I finished reading The Ambassadors by Henry James: a failed man of letters goes to Paris to bring back the son of his wealthy fiancee.
I didn’t like it. There were way, way too many sentences where I had to read them twice to figure out what they were trying to say, and I disliked almost all of the characters. It redeemed itself somewhat at the very end, but I don’t think I’m going to leap into another Henry James book for a while.
Henry James (deservedly) takes his lumps here for oververbosity and other literary sins: "Reading Thomas Hardy is like eating a pillow." - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
Just finished Dan Balz’s Collision 2012, which is pretty good but not as engagingly told as Mark Halperin’s and John Heilemann’s Double Down, which covers much the same ground about the Obama v. Romney race. Also finished J.R. Pournelle’s Outies, a very disappointing authorized sequel to her dad’s and Larry Niven’s classic first-contact novel The Mote in God’s Eye.
I’ve begun Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear, about avoiding becoming a victim of crime. He’s a bit boastful about his expertise, and sometimes says things with great certainty that just don’t sound quite right, but it’s interesting.
I finished Sandman Vol 3 Dream Country by Neil Gaiman yesterday. This volume was rather hit and mis, mostly miss unfortuately. The first story was great, Gaiman at his best. The second was a shaggy dog story involving cats that made me do a headdesk and the last story was so short it didn’t even have time to be boring much less develop a plot or characters…
Speaking of Neil Gaiman, I finished Neverwhere today. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a fun, quick, and tremendously inventive read. The only quibble I have is that, given that the narrative hews pretty closely to the classic “Hero’s journey” structure, the main character is, for much of the novel, more of a passive observer than an active participant. I never really found him particularly convincing, believable, or sympathetic.
That said, all the other characters are brilliant! Particularly Messrs Croup and Vandemar, a pair of deliciously grotesque supernatural assassins who take far too much pride in their work. I can’t think of another writer who can do characters like that as well as Neil Gaiman.
I’d give Neverwhere 4[sup]1/2[/sup] out of 5. Urban fantasy fans will find something to enjoy on nearly every page.
I’m also about two thirds of the way through Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. I must admit, I’m finding it pretty hard going. I’ve never read anything by Henry James before and I’m finding it hard to get to grips with his style. The book is incredibly ‘writerly’, full of huge run-on sentences which pile clauses upon clauses until they just collapse under their own weight. As it turns out, many of these sentences are worth grappling with, but I can’t read more than 10 pages without needing a break. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has had similar difficulties with this book.
I tried, oh lordy I tried THREE times to read it but I just can’t for all the reasons you enumerate.
I finished Silks by Dick and Felix Francis on Thursday. I quite enjoyed it even the parts other reviewers felt ran on too long.
Friday I also read Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer by Kelly Jones. It’s a YA tending toward the younger end of young adults, but the narrative was engaging and it was pleasant to not read an overly precocious tween. Sophie is a 12 yr old half Mexican girl who moves from LA to the country and discovers there are some rather unusual chickens on the farm… I highly recommend it for chicken lovers and YA book lovers too! Cough Dung Beetle
Finished Fatherland, a great alt-history novel by Robert Harris, and The Peoples of Middle-earth, a 1996 collection of J.R.R. Tolkien’s notes, working drafts and story fragments edited by his son Christopher. Two highlights: “The New Shadow,” the brief beginning of a LOTR sequel that would’ve been set about a century after Sauron’s fall, and “Tal-Elmar,” a similarly-abandoned story of a man from a backwards tribe who encounters Numenorean mariners.
Next up: a re-read of 1776 by David McCullough, nonfiction focusing on that key year of the American Revolution, and Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca, a novel about a Nazi spy in Cairo helping Rommel against the British.
Robert Harris is one of my go to authors - I haven’t read a bad book by him yet.
I’ve just finished Zola’s Pot Bouille and am just starting The Ladies’ Paradise as I work through the Rougon-Macquart cycle. The last three books I’ve read in this series have been all excellent in different ways. I’m in awe at Zola’s skill as a writer.
I’m also re-reading Robert Massie’s Castles of Steel. I’d love to know if anyone can recommend a similarly excellent book on World War Two naval history.
I have had my times reading Henry James. I had to read Turn of the Screw back in a high school English course, and hated it. James is the only person who can make a ghost story boring. It’s been filmed at least twice, by the way*).
In college I had to read The Beast in the Jungle. Despite the promising title, the story has neither Beast nor Jungle in it, except in a metaphorical sense. It’s really a story – I kid you not – where the point is that nothing happens. But it takes so damned long not to happen. James is arguably the perfect author for a story like this.
I had an English professor who loved Henry James. He saw those incredibly long, subordinate clause-filled sentences as the pillars of the great gothic cathedral of James’ novels, and loved the way they proceeded with great predictability and magnificence to meet in the conclusion of the book. But her recognized that a lot of other people – including most of his students – thought that James was a great, long-winded bore.
I leave you with this bit of wonderfulness – Edith Wharton’s account of Henry James asking for directions. This is supposed to be a true story:
He was a talker, was our Henry.
I do love chicken! 
But not Henry James. If he were here right now, I’d give him a biff in the schnozz. Sadly, he is dead…
I’m glad it’s not just me who has trouble with him 
I finished Turn of the Screw, by the way. I did enjoy it. I thought the ending was very well done, and I quite liked the ambiguity of it all (although, the way I read it, the ghosts were real regardless of whether or not the governess was mad). I just wish I didn’t have to keep forcibly remove myself from the flow of the story every two minutes to decipher 200 word sentences with 28 clauses. That said, I do think that a lot of James’s verbosity can be justified by the emotional precision he achieves. Unlike, say, Cormac McCarthy (whose “All The Pretty Horses” I abandoned after five pages when I came across a paragraph long sentence with sixteen instances of the word ‘and’ in it), grappling with James’s prose can be very rewarding and isn’t wordy just for the sake of being wordy. For now, I’ll give it 3 stars out of 5, but I think I’ll probably read it again at some point.
I’m now onto The Color Purple by Alice Walker. I’m about 90 pages in so far and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s a hard read (emotionally speaking, that is) and not for everybody, but I can’t put it down.
I started Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan. I have a love hate relationship with her, I think her characters are fabulous but God Almighty do I have to know EVERY detail? And I’m tiring of her Mommy issues being front and center in every book…
I read it in college, and I agree with you entirely.
I’m terribly jealous, it’s a book I really, really wanted to read after I heard a radio adaptation of it, but my attention span gets four sentences in and starts to wonder off in search of dragon jewel or something. I’m glad though that you liked it in spite of it’s wordiness.
About 1/4 of the way into The Rook; I know, I’m coming in a little late to the party. Liking it so far. Also part-time reading The Revenge of Seven, the fifth book in the I Am Number Four series.
On audio, I just finished Make Me, the latest Jack Reacher book, in which, holy cow, Reacher finally gets hurt. Yes, the guy who is practically Superman, who survived being shot in the chest because his muscles were too dense for the bullet to penetrate enough to kill him, at long last meets someone who rings his bell. About time, too, since he’s around 40.
Finished Richard Laymon’s The Cellar. Ugh. So much promise, and then the last several chapters are just weird and stupid. There are four books in the “Beast House” series, I hear the second is the best. Still debating whether I want to risk it.
As slow as he’s being able the sequel, you might be right on time… 
Just finished Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’. I was absolutely blown away by it. The style, the character development, the thematic depth…everything about this book justifies its status as a classic. There’s barely a word wasted in the entire book. I give it an unqualified five stars, and I’m definitely going to read it again.
It is pretty heavy going though. I got the fourth Harry Potter book the other day. It’s going to make a nice change of pace
Finished The Rim of Morning: two tales of cosmic horror by William Sloane. Two nicely done sci-fi novellas from the 30s. Solid, and recommended.
This morning, I read a fair bit of The Passenger by Lisa Lutz, a novel about a woman who goes on the run when her husband dies by accident. Didn’t hook me.
If you haven’t read the same author’s The Spellman Files series, I recommend it most highly. It’s mystery mixed with humor, about a family of private investigators who are constantly investigating each other.