Summer 2008 - Pray tell, what readest thou?

Just starting Knut Hamsun's Hunger. I also finished a couple of books by Tom Lloyd, which I think I mentioned in the spring thread.

Maggie Gee: The Ice People. Meh-ish.

Knut Hamsun's Hunger

I loved this book, though it's been a while since I read it.

I'm currently reading: "Minimalists" by K. Robert Schwarz, which is part of the Phaidon 20th Century Composers Series and is thus far a very readable and accessible account of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass predominantly and seems informative to me as a relative neophyte.

"Knut Hamsun's Hunger"

awesome book, but imho "growth of the soil" is even better, and Humson's best.

reading now:
the conformist - alberto moravia - kinda dated,and not moravia's best imo ("tht goes to "contempt" but still great.

jakob von gunten - Robert Walser. amazing. sort of a pre-Kafka style writer (Musil saw it before me, i must say), less focused than kafka, but full of great insights about life.

NABOKOV RUSSIAN TO ENGLISH PROJECT - PHASE ONE:

THE DEFENSE - I prefer Scammell's translations to those of Dmitri - the latter tend to be overwritten whilst the former, like the Baby Bear, tend to be just right.

NEXT: INVITATION TO A BEHEADING

I just finished reading this, which was really light and fun: http://www.amazon.com/Stupid-Contagious-Caprice-Crane/dp/0446695726

Now I'm reading the newest David Adams Richards book, as suggested by my housemate. It's pretty good so far - I hope it isn't as depressing as Mercy Among the Children was, though.

Leslie Marmon Silko: Almanac of the Dead. Anything but touchy-feel dream catcher stuff (though you could maybe argue that the portrayal of some elder/medicine women &/or witch types is a touch sentimental). Darkly funny at times.

TH White, The Once and Future King. great so far, but having trouble finding time to really get into it.

Helen Dewitt's Your Name Here
new Sonic Youth Bio

recently finished Paul Verhaeghen's Omega Minor, good stuff if a little heavy/dense for summer

Leslie Marmon Silko's 'Ceremony' was really good, though I think i need to read it again as I felt there were bits that I didn't fully get.

'Hunger' is really good, too, as is the other Hamsun I've read, but I've not yet tackled 'Growth of the Soil'. I remember really enjoying the TV drama 'The Book Group' about the really fucked-up Book Group, where they're reading Hunger and the Swedish girl is complaining about how stupid Norwegians are: 'Why doesn't he just go and get some food? So stupid!"

i loved growth of the soil. and mysteries. and hunger. haven't read him in years though. i'd like to read some of the books i missed. and i really want to read hamsun's book about his travels in america. i've never seen a copy anywhere.

hamsun was one of the writers that henry miller turned me on to when i was a kid. cuzza this book:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x2/x10444.jpg

read john cowper powys cuzza that book. and jean giono too. don't know if i ever got to any of miller's beloved blaise cendrars. that book also introduced me to krisnamurti and i am eternally grateful for that. i might not read henry miller books anymore, but i still read K.

Neil Powell "Amis & Son". Very strange book indeed. Powell is an odd mixture of competent biographer and loony tune (and I don't mean that in a good way).

I just started Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" yesterday.

I read "Saturday" over New Year and didn't really like it at all, finding it horribly overblown and portentous (in the sense of pompous and pretentious), but thus far "On Chesil Beach" seems pretty good and is certainly a nice easy read.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n52/n264374.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41J2rOsGzHL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Flaubert's Bouvard et Pecuchet, but I need to get it back from my roommate. Afterwards, probably Zamyatin's We if I manage to get that one back from my roommate too.

I picked up a $1 used copy of a strange military biography, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. It's pretty interesting. The man was a total nutjob, but as I said, he's interesting.

The man was a total nutjob, but as I said, he's interesting.

Total nutjobs sometimes make for the best biographies.

just finished The Magus John Fowles. i don't know how i really feel about it - on the one hand, it was a certain kind of exciting read, but on the other i feel like it went over my head somewhat (the ending, that is). i just felt deflated. plus, it was a little too wordy for my liking.

now reading The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford. loved Independence Day. this one seems a little bit more... smug? know-it-all? i'm not sure. i'm enjoying it though. it's wordy too, but the more ponderous kind, which i like. but his sentences tend too much on the side of extremely lengthy, which can get kind of annoying.

think i might need to go on a carver spree soon, to counterbalance all this wordiness, since it's been awhile.

i think i also need to get hold of some richard yates very very soon.

'Selected Short Fiction' - Arthur Schnitzler

In other news, I adore saying 'Schnitzler' as much as Hobbes likes saying 'smock'.

just finished a re-read of The Name of the Rose, almost 20 years after my initial reading!

currently on Colson Whitehead's Apex Hides the Hurt. really like this. a good easy read compared to the Eco but still has a lot of depth and interesting ideas.

In other news, I adore saying 'Schnitzler' as much as Hobbes likes saying 'smock'.

It's a great name, isn't it?. Whenever I read anything by him it still cracks my wife up. Cool name for a dog, I reckon--especially a schanuzer. (But then I'm a guy who has a dog named 'Boswell').

Had a chance to dip into the Collected Writings of Morton Feldman. Otherwise, I've read very little in the last month. Once I get to Toronto though, then, then I will read up a storm! And feel like myself again.

i love that feldman anthology. his writing is unique, to say the least.

It's not a patch on the Collected Writings of Marty Feldman.

PIERROT MON AMI by Raymond Queneau

the magus is deflating. i don't think it's over your head, i just think it descends into a kind of pretentious silliness.

i have finished the stephenson and the wrobleonski. next i will try to read some george pellicanos, because a friend is recommending him.

PIERROT MON AMI by Raymond Queneau
I loved this book but I really don't remember it very well at all. I guess I have to reread it.

The Last of the Menu Girls by Denise Chavez. Really tedious, self-indulgent, sometimes over-written something or other. (And if I had to grow up in southern New Mexico to really get it, maybe it doesn't work so well as literature?) I can't believe they assign this mess to high school kids.

(Started on Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and will probably borrow another novel or two from the library on my way out.)

reading moby dick for the first time. great!
picked up the first vol. of some beckett novels. currently reading 'murphy'. OK so far.

started today:

e.f. benson - an autumn sowing

(supposed to be one of his best. from 1917.)

I was recently reading some ghost stories by the other two Benson brothers (AC and RH)--not bad, but too many en masse were a bit same-ish.

Recently/now: Elmore Leonard "LaBrava"
JP Donleavy "The Saddest Summer of Samuel S"
Christopher Isherwood "Goodbye to Berlin"
Michael Moorcock "The Condition of Muzak"
Mervyn Peake "Mr Pye"

Mishima - Temple of Dawn (finished all four bks on his tetralogy)
Chekhov - The Steppe and other short stories penguin collection

Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman
Truman Capote - In Cold Blood (no 'decline of American dream' pattern here, its pure coincidence)

Solzenitsyn August 1914
Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses
Carson McCullers The Member of the Wedding
Haruki Murakami The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Harold Rosenberg The de definition of Art
Sartre Imagination

See how that goes. It's good for me to have a nice pile and not feel to bound or anything. The world is so full of books. And good ones at that.

Gonna start Gravity's Rainbow tomorrow! Wish me luck everyone! :D

Read "Don't Cry" by Mary Gaitskill, in June double issue of New Yorker. Recently widowed woman goes to Ethiopia with an old friend, to secure an adoption under dubious circumstances (longshot and they get shot at). Removed from familiar shields, must learn new coping skills soonest, it's not Gaitskill's best but damn good.

PIERROT MON AMI by Raymond Queneau
I loved this book but I really don't remember it very well at all. I guess I have to reread it.

I agree with your initial response - semi-farcical slices of life with slivers of a genuine plot buried not too far below. Fun stuff, natch. Now onto EXERCISES IN STYLE or Nabokov's DESPAIR.

Beginner's Greek - light fluffy improbable sweet and funny perfect summer weekend book. Several books on knife skills (to support my new hobby of sharpening knives). Pat Barker's Life Class. Bleak House is being read aloud to me, which I'm happy about now that we are past the incredible tediousness of the first chapter or two.

Finally near the end of *Motherless Brooklyn*; only a dozen or twenty pages to go.

Finished David Rockefeller's Memoirs (pretty long, and decidedly short on juicy details, but it's possible to get a glimpse of interesting events behind the somewhat bland prose). Now started on Houllebecq's Elementary Particles, which looks like it's going to be a bit grim.

Tom Vanderbilt: Survival City--very interesting book about all the (mostly now decaying) structures built to "fight" the Cold War--weapons testing areas, bunkers, fallout shelters, secret headquarters, etc etc. Mostly very good, with only occasional lapses into academic jargon, and lots of cool pictures.

This after not getting very far with Robert Graves' Complete Short Stories. A few semi-precious gems, lots and lots of rough.

GRR, PROSE IS FOR DUMBASSES growls Graves

Daniel Pinchbeck - 2012 - The Return of Quetzelcoatl

I BELIEVE

but at the same time, no more, not after the last 30 pages or so. Crop circles, UFOs? His admiration of Carl Jung is apparent, but he relies on it way too heavily.

Nim Chimpsky. Most of those chimp researchers were such a bunch of shitheads.

i'm kind of turned off by jung, without reading him. that's probably bad =(.

trying to get started on 'anti-oedipus' for a summer book club my friend's doing. it just seems fruitless without the necessary vocab and background. mainly psych. currently hating all the lit-douche allusions and summaries i came across in lol college. it's really coloring the experience for me. but then the actual txt is such a pain to really understand, i think i insert things when they're not really there. are there heads too far up anuses and does it matter if they are.

Jung is important today because he rescued symbol and allegory as a respectable academic subject. Symbol and allegory would still be around, with him or without him, but "serious" people with "ideas" would still be looking down their noses at it.

A lot of his theory, like Freud's, is outdated and kind of off the wall, but he's still important for the same sorts of reasons; he was a heavy player.

Finished Rudolpho Anaya's Bless Me Ultima, which I liked a lot more than expectd. It does have kind of a YA feel to it, but that didn't prevent me from enjoying it. Started reading True Tales From Another Mexico by Sam Quinones.

Re Jung: But he dreamed of a kingfisher, and then he saw a kingfisher, DO YOU SEE?

Yes, Graves really did seem to save the good stuff for his poems. Though I enjoyed 'I, Claudius'.

Also read: Simenon's 'The Widow'. Expectedly bleak stuff.

Gil Adamson's The Outlander, which is good.

James M.Cain - Double Indemnity
Dashiell Hammett - The Dain Curse, a 1/3 of the way through.

I think I've been spoilt by Jim Thompson as far as my pulp goes...not enough evil, or enough tricks to throw me off (which has the effect of keeping me attentive).

Hammett is actually dragging, not fast enough.

Finished *Motherless Brooklyn* at last.

James McWhorter's The Power Of Babel, which is telling me stuff I mostly already know (and some of which I disagree with -- I'm not convinced that there would have been only one language at some point, which is the central idea in this book), but with heavy-handed pop culture references which aren't as clever as he thinks (and are sometimes not quite right -- Charlie Brown is not bald, as he claims (and then makes something of a semiotics reading of it), but rather has a severe buzz cut, as some kids did in the 50s). But, we'll see. My books arrive sometime next week, and I get my library card Monday, so.

I seem to be in a period of re-reading books I already know but wish to revisit. If any new thoughts about them occur to me, I will share them, otherwise I might not mention them at all.

Re Hammett being slow: have you read The Glass Key? Probably his fastest-paced novel, from memory. Or read his long story, The Gutting of Fingal--very thrilling stuff about crooks robbing a whole town in one night. But I agree, Jim Thompson is great.

To change the pace, am reading E Nesbit's 'Five Childrten and It', which is great, but in a very different way to Jim Thompson.

Thanks, I shall have a go. Have you read 'The Maltese Falcon'? Love the film...

started reading a peter de vries book i've never read and i got about 100 pages in and its missing 20 pages! so, i stopped reading it. i'm gonna go on a flannery o'connor binge instead and read (or re-read) everything she ever wrote before the end of summer. it's hot out. it's sticky. it's time to find God.

'Maltese Falcon' is excellent, but if you love the film (as I do too) expect cognitive dissonance from the very different-looking Sam Spade.

Ulysses

for any fans, this thread is on ILE:

Thomas S. Disch Feb 2, 1940 - July 4, 2008

Ulysses again? That's good. How far did you get so far, Youn?

Just started Percy's The Moviegoer.

So I finished Hunger and then moved on to Growth of the Soil. Also read:

01 - Bunin: Dark Avenues
02 - Cook: The Books of the South
03 - Bilsborough: A Fire in the North
04 - Burke: Black Flies

Hamsun bored me, which is maybe my fault, I think maybe I'm too... solipsistic a reader I need to inhabit a book in order to read it and the Hamsun novels are too obsessive and alien and my eyes kept sliding away from the page and then to something else, like my dry cleaning ticket.

I loved Black Flies though in a dumb, sudden way that I first felt in my teeth, like ice cream or raw grief. So good.

What was the Bunin like? I really enjoyed 'The Gentleman from San Francisco'.

Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City, but in French, naturally.

I've been reading a lot!
-Don DeLillo, 'Americana', my favourite novelist but this was not so good.
-Caroline Adderson, 'A History of Forgetting', decent CanLit
-Bill Gaston, 'Sex Is Red', very decent CanLit
-Michael Redhill, 'Fidelity', mode decent CanLit
-Michael Ondaatje, 'Anil's Ghost', the first of his I've read! I loved it.
-Mark Adlard, 'Interface,' 'Volteface,' and 'Multiface'. known as the "T-City Trilogy" 1970s british sci-fi, very fun!

and Non-Fiction:
-Bob Woodward, 'The Choice', the inside story of the 1996 presidential election!
-ed. Michael Sorkin, 'Variations on a Theme Park: The new American City and The End of Public Space', very good book of essays from 1992

Now I'm reading "Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century", a wonderful 400+ pg expose of the history of Dow Chemical corp and it's toxic legacy!

David Remnick - King of the World (about Muhammad Ali) - it's great so far

Finished Richard Price's Lush Life overseas, loved it, but I don't really have anything on deck.

(suggestions welcome)

I think I've been spoilt by Jim Thompson as far as my pulp goes...not enough evil, or enough tricks to throw me off (which has the effect of keeping me attentive).

Hammett is actually dragging, not fast enough.

-- xyzzzz__, Saturday, July 5, 2008 9:56 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Link

Try Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice. For fast-paced Hammett with lots of guns and double-crosses I love Red Harvest.

Took time out from my novel-reading to read a couple of stories each by John O'Hara and Julio Cortazar over the weekend.

Dammit now my books won't get here until Monday. I can't take having only six books around! This is like living in caveman times!

I take that back. They are here. Yay.

somerset-maugham-the-bookbag.jpg

"Try Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice."

Def will - both versions on film are quite excellent and different, which speaks volumes for the book.

W. G. Sebald - On the Natural History of Destruction is an excellent little collection of essays. First time I've read him. Makes Jean Amery sound like a must read.

Simone De Beauvoir - The Blood of Others
Anais Nin - Delta of Venus

Robert Walser: The Assistant (Swiss pre-WWI shenanigans)
Charles W Chesnutt: The House Behind the Cedars (1900-published book about black brother and sister in South Carolina trying to "pass" as white)
Hope Larson: Chiggers (charming YA graphic novel)

just finished:
louise erdrich, tracks
carl sagan, dragons of eden

on now:
kyril bonfiglioli, don't point that thing at me

I went across the street to buy a paper this morning at the bookstore and came back with Lolita, an enjoyable collection of Steve Almond essays (Not That You Asked), and Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest which looked optimistic and possibly is, but also is rather heavy-going. Also, the Sunday paper.

I just finished Loving by Henry Green, which was all round-about with scads of dialogue and then ended quite abruptly. Bleak House continues aloud nightly, and recently I finished The Flash Press, a scholarly look at an eruption of scandalous broadsheets in NYC in the 1840s that were long on blackmail and full of moralizing pieces that were ill-disguised ads for bawdy houses.

"Robert Walser: The Assistant (Swiss pre-WWI shenanigans)

read Jacob Von Gunten by him which is better than the (great) assistant.
Gunten might be Walser's masterpiece imo and not only imo

Zeno, you are spot-on: Jacob von Gunten was my first Walser. I also came across this OP edition under a different name with a freaky and cool cover image (not so keen on the type treatment, though).

http://sitb-images-eu.amazon.com/Qffs+v35leogMjGQNsNMaqJDncaLLyvae6NilBsf5NBrqHsRWZiSn76zWfX+XaGi

oohhh,expressionism.
btw, i'm quite sure that,beside Kafka, Thomas Bernhard was also influenced by Walser, since you can spot some of Bernhard's ideas in Walser's writing.
tough less known, he is well established in the german language literature of the era, with Kafka,Musil,Broch,Doblin,Canetti and Mann.

started Interpreter of Maladies, also bought The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Finished: THE FLIGHT OF ICARUS by Raymond Queneau

Just started: A HISTORY OF HISTORIES by John Burrow

Being unemployed makes it easier to read more:

Finished:

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Women of the Light: The New Sexual Healers by Kenneth Ray Stubbs (New Age inspirational soft porn trash, basically, though there are some interesting comments here and there in it)
Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation by Thomas W. Laqueur (This is actually very good. A bit repetitive at times, but good)
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Ilan Pappe (The writing itself isn't too great, but well worth reading)
The Case Against Christianity by Michael Martin
New Pearl Harbor David Ray Griffin (pretty good as far as it goes)
War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism by Nafeez Mosadeq Ahmed (pretty mind-blowing, even on top of all that I've read about this elsewhere, and even though Ahmed doesn't deal with the physical evidence I consider most significant)

Currently reading: The Problem of the Media by Robert W. McChesney (excellent so far)

(This using puiblic PCs and being rushed sucks)

"Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation by Thomas W. Laqueur"

"A bit repetitive at times"

:))))))))))))))))!!

and "actually very good"

I finished Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles. It started strongly enough, with some flashes of real ferocity, sadness and anger. But it started feeling a bit didactic by about the middle, and by the epilogue it was just kind of juvenile, bottom-drawer sci-fi. Now I'm starting on Wilfrid Sheed's The House that George Built.

I think that's pretty much how I feel about Houllebecq in a nutshell.

In answer to question Harwood, Raworth, Fisher, all collecteds, sadly, I still lack £££ for individual volumes

I've been flicking through the Joris/Rothenburg Poems of the Millenium and getting all excited about Celan's Death Fugue, again.

Carson McCullers: Clock Without Hands - brilliant, of course
Alan Furst: Kingdom of Shadows - ditto

I've got Yevgeny Yevtushenko's 'Selected Poems' waiting for my lunch break--lots of groovy-looking narrative/autobiographicasl pieces in there. Should be good.

It's Carson McCullers FEVER around here. I just read the Member of the Wedding cos my sister had it lying around. I kinda liked the cover even though she hated it, my other sister hated it too. My sisters don't know shit, seriously.

well, i'm not reading carson mccullers, but i DID just finish flannery o'connor's everything that rises must converge collection, so, i'm in the same ballpark.

now, i'm either gonna read trailerpark by russell banks or moo by jane smiley. i've never read anything by jane smiley, but i picked moo up and i immediately wanted to keep reading. which is a good sign, needless to say.

Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union (pretty good, the actiony bits don't quite ring true)
Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury (understood much more this time)
Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies (lots of fun, surprisingly affecting at certain points)

Just started Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.

The Walser cover upthread is a still from the magnificent Quay Brothers film of the book - the film goes by the title "Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life".

http://www.espacioblog.com/myfiles/rrose/posterbenjamenta.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIjWWZZq00k

Just finished The Disappointment Artist by Lethem. Now reading Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. On deck:

-(finishing) Sacred Games
-The Gunslinger (Stephen King)
-Fortress of Solitude (Lethem again)
-Only Revolutions (Danieliwzkyiiasiuoiwsoiuoiusdfi)
-In the Hand of Dante (Tosches)

Jes, you are a magic person--thanks for explaining that image. I need to see this film!

JED I mean--can't even spell a 3-letter name.

"Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation by Thomas W. Laqueur"

"A bit repetitive at times"

:))))))))))))))))!!

Up and down the same points, over and over again. . . Working that data

It is summer reading time. I am now reading Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux. He sounds the same as ever, but the territory (Africa) is quite interesting this time around.

i just got the complete works of carson mccullers in a beautiful hardcover given to me; i've read all but 'the clock without hands'.

currently reading 'women' by bukowski, and 'order and chaos chez hans reichel' by henry miller and published/printed by loujon press, which is the most beautiful book i've ever owned (another gift - it's pretty great having a bf who collects books, and who is a total snob about book book design/editions). it's from the cork edition limited to 1399 and is completely letterpress printed:

this is the slipcase it comes in (i'm i total sucker for any books that come in slipcases):
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3051/2671618631_3896ed9de4_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3025/2671621945_0e49f0ec75_o.jpg

Currently Slaves of Solitude, Patrick Hamilton; Bela Bartok, Kenneth Chalmers (decent bio). Recently Jake's Thing, Stanley and the Women, Kingsley Amis; Seize the Day, Bellow; Jane and Prudence, Barbara Pym (exquisite); Operation Shylock, Roth (far from his best); You Don't Love Me Yet, Lethem (weak).

J,

Please to give us photos of ALL your lovely new acquisitions.

K. Amis: The Old Devils

M. Amis thinks it among the greatest books of the C20

I don't

I'm trying Virginia Woolf's "The Waves", I think for the second time, after failing several years ago after finding it just too difficult to get on with. I'm already struggling once again sadly.

In an effort to improve my French...

Les paradis artificiels (Baudelaire)
Du coté de chez Swann (Proust)

Mirbeau - The Torture Garden (from a set of lit-porn classics a friend's putting out.)
Joyce's letters. Feeling nosy about his life.
Essays by Blanchot, bits of Auden's prose (just blew out on v3 of the complete works.)
For Poetry I am spending my time with Elizabeth Bishop, Frost and Robert Graves.

Woolf's 'Waves' must be one of the worst books by a writer who could write well (even is she was a horrific snob and anti-semite).

Myself recently:
BS Johnson: The Unfortunates (very, very good, though the chapters-readable-in-any-order thing isn't quite as true as Johnson pretended)
Conan Doyle: The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (fun)
Guy Goffette: Forever Nude (fairly good but quite pretentious, and over-long for the style in which it was written, even at 130 pages)

I read all (?) Bishop's poems last year; that felt worth doing.

I don't really agree about The Waves. I remember having trouble with it early on - the abstraction, the voice, the tone. But I persisted and it grew and washed over me, and by the end I was quite overwhelmed, and felt that a great vision of life, time and mortality had been disclosed.

I'm concentrating on my onward struggle with August 1914 at the moment, after that I'll see where I am. I really want to read more McCullers at the moment, but I bought so many books recently that I can't justify not reading at least five more before I do.

Also, I struck a deal with the librarian and got a TON of books out for the period of renovations, and I've barely cracked any of them, except for rereading The Invisible Dragon, but that's just an essay and it's BRILLIANT.

I woke up at 4am today and wound up making a pot of tea and reading The Old Devils. I guess it's becoming more readable, but there is still a weird conversational slackness about all the prose, let alone the homogeneous dialogue and characters it is hard to distinguish.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri - about halfway in so far, great read though making me very depressed about the concept of marriage generally

Gilbert Adair - The Dreamers. This was much better than I thought it would be.
Finished Simone De Beauvoir - The Blood of Others. I think Simone and Woolf are quite a nice pair up for a poll, or so I thought at the time I was finished this. Its great.
Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart. The Lynchean stuff isn't as cute as I found a few years ago.
Ballard - The Crystal World.
Primo Levi - Moments of Reprieve.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Metamorphosis and Other Stories

I really liked The Blood of Others--lots of philosophising, but enough narrative momentum to carry you through. What was The Crystal World like? It looks good, but not that long ago I read too many similar (recentish) Ballards in a row and felt a bit burned out with him.

Crystal World is pretty good, but it does run out of steam at points. In Crash he really figured out how to write circularly on a theme however the leper stuff is horrific and 'nice'.

I really like the sheer amount of reflection on The Blood of Others. Somehow I think if Woolf got her tone more 'correct' she would write as engagingly as Beauvoir.

Started: Gogol - Dead Souls

finished Interpreter of Maladies (very good), 1/4 into Oscar Wao (very great)

Jordan dk if yr still looking for recs but I really, really loved Black Flies also will rep for Netherland talked about both upthread or maybe on the other thread but both are superlative talk.

Spent the weekend by the pool reading Cancer Ward left me feeling wistful but I was kind of desperate and borrowed Stephen King's Cell for the train ride home and I'm liking it, kind of, so far.

those sound great, esp. Black Flies.

just finished women by bukowski, now onto the reasons i won't be coming, a collection of short stories by eliot perlman, and status anxiety by alain de botton.

ooh, Jordan, great to hear yr liking Oscar Wao--I picked up Diaz's short story collection, Drown, and am gonna read it after I get through the Moviegoer.

i'm really digging Moo by Jane Smiley! um, just so you know. i dig funny academia novels. and this book is way funny and well-written to boot. i might have to look out for her other books. i don't know why i pegged her as some bucolic/pastoral type of lady writer. maybe cuz the movie version of a thousand acres looked like such a snooze.

and i never knew she was so bloodthirsty! choice quotes from her wiki page:

shortly after Election Day 2004, she wrote:

"The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry...I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 millions have not...Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states...The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America...The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do - they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable...Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are - they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence."

In response to the Bush Administration, she wrote:

"In a just world, these people would be taken out and shot." - Salon Article

i read her mystery novel (Duplicate Keys) and liked it a lot, but i also have the weird idea that her other books are boring. she is really good at writing about banal day-to-day stuff, which might be more boring without a murder hanging over it.

that book reminded me of patricia highsmith with less misanthropy.

yeah, Moo is totally not boring. there is so much going on and so many characters. VERY entertaining.

OK, a few problematic ones over the last few days...

Ivan Bunin: Dark Avenues
- beautifully written short stories, but almost every one of them boils down to person A fucks person B, then either heartlessly pisses off, or is forced by person C to piss off. Given that there are 30+ stories in the book, so far almost all like this, I'm not reading this book in one go the way I normally would with story collections.

David Jones: In Parenthesis
- NYRB Classic WWI novel, part prose, part poetry. Probably really good, but my enjoyment frustrated by the fact it has a vast set of notes at the back, by Jones hismelf, which on his instructions NEED to be read to get the full gist (and he's right), but the constant flipping to the back really ruins the rhythm of what is, after all, meant to be poetry.

Witold Gombrowicz: Pornografia
-There's a really good, nasty novella at the heart of this book, smothered by over-writing and vastly annoying authorial mannerisms that make me want to punch Witold in the face. I'm persisting because it's only 190 pages long and people I respect have raved about him, but it's a close call.

so many characters

Including a gigantic pig! what's not to like?

Vladimir Nabakov - Speak, Memory + Nabakov's Dozen
VS Naipaul - The Middle Passage (his first travel book)
Pico Iyer - The Open Road

currently 3/4 thru the Iyer. it's about the Dali Lama, more of a travel book about Tibet than a "meditation" (haha) and quite thought-provoking even or especially for a resolutely non-spiritual being like yrs truly.

Have you tried reading the notes first, then reading the poem?

I read a book of poetry that was largely working off The Waves. It was pretty good.

Have you tried reading the notes first, then reading the poem?

This might work. I think I'll have to try this again when I have more patience.

Pat Barker: Another World
Imre Kertesz: The Pathseeker

Both of these are much more like it, after the 3 unsatisfying books mentioned above. Witold came good, but unfortunately it was in the last 2-3 sentences.

I've just started Modern Library's new version of Peter Matthiessen's "Shadow Country".

Simple but thick prose, filled with purely objective biographical moments. Good.

I've read almost nothing lately. It's depressing. Other day, I went to Elliott Bay books here in Seattle (about as big and well-curated as we've got), spent about two hours flipping through stuff, but bought nothing. I'm dying to ready something, but I dunno what.

Almost Nothing:

"Beasts of No Nation" by Uzodinma Iweala -- Bought for five bucks off the Border's bargain table at Northgate Mall. Novella about a very young boy forced to become a soldier in an unidentified West African country's ongoing revolution. Slangy, dialect-heavy first person narration that almost enters Clockwork Orange territory, insanely gruesome depictions of wartime atrocities, and a style that alternates between frenetic carnage and wide-eyed, childlike wonder. Bruising and ultimately moving, but a bit slight and simple/predictable.

"Icelander" by Dustin Long -- McSweeny's book I coveted in hardback due to the swell cover art and packaging. Eventually ended up buying a five dollar bargain PB copy of at the University Book Store. Tricky, jokey, mockingly post-modern update on the girl-detective genre (think Nancy Drew). Features an author character who's clearly supposed to be Nabokov and bit players with names like "Connie Lingus" and "Shirley MacGuffin". Heroine is named "Our Heroine". Mystery-beneath the mystery is never really spelled out or directly solved. Set in an Icelandic Canada that stands in for upstate New York (New Uruk). Etc. Should be insufferable, but Long never takes any of it too seriously, and the goofy premise and quick-moving plot won me over.

"The Penal Colony" (collected published stories) by Franz Kafka -- Bought for $0.25 at a garage sale. Kind of ashamed to admit I'd never read most of these. Other than The Metamorphosis and the title story, I mean. An fascinating book, but it suggests that, in terms of short fiction, Kafka was a more consistently interesting writer than a consistently great one. A few stories stand out among the best I've ever read (the two I mentioned earlier, Conversation with the Supplicant, The Judgement, A Country Doctor and The Hunger Artist), but many of the others feel like style exercises, and they fall short in comparison. That's not to condemn Kafka or this collection, just to point out how truly spectacular his best stories are.

Moomin: The Collected Comic Strip by Tove Jansson -- Two volumes, bought for half price at Queen Anne's sidewalk sale last weekend. Fantastic stuff! Wonderful characters, expressive & personal linework, minmal emphasis on punchlines, wholly unique style & POV. Comparable to Milne's Pooh books and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows in terms of humane yet authentic children's character writing. Need to track down some other Jansson stuff. Why didn't I think of that while I was at the bookstore?

Just started Charles D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum.

I agree with a lot you said about "Beasts of No Nation". Although it's graphic in some places, I wonder if this book shouldn't be shelved in teen fiction. The predictable, but important conclusions the book makes make it perfect for readers aged 12-15.

Yeah, agree that it often felt like an ostensibly "adult" novel that might be ideally suited for teen readers. Like Sandra Cisneros' The House On Mango Street. It does kinda cross the line in terms of the horrors it portrays, but I guess it gets a pass for honesty and seriousness of intent. Vaguely dread the inevitable movie.

Almost halfway through Drown already, and so far, so awesome.

Anyone read Chuck Palahniuk's new death-by-fucking novel? I gave up on CP after reading Choke, Lullaby and (worst of all) Haunted in quick succession about three years back, and the excerpt published in Vice was beyond terrible, but I'm still a bit curious.

Charles D'Ambrosio is a funny dude

'Moomin' is brilliant. I'm hanging out for volume 3. If you're interested in the Moomin novels, start with 'Finn Family Moomintroll' or 'Comet in Moominland'. Her novel (one of many adult ones) 'The Summer Book' is brilliant too.

This week I've been reading His Dark Properties for the first time. I'm still reading a general history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a comparative history of British and Spanish colonialism in the Americas, and can't remember the exact titles of either of those books offhand.

Do you mean His Dark Materials or is that an alternate title?

Or a totally different book I've never heard of....

Twain - Huck Finn.
Bellow - Seize the Day

Cantos

Enjoying that? I do want to try those someday...I've read pound On Noh plays...

Do you mean His Dark Materials or is that an alternate title?

It's the equivalent of His Dark Materials but published in Lyra's world. (Yes, I'm not sure why it came out that way.)

I just started the His Dark Municipalities series. It's about a bear trying to open up a little bed & breakfast in a mythical world, and all the problems that arise due to arcane zoning laws.

I would read that book.

xxxpost

Sorry for not replying earlier. Yeah I love those poems, umpteenth time I've read them.

a couple of agatha christie's poirot books
rem koolhaas - delirious new york

Finished Dark Star Safari. Enjoyable read, so long as you can accept Theroux's personality as a traveling companion. I have no trouble with him, and so found the book quite satisfying.

I am now about 2/3 through a slender book, The Goshawk by T.H. White. It is about his self-taught attempt to become a falconer (an austringer, more exactly, since he is training a hawk rather than a falcon). A peculiar book. Worthwhile.

I was reading it while hiking and camping at 7000+ feet in some eastern Oregon mountains. It's a lovely setting for reading, but I'm too tired at the end of the day to spend much time with a book. I'm hanging out in civilization for a few days and then disappearing back into the mountains until mid-August.

Oscar Wao is really really good. A few tropes felt tired but the revival of so many things that are old and not done enough in the context of so many things that are genuinely new is really powerful. Just full of ideas.

Savage Detectives isn't all I hoped compared to Bolano's short stories, but I'm willing to give it time to unfold.

Also a very belated R.I.P. to Oakley Hall. Been reading plenty of his westerns lately.

am switching between a bunch of books right now (mostly short story collections) but have also just started alice munro's 'the love of a good woman' - very dark so far, but really enjoying it.

really? i thought i heard that bolano's short stories were disappointing compared to savage detectives.

i want to check out junot diaz's short story collection too, is it good?

i got so bored with oscar wao, but i have a tough time with enormously long flashbacks that turn into competing sections of the novel. i liked oscar's story but the lengthy flashbacks about his mom and family bored me to tears.

competing? anyway. it distracted me from the main story

i want to check out junot diaz's short story collection too, is it good?

Finished this in two days flat. It's awesome. Great voice, great story construction, funny and sad.

Heard that diaz's short stories were rather conventional -- but haven't read them myself. I thought the flashbacks were actually the more interesting bits of the novel, and oscar's story was almost just an excuse for them actually. (i.e. how gatsby isn't about gatsby, etc.)

the bolano stories were very compact and economic while detectives feels like a big sprawl so far. i liked the precision in them, and in night in chile too...

(i.e. how gatsby isn't about gatsby, etc.)

you mean how Gatsby isn't about Nick Carraway, right?

um, no.

so what's gatsby about then, if it isn't about gatsby?

because i re-read it pretty recently and i gotta tell ya, it's mostly about gastby!

jack burden, duh.

gatsby's so so so about nick. fuck a redford.

i liked the flashbacks in oscar wao. also liked how the narrator was kind of mysterious and was only really revealed about 2/3rds of the way through.

Reading...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51k44GKpcSL._SS500_.jpg

I really, REALLY want to like this. It's a memoir of his getting into books and his adventures as a bookseller. The subject makes this the perfect book for me, which is lucky, because the execution is woeful. It reads like a transcription of a first draft dictated to a tape recorder. Events are all jumbled up in order (without any reason or art to it); people are introduced by name and described as "colorful" or "a character" without any other descriptions so that they remain completely colourless and feautureless; the standard "anecdote" is along the lines of McMurtry once had lunch at a cafe in England, and a young couple shared his table, and they couldn't afford butter, and he felt a bit sad for them, and he ate a hamburger. And it's full of irritating bits such as him saying "I think I forgot to mention earlier..." about such and such. Well, that's the thing with writing a book, you're allowed to go back and put things in where they fit best, and shape the material. That has not happened here. No editor must have come within a mile of this thing. A huge disappointment. I've not read any of his fiction, but this does not dispose me towards doing so--I can only assume age (he's 72) is not helping him here.

"Sorry for not replying earlier. Yeah I love those poems, umpteenth time I've read them."

A real novice to poetry, but I'll def try 'em, they sound kinda inviting from the few bits posted on an ILE thread.

Iain Sinclair - Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge. Again, likeable, gotta be when you're writing awesomely about Stan Brakhage.

yeah, i wanted to read that McMurtry book too until i read the review of it in the NYT book review which basically said all the things that you just said about it.

here's that review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/review/Campbell-t.html?scp=1&sq=mcmurtry&st=cse

although the picture in that review really makes me want to visit his store in texas!

Finished "Slaves of Solitude" which was excellent. My favourite Hamilton of the ones I've read (this one, Hangover Square and the 20,000 Streets Under the Sky trilogy). Also finished Rose Tremain's "The Road Home". This wasn't as polished or literary as Tremain's reputation would have led me to believe (I've read one of hers before, The Way I Found Her, but it was years ago and I don't remember too much about it). All the same, it was a very enjoyable read and not as dry or worthy as I feared from the subject matter (immigrant from ex-communist Europe struggles to make ends meet in contemporary Britain). Just started reading Barbara Pym's "Excellent Women". I hope I'm going to like this, having bought four more of her novels after enjoying "Jane and Prudence" so much, but it started well and I think I'm pretty safe.

Salves of Solitude is also my favourite Hamilton, although I've not read 20,000 Streets... yet. Mr Thwaites is the best bad guy EVER.

yeah, i wanted to read that McMurtry book too until i read the review of it in the NYT book review which basically said all the things that you just said about it.

Maybe I have more tolerance for McMurtry's rambling, discursive style, but the excerpts in that NYT review made me want to read it. I don't think there's anything wrong with him putting disclaimers on hazy recollections of fact. It may not pass NYT journalism standards, but for a memoir, I don't think it's a fatal flaw, especially if the voice and tone are engaging and charming, as McMurtry's tends to be. I like his reviews for the NY Review of Books, which tend to be a bit shaggy around the edges at times. I don't find anything wrong about saying that someone grew up in "a castle on the Rhine — or was it the Danube?", as that NYT review gripes about. It's true to the voice of an American who would tend to lump those exotic locations together anyway, and the image of that castle comes through loud and clear, so does it really matter which river it was on?

I don't find anything wrong about saying that someone grew up in "a castle on the Rhine — or was it the Danube?", as that NYT review gripes about. It's true to the voice of an American who would tend to lump those exotic locations together anyway, and the image of that castle comes through loud and clear, so does it really matter which river it was on?

i think a little bit of that goes a long way though. too much of it would get annoying after awhile.

Sure, if it's like every other sentence. I haven't read the book though, so it's hard to tell if it's truly overdone or the NYT reviewer's just being a bit prissy.

It's well worth tracking down the BBC's dramatisation Of 20,000 Streets if you're a Hamilton fan. It's beautifully done.

I agree about Mr Thwaites. Vicki Kugelmann is if anything even nastier, though: at least Mr Thwaites has the excuse of unimaginative stupidity!

Sure, if it's like every other sentence. I haven't read the book though, so it's hard to tell if it's truly overdone or the NYT reviewer's just being a bit prissy.

It's about every third sentence, unfortunately. And the stories/anecdotes are truly, truly feeble. I finished it last night, thank fuck. Thanks for the pointer to the NYT review--it's pretty much spot-on, only not as angry as I was at times. And as I say, I'm this book's ideal reader, in theory. I've got a whole shelf of bookselling/reading memoirs.

is this your bible:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61WPYK9YSSL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

finished Moo by Jane Smiley. I dug it! very perceptive. funny. not everything works. way too many characters. meaning, she could have consolidated a few of them, cuz they all weren't that interesting or even distinguishable from one another. and a couple sub-plots ( there are many sub-plots) fell flat, but other than that, I was impressed.

just read: The Middle Mind - Why Americans Don't Think For Themselves by Curtis White. an essay from the book caused a furor in Harper's Magazine a while back when White dared to slam Terry Gross for being the enemy of thought and imagination. I liked the book. It made me think. It made me want to read OTHER books, which is always good. Still, in the end, I'll continue watching America's Got Talent and generally be a lover of brain dead fare. Can't help myself. It's too late for me. Save yourself. Loved White's slam of Nick Horby's infamous Radiohead review in the New Yorker. I slammed it myself in the pages of the Village Voice back in 2000 and I hope people continue to slam it for as long as I or Nick Hornby live. Even the Derrida and Adorno in White's book didn't scare me! And I liked the ghost of Wallace Stevens watching over the whole thing.

Now I'm reading a book of essays on literature and society by Elizabeth Hardwick. mostly old book reviews. good stuff. and she gives a shout-out to Christina Stead in an essay about Stead's masterpiece The Man Who Loved Children (a book anyone who digs completely mind-blowing and original 20th century fiction should read).

Sorry, but I can't agree you about White. I can't make up my mind if he is a fool or a charlatan, but he is certainly no thinker. Take this example from his piece on Hornby:

Hornby can then begin to lay out the aesthetic grounds for Radiohead's heresy ............

[quoting Hornby]
"Kid A demands the patience of the devoted; both patience and devotion become scarcer commodities once you start picking up a paycheck."

Could he be any plainer? Art is about exchange. We give the artist our hard-earned money and the artist . . . what? Doesn't try our patience?

Hornby gives more content to what it is we expect in return for that which we've given from our paycheck.

It's debatable whether Hornby could or should have been plainer, although I suspect his meaning will be obvious enough to most readers. What isn't in dispute is that he hasn't been plain enough for White, who completely misreads him.

Hornby is making the point, by no means original, and something of a hobbyhorse of his, that people's attitudes to art change when they get full time jobs (and families). It's has nothing to do with value for money or "exchange" -- in fact, once the pay cheque starts arriving, money is less of an obstacle to buying cds. (Lack of) time and energy are the new obstacles to "patience" and "devotion". He is saying that in assessing the value of a work of art (especially popular art) ctitics pay too much heed to its value for specialists and obsessives, time rich kids and students, and not enough to its value for adults with jobs and families. That if Kid A works for a minority of devotees and OK Computer works for Joe and Josephina Bloggs, maybe we should admire OK Computer more.

You don't have to agree with Hornby about this (most of the music I listen to sells a fraction of what Kid A sold, but then I don't have kids or a paycheque); but you are not entitled to misrepresent him in the way that White does before drawing this kind of conclusion:

So, in the World of Art according to Nick Hornby, the first and highest principle is that it should be a fair exchange, you should "get your money's worth" (as his mother probably told him),

yeah, the money thing is a bit off. but hornby WAS saying that people who are busy and have jobs and kids don't have time for anything that's "difficult". and that's bullshit. (who the hell listens to classical music and modern classical and most jazz?) when he puts down his money for a show or an album he wants to be entertained and he doesn't want to think that much. and if that's how he feels, hey, whatever. but he wasn't just speaking for himself. he took it upon himself to speak for some faceless tired mass of people who don't want to think when they listen to a record. kid a was too difficult and time-consuming for him. a zillion people who bought it, many of them employed and with children, would beg to differ.

i didn't agree with white about a lot of stuff in that book. but i definitely think he was thinking! he made me think. he's more of an elitist than me, and he has read more marx than me, and he's one of those people who thinks that beauty and pleasure corrupt people, but he had some really smart things to say too. he's not a dummy!

oops, that was me.

i think most people just thought it was laughable that he thought kid a was "difficult".

actually, the word might have been "challenging" and not "difficult". it's been awhile.

and i was actually harder on him in 2004 after his horrible new york times op-ed piece about rock and marah and whatever else. he should just never ever write about music again. i have no problem with his book column in the believer though.

My point was wholly to do with White's credentials as a reader and thinker.

I don't have the problems with Hornby that many seem to, but that may be because I'm not very interested in pop music criticism. Some people prefer OK Computer to Kid A, some feel the opposite, and I can't see what there is to be gained by arguing which of them is right: it's a subjective response and I'm more than happy to let everyone get on with enjoying the stuff they enjoy. My current musical obsessions are Szymanovsky (esp Krol Roger) and Dutilleux, pretty far from Hornby territory: but I suspect Hornby, too, is pretty much a live and let live guy

For some reason that posted prematurely. My point about Hornby is that I never feel he is hostile to people who like "difficult" music, just people who parade a sense of superiority about it (and in the process try to belittle people who don't). I can't think of many things more absurd than thinking you're better than other people because of the records you like, so I'm going to instinctively side with Hornby against someone as pretentious as White.

the ultimate irony: the "paycheck" hornby was receiving was from the new yorker...to write about the new radiohead album! but he doesn't have time to listen to it! it's too much work! hahahaha! he is cheeky.

(it wouldn't have mattered to me who wrote that thing. i would have despised it no matter what.)

Stephen Pinker - The Language Instinct
Lots and lots of comic books (I went to the local library and asked if they could recommend some comics. The fellow who worked there loaded me up with a ton of stuff. No really. I carried two bags home. So far I've particularly liked the ones I read by this French fellow by the name of Trondheim. I do -not- see the appeal of Robert Crumb. Maybe I'm too twee. And, uhm, Lone Wolf & Cub is all sorts of entertaining.)
William H Gass - The Tunnel (It seems somehow wrong to say it, but this is the most fun I've had with a novel in a long time. I tried to write a limerick here, but it was really damn embarrassing. Though I got to rhyme Gass with Pizazz. So that's...something. )

A copy of Nabokov's Lectures on Literature just showed up in the mail too. It seems the kind of book that needs to be turned into a small autumn project, where each novel it discusses is read immediately before reading the lecture. Has anyone here tried to do this? Good timing too, as I just picked up a copy of Bleak House as well.

I want to see that limerick!

Speaking of twee-ish comics, I really liked Simone Lia's 'Fluffy': I can see its flaws, but it was so cute that they didn't bother me.

Am now reading Alice Munro: Hateship, Friendship, etc etc - really really really good.

that title story is a monster. but the whole thing is a feast. er, talking about the munro book.

just started McCarthy's "The Road" in anticipation of the movie.
also, checking out an anthology called "My Favorite Horror Stories."

just finished Girl Factory by Jim Krusoe, who is really great and recommended if you are into funny and surreal contemporary stuff a la George Saunders, Donald Antrim, and Kelly Link. I loved his first novel, Iceland.

Crumbs sketchbooks are nice enough to leaf through.

I'm reading the Wittgenstein biography by Ray Monk.

i have the first two crumb sketchbooks that a small german press put out in the 80's in hardcover. they are waaaay fancy and beautiful. i bought them from rip off press when i was a kid cuz they were selling both volumes 2 for 30 dollars. i thought it was a steal then, i have no idea what they are worth now.

i was definitely a fan. had almost all the comix at one time.

oh, and i am almost done with the jincy willett story collection, Jenny & the Jaws of Life. with all due respect to david sedaris - who wrote the forward to this reissue - it's not the funniest short story collection i've ever read, but it has definitely been a strange and enjoyable experience reading her stuff.

William H Gass - The Tunnel

Always been curious about this one. I really like his criticism.

Currently a 100p in on Edmund White's biog of Genet. It promises some meaty dissection of the novels that I hope will be fulfilled. Again, has anyone read his fiction?

Kafka - The Metamorphosis
Thomas De Quincey - Confessions of an Opium Eater

i liked white's life of genet a lot, good sensibility match of author & subject. the only novel of white's I've read was "a boy's own story" in the early 80s. autobiograpical, really.

wait, read genet's fiction or white's fiction?

i can never finish a genet novel. i start them and then i always end up...dropping out. i should try again though. i was so much younger then, i'm older than that now.

i really liked a boy's own story and the beautiful room is empty by white. beautiful room is kind of the autobio sequel to boy's own story. forgetting elena, his first novel, is pretty crazy. it's a fantasy. very arch.

i have the farewell symphony, but i haven't read it. i think that starts off where the beautiful room ends.

and i have the genet bio, but it's always been too daunting to me. but i will read it someday, cuz his life has always fascinated me.

(and i would like to get a book of white's essays as well. he's a fine writer.)

A copy of Nabokov's Lectures on Literature just showed up in the mail too. It seems the kind of book that needs to be turned into a small autumn project, where each novel it discusses is read immediately before reading the lecture. Has anyone here tried to do this?

I did this when I was ~ 16 also in conjunction w/Strong Opinions but selectively not wanting to trudge through Joyce it may have been a bad idea for me since it was my first time reading everything but the Kafka and I swallowed the lectures whole w/o really thinking much.

Read The Kraken Wakes and Day of the Triffids lately the former esp. so v. romantic but glib in an exciting way not what I expected. Nick and Nora at the end of the world a little, maybe? Now reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksliver.

Remember when we were all reading Carson McCullers? That was nice.

sry 4 ruining yr good time T_T

i need to get back to that mccullers story, 'the clock without hands'. just about finished the munro collection.

Hang on, I thought I was reading that. Scott's right, Hateship etc is a feast. And the Kincy Willett collection was excellent, I thought, but not funny in the way Sedaris implied. Some bitter graveside laughter, maybe.

yeah, it's weird, his forward had me expecting some gut-busting romp or something. the only story like that was the advice column one, The Best Of Betty. Which was totally funny (and very david and amy sedaris in its humor). I did like the book though.

Right now, I'm reading The Great Victorian Collection by Brian Moore which is very addictive. and funny! I couldn't stop reading it last night.

I have never read Carson McCullers.

'the heart is a lonely hunter' is one of the most devastatingly sad stories i have ever read.

The member of the wedding is the most true thing.

"wait, read Genet's fiction or White's fiction?"

White. Thanks for the breakdown, Seward and Coleman. Is White a bit like Kathy Acker, in terms of theme/writing (another Genet fan, etc. I've just picked up a cpl of her bks)?

"i can never finish a genet novel. i start them and then i always end up...dropping out. i should try again though. i was so much younger then, i'm older than that now."

I can see dropping out as quite an easy thing to do w/Genet's novels - love the games he plays, however. Maybe try his plays sometime, if you haven't?

I'd never imagined Acker and White being similar before. The idea still boggles.

Am now reading Rick Moody's 'The Omega Force' - seems good so far, but he's got a lot of ill-will from apst books to dispel before I pronounce it officially good.

underworld. i think delillo seems kinda annoying. i just re-read the new york trilogy by auster, which was ... well, better when i read it the first time.

i enjoyed tanya french's debut (and edgar-award-winning) procedural 'the woods' which we've been promoting the hell out of at borders, and also george pellecanos 'right as rain'. i read 'the world jones made' last week, and have to confess i didn't 'get' large chunks of it. i've said elsewhere that i enjoyed the promo copy of neal stephenson's new novel, anathem, and also love, love, love, loved the sequel to sharon creech's 'love this dog' which is somewhat cutely titled 'hate that cat'

'remy' likes single quotes, 'doesn't' he?

It was a question James. I don't know.

The Emperor by Kapuscinski. Starting awesomely. Only read Imperium before, which I liked a lot.
Edwin Muir's poetry. Always liked that old slim Faber selected (and get on better with his and Willa's Kafka translations than any other I've read), so grabbed the Collected from the library. Gloomy modernist fun ahoy - Grim landscapes, failed journeys, broken myths.

If you like Muir, it might be worth looking out for his autobiography. His best work IMO.

Attempted Jose Garcia Villa's 'Doveglion: Collected Poems'. Not really my thing, alas. Much more my thing-- Amy Levy's 'The Romance of a Shop': 1880s London Jewish New Woman novel about four sisters setting up in business as photographers. Really liked her 'Reuben Sachs', which is put out by Persephone.

just bought some new mcculllers cuz of this thread, as well as rendezvous w. rama & henry petrowski's evolution of little things. i got sick of 'underworld' halfway though and gave up.

I left my book on the train.

A good book about Genet is D.A. Miller's book about Barthes.

Much enjoyed Rama, but never read the sequel(s), suspecting diminishing returns with no more real answers.

I read Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running on the plane, liked it a lot.

Things I Laughed at in Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category

A list of things kids want to be when they grow up

Old Styrofoamsides

i guess there was some other stuff that was okay, but i had seen before online. some of it is really lame, though.

I finished The House that George Built by Wilfrid Sheed. It was pretty interesting, though I only recognized maybe 10% of the song titles he mentioned. He uses lots of puns and allusions to old movies and songs in his prose, so I'm sure 90% of that went over my head too. Still it was interesting to catch a glimpse of that vanished world of Broadway-Tin Pan Alley-Hollywood in the "Golden Age" of the musical.

Now I'm starting on The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming.

reading ethan canin's emperor of the air story collection from the 80's. can't believe he was in his 20's when he wrote these. lots of young folks are smart, but dude was wise.

i like him a lot. his second book "The palace Thief" is really beautiful. it's a collection of 4 novellas.

still reading the canin book, but this morning i picked up desperate characters by paula fox and started reading it before work and i just finished it now. i haven't read it in years. that part where they catch the cat in the box still fills me with dread. everyone should read that book, if they haven't already.

Laurie Lee - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

totally great, read this right after Homage to Catalonia, they fit together very well, though Lee has way more idyllic tramping.

Victor Serge - The Case of Comrade Tulayev

excellent, probably enjoyed this more than Darkness at Noon, but they're very different.

I'm reading Walter Benjamin's Illuminations. Next up will be, I think, Tim Winton's Breath. Anyone read it?

Mishima - Sun and Steel
Montaigne - A selection of his Essays
Heinrich Boll - The Silent Angel

Nabokov - Speak, Memory

John Healy: The Grass Arena - memoirs of life as homeless alkie and then chess junkie: fascinating
Premchand: The Co-Wife and Other Stories - early 20th-century Indian writer best-of
Somerset Maugham: Mrs Craddock - lots of fun

What's the Boll like? Haven't read--or even heard--of that one.

Its his first, belatedly discovered, never published at the time novel (apparently intricate descriptions of bombed out German cities were too much for German publishers in the late 40s). The landscape stuff is quite affecting, def worth a quick read. I found out about it through a W. G. Sebald essay. I hadn't read a bk by him before...

jim thompson - roughneck. alleged autobiography, more like his novels boiled down to concentrate.

kingsley amis - one fat englishman. academic satire, funny haha.

vladimir nabokov - pnin. academic satire, russki expat. funny profound. i want to write sentences like his.

vs naipaul - a turn in the south. US travel. just started and am hooked. he's the opposite of nabakov in many respects, his prose is so direct. he nails descriptions w/a single detail and his ideas pierce my brain. genius.

"jim thompson - roughneck"

roughneck and bad boy are his two autobio efforts, but you should check out his first book *now and on earth* which is very cool semi-autobio fiction and one of his only non-genre books. if you haven't read it already, that is.

I loved 'Now and on earth'--I think it was Scott talking about it on another thread that got me to get it. And that Boll sounds well worth getting too. More for the list!

And Pnin is ace.

finally reading some richard yates "eleven kinds of loneliness"; really enjoying it. think i might find one of the novels next.

I loved Pnin - my first Nabokov ever. I finished Lolita a week ago - creepy, but so fantastic to read.

reading trailerpark by russell banks. i dig it. can't believe one of those sundance/indie directors never made it into a movie. or maybe they did.

i might read some mishima next! cuzza that thread. i have a copy of *after the banquet* in the stacks. we'll see. i might chicken out and grab some more kmart and/or dirty realism instead. i'm predictable like that. and parochial like that. and provincial like that. (truth is, i'm wiped out and russell banks is my equivalent of, i dunno, whatever people read at the beach. genre stuff. or in airports. harlan coben? my dad is always pushing james lee burke and dennis lehane and elmore on me and i appreciate it but i never get around to reading them. eventually, i'll get to them. today, someone at the hospital asked me if i had read any styron and i said NO! but i've been meaning to. and then he said that he had never read any john hersey and i said ME NEITHER! i will someday though. and then he said that he was reading youth by joseph conrad and i said I NEED TO READ MORE JOSEPH CONRAD! someday. if i live long enough.)

I might read some Jim Thompson next! Picked up a copy of Pop 1280, and its out of character for me not to drop everything to read any just found Thompson immediately.

Finished: Montaigne - Essays. Where have you been all my life?! I love how he meanders on, his unwillingness to make a central point on anything is a very endearing quality.

Charles Lamb - Essays of Elia. Which I'm thinking of giving up on, its so light and seemingly unsubstantial, or whether its my sudden fit of impatience I can't decide.

night of the gun
the terror (hi ned)
the likeness

Wanna throw my support in for the reading of Pnin - it's very, very ace.

just got raymond carver's poetry collection, 'ultramarine', and am really loving it, more than i expected to.

I've returned from hiking. While out there I finished The Goshawk (already mentioned above), then I read Egil's Saga in the penguin edition. I very much liked it.

I have also just about finished Krakatoa by Simon Winchester, which is quite excursive into many side subjects, such as Dutch colonialism and plate tectonics, but I'd have to give it a solid 'B' for workmanlike delivery of a lot of loosely allied factual material. He doesn't ever succeed in tying it together into a single, seamless story, but it muddles along bravely and is fairly engaging as it is.

Aw, Egilpaws!

A few things since last we met...

Tales from the Vienna Woods - Odon von Horvath : great play from 1931 or 1932, by Austro-Hungarian writer, about a group of connected people in Vienna with the distant rumblings of Nazism

Pharos - Alice Thompson - amazingly inept ghost story novella, with very good first 40 pages, not much good next 60 pages, laughable final 50 pages, full of plot holes, irritating magic realism, anachronistic language, general bullshit

Hothouse- Brian Aldiss - good vintage SF, but could have done with a bit of pruning

The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham - a re-read, I love it

Reunion - Fred Uhlmann - a lovely little novella, again about rise of Nazism

Just started Danilo Kis's "Garden Ashes". Came to him through Hemon, so far, so good.
Anyone have any other suggestions or thoughts about Kis? I'm new to him.

The Encyclopedia of the Dead is better than "garden ashes" imo

Thanks

August list, so far:

Nova, Tales of Neveryon- Samuel R. Delaney (
Holy Fire- Bruce Sterling
Perdido Street Station- China Mieville
Invisible Cities- Italo Calvino

Dana Johnson: Break Any Woman Down - mostly pretty good shoirt stories, but she must be about the seventh US writer I've read in the last couple of months who is also a teacher of creative writing - I find this depressing, for some reason

Tom Stacey: The Man Who Knew Everything - rather excellent Graham Greene/Eric Ambler-ish (in atmosphere at least) political/journalism novel

Mexico: A Biography of Power by Enrique Krauze.

can't remember if i've already listed this: t.c. boyle's tooth and claw

he's a bit over the top with his descriptions/metaphors etc sometimes, but i really like these short stories; very sort of ordinary people/situations with bizarre and unusual twists. very inventive and surprising.

I've not been reading so much recently, but I did finish Barbara Pym's Excellent Women, which picked up nicely after a slow start. Very enjoyable but not as much as Jane and Prudence -- I'm not sure if it was less good, or if the social milieu it was set in appealed less (it was less sexy, if only in the same way as Mansfield Park is less sexy than Pride and Prejudice) or if the law of diminishing returns has already kicked in with the second Pym novel I've read. I'll be reading more Pym but will take a break first.

I did also finally get round to reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which I bought a couple of years ago but put off reading for fear it would oblige me to reread Mrs Dalloway. In the event I needn't have worried - I remembered Woolf well enough to get the parallels. A very strange book: phenomenally difficult to update Woolf and get the tone so beautifully right, but inevitably the reader is will be thinking, that's wonderful but why bother? Cunningham comes very close to a perfect answer: some of the writing is exquisite, and there was a point about a third of the way in when I thought it was going to be the best thing I'd read for a year or two. Ultimately, though, the stories themselves are too slight and portentous, and his view of the world too determinedly over-refined -- pretty much the same faults as one finds in Woolf. But it's a short novel full of lovely and insightful writing and I'd recommend anyone who hasn't read it to give it a try.

Best summary of what's good/bad about 'The Hours' ever.

Had a good day off work yesterday, did fuck-all but read...

Tobias Wolff: Our Story Begins - the man's a genius.
Marcel Proust: Days of Reading - charming essay about being young and spending all your time wrapped up in books
Eddie Campbell: The Amazing Mr Leotard - lightweight but very fun graphic novel
Read bits of Penelope Fitzgerald's Collected Letters - she's one of my favourite writers

Am now reading Emanuel Litvinoff's 'Journey through a small planet' - memoir about growing up in the Jewish East End of London in the 1920s - very well written and fascinating

i want to get that tobias wolff! i emailed him the other day to find out if he's giving any readings in my area: no, but he's doing a 'conversation' in september, when three of his stories are being performed in sf (sadly, i'll be in chicago that weekend).

i cannot find a cheap/fine first edition of his 'in the garden of north american martyrs', but i don't like the other covers, and i want a hardcover!

It (the new Wolff) is amazing. About 110 pages of the 370 pages are new stories, and the rest are (some) of the best of his earlier ones. Really, though, they should have done a huge volume printing everything, like that 1000-page William Trevor story collection.

Now reading Maria Edgeworth's 'The Absentee' - really good.

reading Sylvia by Leonard Michaels. found a nice copy at the dump. now if i could just find a nice copy of his collected stories at the dump...

oh, and i dug After The Banquet by Mishima.

As the summer draws to a close:

Herman Hesse - Steppenwolf.
W.G. Sebald - The Rings of Saturn. Halfway through now and this refusal to make easy, grand points that are just implied could be a strength. I've no idea where any of this is going, if anywhere - it might be the best article ever that will never appear in the Guardian - even then I'm not sure whether its a good thing, but I keep turning the pages.

Partick White - Voss - where was this author hiding all my life? a masterpiece.

Netherland, which is knocking it outta the park. I don't want to reach the last page.

'Netherland' is great, isn't it?
Just read 'Inverted World' by Christopher Priest. Mind-bogglingly great in the best SF way.

Liked 'Netherland' a lot. My only critique would be that it felt over written in certain spots.

Booth Tarkington: Seventeen (pub 1916) - hilarious. Exactly nails what it's like to be a mildly pretentious unworldly 17-year-old with a mad crush on a girl who outside observers realise is a total drip.

i want to read 'housekeeping' so i can read 'gilead', but i want it in the bizarre battered paperback edition i saw in gothenburg that made it look like a mills and boon novel

i am in the middle of over a dozen books again. bugger

h.p. lovecraft, "selected"
p. highsmith, "talented mr. ripley"

I've got Dorothy Richardson's 'Pilgrimage' sequence waiting for me at the library. I don't know much about it, other than it's hard to get a hold of and it's a 13 book series. I wonder if anyone here has read it, and if they could give me a little preview... thanks.

Michael Power: Shadow Game (1972) - banned in Sth Africa at the time, about a white man and a black man falling ion love and secretly living togetehr, with the black guy posing as the white guy's servant. Very good, though spent half the book thinking a female character was a drag queen because Power referred a couple of times to her Adam's apple.

Summer's lease hath all too short a life.

I have been reading a non-fiction book called Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. Basic summer reading material. Shipwreck story from 1857 merged with the modern (1986?) story of searching for the wreck in order to salvage the cargo of gold bullion. Competantly written, with a tendency to goose up the drama a bit for the sake of keeping the reader excited. It's OK.

"i am in the middle of over a dozen books again. bugger"

make it more fun by listing them so we can see your logic ;-)

As for me:

Junichiro Tanizaki - Diary of a Mad Old Man and Some Prefer Nettles
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

mozart's letters
the stars and their courses - james jeans
baudelaire trans francis scarfe
moliere - the misanthrope

damn got to read some solzhenitsyn

Twerski & Henderson: Torts
Joshua Dressler: Criminal Law
Silberman, Stein & Wolf: Civil Procedure
Glannon: Civil Procedure Examples & Explanations
Shapo: Writing & Analysis in the Law

condolences

i'm reading "Filth" by Irvine Welsh; enjoying it.

i'm reading this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51E4QXNQQXL._SL210_.jpg

haven't really gotten into it yet.

now i know via googling that it's now a movie starring this guy:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0ens9RDawo1zu/340x.jpg

all families are psychotic by douglas coupland. fast, entertaining, light read.

Song of the Wren - H E Bates: short stories
Hit and Run - Lawrence Block
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

At the national library once again with the urbane librarian. I think my problem is that I find it difficult to devote the conscious deliberate attention to reading his stream of consciousness writing and rather than go with the flow, if one is meant to, I feel I must back track and try to figure things out. Sometimes I just have trouble remembering familiar sounding names... It's almost hopeless, but I feel I can read no other book, until I finish.

That chapter is unusually hard - not, I think, because of stream-of-consciousness material, mainly just cos Stephen D's superbly eloquent discourse, which dominates the episode, is very very hard to understand as a coherent argument.

I find almost all the other chapters save perhaps 3, 14, 15, maybe 18 easier to read than 9.