The City and the Stars is far and away my favorite Clarke book. Definitely a classic SF novel.
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I finished the book of reminiscences and am now reading a collection of short essays about Jane Austen’s novels, A Truth Universally Acknowledged edited by Susannah Carson. I am a huge admirer of Austen’s work and have had my enjoyment enhanced by the insights in several similar volumes that I have read. Excellent discussions here by C.S. Lewis, Anna Quindlen, Eudora Welty, Louis Auchencloss, and others, and stupid pieces by Lionel Trilling and Kingsley Amis. Only about half done, but I have already encountered several ideas that make me want to read the whole canon again.
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The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma
Felt incredible after reading it. I could just see everything happening in front of me. A must read in between a career centric life.
Now reading
The battle of Bali. Imperialism, resistance and independence (1846-1950) by Anne-Lot Hoek.
About the futile and violent attempts of the Netherlands of keeping Bali within the kingdom. Definitely a black page in Dutch history.
No translation as far as I know.
Next reading
On China written by Henry Kissinger.
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No wonder it is Kissinger who is writing about that subject, he is the only one been around long enough to know what happened 3000 years ago. 
I’ve been rereading Don Quixote, which I first encountered about forty years ago. That first reading didn’t go the way I had hoped. I expected the storyline and the characterizations to follow some sort of trajectory, and I clinged stubbornly to that expectation, which was a misunderstanding of how satire works. For me it became terribly tedious, and although there were worthy nuggets of entertainment along the way (quite a few actually) altogether it struck me as a thin return on investment, mere pennies to the dollar.
I can’t say that I’ve gained any new insights this time. What I have been able to do is to focus on what this novel actually is and does, as opposed to how it measures up against preformed ideas I’d had. With good reason Don Quixote is considered one of the great masterworks in all western literature. Still, if you’ve thought about reading it but are hesitating, there are a few things I think it would be helpful to bear in mind:
In another kind of novel, when Don Quixote attacks the windmills and falls off his horse it would seem reasonable that this should stand as the story’s climax. He would surely experience some epiphany, his hallucinations would cease, and he could put away his sword, his lance and his armour for good. Well, this is not that novel. At that point there are roughly nine hundred pages remaining and Don Quixote is just getting warmed up. He’ll continue to create chaos wherever he goes, never wavering in his belief that he’s a valiant knight-errant performing heroic deeds that will resound through the ages. By the time you reach the end you’ll have been treated to essentially the same joke many times over.
Fortunately there is compensation for that. It may help for you to approach the novel as a kind of smorgasbord. It’s constructed in such a way that you could jump around and dip into it here and there without losing the main narrative thread. Cervantes will sometimes lead you down some lengthy byways that have nothing to do with Don Quixote. These stand-alone stories (such as The Tale of Ill-Advised Curiosity) revolve around questions of honour and steadfastness. They are very well-crafted stories that take you into a time and place that you are unlikely to have visited as a reader before.
And, to be fair, the comic relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza does begin to hit its stride in the book’s second half. Their growing exasperation with one another leads to some amusing back and forth between them; as for instance during the wedding of Camacho the Rich, or as Don Quixote offers advice to Sancho concerning his upcoming “governorship” of an island. Actually my favourite scene occurs early on at an inn where a group of workmen make sport of Sancho by tossing him into the air repeatedly with a blanket. (Do people still do this nowadays?) Of the many indignities Sancho has to endure, this blanket incident seems to fester within him more than any other, and he’s never far from complaining about it for the umpteenth time.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza can seem thoroughly grounded one moment then childishly credulous the next. We see that insanity is an elusive concept with its gradations and its anomalies and sudden reversals. It can be highly specialized as with Don Quixote, or it can hide in plain sight waiting for almost any number of things to make it declare itself. If Sancho Panza were living today he might well be a flat-earther, but then he might instead be extolling the benefits of household cleaners as a treatment for Covid-19, The idea that madness is a far more mundane affair than generally thought makes this novel as relevant today as it has ever been, if not more.
I like to think that I’m a more patient reader now, less preoccupied with getting from point a to point b, and that I’ve acquired a greater willingness to just give myself over to the beautifully wrought language such as you’ll find with Cervantes. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised this time. Conrad Melville recently alluded to a comment by C.S.Lewis to the effect that a book has to be read at least twice to be fully appreciated. I don’t know if that’s always the case, but it certainly has proven true when it came to my appreciation of Don Quixote.
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As always, an illuminating review. My experience with Don Quixote was the same as yours. I read it around age 14 or 15 and found it very tedious, but plowed through because I thought I should. I was probably too young and very likely had a bad translation. I have thought about rereading it because it is so often highly touted, but I am not fond of long books (even though The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite). Nevertheless, your comments certainly nudge me in that direction.
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I am now reading The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes, which I discovered in my favorite used book store. In the past, I never saw anything but his poetry collections in used book stores, and they didn’t interest me. But this is a collection of short stories, which I am very fond of. I opened it up and read “Melton was one of those miserable in-between little places, not large enough to be a town, nor small enough to be a village—that is, a village in the rural, charming sense of the word.” Intrigued.
And later: “Cora was not humble before the fact of death. As she turned away from the hole, tears came—but at the same time a stream of curses so violent that they made the grave-tenders look up in startled horror.” Sold!
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I think you have a poorly translated copy. It’s supposed to read:
“Kosh was not humble before the fact of defeat. As she turned away from the goban, tears came—but at the same time a stream of curses so violent that they made the moderators look up in startled horror.”
Cookie
Conrad’s earlier quote from the book should read:
Melton was one of those miserable in-between little get-togethers, not large enough to be an association, nor small enough to be a club—that is, a club in the rural, charming, WE NEED MORE PLAYERS sense of the word.
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I am reading Harry Potter here. I really like it.
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Does anybody here have an opinion on Pynchon’s “Gravity’s rainbow”? I saw it at the bookstore and I’m wondering if I want to read it.
Even an opinion on Pynchon in general is more than welcome. Thanks!
It’s been a long time since I’ve read that novel, and all I can tell you is that it’s a highly imaginative and challenging work that I happened to enjoy. By no means can I claim to have a thorough grasp of it. If you’ve never read Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow probably isn’t the one to start with. You might consider Mason and Dixon, a more accessible novel that I likewise found entertaining. The thing is, these are two lengthy novels, so you’re in for a serious investment of time one way or another. And if you are put off by books that tend to wander somewhat, again Gravity’s Rainbow may not be the one for you.
I hope I’m not being too much of a killjoy here. Gravity’s Rainbow is a tremendous achievement but not something I would recommend to all comers without reservation.
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For whatever it’s worth, Gravity’s Rainbow features an octopus named Grigori and a cameo appearance by Mickey Rooney. It does have its quirks for sure.
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DISCLAIMER: I own a copy of this book but have NOT yet read it, too intimidated. And I have a hundred books (mostly, but not all, science textbooks, popular science, and lots of SF) that are much higher in my many stacks of “to read” books.
But … I often resort to Goodreads.com when I want to know what people think about a certain book. And then I sometimes spend HOURS reading the many comments (and comments to comments).
In this case: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon | Goodreads
And sometimes then, I read a book because of the ★★★★★ and positive comments it got, and sometimes I read it despite the critical comments—in the latter case, it usually is because those critical comments seem to come from people with a view of life diametrically opposite to mine.
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Thank you very much, I really appreciate it and it’s just the kind of advice I was looking for. I must say that I’m still intrigued, so I guess I could give it a try. And since you suggested it I’ll also check Mason and Dixon if I find it.
Not at all a killjoy, and after all I asked for an opinion, so it wouldn’t have been a problem anyway.
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Thanks, that’s actually useful, I’ll check it out.
Well, sometimes I read bad reviews of things I like just for the sake of getting angry, so I guess that this reverse approach sounds very reasonable.
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Looking over my earlier comments, I feel I can do better.
Gravity’s Rainbow explores the idea of war as an extension of male sexuality. What Pynchon does is to fuse these two things into a single character, and it gets quite literal, the protagonist’s sexual impulses coinciding with one ballistic event or another. It’s an approach that critics refer to as magic realism. Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass—all have applied this narrative feature. Where Pynchon ultimately goes with this is a bit foggy in my mind now. But I don’t wish to be a spoiler, so maybe it’s just as well.
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I tried to read The Crying of Lot 49, his shortest novel, which I thought would be the best place to start without wasting a lot of time if I didn’t like it. Indeed, I gave up at the halfway point, as the story seemed to be going nowhere.
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Recently reread The cat who … - series (in Dutch).
They always put a smile on my face.
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I finished The Ways of White Folks, comprising 14 outstanding stories. On the basis of that one volume, I now consider Langston Hughes among the greatest of American short story writers, alongside Stephen Crane, Jack London, Ring Lardner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Flannery O’Conner.
I subsequently read the tedious, wretched novel, Vathek, by William Beckford. I would have given up, but it has two points of interest: its wealth of Arabic lore, and its historical place as a decadent novel 100 years before the Decadent movement.
I am now taking up The Life of Alcibiades by Jacqueline de Romilly. Alcibiades was one of the most interesting people in the ancient world, I think, so I am looking forward to reading a coherent account that pulls together the scattered strands of his history.
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