Beerleg Book Club

Hijack: I just finished Into the Kingdom of Ice, about the 1880-ish arctic expedition of the USS Jeanette. I don't know how those guys got through what they got through. Even the ones who didn't make it back to civilization still toughed their way though intense hardship.

Now I'm a few dozen pages into Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. Too early to comment, but he's my favorite contemporary author.

I haven't but, if you go for it, maybe this will help:

http://williamgaddis.org/recognitions/trguide.shtml

You may want to check with Kent on that. He is the final expert and critic on all things here.
If I am going to scratchy noggin for all that implies, I'll read some Pynchon.
Like Mason Dixon with mechanical ducks or you may like the recent novel that they just released a movie, Inherent Vice. It is s Cali story that you may like.

I m reading light now. Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol 1. I didn't realize how many noted people that "Bob"came across when he immersed himself on his move to NYC and the depth of his self education. He also writes about New Orleans with insightful views like an very astute tourist .

I did read Inherent Vice, as a matter of fact, and loved it. I only got a few chapters into V., though. I was kind of enjoying it, but not quite grasping it, I think, and moved on something less demanding. Sometimes I'm a very lazy reader.

Don

Wow, even the guide is daunting. I don't think I'm ready for Gaddis:-(

Don

V was accessible to my brain way back in the 70s.Gravity's Rainbow was a like a reading expedition to Everest for me back then.

Somewhere and sometime a few decades ago, I came to the conclusion that most (not all) modern fiction has no appeal for me.
So I started reading mostly non-fiction. Bios, history, science and arts etc.

Of course there were exceptions like Garcia-Marqez, John Berger, Donald Harrington were consistently enjoyable and ghee were others that hit the ark with me at times. Berger's trilogy "Into Their Labours" is a favorite read

My soon to be JHS son is a reader. He read the Outsiders this spring and has Rumblefish now and wants to read Life of Pi this summer and the latest Carl Hiassen young adult novel.

Around here, quite a few of the books I get through are ones my wife and I have agreed that I’ll read aloud to us both. It can take a while, as in the case of Dickens’s Bleak House, which we finished right before the first of the year. Since then we’ve done all four of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe novels—The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land, and Let Me Be Frank With You—and are now not quite 200 pages into Dickens again, Dombey and Son. Meanwhile I recently finished Thomas Powers’s The Killing of Crazy Horse. It looks like the definitive job, unless somebody comes up with a demonstrably authentic photograph of the subject. Thinking about that, I’m reminded of a day back in college when some English professor had us listening to a recording in which Raymond Massey was portraying Lincoln. Afterwards, a classmate said, “Boy, it’s just spooky how much that guy sounds like Lincoln, isn’t it?”

I met Gaddis once; an unusually elegant man. I haven’t yet been able to find his novels engaging.

Cheers,
Henry

P.S. Fussiness prompts be to note that Let Me Be Frank With You isn't a novel, but a collection of long stories.

Thanks for your patience . . .

Henry

The Path Between the Seas

The Great Bridge

The Johnstown Flood

John Adams..

most recent The Wright Brothers....by David McCullough

if you enjoy American History try these...

Have you read "The River of Doubt" about Teddy Roosevelt....incredible story of perseverance?

Yeah, I just finished "live right and be happy (although beer is much faster)" by Dave Barry. No tutorial needed, but life experience makes one appreciate it more.

I like light reading:

The book Nimrod — Courts, Claims And Killing on the Oregon Frontier, recently published by the Washington State University Press, tells the true story of Nimrod O’Kelly, an Oregon frontiersman, who killed a claim jumper in 1852, at a time when Oregon pioneers were entitled to take as much as one square mile of land at no monetary cost. The Oregon Supreme Court decision — Oregon Territory vs. Nimrod O’Kelly — appears at page 52 of the first volume of the Oregon Report. The story furnishes the background for the genesis of Oregon land law and the Oregon judiciary. The following is an excerpted version of the first chapter of Nimrod.

Geezer|-)

If you have not read Gaddis's "A Frolic of his Own" then you have a real treat waiting for you.