Quick Question:

I've been wanting to read something by Margret Atwood but I'm not sure where to being. I was wondering if any of you are fans or have at least read a book of hers that you could recommend to me?

I wanted to mention this play, The London Merchant, written by George Lillo in 1731, in light of the last discussion here. It's what my professor called a "New Tragedy," due to the fact that it is the tragedy of an apprentice and a harlot, not the high folk of tragedies past.
Robert Hume would say The London Merchant takes place in "Melodramaland," the play is filled with morals and christianity and mercy and grace, and characters like Thorowgood and Trueman. It takes itself clearly from the pages of Paradise Lost, Hamlet and Macbeth. It is a play that should be all those things FR laments in the previous conversation.
But it is absolutely brilliant. I had not read this play before yesterday, but I think this is the stuff that i stand on when i support the sentimental and the melodramatic.

Frazier, Charles

All this talk about books I haven't read reminds me another book I haven't read, and want to read. High upon my list it is, though little knowledge about it, have I. (god i'm bored).
The book is Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier, author of the wonderful Cold Mountain.
Does anyone know anything about this? Is it supposed to be any good? I thought, all this Cormac McCarthy talk, we shouldn't forget other people.
Like Charles Frazier, or Herman from Herman's Head. Remember that show? Whatever happened to Herman?

In the thread of...

It's been a big week for prizes in literature. Today the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Orhan Pamuk. He is the first person from Turkey to win the Nobel prize for literature. Which is pretty exciting. Particularly because of the state of the world right now, namely whats going on in the Middle East, but clearly I didn't need to spell that out for you. The Nobel prize committee describes his writing as one, "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures". A list of his works (along with publishing dates) can be found here. And a comprehensive list of past winners for literature can be found here.

In case any of you want to talk about it...

Man Booker What?

In case you didn't remember the significance of today I am here to remind you. Today the the Man Booker 2006 winner gets announced. The official press release was at 10 am in London on BBC1. Which was many a hour since its nearly 12 in Chicago. Yet somehow I can't figure out who won. It's not on the Booker website, nor on BBC1. Let me know if you hear anything.

In eager anticipation,
azf

UPDATE: Kiran Desai is announced winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006.

The Dive From Clausen's Pier

As you all already know, I am reading The Master and Margarita right now. But before I picked that up I was reading, rather vigorously I would say, The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Anne Packer. This is her first novel, but before it she wrote for The New Yorker and had a collection of short stories, Mendocino and Other Stories, which I believe she won some awards for--but don't quote me on that. The novel follows one young woman's post college search to find where in the world she belongs, which sounds kinda cheesy, but that's my own fault, not Packer's. The book centers around one highly debatable ethical question: how much of ourselves are we required to give to others? And when do we have to put ourselves first? A review from The New Yorker describes it this way:

At the start of this quietly engrossing début novel, twenty-three-year-old Carrie Bell is tiring of her stalled life in Madison, Wisconsin, and her bland, relentlessly loving boyfriend of eight years' standing. When a dive into the local reservoir leaves him paralyzed from the neck down, she flees to Manhattan, where she takes shelter with a group of wannabe artists in a decaying Chelsea brownstone and falls for an elusive older man. The journey is a familiar one, but Packer fleshes it out with a naturalist's vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented, and capable of mistakes that the author may never have intended. The result is genuine suspense, as Carrie feels her way toward the truth about herself, and what it means to be a moral being.

I'm can't out-right recommend this book to everyone, obvioulsy, because what book can be recommened with such overarching confidence (besdies this one) but I will say that I really really enjoyed it and if, when recalling the past, you find that you often like the same books as I do, then it would be well worth your while to pick it.

RIP: AZF's Computer

Things have slowed down a bit on the blog, I am sure you noticed. It is due to the untimely demise of AZ's computer. Tragically, it has expired. But reading has not expired, nor has CZF's ability (and he excels at this) to sit on a computer at work and not do much.
So. AZ has started The Master and Margarita, which I know some of you have read, and there is and endless amount of discussability there. Jesus and Pontius, the upright cat with the monocle, the devil and the master and all that great stuff. I find that this novel, though I have forgotten much of it, has left very strong images in my mind, which I'll probably never forget.
Or, if that doesn't interest you, Book IV and V of Paradise Lost, which I am reading.
Or, Latin. Convenire meus amicis cupio et amor deusque dissere.

(how's that for elementary latin.)