AUGUST 2006 - what are you reading?

(it is fantastic)

I am now trolling through Tim Robinson's 'Labyrinth' - the sequel to 'Pilgrimage' - about the interior of Aran. Funnily enough the blurb on the back says "Robinson does for space what Proust did for time", and it may be right.

I am now reading "Belios" by Orfhlaith Foyle, except there should be an acute accent over the top of the O of Orfhlaith. This is Galway homework. It seems OK, a quarter of the way through I'm getting the impression it could be subtler. But couldn't we all?

I am still slowly reading through the Penguin collection of writings by the Sophists. It is set up exactly how I would want such a book to be set up, with excessive footnotes and many translations of key words into the original Greek. The translation of the Encomium of Helen is set up like quasipoetry in order to make its oratorical flourishes all the clearer = exactly!

I've been waiting all summer to read DeLillo's "Libra", and will hopefully get the chance after my last exam on the 14th.

Back at you! Glad that you liked the book -- it is one that I have been meaning to read for ages, and it classified as a "curiosity before 1300," or some such as that; if it is not too late, I would like to request the CD about the dishwasher thief. Otherwise, feel free to send whatever you think is worth sending.

Anyway, I have been reading "At Swim Two-Birds" lately, and it might be the best thing that I have attempted to read during the last couple of months!

Love for PK Dick (that took a couple of revisions) evades me still. Interesting ideas, I guess, but not earth-shattering and he's not the most eloquent or stylish of writers.

understatement of the century. while the ideas in his best books (High Castle, Stigmata, Flow My Tears) still intrigue decades after reading them, even when I went through my PKD phase I couldn't understand how people physically got through most of his stuff.

Or maybe I just need to get more sleep.

So I think I'll set the Kesey aside for when my mind's more, um, functional and read something trashy, instead.

I am a bit paranopid about putting the Proust down. I think you are all going to laugh at me.

he'd make a great biography subject. is there a definitive life of Dick?(sorry) maybe that's what TW is working on?

there's two biographies: lawrence sutin's - who also edited dick's posthumous 'selected literary and philosophical writings', which is rather fans-only - which is a fairly straight biography, written by someone who doesn't want to dismiss all other science fiction or anything, which is good; and emmanuel carrere's (sp?) 'i am alive and you are dead: into the mind of philip k dick, which is rather uh novelistic; falls into the french trap of taking american blowhards at their own estimation (see poe; also houellebecq on lovecraft), doesn't want to read dick as having a meaningful relation with SF, considers him to have been surrounded by castrating women, etc., etc.: it's not that bad, though. in particular it makes a better job, in deliberately fragmentary narrative, of the scanner darklyish years. reminded me of uh we shall all be healed, that bit.

apparently another one came out in early of this year! i shall have to get a copy.

Heart of Darkness for English - short but dense....

Daphnis and Chloe - what can I say?

I have no clue what to read now. The Gaddis thread here has made me want to go ask the library to get hold of "JR" for me though.

Very jolly.

Stevenage: a sociological study of a new town - Harold Orlans. Very good - Orlans is a wry old stick.

Leadville: a biography of the A40 - Edward Platt. This is really great, but he should have just stuck to the interviews - he's a bit clunky in trying to absorb Le Corbusier etc.

Park and Ride: a journey into suburbia - Miranda Sawyer. Unbelievably bad - lame idea, lazily executed, appalling written.

tried to read rudy wurlitzer's 'nog' and 'quake', found them largely appalling. almost halfway through J R but doubt i will get to it much until train journeys on thurs, sun. reading at work: h p lovecraft, clark ashton smith. and reading old call of cthulhu rpg bullshit at home.

Where are you going by train?

Back to Calcio [Italian football history] which I aim to finish off.

And now more Galway homework, "The Guards" by Ken Bruen. Galway noir, it seems. Guess what? The narrator is a cynical alcoholic. This is OK, I like the pace of these books.

Also, various Emersonian essays. I just happen to be in one of those moods, I guess.

I have taken to making notes on my computer while I'm reading, something I never normally do, because mushy preg brain is making me even less good at retaining information than normal.

I tried reading this poetry book, Em,rgency Kit, and the second or third poem was about child abuse, so I put it back down again. Now I am slowly reading the Collected Ted Hughes, but to be honest I think Record Collector magazine is the right level for me at the moment, due to "mushy twat brain".

mj, how was At Swim-Two-Birds?

I highly recommend it to you, like most ILB'ers, I imagine, if you haven't read it yet.

You could help me out, too! That is, I'm stuck in book lingo and don't know what to read next -- Dhalgren sputtered out on me the other night.

Any thoughts on a good book (preferably something that I could find in a library)? It doesn't matter much as to whether it is non-fiction or fiction.

I am reading the New Statesman magazine. It varies from interesting and engaging to complete fucking twaddle.

Now reading 'The Brothers Karamazov' (actually, in my edition, 'The Karamazov Brothers' but it just seems wrong to have the words that way round, somehow).

Oh Ye Jigs and Juleps by Virginia Cary Hudson
Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland
Northern Sky by Mark Radcliffe
Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
The Wench is Dead by Colin Dexter
The Jewel That Was Ours by Colin Dexter

OYJAJ was by far the best. If you haven't read it, you should!

God help me, I am reading The Secret of Happy Parents by Steve and Shaaron Biddulph. It is appallingly written. I wonder if the secret of happy parents is in fact to make lots of money off selling rubbish books?

i only really got involved in the story (and not the – admittedly wonderful – literary pyrotechnics) around the time that (the) kid(d) is hanging around the elevator and the child falls down the shaft and croaks. that incident indicated that the scale, the scope, the stakes of the novel where much larger than i'd previously anticipated, and more affecting. so i'm with chris and jordan in being confused about it losing anything as it goes on.

I will get back to the book in the near future, but I just need to take a break from thick books for a while.

I have owned this book for years, and I thought I had read it but, picking it up again, I don't think I have. There's an amazing picture of Edna on the inside cover, too.

I think I preferred "Girl With Green Eyes" (aka "The Lonely Girl"), I'm more interested in reading about young adults in town, than little kids in the country. Yes yes, I know I'm reading a book called "The Country Girls" but still.

I finished Edwin Mullhouse at 2.21 a.m. last night. I know I've got a habit of over-eagerly promoting my most recent reading projects, and even taking that into consideration... I feel compelled to enthuse especially about EM. So, so, wonderful.

Dead Souls- Nikolai Gogol (surprisingly funny)
In Persuasion Nation- George Saunders (some great stories, some quite awful)
The Elementary Particles- Michel Houellebecq (hrmmm...)
Mythologies- Roland Barthes (great, re-read)

now

Another Country- James Baldwin

up next

Where I'm Calling From- Raymond Carver

highly anticipating

new PELECANOS!

Part of my new job is abstracting the New Statesman, and I concur with this view wholeheartedly. However, even the twaddle, for me, makes a refreshing change from the American Journal of Death Studies, or similar.

Tim, Ireland homework? Are you visiting again? Do you still have my number? Will you have time to call?

g. saunders, 'in persuasion nation'

Just started Siminon's Pietr le Letton, which I believe is the very first Maigret.

I'm interested in what you thought about this. I finished reading it recently at the recommendation of my father and was severely disappointed.

The book has two real aspects to it. There's all the sexual stuff and the sci-fi and sociopolitical revolution stuff. The first part is at times funny, somewhat amusing, but does it really end up as anything important? The second part is disappointing. The book doesn't raise any real interesting ideas that haven't been explored extensively already.

Colin Ward's e 'New Town, Home Town' was so good I stayed up til 3.30am to finish it and now I am struggling to make it through the afternoon.

You'd be surprised - I have been reading a ton!

Today - Derek Jarman!

Anyway, the content of the book is good also! But, then, they always are. I am trying to read only short/quick things in acticipation of the fact that I start LIBRARY SCHOOL in exactly one week. yikes.

We have a Biddulph book, but not that one. I think the secret of being happy parents is to follow your heart.

Anyhow, currently re-reading Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. It's even more interesting than I remembered.

Looking forward to starting two interlibrary loans that this board has driven me to: _Housekeeping_ and Gaddis' _JR_
The latter had a piece of paper in it with the text "Du veit ikkje kor vakker du er" ("You don't know how beautiful you are")
This is apparently a meme of sorts in Bergen, from whence the book came.

If, at this altogether anticipated juncture in the reading life of our hero, there entered a sense of relief, it was a relief based not so much upon his sense of the perils escaped by the characters of the book into which he had so recently invested so much of his time and attention, for these perils had not been resolved in a manner sufficient to inspire such a sense, nor yet was it a relief such as one feels in the laying down of a heavy burden, for he had not felt an interest in the enterprise keen enough to transform this, the lightest of engagements upon his soul, into a burden, but rather it was a relief keyed to his knowledge that he might never be taxed with wondering what he was missing in his ignorance of the author's ouerve, for now he felt he had mastered the Master and this satisfaction was coupled with no obligation to repeat the experiment again. He was free again, and his freedom, although negligible, was perfect of its kind.

Just started: A Lie About My Father by John Burnside.

Still in the middle of: Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich.

It did give me the opportunity to read a couple of books, though. First, "A Night of Serious Drinking" by Rene Daumal, which is like a booze-soaked modernist "Gulliver's Travels" and frequently made me laugh out loud in an unlaughy situation. Second, "Voices" by Arnaldur Indridason, which is muted and miserable, like his previous Reykjavik murder mysteries.

Now I'm back to Greil Marcus's new one, "The Shape Of Things TO Come" which so far is largely a bit wordy-worthy, occasionally extremely interesting. I'd have finished it by now, if they hadn't made me check it into my luggage.

I've just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch, in which she investigates the employment problem in corporate America. It's a really depressing book. I know none of her books are exactly a pie fight, but this one (because they're coming for us!) is truly depressing. It actually made me glad that a) I live in Ireland, and b) I've never really had any aspirations to a family or a career, so I can, in theory, coast for a while on a really low salary if necessary.

Now I'm re-reading Fforde's The Big Over Easy (which I had to go and purchase again 'cause one of the derned roomies went and long-term lent my original copy to his father, who thought it was a gift and read it and then passed it along to someone else) in anticipation of cracking the spine on The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime tomorrow while I'm waiting at the vet's.

lately: cop hater, by ed mcbain; double indemnity, by james m cain; fearless jones, by walter mosley.

currently: gold fools, by gilbert sorrentino; j r, by william gaddis (still); tales of the cthulhu mythos, ed. august derleth (still); slouching towards bethlehem, by joan didion

I like them because they manage to combine briskness with a downbeat sense of misery, which seems an especially Nordic combination. Also a sense that everyone is ultimately screwed by their environment.

One of the books won one of the big crime writing awards last year, or the year before, which I think resulted in the rules of the award being amended to exclude works in translation. Ridiculous.

Nearly finished the Kite Runner [Khalled Hosseini] which was a real 'tube' book some month back. Quite graphic and really nicely balanced.

Haven't got any further in Reporting. I got through part of the chapter on Blair on the train on Sunday. A part of Remnick's technique appears to be to show his subjects in an unflattering light, but with enough context to make you actually not want to judge them too harshly.

The Arthurian book mostly eschews dwarfs and giants and the usual magical apparatus of wonder tales to concentrate (somewhat surprisingly) on psychology, which makes it unusual, but also somewhat thin gruel at times, since every passing episode seems to be condensed like a Reader's Digest book.

The Koestler book is actually rather neatly contrived and manages to pose some interesting political and philosophical problems that are nicely integrated into the characters and plot, making for a satifying read that continues to improve through most of the arc of the book.

Just started this one and yes, I have no shame! Apologies to the big guy, but this is only 100 tiny pages.

Mallarme / Rimbaud / Baudelaire / Carson: a vivid translator

Maupassant: simple tales?

Barthes: L'Empire des Signes: lentement

Julian Barnes, Something To Declare: finesse

Sean O'Brien, The Deregulated Muse: well-informed - but he should write more sparely and simply

Pam Gems, Loving Women: strictly worthy

Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: wow, terrific on rereading: atmosphere, narrative, place

Mark Simpson, Saint Morrissey: the sparks of originality fly
as David Thomson battles Andrew Collins and Graham Norton for control of the word-processor; I dream of the work that would give Marr his due

Dick Hebidge, Hiding In The Light: read that Face chapter again - beginning to end

James Kelman, A Disaffection: plausibly demented; sometimes very comic

Iain Sinclair, Downriver: the English Gravity's Rainbow?