

[dirac]

The performances in the I, Claudius series were very much from the period, and in the style, in which Graves himself wrote. (Early 20th-century dramaturgy, I would think.)

I think Graves actually chose a very relaxed style for the original books – Claudius often digresses in a oh-I-forgot-to-mention-this-earlier manner, and the books still seem very fresh, not at all in the Hail and Farewell manner. I saw the series again recently and the performances are indeed still great but they’re in a style that would be quite unfamiliar to Clyde Fitch, I think. Not dated at all. (The staging, however, will look hopelessly stilted to anyone raised on the much more fluid and sophisticated camerawork of today’s television. Particularly amusing is the way the roar of the unseen crowds in the Colosseum is so obviously canned – which was also obvious back in the day, I should note – as the actors stand there and wave.)

Right now, though, I'm almost finished with Nick Hornby's "The Polysyllabic Spree" -- it's list of what he bought and what he actually read for a year, with some very snarky comments.

I loved “High Fidelity,” book and movie both, but for some reason I never sought out anything else by Hornby, and I’m rather sorry I didn’t.

Anne is probably her most interesting character.

Hmmm....I think I’d vote for Emma, myself, although I do see what you mean. I felt sorry for Anne and I liked her – Emma is in many ways not a very likable person – but Emma interested me more.