What are you reading?

[Madrigal]

The Red Pony and The Moon Is Down, Steinbeck.

I really liked the latter. It's a short novel about an imaginary Nazi invasion of a small Northern European town.

Oh I eventually ended up loving Cannery Row.

Something that makes it hard to read Steinbeck (besides someone getting their head blown off once in a while) is that there's usually something awful happening to animals. I obviously like his style, though, or I wouldn't keep reading more. I have a few more short novels of his to read here.

Paused the Steinbeck binge to read Ray Bradbury's short stories:

Dandelion Wine
The Foghorn
The Veldt (really fuckin Freudian)

My faves so far. The guy sounds like García Márquez or Borges sometimes when he blurs reality and fantasy. I didn't know he was that poetic. Sometimes I even have to slow down because it's a lot. Underappreciated, though.

[Madrigal]

Can somebody tell me where this has been all my life.

[Madrigal]

Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck.

What in God's name possessed Steinbeck to have his chicano characters address each other as "thou"? I think he wants to translate the informal "you", but it sounds really wrong. It's like he said, "Hey, we have that in English too," then proceeds to make the bums in his story speak in Shakespearean English.

[Catoptric]

Can somebody tell me where this has been all my life.

Those books are referred to as The Kent Family Chronicles ( https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5768.John_Jakes .)

(Edit: and I just found out the first book the Bastard had a miniseries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW8D92p43zw and so did The Rebel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs0KdQzNTWY )

The Seekers had a TV miniseries ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-xSVbPJzc ) created about it, and though the writer also did a fantasy series similar to Conan the Barbarian, he is mostly known for fiction based on US/American History, and I'm mostly familiar with his work from 'The North and South' books which were also made into a miniseries (1985 with Patrick Swayze, David Carradine, and Kirstie Allen who might have already starred in Cheers.) (found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kv0H2D ... 9TKe0q4XQm with a better quality here, but google search might be needed to find the rest of the episodes https://ok.ru/video/7321240734404 ) and many consider it more of a soap opera. England also has their own series known as North and South.

A close comparison is the book series created by a father, but mostly popularized by the son, Jeff (1952-) and Michael Shaara (1928-1988,) who wrote The Killer Angels which was made into the movie, Gettysburg (Ronald F. Maxwell, 1993) with Martin Sheen, Sam Elliott, Ted Turner (. . . I seem to have overlooked where he was in it, but I think he funded part of it.)

Unrelated to books (though well researched by historians, John Leekley and Bruce Catton) The Blue and the Gray miniseries from 1982 is based in Arkansas. I believe Gettysburg was a far more realistic portrayal of how they generally acted and is one of the few films where it's easy to kind of suspend disbelief that it's mostly fiction.

Probably a better comparison to those particular books is Kenneth Roberts series:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5 ... th_Roberts

[Madrigal]

The Wine Bible, by Karen MacNeil.

Very talented writer, I'm loving all of her wine descriptions. About Rhône Syrahs:

There is no question that, among the world's greatest red wines, Rhônes are the most untamed. Their howling spicy, dark flavors seem almost caged, ready to explode with fierceness. Rhônes are the wine equivalent of a primal scream. (...) Syrah planted here explodes with aromas of exotic incense, forest, leather and black plums. Darkly savage and dramatic, the wines exude corruption, and almost pant with gamey, meaty, animal flavors. (Then there's blood, offal, and sweat. You can count on Rhône Syrahs to take you into indelicate realms of flavor best discussed only among friends.)

Funny, I had a Syrah phase a long time ago, later found them too bloody and I now prefer Cabs. xD

Those books are referred to as The Kent Family Chronicles ( https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5768.John_Jakes .)

Yes, found out about them through a NYT article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/opin ... erica.html

The whole collection will be mine! Someday, anyway.

[Ferrus]

The Wine Bible, by Karen MacNeil.

Perhaps not such an elevated subject but I have been browsing through An A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes by Rachel Roody recently. Every entry has a couple of recipes some of them it seems inspired by her husband's Sicilian family.

I used to go to the theater a lot in Baires but I'm not sure I really loved it. Most plays aren't very good and there's a certain cliched theater body language I just detest.

I don't disagree, however certain plays are just part of the classic canon of literature and have to be seen and not read to be properly appreciated. And seeing filmed versions just doesn't quite cut it at times, although I have watched live performances from the National Theatre in the cinema before, A Winter's Tale, Phèdre by Racine and Antigone.

Sometimes I guess certain older performances are better than what you might see live. For example this 1983 performance of the Oresteia that was originally broadcast on Channel 4 for example is pretty good and probably better than most live performances that instist on some kind of cringeworthy 'contemporisation'.

I wouldn't mind seeing plays in Spanish, I saw Escenas de la vida conyugal a few years ago in the Teatre Tivoli. The only reason my now wife wanted to go with her brother and his girlfriend I think was to ambush a famous Argentinian actor after the play to take photos with him. They found him in a bar afterwards drinking with a couple of girls, my wife and her brother's girlfriend got a photo with him. Then he seemed to want to leave as he didn't like being ambushed but my brother-in-law also insisted on a photo while he pretended to smile but seemed to be kind of pised off. I was just watching by the side and caught a glance of his and I mainly felt a sort of vicarious embarrassment about it all but the rest of seemed pretty happy with the outcome on the basis. I then saw him put on a baseball cap to cover his face and he seemed to rapidly scurry off into the anonymity of Barcelona at night.

Anyway I quite enjoyed the play and would like to see more literary works like that (the play was by Bergman). Unfortunately most of the serious plays in Barcelona are in Catalan and most of the Spanish language peformancess in theatres are populist entertainments of some kind.