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Old 07-23-2010, 05:17 AM   #5687
beppe
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Reading the posts on this interesting thread has changed a little my attitude toward this thread.
Therefore I am posting what I am actually reading. In any case it will be useful to me as reference.

I have the long ingrained habit of reading several books at the same time.
This is what I have open in my reader.

Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster. Just started it, fascinating.
Spoiler:
A delightful, witty, easily accessible set of talks on the topic of the novel. Relatively short, too.
Forster's book is not really a book at all; rather, it's a collection of lectures delivered at Cambridge University on subjects as parboiled as "People," "The Plot," and "The Story." It has an unpretentious verbal immediacy thanks to its spoken origin and is written in the key of Aplogetic Mumble: "Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad." Such gentle provocations litter these pages. How can you not read on? Forster's critical writing is so ridiculously plainspoken, so happily commonsensical, that we often forget to be intimidated by the rhetorical landscapes he so ably leads us through. As he himself points out in the introductory note, "Since the novel is itself often colloquial it may possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and grander streams of criticism, and may reveal them to backwaters and shallows."

Ulysses by James Joice. It is the third time that I am reading it. I liked Stefano Dedalo very much in the other previous readings, also. But in the first of those I was searching mostly for stimulations, in the second peace of mind and distraction from my own "torments". Now just pleasure of reading.
Spoiler:
Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle).[3] The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.
Ulysses contains approximately 265,000 words from a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses),[4] divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.from Wikipedia that has a useful description of the structure of the book.


Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I started it following the advice of Wife and Friend. It is probably the sweetest book that I ever encountered. I read it on and off since a while. At a certain point it will catch me and then I will have to read it not stop. For the moment I savor it like a bite of chocolate once in a while.
Spoiler:
Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel written by Yann Martel. In the story, the protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck, while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean. Martel brought the idea of rituals many times throughout the novel as well as storytelling. Rituals give structure to abstract ideas and emotions—in other words, ritual is an alternate form of storytelling. It was rituals and storytelling that kept Pi Patel sane.


Declarations of War by Len Deighton.
Spoiler:
I read it once in a while, when I need something short and catching, just to change my mind. Like they do when they eat a piece of bread between two different wines that they want to taste. Or like a sip of wine between bites. I read it for the first time in 1971 when it came out. I have reread it several times. I found it in ebook form with great pleasure and I still enjoy very much It is a collection of flashes spanning from Hannibal to Vietnam. I strongly recommend it to lover of war books.


I have other books open, of quality. Ulysses intensity does not allow me to spend more concentration time. I will mention them when I will pick them up again.
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