What are you reading?

[Ellie]

I finished Hardy's Jude the Obscure. And now I'm ready to kill myself.

It advertised that Hardy wrote it, right on the cover, didn't it?

[JD]

I found a prerelease copy of City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai and I'm really enjoying it. It's a rather sensationalized and probably fictionalized version of history (understandable, since gangsters aren't known for keeping careful notes, and all of the primary sources are probably dead at this point) but it works well.

[Jake]

Rereading The Club Dumas — I hope to be done by Wednesday at the latest.

I love love love that book.

[Warren]

Rereading The Club Dumas — I hope to be done by Wednesday at the latest.

I love love love that book.

Is that French for "The dumb-ass club"?

[Jake]

Rereading The Club Dumas — I hope to be done by Wednesday at the latest.

I love love love that book.

Is that French for "The dumb-ass club"?

Apparently so.

[Kwix]

Just finished The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Stephenson and Galland. Fun light read for Stephenson.

[Tuco]

I finished Hardy's Jude the Obscure. And now I'm ready to kill myself.

I knew a girl who one summer read all of Hardy's novels at once. She was never the same.

[Ellie]

I'm sure by "at once" you mean "one right after the other," but I initially read it as "simultaneously" and was envisioning someone with a book in each hand, trying to hold two more up in their toes, gaze desperately flicking from one page to another.

[nicole]

I've done from Under the Greenwood Tree through The Mayor of Casterbridge in a summer. So I'm a bit more than halfway through. But the approach of Tess (which I read in high school) killed my momentum.

[Andrew]

I've done from Under the Greenwood Tree through The Mayor of Casterbridge in a summer. So I'm a bit more than halfway through. But the approach of Tess (which I read in high school) killed my momentum.

That was the first Hardy novel I've read. I'd like to read Native, Madding, and Tess, but I'll need to space them out to avoid severe depression.

Now I'm about halfway through The Third Policeman. It is quite something. The comic surrealism + unreliable narrator makes for fun reading.

[lunchstealer]

I hated Tess with a passion. It's possible with more years under my belt it wouldn't seem so awful, but I doubt it.

[nicole]

I hated Tess with a passion. It's possible with more years under my belt it wouldn't seem so awful, but I doubt it.

it me

[Tuco]

I'm sure by "at once" you mean "one right after the other," but I initially read it as "simultaneously" and was envisioning someone with a book in each hand, trying to hold two more up in their toes, gaze desperately flicking from one page to another.

She was talented.

I read Mayor of Casterbridge in one night one winter after I'd lost a lease and was homeless and had my horses pastured all over the place and was giving what money I had left to lawyers and was scrambling around doing whatever work I could find and that was drying up....

I should have read me some Dr Zeuss.

[Andrew]

I wonder what the first story/novel is in Western lit that involves the majority of the story being a fantasy that takes place while the protagonist is dead/dying. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is from 1890, which seems late for such a common plot device to enter circulation.

[Fin Fang Foom]

I wonder what the first story/novel is in Western lit that involves the majority of the story being a fantasy that takes place while the protagonist is dead/dying. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is from 1890, which seems late for such a common plot device to enter circulation.

TV tropes doesn't have anything earlier than that.

I am assuming you mean where the reader or narrator doesn't know.

[thoreau]

I'm reading Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society by Mario Vargas Llosa. I think I have a massive man-crush.

[Fin Fang Foom]

Lawrence Wright's God Save Texas. So far it is interesting, but it is marred by his (relatively subdued) Texas chauvinism and boosterism (which he probably wouldn't recognize as such).

[Fin Fang Foom]

Lawrence Wright's God Save Texas. So far it is interesting, but it is marred by his (relatively subdued) Texas chauvinism and boosterism (which he probably wouldn't recognize as such).

Almost finished with this. Wright is a good writer, but I think he may be dense. Throughout the book he occasionally mentions meeting some coastal type who shows disdain for Texas and Texans. He thinks this unjust. Then he writes a chapter about the racist, misogynist, petty, cruel, short-sighted, and buffoonish politics of Texas. He does not connect the two.

[Jennifer]

Daily Life in Elizabethan England, by Jeffrey L. Singman. By the title you can surely guess what it's about, but it's more detailed than I expected when I bought it at a library sale a couple weeks ago: among other things, it includes the music and lyrics for then-popular songs, instructions for how to play popular games and dance popular dances, patterns for making common Elizabethan garments, and more.

I'm sure I'd appreciate it even more, if I knew how to read music, and sew.

[Andrew]

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. I'd say it lives up to the hype, although some of it is excruciatingly awkward humor. As a commentary on campus politics and higher education in general, I think some around here might enjoy it.

[dhex]

Finished her body and other parties on the train. I recommend it very heartily.

[Jennifer]

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams. Short read, not as good as the original but still enjoyable.

[Ellie]

Finished her body and other parties on the train. I recommend it very heartily.

This sentence is weird out of context.

[dhex]

...or is it?

[JasonL]

Listened to Ready Player One on audible while moving the in laws in Jersey. Er. Hmm. There's an okay caper story in there, but FFS the navel gazing is probably worse than Scott Pilgrim, which ... wow.