What are you reading - on or about October 2006

In fact I'm reading The Scramble for Africa, which goes firmly in my list of books you wish came in two separate volumes for portability purposes.

at the same time, i want to read william c heine, the last canadian (a 1970s thriller about, literally, 'the last canadian.' i think it's about a plague.), some science fiction/horror short stories (by anyone!), and finish delillo's libra.

i just finished delillo's the body artist, which is probably my second favourite of his now, after the names.

Then I read "Love's Death" by Oswcar van den Boogard, which is (if anything) slightly more miserable than the title implies. A little girl dies on the second page and it gets less cheerful from there. It was OK, if a little unremitting.

I nearly started "Blindness" by Henry Green but my train arrived and I had to get to work.

Once I got it I looked at Kyle's blog where he announced that this bk is now out on paperback.

If so, ha ha ha, etc.

I'm reading A Life Stripped Bare by Leo Hickman, it's an easy read and makes me feel a bit more normal for finding it a struggle to be 'ethical', but also that it's worthwhile to keep trying.

Just finished Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, which was gripping, moving and well-written. Feels like a long time since I enjoyed a novel to the full for some reason, but this one I did.

Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food and Frolics from Halloweens Past by Diane Arkus

Now I am reading 'Lolita'.

Now reading Potiki by the fabulous Patricia Grace.

So for a change of pace I started Dibdin's Ratking, which is the first in his Aurelio Zen series - and it's positively marvelous. Or maybe I'm just tickled to be reading something that's literate, gramatically correct, has vibrant characters, and is entertaining.

Oh, and my bathroom reading currently is going back and forth between Rabbit Health in the 21st Century and The Cornucopia: Being a Kitchen Entertainment and Cookbook, Containing Good Reading and Good Cookery from More than 500 Years of Recipes, Food Lore, etc. As Conceived and Expounded by The Great Chefs & Gourmets of the Old and New Worlds Between the Years 1380 and 1899, Copiously Illustrated - the latter is most excellent, the former informative.

How many?

beckett, murphy
stuff for 'popular fiction' and 'contemporary american novel' courses.

Oddly enough the publisher classifies it as "Crime Fiction" (you know, that tag in the upper left corner of the back cover, to guide where bookstores shelve it), because that is what the author usually writes.

Bob Woodward- State of Denial
Conservatize Me- John Moe
L.A. Rex- Will Beall

okay, i found something. I'm gonna read Amy Bloom's 2000 story collection *A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You* and then read *What Maisie Knew* by James. My copy of What Maisie Knew is one of those nice old Anchor paperbacks with the Gorey covers. I love those things. Those two books should take me to january!

Now reading Utterly Monkey by Mr Zadie Smith er I mean Nick Laird. It's a bit boring. And something or other by Mavis Cheek, who I guess would be my favourite 'guilty pleasure' author if I had any guilty feelings about books.

i'm reading schopenhauer, montaigne, and a book about wcw and the art world.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (great bbc miniseries btw)

A Perfect Spy

My non-school reading is "The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, about how he read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica. It's set up as a series of alphabetical entries running parallel to where he is in the encyclopedia at the time. I am a total sucker for this kind of book.

And now, "Gold - The Marvellous History of General John Augustus Sutter" by Blaise Cenrars. I wouldn't normally pick up a book with a title like that, but (a) a novel by my favourite of all the Swiss - Scottich poets! and (b) you have to love those Peter Owen Modern Classics, eh?

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Manuscript was one of the best works of fiction that I have read in some time. The Dick was disturbingly entertaining -- most of his books incite similar responses when I read them.

Now, I am beginning to commence reading Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel and some scholarly book on the devil.

mj, have you gotten to the toilet paper chapter yet? That's really all I remember from however little of that book I read. Also, I am hella overdue with sending you a package...

No rush on the package, really -- whenever you find the time works for me.

More Yuri business: "Envy" by Yuri Olesha. I'm only a few pages in but it's started marvellously.

So far I think it is rubbish because

a) I don't think it is particulalrly clever to find out what brain surgeons do and then show off about it

and

b) I hate the "blues musician" son and his autographed beer mat from Ry Cooder.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/syndicates/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003255156

I am currently reading nothing but textbooks and the latest NYRB.

IMO, Kittredge sprinkles veiled implications all over his chapters as if they were some sort of magic fairy dust for making vaguely suggestive writing into 'creative' writing. He seems to have been marked by Hemingway like some big ole' inky thumbprint on his forehead. He's not quite my style, but good enough for all that.

I have reverted to Titus Groan, which is like Fattypuffs and Thinnifers for adults, and quite enjoyable, if not entirely gripping.

But this morning I read the adventures of Rooney, Mourinho et al in The Guardian, and then I closed my eyes.

We were talking about Fattypuffs and Thinnifers on Sunday - M was in a stage adaptation of it at school, which would so NEVER happen nowadays. 'Right, casting: all the fat kids line up over here, and all the skinny kids over here...'

I recently finished Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore". It was enjoyable enough, Murakami's usual strengths and weaknesses, but I'm starting to find his amiability and imaginative zip insufficient compensation for his aimlessness and self-indulgence. I've read most of what he's written, but suspect I won't be reading any more.

Next up: The Naked Madonna by Jan Wiese. That doesn't look to me like the name of a Norwegian, but apparently it is. Jan is about to chew the arm of his specs on the back cover, I think that's a bad sign but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, for now.

Although I would have to agree with the general position of the author that peak oil will touch off a great many chronic problems worldwide, I find the book is insufficiently researched and rather weakly argued. The author (whosis) tires quickly of supporting his opinions, so that often he just collects them and hands them to you with very little more than this sort of 'argument': "Is it likely this technology can continue without the platform of cheap oil to support it? I think not." End of story.

I'm disappointed, because this issue needs to be much more thoroughly presented. We are already fighting our second oil war in two decades and we are likely to be fighting more of them in the next several decades, unless the American public grasps the nettle and decides to change its way of life, rather than always being caught far behind the curve of events, manipulated, impoverished, and terminally stupid.

i really liked this until the end, which i found really awful. it was all build up but the payoff didn't work for me.

i'm reading a 70s sci-fi short story collection, "Where Do We Go From Here?" it was collected for high schools by isaac asimov, and as such has leading questions for discussion after each story to engage the class/serve as homework for lazy teachers. i've got about 6 or 7 of this sort of short story collection, with various themes. they're always really enjoyable.

next i want to read ray bradbury's something wicked this way comes, because it fits the weather nicely.

I haven't decided on my next book, but I did pick up The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley and started in on it last night. It may be a bit too introductory to hold me for long.

70 pp of Titus Groan to go.

Please do not come back here trying to get us to buy Noel Edmonds' book. If you do, I will assume you are being paid by a viral marketing company.

I am still wading my way through The Scramble for Africa. Too many wars and not enough exploration for my liking, at this point. However, I took a break from it at the weekend and read Affinity by Sarah Waters. I'm not sure I'd describe her books as pastiche Victoriana really. Although Fingersmith certainly does have a great deal of lesbianism in it. Affinity is slighter, shorter, and very gothic.

Just started Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express and so far it's giving me aching wanderlust (not much use when you're 5 months pregnant).

Now: "The Goodbye Kiss" by Massimo Carlotto, which is brutal Italian hard-boiled crime fiction. I'm about halfway through and it's all too macho for me, I think. It looks like I'm the sort of person to enjoy the more bleeding heart liberal Scando version.

That being said, "Portrait of a Lady" was a fairly smashing book, and I feel wonderfully happy being lost in the jungle that is "The Golden Bowl." Strange, too, because I had always heard that Henry James was a tedious read -- I guess I'm just a sucker for florid prose.

Rabelais has been put on hold until I can find a better version.

But, to reward myself for actually finishing them, I've just started Suite Francaise which is achingly beautiful ... at least the first couple of chapters. But it's going to be getting grim really soon, I fear. And, knowing what happened to the author and all, I have this overall feeling of bleakness.

glad to hear you say this to know that i'm not just mad. it was so wonderfully delightful until the very, very end, and the anticipation makes the lousy payoff seem all the worse. i felt cheated :(

this week, i am cracking into turkey: a modern history and terrorists or freedom fighters: reflections on the liberation of animals.

So now I'm reading "Portnoy's Complaint", which is much more up my proverbial alley. NO I DON'T MEAN BY WAY OF IDENTIFICATION WITH THE LEAD CHARACTER, cheeky.

*I have met more first year undergraduates who take this self-congrtulatory and fruitless line than I have any other broad group, please don't take this as some kind of blanket condemnation of undergraduates!

Have you read anything by him before? The early work is actually written in a fairly straightforward manner -- it just isn't as interesting as the later stuff (to me, anyway). The ornate style only really confuses in the final works.

Could I recommend one of his novellas to you? "Daisy Miller," perhaps? "The Aspern Papers"? Those probably wouldn't require a whole lot of time if they interested you.

I like them, but I definitely wouldn't start with The Bostonians or What Maisie Knew.

LRB has not yet shown, but a letter arrived, with a little slip on it, a little slip I completed and returned by return.

The next day the same letter arrived (with a date two days later than the first) , with an identical little slip. I thought it best not to return that one, it might have confused them.

I have not yet seen a real actual LRB, but I hope to and I remain very grateful for your kind thoughts.

DESCRIPTION OF STRATA

Tarmac

Dense Brown Granular FILL - MADE GROUND*

Firm / Stiff Red Brown silty sandy
gravelly CLAY*

Soft Mottled Brown clayey sandy
SILT some gravel*

Loose Brown silty SAND*

Medium Dense Brown silty gravelly
SAND

Medium Dense Grey Brown silty sandy
GRAVEL with cobbles*

(Continued...)

right? sometimes I'll think I'm actually understanding one of his ridiculous labyrinthine metaphors in those intros and all of a sudden, it'll turn a previously-unimaginable corner of insanity. Like in the preface to Portrait, when he's describing the "house of fiction" and it gets all out of control.

it's funny, because in academic novel studies, a lot of critical weight is given to those prefaces; they get cited a lot as seminal in the formation of the field. but it's not clear to me that anyone who cites them has actually read them, because the idea that you could actually easily lay out, like, a blueprint for a novel from one of them is totally absurd.

anyway, I'm glad you like What Maisie Knew. I had a weirdly emotional reaction to that book. I think it's generally regarded as cold.

This thread is making me want to read Henry James, a writer I've never remotely considered before and about whom I know basically nothing. I am totally a sucker for florid prose. I didn't know James was florid.

Just finished The Man With the Golden Arm (finally). It reminds me of that line of Rilke's about lying down with a leper and warming him with your warmth, and I think Algren has come closest to achieving that (in a metaphorical sense) than any other writer I know. It was pretty wonderful and haunting, and I had bizarre dreams about morphine and snow and elevated trains last night.

And now I feel like kind of a twat for quoting Rilke, and I started Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing this morning.

That is probably going to take another week though, since "Golden Bowl" doesn't lend itself to fast reading.

Cozen: Moy Sand and Gravel?

TH: good news!

Livy is transparently rooting for the Romans to win. Hannibal is this shrewd, faithless, evil genius who keeps beating the tar out of the true-blue Roman consulary legions, who mean well, but for some reason just can't win for losing, the poor fellas.

this week's classes: the time machine and the book of daniel.

Half-way through July, July by Tim O'Brien. he has a really lovely, dry, comic style which is incredibly "readable". Fits nicely into my interest in post-war US fiction.

Ya think?

I won't spoil the ending for you, though.

The battle of Cannae took place on my birthday, a few thousand years before my birth, according to the Wikipedia. I'm not sure how I should feel about that.

I am reading Nokter the Stammerer's Life of Charlemagne, which is awkwardly translated in the Penguin version (all the Latinisms are plain as day) but which, so far, is kind of hysterical.

Thank you. I wonder if I will become a subscriber, in my own right, eventually.

First 80-odd paragraphs are maybe the best philosophy ever committed to paper. I think he tends to lose me shortly after that though.

a cyberpunk detective thriller called a philosophical investigation.

Arf. I bought that, years ago, on the strength of the title. Disappointingly straightforward I thought, but dick lit ain't really my thing.

frank kogan's real punks don't wear black.

Been meaning to get that - mainly on the strength of his Wittgenstein tours de force over on ILX!

Currently, I am reading a book on African-Portuguese slave culture for a class, and probably will start Dangerous Liaisons within the next couple of days once all of the chaos has subsided a bit.

PL argument - I think it's just 'cause my sympathies lie in the opposite direction. While in general I buy his whole project of putting philosophy at the service of language instead of vice versa, in that particular instance I find the sceptical argument more compelling - irrefutable indeed; and the idea of being unable to follow a rule without a community just doesn't convince me.

it had a point! no tricks were necessary (although it does have an interlocking narrative from a previous book actually). i thought it was extremely moving which not something i could say about his other books, much as i liked them.

hey there's a link! apparently traci guest appeared on a manics track?

the bio's lame. the whole fucking book she says she hates talking about her porn daaazzze! i mean ffs 90 percent of the readers all buy the damn book to find out more about that period in her life, not so much about her experiences in the rave scene. she must know this.

(I noticed the recurring character, but the narrative structure is still very simple. Not that there's anything wrong with that)

Anyway, after finsihing that, everything else kinda pales in comparison (to coin a cliche) - I've picked-up and put down five books, at last count, and finally settled on The Coroner's Lunch, 'cause I figured that it was different enough I wouldn't keep comparing it to Suite. It's pretty entertaining, I must say.