World Cup Month 2006: What are you reading?

Anyone read Vital Signs? by Shepherdson? I am tempted to order that as well.

My brain is clearly useless though: I once read a book only to realize about five pages from the end that "hey, I've read this before!" The book was Douglas Adams' "The long dark tea-time of the soul" incidentally, so maybe my mind just doesn't want to remember comedic novels abouts gods.

Just about to read - Tor!: The Story of German Football - Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger

If you're looking for a good football book try and find The Rise Of Gerry Logan by Brian Glanville

I'm about to start on Never Let Me Go, though. I swear it.

Now I'm reading "The Accidental Evolution of Rock N Roll" by Chuck Eddy, which isn't strictly NYC homework but feels like it might as well be. It's predictably marvellous and (I think) the fifth best book on pop music I've ever read.

Ray: in Bellos's "Georges Perec: A Life In Words" there are some fascinating explanations of the Oulipian 'scaffloding' used to construct "Life A Users Manual". You might know that already, but I suppose you might not.

Mikey: you are restricting yourself to football books and travel books this month. This could be re-stated as "this month I have gven up moomins and Brautigan."

Oh yes, I'm well stuck in to Never Let Me Go now. I can see why it gets donated to charity shops a lot. The cover is all wrong for the inside.

I hope to start on Don Delillo's Players next, and then reread some Daphne DuMaurier short stories.

i'm reading this too. it's fucking awful.

- Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome (the mediocre follow-on to his much better, now-classic Three Men In a Boat), and

- Tristan, (aka Tristan and Isolde), by Gottfried von Strassburg, in the Penguin Classic black-cover edition. Very strange courtly romance from circa 1250 AD.

I've only read My Life as a Fake out of that lot, and I didn't like it one bit. I don't like Carey's modern books as much as his historical romps, though, and I felt that this one in particular kind of flailed about looking for something to say without really saying anything.

Jed, do you really hate it? I think it's okay.

http://lrblog.typepad.com/

Even worse: it is written by John Lanchester.

I just finished Barthes' The Neutral.

The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Io Non Ho Paura
Poesia in forma di rosa (Pasolini)

1. Cold Comfort by Susannah Waters
Novel about climate change in Alaska (do you see?). I know the author slightly so you must all go out and buy it immediately.
2. Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
The third 'Maisie Dobbs' mystery. Went down easily.
3. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
More unlikely proof that Richard and Judy have quite good taste in books.
4. Past Caring by Susannah Dunn
Novel about reincarnation and growing up. Bizarrely, by another Susannah of my acquaintance though fairly distant. Purchase optional.
5. School Days by Robert B Parker
A slight return to form I think.
6. In The Stacks: short stories about libraries and librarians
Could hardly NOT read this, could I? Haven't finished it yet though.
7. The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L Carter
Huzzah, I finally finished it! I don't think it fully repaid my efforts to be honest.

It's GREAT.

Recent reading:

McEwan, Saturday - flawed, but excellent in ways

Goddard, Songs That Saved Your Life, 2nd edition - so atrociously written he gives Middles a run for his money, yet it *does* work as a chronological history of the band, and despite his weaknesses as a writer, his way of allocating themes and incidents to songs, etc, shows quite a sound structural sense.

I read it slowly and carefully, you see.

Crikey, maybe that's all.

I HATE that book. I hope I'm not alone. What did you think, mj?
I love "The Believer", and like what Eggers is doing with his time and money, but "AHWOSG" made me want to throw it in the road and watch trucks run over it.

I have finished Never Let Me Go, which promised much but did not deliver, I feel. Not sure what to read now.

Less good is Rebecca Solnit's 'Wanderlust: a history of walking' which is frequently interesting but written in that overbearingly earnest American style of feature journalism.

Well, from the little I have read, it seems to be fairly pointless, albeit somewhat funny in places.

I would not say that I hate it, but I do not know if I will continue reading it much longer. The "in-your-face" quirkiness and self-consciousness worked pretty well in the beginning, but it gets old pretty fast. And, really, the guy just is not that funny after the first couple of jokes.

What is Eggers doing with his time and money, out of curiousity?

I am into Paradiso, and am now finished with all my classes, so goodbye Philosophical Investigations, it's been a wild ride. I have no idea what I might read for funsies next. Well, actually, I'm reading some Krazy Kat. But beyond that... dunno.

Uh, um...

*cough*

Now, I am no longer an ignorant person.

I suspect that each time he caught himself writing a straightforward sentence consisting of a subject, verb and object, he rejected it out of hand and immediately redid it as a baroque concatentation of disjecta membra. The difficulty with such a style is that it eventually becomes its own justification and I cannot always tell whether he is just humming a wayward tune or has something definite to say. Still, its fun in 50 page doses.

On my holidays I also read some Graham Greene and Laurie Lee, but I mainly watched the World Cup.

Father's Day present from my remarkably clued-up daughter.

How Soccer Explains the World - Franklin Foer
Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby

Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen - enjoyable and interesting in parts, frustratingly disjointed in others

Shibumi by Trevanian - I can't believe I actually finished it - are Trevanian's other works as ... unpleasant?

Outposts by Simon Winchester - inspired idea, sucky execution - I find that I feel the same about lots of Winchester's works, though, so maybe it's just a personal thing

Misfortune by Wesley Stace - quite entertaining, to my way of thinking

Metropolis by Elizabeth Gaffney - somewhat like Dreamland and Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker but also called to mind Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, thanks to the "bridge" references

Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr - just started this morning, but so far I'm completely enraptured (it's gotta be good when I am late with syringe-feeding the little critters 'cause I keep thinking "just one more paragraph ... one more page ... one more chapter", then I finally gave in and devised a book weight [since mine was attacked by a hedgehog and chewed to pieces] with a butterknife, a tv remote, and a bottle of cat shampoo)

31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us The Government We Have Today Barry Werth. breathless account of the Nixon/Ford transition.

The Planets Dava Sobel. sweet slightly eccentric pop science.

I am currently reading Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick. He is an amazing writer of narrative history, and this book is all about the epic Expedition of Exploration undertaken by the American navy between 1838 and 1842 (I think) in which the American navy discovered Antarctica and did a bunch of other amazing things. Philbrick is interested in why we don't hear more about this. And so am I.
Plus, there are few things I love more than a glossy new American Penguin edition with some sailing ships on the cover. I am in heaven.

I've started Lawless Roads by Graham Greene. White man travels to Liberia in the 1930's. Locals look askance.

It was well into the second paragraph on page one before he announces he is Catholic.

And I haven't read Outposts, but I've read a couple of his other books and I don't think he's a great writer. Great researcher, maybe.

Actually, it was quite a nice little essay masquerading as a book, and well worth the minimal time needed to read it. It simply pointed out the connection between the universal human desire to experience visions and various forms of art that you wouldn't ordinarily have thought of in this context.

I take my mother home tomorrow!

Nathalie, can you get "Vogue Knitting?" It's a fabulous, encyclopaedic book. The close-up graphics of various stitches are really comprehensible.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193154316X/104-6393745-5280704?v=glance&n=283155

If you have trouble getting it in Europe, let me know.

I got some Viz Big Hard Ones from the charity shop.

The final part of my USA homework was reading "The Intuitionist", by Colson Whitehead. This was homework as set by Laurel, as purchased cheap from The Strand bookshop, and as enjoyed thoroughly by me, well done everyone concerned.

Now I have started on some Icelandic homework. This will consist (over the next fortnight or so) of "Silence Of The Grave" by Arnaldur Indridason and "Independent People" by Halldor Laxness, maybe with a quick Icelandic saga chucked in if I've time.

Will you coincide with B&S?

If so, nice one.

PS: I have totally given up reading, and indeed, thinking.

Apologies to everyone including myself for this interruption.

"Silence of the Grave" is fairly gripping but, my word, it's miserable so far.

I am reading "The Smell of Bejam's" by Zebedee Harcout.

Wonderfully specific, engagingly self-absorbed, superbly meandering. In a sense... the best book on poetry I have ever read?

Am currently reading J-Pod. I've reached the stage where I want to jump into the book and beat the characters around the face. This is normal for a Douglas Coupland book.

Yesterday I watched The Unbearable Lightness of Being for the first time in about ten years. Brilliant still and the boring bits are cloaked with lots of nudity. Nice one.

I don't know this. Is it new?

There are pages and pages of crap; prime numbers, brand names, geek speak etc.

I can't remember the last book I read where I wanted to find out where the author lives, tap him on the shoulder and say, "you're a cunt."

Still reading Vic Reeves - funny bits with a fair bit of dross.

Anyway, there's a chance I may stick to this and finish it, so long as it doesn't spend too much time spinning its wheels in a bog of minutiae.

Fuck that then, as the philosopher said.

I am still reading my amazing book about the Exploration Expedition. I want to read nothing for the rest of my life except books about expeditions.

As a sidebar, I dropped into the old shop today, only to find that some thieving junky scumbag robbed the big wallet they keep all the CDs in to stop them getting stolen off the shelves. 200 CDs gone. Just like that. I don't like scumbags.

Deserves to be unwritten and the author punched.

And now reading 'The Bridge Of San Luis Rey' by Thornton Wilder. I rather like it.

I read The Year of Magical Thinking all in one go when ill at home yesterday, having realised it was due back to the library and I couldn't renew it. Surprisingly, gievn how weepy I am these days, I didn't cry. Was probably too ill.

Anyhow just finished Charlotte Simmons as in I am and Tom just couldn't keep his lasciviousness under wraps ... "winking belly buttons" aplenty.

Also, Sand in My Bra. An anthology of 'comic' womens travel writing. As if there was any other kind. Ho ho.

I've finished my book about expeditions and am now reading Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee. It's brilliant. Why do I not read more of his stuff, I ask myself.

I really miss that book already.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - PKD
Kafka on the Shore - Murakami
Fairy Tales: Penguin Classics Deluxe Ed. - Hans Christian Andersen (artwork is beautiful; stellar new translation)
Ghostwritten - Mitchell

Reading A History of the Tube Map (that's the metro in London for those who live off-island). It seems Mr Beck was pressurised into adding pointless imagery by the board of London Transport; like a compass indicating north.

Berlin Noir, Philip Kerr- not bad at all and just what I was in the mood for at the time
Two For the Road, Jane and Michael Stern - I loved "Roadfood" but this was just too meandering for me
Crossing California, Adam Langer - greatly enjoyed the reading, but very little of the story's stayed with me
War Reporting for Cowards, Chris Ayres - probabl better than I'll give credit, but I was just grumpy as hell while reading it
Ninety-two In the Shade, Thomas McGuane - why in the hell did I wait so long before reading this?!

Now I'm reading News from Tartary, by Peter Fleming, but I'm thinking I should set it aside for now and take it up again once life settles a bit, as I'm not doing it justice and can't keep a steady train of thought and keep forgetting who's who (which is pretty pathetic as I think that there's really only two main characters).

I mean, he sent them. He didn't write the book.

Man, you can tell I write for a living, can't you? You'd pay me to write, I bet.

In process:
The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones, Anthony Bourdain - not bad but I don't much care for collections of shorts, as a rule

Enslaved By Ducks: How One Man Went from Head of the Household to Bottom of the Pecking Order, Bob Tarte - I think that, being in animal rescue myself, the stuff that's supposed to be funny just feels familiar and depressing, but I do find enjoyment in his descriptions of the birds, since I know diddly-squat about the feathered critters

News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir, Peter Fleming - I love the older travelogues and this one is pretty good, but I'm just not finding myself submerged in the adventure

The End of Vandalism: A Novel, Tom Drury - some of the best dialogue, most perfect encapsulations of characters in just a few words ... and yet I'm not that involved with the story

Hmm. Thinks...

After the initial two are discarded, I shall have my pick of several, including Anthony and Cleopatra by Mr. Shakespeare, The Lais of Marie De France, and Ill Met By Moonlight by Mr. Leigh-Fermor. These and one or two others that I cannot now recall are presently stuffed into plastic buckets, cheek-by-jowl with dehydrated food, insect repellent and assorted other oddments a hiker might find useful, and these buckets are even now secretly planted next to forest roads, waiting for my arrival on foot some ten or fifteen days from today.

i've been adrift in books about genre, and also read some gadamer, some history of jazz, some cavell, some jeff chang, history of german literature, grimms' tales, wittgenstein, read and finished 'berlin noir', re-started 'mason & dixon' (which i first started reading when the first paperback edition came out, but which i have seriously stalled in on at least three separate occasions over the years - i'm not sure i'll remember everything up to the point where i have already read), read a bit in that donald allen 'new american poetry' anthology that ron silliman is so nonstop about, read a bit of zora neale hurston, and some stuff on plato.

i wonder if it would make my daily wandering around minneapolis a bit easier if i adopted aimless's method for myself, leaving books secreted around all my haunts to find and read.

I finished my Icelandic homework ("Independent People" by Halldor Laxness, which caused extreme reaction in some of the Icelanders to whom I mention it - apparently it's one of those books everyone is forced to read at the age of 12 and therefore is loved and loathed in equal measure; "Gisli's Saga", which is just great). I went to see some saga manuscripts, too, which was amazing.

Now I'm reading "Equal Danger" by Leonardo Sciascia, which is a skewed detective novel. Sometimes I'm wondering whether the odd linguistic clunk is an aesthetic choice or whether it's a translation thing. And in such unknowables does (some) enjoyment live.

Actually, Tim, I read one of his novels in the original language, and I would to be prone to say that the odd linguistic clunks are the results of both things that you mentioned. He was well-noted for his precise, terse style; also, he threw in all of those oddball Sicilianisms to make it even more difficult to read for someone who does not live there. I am sure that it would be a translator's nightmare, in regards to trying to translate certain sections of his books.

Anyway, I am still reading "Innocents Abroad", and I will probably move on to some Kierkegaard once I am done with it.

Casuistry - I leave on Saturday. May you be fortunate in your audience.

I'm still reading Marion Nestle's What to Eat, which makes me cringe some but reaffirms most of our personal dietary/food supply choices. I've started harassing my senators and representatives about Country of Origin labelling (COOL) laws.

I am nearly nearly done with Dante. Just a few more tedious Paradiso cantos to go.

A perfect idea!

I spent the first two months of this year reading Pratchett - made it through the Discworld series, up to Thud! and now wish that I could come-up with a good reason to go back and re-read them all over again.

I'm naming the next creature that comes into my care Rincewind. (I read three sister guinea pigs that came to me to be fostered Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat - should have saved those most excellent names for long-term residents, eh?)

Am still trudging through News from Tartary but think I should just put it back on the shelf for another time - though I'm more than half-way through and I'll feel like I copped-out if I do that - but I'd rather read it and enjoy it instead of reading it out of obligation.

Now I am ewading "The Flood" by David Maine, which seems like harmless fun.

TONIGHT! - I need to see Sex Lives of the Potato Men.

Still reading Zizek's Looking Awry. I'm tempted to say I hate him but I'll give another chance.

I am unsure where to go after "rip it up", thinking maybe "Perfume" by P. Suskind. Is this any good? Though Archel's "miss marple binge" sounds rather tempting...

hammett is fresher, better, weirder than i was expecting.

I don't know what's on deck for booky books, maybe some Kafka so I can go back and get more of the references from KA.

Easily the best book I've read this year.

Also still reading a history of Italian football. Summary - corrupt from day one. Plus some Brautigan (natch). Lots of time to read on holiday plus FOUR HOUR flight delay back from Sofia yesterday. Plus horrible tube journey across town in train made entirely from summer heat.

I have been reading lots of articles on and interviews with the Smiths.

I also finished reading a new biography of James Joyce.

I am going to read Alice Oswald's Dart some time, but the fact that it seems to be all in one long piece makes me wonder, slightly, how exactly that's best attempted.

I am going to get back to Elizabeth Bishop, too, eventually.

This is turning into 'Post-World Cup Month: what are you going to read?'.

Christ, it's hot today.

-- accentmonkey (tris...) (webmail), Yesterday 2:08 PM. (accentmonkey) (later) (link)

See also: Maugham

I just started The Accidental by Ali Smith. Liking!

Oh and Madonna and Child: Towards a New Politics of Motherhood by Melissa Benn is really good, if now slightly dated - written when Tony and co were still a brand new government, I don't know how much of their legacy was at all predictable back then. Still examines very lucidly lots of things that I just incoherently fret about though.

Don't worry Remy, I think you recommended Maugham to me before, and I'm saving it up for the next time I see some in a nice Penguin edition. I have not forgotten.

I really would love to see a little column in one of the Sunday paper review sections called Revive! with a little bit about an unfashionable but excellent author. In honour of George Bernard Shaw's 150th anniversary (birth? death? The Pinefox would know, I'm sure), I'd start with him. not one Irish theatre company is planning a major Shaw work this year. Kind of sad.

Elaborate, please! I read that rather slim volume about a year ago, and I don't remember much about it -- I just remember that he broke out into sonnets about every other page.

Oh, and please point something out on your wishlist that you expressly desire above other items. Seven days, right?

Anyway, I have been reading "Walden" for some time now, and I just started reading a new translation of "Don Quixote." So far, it has been an improvement over the Penguin version.

That's madness, there's no -- wait, did we make a birthday wishlist pact? It's starting to ring a bell...

Uh, oh heavens. Most of the things on my wishlist are marked "high", "medium", "low", etc with relevant priority. But also most of the things on my wishlist that are marked "high" that I haven't bought already are somewhat expensive. And anyway it would be more fun to get something that I want but don't know I want, you know? You can always check my LibraryThing to see if I have a book already or not. Curious books from before 1300 are always appreciated, or Oulipo-style books that I don't already have, or great comic strips.

Uh, but really, you don't have to!

ANYWAY, that aside, I'm mostly finding it bizarre because the poetry, at least in the translation I'm reading (Musa) is totally clear, translated for its structure and prose meaning rather than trying to capture anything poetic about it, but each poem is followed up with Dante's comments about the structure of the poem and where each of the different parts begins. He's completely anal about structure (shock on, I know, after having read the Commedia) but it's interesting that he doesn't ever seem to want to, you know, blur some of those sharp edges or come up with intertwined threads or whatnot. Also he only talks about the prose content and the overall structure of the poems, but nothing about, say, language choice, sound, meter, rhyme, voice, style, vocabulary, puns, anything like that. And because it's in translation (and because I've been lazy about comparing it with the originals) I have no clue if there simply isn't anything else to the poetry beyond the prose content and the structure, or what (and historically I don't know if he was doing anything interesting with the structure -- there are notes about how certain poems relate to troubadour poems, but...).

Also, although it's totally different, it's mostly striking me as the model for WCW's "Spring & All", which I suppose I will have to reread once I'm done with this.

His third book on Spain, this time focusing on the civil war. I like him as a travel writer, but I'm not sure I believe him.

E-mail, or send me an amazon message, or something, if more information is necessary.

Anyway, I guess it is time to get back to the, uh, relevant subject of this thread.

Then to Tatus written oh nearly two millenia ago - Leucippe and Clitophon, yes for study but there is really no other way to describe it other than lurid potboiler.

Now am reading The Day Of The Locust by Nathaniel West, it's brilliant and well-suited to these humid days, somehow.

I agree with you about him.

It's very good. Hard work, but good enough to make it worth it. So far. I wonder if the Kelly Montieth translation is easier to read than this "modern" one.

"Living" is set in the 1920s. I suppose some things don't change.

Now I'm reading "Shoedog" by George P Pelecanos, which I suppose is Washington, DC revision.

Come on, Randy Lerner!

Still digging Proust - it has funny bits! I have read more than 100 pages!

finished mulligan stew, started gaddis's 'j r'. got hammett's 'the continental op' and joe gores's 'hammett' for work reading, bcz j r is a bit much for lunchbreaks.

I didn't get all the way through vol 1 of Proust. But I don't remember finding him to be at all hard, just really really long.

christ it's an ugly book jacket:

not sure i got a lot of the jokes viz. baseball.

is sorrentino's poetry/criticism any good? and are his early novels like the novels of the people he mocks in his later novels?

i had to stop reading proust due to being told to go out and get a job whenever i did anything other than go out and try and get a job for more than five minutes, that summer. for an english teacher my mother disapproves of reading a whole lot.

maybe i should read the comic book version first.

I picked up Alexander McCall Smith's Espresso Tales in the Toronto airport, and it's nice and light and fluffy, but also intelligently written and engaging.

I am convinced Moncrieff is better, again, without actually having a clue. Lydai D writes "they all withdrew to the drawing room" or something, which STICKS IN MY GULLET!

I hope Espresso Tales is literally short stories about espresso. But I'm not entirely sure why Tom reacted so negatively to the title.

it seemed uh "lifestyle". but in a kind of very outdated way. and also it seems to indicate a bit of a tin ear.

i just read a call of cthulhu adventure in an old issue of white dwarf starring ... dashiell hammett. it was about the second thing in the box i opened, too.

Reading Granta 94: Where Travel Writing Went Next.

I recommend Jason Webster's Guerra! for any Hispanophiles. Some great summaries of key episodes of the civil war; the siege of Toledo, the Durutti Column, atrocities at Badajoz etc. The chapters dealing with his own impressions feel too clumsy and in places, contrived.

Got the Beevor Spanish Civil War book out of the library.

I also bought Lord Vishnu's Love Handles.

i've probably mentioned that, somewhere.

Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
Carry On, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
The Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
The Lais of Marie de France (only about 2/3rds of it)

Ill Met By MoonLight, Robert Moss (incorrectly identified as Patrick Leigh-Fermor, above: PLF was a main player in the book, but not the author. This is a diary of a Brit commando in Crete who helped to kidnap a Nazi general and smuggle him off the island. Ripping tale and whatnot.)

Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (only just started it; I may not finish.)

Of these, the one most worth comment is The Fifth Business. I find I like to read a Robertson Davies book about every four years or so. He writes well, but I have to space them out, because his personal quirks emerge too strongly if I read them any closer together.

Now I shall be returning, sedately, to Portrait of a Lady from where I left off two weeks ago.

The other problem with Davies - he writes trilogies, so I always pound right through all three when I should stop at the one. Then I am done with him for several years, even though I really enjoy his books while I'm reading them. The Deptford trilogy (Fifth Business/Manticore/World of Wonders) was the first of his I'd ever read, then I had to wait 5 or 6 years to jump into the Salterton one.

And I have once more misattributed the WWII book. It was W. Stanley Moss, not Robert Moss whose daring do I read about. Please castigate me.

I finished "Walden" the other day and was quite amazed with it, as a whole.

Also, I should be getting a Frances Yates book on Giordano Bruno in the near future.

This is the first sci-fi/fantasy book I've read in my adult life -- for reasons I can't really articulate, it's a genre I've always avoided. First 50 pages or so I had issues with all the made-up creatures with silly names, but now I'm really enjoying it.

I hardly think that's the point though, do you?

Soccer Against the Enemy: How the World's Most Popular Sport Starts and Fuels Revolutions and Keeps Dictators in Power by Simon Kuper.

But, since I am working on a paper, I don't have time to read the above right now. Instead I am reading historical and fictional accounts of book-burning, including: Fahrenheit 451 and Bedlam Burning by Geoff Nicholson, which was the only other novel cataloged at my library with the subject heading of "Book Burning--Fiction."