I similarly got so engrossed in this book when I read it that I was really sad when I had finished it and had to return to the real world. It was a really long time ago, but I remember that feeling. Perfect to distract you from thinking about food. Try Anna Karenina next!
Another one of my favorite books is "The American," by Howard Fast. His historical fiction is always engrossing, but this one I found particularly compelling. it is about labor, unions, the Haymarket affair, and the Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld, who was one of the founders of the progressive movement in the late 1800s and an associate of Clarence Darrow, among others. I've always found this era of American history fascinating. You might like this one, but it's not very long. However, Fast was a prodigious writer, and you can get hooked on his books. Or maybe you've read all of them already (I imagine your dad might have been a fan of his).
Really! My husband and I read "Karenina" aloud together, having both read it earlier in life, and I just... couldn't believe... we had chosen to experience that culminating scene. Like, when I read it in high school, I was like "Oh wow, this is really well written!" I mean it wasn't real to me. You can read all kinds of stuff as an adolescent, when you're still hardened, y'know?
Have you read "Watership Down"? Not sure if it counts as a classic (it's actually classified as a children's book), but it's one of my favorites. Very engrossing and over 400 pages long.
Congrats on dipping below 200! I’ve just discovered your Substack and love it! Have you ever read “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt? It’s absolutely fabulous. I’ve read it 3x. The movie was a disaster but the book is SO GOOD and fully immersive. Let me know if you read it.
Thank you, Elizabeth!! No, I haven't yet read "The Goldfinch" - but a dear friend of mine loved it and highly recommended it to me. Now, with your added recommendation, I'm definitely putting it on my list!
My therapist used that book along with Moby Dick as a form of bibliotherapy. It’s important to return to these books and glean what you can from a current vantage point. If you read it before it may be time to go back to The Grand Inquisitor!
As for "The Red and the Black," I read it in my twenties, in French without having first read it in English. I know better than that, now. It was maybe the first experience that challenged my belief that I "knew French." By the end I was barely hanging on, and at this point all I remember is, I think it was about a social climber and at some point he had an illicit liaison.
My dad's friend the Rev. Chuck Yerkes, who I want to write about sometime, taught himself Russian during basic training in the Army by reading "War and Peace" in Russian. (He said that this probably wouldn't have worked with Dostoyevsky, who used a much bigger vocabulary and whose syntax was more complex.) A writer I hugely admire, the late Clive James, learned several languages this way - by reading great books in their original language. As for me, the slow reader, I'm quite happy and proud just to get through a great translation! Que sera, sera!
So I was starting to say, and lost the draft comment, that Stephen and I read War and Peace aloud (a practice we've had for going on forty years) and it was the next biggest page-turner ever, after Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"--a huge book with the addictiveness of a high-class soap opera. Never wanted to leave those people. War and Peace also kept us riveted, and we greatly appreciated the short chapters. We dutifully read all the way through the Epilogue, at which point we were good and ready to go, but we read with enough attention to notice when our book had a line missing, or out of order, or something, i.e., we could tell whether it did or didn't make sense.
Alice, I'm so glad you rewrote this comment after losing the draft! What Stephen and you experienced is _exactly_ what I did with "War and Peace" -- including my gratitude for the short chapters, and _definitely_ including the very difficult slog through that Epilogue (man, Tolstoy had some things to say about where he thought historians were falling short!). Love that you've been reading aloud to each other for all these decades! Also making a note to myself to check out the Vikram Seth book, which -- as so often happens -- I may actually have bought at some point and may be somewhere on my super-disorganized bookshelves (the last person to bring any order to my book collection was, at my request, my librarian mom, many years ago on a visit to Berkeley; since then, entropy has been fully restored).
The two Russian classics I have not read are Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I will be sure to have a list of characters on hand when I do finally read it. Congratulation on passing your milestone
Q: “What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?”
A: “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this, but I read old issues of Archie comics before I go to bed. It’s not a new habit: I used to read Archie as a kid, before I tucked in for the night. Riverdale in the comics always seemed so crisp and bright and welcoming (the opposite of the way I felt about my school growing up). It continues to give me a warm, soothing feeling before I drift off to sleep. But more important, closing the day by reading the same thing that I did when I was young gives my life a semblance of beautiful sense and order.”
SOMAN CHAINANI
from Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Timothy Ferriss
also, while the great novelists are indeed often great have you seen that giant Taschen Spider-Man reprint of the first 21 issues? I got it on sale, it is physically huge so some part of my brain tells me I am a small child discovering Steve Ditko for the first time.
Read War and Peace a couple of years ago, what’s with the 8 syllable names and nicknames one syllable shorter?! You’re so right that a cheat sheet of names is critical, Josh. It wasn’t a weight loss balm for me but how wonderful that it was for you! Go Josh go!!
I think Moby Dick makes the most sense if you've seen an old whaling port like Nantucket or Salem. Just following the paragraph structure will take your mind elsewhere. Congrats on the minus 31.
Congratulations, Josh!! or Mazel Tov! for both slipping (slurping?) into the 100's and completing War and Peace! A fine beginning of the new year. Shanah Tovah!
I've never read W&P or any of the 3 others you mentioned. and probably won't try to either. But I have been reading Stegner's Angle of Repose--admitting that he's an interesting/excellent writer, but not liking the book. A curious combination for me. Have you or any of you readers out there read it? If so, comments?
As an Easterner by birth and a Westerner by later choice, I both enjoy and admire Wallace Stegner’s writing. I have a special place for The Gathering of Zion, one of my 3 favorite books of Western American histories. This book brings alive the remarkable movement of the Mormons to their eventual home in the Great Basin. Stegner, though not a Mormon himself, wrote with insight gained from his childhood as the son of a man chasing rainbows all over the mountain West. The book is an unromanticized account of Brigham Young and his early followers and their extraordinary journey West.
Yes, my husband and I actually read Angle of Repose aloud--as we did War and Peace! (I seem to have lost the unfinished comment about our doing the latter.) And yeah...I felt pretty conflicted about it. For one thing (meta) the fact that it cannibalized real letters, I forget exactly whose (read it some years back) but remember that the heirs of the person or people cannibalized were not pleased--this made me queasy. And there was just something queasy about it anyway. But parts of it were so vivid. I especially remember a scene going down into a mine shaft. OK maybe that's the only vivid scene I remember.
And man, at this rate this post could expand indefinitely!
I agree, Alice. Stegner is great with descriptions. but it took me a long time to get into it, and I don't like the characters either, who seem to get worse and worse as the book progresses. Yes, cannibalizing is a good term. Not as long as W&P, but at over 600 pgs, longest novel I've read in maybe forever. Still muddling towards the end. Don't understand why so many voted it one of the best novels ever.
Maybe we should close this detour from Josh's comments so it doesn't get as long as the book!
Thanks to you, Josh, my partner and I are in the middle of our 3rd week of the diet. (We're doing bars as well as soups and shakes, so it is not ENTIRELY liquid, but with the 3-5 quarts of water they want us to drink there's a lot sloshing around in our mouths...) I had already begun a 13 volume fantasy series of books before the diet, but I am tenaciously clinging to it -on volume 10- for alternative reality space. I read War and Peace as a geeky intellectual in high school and used it as a kind of shield to fend off the WASP conformity imperatives of my Connecticut suburb. Jews were my 1st "minority." Much more interesting than the protestant kids my mother wanted me to date. Wishing us all the best and a happy new year as we shed pounds and keep empathaction going!
Susan, that's SO GREAT!! It sounds like we're actually on the same diet program, or at least a very similar one: I keep calling mine a "liquid diet" (maybe because I like the sound of it), but it also has soups and bars as options, along with the shakes. (I'm on the Kaiser Medical Weight Management Program.) Ooh -- being immersed in a long fantasy series sounds AWESOME!! Sending oodles of vibes of support and empathaction to you and your partner as you shed the pounds!!! (Unsolicited advice: I've been using an app called WaterMinder to keep track of the buttloads of water I need to drink each day.)
I have also started W & P multiple times. Maybe I’ll give it a go now. Your persistence with both diet and book is inspiring. But I need a character list such as you describe.
I similarly got so engrossed in this book when I read it that I was really sad when I had finished it and had to return to the real world. It was a really long time ago, but I remember that feeling. Perfect to distract you from thinking about food. Try Anna Karenina next!
Yes, Leslie -- I was so sad to leave the world, and characters, of the book!! Thanks for the recommendation of "Anna Karenina"!!
Another one of my favorite books is "The American," by Howard Fast. His historical fiction is always engrossing, but this one I found particularly compelling. it is about labor, unions, the Haymarket affair, and the Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld, who was one of the founders of the progressive movement in the late 1800s and an associate of Clarence Darrow, among others. I've always found this era of American history fascinating. You might like this one, but it's not very long. However, Fast was a prodigious writer, and you can get hooked on his books. Or maybe you've read all of them already (I imagine your dad might have been a fan of his).
Thanks Leslie!
Well, if you want another longish Tolstoy experience, that would be a good choice, but be forewarned, it's pretty sad.
Really! My husband and I read "Karenina" aloud together, having both read it earlier in life, and I just... couldn't believe... we had chosen to experience that culminating scene. Like, when I read it in high school, I was like "Oh wow, this is really well written!" I mean it wasn't real to me. You can read all kinds of stuff as an adolescent, when you're still hardened, y'know?
Have you read "Watership Down"? Not sure if it counts as a classic (it's actually classified as a children's book), but it's one of my favorites. Very engrossing and over 400 pages long.
Pax, it's on my list! Sara loves it, and I _really_ want to read it sometime! Thanks for the recommendation!!
Congratulations on breaking 200. Keep at it! Buena suerte, amigo.
congrats on all fronts! Some pretty impressive milestones :)
Congrats on dipping below 200! I’ve just discovered your Substack and love it! Have you ever read “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt? It’s absolutely fabulous. I’ve read it 3x. The movie was a disaster but the book is SO GOOD and fully immersive. Let me know if you read it.
Thank you, Elizabeth!! No, I haven't yet read "The Goldfinch" - but a dear friend of mine loved it and highly recommended it to me. Now, with your added recommendation, I'm definitely putting it on my list!
You go Josh
Inspiring
Brothers Karamazov?
My therapist used that book along with Moby Dick as a form of bibliotherapy. It’s important to return to these books and glean what you can from a current vantage point. If you read it before it may be time to go back to The Grand Inquisitor!
and a big mazal tov on dropping that "2" in the hundreds place! Also, your mom and stepdad are beautiful.
_So_ beautiful -- thanks!!
As for "The Red and the Black," I read it in my twenties, in French without having first read it in English. I know better than that, now. It was maybe the first experience that challenged my belief that I "knew French." By the end I was barely hanging on, and at this point all I remember is, I think it was about a social climber and at some point he had an illicit liaison.
My dad's friend the Rev. Chuck Yerkes, who I want to write about sometime, taught himself Russian during basic training in the Army by reading "War and Peace" in Russian. (He said that this probably wouldn't have worked with Dostoyevsky, who used a much bigger vocabulary and whose syntax was more complex.) A writer I hugely admire, the late Clive James, learned several languages this way - by reading great books in their original language. As for me, the slow reader, I'm quite happy and proud just to get through a great translation! Que sera, sera!
So I was starting to say, and lost the draft comment, that Stephen and I read War and Peace aloud (a practice we've had for going on forty years) and it was the next biggest page-turner ever, after Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"--a huge book with the addictiveness of a high-class soap opera. Never wanted to leave those people. War and Peace also kept us riveted, and we greatly appreciated the short chapters. We dutifully read all the way through the Epilogue, at which point we were good and ready to go, but we read with enough attention to notice when our book had a line missing, or out of order, or something, i.e., we could tell whether it did or didn't make sense.
Alice, I'm so glad you rewrote this comment after losing the draft! What Stephen and you experienced is _exactly_ what I did with "War and Peace" -- including my gratitude for the short chapters, and _definitely_ including the very difficult slog through that Epilogue (man, Tolstoy had some things to say about where he thought historians were falling short!). Love that you've been reading aloud to each other for all these decades! Also making a note to myself to check out the Vikram Seth book, which -- as so often happens -- I may actually have bought at some point and may be somewhere on my super-disorganized bookshelves (the last person to bring any order to my book collection was, at my request, my librarian mom, many years ago on a visit to Berkeley; since then, entropy has been fully restored).
The two Russian classics I have not read are Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I will be sure to have a list of characters on hand when I do finally read it. Congratulation on passing your milestone
here’s a quote I love:
Q: “What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?”
A: “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this, but I read old issues of Archie comics before I go to bed. It’s not a new habit: I used to read Archie as a kid, before I tucked in for the night. Riverdale in the comics always seemed so crisp and bright and welcoming (the opposite of the way I felt about my school growing up). It continues to give me a warm, soothing feeling before I drift off to sleep. But more important, closing the day by reading the same thing that I did when I was young gives my life a semblance of beautiful sense and order.”
SOMAN CHAINANI
from Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Timothy Ferriss
I _love_ this -- thank you!!!
also, while the great novelists are indeed often great have you seen that giant Taschen Spider-Man reprint of the first 21 issues? I got it on sale, it is physically huge so some part of my brain tells me I am a small child discovering Steve Ditko for the first time.
forgive me.
or
Nuff Said, True Believer!
I have not seen it -- and I will look it up!! Wow, Steve Ditko -- that name brings back a flood of happy memories!!
Read War and Peace a couple of years ago, what’s with the 8 syllable names and nicknames one syllable shorter?! You’re so right that a cheat sheet of names is critical, Josh. It wasn’t a weight loss balm for me but how wonderful that it was for you! Go Josh go!!
Thanks, Jeanne!! That cheat sheet also listed nicknames -- super-helpful!!
I think Moby Dick makes the most sense if you've seen an old whaling port like Nantucket or Salem. Just following the paragraph structure will take your mind elsewhere. Congrats on the minus 31.
I’m inclined to agree, Bruce! Plus there are those great Rockwell Kent illustrations.
Congratulations, Josh!! or Mazel Tov! for both slipping (slurping?) into the 100's and completing War and Peace! A fine beginning of the new year. Shanah Tovah!
I've never read W&P or any of the 3 others you mentioned. and probably won't try to either. But I have been reading Stegner's Angle of Repose--admitting that he's an interesting/excellent writer, but not liking the book. A curious combination for me. Have you or any of you readers out there read it? If so, comments?
As an Easterner by birth and a Westerner by later choice, I both enjoy and admire Wallace Stegner’s writing. I have a special place for The Gathering of Zion, one of my 3 favorite books of Western American histories. This book brings alive the remarkable movement of the Mormons to their eventual home in the Great Basin. Stegner, though not a Mormon himself, wrote with insight gained from his childhood as the son of a man chasing rainbows all over the mountain West. The book is an unromanticized account of Brigham Young and his early followers and their extraordinary journey West.
John, thanks for the book review.
Yes, my husband and I actually read Angle of Repose aloud--as we did War and Peace! (I seem to have lost the unfinished comment about our doing the latter.) And yeah...I felt pretty conflicted about it. For one thing (meta) the fact that it cannibalized real letters, I forget exactly whose (read it some years back) but remember that the heirs of the person or people cannibalized were not pleased--this made me queasy. And there was just something queasy about it anyway. But parts of it were so vivid. I especially remember a scene going down into a mine shaft. OK maybe that's the only vivid scene I remember.
And man, at this rate this post could expand indefinitely!
I agree, Alice. Stegner is great with descriptions. but it took me a long time to get into it, and I don't like the characters either, who seem to get worse and worse as the book progresses. Yes, cannibalizing is a good term. Not as long as W&P, but at over 600 pgs, longest novel I've read in maybe forever. Still muddling towards the end. Don't understand why so many voted it one of the best novels ever.
Maybe we should close this detour from Josh's comments so it doesn't get as long as the book!
I’m enjoying this detour!
Thanks, Sara! Speaking for myself, I haven’t read any Wallace Stegner - though I think he has a great name!
a memorable name for sure.
Thanks to you, Josh, my partner and I are in the middle of our 3rd week of the diet. (We're doing bars as well as soups and shakes, so it is not ENTIRELY liquid, but with the 3-5 quarts of water they want us to drink there's a lot sloshing around in our mouths...) I had already begun a 13 volume fantasy series of books before the diet, but I am tenaciously clinging to it -on volume 10- for alternative reality space. I read War and Peace as a geeky intellectual in high school and used it as a kind of shield to fend off the WASP conformity imperatives of my Connecticut suburb. Jews were my 1st "minority." Much more interesting than the protestant kids my mother wanted me to date. Wishing us all the best and a happy new year as we shed pounds and keep empathaction going!
Susan, that's SO GREAT!! It sounds like we're actually on the same diet program, or at least a very similar one: I keep calling mine a "liquid diet" (maybe because I like the sound of it), but it also has soups and bars as options, along with the shakes. (I'm on the Kaiser Medical Weight Management Program.) Ooh -- being immersed in a long fantasy series sounds AWESOME!! Sending oodles of vibes of support and empathaction to you and your partner as you shed the pounds!!! (Unsolicited advice: I've been using an app called WaterMinder to keep track of the buttloads of water I need to drink each day.)
I have also started W & P multiple times. Maybe I’ll give it a go now. Your persistence with both diet and book is inspiring. But I need a character list such as you describe.
I kept that character list bookmarked the whole time I was reading it, Nette -- it was invaluable!