Haven’t read Márquez yet. I should.


What are you reading?

Besides retirement, there may never again be a time like now to read as one pleases.

Let’s say it last a few months, what shall I read? What about six months? 12 months? 18 months? Would I read different things during 18 months than I would for three?

Eighteen months would be nice for:

Gibbon’s Decline And Fall

Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time

Zola’s 20 Rougon-Macquart novels

Complete Conrad

Maybe Pepy’s Journals…

“August 16th 1665

“It was dark before I could get home; and so land at church-yard stairs, where to my great trouble I met a dead Corps, of the plague, in the narrow ally, just bringing down a little pair of stairs - but I thank God I was not much disturbed at it. However, I shall beware of being late abroad again.”

…Or what we will,

Human

Yes!

Don’t tell me you have these in volumes. That’d be something Bauman’s in New York would display quite proudly. I’ve seen some nice complete sets in University libraries. Envious if you do.

Another along that line would be George Moore.

Those that can read in digital formats can get such things easily and cheaply:

https://www.delphiclassics.com/

Alas, I cannot take advantage. I’ve tried to read digitally but my eyes or brain or soul just doesn’t like it. And I’m not the fella to be shopping at Bauman’s Rare Books anytime this lifetime.

Cheers, caffeinated one

I realized this too!

I'm sort of smorgasbording around the books already here (where I live), and I've found that one subject is wheting my interest, and simultaneously leading to another.

I began with a YA (Young Adult) novel about an extended Jewish family group during the Spanish Inquisition (the Spanish Inquisition took place beginning in the late 1400s, and lasted through mid-1800s)....that YA novel led to more books and articles and Internet searches on the Inquisition, and on the widely acknowledged "culture of cruelty" which is evidently an integral part of Spanish culture to this day (some truly horrific things came up, things I had to deal with but didn't want to)....which led to another YA novel I already had about an adolescent, contemporary-ish, observant Jewish girl who solves mysteries which involve Jewish elements (think: Nancy Drew within a community of observant Jews)....and I realized a couple of hours ago that this is probably the "right" time for me to dive into all those notes I've been making for the last several decades: look up the references I didn't understand, learn the correct pronunciation of whatever, highlight the locations on my maps and atlases, etc.--all of which should take several weeks at minimum (there are hundreds of these notes I have made through the years, scrawled on different Post-It notes or pieces of scrap paper or notebook paper, many written "blindly," in the dark of a movie theater or in a moving car at night).

When we are all released from our "stay at home" orders, I will probably have covered a whole lot of intellectual ground that I've been inadvertently "intending" to do since I was in about fifth grade!

[In support of these efforts, the books (both fiction and non-fiction), and the articles I've physically excerpted from periodicals, are already somewhere on my bookshelves, or are in my files, or are tucked away in storage cartons I have easy access to.]

I know exactly where I started on this, but I have no idea where I will end up when we are all released from home containment.

Could easily be a universe, or a history of humankind, or the geological Earth, away.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2020 08:07PM by Tevai.

An intellectual project, yes!

I use to read history a lot, and tried to do it sequentially, Mesopotamia, Greeks and Romans, etc. I got as far as the Renaissance. I could pick that up where I left off. Or the set of works on the Byzantinian Empire I always meant to do.

(Tevai, when you were younger, did you meet the Huxleys when they were in California?)

Human Wrote:
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> An intellectual project, yes!

This is the perfect time! We have all been granted an unexpected and extra "summer vacation"--and since it has been given to us as a freebie, we can do all the stuff we really always wanted to do, but were too busy or too obligated to do--and with a totally free conscience!

> I use to read history a lot, and tried to do it
> sequentially, Mesopotamia, Greeks and Romans, etc.
> I got as far as the Renaissance. I could pick that
> up where I left off. Or the set of works on the
> Byzantinian Empire I always meant to do.

Exactly!


> (Tevai, when you were younger, did you meet the
> Huxleys when they were in California?)

I never met either of his wives (his first wife died, and later he remarried), but he and I literally "ran into" each other on many occasions when we were both at the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood, either at the well attended Sunday services (on Sunday because this is the American "day off" and traditional "religious" day), and at the weekly lectures (Wednesday night, I think?), which were HUGE draws for those in the entertainment industry (for the intellectuals and creative types, and for the performers, or wannabe performers, as well).

The Vedanta Temple was a neutral place, open to everyone who wanted to come, where an agent or a p.r. person (etc.) could bring a client, who would then just "accidentally" meet, and be introduced to, the producer or director who was looking for JUST that "type" to appear in their current, or their next, production. On the literary front, there were plenty of book publication related people who came regularly, too--so it was a valuable resource for new writers especially, where they could informally meet people with clout who they likely never would have had access to otherwise.

The reason why I began going there is that, from the time I was about four, I would accompany my aunt --who was jaw-droppingly beautiful (think Vivian Leigh in her prime) to both Sunday services and to weekday evening lectures. I was, in effect, her duena (I can't do a tilde over the "n"). With me by her side, SHE was safe (and without any social awkwardness when she was getting hit on by this or that male stranger). So I was this little kid, often running up and down not only the sanctuary but the entire property....

....and Aldous Huxley, who was very close to blind, and I physically collided frequently. That's how we got to "know" each other--I was the kid who always seemed to be running into him.

Even at that age, I knew he was an extraordinary human being. I can still remember his eyes, which seemed to me to be deeper and wiser than any eyes I had ever encountered before. He was always incredibly nice and polite to me, and he always laughed when we would collide yet again.

He never knew my name....and I never knew his name until I was into my late teens.

We hardly had a "relationship" of any kind, but I will remember those encounters always, because even though there was this vast age discrepancy between us, somehow he "transmitted" to me what it meant to be not only enormously talented, but also deeply wise in an eternal kind of way.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2020 10:04AM by Tevai.

Yes, fascinating, Tevai. I asked because I think you have written about this stuff before. Glad to find my memory served.

I just put down a few days ago a memoir-novel-reminiscence written by Sybille Bedford, about her childhood. She spent her time largely between London and the French Mediterranean coast, mostly at a place called Sanary. Well, she runs into Aldous barely out of her teens, almost in the same way you did! He encouraged her to write, and so she did. I believe she went on to write his biography.

The way she writes about Huxley and his wife of the time, Maria, makes him out to be such a gentle soul, and charming, and at the same time a personage instantly commanding respect without trying. And Maria was surpassingly lovely. The way Bedford described the Huxleys has me thinking about doing a deep-dive into his life and work. As we've been saying, there's no time better than the present.


As a side-note: I began adulthood on the labour side of show-business (IATSE). One job I did was dress the principals for the Operas that came through town. I dressed one in particular, he played Porgy & Bess's Sportin' Life, who tried to radically changed my life. He introduced me to Self-Realization Fellowship and invited me to stay with him in New York. I was barely eighteen, and no matter how much I wanted to go, I declined. Then he suggested arranging a stay for me at the LA Headquarters. But it didn't happen.

Instead, things went side-ways for me until I was 23. It was a sliding-doors moment, lost. Had I somehow found myself on the creative side of show-business I would have lived a much happier life. I've long thought that had I gone to New York upon the invitation, or accepted a few months in LA, I would have. Alas, life went differently.

Not complaining, mind. Life has been fairer to me than I have to it.

Cheers, Tevai,

Human

If it lasts more than another month I will be reading my court papers for the murder of Hubby!

Seriously though, I am reading the Anne Rice books I have not read in a while then I am thinking Gone with the Wind, The Good Earth, Great Ex, David Copperfield - comfort reading. I would also like to reread the "True Blood" series.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2020 09:48AM by Susan I/S.

Susan I/S Wrote:
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> If it lasts more than another month I will be
> reading my court papers for the murder of Hubby!




Hahahaha

I'd love to re-read David Copperfield! I have strong memories of Mrs. Peggotty's buttons always popping off from pure good nature. I have no idea if that is accurate, but that was the sensation. Wonderful good soul.

But there's the problem: if I re-read David Copperfield I'm missing the chance to read a Dickens I haven't read, like Nicholas Nickleby or Our Mutual Friend. I get it though, the comfort food of reading, old, worn pleasures like Ann Rice books. You know them so well, which is exactly why you return to them again and again.

Plural Bride to Be by Cheryl Vaught on Kindle. "Selling well" means a book sale every day or two which is more than other writers I know.

It was a labor of love. I'll never be rich from sales as I make only $1.79 per book. But I don't know any writer who gets rich from their writing. They all have day jobs or make their livings by teaching writing and by editing or helping others publish. One lady I know writes user manuals and assembly booklets to make ends meet as she also writes novels for a couple of hours a day.

And now, posted elsewhere by elderolddog, they just give books away, for free!


You bring up a good idea, though. If there ever was a time to pull out the musty manuscript moldering away underneath God knows what, it's now. I'd bet a lot of mss. suddenly appear all at once on the desks of every publisher everywhere.

And by the way, good on you getting yours done. Writing is its own reward; or it better be because few ever make any money at it. And that's not just now, that's been true forever. Gissing's New Grub Street is a heartbreaker!

I worked hard to write a novel anyone could enjoy because I wanted readers to know about the evils of polygamy and underage sex abuse. I also didn't want the 1950s operation seagull investigation to be lost from memory.

If we don't learn from experience, it will be repeated.

I am content knowing I did my small bit to inform the readership that polygamy is a bane to humanity which continues to this day to abuse anyone who suffers under its rein.

I think polygamy should be wiped out completely and I think many learn more from so-called fiction than they do from the often dry data in non-fiction

Cheryl’s book:

https://www.amazon.com/Plural-Bride-Be-Cheryl-Vaught-ebook/dp/B07CZQT5Q8/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=cheryl+polygamy&qid=1585419085&sr=8-1

How thoughtful of you!

Of course, Cheryl.

Cheers.

Because of you my readership tripled these last few days. How gratifying!

Gee, I feel very un-intellectual--I just ordered 'G-506 Chevrolet 1 1/2 ton trucks in WWII' and 'Panzerwrecks #22: North Africa'.

Naw, I don't see it like that at all. Everybody's hobby-horse is a ride for pleasure. Hate to see us all ride in on the same horse!

Re-reading Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague"; Edgar Allen Poe's "Masque of the Red Death."

Prescient-works-both-of-them ly yrs,

S

Another reader on the theme...

Favourite Plague book, which I read on the way out of LDSinc, is Boccaccio's Decameron: 100 stories told by ten priviledged Italians during the Black Death. Shocked my little mormon mind! All that carrying on between friars and maidens and married women and dark nights when who knows who is poking you from behind under the covers...

I pay $9.99/month to Amazon to read a shit-ton of kindle books, which scroll down; so when I read from Libby, I get annoyed at having to turn pages.

I mostly read Sci/Fi and some is awful, but most is pretty good! The kids now-days seem to have gotten their heads screwed on straight in terms of plotting and personae, and thank ghawd for Grammarly!

And the new Lucas Davenport drops in early April. I'll get it on my phone & tablets at 9:01pm on the Monday before the scheduled Tuesday release because they release it at 12:01am on Tuesday, Eastern Daylight savings time. It's always a pleasant little surprise because it always catches me unawares! I'll be up the whole night, reading it straight through.

Reading IS fun-damental!

Share it with someone you love (HINT).

Lucky fella. Not only can you read on a device, but you can read the fun stuff, too.

Me: reading comes with such difficulty that I feel like I have to make it count every time out. No time for frivolity! Luckily, I've been able to make myself believe that the pleasure is *in* the difficulty. If not for that, I'd be the reigning champ of Mario Kart by now.

Edgar Allen Poe’s Masque of Red Death. Prince Prospero’s Boner

Way more fun than Camus's Le Peste.

Wait, I just checked, it's La Peste. Now why would the French make pestilence feminine, I wonder?

Working on My Italian so reading “Leonardo, Il Romanzo di uno Genio Ribelle”; and “Il Sigillo di Caravaggio”. Oh, and listening to podcasts by Alessandro Barbero, professor of medieval history at The University of Torino. But, you can’t Go wrong with Gabriel Garcia Marquez!

Ah man! If I could read Italian... How much fun would it be to read aloud Orlando Innamorato, or Ariosto, or Tasso...let alone Dante and Petrarch?

Besides the Renaissance guys, I'd read The Betrothed. Then there's Calvino, Primo Levi, Svevo. I'd read Montale's poems, whatshisname's The Leopard... There's so much!

Did you do a mission in Italy? There's the one good thing about doing a mission, if you were "blessed" enough to get sent abroad, that is.

Yes,I was fortunate enough to be, what otherwise would have been largely a waste of time, in Northern Italy. I was also fortunate in that half way through we had a change of mission presidents. The first one was a culturally obtuse buffoon, the second an ex ybu professor who encouraged us to appreciate and enjoy the culture. Fortunately during this transition I was in Milano so I was able to see Delibes at La Scala. Unfortunately I was not able to see or enjoy the many other cultural experiences Italy has to offer (although I fortunately have been able to go back to see Rome, Florence, Urbino, the Adriatic coast and a few other picturesque villages in central Italy). I have a copy of “I Promessi Sposi”, “Il Principe” and an Eco book as well as short story compilations with Calvino,Pirandello, Tabucchi, and others that I am waiting to read when I am more fluent.

Have you had the chance to visit Harvard's Villa I Tatti in Florence?

I did not take the opportunity to visit it while I was there. If I were not looking to increase my ability to read and understand Italian I would read some of the works they have translated. Some of the works they have translated are in the Italian podcasts I listen to, so I am learning Italian and European history and philosophy through them. I wish I had been exposed to this culture before my mission so I could have been more aware and appreciative when I spent my mission there. It is interesting that you mentioned Boccaccio. I was listening to a podcast about sex in the Middle Ages and he was quoted several times. You are correct, it is quite surprising the profligacy of not only the citizenry but also the clergy! I will have to check out, “Il Decamerone”. Unfortunately, like Dante and even Collodi having a good understanding of Italian is not sufficient to being able to easily understand given that they were written in the Florentine vernacular, as was “I Promessi Sposi” (when it was rewritten from the Milanese or Lombardian).

Currently I'm reading "The Northwest Coast, or, Three Years' Residence in the Washington Territory" by James G. Swan. Originally published in 1857.

It's pretty interesting. It mostly centers on "Shoalwater Bay", which is now known as Willapa Bay, and has lots of information on the local Indians. It was also previously read by somebody who was, obviously, in a Cultural Anthropology class as the notes they left in the margins remind me of when I was taking those classes.

I love marginalia in used books. Sometimes you get more, like an old bus ticket or a restaurant receipt or maybe an old photograph. But old thoughts are the best, especially when the gloss is different from one’s own.

Well, one of my favorite books IS "Love in the Time of Cholera." Guess it might be a fitting time to re-read as it's been years.