Archive for Faulkner
MaxEnt’ipodes [December 14-19, 2025, U of Auckland, Aotearoa]
Posted in Statistics with tags 44th International Workshop on Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering, Antipodes, Aotearoa, Auckland, Bayesian inference, conference, Faulkner, MaxEn 2025, Milford Sound, New Zealand, Oxford (Mississipi), Te Ika a Māui, University of Auckland on March 22, 2025 by xi'an
interesting places [Xed]
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags antivaxers, COVID-19, Donald Trump, far-right, Faulkner, Mount Shasta, NYT, Oxford (Mississipi), San Francisco half-marathon, secessionism, Square Books, The New York Times, The New Yorker on August 2, 2022 by xi'an
An article in The New Yorker about Square Books, The bookstore (chain) in Oxford, Mississippi, reminded of the visit I had made to that highly engaging bookstore during MaxEnt 2009. I found the bookstore had a lot of “atmosphere” (pardon my French!) and personality, with loads of signed books and a sort of homely feeling. I was thus most interested in reading in details how the booksellers, Richard and Lisa Howorth, had made the place an Oxonian institution, a fitting tribute to the town’s most famous son, William Faulkner. (I seem to remember I originally entered the bookstore on a Sunday morn to seek the weekend edition of the New York Times, but cannot remember if the bookstore had any.) I also learned a lot about their contributions to contemporary Southern literature, and to US culture as a whole, since Richard Howorth was a president of the American Bookseller Association (ABA) and on the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority, until Trump fired him!
Another recent article about a place I also visited was in The Guardian today and alas much more ghastly, namely how Shasta County, Northern California, turned into a far-right stronghold… We spent a few days in Dunsmuir in 2016, as I had hoped to climb Mount Shasta during a family Californian road trip, the year of the San Francisco half-marathon!, but failed to do so for poor planning (and too much driving). At the (pre-Trump) time, I had not realised how conservative the region is, to the point of supporting secessionism from the rest of California! Peaking with the antivax, antimask, antisafety measures, hysteria.
the best books of the NYT readers
Posted in Books, Kids, Travel with tags 1984, book list, book reviews, Catch, censorship, Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, George Orwell, Harper Lee, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowlings, J.R. Tolkien, James Joyce, John Steinbeck, Le Monde, list, Margaret Atwood, Nabokov, novel, The Lord of the Rings, The New York Times, To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morisson on February 9, 2022 by xi'an
Two years after Le Monde reported on the list of the 101 favourite novels of [some of] its readers, which I found most fascinating as a sociological entry on said readers, rather than a meaningful ordering of literary monuments (!), even though it led me to read Damasio’s La Horde du Contrevent, as well as Jean-Philippe Jaworski’s Gagner la Guerre [To the victors go the spoils], The New York Times did something similar to celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary. If on a lesser scale, as it only produces
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- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
- 1984 by George Orwell
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
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as the top five books of the last 125th years, Lee’s, Tolkien’s, and Garcia Márquez’s appearing in both lists, if with a different ranking. (The nomination rules were not exactly the same, though, with only novels for Le Monde and only “recent” books and only one per author for the New York Times.) Here is a longer list of the 25 top contenders, from which NYT readers voted [an opportunity I missed!]:
the 101 favourite novels of Le Monde readers
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags Albert Camus, Alexandre Dumas, André Malraux, Barbey d'Aurevilly, book reviews, Céline, Charlotte Bronte, Cormac McCarthy, Don Quixote, Emile Zola, Faulkner, Fiodor Dostoïevski, Foundation, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, George Pérec, Graham Greene, Harry Potter, Haruki Murakami, Honoré de Balzac, Hyperion, Iain Pears, Jane Austen, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Steinbeck, Jules Verne, Kafka on the shore, Le Monde, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Marguerite Yourcenar, Maupassant, Memoirs of Hadrian, Nobel Prize, Spanish Civil War, Stendhal, Stephen Zweig, The Lord of the Rings, The Road, Umberto Eco, Victor Hugo on January 1, 2020 by xi'an
Le Monde called its readers to vote for their five favourite novels, with no major surprise in the results, except maybe Harry Potter coming up top. Before Voyage au bout de la nuit and (the predictable) A la recherche du temps perdu. And a complete unknown, Damasio’s La Horde du Contrevent, as 12th and first science fiction book. Above both the Foundation novels (16th). And Dune (32nd). And Hyperion Cantos (52). But no Jules Verne! In a sense, it reflects upon the French high school curriculum on literature that almost uniquely focus on French 19th and 20th books. (Missing also Abe, Conrad, Chandler, Dickens, Ishiguro, Joyce, Kawabata, Madame de Lafayette, Levi, Morante, Naipaul, Rabelais, Rushdie, Singer, and so many others…) Interestingly (or not), Sartre did not make it to the list, despite his literature 1953 Nobel Prize, maybe because so few read the (appalling) books of his chemins de la liberté trilogy.
I did send my vote in due time but cannot remember for certain all the five titles I chose except for Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (2nd), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (74th) and maybe Fedor Dostoievski’s Brothers Karamazov (24th). Maybe not as I may have included Barbey d’Aurevilly’s L’ensorcelée, Iain Pears’ An instance at the fingerpost, and Graham Greene’s The End of the affair, neither of which made it in the list. Here are some books from the list that would have made it to my own 101 list, although not necessarily as my first choice of titles for authors like Hugo (1793!) or Malraux (l’Espoir). (Warning: Amazon Associate links).
- Harry Potter
- Voyage au bout de la nuit
- One hundred years of solitude
- The Lord of the rings
- L’étranger
- Belle du seigneur
- Les misérables
- Mémoires d’Hadrien
- Pride and prejudices
- The unbearable lightness of being
- Foundation
- Crime and punishment
- Madame Bovary
- Le rouge et le noir
- The Brothers Karamazov
- La peste
- War and peace
- The grapes of wrath
- Les liaisons dangereuses
- Bel-Ami
- Anna Karenina
- The name of the rose
- Germinal
- To kill a mocking bird
- The three musketeers
- Kafka on the shore
- La vie mode d’emploi
- Lolita
- Wuthering heights
- Mort à crédit
- The picture of Dorian Gray
- Life and fate
- Chess story
- La chartreuse de Parme
- L’œuvre au noir
- The idiot
- L’assommoir
- The road
- Le père Goriot
- The trial
- Don Quixote
- Notre-Dame de Paris
- Illusions perdues
- The sound and the fury
- La condition humaine
summer reads (#2)
Posted in Books, Travel with tags Australia, book reviews, Canterbury Tales, Che la festa cominci, David, Faulkner, Hyperion, Niccolo Ammaniti, Philip K. DIck, Richard Ford, Roma, Sydney, William Gibson on August 26, 2012 by xi'anAs mentioned in a previous blog, I only packed four books in my suitcase in early July. Among those, Richard Ford’s A Piece of my Heart, and Niccolo Ammaniti’s La Fête du Siècle (Che la festa cominci). I also bought Dan Simmons’s Hyperion in the (same) nice bookshop near Bondi Junction in Sydney, Berkelouw Books.
“Whoever it was, though, didn’t have no business being here. I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you that right now.” A Piece of my Heart, R. Ford
A Piece of my Heart is the first novel written by Richard Ford and I did not even know about it. (I happen to have bought it perchance in a closing bookshop in Bristol selling every book there for two pounds!) I feel it is quite different from the other novels of Richard Ford I read so far. A Piece of my Heart is quite harsh and bleak in a Southern (U.S.) way, making one feel all characters (esp. men) are doomed from the start and that there is no use fighting against this… This makes their actions and decisions unpredictable and mostly irrational, but there is a kind of beauty in seeing them succumbing to this doom. I also found there is a sort of Faulknerian feeling in the novel, particularly in the character of Mr. Lamb, an old recluse living on an island that does not even exist on official maps. The tragic and foreseeable ending of the book is actually announced in the very first pages, but this does not make A Piece of my Heart less fascinating to read. Because this is not what matter…
“There’s a legend that Cowboy Gibson did it before the Core seceded.” Hyperion, D. Simmons
I finished reading Hyperion in the plane back home. This again is a (1989) book I had not heard of until I saw it in the Gollancz 50 series (which delivers at a low price the “best” 50 books in science-fiction and fantasy, like Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind and Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, its only drawback being a vivid and ugly yellow color!) I do not often read space opera sci’fi’, however this book is a masterpiece that completely deserves its inclusion in the Gollancz 50 series… Hyperion offers a complex plot, compelling characters, an interesting universe, a credible political structure, and, above all, relates quite strongly and openly to literary history, from Chauncer’s Canterbury Tales, to H.G. Wells, to William Gibson’s Neuromancer, to Philip K. Dick (and Blade Runner), and to Keats as a central figure. Plus interesting plays on religions and beliefs. The book does not conclude, as there is a sequel, The Fall of Hyperion, that I will most certainly read.
La Fête du Siècle (Che la festa cominci) is an hilarious book by Niccolo Ammaniti that I can only classify as picaresque, given the accumulation of well-drawn characters and of fantastic events that build throughout the book. It is very different from the much more intimate Io non ho paura, however La Fête du Siècle reads very well and offers a very harsh criticism of the Berlusconi era and of the new social class it created. From nouveaux riches to would-be Satanists (all) looking for recognition or at least a few minutes of fame on TV… And meeting their end in a grandiose way. (I do not know if this book has been translated into english.) I read it in a few hours during my vacation week along the Great Ocean Road. And am still laughing at the comedy it exposed.
