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venner: alphaorder, Donachca, jkavanagh, Joycepa, mkunruh, Pat_D, rmckeown

interessante biblioteker: almigwin, alphaorder, amandameale, annaO, Booksloth, citizenkelly, Cronshaw, Grammath, gwendolyndawson, Hagelstein, HarvReviewer, IrishJoe, jkavanagh, Joycepa, kiwidoc, laytonwoman3rd, LouisBranning, michaelbartley, NativeRoses, rebeccanyc, rgg102, rmckeown, sarajill, TheresaWilliams, tiffin, wyvernfriend

LibraryThing-forfattere: Joseph Lee (joecflee), Richard Price (rixsal)

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Medlem: SeanLong

Bibliotek581 bøger — se bibliotek

Anmeldelser32 anmeldelser — se anmeldelser

Skyertag-sky, forfatter-sky

TagsIrish literature (89), American literature (41), Southern literature (37), American nonfiction (27), Books on books (21), Southern literature reference (14), Irish-American literature (13), Irish nonfiction (12), Irish poetry (11) — se alle tags

Grupper1001 Books to read before you die, BBC Radio 3 Listeners, Books in Books, British & Irish Crime Fiction, Catholic Tradition, Country & Bluegrass, Deep South, Gaeilge—Students of the Irish Language, Historical Fiction, Irish Books — vis alle grupper

YndlingsforfattereJohn Banville, Larry Brown, Raymond Carver, Roddy Doyle, William Faulkner, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, Mary Lavin, Bernard MacLaverty, Colum McCann, Cormac McCarthy, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frank O'Connor, Joseph Victor O'Connor, Colm Tóibín, William Trevor, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams (Fælles favoritter)

Om mig Born in a little townland in Ireland called Kilrush in County Clare. Came to the U.S. as a young boy with my family and settled and grew up in the foothills of the Applachian Mountains in Pennsylvania. Now living in the beautiful hills of Lake County, Florida with my wife and eight year old daughter, both of whom love to read!

The lad in the middle of the picture holding the football is yours truly, circa 1960.

Om mit bibliotek Books are arranged by American fiction and non-fiction, books about books, Southern literature and history, Irish-American literature and history, Chicago and Pittsburgh architecture, and Irish literature, folklore, poetry, history, memoir and music.

My best books read of 2008 so far:

Benjamin Black - The Silver Swan
Richard Price - Clockers and Lush Life
Jhumpa Lahiri - Unaccustomed Earth
Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country
Dermot Bolger - The Journey Home
Rick Bragg - The Prince of Frogtown
John Williams - Stoner
Stephen Millhauser - Dangerous Laughter
Oakley Hall - Warlock
Andre Dubus, III - The Garden of Last Days
Claire Keegan - Walk the Blue Fields

Medlemskab LibraryThing Early Reviewers

StedMount Dora, Florida

Kontotypeoffentlig, livstid

ForbindelserForbindelser

URLer http://www.librarything.com/profile/SeanLong (profil)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SeanLong (bibliotek)

Medlem sidenApr 27, 2006

Skriv besked

Wow, Sean, your visits to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Hemingway sites sounded great, would dearly love to do it myself. I've always been a huge Rawling's fan and even have gorgeous first editions of The Yearling and Cross Creek too. I also highly recommend Max and Marjorie, the almost magical set of letters between MKR and her legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, which offers more insight into her work and life than any other source I've run across, including her very close friendship with Zora Neale Hurston. It was pubbed by the Univ.Press of Florida in 1999 and is great stuff all the way.

Sean, I've gotta recommend you take a look at Chris Adrian, surely one of the most unusual writers working today. At present he's a working pediatrician at a Boston hospital, while also in his last year of divinity studies at Harvard. I've not yet read his first novel Gob's Grief, but his second novel The Children's Hospital blew me away and remains one of my favorite books from the last few years. His new book of short stories A Better Angel contains 9 stories, all previously pubbed in either the New Yorker, McSweeney's, Zoetrope, Esquire, or Tin House, and are as an arresting group as any I've read this year, easily comparable in inventiveness and substance to the Millhauser book which we both admired so much. A reviewer once called Adrian's work "medical magical realism", not exactly a poor description, but one that in no way does justice to the breadth of his talent, and the last 5 stories in A Better Angel are purely phenomenal. There's also an excellent interview with Adrian this month at Bookslut and I found it all just intensely interesting, so you might check it out.

Matthew Kneale's English Passengers was one of the biggest surprises I've had all year, and definitely one of the greatest historical novels I've read in the last 10 years, just an amazing book that's as hilarious as it is harrowing, and can't recommend it any higher. I just finished T.J. English's Havana Nocturne and loved it to the max, even though I'd read Lansky's bio Little Man which covered a lot of the same territory. And hey, there's even a mention of Mount Dora in it too, where Lansky stops briefly to swipe an orange. I think you're really gonna like this one. All the luck!

skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:22 pm (EST) den Aug 16, 2008

Hi Sean, how's it going with Grant's memoirs so far? i finished last week and thought it was totally compelling all the way through, but still rather sad at the end when he finally acknowledges his illness. I wished the whole thing had been longer and in more detail, covering more of his later career as president, but I'm looking around for a good U.S.G. biography right now, and will light on something pretty soon. I pulled out my copy of Bruce Catton's Grant Moves South and actually had to force myself to put it down, trying to avoid a Civil War OD you know, but I'm definitely going back to Catton's book before the end of the year.

I finished Doug Dorst's Alive in Necropolis the other day and liked it well enough, but it didn't really click for me, mainly because I found his protagonist a bit of a loser, and the fantasy elements of the story were intrusive too, mostly boring and schlockey. Right now I'm about 200 pages into Matthew Kneale's 2000 novel English Passengers and it's been absolutely terrific so far, wonderful characters and top-of-the-line storytelling, a great boook and highly recommended.

There's been such a dearth of decent new fiction the last month or so, but up next is Chris Adrian's new book of short stories A Better Angel, which has only had so-so reviews so far, but after The Children's Hospital, I'm completely oblivious to what any half-assed reviewer might say about Adrian, and intend to read everything he writes from here on. After that, I'm on to T.J. English's non-fiction saga of pre-Castro Cuba Havana Nocturne, and I also plan to re-read Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece Brideshead Revisited, one of the greatest novels of the last century IMVHO, and only hope I love it like I did the first time. All the luck?

skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 7:19 pm (EST) den Aug 9, 2008

Hey Sean, it's great we're both reading the Grant book at the same time. On our trip to St. Louis we visited both Jefferson Barracks and Grant's Farm, so my interest in U.S.G. was definitely rekindled, but I'd meant to read this for many years and never had. I'm only just this minute finishing Book 1, about 315 pages in, so you won't be too far behind at all. Does your edition have the story of how Mark Twain finally persuaded Grant to write his memoirs? My paperback Modern Liabrary edition has a marvelous intro by Geoffrey Perret that tells it all, and it's really a jaw-dropping piece. I love Grant's style, never bombastic but always understated and quite easy to read, though it took me several pages to acclimate myself to some of his word usages and their then-current idioms.

Just FYI, I was born and lived my first 19 years in Vicksburg, Miss., completely steeped in deep South Civil War lore from the cradle, and as a kid knew the huge array of battlefields surrounding Vicksburg like the back of my hand. I've been to Shiloh a couple of times too in the last 10 years, and I even spent a couple of days visiting the battlegrounds at Gettysburg. Growing up I think I read nearly every significant history of the Civil War available, and Grant's account of the siege of Vicksburg truly brings back a lot of memories. Both Bruce Catton's awesome Grant Moves South and Foote's The Beleaguered City tell the same story in more detail of course, but U.S.G.'s story offers the most unique perspective of all I think. All the luck!

skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 9:55 am (EST) den Aug 3, 2008

Sean, right now I'm over halfway through Bartle Bull's extraordinary first novel from 1992 The White Rhino Hotel and enjoying it to the max. I'd never even heard of Bartle Bull before 1998 when I discovered his book A Cafe on the Nile, but I was hooked, and have read his ensuing novels The Devil's Oasis in 2001, and Shanghai Station in 2004, with great relish, but had never got around to his first one until just the other day. Bull writes these epic and very literate African adventure stories, a la H. Rider Haggard, but with much greater wit and panache, and I feel like such an idiot because I've only just realized that The White Rhino Hotel is actually the 1st of a trilogy that sets up the next 2 books, so I may be forced to read A Cafe on the Nile again, but from a little different perspective. Bravo Bull!

I finished Brendan Koerner's Now the Hell Will Start and loved it, as exciting a piece of non-fiction as I've read this year, as well as a harrowing treatise on the plantation mentality of the US Army and its despicable treatment of black GIs in WWII, truly an affecting piece of work though. I absolutely hated Natsuo Kirino's new book Real World and really wanted my money back on it, nothing but pure piffle, and only one cut above an average manga comic. I'm still in shock that the NYTBR gave this crap-fest a cover review too.

I'll be reading Doug Dorst's Alive in Necropolis pretty soon, but first I'm jumping head-first into Ulysses S. Grant's Personal Memoirs, a book I've put off reading for years, but now feels like just the right time finally. All the luck!!

skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:21 am (EST) den Jul 30, 2008

Yes Sean, I can see that I will need to read Absalom again. Even as I finished it I was tempted to go back and start again.
Amanda

skrevet af amandameale kl. 10:30 pm (EST) den Jul 27, 2008

Hey Sean, my wife, kids and I were up in St. Louis for several days last week, and we all had a great time. You don't usually think of St.Louis as a vacation destination, but there's a ton of cool things to see and do, and so many of them are free too. You were absolutely correct about O'Connor's 1964 novel I Was Dancing being turned into a stage-play, but despite the books's dearth of action, I still found it quite enjoyable. I also finished Allen Tate's 1938 Civil War novel The Fathers that JYardley had recced, blew right through it in 2 days, and despite a somewhat obtuse style that was more than a bit Faulknerish, I thought it was superb and totally underserving of its obscurity, though certainly not a book for everyone.

I've read and liked all of Tim O'Brien's Vietnam books and The Things They Carried has to be the best of the bunch, though Stephen Wright's Meditations in Green remains the gold standard of Vietnam war novels, along with Herr's (mostly) non-fiction Dispatches. I spent the scariest year of my life (1967-68) in beautiful sun-drenched S.Vietnam, helped celebrate Tet and got a Bronze Star, saw all the sights, and have read nearly everything ever published on this harrowing bit of US history.

I just couldn't find much to like about Tim Winton's Breath. I know it's had some great reviews and strong word-of-mouth, but neither the writing nor the story were very impressive, and I was bored silly by Winton's watery saga and his rather dim-witted surfing freaks. In the last few weeks Yardley's raved about Seth Greenland's Shining City, which I laughed at consistently, but didn't find as amusing as his book The Bones from 2005, which JY also highly praises in the same column. JY also raved about Brendan Koerner's Now the Hell Will Start and I'm nearly halfway through it already, a book that'll easily make my non-fiction favorites' list, just an unbelieveable story and riveting to the max. All the luck!!

skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:25 am (EST) den Jul 22, 2008

Sean, if you haven't already you should check-out the Washington Post (Books) website, and see (at the bottom) Jonathan Yardley's "Second Reading" columns. I've read them all, and because JY recced it so highly I've just finished the great Edwin O'Connor's 1964 novel I Was Dancing and it truly was everything he'd touted it to be. I also just got the 1938 novel The Fathers by Allen Tate that JY praised so rapturously, and despite my recent aversion to Civil War fiction, I can't wait to jump into this one.

I thought Ethan Canin's America America was excellent, despite a little lameness now and then, but still, a very entertaining novel. Finished Seth Greenland's Shining City,/i> which JY had raved about 2 weeks ago, and mostly laughed my ass off, though it was never close to being as funny as his riotous The Bones from a couple years ago.

If you think I'm not a Joyce Carol Oate4s fan then please check out my library, but this awesome writer's new book My Sister, My Love just blew me away, a slam-fisted, take-no-prisoners satire on pop culture that is one of the best I've read this year. Sorry for the length, old bud, all the luck!

PS - We're all knee keep in GTA4, blowing and going and even using the Cheats nov to make it all even speedier, a total mind-fuck of a game. Cheers!!
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:58 pm (EST) den Jul 13, 2008

Hey Sean, I've been MIA the last week or so, lots of stuff going on here - my triplets turned 9 on the 16th with all the hoopla their birthdays usually entail, and for Fathers Day my oldest son gave me a PlayStation 3, along with Grand Theft Auto IV and its huge strategy guide too, so you know I've been devoting more than a few hours to fooling with that, but GTAIV is really a stunning thing and will be playing with this one for a long time.

Nevertheless, I did manage to read Larry Brown's Father and Son and had completely forgotten what made it such a terrific book, but wow, I was glued to the thing for 2 days and blown away again at its off-hand greatness. I also read Duane Swierczynski's Severance Package, and I have to admire a book whose cover blurb says, "Ever want to kill your boss? Well guess what, THE FEELING IS MUTUAL". This was recommended by Sarah Weinman at Idiosyncratic Mind and it's nothing but the hardcore bomb: cynical, violent, and hilarious too, and the full-page illustrations are nightmarish to the max, loved it down to its black little heart.

Right now I'm a hundred pages into Joyce Carol Oates' new one My Sister, My Love, a 560-page rip on the Jon-Benet Ramsey tragedy which I'm really enjoying, but I've long since reached the stage where I'll read anything JCO writes, and this one's pretty fine so far. All the luck!!
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:48 am (EST) den Jun 27, 2008

Hey Sean, thought you might be interested my interview with Joseph O'Connor:

http://journal.readerville.com/

http://journal.readerville.com/readervil...

Cheers,
Pat D
skrevet af Pat_D kl. 6:04 am (EST) den Jun 23, 2008

Hey Sean, the Dubus book was really something else, wasn't it? I'll admit I wasn't expecting it to be a 9/11 novel, but it ended up as so much more than just that, one of those where I was literally on the edge of my seat for most of it.

I was bored witless by the new Lee Child book Nothing to Lose, but Jonathan Miles' Dear American Airlines came as a very pleasant surprise, and I think you'd really like it. Besides being extremely funny, it's also rather wise and very sad too, plus I found the voice of the Benjamin Ford character very hard to resist. What amazed me the most about it though, is that at first glance the book looks tiny and short at 180 pages, but it's so surprisingly dense, with a lot to read and think about, and it took me almost 4 days to get through it, truly a terrific novel though.

Right now I'm about 50 pages into Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture and liking it all quite a bit so far, lots of Irish in there too. All the luck!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:48 am (EST) den Jun 13, 2008

Sean, I'm over halfway in the Andre Dubus book The Garden of Last Days and feel totally pulverized, like I've been hit by a 100mph freight train, the absolute damndest thing I've read this year, and I dare anyone to put this monster down once they start reading it. And for as many people as will surely love this thing, there's gonna be quite a few who won't like it either, its down-and-dirty rawness, and will probably send a few running for the hills.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:58 am (EST) den Jun 4, 2008

Hi, Sean,

The book you just purchased is high on my list of Civil War must-have books--but I haven't bought it yet. When I learned last year (I think--time is a slippery element with me!) that a treasure trove of Lee's letters to his daughter had been uncovered, I made a mental note to keep up with whatever was going to happen on that front. Lee is probably one of the most difficult prominent American figures to grasp as a human being because of instantly going into Marble Man myth; I think the letters are the best way to get even close to who he was.

There is a biography that is well-thought of that is also on my list:Robert E. Lee, a Biography by Emory Thomas. I think it was written in 1995 and is an attempt to portray the human being, not just the leader on a horse on a pedestal. But I haven't read it.

I've become much more interested in Jefferson Davis, but again, have not read anything on him, although I do have two on my list. I'm always a little reserved about biographies of Great Leaders, being a near-total skeptic myself of the concept.

So--please do let me know what you think of the book, because I will be extremely interested.

And I should tell you--I immediately put Warlock on my completely impossible To Buy list as soon as I read your comments. I actually may get it some time this decade! I'm usually a pretty decisive person, but lately when I've gone to order books, I find myself overwhelmed with all the I-have-to-have-this-book-or-die titles on my list.

Clone, clone, where's the clone program--but with money, please! :-)

All is well here, as I hope it is with you and yours.

Later!

With regards,

Joyce
skrevet af Joycepa kl. 9:43 pm (EST) den Jun 3, 2008

Hey Sean, I kinda thought you'd like Stoner, a one-of-a-kind if there ever was one, and a book I love to recommend. What's really amazing is that Williams' other novels are so utterly different from one another, and you'd never guess that the guy who wrote Stoner could also write the NBA-winning Augustus, or my other favorite of his Butcher's Crossing. And this is weird, but Howard Bahr's actually a neighbor or mine, lives about 15 miles down the road, though I've only met him a time or two. I read (and liked) The Black Flower, but Civil War fiction I have to take in small and measured doses, so have passed on the rest.

I absolutely loved Beginner's Greek and recommend it to the max. If you can get through the first 2 pages without thinking it's the sappiest things you've ever read, then you'll find one of the best books of the year, absolutely terrific. And oh yes, that Nixonland was something else, and I've missed it too, wish I could read Perlstein's take on what happened to that shitbag Nixon and his criminal cohorts after 1972, when it really started to get hot for them. It's a consolation of sorts to remember that less than 20 months after Nixon's '72 landslide, he wasn't president of anything.

I had to bail on Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, a book almost painful to read it's so clumsily written, plus I discovered 2 obvious factual errors that were naggingly disconcerting, and was glad to toss it overboard after a hundred pages. Right now I'm about 80 pages into Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge and I'm really liking it so far, smartly engaging and gorgeously written too. All the luck, and hope you enjoy Dangerous Laughter as much as I did.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:11 am (EST) den May 29, 2008

Hey Sean, despite all the great reviews of O'Neill's Netherland, I've not been disposed to read it, as I've already read a couple of books this year with 9/11 as a backdrop, and more 9/11 angst is just not on my menu anytime soon, Plus, I'm not even mildly interested in cricket, so I'm taking a pass on it right now.

It took me 11 days, but I finished Rick Perlstein's Nixonland yesterday and loved every bit of it, about as entertaining, and as hilarious at times, as history's gonna get, truly an astounding piece of work. And as a sidebar: This just has to be Colin Harrison's year. As you know I've read 2 absolutely great books by him lately, but I discovered that his day job is non-fiction editor at Scribner, and Perlstein credits him as the guiding force behind Nixonland, so Harrison's really making a mark this year.

Right now I'm a hundred pages into James Collins' romantic folly Beginner's Greek, which is definitely NOT the kind of novel I'm normally drawn to, but it's so guilelessly written and so unrelentingly charming, that it's been nothing short of irresistible so far. And what's so cool about it is that you can tell instantly whether you'll like it or not: after the first 2 pages you'll either want to puke or beg for more, but I bought-in to Collins' idea at once, and couldn't be more delighted with this wonderful book.

Envy Unlimited: You get to read Oakley Hall's Warlock for the 1st time and I don't. All the luck!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:02 am (EST) den May 23, 2008

Sean: I read your comments on the new Rick Bragg book, and have added that to my Wish List. I also had the same problem as another person about getting to The journey Home but finally did get to the correct book--which has also been added to my list.

I always enjoy your comments--thoughtful and well-written.

Joyce
skrevet af Joycepa kl. 10:18 am (EST) den May 16, 2008

Hey Sean, I saw your comments on the new Rick Bragg book, but I've sort of side-stepped Bragg after All Over But the Shouting, a book I liked, but haven't felt compelled to go any further with his others. I notice over at R'ville they're highlighting one of my all-time favorite novels, Oakley Hall's Warlock, simply a legendary piece of Americana that I don't think can ever be praised enough.

I'm really curious to get your reaction on the Steven Millhauser book, since you'd mentioned that it was next on your reading list. As much as I've admired his novels, I'd always thought his short stories were too self-conscious and a bit distanced as well, but wow, I wasn't expecting the reaction I've had to Dangerous Laughter, just genius stuff as far as I'm concerned, and easily one of the best things I've found this year.

I'm just at the halfway point in Rick Perlstein's monumental Nixonland, and there hasn't been a dull page yet. Perlstein's book covers American politics between 1964 and 1972, but his style is gleefully sardonic, always a shade shy of over-the-top, making it about as entertaining as history can get. What's even more startling about the events that Perlstein portrays though, is how they eerily portend the same cultural and political fissures, the very same sense of divisiveness that we're being forced to deal with in the country today, or as Perlstein wisely sums up, "How does Nixonland end? It has not ended yet."

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:04 am (EST) den May 16, 2008

I read your post about The Journey Home, but when I clicked on the hyperlink, jumped to the same title written by Edward Abbey. Who knew? Otherwise, the Irish author sounds interesting, and I'll keep an eye on him.
skrevet af RcCarol kl. 6:24 pm (EST) den May 12, 2008

I hope you don't mind my jumping in here and keeping an eye on your postings. There are so many great recommendations and I find that it is leaning towards books that would not be recommended in some of the other groups that I have participated in. I will also keep an eye on Louis's page because I value the recommendations and recognize many of the authors names but might not have ventured there if I had not heard such strong opinions from you guys. I, too read Tin House and have some books in my library by Matthiesen. Vollman is in this edition of Tin House and I have read Ron Carlson's story. I really try to vary my reading as an aspiring writer, I want to cover all bases. Some of my favorites that I have heard mentioned here are Faulkner, actually read quite some time ago, and remember feeling inspired by his passion with character development. Definitely a re-read is in order. Remember loving Absolom, Absolom, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury. I read one after the other which is unusual for me, I usually like to switch to another writer, but I was swept away. I enjoy Cormac McCarthy,particularly his Border Trilogy, it feltthe voice very masculine (obvious, but not always achieved) and made place such an integral part of the violence, which he underplays nicely, while it hovers there always like a gun, hidden but close to twitching fingers. I'm only posting once because I have also been to LouisBranning's page and hope he reads this here and comments. You both have caught my attention with your passion for the books and authors you discuss. I'll be checking out the Harrison book mentioned, I am familiar with Kathryn Harrison, and will also check out Vollman and Matthiesen, although I feel I may have read something by him (M)already. Mary Beth. Off to enjoy mother's day with my family-my daughter is in L'il Abner this weekend!
skrevet af mmignano11 kl. 12:00 pm (EST) den May 11, 2008

Sean, I try not to go off the deep-end too often about certain books and writers, but just can't help myself with Colin Harrison's The Havana Room. Last month I raved about his new book The Finder, and as great as that book certainly is, I was by no means prepared for the sheer storytelling genius displayed in The Havana Room, and can't recommend it any higher. Unfortunately Harrison's books are labeled "thrillers", a pejorative that does no justice at all to what he actually writes, which are great "novels" first above everything else. He's now published 6 books, lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the writer Kathryn Harrison and their 3 kids, and in The Havana Room he speaks eloquently about parenthood:

"There are the deep pressures of being human, and those of us who are parents feel the forwardness of our flesh even as we know our own is failing. The rhythmic sything away of the previous generation forces our attention to our children, for if we do not have our children, then, knowing ourselves to be doomed, we do not have anything. People who don't have children often take violent exception to the idea that their lives are in any way existentially different from the lives of those who do have children, and to this I only laugh darkly to myself and think, Well yes, you may think that, but you are already dead, my friend. I am also already dead, yet live on in my son, who will have his son or daughter when I am dispersed with the fluorocarbons, part of the mist of ozone cooking the earth. Yes, I will yet live. And I think this is in all of us."

Thanks to your reminder I finally got a copy of the Steven Millhauser book, which I'd totally forgotten about, and have what looks like 2 good ones coming up: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, and Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, just a huge thing at 880 pages. All the luck, and sorry about the length again!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:34 am (EST) den May 8, 2008

Sean:

You have a small library posted so far, but we have a lot of books in common. Are you a big fan of Joyce? I did my Master's Thesis on him.

-Jim
skrevet af rmckeown kl. 1:49 pm (EST) den May 5, 2008

Sean, here's a most interesting letter to the NYTBR editor re Dermot Bolger's book, and thought it might merit your attention (& sorry for the length):
"Early in his review of The Journey Home by Dermot Bolger, Terrence Rafferty notes that the novel was originally published in 1990, but he makes no mention of how the last 18 years might affect the reception of this book now that it's appearing for the first time in the United States, nor of the dated quality of the condition of its protagonists as a result of the broad economic and social changes that have transformed Ireland during the exact period in question.

Like Roddy Doyle (whose book The Commitments was published in 1987), Bolger is writing of an era when nearly a whole generation of Irish youth, privileged and disadvantaged alike, were forced to emigrate. Both writers presented a gritty urban Dublin underclass, and although the likes of Shay and Hano would not necessarily have been among those more likely to benefit from the largess of the Celtic Tiger that has developed since, their contemporary equivalents are not emigrating to work in factories in Germany or Turkey - instead, thousands of Poles, Turks, Brazilians and others are living in Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland in the grim equivalent of the housing conditions Hano survived, while Jimmy Rabbitt's kids are meanwhile probably running dot-coms.

What is rather prescient about the University of Texas Press's decision to publish Bolger's excellent novel now is that the bubble has burst, and an Irish generation that has known nothing but boom times and affluence will be undergoing a period of considerable adjustment."

Christina Hunt Mahony
Washington

The new Tin House came yesterday, and over the last few years has become one of my very favorite things: a fat book of short stories, poems, essays and interviews, published 4x a year, and I always wind up reading it cover-to-cover. I don't recall you mentioning it before, and may subscribe already, but it's a great treat every time a new one arrives. The lead short story in this edition is by the great Ron Carlson, and I highly recommend his 2007 novel Five Skies if you've not read him before. All the luck!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:43 am (EST) den May 3, 2008

Hi Sean
Their Eyes Were Watching God is the first NZH I have read and I'm enjoying it very much. My big discovery for the year has been Robertson Davies. Before even finishing Fifth Business I had ordered the remaining two books in the Deptford Trilogy. I saw Louis's message about James Meek and I add to that a thumbs-up for The People's Act of Love.
I've just had two weeks holiday which was blighted by family illness so I was pleased to have my students return yesterday and put my mind to something else.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 10:10 pm (EST) den Apr 28, 2008

Hey Sean, I liked James Meek's We Are Now Beginning Our Descent very much, though it was nowhere near as impressive as The People's Act of Love. Also really enjoyed the Wally Stegner biography a whole lot more than I'd expected. Peter Matthiessen's dad was chairman of the English dept. at Harvard when Wally was brought in to inaugurate their creative writing program too.

Speaking of Matthiessen, I saw you'd added Shadow Country to your list of good ones, so I'm assuming you've already finished it. I only just wound up Book I myself, but it's so great that I'll likely be adding it to mine before it's over, still have a ways to go in it right now. Coming up I've got James Howard Kunstler's World Made By Hand, along with Interpreter of Maladies, one I've been looking forward to for a while.

Can you believe O'Hagan's Be Near Me won the LA Times fiction award this weekend? The competition must have been damn thin out there this year. Luck and All!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:12 am (EST) den Apr 27, 2008

Hey Sean, here's a big Irish heads-up: on the cover of this weekend's NYTBR, there's a rave review of Irish writer Dermot Bolger's novel The Journey Home, which was originally published in the UK in 1990, and is only now being pubbed by the Univ. of Texas Press in the US. The reviewer calls it "an Irish Rebel Without A Cause, saying "whatever the "real" Ireland is or was or will be, there are great chunks of it, with the smell and texture of Irish earth, in Bolger's rich, conflicted, ferociously vital book." You may have already read this one, and if you have, let me know what you thought about it. I just ordered a copy myself, and really look forward to it.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:07 am (EST) den Apr 17, 2008

Sean -

I did read Interpreter, but before it came out, so it was some time ago. I was blown away by it at the time so I was overjoyed when I heard about Unaccustomed Earth. I cannot compare the two because I read them so far apart and when I read Interpreter, Lahiri was new to me. I had the same reaction to both books. And I say you should read them, because I cannot believe that a writer of her level would have a collection not worth reading.

I have not read Namesake yet, but did see the movie and loved it.
skrevet af alphaorder kl. 11:30 am (EST) den Apr 14, 2008

Oh yeah, Sean, that new Modern Library of Matthiessen's trilogy is a very cool book, a most handsome volume. I'd read Killing Mr. Watson years ago, but not the other 2, and Matthiessen's abridged and re-edited them all into one story, so it might be interesting I thought. So glad you liked the Lahiri, as I'm starting it pretty soon, and already feel like I'm the last one to read it. I did read O'Hagan's Be Near Me last year, and though I was quite impressed with his fluent style, I felt unsatisfied with it in the end because I just wasn't able to buy into the narrator's motivation in the second half of the book. It did get wonderful reviews nearly everywhere, but didn't quite click for me.

I really liked Siri Hustvedt's The Sorrows of an American, one of those surprises that sorta sneaks up on you out of nowhere, a very smart book I think, and very reminiscent of Richard Powers. I'm almost done with Rudy Wurlitzer's The Drop Side of Yonder and have gotten more than a few laughs out of it, a speedy mock-western posing as a tongue-in-cheek picaresque, good loopy fun.

I see you've got a copy of Angle of Repose, a book I/ve always loved, and would re-read at the drop of a hat. I was telling Nancy about still having my original reviewer's copy of it, including all the lay-ins, and it's in terrific shape too, but I may get another copy, as she suggested, if I decide to re-read it. I don't have any idea what this beauty's worth, probably not a whole lot, but I sure don't want to have any dumb-ass accidents with it either at this late date. Good luck!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 10:56 am (EST) den Apr 14, 2008

I saw you mention Andrew O'Hagan's Be Near Me in the "Now Reading" thread. If you'd like, I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it after you're finished. I've been waffling on whether to purchase it (and add it to the ever-growing pile of unread books).
skrevet af Medellia12 kl. 8:17 pm (EST) den Apr 13, 2008

What's up, Sean? That Colin Harrison novel The Finder was just a powerhouse of a book, cheap at twice whaever price I paid for it, and I've been shoving it at every reader I cross paths with, so consider it waved in your face too, Ha! I've also ordered one of Harrison's earlier novels The Havana Room, and only hope it's half as good as this new one.

I'm well past halfway in the Martin Amis memoir Experience and it's really beyond fantastic, and that's not hyperbole either, but for Amis to write so beautifully, and still be so brutally truthful, is really quite astonishing, especially since he's made his career with a string of fairly shitty novels, none of which I can honestly recommend except Time's Arrow. Of course he's obsessed with the literary life as you'd expect, dwelling on his father's writing and career, while fixating on all writers he reads or meets, but especially Nabokov and Bellow, both of whom I revere as much as MA does, so I feel I'm in fine company.

I've got a few cool things in the wings right now: James Meek's We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, Rudolph Wurlitzer's The Drop Edge of Yonder, which has been characterized as "Sam Beckett with a six-gun and a sack of rattlesnakes", and Siri Hustvedt's po-mo showpiece The Sorrows of an American. Good luck!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:36 pm (EST) den Apr 6, 2008

Always immensely flattered that anyone thinks my library is interesting!
Hmmmm, I see your problem about finding the LTers With Dogs Group. I have just tried searching for it and was given a list of 80+ books, none of which were the slightest bit relevant. Tell you what I'll do - I think I can probably send you an invite to join Photos of our Dogs which, hopefully, will give a link to the right page. My darlin' lab is on posts 75 & 76 but I'm sure you'll love lost of the other dogs too. Off to try now - if you don't get anything soon you'll know I'm having problems!
skrevet af Booksloth kl. 12:10 pm (EST) den Apr 1, 2008

Hi Sean, I know what you mean about real-life interfering with your reading. I didn't make much progress on anything yesterday, as my 2 oldest sons (36,27) were here and all pumped about the Tiger game v. Texas, which we all watched, and then celebrated appropriately afterward. I did finish the first 21 selected stories, and have just started on Wolff's new stuff at the end. As soon as I'm done, I'm starting Colin Harrison's new book The Finder, which looks like it's offering some serious fun, and then I'll probably pick up either the Martin Amis memoir Experience, or the new bio Wallace Stegner and the American West which is supposed to be exceptional too.

I think you're probably gonna like the Woiwode memoir. I've gone back to it several times asince I finished, and have managed to re-read half of it already. His style alone should get your attention, and you'll like that it's crammed with one literary reference after another, plus the details of his warm relationship with Maxwell, and his description of his first meeting with Jim Harrison(whom I love!), are truly priceless. Woiwode's 2 big books, What I'm Going To Do, I Think and particularly Beyond the Bedroom Wall, shouldn't be missed either, their appeal is timeless, but A Step From Death is really something else.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 12:00 pm (EST) den Mar 31, 2008

Just happened to see a post from you stating you have a black lab, so I had to make contact and say hi from our black lab (see Photos of Our Dogs) - aren't they just amazing? I love greyhounds too though I've never had one - are yours rescues (as so many are) or did you have him/her from a pup? I know we're ostensibly here to talk about books (which I can do ad nauseum) but it's great to meet all these dog-people too.
skrevet af Booksloth kl. 8:13 am (EST) den Mar 31, 2008

Hey Sean, and yes, Tobias Wolff's really an exceptional writer, but the only things of his I've read are Old School and This Boy's Life: a Memoir, both of which I really liked and could easily recommend. His brother's Geoffrey Wolff whom I also admire, especially The Duke of Deception and his terrific John O'Hara biography The Art of Burning Bridges. And we should be on the same page pretty soon, cause as soon as I finish Maugham's wonderful novel The Razor's Edge, I'll be starting on Our Story Begins too.

The Larry Woiwode memoir I mentioned before, A Step From Death, just totally blew me out of the ball park, easily one of the finest things I've read this year. Good luck!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 11:10 am (EST) den Mar 26, 2008

Sean, I really enjoyed your St. Pat's Day piece on new Irish writers and knew you'd gotten a kick out of writing it too, fine stuff. And glad you liked Lush Life as much as I did, and know you're probably getting primed for Clockers pretty soon, another terrific book of his. I'll admit that, of his later novels, I wasn't really taken so much with Samaritan, but I'd have to recommend Wonderland, which I thought as good as anything he's ever produced. For all the acclaim Price's received over the years, I still feel his work is under-valued and under-read, but his books are just too smart and too tough sometimes, all written strictly for adult sensibilities, and most readers today, as well you know, prefer read-by-numbers YA and the insipid over all else.

I finished Wallace Stegner's 1987 novel Crossing to Safety the other day and loved it, but wasn't so surprised because I'd just read his NBA-winning The Spectator Bird last year, and it sort of blew me away at the time. I plan on reading some of his earlier stuff and already have The Big Rock Candy Mountain and its sequel Recapitulation set for summer.

Right now I'm halfway through David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America, an amazing slice of cultural history that's as hilarious as it is harrowing, and a book I'll likely be recommending for the rest of the year. And I'm amped to the max cause I just got my copy of Larry Woiwode's new memoir A Step From Death and am ultra-anxious to start it. Woiwode (pronounced "WHY-woody", or "Y-woody") wrote 2 of my all-time favorite novels, What I'm Going To Do, I Think and Beyond the Bedroom Wall, and this new memoir looks like it could be bliss on toast.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:30 am (EST) den Mar 20, 2008

Dear Sean
Just dropped in to wish you a Happy St Patrick's Day 2008! As I suggested last year, don't drink too much green beer as some Irish-Australians do. Perhaps a nice pint of Guiness?
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 8:39 am (EST) den Mar 17, 2008

Sean, I saw where you got Lush Life and you're really in for a hell of a treat, a spectacular novel by anyone's standards. I also finished The Blue Star, and there's really no words to explain how much I loved it, even more than Jim the Boy. And if you can keep a dry eye during the last 40 pages or so, then you're a stonier soul than I am, my friend, cause I was nothing but a puddle by the last page of this lovely, lovely book.

I also read and totally despised Tom Franklin's Smonk, a complete waste of time, and wish I hadn't even picked the repulsive thing up. Right now I'm halfway through David Mamet's book of essays Bambi vs. Godzilla, just a hoot and a half so far, and I'm also about a hundred pages into Richard Hofstadter's non-fiction Pulitzer winner Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which first came out in 1964 and caused quite a stir. What's amazing is that I think it's perhaps even more relevant today than it was then, and I've been stunned several times by Hofstadter's insights into the active life of the mind and how it deals with the untiring scorners of intellect, whom we're forced to confront every day of our lives. Wow.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 3:16 pm (EST) den Mar 13, 2008

Hi, Sean,

Well, I hafta tell you that I'm afraid that the debt is still mine! Thanks to your comments about Troubles, I bought the whole series. I'm too anal-retentive about reading things in order (you mean, read the middle one first? GASP--god, the world will end!), so I decided to go whole hog.

I thoroughly enjoyed Siege of Krishnapur and Troubles, which I thought was utterly enthralling. I'm now about 2/3 of the way through The Singapore Grip and concur with the general agreement that it's not the best one of the trilogy. But I am fascinated by the military history part of it, and since that's where I am right now, it's moving right along for me.

Normally I shun debt like the plague but I'm truly looking forward to being even more obliged to you for good book recommendations!

Joyce
skrevet af Joycepa kl. 1:44 pm (EST) den Mar 11, 2008

Hey Sean, it's been a pretty interesting reading month so far. First I read Maugham's Cakes and Ale, which I loved, then Louis Auchincloss's 1964 novel The Rector of Justin, another exceptional book and probably Auchincloss's best one too. Then I sort of raced through Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas, a little tiny thing which was only just ok, and not nearly approaching The Savage Detectives on any level.

I tried to read Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, but bailed after 350 pages cause it was boring the piss out of me, but then halleluliah! and break out the Pulitzers, I started Richard Price's new book Lush Life, which is the absolute best thing I've read this year, and is by far the most astounding thing Price has ever written, and I've read all his novels too. When I finish I'm on to Tony Earley's The Blue Star, the sequel to his magnificent 2000 novel Jim the Boy and I can't wait on that one.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 4:50 pm (EST) den Mar 7, 2008

Sean, I'm delighted you find my library interesting. One of these days I'm going to take a picture of my "Faulkner shelf", and put it on my profile page. I can get lost in his world for weeks at a time myself. Are you enjoying The Reivers?
skrevet af laytonwoman3rd kl. 11:04 pm (EST) den Mar 1, 2008

Thanks, Sean. I had added you so I could unabashedly steal ideas for great Irish reads.
Slaintè
skrevet af tiffin kl. 1:17 pm (EST) den Feb 28, 2008

Sean, I knew you'd been re-exploring Faulkner's early novels, and I was delighted to be reminded again of The Reivers, which to my mind has always been vastly under-rated, just as his nearly unreadable A Fable was grossly over-rated. I remember I bought a copy of The Reivers the week it was first published in 1962(I was 15YO), absolutely loved it, and I still have that same copy in my library, a prized item to say the least.

February's been just a stellar reading month, one great book after another, which is what I always like best of course, but a month like Feb. is really quite thrilling finally. I just finished Mark Harris's brilliant and utterly original Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies and The Birth of the New Hollywood, in which he tracks 5 movies from their initial-idea stage through their five-year journey to Oscar night in the spring of 1968, and Harris's book is as absorbing and as entertaining as anything I've read this year. Right now I'm really enjoying Anthony Arthur's 2006 biography Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, and Sinclair's life is just boggling to me so far. I'd only read The Jungle last year, but I read Oil! last month and as heavy-handed as some of it was, I could barely put it down. My wife jokes that I've become an unapologetic socialist in my old age and we've laughed about that a lot lately.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:25 am (EST) den Feb 28, 2008

Sean, old bud, you can drop by every day if you feel like it and I'd be glad. Regarding the Bock book, Janet Maslin is my least favorite NYT reviewer. She never seems able to appreciate or explain ultra-complex novels, and I discount every review she writes. FYI Beautiful Children was the front-cover review in the Feb. 3 NYTBR, penned by the esteemed Liesl Schillinger, who says Bock's "depiction of each man, woman, and child's personal mythology is ravishing and raw". In her wind-up she calls it splendid, disturbing and a bravura performance.

And yes, I'm a big Vollmann fan, but every review of it across-the-board was very negative. The big question asked by nearly all of them was, Why had WV even bothered to write this book?, as he's done both urban and rural hard-luck-stories much more perceptively in prior works. Good luck!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 10:30 am (EST) den Feb 19, 2008

Hey Sean, I just finished Charles Bock's Beautiful Children, parts of which were as grim and grotesque as anything I've ever read, but it's really just an astounding piece of work that's for-certain-sure gonna show up at prize time, not to mention that it's far and away the best thing I've read this year.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 4:13 pm (EST) den Feb 17, 2008

Hi Sean, Haven't been making a lot of use of Librarything recently,sorry for the long delay. I finished "Looking for Jimmy" and yes I thought it was excellent, I will look out for his novel which you mentioned. By the way I managed to get hold of a collection of Mary Lavin stories, although I have not had a chance to read it "Patriot Son and other Stories". Have you read it?
Anyway hope all is well with you, will be in touch sometime soon again. All the best, Jimmy
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 5:46 pm (EST) den Feb 13, 2008

Sean, I really admire your recurring Faulkner gene. Of course I've read all of them over the years, most of them twice, and The Sound and the Fury, more times than I can recall. I have a feeling that sooner or later, you're gonna get the urge to make the pilgrimage to Oxford, and when you do please let me know, and I'll run down there too. I know it'll blow you away.

I've read a handful of good things lately, especially Pope Brock's wonderfully compelling Charlatan, plus Barker's Life Class, and Maugham's Mrs. Craddock, but right now I'm barely 50 pages into The Monsters of Templeton and liking it more than a little. Good luck!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 3:11 pm (EST) den Feb 12, 2008

Hey Sean, I think the first great new novel of '08 has to be Zachary Lazar's Sway, a brilliant take on the decadence of the late 60s that I was totally enthralled with, and wished it had been longer. I'd rec Jim Shepard's Like You'd Understand, Anyway, but I know you've already read it. Wasn't it wonderful? And I'm halfway through Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai right now, and can't put it down, supremely good so far, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the wretched Tom Cruise movie of the same name. Hunt this one down if you've not read it, just an amazing book on every level and wildly original. Good luck!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:49 am (EST) den Jan 24, 2008

Sean,
That's a really great story, your daughter will love that note when she is older, it will be worth a fortune some day.
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 12:44 pm (EST) den Jan 11, 2008

Sean,
Meant to ask, what did you get to say to Bill
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 6:45 pm (EST) den Jan 10, 2008

Hi Sean,
I love John McGahern,I think he was an absolutely amazing writer,I don't know anyone who could use simple language in such an effective manner, the man was a wizard. He didn't live that far from me as he was from County bLeitrim which is practically next door. I'm sorry I never made an effort to meet him. Which one have you signed?
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 3:21 pm (EST) den Jan 10, 2008

Hi Sean, Yeah I've heard of Quinn and that book before but I have not read it, glad you like "Looking for Jimmy" I thought that it might all be "old hat" to you as you live over there. I'm finding it really brilliant but I have not got looking at it this last 2 nights tas I was oncall for work,so I'm not to far ahead of you,just at the Chapter "The Bronx is Burning" I think around 120 pages, you will probably be finished before me.
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 3:11 pm (EST) den Jan 10, 2008

But of course, Sean - feel free to wander around at will!
I've spotted you a couple of times giving very sage advice on Irish books to some other friends of mine in here, so it's grand to make your acquaintance.
Well, while I'm here, I'll have a peek at what you have...
All the best, Carolyn
skrevet af citizenkelly kl. 1:29 am (EST) den Jan 10, 2008

Hi Sean,
"Looking for Jimmy" is actually very interesting with regard to the Irish-American relationship with the Democrats.
If the election turns out to be a battle about the economy, will that suit the Republicans?
Anyway as to the Barack Obama books, I first heard him speak one Saturday when I was in Galway at a niece's wedding, I went to the hotel room for a break after the meal and turned on SKY news and there he was, and I was really impressed with him. So when I went home on Monday I looked up Powells and Abebooks and bought signed copies of "Dreams from my Father" and "The Audacity of Hope". I got them both at very good prices,they are already well over double what I paid for them. I decided to cover myself anyway and also bought Hillary Clinton's "It takes a Village" and "Living History" both of those are also signed first editions. I always tell my wife about what good investments my books are, (I have many signed firsts)but in truth I don't ever intend parting with any of them. I think she knows that too.
Anyway back to the election,interesting to hear you say that Barack Obama is "iffy" on foreign policy, I would have thought he was quite clear about Iraq,but I have a feeling that he is going to be portrayed as "weak" on terrorism by the Republicans and probably even by Clinton, I think though that he has brought an interest and dynamic to the campaign that would not be there otherwise, especially for us outside observers,and he seems to have stirred young people which I think is great,it is very dificult to get young people to take an interest,that in itself is a great achievement, he reminds me a bit of Kennedy in that way. Could we end up with the first female President and the first coloured Vice-President? Obama would still be young enough next time around and obviously more experienced.
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 6:32 pm (EST) den Jan 9, 2008

Hi Sean,
I agree it's a very interesting time out there, and will be great over the next few months. I was watching last night on satellite (SKY) we had a really stormy night here, so the electricity went off in the middle of it, at that point the polls had Obama on 38% and Clinton on 30%, I couldn't believe it when I checked the teletext this morning and saw that Clinton had won it. Puts a completely different perspective on things now, and as you say Mrs. Clinton will probably have the greater financial resourses and will throw everything at it. I must say though that Obama is impressive, I love his speeches, but I suspect that you are right,after last night,looks like McCain and Clinton, but you can't be sure. don't know what your politics are but I hope that the Democrats have the next President. Don't think anywhere in the world wants another Republican Presidency.
I have a couple of signed first editions by both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. Regards Jimmy
Take it easy and stay in touch.
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 4:41 pm (EST) den Jan 9, 2008

Sean,

Our bookstore was out of Amongst Women - shame! - but I put one on order and look forward to reading it when it comes in.

I will also check out Looking for Jimmy!

All best,
alpha / Nancy
skrevet af alphaorder kl. 12:57 pm (EST) den Jan 9, 2008

Sean,

Also my husbands name, but his parents spelled it Shawn. Last name Quinn. We had a nice family trip - my family, not his, no Irish blood in us - to Ireland last year.

Anyway, I will be certain to pick up more McGahern. I work in a bookstore (have for 18 years), so it shouldn't be a problem.

Please do let me know what you think of Stoner. I hope I didn't steer you wrong. I just loved that book and wish I could read it again for the first time.

Best,
Alpha
skrevet af alphaorder kl. 6:51 pm (EST) den Jan 8, 2008

Hi Sean, Thanks for that background on Mary Lavin. I found a few of her books on bookfinder today. So I will make a purchase soon. By the way what about the Presidential Election, is Barack Obama gonna make it do you think?
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 6:27 pm (EST) den Jan 8, 2008

Sean,

Found you by your post on what you are reading. So Creatures of the Earth is not avaiable in US, right? You made me want to run out and pick it up!

I looked at our simliar books and see that you too have Stoner. Have you read it yet? It was my favorite book I read last year, out of 50. Of course there were other close contenders...

Nice to meet you and your library!

alphaorder
skrevet af alphaorder kl. 9:01 am (EST) den Jan 8, 2008

Hello again Sean,
Just noticed you have "Looking for Jimmy" in your library. I am adding you to my friends list, I hope you don't mind.
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 3:58 pm (EST) den Jan 7, 2008

Hi Sean,
I'm afraid I have to plead ignorance here, I have read none of her stories, but thanks a lot for the tip, I will check her out tomorrow and try and find the collected edition which you are reading. Thanks again for bringing her to my attention, a bit of good advise is always welcome and appreciated. By the way I am reading a book at the moment by Peter Quinn called "Looking for Jimmy" published by the Overlook Press last year (2007). It's a "history" of Irish America or as he describes it as a "search for Irish America". Since the book is published in America you are probably aware of it, but if not I would recommend it, I am finding it fascinating. Happpy reading and every good wish to you and yours for 2008, and keep in touch. Jimmy.
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 3:50 pm (EST) den Jan 7, 2008

Hi Sean, I'm always glad to make a great connection with someone here at LT. Thanks for your message!
skrevet af TheresaWilliams kl. 10:18 am (EST) den Jan 7, 2008

Hi Sean
Recently read a very good review of That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland by Clare Wills (Harvard University Press). Sounds interesting.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 8:47 pm (EST) den Dec 28, 2007

Thanks Sean, but you have far better taste than me. As much as I try to avoid it I always end up reading some shockers during the year. Luckily, however, I have very recently dsicovered BookMooch and I'm getting rid of some. One man's trash is another man's treasure, as they say.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 1:44 am (EST) den Dec 24, 2007

Hi, Sean, I just added Frank O'Connor's 'My Oedipus Complex and other stories,' noticed your name among those who added it recently, hop you enjoy. reading these stories brings back many memories.
skrevet af liamfoley kl. 2:41 pm (EST) den Dec 16, 2007

Hi Sean, Tom Franklin's been living and working down in Oxford for a few years now (writer-in-res at Ole Miss), and I got those signed copies from Off Square Books, one of his regular hang-outs there. I enjoyed Poachers, but thought Hell at the Breech was even better. I took a pass on Smonk after a string of unflattering reviews, but may get to it eventually. FYI, every Southern writer of any note always signs books at OSB, and also at Lemuria in Jackson, Ms. What's kind of surprising is that several non-Southern writers(so to speak) make regular stops at both places too. I've met Nicole Krauss, Jim Harrison, and Susanna Clark at OSB, and since Oxford's only a skip and a jump due south of here, it's a quick trip, plus they do a thriving on-line business as well.

Right now I'm about 200 pages into Eca de Queiros' The Maias, simply a sparkling new translation, and though it's a bit languid at times, there's quite a lot of life in it for a book first pubbed in 1888, first-rate stuff so far. There's not a lot of new fiction on the horizon, but I do have an ARC of Charles Baxter's new book The Soul Thief which looks great, and I just got the Everyman's Library edition of Martin Chuzzlewit, which I bought because Noel Coward praised it so highly in his Letters.

Hope you and your family stay healthy, wealthy, and enjoy the best holiday ever. Both my errant sons in Colorado will make it home for Christmas, so my wife and I, with all my 6 children, plan on partying like it's 1999. Felize Navidad!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:03 am (EST) den Dec 14, 2007

Thanks for your interest in my library, Sean. I assume you were attracted by my comments on the works of Raymond Carver. Other than that, we don't seem to have much cross over. I'm mildly surprised to see your library does not include any Ernest Hemingway - if you like Carver, I think you will also like his short work. Try "Men Without Women" as a starting point.

I studied for a year in State College, PA, but I confess I didn't get to know Appalachia or Pittsburgh well.
skrevet af Grammath kl. 6:57 am (EST) den Dec 12, 2007

Sean just noticed that you are originally from Kilrush in Co.Clare, I have a sister living in a little place close to Kilrush called Kilmihil if you ever heard of it.
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 1:02 pm (EST) den Dec 11, 2007

Hi Sean, many thanks for adding me to your interesting libraries,by the way I love the photo of your own library and the Irish greeting. I will return and have a more detailed look later, but on first glance I think your own library is more intersting than mine.Slainte
skrevet af jkavanagh kl. 12:58 pm (EST) den Dec 11, 2007

Sean, Thanks for adding me to your Interesting Libraries. You have an interesting and varied collection yourself. It is hard to stop reading Larry Brown once you get started.
skrevet af Hagelstein kl. 7:42 pm (EST) den Dec 10, 2007

Hi Sean
Hope all is well with you. I have just started The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald and the prose is beautiful. HAve you read it?
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 7:52 am (EST) den Dec 7, 2007

Sean, I was elated that you enjoyed The Abstinence Teacher as much as I did. I laughed so hard at Pastor Dennis when he came dragging into the service late, all bedraggled and beat up...and then he tells about the wedding he and his wife attended, Jenna Jameson, cornering the guy in the men's room, etc....I thought I would absolutely die from laughing so much. I even read it aloud to my wife, then she and I both collapsed, just the most hilarious sequence I've read this year.

I confess I only read about 300 pages of the Tennessee Williams' Notebooks, but I detested the book's layout, with its pages and pages of tiny-print footnotes, and found it a bloody chore to get as far as I did in it. More deploringly, I found I had developed a profound dislike for Williams himself, with his whining petulance and self pity, so I've since banished Notebooks to my "Bad Books" shelf.

I'm enjoying the Coward letters immensely, but I'm glad I read Alex von Tunzelmann's Indian Summer earlier this year or I wouldn't have had a clue about Coward's relationship with Lord Louis Mountbatten, and particularly his unbelieveably marvelous wife Edwina, who's the real heroine of Indian Summer, the centerpiece of which is Edwina's long and passionate liasion with Jawaharlal Nehru. It also went into some detail on Mountbatten and Coward's collaboration on Coward's famous war film In Which We Serve, and it's fascinating stuff all around. In the meantime I'm wallowing in Coward's correspondence and will hate for it to end.

Have you seen the NYTBR's "10 Best Books of 2007" list yet?? I've read all 5 of the fiction titles and 2 of the non-fiction, and think it an excellent bunch overall. And of course the list includes Tree of Smoke, but also Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, probably the most purely exciting thing I've read all year. I've since read all of Bolano's work available in English, and a new one (Nazi Literature in the Americas) is due in late February. He's surely become the most prolific dead writers of the new century and I can't wait for Nazi Lit. Happy trails!

Louis

PS - As a fellow Johnny Cash fan I must alert you to "The Best of The Johnny Cash TV Show 1969-1971", a sparkling DVD that includes performances by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, E. Clapton, Ray Charles and many others, plus JC never looked or sang any better. I've already bought 2 more for Christmas gifts and you've just gotta see it if you haven't already.
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:05 am (EST) den Nov 29, 2007

Eeep! Sorry for "outing" you! It was funny, following profile comments and then beginning to figure out who you were. But The Gathering promo helped, that and the chatter back and forth with Louis.
skrevet af mkunruh kl. 2:04 pm (EST) den Nov 20, 2007

Hello Sean

I suspect I know you from another forum - your tastes and writing style are distinct! The last post, of course, confirms this.

Lovely to see you here.

Miriam
skrevet af mkunruh kl. 8:58 am (EST) den Nov 20, 2007

Sean, I was thinking you should be nearly done with The Gathering by now, easily one of my favorites this year, and one I should be recommending for a long while. I really envy you about your signed copy too. I finished Jeanine Basinger's hugely entertaining The Star Machine and had nothing but great fun all the way through. It bills itself as "a rich, penetrating, amusing plum pudding of a book about the golden age of movies", and it's certainly all that, plus it's one of those where the footnotes are just as marvelous as the text. Basinger is the chair of film studies at Wesleyan U., has written 9 books on film, and is one of the few people I know who've seen more old movies than I have, a great book and a gorgeous one as well.

Right now I'm slamming my way through Ben MacIntyre's Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, just an unbelieveable story that's only come to light since MI5 declassified the Zigzag files in 2001. MacIntyre's book is one big "wow", breathlessly presented, and tells a jaw-dropping story of WWII, highly recommended of course. I don't have much new fiction on the horizon between now and year's end, but I've had such phenomenal luck with non-fiction lately that I'll probably continue with it. Next up is Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s Journals: 1952 - 2000, and then I'll probably finish up the Paris Review Interviews 2. Have you read the Faulkner interview yet? It's the only one I've read so far, but it sort of blew me away. Happy trails!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:51 am (EST) den Nov 16, 2007

Hi Sean, thank you for adding me to your interesting library list! Always nice to hear from not only a fellow reader but also runner! Speaking of Arctic Dreams which I enjoyed a lot yesterday I went to see Into the Wild based on Jon Karkauer's book. I found the book very thought providing, the movie was very true to the book. I recommend both the book and the movie. Got me to think about people like Thoreau. It seems there vision causes readers others to explain there own visions which of course is good. But it also seems muct of there vision comes from pride. Into the Wild is a modern Greek tragedy. I wish you hours of both happy reading and running
Michael
skrevet af michaelbartley kl. 1:08 pm (EST) den Nov 4, 2007

Sean, I'll not say too much about The Abstinence Teacher until after you've read it, but I was forced to add it to my Favorite Books of the year list, and hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I notice that the reviews are just starting to appear for Ha Jin's novel A New Life, which I read back in Aug.(a signed ARC too!), and I've had it on my Favorites list since then. As much as I'd loved both Waiting and especially War Trash, I think this new one is his best ever.

I finished Australian writer Peter Temple's The Broken Shore, and despite the wonderful reviews it's amassed, I just didn't care for it much. I found the Aussie slang distracting throughout, and thought it all pretty ho-hum stuff. Right now I'm several hundred pages into Ken Follett's World Without End and find myself moderately bored with it so far, but there is sort of an accelerating momentum to it and I'll probably cruise through to the end. The writing's merely pedestrian, pitched at about a 7th-grade level I'd guess, but Follett is truly a gifted storyteller at times, and some of his audacious plot turns can be very entertaining. Good luck!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:53 am (EST) den Oct 30, 2007

Sean, I've read several of Gay's short stories over the last few years, mostly in the Oxford-American and Tin House (and one of those landed in Best Short Stories of 2007 too), but have never read any of his novels. For some reason I've never been overly-impressed with his work, and yes, I'd say he qualifies as a would-be Cormac McCarthy(or Harry Crews) but without the serious writing chops. His stories remind me more of Daniel Woodrell, who essentially plows the same rural Southern turf, but is a much finer writer I think, much more focused though just as eccentricly hard-core. Sometime take a look at Woodrell's little time-bomb of a novel Winter's Bone and see if Gay's ever written anything close to it.

Last night I finished Tim Jeal's Stanley which will, without any doubt, be one of my favorite books of the year. Besides being beautifully written, it's a blazing page-turner crammed with impossible adventures, a tragic, melancholy hero who routinely displays jaw-dropping fortitude and bravery, and Jeal's first-ever access to the Stanley Archive has yielded what I think is just a magnificent example of the biographer's art, a superb book in every way.

Even though I've only read 10 pages of Tom Perrotta's new novel The Abstinence Teacher, I can tell it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'd loved both Election and Little Children, and have really been looking forward to this one. Happy trails!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:00 am (EST) den Oct 19, 2007

Sean, I know you've seen the list of NBA fiction finalists by now, a damn fine bunch too I think, made more special since Tree of Smoke will surely win going away. I've not read either of the 2 books of short stories that were nominated, but Josh Ferris's Then We Came To The End has been one of this year's favorites, and I've been recommending it since I read the ARC in January. Another surprise nominee was Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork, a first-novel that I read in May and liked very much. I read it off Stephen King's rec in his EW column, and while I didn't like it as much as King did, it was excellent nevertheless.

I just finished the Best of 2007 anthology yesterday, loved some of them (the John Barth and Richard Russo stories), some were stinkers (Kate Walbert), but overall the majority were quite good and most entertaining all the way. I've just gotten started on Tim Jeal's massive Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer, which has already run through its 1st printing, with the 2nd not due till mid-November. For a book with a hefty $38 retail, and one you might assume to have a limited appeal, that's pretty amazing. Happy trails!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 4:01 am (EST) den Oct 12, 2007

Hi Sean - I just knew you'd love Last Train to Memphis and yes, I'd wait a while before reading Careless Love so's not to unnecessarily OD on Elvis, and really give yourself some time to savor LTtM a little. I also read, and mightily enjoyed, Will You Still Miss Me When I'm Gone and have repeatedly recommended it to any and all.

Over the weekend I finally finished Dumas' The Last Cavalier, and even though Dumas died before he could properly conclude it, I was fairly enthralled with it all the way through its 750 pages. Of course Dumas was a complete plot-freak, and his hero was just a bit too perfectly heroic for belief(the titular Last Cavalier), but his grasp of French history, particularly pre- and post-Revolution, and especially his insightfully realistic portrayal of Napoleon and his family, made it easily as memorable as the best of his other work.

I'd loved Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke so much that I finally picked up his book Jesus' Son and finished it in one sitting. There really wasn't that much to it, a series short, inter-related stories about hopeless junkies and other random low-life, only about 160 pages long and I sort of gulped it. I guess I liked it, but it's one of those I'd hesitate to recommend, definitely not for everyone. It reminded me somewhat of John Fante's novel Ask the Dust, which I sincerely do recommend, a terrific slice of the literary low-life that's become a minor classic.

Like minds etc., but I'm almost finished with The Best American Short Stories of 2007 as well. I've got about 4 stories left, have greatly enjoyed most of them, but my favorite so far is Barth's "Toga Party", absolutely the most hilarious single thing I've read this year. I've got 2 monsters coming up: Tim Jeal's much-anticipated Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer, and then Ken Follet's World Without End, his 1000-page sequel to Pillars of the Earth, which, if you haven't read it yet, is one of my favorite pop novels of the last 30 years. All the luck!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:21 am (EST) den Oct 9, 2007

Sean, I know you're probably knee-deep in Elvis right now and I can sincerely say that I envy you the first-reading enjoyment of Guralnick's Last Train To Memphis. I read it again a few years ago, right before starting Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, which picks up perfectly from the end of LTTM Careless Love's an exceptional book as well, and though a much sadder story, it's a mesmerizing train-wreck of an ending to a tumultuous life, truly a must-read. The two books together comprise the single greatest music biography I've ever read.

Right now I'm nearly 300 pages into Alexandre Dumas' mammoth The Last Cavalier and enjoying it quite a bit. A Dumas Scholar discovered the lost manuscript about 15 years ago, which was collected from various sources, edited, and finally published in France in 2005, becoming a surprise bestseller there too. This is the first US translation of it, and it's easily as swashbuckling, and as compulsively readable as either The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers, just great fun stuff.

In the last year I've read a couple of really exceptional post-apocalyptic novels (The Road, Matt Sharpe's Jamestown), one very lousy one (Crace's The Pesthouse), but I just finished David Lozell Martin's Our American King the other day and thought it was pure dynamite, and, in its own eccentric, though quite riveting approach, ranks with the very best of its kind. I loved it.

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:05 am (EST) den Sep 30, 2007

Sean, sorry to bug you again so soon, but it's almost uncanny sometimes how our tastes dovetail on a pretty regular basis. Just a few weeks ago I'd raved about Holly George-Warren's Public Cowboy No.1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry, and since you've been reading up on Johnny Cash's career you may already know that Gene Autry was his single biggest early influence.

JC wrote in 1977: "I saw him in the movies when I was five years old, and haven't stopped loving him and his kind of movieland dreams. More than that, I took part of Gene Autry home with me in my heart and sang it out in the cotton fields, songs like "Be Honest With Me", and "The Last Roundup". It's no surprise that JC's first real guitar was a Gene Autry "Round-Up" Guitar, a $9.75 special from the Sears Roebuck catalogue (also Willie Nelson's and George Jones' first one too), and Sears sold hundreds of licensed Gene Autry products over a 30-year period.

But Autry and Cash became friends after JC got famous in the late 50s and they stayed in touch. In 1965 when JC was arrested in El Paso for illegally transporting amphetamines across the border, he called Gene first. With his myriad political connections in Texas, Gene knew who to contact and Cash merely paid a modest fine. The following year, the Man in Black wrote Gene, "It's a hell of a long time to wait to thank you for the letter to El Paso for me...your letter was the #1 most important in getting me out of the trouble there, and I will always be grateful to you for going to such trouble for me." I loved JC, saw him perform in-person twice during the 70s, and he was finally just like his first hero Gene Autry, the rarest one-of-a-kind.

Oh, and I absolutely loved Peter Guralnick's Dream Boogie that you mentioned, and if you've not read his Elvis' books yet, what a treat you've got coming your way. All the luck!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 2:05 pm (EST) den Sep 24, 2007

Hi Sean! So glad you liked All Aunt Hagar's Children as much as I did. I've met and talked with Ed on two occasions, have signed 1sts of both The Known World and AAHC, and if you weren't aware, the original "Aunt Hagar" was the black matriarch of Harriet Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, who refers to the slaves on the plantation as "all Aunt Hagar's children". I read the Norton annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin last year, right after AAHC and found it a fairly boggling juxtaposition.

Tree of Smoke was the best new novel I/ve read this whole year. I was in Vietnam myself from Oct.67 to Sept.68, right when much of the action in the book transpires, and Johnson's chilling description of the Tet offensive is just as real it gets. It's just a superb book though, and think it should win every prize hands down. I mostly enjoyed Amy Bloom's Away, though I found it rather 'thin' overall, but I absolutely hated An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, which I thought tiresomely whimsical and unfunny in the extreme.

Right now I'm slogging through to the end of David Peace's Tokyo Year Zero, another over-hyped piece of crap which has been disappointing to say the least. On a brighter front, I'm forced to wholeheartedly recommend Alex von Tunzelmann's tour-de-force Indian Summer, an eye-opening "secret" history of the actual last days of the British Raj in India, really a thrilling narrative history with an amazingly human side to it as well. Up next is David Lozell Martin's Our American King, which looks great, then I'm on to Dumas' The Last Cavalier, and Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher after that. Happy Trails!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 5:56 am (EST) den Sep 24, 2007

Ta' failte romhat!
skrevet af AnneBoleyn kl. 5:28 am (EST) den Sep 16, 2007

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance.... - William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
skrevet af AnneBoleyn kl. 12:16 pm (EST) den Sep 15, 2007

Hi there Sean, i'm very pleased to meet you and am very much looking forward to browsing your library. Ireland to Florida -- that's quite a leap! i hope your skin's doing ok in all the sun. (i've got a lot of Irish in my background and tend to freckles and sunburn.) :-)
skrevet af NativeRoses kl. 10:33 am (EST) den Sep 12, 2007

Hi Sean, just a quick update to say that I absolutely loved Holly George-Warren's new bio Public Cowboy No.1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry, easily one of my several non-fiction favorites this year. I also admired John Williams' NBA-winning novel Augustus, though I liked his book Stoner better. I also read Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, the IMPAC Dublin winner, but wasn't especially impressed with it. I think Petterson's book, even though set in Norway, owes a huge debt to middle-period Cormac McCarthy and McCarthy did it better.

You're probably aware that I'm not a big thriller/fantasy fan, but Michael Marshall's The Intruders is the real deal, nearly impossible to put down and breathlessly entertaining too. Right now I'm nearly halfway through Denis Johnson's doorstop Tree of Smoke and Johnson keeps blowing me away in chapter after chapter, and this could be one of the very best novels of the year. Good luck!!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 12:59 pm (EST) den Sep 10, 2007

On my cluttered desk I found a note: "tell Sean Long to read "Flyaway Peter," by David Malouf." Have I done so? If not, herewith (tho I don't recall why!) It is a beautiful book about war's horrors. . . strange combination of factors, yes. Esta1923
skrevet af Esta1923 kl. 2:49 pm (EST) den Sep 2, 2007

Sean, so glad you seemed to like Tom Bedlam as much as I did, definitely one of the finest new novels this year and one easily worthy of a much larger audience as well. Right now I'm well past halfway in John Williams' epistolary wonder Augustus, and loving every page and can now understand why it's never been out of print since it won the NBA in 1973.

Just lately I've read a string of terrific memoirs too, including the tragic House of Happy Endings by Leslie Garis, Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander, and Lucette Lagnado's The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, all just great stuff. I'll have to admit that I was mildly disappointed in Andrew O'Hagan's Be Near Me. Though his writing was lovely throughout, I never really understood the motivation for his central character's self-destructive tendencies, and could never really empathize with him through all his travails. And despite its gonzo weirdness, I absolutely loved Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein, as hilarious an assault on noir tropes as you'll ever read, and it's especially recommended.

After finishing Augustus, I'm on to Amy Bloom's Away which looks very promising, and then to Holly George-Warren's Public Cowboy #1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry, just a gorgeous book and one I've been looking forward to all year. Good luck!

Louis
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 7:00 am (EST) den Aug 21, 2007

Sean, just a follow-up to yesterday's note, but I noticed that I left a string of sloppy typos towards the end of that message, for which I wanted to apologize. And since yesterday Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip has earned a Booker nod, which it certainly deserves, and I hope it goes on to win too, but I was a bit bumfuzzled that Ondaatje's Divisadero was passed over, another really remarkable book I thought.

I also misspelled George Hagen's name yesterday, and of all the great new books I've read this year, his Tom Bedlam is my absolute favorite. There's a rave of it by Terrence Rafferty in last weekend's NYTBR too.

I'm nearly a hundred pages into House of Happy Endings, Leslie Garis's family memoir which I'm quite liking so far. Her grandfather wrote Uncle Wiggily, her grandmother wrote The Bobbsey Twins - and between them Tom Swift and hundreds of other chiildren's stories - but their lives were ill-fated and ultimately quite tragic. After that I'm on to Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein which looks delicious and possibly sinful. Good luck!

Louis

P.S. - And good luck with Suttree, an all-time favorite of mine.
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 10:40 am (EST) den Aug 8, 2007

Sean,

Flattered to be added to your interesting library collection.

I was very interested in your Irish reads - I think the Irish have some very talented writers, innovative as well.

I have not read Annie Dunne, so excited to hear of another title by the incomparable Barry. I really thought his writing was superb.

Also love Trevor, Toibin and McGahern. Find Roddy Doyle a little less appealing - although undoubtedly he has great talent - just don't get the 'want to finish in one sitting' feeling with him.

Nice to make contact - it is good to have a different style of library to contemplate.

Cheers, Karen
skrevet af kiwidoc kl. 12:16 pm (EST) den Jul 30, 2007

Hello Sean,

After looking at your page and your readings I just had to add you to my 'interesting libraries'. Hope this is OK. Your book collection looks awesome.

Karen
skrevet af kiwidoc kl. 12:36 pm (EST) den Jul 27, 2007

Hi Sean
Me again. David Malouf is a very good writer. Try any of his books and if you like that one, read more.
Tim Winton's most loved book is Cloudstreet and it is very good. My personal favourite is The Riders. I don't recommend Dirt Music - I don't think you would like it.
Peter Carey has written some good novels. I like, in particulr, Oscar and Lucinda. Also True History of the Kelly Gang is very enjoyable and has an Irish angle which you might like. Look up Ned Kelly on Wikepedia.
A very fine writer is Christopher Koch and I recommend all of his novels.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 9:07 am (EST) den Jul 26, 2007

Hi Sean
Delighted to hear from you again, Hope you are in good health. I'll just write a quick note here and get back to you later. I know that you like exemplary writing so you will like everything that Patrick White wrote. Try Voss or Riders in the Chariot.
More later.
Amanda XX
skrevet af amandameale kl. 10:34 pm (EST) den Jul 24, 2007

Glad to hear you like Lavin, as you say she is so underestimated. Without running to my stored books there are so many of her stories that stick out in my mind. Brother Boniface, Bridget and An occasion of sin, did you find any of them? Was there a specific story. I hope you are begining to feel better, take care of yourself.
skrevet af liamfoley kl. 1:19 pm (EST) den Jun 14, 2007

Have you had time to read Mary Lavin yet?
skrevet af liamfoley kl. 9:33 am (EST) den Jun 6, 2007

Have you heard from Louis Branning lately? Several of us are missing him and hoping he's OK.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 8:15 am (EST) den May 19, 2007

I think that I have most of Mary Lavin's books in storage right now. She does happen to be one of my fave short story writers. There was one of her stories on the Inter Cert years ago, "Brother Boniface." Ever since then I have been interested in her work. Her life story is also interesting. Sometimes we have to suffer before we realise what is important in life. Can one write good work if they have not suffered? I know that I have read some of the stories from "Tales" but I cannot remember which ones are in that volume. Can you remind me? Then I will be in a position to offer my opinion. But I can sasy that I have never been disappointed by any Mary Lavin's books.
skrevet af liamfoley kl. 2:37 pm (EST) den Apr 2, 2007

Happy St Patricks Day for tomorrow. Don't drink too much green alchohol!
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 9:14 am (EST) den Mar 16, 2007

I get back to Limerick when I can, I was there for a few monthl last year, how about yourself?
skrevet af liamfoley kl. 10:07 pm (EST) den Feb 20, 2007

Only 15 shared books? For a few Irish we have to do better than that!
skrevet af liamfoley kl. 8:30 am (EST) den Feb 20, 2007

Thanks! I hope you do get at least one of those fiddles. Too sad about the books. I have told my family repeatedly - when I eventually keel over, they should under NO circumstances sell my books in a garage sale! Instead they should just call up Powell's (huge local bookstore) and ask them to bring a truck!
skrevet af oregonobsessionz kl. 2:20 pm (EST) den Feb 19, 2007

Hi Sean
Just finished The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle. I think you said that you had read this? What a book! Marvellous. And you can hear the Dublin accents in the dialogue.

Had a peek at Louis's message. I like The Information very much. After that I think Amis had a few bad reviews and I haven't read another.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 8:07 am (EST) den Feb 13, 2007

Sean, I've never really been a big Amis fan, though I've liked a couple of his books over the years, but despite so many of the fine reviews for this new one, I'm still gonna take a pass on it I think. I read an interview with Amis where he said that his biggest source for the new book was Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer-winner Gulag, and I was thinking about finally reading it, since I've had it on the shelf for a couple of years now.
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 3:05 pm (EST) den Jan 16, 2007

Hi Sean,
i am from the Czech Republic and i am translating a story Visiting Takabuti from Matters of Life and Death by MacLaverty, and i have a problem with it, do you think you could help me? The thing is, that i think there are some mistakes in the transcript i have been provided, because neither me, neither my American friend know or understand a couple of phrases from there. Thats why we suppose there are some spelling mistakes or such... Unfortunatelly i have no chance to reach the original, or at least not within the time i am supposed to hand in the transaltion. I searched the internet for some online version but of course the book is too new to be here, but i found this server, and when i saw your comment on Visting Takabuti i decided to ask you for help. Please, could you let me know on e.noova@yahoo.com whether you would be able to check a few places for me in the original? Perhaps you still ve got the book at home or so... thanks a lot, best regards, Estella
skrevet af estella kl. 5:35 am (EST) den Jan 12, 2007

One of Christopher Koch's books is called Out of Ireland. About a convict (I think) who acquires a Ticket of Leave (he's free)in Tasmania. An excellent book.
skrevet af amandameale kl. 6:40 am (EST) den Jan 8, 2007

Hi Sean
1. My mother-in-law is from County Kerry (next-door to you?) but has been in Australia for over thirty years now. Over the years she made many trips back home to Ballybunion but since her remaining sister died she hasn't been back. Her name was Costelloe. She still has the accent, of course, and is very lovely.
2. I have a copy of The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton and would value your opinion. I'm not sure whether to read it.
3.Australian literature: anything by Patrick White; anything by Christopher Koch; Cloudstreet by Tim Winton; The White Earth by Andrew McGahan; True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey; The Secret River by Kate Grenville, and many more. I admire very much Koch and White (our only Nobel Literature laureate).
skrevet af amandameale kl. 7:32 am (EST) den Jan 7, 2007

Hey Sean, and thanks for the wonderful New Year greeting and hope you and your family have the best year ever. I had all my older sons here at the house for the holidays, really a hectic but fun time, and know exactly what you're talking about. I finished the two volumes of John Fowles' journals last month and loved them both, even reading them out of order too, completely loved The Children's Hospital, and right now I'm nearly finished with what I think's gonna be one of the great new novels of '07, Joshua Ferris's Then We Came To The End. It won't be out until March 1, but I think you'd really like it a lot, a true keeper.
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 6:43 am (EST) den Jan 7, 2007

It's me again, sorry. Was just reading LouisBranning's page and I'm advising both of you not to read The Night Watch. It's a slightly better than average novel. Nothing special. But if you read it and like it let me know.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 7:36 am (EST) den Jan 6, 2007

Hi Sean
Most of the books we share are by Irish writers. Are you Irish or American by birth?
1. I'm still confused about Oh PLay That Thing. I wonder if Doyle had invented a new character would it have worked a little better. It was a big jump from A Star Called Henry to the sequel - the two Henrys were almost two different people. Miss O'Shea's appearance in the middle of the book seemed CRAZY so there was definitely a problem of continuity and/or structure. In fact, I think the structure of Oh Play was its downfall. If you take the various sections of the book on their own, for example, the Louis Armstrong section, I think the writing is good and the story works. Likewise if you take the last section of the book (on the trains etc.) it is well written and it works. But when you throw all of the elements together it is a dog's breakfast. My reaction was ambivalent. While reading the end section I was asking myself what the hell was this tacked on for, and at the same time admiring the writing and the content. I was glad I read it.
2. Yes, I loved The Master by Colm Toibin - what an exquisite piece of writing. I have read some of Mothers and Sons as well - very good.
3. I have in my pile That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern - looking forward to it.
4. Read The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor this year - very good.
5. Also in my pile is another Doyle - The Woman Who Walked into Doors which I read about when Paula Spencer was published.

I hope you don't mind reading all this. I sure am enjoying telling you. Happy to receive recommendations from you at any time.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 7:32 am (EST) den Jan 6, 2007

Dear Sean
I was just reading your comments on the McLaverty book which on my must buy list.
Was interested in your earlier comments about Oh Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle. I read it and was constantly asking myself whether I liked it or not. Was there a problem with the structure? I was asking myself the same question when I finished it but decided that it had some merit. I'd love to know why you hated it.
Amanda
skrevet af amandameale kl. 2:09 am (EST) den Jan 5, 2007

Sean, I was mildly interested in Waters'NightWatch because of the Booker nomination, but I went and read Fingersmith instead, and found it so utterly pedestrian and such a slog to get through, that I've passed on anything by Waters since then, including Night Watch. If you decide to try it, let me know how it turns out.
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 7:43 am (EST) den Dec 13, 2006

Truly a superior list, Sean, good luck!!
skrevet af LouisBranning kl. 2:57 pm (EST) den Dec 12, 2006

I laughed at myself all the while I was reading the Fowles' Jounal, Sean, because I hadn't read the first one either, but found it made no difference whatsoever. I've since bought Volume 1 t