BOOKS THREAD

Wow.

 

Received an advance copy of this book, which I am yiking very much.

 

I just finished Charlotte Temple some weeks ago, I found it to be a great read. It was only about 150-160 pages too so I finished it in a matter of two days.

 

Just wanted to say that I enjoyed "A Thousand Splendid Suns" even more than "The Kite Runner".

 

NYT releases their Notable Books List for 2007:

Mr. Perotta's novel, which Moddy just mentioned, is the first on the (alphabetical) fiction list.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/notable-books-2007.html

 

Thanks for sharing the notable list, DD.

"Septembers of Shiraz" is particularly good, in my opinion.

 

Just finished Robert Fagles' translation of The Aeneid, completing the Fagles trilogy.
Man's the bomb.

 

Just wanted to thank whoever recommended Seven Types of Ambiguity, which I recently finished. Phenomenal.

Starting the Chabon "Yiddish...Policemen's Union," and 45 pages in, I love it.

Is "Kavalier and Klay" better?

 

Just finished James McBride's "The Color of Water" -- one of those books I've been meaning to read for a long time and just never got around to it. Excellent read.

 

Dedo and I can split credit for Seven Types. I loved it, raved about it here, he loved it, raved about it again, which is probably what you saw. I would recommend it to anyone. Perlman is stunningly good.

I liked Yiddish Policeman's Union very much. One of the better books I've read this year, easily.

Kavalier and Clay is much, much more dense than YPU, but it is Chabon's masterpiece, and should be looked at like this:

Blood Meridan is, without much debate, Cormac McCarthy's best book. But I like The Road better because it is provacative and interesting and beautiful without making you chisel through it with a rock hammer. (YPU isn't the book The Road is, but both are accessible and a departure from the two authors more serious writing style.)

I have some similar feelings about Kav and Clay. It's a work of art, truly one of the better books produced in the last 10-15 years, but it can be a long, hard slog in the middle. YPU is written as an homage to detective books, a talented author's take on writing a crime noir, similar, in some ways, to what Lethem did (or tried to do) with Motherless Brooklyn. Kav and Clay is literature. It's rewarding, interesting, challenging and worth reading, but it's not breezy.

 

I liked Kav/Clay....I didn't think it much of a slog.

The reviews for The Yiddish Policeman's etc turned me off it, but maybe I'll give it a chance.

If you like science-lite stuff (like Bill Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything"), pick up "World Without Us," by Alan Weisman (I think I'm remembering the name right.)

He imagines what would happen if all of a sudden mankind disappeared from Earth -- not because of a nuclear war, but just some sudden disappearance -- and he uses that premise to range far and wide on a bunch of subjects. Nuts and bolts stuff like within 3 days the NYC subways and a lot of skyscrapers' basements would flood; hypothetical stuff like what would happen a few decades down the road after all the glass windows are broken, power lines are down and billions of birds are no longer killed by them.

Very interesting, and very readable.