Can we have a new "What are you reading at the moment" thread?

I'm about to read a Larry McMurtry book (Sin Killer, iirc), and then I have books on human sacrifice and glossolalia to cruise through, creatively titled Human Sacrifice and Glossolalia.

Next up is To The Lighthouse by Ginny Woolf.

My backup book is In The Little World by John Richardson, which is about him going to the Little People of America convention to do a story and it became a book. It's both sympathethic and openly manipulative, which is a neat trick.

I am currently impatiently waiting for a box of goodies from Amazon, among which I am most looking forward to reading Janey's "Northanger Abbey" and "Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination" (or something like that) by Peter Ackroyd. Incidentally, has anyone else in the UK used their "free super saver over-£39" delivery thing, and did you have to wait over a fortnight too?

Amazon free delivery - yes, I've used it, got the stuff in a couple of days. Always check that the bundle of things you're getting are available in 24 hrs/2 days or something, because if they have to order even one item in, it'll delay the whole lot.

I also have a book of Buffy analysis lined up called FIGHTING THE FORCES: WHAT'S AT **STAKE** (do you see) in BTVS. Grand.

Hmph on Saturday I will make ATTEMPT TWO at picking up my Amazon packages from the post office (rot in hell). I have ordered the official sowpods Scrabble words book and er... a word lists book. CURSE YOU STEFAN FATSIS FOR WRITING WORD FREAK AND TURNING ME INSANE.

satine!

At work (during lunch): The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast (sp?) which is awesome, mainly I think because I have read a lot of "rock" music books and feel like whenever I read those now it's mostly stuff I already know, but this book is mostly about music I know nothing about, so it's really interesting. I like reading about how when composers introduced challenging new works, people would riot. That's fucked up.

haha sinkah to smash yr skull to bits!

''Hmmm must read more Joyce - have only done Dubliners and some of his surprisingly twee poetry.''

have read 'Portrait' and found it surprisingly good.

but 'Ulysses' is something else and makes 'Portrait' very much 'normal' in comparison. It is imcromprehensible in places but I like that a lot.

CURSE YOU STEFAN FATSIS FOR WRITING WORD FREAK AND TURNING ME INSANE.

oh that book sent my girlfriend insane. Nothing has been the same since.

also am reading gibsons burning chrome, and some debord.

I just finished Carl Hiaasen's Basket Case, and started THEM, Jon Ronson's adventures with extremists.

At home: Just finished Fast Food Nation and am now returning, after a month-long break, to Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel, which is beautiful (the book, I mean, not that I'm returning to it).

I finally started reading The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts, which is actually quite good so far (not that I've gotten very far), though a little technical at times (as you might imagine).

I picked up a bunch of Walker Percy in Denver over Xmas. I am just about to get back into 'The Moviegoer', which I started back then, but got distracted from.

Of course, since my copy of Navigator is a hardcover, I don't drag it with on the subway. Instead, I've been going through the Raymond Chandler novels in chronological order. I'm now about 75% through The Long Goodbye.

And gareth, "City of Quartz" is amazing--I've read some of Mike Davis' other books (one about natural disasters in L.A. is interesting) and it's the best I know of.

Now reading

Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Nabokov, Ada
Foote, The Civil War (volume one)
two books by Alma Guillermoprieto--Samba and The Heart That Bleeds
Boyle, Drop City

I love Nabokov--have read almost all his novels at this point--but find Ada difficult. Self-indulgent with some great passages. But then I found The Gift hard and re-read it, now I think it's up there with his best work. So I guess it's my job to work through Ada and see what tricks V.N. has up his sleeve for me.

The Sound of My Voice -- Ron Butlin

Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise -- Sally Cline

Plus it's in a Library of America vol with "Transparent Things" and "Look at the Harlequins" both of which are shorter, easier, later works (signs of VN's flagging energies, I guess) so I keep dipping into those...

That Charles Portis book;
Francis Ponge poems I found in a French anthology (inc Mollusc);
Don Paterson, 'Nil Nil' (I have lost my copy of 'God's Gift to Women');
all Paul Morley, Chris Roberts, Ian Penman etc in back issues of Uncut (Morley on the Slits, Penman on Spiritualised and Dylan, Roberts on anything);
Jean Rhys, 'Good Morning Midnight'
Slavoj Zizek, 'Welcome to the Desert of the Real';
Lyotard, Derrida, Kant, Foucault, Habermas, Locke, Hume, Monbiot (haha how he'd love Single Surname status), Aborigine Law stuff;
John Burnside, 'The Light Trap' (JtN - what d'you think of Burnside, I've probably asked you before but I think he's just...);
assorted Virginia Woolf.

I have finished none of these. I have also been eating cereal and 110% cocoa truffles. Some Irn-Bru too. My heart is slightly heavy as Celtic drew tonight but the wine is carrying me through the first side of 'The Lexicon of Love'.

And I'm going to read Morley's 'Nothing' now that JtN has recommended it like the creepy person I am. I will not return with a grimace at the end of my post telling that I'm reading it.

Jel, I read one Wang Shuo, but don't remember the title (not that one). It was pretty good, but I can't say I've felt like chasing more. Checks: Playing For Thrills.

Just about to start 'Stan and Ollie' by Simon Louvish.

The Basque History of The World-Mark Kurlansky
We Got The Neutron Bomb-Mark Spitz+Brendan Mullen
Chasin' That Devil Music-Gayle Dean Wardlow (at discount cos of frayed corners!!!)

-- Nick A.

Oh yeah, I've read all those. Plus "Glory," "King, Queen, Knave," "Mary," "The Defense," "Pnin," "The Gift," the short stories...his Gogol book...the lectures on literature. I'm nuts for Nabokov!

actually there are a lad of others I really ought to finish, bloody interweb

It's about a woman who totally turned around a school in southside Chicago. It was assigned to me by our dean.

Bakhtin: The Dialogic Imagination

Yesterday, I finished Moominland Midwinter, can anyone tell me why Moominmamma woke up and started burning holes in film, that bit was totally bizarre, "Moominmamma sat on the verandah burning a strip of film with a magnifying glass. The film smoked and glowed, and a pugent smell was tickling her snout". I have also bought Tales from Moominvalley but the illustrations are a bit ropey compared to Tove's other work.

I am also reading the Lizard short stories by Banana Yoshimto, James Kochalka's sketchbook diaries volume 3, Fargo Rock City (thanks for the suggestion Ned!), Sweet Revenge (Urusei Yatsura) and Transformers Armada comics.

for myself,i'm reading rap attack by david toop...

Yer quite welcome. :-)

So far, it's living up to that, but the voice of the narrator -- it's one of those books where the narrator tells you he's writing a book to set the story straight and so on -- keeps coming across like a caricature of what Americans think British people write like, which is weird since Barker is British.

Before that I reread The Crying of Lot 49, which wasn't quite as good as I remembered, but still quite fine.

So can anyone recommend other books in this vein? I have everything I need for my report, I'm just interesting in browsing. These books are quite interesting.

Horace Mann - I'm curious as to your feelings about Hiaasen's Basket Case - I really enjoyed some of his other works, but thought that BC was a bit flimsy, to be honest. But I've an autographed copy of it, so I'll not be too critical (a gift from some friends, dedicated to "The Most Awesome Mistress in the World" - apparently he laughed at the requested wording). But I did love his Sick Puppu (the first of his books that I read). I'm also interested in your feelings about Ronson's Them - when I finished it I wasn't sure whether to be nauseated, amused, or afraid. Or disgusted, for that matter. But it did make me laugh.

As soon as I finish TEA I am on to Middlesex, followed by Mike Nelson's Death Rat, Froer's Everything is Illuminated, Strahan's Managing Ignatious: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in New Orleans - though I've four books left in the Burke series that I will sneak into that list, too.

I dread to think how much library fine has accumulated on the Dalkey Archive (which is now lost in boxes too) which I've *still* not finished despite the few chapters I've read being the best things *ever* - if only for the policemans attitude regarding humangs and bicycles.

I did look in the British Heart Foundation for some more books this lunchtime but they were all k-rub. I was also disappointed by a shiny dress but that's another story...

I've never read The Dalkey Archive - but aren't the policemen and the bicycles from The Third Policeman?

Re: Ronson's Them
was completely enthralled, laughed a lot, shuddered a bit, and left it a little ambivalent, except was reminded that that was what I wanted to do with my journalism career, not talk to asshole musicians all the fuckin' time.

Re: Hiaasen's Basket Case
Liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I was off Hiassen for a while, having devoured much of his catalogue over the course of 00/01. Of course, a lot of the subject matter touched home for me, as I work in for both the entertainment AND obit sections of a daily paper recently purchased by a soulless egomaniac.
I have a signed copy of Team Rodent. I like CH's n/f quite a bit.

Will probably finally get around to House of Leaves next, unless Sports Illustrated or Shonen Jump lands in my mailbox.

Tep - I'll be interested in hearing your take on House of Leaves; it's another book that has been gathering dust on a shelf - I flipped through it once and thought something to the effect of "Shit, this is a headache just waiting to happen" and haven't looked at it since. Sorry to hear that you didn't make it through South of the Border, West of the Sun. I seem to recall enjoying that story, but at the time I was on a Murakami-orgy reading kick, so I may well have woven the threads of that narrative into another title (or two).

So I finished The Eyre Affair last night and am still happily chuckling. And today I made it through another of Vachss books and am halfway through a second (only two more to go! Yay!). Oh, and I read Everything on a Waffle while in the bath today (it's a young adult book - quick read, but quite amusing and sweet and stuff. Kind of overly sweet, come to think of it).

Someone else had recommended it to me earlier in the year, sort of -- "when you ramble on and on about what you want to eventually do with writing, you remind me of this."

Not as well structured as his other books but still fascinaing.

http://www.hambledon.co.uk/duckwort.jpg

The Eyre Affair was very amusing. There's a children's book it reminded me of - not a well-known one - but I can't remember what. I keep meaning to get hold of a copy of the sequel.

- Jacques The Fatalist by Diderot, brought it to a FAP, lost it, found it again a couple of days ago, great stuff.

- Dante's Divine Comedy, a canto or two per evening. World's Classics translation, v. readable once you adjust to the metre.

* the Moviegoer by Walker Percy

I am also dabbling my way through Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex by Katharine Gates. It's, well, wonderful and horrible and really interesting reading. But I am honestly squicked by some of the fetishes. Not saying their wrong or anything, just that they're definitely not *my* thing right now. And it does seem better to dabble through this rather than read straight through - else I start looking at everyone oddly and wondering about their fantasy lives.

Since I finished Monte Cristo

Horace - I shall save Hiassen's collected columns for the back of the bathroom door book holder thingy - I need something new in there, anyway. Many thanks *smile* (Though I do wonder if I need any more reasons to dislike this state.)

Di - how's the Winterson book? I've only (sadly) made it through two of her other works - Sexing the Cherry and I can't recall the other title. I keep meaning to pick-up more of her stuff, but wasn't sure what else was worth reading.

Next in line: The Fourth Star about Daniel Boulud's restaurant. It looks interesting and diverting.

The big news around here - I just ordered four more bookcases. I am going to have to take down some artwork to make wall-space for the new cases. I need a new house! (Or Glenn needs to move out so I can convert his office and his bedroom into an extension of the library.)

I'm currently reading Lemony Snicket's "The Vile Village", and Frances Yates' "The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age". Really interesting and well-written, but takes an age to get through all the information.

I just did a really cheeky thing too; I recalled a book from a student because I want to read it! I'm so naughty. It's Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges.

Simon Schama's Citizens might make the other side of the argument seem more plausible, possibly?

(the only relevant non-fiction book I've read is The Oxford History of the French Revolution, which is pretty good and does tend to emphasise that it's more than just the storming of the Bastille and killing all the aristocrats that went on.)

If you ever see a copy of Carlyle's French Revolution going cheap in a second-hand place, pick it up. Not for any historical merit, because it might as well be fiction, but turn to any page and you'll get classics like:

"The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had but broken over Versailles, when it pleased Destiny that a Bodyguard should look out of the window, on the right wing of the Château, to see what prospect there was in Heaven and in Earth. Rascality male and female is prowling in view of him. His fasting stomach is, with good cause, sour; he cannot perhaps forbear a passing malison on them; least of all can be forbear asking such."

There are not the words.

I might start reading a brief book on Wahabism. (No, no, it looks quite interesting actually.)

Yesterday I finished "Heligoland" by Shena Mackay. Ah how I love Shena Mackay, and not just because she so often sets her novels in the glorious quadrant which is suburban SE London. Heligoland is a classic piece of Mackay cheerful misery.

heh. i was gonna start this after I finished 'now wait for last year'.

You say that as though it's a bad thing, Andrew.

It's regularly good reading, but not necessarily a good read. Thr "big idea" is great, but is only like 6-8 of the chapters.

You say that as though it's a bad thing, Andrew.

A list of things in a room is not a bad thing. Just a list is.

I understand how you can find it dull, mind.

heh, I've already seen that map. don't you look at the last pages of books first you freak ;-)

Go on.

If there's a central idea, it's the house, and the map (at the back) is not the territory.

I am reading 'Nobel Crimes', a collection of crime(ish) stories by Nobel winners - Hemingway, Faulkner, Garcia Marquez and lots of others, mostly really excellent. Also a colossal history of sculpture (I'm rather bogged down in the middle ages to be honest, and going slowly) and volume 2 of Osamu Tezuka's wonderful Astro Boy.

plus just finished candlefasts by william mayne (also grebt, also full of typos)

Next on the list is either Managing Ignatius or Lauren Belfer's City of Light, which has some excellent reviews.

jaymc - if you''re still reading, make sure you plough into Carson's Member of the Wedding, which is a beautiful, beautiful book.

jel - is that the same Kurkov that wrote Death and the Penguin? That was my favourite book of last year.

Archel - read a Catskill Eagle if you haven't already - probably the best Spenser novel.

Currently some history of big media trying to get to grips with the Internet in the nineties. Surprisingly spry.

rockist, in the middle of 'wittgenstein's vienna', which partly argues that a number of polymaths (?) in wildly different fields were all concerned with the limits of expression and the connection between those limits and ethics, the authors janik and toulmin mention that musil, who was one of those people, is essential reading for students of turn-of-the-century philosophy. that much seems clear to me so far. I don't know so much about history, but they also talk a lot about the particular situation in vienna at the time. while targets like musil's are not new, I was led to think that the particular situations he's depicting were pretty particular to that time and place.

I've also recently spent some time on a biography of kant, a book on formalism and structuralism by jameson, and a few other things here and there, but I'm trying to stick to the musil and kant biography until I finish them.

Hi josh! What is the title of that Jameson book?

Now I'm reading London: The Biography which is good bc I seem to have a lot of free time suddenly and an 800 page book works well. I enjoy it, but I wonder, is it just PR for London? When I think in terms of NY I can't think of a similar book being written. It seems to be so much glorification, which is fine, when he is just repeating Dickens or Smollet or whatever, but I wonder, does he actually love London so much? It seems a bit of a stretch, but it makes for interesting reading.

anyway i'm reading a book on the women's rights movement in russia and have just finished woodward's "strange career of jim crow" which i want to follow by either his "origins of the new south" or taylor's "origins of world war two".

before that i reread the meltzer anthology.

the combination of the essayistic chapters with the sort of suspended time that lets him WRITE so many essayistic chapters excites me a lot.

mary, does 'gotham' not count as a book like that about new york? (nb I have not read or seen 'london')

i just packed my books otherwise i'd remember the other german dude from the time who wrote all sorts of 2 page stories like "x was an unexception man from an unexceptional part of town. he did unexceptional things like banking." those are so great -- like proto-carver.

I'm wondering what I should get for a vacation coming up--I'm not looking forward to the vacation for various reasons so I really need to find a very absorbing, mostly mindless escapist book. Preferably long. Or several books that fit that description. I had a Harry Potter book for last year's vacation, and that worked out mostly well (though it didn't last the duration, so I ended up rereading NYT articles a lot). Any recommendations?

Ron - you're very welcome :)

Caitlin - you didn't answer the most pressing question about London - was it worth reading? Enjoyable? Drudgery?

Julia - check-out the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series for your vacation time - funny and sweet and absorbing and not really upsetting and an interesting look at modern Africa (sorry, can't recall the precise country at the moment). Or if you want something more absorbing and enjoyable (and long, without being upleasantly long) check-out The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (not certain on author's name). The new Harry Potter will be out this weekend. Oh, there's also the Artemis Fowl children's/young adult's series of three books - the first one is brilliantly hillarious, the second is weak, and the third is pretty much okay.

(I never read on the loo myself, for some reason)

They're written by Jasper Fforde, the Series of Unfortunate Events is by Lemony Snicket.

But it really is one of the most fantastic books I've ever read, certainly in terms of how much I enjoyed and got out of it. It would work very well as a bathroom book, too, but even though the chapters aren't linear, I do think you'd miss out by not reading it from start to fnish.

Ackroyd's writing often has to be taken with a pinch of salt - lots of the assertions he makes are scoff-worthy, often derived from one distorted and lonely quote, but that was something I came to enjoy about "London" - it's almost like hearing it all from a very erudite but not infallible chum.

I also have his novel, Hawksmoor, in my holiday-reading pile - has anyone read it?

* I'm picking this date off the top of my head; there isn't really a sharp starting point.

Gary Shteyngart "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" ***
Paul Auster "Moon Palace" ****
Evelyn Waugh "Put Out More Flags" ****

And currently reading the biography "Tesla: Man Out of Time" by Margaret Cheney.

Also picked up 'Nobody's Perfect' by Anthony Lane for £1.20 in the Lewisham Red Cross shop today - I've done some dipping, and so far not been terribly impressed - not sure there's a LOT more to Lane than some (admittedly v. gd) one-liners

*already read it, reading it again, so what, who cares, who asked you anyway

* as recommended by this man:

X-post: Ian, is that Tom Green or the guy from the Spin Doctors?

I agree. I didn't have any trouble finishing it, but I think I preferred the first half of the book, before he goes to Prava. He's written a couple of magazine pieces and a short story that I like. I'm not sure if they were written before or after the novel, but I think he shows some promise of good things to come.

I probably mentioned the second one before, but now I am actually reading it. I'm finding it pretty interesting, except for occasional detail overload.

I think I'm going to be reading a lot more history in the future, but that comes at the expense of not reading philosophy at the moment. (When I read philosophy, I like to do it carefully, more carefully than I can muster right now. I still have a certain number of authors I want to read first, but they are all formidable. With history or social sciences, or any other area of non-fiction that I'd be interested in, I am more likely to feel I can simply jump in.)

Same here - I flew through it and enjoyed it, but by no means was blown away - I'd been expecting something much more - complex? somehow. But there's now all of that hype about the Everything's Illuminated text - maybe that will be closer to what I expect.

I just finished Carter Beats the Devil and it's ranking up with Kavalier and Clay in my mind (er, that's a good ranking, by the way).

Now I'm working on Villa Incognito, which is the latest from Tom Robbins. Sadly, I seem to be trudging through the text - I'm not delving into a new world like with his earlier stuff (I've disliked the previous two of his as well). It's like he's trying to write like he's on 'shrooms when he isn't - a sad effort.

reading 'a void' by georges perec right now.

UCI's writing program wins again!

I just reread The Martian Chronicles last night, but I think I'll start a separate thread on that...

Am also determined to finish the Amber Spyglass now thanks to Dan's revival thread.

(Last book prior to that was The Fabulist, though, which annoyed me so much I didn't finish it.)

About to start The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami, and the girlfriend just finished Battle Royale, so I'll be going at that, too. On deck for school, I have all sorts of things on Medieval religion and so forth, and I have The Tempest and Waiting for Godot out from the library.

This one has more of a kinda friendly predictability/tradional-story-element, like a modernized fairie-tale, which I definitely suspect was his goal with it.

The one I loved was the fantasy series, The Dragonbone Chair and its sequels (especially the first book). That's one of the reasons I don't think I'll write a fantasy series :)

ursula le guin: rocannon's world right now

Just finished Neil Gaiman's Coraline, which was far superior to American Gods, largely because it's sparer and as such, creepier.

"I swear it on my mother's grave."

"Does she have a grave?"

"Oh yes. I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."

Next up: Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad. Or possibly Stephen Jay Gould's Ever Since Darwin. Think I'll toss a coin.

Oh, and Polish in 4 Weeks (Lesson 3).

An beginners photoshop book by Future publishing

Guardian Saturday supplement from yesterday

Inlay to an ESG anthology CD

I've just started Mikhail Bulgakov's A Cuntry Doctor's Notebook. I'm also reading The Essential Human Torch, one of the world's most oxymoronic titles. And I've been bogged down in the medieval section of a mammoth sculpture history for ages now - no time, especially with my eye troubles of late.

Given my varying addictions to fantasy, no surprise that I've read this, and while I was impressed with the ambition in the end I found the one-to-one comparisons with European cultures and history forced. Guy Gavriel Kay's various alternate Europes, starting with Tigana, strike me as much more involving, both in terms of how setting is handled and in terms of specific nuance (there are no dark lords, just people in various shades of grey).

And Ned, yeah -- I haven't read the later books of the Dragonbone Chair series (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn?) since they first came out, when I think I was in high school, so I'm still tainted by my first "this is SO much better than DragonLance or the later Shannara books!" impression :)

Julio if you enjoyed this you should read morton Feldman's Collection of Essays "Give My regards to 8th Street" its really incisive and extremely funny. His writing Style is to blunt and beautiful.

I am reading "Words and Music" and getting frustrated by the Style but enjoying the ideas.

shoulda read His writing style is blunt but beautiful.

Hey! (Preachy as Dragonlance could be/ended up being, it had Raistlin = it is brilliant. An antihero I could more easily empathize with than Elric, say.)

(Legends is much better, presumably because of the entirely different process behind it.)

have you read it justyn?

There is a welles season here actually so i look forward to seeing it on the big screen.

My mom and both my sisters read it and they all enjoyed it.

Yesterday, I went to the library and got Fargo Rock City, which I'm now halfway through, and The Virgin Suicides, which I initially didn't want to read after having seen the movie but now am remembering how much I liked Middlesex (also by Jeffrey Eugenides).

What are the hot new novels coming out this fall?

I am excited because the new Neil Stephenson Quicksilver comes out in a few days/weeks. I know that there's other new releases, too, but that's the big one for me.

Am currently on "The World Turned Upside Down" by Pierre François Souryi, about the 'middle ages' in Japan. And still have a couple of histories of the early Church that are just lying around waiting for me to remember and to finish reading them.

1 = i am a goth fellow-traveller
2 = vanity (someone said something i wrote reminded him of this book)
3 = it has a chapter about PIRATES!

I'm currently dithering between the first in the Easy Rawling series by Mosely and something by Philip Roth. Or that Wittengensteins's Poker (I just butchered that title with my spelling, I think) or a bio. of the Mittford sisters or The Great Indian Novel.

I think I'll go find an old Calvin and Hobbes collection to read in the tub.

(how's the kennedy mister cozen?)

Last night I read X-Men comics.

"Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond

"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" by Philip K Dick (re-read)

I read "High-Rise" this summer, it is a good read.

I'm currently reading In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner. I really enjoyed Good in Bed, her first book.

Right now I am reading fluff (and I do mean fluff, I am ashamed to say). I'm about to finish The Secret Life of Bees which is sweet and enderaing and simple and not at all brilliant, but is okay. And I recently re-read Cryptonomicon and am convinced that it's a masterwork. Next I am thinking will be Perdido Street Station or Quicksilver, unless my memory is still on vacation, in which case I'll go for one of Lethem's older works, I think. Or a decent mystery from the Vintage Crime collection.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380977427/102-3039978-0836938?v=glance

anyway, Pynchon's GR.

and a book on the assassination of JFK by Ant Summers

next will be Scoop by Eve Waugh

or maybe Voltaire's Coconuts by Ian Buruma

-- Sarah MCLUsky (x77tigersxu...), September 23rd, 2003.

They are great arent they? I think i've got that 'In Her Shoes' (damn book club sending me loads of books i didnt order!) so let me know how it is!

Still reading:
Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths (great great great, but I only read a few stories now and then, so it's been slow going)

Just started on Mervyn Peake's "Titus Groan" (book 1 of the Gormenghast trio) which seems like it's going to be spectacular, as his writing is delightful.

Oh, and an amazingly exciting book about the wonderous subject of Software Engineering.

ALso considering starting Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, for some easy-readin'

The Peake book, however, is still bunning me mercilessly.... Thankfully I'm not even halfway yet! Yay! I will have to read "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone" as well!
Has anyone here read any of his non-Gormenghast-related material? I see there's disappointingly little of it (unless a lot of the collections I see in bibliographies include all sorts of short stories and novellas)

Books I've bought and have lined up to read:

The Plague - Albert Camus
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs

After that, I have some books laying around I might read. A Clockwork Orange, Queer by Burroughs, and a book who's title I have forgot that compares the lives of Picasso and Einstein.

Unless you happily scratch yourself in front of women, Ann, your X chromosomes haven't fully mutated.

Still finishing Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley (Alison Weir), but I've also started reading through some Greek essays by Aristophanes I borrowed from the library.

Story of Civilization - The Renaissance by Will Durant
Fright of Real Tears: Kieslowski Between Theory and Post-Theory by Slavoj Zizek
The Zizek Reader by...duh.
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
Living Systems by James Grier Miller

Did I mention I also watch way too much film? That may be why my reading progresses soooo slowly.

Now Max Harrison's 'Jazz Retrospect'.

We need a death match to determine who is the most popular ILX author, Calvino or Murakami.

I've started into to Wolfram's A New Kind of Science and will probably keep reading that until something fun comes along to break it up. I'm thinking of ordering The Bluegrass Conspiracy, Pete Seeger's How to Play the Five-String Banjo, and Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver.

flowers for algernon - daniel keyes
how late it was, how late - james kelman

great books and all but god that was depressing, i need to read
something a bit more cheerful...any recommendations?

such a brilliant sentence...

book I am mostly reading now:
Chuck Eddy, The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n Roll

I'm reading "Decline and Fall" by Evelyn Waugh. It's my first Waugh and as good as I'd been led to believe. I'm also glued to Phillip Gourevitch's brilliant "We wish to inform you that tommorow we will be killed by our families", which makes an excellent companion to Safe Are Gorazde.

What's God's Secretaries like, Ned?

Eriik, what did you make of this? I love Carson McCullers and I hated this book.

hey x-post - weird.

I liked it -- seemed in part to be an apologia for the style of the King James more than anything else, quite a few zingers at both earlier and later translations delivered. But it did address the issue of (as best as can be told) how the translating team was assembled and worked and certainly wasn't sparing of both praise and blame for individual members in their other lives. The nicest comment was the note about the idea of a great work of art being created by committee is very antithetical to two centuries of Romantic/post-Romantic thought, and yet...

(Or has a new thread been created and I've missed it completely an therefore I'm making an ass of myself and showing just how non-attention-paying-to-the-boards-I-have-been-as-of-late?)

Underworld by Don DeLillo (most excellent, but the epilogue almost destroyed the brilliance of the rest of the text)
Life at These Speeds by Jeremy Jackson (okay, needed a firmer editor)
Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of An American Gangster in Japan by Robert Whiting (great in some places, lacking in others)
A Dog's Life by Peter Mayle (light, fluffy, and delightful)
Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott (fairly light and "chickish" - still amde me cry in places, in that weeping-violinish way)
The Walking Tour: A Novel by Kathryn Davis (another one that's great at moments and horrid at others - and I missed a whole lot of what she was trying to do in some of plot)
The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen (hmmm - a bit dated, but interesting, especially if you like conspiracy things - also, hard for me 'cause the bad guys are Democrats and the good guys are Republicans)
The Tale of Despereaux: being the story of a mouse, a princess, some soup, and a spool of thread by Kate DiCamillo (sweet, charming, delightful - it deserves having won this year's Newberry Award)

And now I'm working on Reading Lolita in Tehran, which is pretty damn good and amazing and beautiful and heart-breaking and it makes me even more steamed about religious fundamentalism, in any guise.

have read delany's 'dhalgren', orwell's '1984' and a couple of others too.

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/newanswers.php?board=54

Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets - J K Rowling (I'm really enjoying this actually. I was a little late reading the HP series, but I've got them all & am ploughing my way through. Nice light reading.)
His Dark Materials (Northen Lights) - Philip Pullman (i'm enjoying this, but it taking some getting into.)
Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel (hm, it seems like I am reading the same page over & over again.)

Still going with the Chaos book, halfway through rereading Burrough's Naked Lunch, still going with the book on Lost Medieval Villages and just started rereading Ackroyd's London bio last night.

I just can't seem to finish a book at the moment.

that said, i have a three inch pile of magazine articles and a bunch of stuff from Project Gutenburg on my Handspring so i'm not short of things to read.

or i could try finished 100 Years Of Solitude. again. 8)

Next I'll read Colors Insulting to Nature : A Novel which Cintra Wilson jestingly inscribed to me thusly, "Mr. White, Thanks for all the memorable sex." I don't remember anything unfortunately.

Frances FitzGerald - Way Out There In the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War
E.B. Sledge - With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Richard Farina - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me

Then I have a couple of books of poetry and shorter fiction that I have been somewhat regularly dipping into:

Pablo Neruda - Selected Poems
H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

This is not counting a bunch of other books with bookmarks in them that have been put on semi-permanent hiatus.

Disgusting, but I can't put it down. Has the palliative effect of making me glad I am not in my apartment in NYC.

next: mishima confessions of a mask.

Revolution In The Head
A History Of God
Three Men In A Boat

haha! i just realized i'm not the only one!

I'm also finally getting around to reading Midnight's Children by Rushdie.

Every bit as funny as "Naked" and "Me Talk Pretty One Day".

started reading marc reisner's cadillac desert: the american west and its disappearing water today. great book, beautiful writing. i love the part about the first explorers ballsy enough to ride the scary-ass rapids on the colorado river.

the book was also a pbs miniseries.

i've got four books on the go:
the sportwriter - richard ford
journey to the end of the night - celine
hunters in the snow - tobias wolff
weep not, my wanton - maggie dubris

judith butler - gender trouble

in the bookbag & on the nightstand:

everyday zen - charlotte joko beck
things fall apart - chinua achebe
our band could be your life - michael azerrad
walden - hd thoreau

i didn't really like things fall apart. have you read 'joys of motherhood' (by buchi amechta [sp?]), it's a far more indepth study of the effects of european colonisation, and it's also kinda funny.

I have not, I'll have to follow up Achebe with that one.

Was it just the absence of the portrayal of colonialism from most of Things Fall Apart that bothered you, or something else?

tbh, it was a while ago that i read it, so the specifics are eluding me. but i just remember that it was really dry, and i found it hard to find the characters 'real'. emecheta's (i just checked the spelling) was a lot easier for me to connect with. i felt like she was really able to lead me into her life and the life of her tribe. i read both books for a colonial/post-colonial lit paper i was doing.

haha I'm reading TFA cause I'm the sort of douchebag who reads post-colonial theory & lit for fun.

dude, nothing douchebag-y about that. have you read 'wide sargasso sea' by jean rhys? it's the story of of Mr Rochester's 'mad woman in the attic' wife. also 'foe' by j.m. coetzee (i really enjoyed both these books).

I've heard a lot about 'sargasso' from friends, but haven't picked it up yet. Worth a read, then?

Does anyone else know Denise Mina? I read a novel of hers for work, loved it so much we took her on as a client (to handle her film/TV rights), and have since read 4 and three quarters more of her books, and they're all fantastic. The Garnethill trilogy is probably my biggest recommendation, though really I don't think you can go wrong.

xpost

dude, nothing douchebag-y about that.

I think I've just become paranoid about kneejerk ILX cynicism and was trying to innoculate myself with a little self-depreciation. Lots around here like to pretend that the whole field of critical theory consists of stating the glaringly obvious ("omg you mean to say that this novel that was written in the early 20th century by a rich white man has POOR attitudes about race??"), but obviously I disagree.

lol that should be self-deprication obv

lol graveyard shift

against the day is still wot i'm reading, yo. ('ve got to page 704, since last xmas)

BIG HOOS, sargasso is definitely worth a read - it's one of the great modernist novels. it explores all aspects of what makes up the 'other' - not just race but also gender. the character of bertha is interesting because she is actually white (genetically) but has been raised carribean, which sets up all kinds of complications in the development of her character.

'foe' is an epistolary novel, and a nice short read - coetzee re-imagines the story of crusoe, but adds a woman also deserted on the island, who eventually escapes back to england with man friday. she contacts a writer called 'daniel foe' to write her story. the whole book consists entirely of her letters, except for this strange, dream-like ending. probably my favourite of the few coetzee novels i've read.

i think if you're interested in critical theory, you'd enjoy both.

And if you want to get into reimaginations of Crusoe, there is "Friday" by Michel Tournier. It's intensely dreary at times (at other times, rollickingly hilarious) , but if you're going to get all dreary and philosophical, you might as well set it in tropical paradise. Amazon.com only lists "Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique" - in the original French - so I couldn't tell you where to get a copy, but it's out there in English somewhere.

On the subject of retelling classic stories through "the other" has anyone read "Mists of Avalon"? I read "Le Morte d'Arthur" last semester and a classmate recommended this. It frames the Arthurian legends through Morgan le Fey's P.O.V. It's at the top of my list, but I haven't picked it up yet.

I've seen the mini-series based on the book, not read the book though.

It was damn good on telly!

FYI guys I have no idea why but I just bought Ulysses.

i am too scared to even look at ulysses.

I believe the exact line of thought was "Man, Dubliners was really good. Hey look, Ulysses. 4 bucks? Fuck it."

I picked up Ulysses for fifty cents from a library book sale 7 years ago. It's remained uncracked on my bookshelf, although I've been through the actual Odyssey three times (once for kicks, twice for school). My dad has Finnegan's Wake on his shelf. I haven't asked him if he actually read it yet.

Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy.

We have a really nice fun version of this thread over at ILBooks if anyone hasn't looked over there in a while.

That said, The Making of the Middle Ages by RW Southern.

Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino.

Can I get a fuck yeah for Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino??

Ulysses is really not that hard, and is incredibly funny in places. Finnegan's Wake, on the other hand, gives me the fear, although I may well try it this summer.

Currently re-reading all the B.S. Johnson novels, as I'm doing a dissertation on him next year, and I adore him, but will try to fit in The Journalist by Harry Mathews, 7 Types of Ambiguity by Empson and a few other random things as well.

I just finished Borges' Ficciones, which may be the best thing I've ever read.

With this wiki at hand, I'm going to start Pynchon's V. tomorrow, I think.

emil.y, have you read eliot perlman's '7 types of ambiguity'? australian author, fiction,

ZS, i just read 'the crying of lot 49', it was hilarious, and extremely prophetic with regards to the development of the internet. i loved the whole thing about 'informational entropy' - it took me ages to actually figure out what the hell that meant, but when i finally got it, i really *got* it.

Can I get a fuck yeah for Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino??

You can, but only from Ken L.

Also, Finnegans Wake is a lot of fun. Or it was back when I was reading it. I don't think I could take it now, it requires a completely different headspace.

When I haven't been reading school-related stuff, for the past 6 months (!) I've been reading Gone with the Wind. A lot of it is hard going, although realistically I suppose that it represents the actual perspective that the South had during the Civil War. I have moments when I'm just enthralled with the story and then other moments when I'm so frustrated with the politics of the South from that era, and the implication that slaves looooooooved their "families."

I also just started an anthology - I think the title is Best Food Writing 2006. There's some fun stuff in there.