Starting 2023 with Thomas Pynchon 📕
#readin2023 #homelibrary #whatacover
Starting 2023 with Thomas Pynchon 📕
#readin2023 #homelibrary #whatacover
#Alphabetgame #LetterV @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
I have a mixed relationship with Pynchon, and actually with this book, but it‘s a wacky, entertaining, fun, oddball, if difficult work (possibly with a heavy play Vladimir Nabokov, by name and by theme in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, a book also searching for some mysterious thing). So it‘s hung around.
See also Véra-Stacy Schiff (more Nabokov) & Voices from Chernobyl-Svetlana Alexievich.
#3books with a one word title. (I couldn't resist these one letter titles even if the two I've read were so-so and I am afraid of the third 😁)
@OriginalCyn620 @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
1. V by Thomas Pynchon ?
2. Barbara Vine (kind of cheating here—this is a nom de plume of Ruth Rendell) ?
3. Vicky Cristina Barcelona ? & Vera ?
4. Vanilla anything! Ice cream, Creme brûlée, Frosting—anything!! ?
#ManicMonday
Thanks @JoScho
V. is not my favorite of the Pynchon books I have read but it might look like it from its condition. Like most of the his books I have read, I started this one three times before I got into it. There are scenes and characters I dearly love, though. #crimesagainstcovers challenge I always have packing tape (often in my backpack) to repair books. While I was reading this one, I ran out. I made do w/electrical tape and rebuilt the cover once I could
"Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care."
Losing faith is a complicated business and takes time. There are no epiphanies, no "moments of truth." It takes much thought and concentration in the later phases, which themselves come about through an accumulation of small accidents: examples of general injustice, misfortune falling upon the godly, prayers of one's own unanswered.
Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.
I had to take part in #booktober today because I'm in the habit of getting the #debutnovel of just about any author I read. Four of these haven't been read yet; the others are all favorites. My shelves contain many more!
Such an amazing, thought provoking, journey of a novel. Pynchon's first, V., is a series of stories tied together by a common thread. He delves into themes of humanity, life/death, war and love, ultimately creating a labyrinthine masterpiece that will take days to unravel. It will be worth it.
"Beatrice screamed, glasses flew parabolic and glittering, spraying the Sailor's Grave with watery beer."