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Greatest American Novel, yes.

burn that book...read Aeschylus instead...

I read Kafka at the DMV, to truly feel Kafkaesque

You're not just smart, you're incredibly handsome!!

Hello Matthew. Random, but have you heard of the writer Josh Malerman and if so, read any of his books/ care to share a recommendation ?

You sound like a baby; just read the danm books, there's no time line you need to satisfy, just read.

Very spot on the book man, I finished the autiobook and was not impressed by it. I like the way you articulate yourself, how can I learn to speak as calmly as you.

Love your library home. I too have filled my home with books. :) I'm planning on putting up a Little Free Library to do some destashing as I read the ones I have accumulated, so I can share and make room.

I share a lot of your comments. I enjoyed the story but the thing that bugs me a lot is the fact that Benjamin felt disgusted towards Hildegarde when she was only 40! I know she wasn't young but he talks about her as she was elderly :(

I bare the name juvenal

Great analysis! Trollope is a great storyteller and like you said the cast and storylines weave together seamlessly. Which character did you find the most amusing or humorous?

I read this story yesterday and I think that it's amazing. I actually kind of forgot that Irene Adler was going to outsmart Sherlock and I was surprised by it, even though i knew it was going to happen. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is an incredible writer and I think this short story is really important, because Sherlock starts respecting women more, or at least Irene Adler. It's wonderful to see him look up to someone and being inspired by someone.

Is the reader meant to feel like the recipient of the letters? Without return letters, I feel as though that would be the necessary frame of interpretation. Either I would have to assume that I am the recipient, (which would potentially be itself very difficult, if, the one writing these letters feels psychotic, solipsistic, etc), or, that I am simply to have to infer what the recipient was saying back, and when, myself (I've never read the book.)

Schopenhauer's quotes are the best. Larry David would definitely have gotten along with him. He says what most are scared to say, but what some know to be true.

Try to speak louder or use some Mike so we can hear you.......

I find Gatsby, with its universal themes, to be timeless. I enjoy revisiting this one every few years. Great discussion. Thanks for sharing!

I got the ebook so I can join along!

"So we beat on,boats against the current ,borne back ceaselessly into the past." last line of the novel. reflect on this line and the myth of Sisyphus

We should stop making this book be so much about the American dream or something like that. Yeah it's a book about a specific time in America but the lost generation or the unrealiseable dream aren't the only themes. Fitzgerald is ultimately about being borne to the past in every moment, an aesthetic of a lost world and of missing out. Gatsby's building of his own self across his life and then living in the illusion that he can return to the past, the tragedy that ruins his hopes, that's not the American dream, it's just the story of a man who paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He's larger than life, sure. All of this in the best prose in the history of literature? Pretty good is just not the words man 🤷

"Gatsby had an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely that I shall ever find again ." The Great Gatsby Speaking of Gatsby's goal to have Daisy confess that she has loved him exclusively and to marry her, Nick responds: "you can't relive the past." Gatsby responds" Can't relive the past? Of course you can." Gatsby is the one person in the book who posesses complete integrity. The corrupt means he uses to achieve his ends have not altered his spiritual intactness ,he dares to dream and to be faithful to his dream.true corruption lies in the hearts of those who despise Gatsby.

“ They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite books and I think of the quote above every time I watch the news. Politicians, royalty, and movie stars retreating back into their money… The last sentence gets me every time.

I have loved this book since the first time I read it. It continues to hold up under multiple readings. Fitzgerald was a genius.

I have never read this book nor any others by Scott Fitzgerald, I have always just stayed away as though they were just too distasteful. Plus The overlay of Daisy and her Southern accent, the entire 'fakeness'... I honestly can't explain it to you Matthew but everytime I saw the book I just said ...euuuuuu! Then found something else to read. I didn't even know the story or the plot!! I wonder why the entire set of books from Fitzgerald effected me that way. Now you come along and tell me all of this and now I have to reconsider...do I read it or not ? There are only 3 books that have effected me like this....

That ending might be my favorite sentence in English. Wow. I need to reread this book badly.

I find it fascinating that a book that is held up frequently as The Great American Novel...spends its entire breadth poking huge holes in the perceived 'American Dream!' Is it possible that our 'Great American Novel,' then, is nothing more than a tome of explosive irony??? And then, ultimately, is that Fitzgerald's absolute insidious genius - - he writes a book deriding everything America prides itself on only to have it taught in nearly every public school in the land!

You touched on an important point that hadnt dawned on me at the time and that is how unlikeable the characters in the book were, it wasnt a great reading experience for me when i first read this and have wondered why.I always felt it was a little over-rated.

That last sentence is engraved on the slab atop Scott and Zelda’s grave in Rockville. _The Great Gatsby_ is my favorite book, but it has been too long since I last read it. The movie annoyed me to no end. The quintessential story about the Jazz Age should not have been filled with rap music.

Felicidades, es un buen ejemplo. 4 sentadillas son unos mikujava.Monster muchas y un buen ejercicio. Se deja ver que hay muy buenos resultados 😍👍 Saludos desde la Cd.. de world 🌹😉💖 los mortalesp abian apreciado tan hermosa mujer.k

I like the way you read.. Oui yes I’m French

On Amazon, Mick Herron is described as “The John Le Carré of our generation” and its all to do with bad actors and slow horses. Who would have thought le Carré once drummed with the Who? In terms of acclaimed spy novels, Herron’s Slough House series has definitely made him Top Of The Pops in terms of anti-Bond writers. For Len Deighton devotees that ends a long and victorious reign at number one. Raw noir espionage of the Slough House quality is rare, whether or not with occasional splashes of sardonic hilarity. Colin Firth’s performance in Slow Horses has given the Slough House series the leg up the charts it deserved. Maybe Herron will create an anti-Bond character to carry the mantle in terms of brand and legacy … paradoxically a bit like 007. What should he name him or her? Surely not Happy Jack, Pinball Wizard or even Jackson Lamb although Harry Palmer worked for Deighton's fictional spy novels as might Edward Burlington for Bill fairclough in The Burlington Files series. Of course, espionage aficionados will know that both The Slough House and Burlington Files series were rejected by risk averse publishers who didn't think espionage existed unless it was fictional and created by Ian Fleming or David Cornwell. However, they probably didn’t know that Fairclough once drummed with Keith Moon in the seventies.

It's Poetic and very like the rubiyat.

I honestly didn't know that this was two books put together... If I'm honest the size of the novel always put me off. Now knowing it's two books I might give this a chance and buy it. Read book one then see where it goes from there.

Sorry, but....The original “Don Quixote” is an English book. The Spanish translations appeared in 1605 and 1615, much earlier than the original English publications in 1612 and 1620. Between these two periods, in 1614, a “false” Don Quixote was published under the name Avellaneda. The original English text was never released. Francis Bacon was the brain behind the three books of Don Quixote; he wrote the part of the hero. Ben Jonson took on the role of Sancho Panza, John Donne wrote the poems, “the two friends” Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher were assigned the task of writing loose stories. These authors made use of the library owned by Robert Cotton. The printer, William Stansby, inserted concealed clues into the text, in order for the reader to be able to draw conclusions… The Spanish translations were carried out by Thomas Shelton (DQI + DQII) and James Mabbe (the “bogus” DQ). Miguel de Cervantes was just a poor Spanish writer who had sold his name to survive. He had told his life-story to the English, so that it could be processed into the DQ. Ten people, sworn to secrecy about their collaboration in the writing of Don Quixote. Now in this book, after four hundred years, clarity is given as to the “who”, “what” and “why” of all this secrecy. Thank you, Jettie H. van den Boom- generalfeatures@home.nl

These are not famous writers in the English community but you need to read them. Jaime Bayly. José María Arguedas. César Vallejo, Julio Ramón Ribeyro and José Mauro de Vasconcelos. If you find these authors in English, man your gonna blow up. These are very important for us (Latin American)

BACK AGAIN WITH SOME LATIN AMERICAN RECOMMENDATIONS Two very good books translated by Barnaby Conrad who was, BTW the first American ever to become a Mexican Bullfighter. The first is by Luis Spota that I read in a Signet paperback back in the 60s. The American Title is the Wounds of Hunger. It{s a story about 6 young men and a girl who leave their remote village to get into Bullfighting. They all want to be matadors. The story follows them for about a decade and they have lots of adventures, some rather tragic. It is hard to get hold of and Spota is not well known even here in Mexico, but a very enjoyable read. The second book is The 2nd Life of Captain Contreras by Torquato Luca de Tena. This chap is actually Spanish. The story is about a dashing young Spanish Captain on the run from the Inquisition. He is persuaded by a friend to hide in a barrel of honey or something like that. The Inquisition doesnt get him but the Honey does. Several hundred years later the cask is discovered and the body is taken to a hospital facility to be studied. There, to the amazement of the medical staff he wakes up as he is about to be autopsied. Contreras is a sort of Spanish D{Artagnan with strong feelings of honor which makes it very hard for him to adapt in the modern world where honor means so little. I thought it would make a good play, but so did he and his relative who got there first and made a stage adaptation in 1954. The 3rd book is by Enrique Lafoucarde and it is called King Ahab{s Feast. Lafourcarde is Chilean and fled to Mexico during the Allende difficulties. His niece became a very famous singer in Mexico. The story is about this little Caribbean Island Dictatorship probably modeled on the Dominican Republic and Trujillo. The Dictator presides over a friendly court that consists amongst others of a dictator in exile, probably Peron, his security chief who is a former SS Officer, the French ambassador and the dictator{s own beautiful but promiscuous daughter. Lafourcade was a journalist and screenwriter. I frankly have never seen a country taken apart from top to bottom as effortlessly as is done here. I may think of more. But these three are all very fine, if hard to get.

Amadis of Gaul and The Araucaniad

On why Spanish literature might be hard to find in translation, for a long time the Spanish literary tradition used to be one of the more respected ones in Europe, which is why it is so present in Elizabethan-era literature and why poems that today have fallen into obscurity outside the Hispanic world, like La Auracana, were still discussed by, for example, 18th century French writers and were held in the same level as some Classical writers. But Spanish political decadence coincided with a long period of literary “decadence”, during which there is no work on par with the Golden age writings or with the works being made in the rest of Europe. The combination of these two aspects diminished the prestige and influence of Hispanic culture and literature in the rest of the world. And even if Modernismo and writers like Galdós began a new renaissance of Hispanic literature, and even if the Boom writers gained prestige outside the language, Hispanic literature never quite regained the level of prestige it once had in the past.

Hope you saw your girlfriend! I am reading the Castle in my college Literature class. I had a hard time understanding what was so great about it, but you brought to light some things that make the book a work of art and worth reading. Thank you.

Matthew have you thought of having a look online for bookshops in L.A. I'm guessing with a significant Hispanic population, maybe Tom LA Books may have some bookshops to recommend? Most bookshops now have catalogues in pdf format to download.

Amazing review, loved it !

Hello, Matthew. Here are some recommendations ^.^ 'Nada' (Nothing), by Carmen Laforet. She wrote it when she was just 23 years old and her writing is amazing. 'Niebla' (Fog) is also a very well known work by Unamuno. 'La colmena' (The hive) and 'La familia de Pascual Duarte' (The family of Pascual Duarte), both by Camilo José Cela. 'La Regenta', by Leopoldo Alas 'Clarin'. 'Luces de bohemia' (Bohemian lights), by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán.

I'll have to check out Exemplary Stories. I've never thought to read anything besides Quixote from Cervantes. I haven't read Federico Garcia Lorca, but apparently Tim Buckley's album Lorca is named after him One of my favorite Spanish authors is Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio. He has two books in translation, The Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhui and The River. They are very different but both wonderful books translated by Jull Costa. The River is one of those books that occasionally pop into my mind well after reading it. I like to recommend him as much as I can since he's so obscure over here

Modern times is a good work environment film, lots of criticisms of capitalism.

I would like to recommend a couple writers you might like: Miguel de Unamuno a philosopher. novelist, playwright and poet who died in 1936. His best known work in English is The Tragic Sense of Life a powerful philosophical work. He wrote several novels but they are usually short. A good collection was Three Exemplary Novels. He also wrote plays and poetry. A couple oh his plays have been translate(not by me) and published. I have translated but never published several others. The next writer I would recommend is Jacinto Benavente who lived until 1956. He is mainly remembered as a playwright and for one especially called Bonds of Interest which was in the Commedia della Arte tradition and demonstrates how the social system causes people to protect criminals when punishing them might inconvenience important people. Are you interested in Latin American Spanish writers, if so I can make some suggestions there as well.

Thanks for sharing your collection! It would be nice to have access to a wider variety of translated works.

Good choice.

17:09 I think that Libra was somehow able to sense the myriad of alternative outcomes from different combinations of past Avengers - and that in issue eleven he realizes why this particular combination was the successful one, rather than just an assemblage of the most powerful and cocksure Avengers from the past. Yellowjacket’s betrayal was a key part, as was Captain Marvel’s ticking off of Rick Jones, causing Rick to skip out to the moon at the right time. I thoroughly enjoyed the read-along.

The movie Seven Days in May, so much superior to Doctor Strangelove. A fabulous cast and a gripping movie. Definitely not trash at all! After you read the book, please watch this fabulous movie

I remember seeing Seven Days in May when I was a kid, in one of my grandmother’s condensed Reader’s Digest hardcovers. I also recall the movie adaptation starring Burt Lancaster, though I never watched it from start to finish. I won’t be joining in the read-along, though, as I will be focusing on other reading for Horror May-hem and May of the Moderns.

I'm an easy audience, I guess. I liked it a lot. There have been many versions of this story, but this was the first.