Autumn 2007 - Which books' leaves are you turning?

I finally finished Consider the Lobster, not sure what I'm going to read next. Options: Michael Tisserand's Sugarcane Academy (New Orleans dude writing about kids and post-Katrina stuff), the Interpretation of Murder, or maybe try out some Philip Roth? Or Samuel Delany's new one?

Delany's new one is in the mail. Outside of class textbooks, I'm leafing through "Hannah Weiner's Open House", a nice looking selected. Oddly I've been reading poetry lately.

Ben Dolnick: Zoology - very enjoyable. Weirdly, though, the narrator/writer ALWAYS notes when a character is black, yet doesn't (for example) note that one character is a dog. It's one of those odd tics that once you've noticed it, it nags at you every time it turns up again.

Before that, Keith Waterhouse's autobiog, 'City Lights', about growing up in Leeds and getting into fairly ramshackle-sounding journalism, and James Lovelock's 'Revenge of Gaia', which was full of good things, but didn't quite feel like a coherent book--more like a bunch of connected essays pretending to be a single book. And I still think he's wrong about nuclear energy.

Ripped through George Saunder's Braindead Megaphone on flights to and from Atlanta. Enjoyable, made me cry several times and LOL also.

The library has a book on microfinance ready for me.

Also, for work, I am having to read Good to Great, which is very meh.

Byrne, Aimless? By Anthony Burgess?

Yes, indeedy. By Anthony Burgess, the same. As detailed in the 'summer 2007 what are you reading thread' linked above.

i've just read "the ugly american", by lederer and burdick. (the same guys that wrote 'failsafe') good, quite good, in fact.

i have just about finished "journey into russia", by laurens van der post, which is a 1964 travelogue through the soviet union. it's good; i like the writing and am really happy to read an outside take on the USSR at that point that avoids politics for the most part.

i am starting "open secrets" by alice munro. i expect that it will be fantastic. of course, i am also reading "the global transformations reader" for class.

just started Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. very straightforward, "newsy" and crisply written w/short chapters and heading. LOTS of staggering US bufoonery from the early cold war so far.

finished Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks' new one. It's about music-related neurological conditions and also quite memoir-ish and reflective, maybe even a bit rambling but fascinating stuff for the most part.

been in a travel book phase recently: VS Naipaul's An Area of Darkness about India in the 60s and his late brother Shiva's North of South about Africa in the 70s. Respectively, the stern-but-sensitive observer and the brilliant bumbler. Shiva Naipaul is my current Great Underappreciated Author. gonna search for his novels -- Fireflies & The Chip-Chip Gatherers -- next.

The Twenty-Seventh City by Franzen. Also trying to finish the Elegant Universe, but it gives me headaches.

Really want to read Ravelstein, Herzog and Humboldt's Gift when I'm done with Franzen.

did you read augie march?if you didnt'you should it's better than almost anything bellow wrote,except from herzog

Shiva Naipaul's a great fiction writer too. 'A Hot Country' (also known as 'Love and Death in a Hot Country') is very good stuff.

Am reading Tom Drury's 'Hunts in Dreams', which is very funny.

Yesterday had a day of work, and bounced back and forth between...
Flannery O'Connor: Mystery & Manners
Karl Marx: Dispatches from the New York Tribune

Yeah, I read Augie March, and I loved it. Then I read a Philip Roth article in the New Yorker on Bellow and Bellow's essays on Ralph Ellison, and I thought I had to check out his other books.

Has anyone seen Mad Men and suddenly gotten the urge to read Cheever's Shady Hill stories?

I am regretting buying and reading the Miranda July book. At first I was afraid of being afraid of being offended. Now I think it is just bad.

Desperately need a breather between slabs of slow-moving Vergil translations, I turn to The Inimitable Jeeves.

I am regretting buying and reading the Miranda July book. At first I was afraid of being afraid of being offended. Now I think it is just bad.

I'm with you on that. I can't believe it just won that $70,000 prize. Yikes.

I don't think it's great, and it bothers me that she has one theme and one voice, but it's not bad writing. I was kind of surprised to find myself defending it in a book club discussion the other night.

You've got a point, Jordan, although it's definitely the 'one theme, one voice' aspect that bothered me most. Taken individually I may have really liked each story, but all together they were irritating. It felt like I was reading about the same character in every story, making the whole book seem like a really confusing novel with no plot.

It only took seeing the reviews that July's book got to get me irritated. And yes, I am the sort of misanthrope who roots for certain people to fail. Her movie was so noxiously precious, and so weighted with scenes where characters archly and portentously express their deepest thoughts and feelings in lieu of, you know, character development. This is what we're fucking lauding these days? Sorry, sorry. I get worked up about... Miranda July movies, apparently.

So, since I flaked on the Summer reading thread (I did read an awful lot, but nothing terribly great and I was ashamed and so I didn't post about any of them - now I've decided "To hell with being ashamed of my crappy taste in books these days!" and will post with great joy, shouting from the mountain top: "I read crap and am damn proud of it!"), here's my first contribution to the Autumnal thread.

Currently reading: Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 by Daniel James Brown - not marvelous, not horrid, pretty much in the vein of stuff about the Galveston hurricane and the 1906 earthquake and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the General Slocum boat fire and the Johnstown Flood (actually, the book by David McCullough was pretty good) and the Hallifax explosion, etc. Basically "last century horrible event that you don't know much/anything about so here's a book aimed for the masses with grisly details and a few uplifting moments."

In the past couple of weeks have read:
The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers (really, really damn good reading)
Thy Neighbor's Wife, by Gay Talese (fascinating)
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Teri Jentz (kind of liked it, was quite annoyed in many places)
Southland, by Nina Revoyr (interesting but amateurish - not that I could do any better, though)
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield (rather fluffy and escapist)
Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon, by Garrison Keillor (don't know why I bothered, except that I keep waiting for something by him to sweep me away)
All of P.D. James' "Adam Dalgliesh" mysteries (quite addictive and absorbing)
Orchard on Fire, by Shena MacKay (most excellent)

I finished the rest of the stories beginning with Something That Needs Nothing, which I thought was terrific since first reading it in the New Yorker. The stories after that were also much better. The stories in the first half frustrated me because they would build up to nothing, sort of writing as performance art, but without the substance to sustain something that is not immediate. I didn't mind the same voice as much. I thought the stories in the second half were better structurally.

so weighted with scenes where characters archly and portentously express their deepest thoughts and feelings in lieu of, you know, character development.

I haven't seen the movie or anything, but this is a weird criticism, as if movies were created as a character-development delivery system, and if a movie fails on that count, why would you even watch it.

I'm sorry, Casuistry, I'm not exactly sure what you mean, and I'm afraid I risk sounding patronizing in response, so if I do, I don't mean to.

What I'm saying is I found the movie obnoxious and the characters cardboard. I watched it because it got good reviews, and was totally baffled, once I saw it, as to how. The worst is a scene where this family gets a bag of goldfish from a pet store and the father or whoever forgets it on top of the car, and all these people in traffic watch it happen, and everyone's transfixed in this fit of existential angst over the fate of the goldfish. David Denby, though I'm not a fan, had it right when he said it's a bad sign that a goldfish gets more thought and consideration in this movie than any human character.

Sorry to go so far off topic from this thread.

I'm also not wanting to sound patronizing, but: Again, this criticism is only "there aren't good characters, there isn't good character development". And therefore, you say, it's a bad film.

But nothing I know about the film -- the title, July's performance art background, the scene you just described -- makes me think it's the kind of film that attempts to tell a "good story" with "strong characters" who "develop" and all that standard narrative jazz. So the criticism seems like complaining that Silas Mariner doesn't scan very well, or that the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't have much of a plot, or that The Waste Land is marred by its piss-poor cartooning.

I mean, nothing I've heard about July makes me all that interested in her, and I haven't actually seen the film, so I can't exactly give a very nuanced critique here. But I like a lot of films that don't have any humans or characters in them at all, so your criticism struck me as strange.

I'd say it would be better if you had seen the movie, but it wouldn't. It's a shit movie, and you've stated you aren't terribly interested in her work anyway.

I think the problem with July is that reading and writing depend upon what the writer and the reader bring to the text: it assumes a context. Performance art and other performing arts depend more upon experience. But I think it just doesn't translate that well to writing because language has its own life and has a different sort of relationship to being.

PS How do you say her last name?

Ask Orson Welles.

Like the month.

What? You pronounce it "September"?

Started De Sade "120 Days of Sodom". Then had to stop so as to finish a library borrow - as i had to give it back - called "ABC of dialectical materialism". A book published in the late 70s, basically this materialism for dummies comes down to the following: "Lenin ws always right!!". I knew it ws gonna be a laugh the moment I saw the note at the back asking the reader to write to the publishers (USSR addy) asking for any feedback.

But I picked up bits. It ws kinda fascinating.

After that I had to start reading EP Thomspon's "The Poverty of Theory", his essay raging on Althusser/structural linguistics that ws, according to him, taking over history departments. Also published in the late 70s and really brilliantly written and quite angrily-funny. Finish this tonight.

I'm about halfway through Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." I don't really see why it is one of, if not the most famous 19th century French novel--it seems quite lackluster compared to a lot of others I've read. I thought at first it might be due to how controversial it was or something, but it really doesn't even seem that much more scandalous than others either.

If I understand corectly, Flaubert's reputation was based on his extremely nuanced and precise prose style (which doesn't carry the same effect in translation), on his detailed portrayal of the psychology his characters, and the rigor with which that psychology drove his plots. All this was seen as quite revolutionary at the time.

Flaubert's influence on subsequent novelists made each of these innovations much less novel. In much the same way, Hemingway spawned so many imitators that what was seen as revolutionary in his first novels became commonplace and trite in the literature of the next several decades.

my best friend just sent me some beautiful books today:
"summer blonde" by adrian tomine, and "curses" by kevin huizenga (both graphic novels).

and i also received the crowning glory of my book collection: mark ryden's "fushigi circus". it's absolutely beautiful, and i've wanted it for so long - i couldn't believe it when i opened up the package from my friend and found it inside.

(Confidential to Aimless: I'm reading at Borders again next Monday, 10/8, at 7pm, if you're interested.)

"Flaubert's "Madame Bovary":
masterpiece of the objective realism style,where the author "opinions" are impossible to observe,at least on the first reading level, but with hidden large amount of irony towards human behaviour (prejudice,stupidity,fashionable,hypocracy,thinking in cliches etc...),that resembles the efect of the chekhov irony used in his prose.

i'd recommend the wonderfull Julian Barnes novel "Flaubert's parrot",half novel-half essay about Flaubert,very amusing and also very touching to read.

I'm reading Flaubert right now as well: _Bouvard and Pécuchet_. It reads like a comic tragedy about two clerks' adventures in enthusiastic dilettantism. I haven't gotten very far into it, but it's a real treat, despite the recent Norwegian edition I'm reading seeming rather rushed. It's funny, I'm a fairly impressionable chap and am easily allured by reading about people doing something really well. It makes me want to be able to do it as well. Here, however, I'm reading about these fellows making a hash of everything and it STILL sounds great!

Also reading Dawkins' _The God Delusion_, a book I had no intention of reading, but decided to give a shot when I received it as a birthday present. It doesn't hold any great surprises, but is better than I expected after reading some of the online discussions of it last year. I've been a bit sick of Dawkins after seeing a bit too many of his television appearances.
Incidentally, has anyone here taken the plunge and tried to read Hitchens' book? I assume it's an entertaining bit of vitriol, though at book-length I fear its charms will wear thin.

Also: Fuck Vergil.

Finished Roth's Professor of Desire, now reading Jonathan Lethem's Wall of the Sky, Wall of the Eye (short stories, already almost done b/c I've read a few of them in other places).

I read some more essays in Reporting by David Remnick. The one on Havel was interesting. The one on De Lillo did not inspire me to read him. Tomorrow I am looking forward to going to the bookstore to get Special Topics in Calamity Physics. No spoilers please.

Other unread or unfinished books that might be good to pick up again: Ulysses, Maldoror.

I'm reading Trollope's "The Way We Live Now". It's ages since I read any Trollope, although I have at some point in the past read all the Barsetshire novels and one or two of the Palliser series. Trollope seems clumsy and prosaic when you're reading him, and yet somehow he manages to write books that are very enjoyable. I certainly prefer reading him to Dickens, although I admit he's not remotely in the same class as a literary writer.

I'm also reading the second volume of Paul Griffith's Stravinsky bio.

Recent reads include Scarlet Thomas's "The End of Mr Y", which was highly enjoyable, and Philip Roth's "The Counterlife", which was superb. Also a novel called "The Concert Pianist" by Conrad Williams, which I read because it's had some good reviews and I tend to like books about musicians even if they are not very good otherwise, but this was utter rubbish.

It is past time to make a report.

The Buried Book, about the unearthing of the Gilgamesh epic was both interesting and workmanlike. The most fascinating bits of the book were in an appendix, which discusses the literary carreer of Saddam Hussein (yes, after the first Gulf War, he began to write novels) and how his novels were influenced by Gilgamesh.

Byrne is witty and bravura throughout. As the final accolade, I just bought a copy for myself.

After these I read the two lesser works of Nathaniel West, A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell. They are somewhat small beer. The first-mentioned is a rather heavy-handed satire that inverts the Horatio Alger formula. The other is an immature work that shows a lot of precocity, but it's like a box of fireworks going off randomly. Luckily they are short and could be knocked off in a few hours.

I'm not sure what I will read next. Possibly some of Shelby Foote's civil war magnum opus or some Henry James.

I'm currently reading Lovely Bones. Not really a classic by any means, but I find it quite emotional. I noticed there's a huge amount of haterzzz and on the other side a lot of people who rave about it. I dunno, I think it's sweet and lovely but not something I would really think is essential reading. A quick read.

Before that I read a book on Veronica Mars, Neptune Noir, which was okayish.

Also read a book on Xuxa (The Brazilian soft porn/kiddie program presenter), Lady Snowblook (vol 1), Harry Potter (vol 1).

All in all these are light reads. Not up to read any heavy stuff yet and I doubt that will change in the near future as I'm going to have my second baby which means brainsucking sleepless nights. :-)

Currently reading Patrick Neate's Twelve Bar Blues which is surprisingly absorbing and touching and readable.

No idea what I'll read next (although Aimless' reference to The Buried Book has me thinking I might need to go to the bookstore later today).

Finished The Lovely Bones and am now reading Watching Dallas.

Read 'The Arsonists' Guide to Writers' Homes in New England', which was fun, but too long. It was a bit like reading a 300-page George Saunders story, with all that sociopathic whimsy wearing you down after a while. Every nice 2-line observation was couched in a 3/4-page paragraph, and it had several instances of idiot plotting, too (ie the characters have to think and act like complete idiots or else the story will wrap itself up in 20 pages). In fact, the more I think about it, the less I like it.

Now reading some Thomas Hardy short stories, which is more the thing.

I finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics today. It ended up being much better than I thought it would. I think my only choice now is to take up Ulysses again. From the beginning.

wm gibson - spook country

How's the Gibson book? My husband will read it anyway, good or not, as he's a big Gibson fan.

so far pretty good, about 2/3 through. the interwoven plot threads have me a bit baffled but sentence-by-sentence the writing is superb, gibson evokes our current hyper-mediated existence better than anyone.

previously I'd read Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, then lost touch w/him until picking up Pattern Recognition a couple years ago, which I thought was great (and probably better/richer than Spook Cnty.

I've taken a big old dive back into 19th century fiction lately and am half way through Silas Marner at the moment. It has stopped me in my tracks twice already: "the remnants of a disinherited race" in the opening sentence and "the long pipes gave a simultaneous movement, like the antennae of startled insects" at the beginning of chapter 7. It's a concern that there's not much Eliot I've yet to read.

Out of the non-directedness that comes with being Aimless, I checked some books of essays out of the library to read.

I have already finished a trifle entitled Where's There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life by John Mortimer, the barrister who penned the Rumpole stuff. It was, shall we say, slight and self-indulgent, but probably forgivable, since his publisher probably squeezed him for it.

I have started a godforsaken book called Our Culture, What's Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple. The biggest problem with this book isn't that the author is so Tory he probably has gout and an ear trumpet, it is that even when he has a valid point or two to make about his subject matter, he is such a fucking cunt about it that you cannot possibly sympathize with his POV unless you aspire to be a cunt yourself. I do not so aspire. This makes him difficult to persevere with.

Envy me, Madchen--I've only relatively ecently started on Eliot, and she's wonderful. I read 'Middlemarch' a month or so ago, and it was one of the best books ever. Have you read any of her journalism? It's great stuff: perceptive, lucid and frequently very funny.

Just finished The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland, which seems to have been snuck out to the shops; odd that, because it was far better than jPod.

Am now casting about for a new book a little lost, actually. Am re-reading Simon Raven's The Rich Pay Late meantime.

Recently read:
Adrian Tomine: Shortcomings - very good indeed, but too short, and his stuff in general is waaaay too infrequent.
Henry James: Selected Tales - many good satirical stories about the literary life included
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations - trying to do this a chapter each night, so as to actualy take it all in rather than glomming it down in a couple of hours
Eric Hodgins: Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House - funny, even more so than the Cary Grant/Myrna Loy film it inspired

I'm steaming through "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolano. It is an odd narrative and I'm not sure anything is going to happen, but I am enjoying the tale.

i've read only "by night in chile" and it was nice,not much more that that.
but the "detectives" book looks like a Cortazar style book,which i adore.

JM: I haven't read any non-fic Eliot yet so I'm glad to hear it's good. When I posted before, I also forgot the several re-readings of Middlemarch I hope to get out of my lifetime.

Daniel Kalder's "Lost Cosmonaut", about travelling in some of those godforsaken European Russian republics (Kalmykia, Udmurtia, etc.) was problematic at times but generally light and enjoyable.

Voltaire: Memoirs of the Life of Monsieur de Voltaire - much of which is actually memories of his sometime-friend/patron Frederick the Great, told in an amusing, piss-taking manner, as are Voltaire's reflections on what he calls 'the shitbags of literature'.

Also read Brecht's 'The Goopd Woman of Sezchuan', which was OK, I guess. Brecht really knew how to belabour a point.

I should read me some more Voltaire. He is a treat when he's being casual.

Hoskyns (sp?)'s Hotel California.

The Maltese Falcon.

A comp of short stories from Henry James - "The last of the Valerii" where the main character falls in love with a statue is fkn GOLDEN, I tells ya.

The other 3 stories are fine as well - I need to read the one that was adapted into "Celine and Julie Go Boating". Must crack with one of his novels (probably has to be the "The Golden Bowl", 'hard' as that may or not be).

Dear xyzzzz - which short story was that (the Celine... one?). I just read a whole bunch of short stories, too--really good (although a marked increase in stodginess was apparent in the ones written after he started dictating).

For his novels, good ones to START with (so as not to be put off) are The Europeans, Daisy Miller or The Spoils of Poynton.

Saw yr post after I had submitted mine last night.

Google reveals the name of the story as "A Romance of Certain Old Clothes". But the characters in the house are living out the story of a play of his called "The other".

Reading Sugarcane Academy and Marooned right now. I got that new Samuel Delany too.

I finished Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table yesterday (enjoyable, nice physics/liberal arts dichotomy, plenty weird), and am halfway through Robertson Davies' The Cunning Man. Davies is my current all-time favorite - I also read the first book of the Cornish trilogy (The Rebel Angels) in the last 2 weeks. His character list is like the start of joke: an Anglican priest, a Canadian doctor, and a banker walk into a bar...

Recently tackled Middlemarch for the first time. It annoyed me some, but it eventually won me over.

The Sign of Four for fun.
Speaking of Bolano, the story the NYer ran ("The Insufferable Gaucho") was v. good.
Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard, solid enough.
Reading Finistere by Fritz Peters now, the beginning of which was weakish yet it's holding my attention. Also just picked up Gentlemen of the Road, which looks like an enjoyable tip of that hat to another Fritz altogether.

Ilf & Petrov's Twelve Chairs.

I read that Harry Shearer novel I bought when we went to hear him talk. It's woefully bad and I should have stopped after 50 pages, but felt guilty because it's the first book I'd bought in AGES so I read the whole thing. Then the library book gods had James Lee Burke's Neon Rain for me, but it was too violent and depressing so I had to put it down. So now, it's Muriel Spark's The Takeover, which is weird and eccentric and full of petulance.

Unusually for me, I have been playing the field and dating more than one book at the same time.

I'm about halfway through Saints and Strangers, George Willison, a history of the pilgrims of Plymouth Colony. It is refreshingly non-worshipful. It admires what was admirable about them - mainly their courage - and takes note of their occasional hypocrisy, their quarrelsome nature, and moral blind spots. The final part of the book (which remains for me to read) promises to tell the history of how the pilgrims were refashioned into national icons in the 19th century USA.

I have read a number of Mark Twain's speeches, most of them fairly good in their way. Compared to the typical after-dinner speaker at the Rotary Club, he must have had them dancing in the aisles with sheer relief.

I've also been reading some of Haklyut's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. It is obvious that the motive for almost all of these voyages was profit, the biggest profit that could be made, even if you had to schlep it back from the ends of the earth. It is good to remember this.

Lastly, I have been reading Ovid's Tristia, as translated by Peter Green in the Penguin book titled Poems of Exile. It doesn't show Ovid's most likeable side. He flatters; he gripes; he wheedles; he weeps with self-pity; he splits hairs. But it is interesting as heck, because these poems show him fairly naked and vulnerable, like a bug in the hands of a malicious boy thay is able to write poetry about its plight.

Yes, the Poems of Exile are fascinating. I read them after Metamorphosis, the erotic poems, etc, and it was such a change in style--so naked, as you say, and miserable and desperate. And you read it knowing all that pleading did him no good at all.

I'm reading Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, which is sort of a bittersweet read. You can see that certain ideas in it are now almost taken for granted, while others seem to have been completely forgotten even by the leftiest lefties.

Just arrived:

Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers (for book club)
Alex Ross - The Rest is Noise
Ben Ratliff - Coltrane

I just started Memoirs of Hadrian. I am pig-ignorant (technical term) about the Romans and so I think despite my best efforts a lot of it is going over my head. Any recommendations for some reading that might help? Wikipedia seems like cheating.

I recall Memoirs of Hadrian as a pretty good book. If you aren't familiar with any of the more technical Roman terms I can understand the feeling of being a bit lost in the wilderness, but my advice is don't worry too much if you can't tell a questor from a pontifex or a sesterce from a catamite -- just figure out from the context if it is animal, vegetable or mineral and plunge onward. You'll get the main idea one way or another.

If the whole roman era still seems enticing when you finish, then you can embark on a longer course of reading. There's plenty of interesting stuff to cover, because Rome flourished for so long and changed so much over time.

I am really enjoying it, and now that I'm a bit further into it I can see that it's more internal, character-driven stuff, so a ton of background knowledge won't be strictly necessary. But yes, it's an interesting era, as you say, and more research would probably be rewarding.

I'm digging into Ammonite which Laurel recommended on an ILE thread. It will see me through my travels tomorrow. I'm packing Robertson Davies' What's Bred in the Bone and Bliss Broyard's One Drop to sustain me for 2+ weeks away from home. Still have to find something portable for the flight home.

Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, but new baby syndrome makes it difficult to take anything in. I just thought it high time I posted something to ILB again.

Jaq, I hope Ammonite catches your fancy. The central conceit is kind of embarrassingly obvious in theory (considering how clearly the author's own identity issues are showing), but I thought it did a good job of being compelling & mysterious anyway. Sorry I may have ruined the mystery a bit....

I'm liking it Laurel! Though the "anthropologist who should know better gets drunk at tribal storytelling and causes serious trouble" was laid on a bit thick :) It's going to be perfect to get me through airport and plane time tomorrow. Written well enough to make me want to check out her other books, too.

I vaguely remember reading Slow River in college, think it's a little more cyberpunk but couldn't describe the plot to save my life.

"Alex Ross - The Rest is Noise"

How is it so far? Probably until it reaches UK shops.

Been reading some Ruskin.

meant ws: Probably get it when it reaches the UK shops next year (I think).

I like it so far. There have been a couple of times where Ross seems to be making statements because they sound good without considering them adequately. "If Wager, in the Ring, made the gods into ordinary people, Puccini's La Boheme, first heard in 1896, does the opposite: it gives mythic dimensions to ordinary people." It's been a while since I've seen La Boheme, but that struck me as a stretch.

On Wagner's Parsifal: "The music itself is a portal to the beyond. It crystallizes out of the air in weightless forms, transforms into rocklike masses, and dissolves again." I just can't really get my mind around what he's trying to say there.

I've noticed his tendency to get carried away before in his New Yorker pieces. Nonetheless, the first section of the book does a fantastic job of conveying the excitement around Strauss and Wagner, the sense of cultural urgency, etc. Ross seems to have a mission to make 21st century people understand that the milieu of classical music has at times been no less tumultuous than that of punk rock or psychedelia, and he succeeds at that.

I bought Naomi Klein's book on the strength of her essay in Harper's magazine. I brought it along with me to Philadelphia but was too distracted to read it on the train. This is principally a delay tactic for Ulysses.

Books I've read recently:

Edward Abbey - The Monkeywrench Gang (even if you're not an Earth First! sympathizer, this is an excellent, rollicking adventure tale, from a unique jaundiced perspective, with memorable characters, and a naturalist's eye for the desert's austere beauty)

Roberto Bolano - By Night in Chile (an odd but ultimately compelling revery, vivid images, dreamlike logic, not everything works, but enough does)

Richard Powers - The Echo Maker (the structure & pacing show the sure hand of a pro, and he has some interesting ideas on his mind, but the characters are not always believable and the style is often rather pedestrian)

I'm really looking forward to Ross's book and may try to get a copy from the US. I like his journalism and blog, and we seem to like a lot of the same music. He's not the most sensitive classical music critic in the world but that's more than compensated for by his open-mindedness and contempt for the usual pieties.

Currently reading Claire Messud's <i>The Emperor's Children</i>. It was long listed for the Booker in 2006, but didn't make the short list. Unless it falls away badly in the final 3rd, I will have enjoyed it more than any of the novels that did.

Thanks Hurting -- can't make out that passage you quote either. Music that turns into a mass from nothing is something quite general to much modern music - how do those rocks dissolve. Describe the process!

At the risk of repeating myself I think Ross can be open minded in the most damming and forced way -- anything that touches on Germanic negation he has condemned w/out a care. Unfortunately that provides some the richest vein in all music for me (from German composers or not).

Rereading

Angela Carter, <i>Nights at the Circus</i>: histrionic, unbalanced

Salman Rushdie, <i>Midnight's Children</i>: better written than Carter, but overlong and irritating in the familiar way; its one great distinction now is to seem to be the template for TV show <i>Heroes</i>

Julian Barnes, <i>Flaubert's Parrot</i>: a bit too dryly droll, too English for such a French book perhaps; that chummy chattiness can be his flaw; yet still more genuinely full of interesting material than the previous two, and a lot shorter; also, ultimately serious and perceptive about grief and despair

--- <i>A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters</i>: see flaws above, but still a bold, original idea, and his disquisition on love soars beyond anything Rushdie (who had the temerity to criticize this book when it appeared, for lack of depth and weight - as if his own work would recognize those things if they fell on it from a great height) or for that matter Amis could ever have managed. I don't want to sound overboard on Barnes, but the previous two make him a relief by comparison.

Oh, dear: I see that the rules for italics have changed. You get the idea.

+

Miranda July's movie was on last week; if anything I think it put me off her stories - which I like, or think I like, if only perhaps because their bright yellow cover is so seductive. Thinking that the movie was (perhaps) how she visualized her stories made the stories seem less good to me; but perhaps the cross-media comparison is unhelpful, for there are things she can do in prose that she can't do in film, etc.

Will this do?

Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus: histrionic, unbalanced

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children: better written than Carter, but overlong and irritating in the familiar way; its one great distinction now is to seem to be the template for TV show <i>Heroes</i>

Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot: a bit too dryly droll, too English for such a French book perhaps; that chummy chattiness can be his flaw; yet still more genuinely full of interesting material than the previous two, and a lot shorter; also, ultimately serious and perceptive about grief and despair

--- A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters: see flaws above, but still a bold, original idea, and his disquisition on love soars beyond anything Rushdie (who had the temerity to criticize this book when it appeared, for lack of depth and weight - as if his own work would recognize those things if they fell on it from a great height) or for that matter Amis could ever have managed. I don't want to sound overboard on Barnes, but the previous two make him a relief by comparison.

I still didn't get HEROES right. Jesus - I'll get me cape.

But it's true about Rushdie and that programme.

At the risk of repeating myself I think Ross can be open minded in the most damming and forced way -- anything that touches on Germanic negation he has condemned w/out a care. Unfortunately that provides some the richest vein in all music for me (from German composers or not).

But Ross, most unusually for a classical music critic, isn't at all prescriptive about what other people "ought" to like. It's a big part of his charm.

Pinefox we agree about the relative merits of Carter, Rushdie and Barnes.

I've been reading Sir Vidia's Shadow for a couple of nights now. As is often the case with Paul Theroux, he writes more convincingly in a non-fiction framework than when he transposes his ideas into fiction.

I appreciate the fact that Theroux plainly understands the difference between facts which are external to him and his reactions to those facts; he distinguishes well between these two modes of thought, doing so both exactly and unobtrusively. This puts him in a different camp from, say, Joan Didion, who, when she is exact does it obtrusively and when she is inexact she does it implicitly.

Ross interviewed in The Guardian.

I'm ok with critics who push the stuff they like in an at times if necessary aggressive manner.

Had I encountered him a few years I suspect I would've enjoyed this quality of his you describe a lot more, frankie - will def get reading, though I'll suspect I'll hate the conclusions. And hate myself if this rpediction turns out to be accurate.

Kelman, The Busconductor Pines, I mean, The Busconductor Hines.

Finished the Theroux. Liked it. I noticed he laid some slug-trails of "thematic significance" for readers to follow, but they were more or less contentless, so there was no penalty for overlooking them.

I am now reading a literary biography. I never read literary biographies, so this is a cause for raised eyebrows. The book is John Donne: The Reformed Soul by John Stubbs.

Because the primary historical material is rather sparse, Stubbs does an elaborate job of scene setting, but the scene is so full of color and detail that it doesn't wear on one's patience. The author also has internalized some of the better lessons of Tudor prose and writes idiomatically and well. After all, I never read literary biographies and yet I am reading this one.

I finished Memoirs with Hadrian, finally, and my response was admiration more than anything else. Just a really well-done piece of historical-biographical fiction.

Now reading Calvino's Mr Palomar, and am enchanted.

Ross interviewed in The Guardian
When did Chris Bonanos start writing for The Guardian?

What an excellent book club that reads Dog Soldiers. I've been picking up a lot of YA at the workplace. Currently reading Before I Die by Jenny Downham and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Just finished Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. For children's lit I've been reading Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyve and for adult lit I've been dabbling very slowly in the new Schulz bio.

Terry Eagleton, After Theory

Andrew Sinclair, Arts & Cultures, a history of the Arts Council

The second Gossip Girl book. (Yes, yes, I'm double the age which is the target audience. SHOOT ME.)

Dana Thomas' Deluxe

Cash Nexus which is dying a slow and lonely death I fear. It's a bit too dry for my liking.

Like some mentioned upthread, reading Bolano at the moment. Most of the way through Los detectives salvajes and absolutely adoring it. I have his posthumous novel 2666 to start once I'm finished.

Recently finished Wayne Koestenbaum's Moira Orfei In Aigues-Mortes (sad) and Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Man (riveting, but left me with mixed feelings). Meanwhile, slowly plowing through Proust's In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, which I don't expect to finish any time soon. Maybe read McCarthy's The Road next? Maybe not.

Tried to read at least some of The Pushcart Book of Poetry, but the uniformity of tone is brutal. How is it that some 200 poems (by nearly that many poets) written over a 30-year period and selected by nearly 50 different editors ALL SOUND EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME? Like they were written in the same small, comfortably-appointed room in the same quiet but culturally active university town by the same late-middle-aged white person in a wool sweater? Using the same damn flower bud and fish scale metaphors? Maddening.

Michael Perry, Population 485

How is that? It has winked at me from the shelves.

I'm reading James Boyne's "The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas". If you were 12 and had never heard of the Holocaust, it would be really exciting.

In fairness, it does get better as it goes along, though I think maybe it is doing a bit too much of the Making All The Characters Fully Rounded.

Charlie Wilson's War, George Crile

oh that wascally CIA

Illuminating (?) factoid from the John Donne bio: in midlife, when he was Dean of St. Paul's cathedral, he became deathly ill with a "spotted fever". King James was so concerned for his health, he loaned Donne his personal physician to consult with Donne's own physician, so presumably Donne received state-of-the-art health care.

As part of Donne's treatment during the worst of the fever, his physicians tied dead pigeons to his feet! This was thought to draw certain harmful humors away from his head. It must have worked; Donne survived.

I'm in the last chapter of Morris Bishop's The Middle Ages - which is a charming and very readable tour through a fascinating period of history.

How is that? It has winked at me from the shelves.

-- Casuistry, Wednesday, November 28, 2007 12:24 AM (20 hours ago) Bookmark Link

It's fine so far. He's walking some lines (between plain language and the occasional writerly/lyrical passage, etc.) but he's a pretty good writer, and I like the small-town Wisconsin stuff (the firefighting/EMT stories I'm slightly less keen on, but it does add action scenes I guess). It seems like the people who speak really highly of him have all been to a reading, apparently he's a charming dude.

Ce grand cadavre à la renverse by BHL

Oh, that Morris Bishop book was the first one I read when I decided to start reading up on the Middle Ages a few years ago! I wonder what I would think of it now.

Dead Certain:The Presidency of George Bush by Robt Draper

almost finished w/this, very readable and revealing despite covering familiar ground. what makes it fresh is the fact that Draper isn't part of Wash DC press corps but a lifelong Texan who wrote about and knows Bush (and his hench-people) from their Lone Star days. for instance I didn't know the extent of animosity between Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. possibly better than Woodward's State of Denial. better written, anyway.

I just ordered a copy of Shiva Naipaul's outta-print first novel Fireflies, can't wait cause his non-fiction is SO good. oh and I'm reviewing an upcoming book about Alexander Graham Bell called The Telephone Gambit.

PALE FIRE.

The Great Mortality - to continue my Middle Ages kick.

Finished Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night". Gotta love that grime.

Currently on Genet's "Our Lady of Flowers".

Les Voix Du Peuple/Verbum Dei: Le bilinguisme latin-langue vulgaire au moyen âge. My fun school break reading!

I'm wading into the front end of the Argonautika of Apollonius Rhodius, as translated into English by Peter Green. It's choppy so far. I am waiting for the action to pick up a bit, or the poetry, or maybe both if I hit it lucky. I'm sticking with it for a bit longer at any rate.

Orson Welles vs Hollywood by Clinton Heylin

http://www.thegrillstoreandmore.com/image/products/big-pics/743472b.jpg

What's the emoticon for eyes glazing over? The only good thing is that this is part of a process which might get me back into doing some real reading on a regular basis.

I realize I have violated this thread by posting an image of such a quotidian text, but as I say, I'm reading it for a good cause.

Good luck, Scientist.

I am almost through Pale Fire. It's one of those ones that seeps slowly through your brain, and with about 50 pages to go this morning I am pissed off that I had to put it down when I got to work.

Sometimes I try to make up new lyrics to the Rolling Stones's "Hang Fire" to make it be about Pale Fire, but I never get anywhere.

I think Henry James might work better with that, as he used the phrase "hang fire" fairly often in his novels.

Apparently I need to step up the pace of my reading in order to create more fosser for this thread. Have all ILBers begun drinking heavily and staying out all night?

fosser == fodder

I finished the final book of Robertson Davies' Cornish trilogy on the plane home last night. I wish he were still alive so I could write him a gushy fan letter declaring my eternal devotion.

But now, what should be next?

I've not been drinking much, but I moved on the weekend and therefore have not started anything else since Pale Fire. All books are in boxes.

That new Delany book was pretty breezy and nice. It was written "November 2006" and I kind of suspect it to be a NaNoWriMo.

maybe because it's not autumm anymore...

First day of winter is Dec. 22 - we got 10 days of autumn left.

lol @ delany nanowrimo :>

"First day of winter is Dec. 22 - we got 10 days of autumn left"

you are right of course, but it's really cold and rainy outside.

So I guess we got ten days until the David Lodge/Dodge controversy heats up again.

Sorry- I was just being a troublemaker. I'm okay with absconding to the Winter thread at any convenient time.