(urth) What are you reading?

[Antonin Scriabin]

I found it hard to enjoy poetry for a long time, but a few things recently
have swayed me.  *Paradise Lost*, and the poems scattered throughout the
Gormenghast books, of all things.

"Maybe Wolfe's

*The Sorcerer's House"*
Yes!  This is my absolute favorite of Wolfe's post-*Long Sun* novels.  It
is great.


On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <
danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just finished R. A. Lafferty's late novel *Serpent's Egg* (1987) last
> week - mad brilliance as always. (Read John Williams's *Butcher's
> Crossing* just before that - existential buffalo hunting, ya can't beat
> that.)  Reading the stories in the new Centipede Press volume 1 of
> Lafferty's complete short stories - whenever I have the chance to sit down
> and carefully handle the book (as I usually have books thrust in a backpack
> getting bent up as I read them all over the place in between everything).
>  Have already read all those stories, but hugely enjoying revisiting them,
> especially in a quality physical format worthy of them.
>
> Realised I hadn't finished the last 30 or so pages of King's *Salem's Lot*,
> so gonna round that out.
>
> Recently read a 200 page poem from the Middle Ages called *Piers Plowman*(14th c.) - it was for a course I'm in.  *Paradise
> Lost* is one of my all time fave long poems and *Piers *has probably shot
> right up there with it.  The latter actually makes a very interesting
> contrast to the former in just about every respect.  (And to be reductively
> categorical, I'd say Wolfe is more Milton while Lafferty is more *Piers*- the former 'high' and the latter 'low', both genius and both
> all-encompassing and stretching imagination to its limits, each in its
> respective way).
>
> Really torn about what novel to get into next.  Thinking of another King
> just for simple fun.  Maybe Wolfe's *The Sorcerer's House* - that's the
> next one up for me in the post-2000 novels I haven't read.  Maybe McCarthy,
> maybe Michael Bishop, maybe Dan Simmons... I dunno.
>
> -DOJP
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Antonin Scriabin <
> kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days?  I haven't been
>> reading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to
>> participate in some of the other ongoing discussions.
>>
>> I am working my way through the Harvard Classics.  I just finished the
>> fourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton.  *Paradise
>> Lost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume
>> and the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite
>> of mine from my philosophy major days.
>>
>> I've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was
>> excellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,
>> silly fun*.*  I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by
>> McElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being.  It
>> wasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing
>> my attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being
>> written in a very disjointed, unique style.  I will probably get back to it
>> in the near future.
>>
>> Anyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter
>> half of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other
>> Stories*. Looking forward to it!
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
>> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20140312/7cd02cd0/attachment-0004.htm>