dogmatix
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Posts posted by dogmatix
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No but If you think it looks good we could read it together. Just let me know and give me a couple weeks notice.
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Had a 2005 Clos Du Bois Pinot Grigio tonight on the patio with grilled shrimp. It was warm here today. (Is that summer I see comming?)
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My suggestion is to subscribe to a e newsletter that recommends a wine a week, read through this thread for our suggestions, and get to know the sommelier at your wine shop. That way you'll be making some informed descisions rater than relying on what they send you. Trying new wines is fun, but I'd hesitate to belong to a wine of the month club.
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Hiya!
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Okay I'm about 1/2 through:
First off I love characters so what I'm going to start with may seem harsh, but read on.
The characters in The Flanders Panel are fairly 2 dimensional. I find them predictable and without depth almost characatures rather than fleshed out beings. The aging and cynical art dealer and her string of boy toys, the handsome and mysterious auction house owner, the fatherly - if gay- friend, the beautiful but single cigarette smoking heroine. However, not every book is a masterpiece and that being said I am enjoying this one nonetheless.
A solid Who Done It? with an interesting weaving of art and chess, the plot revolves around a famous Flemish painting The Chess Game by Pieter Van Huys.
Without dredging on about the plot (you can read about that below) Reverte' develops quite deftly the relationships between the painter, the painting, the subjects (of the painting) and the viewer. Each player has a unique relationship with the others. Dutch masters are known for their realism, their detail, and their exploration of light. (Go the the Smithsonian Museaum of Fine Art in DC to see a great collection) Reverte has a solid understanding of Dutch painting and he exploits it in his discussion of the scene in the painting and the mysterious imporatnce of both the mirror in the painting and that in the restorer's apartment.
You will not fall in love with Reverte's characters but so far this is a nice page turner and if you like a good mystery you will likely enjoy this book.
(More to follow in about 150 pages.)
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I'd echo Pontalba's comment
except that I don't know what it means. Sorry folks, being dim again. What does it stand for please?
By the way, the book sounds very good!
PP Dumbo
"Rolling on the floor and laughing out loud":lol:
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Starting The Flanders panel today. Picked this book becaused I really enjoyed Arutro Perez Reverta's The Club Dumas (the book The Ninth Gate was based on).
Wow dogmatix! You like Johnny Depp who is one of my favourite actors now it sems you like Arturo Perez Revertes who is one of my favourite authors.
I haven't read The Flanders Panel but have read The Dumas Club, The Fencing Master and Queen of the South. Today I bought The Seville Communion which I can't wait to start.
We must have been parted at birth! About 100 pages in right now I'll start a review soon. BTW The NInth Gate was on the tele 2X today. Heaven!
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Thank God!Phew! This one is already in my TBR stack.
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Starting The Flanders panel today. Picked this book becaused I really enjoyed Arutro Perez Reverta's The Club Dumas (the book The Ninth Gate was based on). Hopefully this one will be as good.
Here's a mixed review from Publisher's Weekly. Mine to follow presently, depending on my reading speed:blush:
From Publishers Weekly
When an art restorer sets out to solve the riddle of a 15th-century masterpiece in this uneven but intriguing, multilayered thriller, she finds that one murder begets another, down through five centuries. Young, beautiful art expert Julia works in Madrid for the Prado as well as for various local galleries and auctioneers. Her painstaking cleaning of The Game of Chess , by Flemish master Pieter Van Huys, uncovers a Latin inscription--painted over by the artist--with the question "Who killed the knight?" Julia explores this mystery with the aid of Cesar, a middle-aged, homosexual antiques dealer who has become something of a surrogate father figure for her; Alvaro, her art professor ex-lover; and Munoz, a mildly antisocial chess master. When Alvaro dies--possibly murdered--Van Huys's riddle becomes relevant not only to the figures and chess pieces represented in his painting but also to Julia and her friends in this rather seamy art community. The author, a TV journalist in Spain, makes interesting use of the chessboard as metaphor for various human interactions, and his characters' sleuthy analysis of the painting's symbols and the details of its frozen chess game is clever and quite suspenseful. But the characters themselves are carelessly drawn cartoons--perhaps distorted in translation--and prone to rather sophomoric pronouncements on aesthetic and philosophical issues. And--highbrow pretensions aside--the whodunit aspect of the narrative is resolved unconvincingly, with disappointing conventionality.
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Finished up Firmin and posted review
Next up:
4. The Flanders Panel - Arturo Perez Reverte
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I swear I'm not lying; when I picked up this book I thought oh Pontalba. I almost wanted to preface my review with a note saying sorry Pontalba I know your TBR is too long but.........
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Firmin, the runt in a litter of 13 rats born in the cellar of a famous old Boston bookstore in a seedier part of town headed towards demolition. Firmin lives on a diet of literature and quickly learn the taste of the "Big Ones"; Faulkner, Joyce, Nabokov and then the actual meaning of the words. He falls in love with the "Lovelies" the women in the late night porn movies shown in the seedy theater next store as well as Ginger Rogers, the "Lovliest" shown on a near continuous reel during the daytime.
Unable to commune with his own kind and not accepted by the humans he loves so much, Firmin begins to live in the stories in his head. In his short rat lifespan he looses much and suffers much too.
A desperate and woeful tale Firmin is burdened with his own "humanity" and the limitations of his physique. As the neignborhood falls into disrepair and buildings begin to be demolished Firmin watches the bookstore's owner close his shop forever, making a final statement by giving away all of his books and Firmin's heaven is gone.
If you love literature, read this book!
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If you're talking about a true blog, like with lots of personal annecdotes, I'm not sure why. Some of the more famous ones out there in cyberspace are pretty entertaining. take the Julie and Julia Project. I susepct they're therapeutic and a way to get your voice heard.
Now if you mean BCF blogs then I too just started mine as a list to see what I've read. Reading others, particularly those of members that I've developed a sense of what they like, is a good way to get new ideas. Plus it forces me to write a review something I enjoy but get a bit lazy about.
Start one Pontalba, everyone's doing it.......what's the matter your mommie won't let ya';) ?
I wanna read your blog. You have such great taste in books. I'm counting on you to raise me out of the literary gutter.
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He "digests" both physically and intellectually many of the greats.
First line of Firmin - Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife:
I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov's "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins"; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
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There is a South African wine I loved called Goats Do Roam, also Goats Do Roam in Villages. 3 or maybe 4 varieties. They're all nice and if I'm not mistaken some of the proceeds are donated to children's charities(?) can't remember for sure.
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I posted a review of A Legend of Wolf Song - George Stone
Started yesterday
3. Firmin - Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, Sam Savage
Review to follow
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A bookstore rat that quotes Nabokov and grieves for his inability to recreate such literary genious. Plus it takes place in my hometown Boston, MA. My latest book is turning out to be a rare treat!
My review to follow but here's one to get you started.
From Publishers Weekly
Savage's sentimental debut concerns the coming-of-age of a well-read rat in 1960s Boston. In the basement of Pembroke Books, a bookstore on Scollay Square, Firmin is the runt of the litter born to Mama Flo, who makes confetti of Moby-Dick and Don Quixote for her offspring's cradle. Soon left to fend for himself, Firmin finds that books are his only friends, and he becomes a hopeless romantic, devouring Great Books
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Awww shucks!
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I read this book when I was in grade school. Found it again in Amazon's great used book secction after month of waiting for a copy to become available.
A Legend of Wolf Song - George Stone
A lovely story based on a Native American Legend about the loss of wolf song and how it was saved. Wolf, our protagonist has an unquenchable desire to sing and for it he is cast from his pack. He endures a mythical journey with a fading older wolf named Elder to find Dirus the mythical wolf that inspires him to return the gift of song to the wolves. Stone employs some of the classsic heroe's obstacles in this story and in general it's well constructed. Stone is no literary giant and his book is very much more appropriate for 4th - 6th graders. The wolves are VERY humanized and have very sophisticated thoughts and language, but if you can overlook your disbelief the message is beatiful. The book comes in at about 220 pages and has some lovely pencil drawings. As a child I loved this book so my fondness for it is based a lot in my childhood mememories of it.
Never to be a classic, and I believe Stone's only book, it's close to my heart and might be perfect for just the right child - or child at heart.
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Finished Instance of the Fingerpost. Reveiwed in a separate thread.
Started and finished:
2. A Legend of Wolf Song - George Stone today.
Review will be posted
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I hated latin but my latin teacher was a peach. She really tried to make it fun.
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Yay! I love to hear what others think Please chime in all once you read.
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In reading my review Id like to add one other important aspect of this novel. I mentioned the backdrop of the struggle betwen the Catholic and Protestant churches but there's more to it than that. The book also touches on what peole will do in the name of their church, what is faith, and then there is that ending......
Too good for a spoiler sorry!
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
in General Fiction
Posted
Me too! Had to keep referring to the bios in the back.
What did ya think of the last 20 pages?