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Atonement has the honour of being an excellent book and a terrible movie. To Atonement (film) fans -

Agreed Camo. It had all the makings of a decent film, but it just wasn't in the end.

I recently read a book called A Little History of the World by E.H.Gombrich. A history book with a little history of it's own. Written in German in 1936 by a 25 year old Gombrich explaining the history of the world to be read by intelligent children without jargon or pomposity. The book was a best seller but then banned by the Nazis and never translated into English .
In his much later years now in England in 2005 Gombrich decided to republish his book in English. It's a remarkable read when you consider it in comparison to other texts from early in the 20th century , specially for it's lack of superiority when talking about other non European races as was often the case at the time. It considers the whole sweep of civilisation since time began the world over. I would've loved it when I was a kid, and I liked it a lot now. Funny it was banned by the Nazis for it's pacifism

The last few books I finished...

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

"With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to remain--where we ran grave risks perhaps!"

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William Easterly

"Thinking about luck is good for the soul. It reminds us self-important analysts that we might just be totally witless about what's going on. Luck makes us ask ourselves whether we would see the same association between our favorite factor X and economic growth if the true cause was sheer luck."

Mr. Arkadin by Orson Welles

"Did you ever stop to think why cops are supposed to be dumb? Because they don't need to be anything else. You don't need to be intelligent to outsmart crooks; they're even stupider."

Within a Budding Grove, Part I by Marcel Proust

"Meanwhile there may have been, perhaps, among the gazing crowd, a motionless, formless mass there in the dark, some writer, some student of human ichthyology who, as he watched the jaws of old feminine monstrosities close over a mouthful of food which they proceeded then to absorb, was amusing himself by classifying them according to their race, by their innate characteristics, as well as by those acquired characteristics which bring it about that an old Serbian lady whose buccal protuberance is that of a great sea-fish, because from her earliest years she has moved in the fresh waters of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, eats her salad for all the world like a La Rochefoucauld."

How does one even approach a Proust novel?

I wanted to quote the preceding image that this part inverts, but didn't think anyone would read anything 2-3 times longer . I also kind of liked how impenetrable it was out of context. Here's the more complete passage, which describes young Marcel's life at a hotel by the sea.

"All the long afternoon, the sea was suspended there before their eyes only as a canvas of attractive colouring might hang on the wall of a wealthy bachelor's flat and it was only in the intervals between the "hands" that one of the players, finding nothing better to do, raised his eyes to it to seek from it some indication of the weather or the time, and to remind the others that tea was ready. And at night they did not dine in the hotel, where, hidden springs of electricity flooding the great dining-room with light, it became as it were an immense and wonderful aquarium against whose wall of glass the working population of Balbec, the fishermen and also the tradesmen's families, clustering invisibly in the outer darkness, pressed their faces to watch, gently floating upon the golden eddies within, the luxurious life of its occupants, a thing as extraordinary to the poor as the life of strange fishes or molluscs : (an important social question, this ; whether the wall of glass will always protect the wonderful creatures at their feasting, whether the obscure folk who watch them hungrily out of the night will not break in some day to gather them from their aquarium and devour them.) Meanwhile there may have been, perhaps, among the gazing crowd, a motionless, formless mass there in the dark, some writer, some student of human ichthyology who, as he watched the jaws of old feminine monstrosities close over a mouthful of food which they proceeded then to absorb, was amusing himself by classifying them according to their race, by their innate characteristics, as well as by those acquired characteristics which bring it about that an old Serbian lady whose buccal protuberance is that of a great sea-fish, because from her earliest years she has moved in the fresh waters of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, eats her salad for all the world like a La Rochefoucauld."

The Stranger by Albert Camus -

Free Will by Sam Harris -

Re-reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

How is that Justin? My dad has it.

It's a brisk and heartbreaking novel. Franzen has a way with characters and small moments that make it wonderful. It's completely devoid of pretension.

What I'm currently reading for Latin-



What I'm going to start reading soon-

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - +

Within a Budding Grove, Part II by Marcel Proust -

As to the pretty girls who went past, from the day on which I had first known that their cheeks could be kissed, I had become curious about their souls. And the universe had appeared to me more interesting.

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I had to write an essay on that book in high school, but I don't remember much about it now.

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Re: The Corrections , I liked it too. Agree about your summing up. The characters are very believable . I love the way the family, like most families, find each other exasperating but have a deep bond that only growing up, and old, together will do.


Recently read Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher book. This has become a tradition in our family with one of us buying the latest as it comes out then passing it on to the rest of us. In this new one 'Personal' he travels to Paris and London in search of an assassin. We've been reading them for so long they're becoming a bit samey but Reacher always has some great fistfights, the inventiveness of which is always something to look forward too. Some of the London scenes were a bit silly , but that's the price you pay when you get a British writer who''s lived far too long in the States

VALIS by Philip K. Dick -

Infinite Jest -
A Clockwork Orange -
Skulduggery Pleasant -

Currently reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ.

"With this work of fiction, Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ explores the inequalities between men and women in Senegal, Islam, and African society. Bâ creates a premise of a fictional letter from Ramatoulaye, a schoolteacher in Senegal, to her good friend Aissatou, now in America. Ramatoulaye, a recent widow, is sequestered in mourning for four months and 10 ten days, as is the custom when a woman’s husband dies. During this time, she reminisces about hers and Aissatou’s lives as students, then later adapting to their roles as wives. She pensively examines the disintegration of both their marriages using introspection and striving to look backward with equanimity."

If you do not have loads of spare time to read but desire to undertake some form of anthropological study of a foreign land with foreign practices then this short novel will prove to be an engaging and intellectual read, one characterized by strong female presence and a resounding call for mutual tolerance and respect.

Being interested in the phenomenon that is JK Rowling, and not fancying reading Harry Potter, I've just finished The Casual Vacancy. This is her novel about characters in a village and the plotting around a district council. Almost abandoned it halfway through as it's pretty bad. A bunch of people defined by their class, liberal social worker, timid wives, plotting scheming men, Asian doctor, bolshy teenagers, drug addicts on a council estate.....can you any more stereotypical? A load of characters so unredeemingly nasty that you actually welcome the silly melodramatic ending. Waste of time.