Pontalba's Books Read - 2008

[pontalba]

JANUARY 2008

 

Women With Men by Richard Ford 3/5

Light Years by James Salter 3/5

Cat Deck the Halls by Shirley Rousseau Murphy 3/5

The Book of Evidence by John Banville 5/5

Time Traders [Omnibus Ed.] by Andr

Edited December 27, 2008 by pontalba
additions

[pontalba]

I cannot say enough good things about John Banville's The Book of Evidence. The front cover has a quote from the New York Times....."Here is an astonishing, disturbing little novel that might have been coughed up from hell."

 

Yeah, that fits.

The allusions and elbow in the ribs humor of the author paying homage to Lolita/Vladimir Nabokov are just hilarious. His prose and humor are second only to Nabokov IMO.

Is Freddie an unreliable narrator? Hmmmm, I'm not even sure now, but in the end I had to believe him. He forgets names left and right, so makes up his own, is amoral......in a sense. Will he attempt to redeem himself? You have to read to the last page to be sure. In spite of the very hideousness of his crime, you almost, I say almost have to like and feel sorry for Freddie. Bloke didn't have a chance to begin with, did he?

[Kylie]

Wow, if our resident Nabokov expert gives such high praise, it must be a good book! I think I'll be adding that one to my wish list, thanks, although I really should read some more Nabokov before I start reading his successors!

[pontalba]

LOL I wish I was an expert! I do love VN's books though, but am only a little more than half way through them.

But please! Don't wait till you've read more Nabokov to read the Banville, to me Banville is merely an acolyte [although only in the broadest sense] paying homage to the Master.

 

Banville is a master in his own right.

[Purple Poppy]

Hi Pontalba! I haven't seen you around for a while (or is that me not reading the right threads!!)Good to see you anyway!

 

I was wanting to ask you about VN. I am reading 'The real life of Sebastian Knight'. It's the first of his that I've read, and I love it. The humour is fantastic and I love his writing style - is sooo good! Why didn't you import me to read his books pronto! I will be now. Lolita is on my TBR list anyway.

 

John Banville is good! Again, I have only read one, 'Birchwood' which I enjoyed, but felt that I would need to read a second time to get the most out of it. Kell, on the other hand didn't enjoy it. So I am interested to hear you talk of this other JB book. I will look out for it.

 

Now I am going to see if you have written any VN reviews!

Bye bye

Pp

[pontalba]

Hi Purple Poppy.

I've been in and out, but not posting too much lately.

Last year I read my first Banville The Sea, then Christine Falls, that is a mystery that Banville wrote under the name Benjamin Black. It is also going to be a series...only loosely, but a series all the same, the next one comes out in March in the U.S., but is already out in the U.K. It is called Silver Swan, and I can hardly wait to read it!

 

I haven't read Birchwood though I do have a couple more Banvilles in my TBR stack...Athena and Ghosts.

 

I do have a few VN reviews over in the review section here...way back from last year.

[pontalba]

I've updated [long over due] my already read list for the year.

 

Again I seem to gravitate towards series. Patricia Highsmith's Ripley series, John Banville's trilogy, and his Benjamin Black detective/mystery series. Although Quirke is not a detective in the true sense, he certainly knows how to find trouble.

 

Finally after holding it more than a year I read Raw Shark Text, an innovative and mostly successful first venture for Steven Hall.

[Kylie]

I read The Book of Evidence earlier in the year and loved it (thanks to your recommendation!) I've since gone out and bought Athena, Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, Mephisto, and The Sea. Can't wait to read them all.

[pontalba]

Oh, I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed The Book of Evidence!

Let me suggest one more to complete the 'trilogy'. To properly get Freddie's story it should be read in this order...

The Book of Evidence

Ghosts

Athena

 

Believe me, even at the end of the third one, I was wishing for more of Freddie's story.

[Kylie]

Thanks for the tip! I didn't realise it was part of a trilogy.

[pontalba]

Phew! Finished Orlando by Virginia Woolf, it bogged down many times in spite of the beautiful prose, the prose being the reason I rated it a 3/5. I don't know if I am just not in the mood, or it's the book, but I'm supposing a reread...way in the future will hopefully hike the rating.

[pontalba]

I'm not getting as much chance to read lately, and am still reading Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer. It is a fascinating study of the workings of the American CIA and the people that inhabit it.

Mailer used all the real events of the times in his book and it is rife with mentionings of all the names we've seen in the newspaper over the last 40 years.

 

Also interesting to me is the ability of the agents to compartmentalize their lives. But at present I'm only on page 169 out of 1128.

One frustrating thing to me is that Mailer ends the book with "TO BE CONTINUED", and of course he never did continue it. grrrrr!

 

I've read a lot of fictionalized accounts of the CIA, but this is the most realistic and down to earth I've come across.

[Guest ii]

Have you read See No Evil by Robert B... something, the name escapes me now? They used that as a starting point to the movie Syriana. It's really good! (Both the movie and the book.)

[pontalba]

You mean Robert Baer I think. No, it seems I've heard of it, but not read it. Looks very interesting though.

[pontalba]

I finally was able to finish Siri Hustvedt's The Blindfold the other day. It was a struggle in places mostly because it has one of the most self involved and bizarre main character that I've run across in quite awhile. Now all that is fine, if the author manages to keep my interest. Hustvedt did not, either in this case or the previous book of hers I've read, A Plea for Eros.

She has talent as a writer, there is no question of that but as far as I am concerned it is undeveloped and superficial.

The character is on a self destructive and boring treadmill.

I can't recommend it at all. 1/5

 

I also read Silks by Dick Francis and his son Felix Francis. It's vintage Francis, and although I enjoyed it, somehow this one fell somewhat flat for me. Still, I do recommend it for Francis fans. 4/5

 

I'm back reading Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer, I'd been derailed by The Blindfold and knew if I put Blindfold down I'd never pick it up again, and I was bound and determined to finish the thing.

 

This is the first Mailer I've read and I'm enjoying it tremendously.

[Colin Jacobs]

I feel Kate Mosse has these attributes too I was disappointed in her books.

[Guest ii]

You mean Robert Baer I think. No, it seems I've heard of it, but not read it. Looks very interesting though.

 

Yes, that's the one. Also, in movies, The Good Shepherd is a really fascinating story, about the birth of the CIA and one mans slow decent into the world of espionage and paranoia in terms of who to trust.

[pontalba]

Yes, that's the one. Also, in movies, The Good Shepherd is a really fascinating story, about the birth of the CIA and one mans slow decent into the world of espionage and paranoia in terms of who to trust.

I've seen The Good Shepherd and mostly enjoyed it, although could Damon have been more wooden? I know the character was cutting himself off emotionally, but he had two expressions. Wooden and wooden[er].

[Weave]

Happy reading pontalba:readingtwo:

[Guest ii]

I've seen The Good Shepherd and mostly enjoyed it, although could Damon have been more wooden? I know the character was cutting himself off emotionally, but he had two expressions. Wooden and wooden[er].

 

*laughs* I didn't find him wooden. It's just that, well, as you said, the character was very unemotional, but also, there wasn't much room in it for Damon to go with. The men of that time were like that, not supposed to show any emotion. On top of that, the character was very reserved. And he worked in a field where a wrong facial expression could literally kill you. But the beauty in Damon's work is that you can see the things going on behind his eyes. You have to look at the eyes. You can see the confusion and desperation and heartbreak.

 

I liked The Good Shepherd very much. (Like that wasn't clear.) I thought it was a beautiful description of a time when men created something that was bigger than them, something they weren't quite ready for. It was too big, too deceptive, too complicated for the innocence and simplicity of that time. They were all taught to play by the rules, and suddenly they had something in their hands that was preconditioned to operate outside of any rules. They didn't know what to do with that.

[pontalba]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I liked the film, it's possible that part of my discontent is that for some reason Matt Damon is irritating to me and I can't put my finger on why. He is an excellent actor, his Ripley was well done, I won't say spot on exactly although very close in spite of the liberties taken by Hollywood in the film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

He was an excellent "immature" Ripley.

 

But John Malkovich was an absolutely amazing and yes, spot on Ripley in the second Ripley film. To me he caught the character's nuances as well as Highsmith had written them.

[Guest ii]

And I like him, so I guess we're bound to be tainted by our prejudices. *laughs* Well, that's just reality, I think. We cannot deal with things and experiences in isolation, what we've experienced and seen and heard always affects our view of things. had you know seen John Malcovich as Ripley, or read the books, would you think differently? Maybe. Had I not liked Damon and his style, or liked the era and the movies of that era, before seeing The Good Shepherd, would I have felt differently? Again, very possible. Our past experiences form us, change us, and to an extent make us react in a certain way to new experiences.

 

That got deep, didn't it? *laughs*

[pontalba]

You're right of course, we're only made up of our experiences it's true, but entered into that are our dreams/hopes for the future, regrets for the past the whole ball of wax, maybe something about Damon reminds me unconsciously of someone I've known. I can't say I dislike him, it's very ambiguous.

 

It's funny, I had not seen Malkovich in anything prior to the Ripley film, I even thought [mistakenly] I didn't care for him, no real basis, only a couple of reviews I'd read and I bought his Ripley film with some trepidation. I was blown away by his performance. If I had not read the book I might have thought he was bringing his "typical" style to the story, but no, he caught Highsmith's Ripley dead on track. The learning curve Tom Ripley was on in that book was portrayed so well, I couldn't get over it. Verra difficult role I would think.

 

BTW, I grew up loving that sort of spy "thriller", do you remember the old Sam Durell books? Edward S. Aarons wrote them, I guess back in the '60's, at least that's when I discovered them, I couldn't buy them fast enough! I have to laugh now, when I first bought the paperbacks, they were I think....65 or 75 cents, but I remember being outraged when they went up to 1.25 USD, I thought that was highway robbery!

 

Now...

[pontalba]

The last two months have been woefully slow reading months for me. I'll start something, toss it aside, start something else. Gak.

 

I've been reading Harlot's Ghost for over a month now, and while I do like it, it has slow spots, and I feel I know more or less what'll happen, so am not as motivated to finish. I'm about a third of the way through.

 

I've finished an old comfortable reread, The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart. Gosh, I hadn't read it in over 30 years, and it was so enjoyable. I do believe it was my first experience with twinning or a possible doppleganger, and even though I remembered exactly what happened, Stewart's prose is so mellow, I kept reading. Lovely book.

 

I did enjoy New Orleans Noir, even though it was depressing for me. It, like it's siblings, Brooklyn Noir, Berlin Noir, et als is a series of short stories about different sections of the City and take on the personality of same.

 

New Orleans Noir is further divided by pre and post Hurricane Katrina, so doubly poignant. They are all crime stories, I wouldn't go so far as to call them mysteries, they arn't, and most don't have a "happy ending" and some have no real conclusion, you just know it continues. I'm very ambivilant about the book. I'd recommend it for someone that would like to know New Olreans nitty-gritty.

[wordsgood]

Oh lordy, don't know where my blonde moment came from when I thought you were also a newbie! I knew you weren't but that seemed to have left my brain for a moment when I was talking to you via our profiles!