2005: so now what are you reading?

Sounds interesting. I wouldn't mind reading more about both of them actually - though I'm currently taking a Dylan break, since I just finished Chronicles. Farina makes a brief appearance in that one as well - mainly on account of his girlfriend at the time, whom Dylan admires (not Mimi Baez).

I'm currently reading Vertigo by W.G. Sebald, so far finding it not quite as good as Austerlitz.

I am pondering a break from Don Quixote, as I am half way through it. Half way through Part 1, that is. I'm on Part 4 of Part 1.

I think I'll read The City: A Guide to London's Global Financial Centre by Richard Roberts. Either that or The Twits what I got out of a Cheerios packet.

Yes, that's it. Dylan says that people considered Farina some mysterious adventurer who had supposedly hung out with Castro in Cuba and the IRA in Northern Ireland, but that he considered Farina the luckiest guy in the world because he was dating Hester.

I never finished either of the WGS books that O. Nate mentions: only the other two (major [?] ones).

Gosh, O. Nate: I did not notice Farina in Chronicles! Or have forgotten it. But I do remember the bit that you mention, just not RF's name being attached to it.

It is also striking, isn't it, how in that book he is so reverential re. Baez (Joan), as a distant, already successful figure.

Lauren's last two sentences, with their slicing dislike untroubled by doubt and their brisk list of savage epithets, remind me of someone. I think it must be - myself.

Casuistry: I bought The Order of Things in June 1993, and meant to read it in the summer of 1994. I failed. I never read it. I have still never read it. It lingers on a low shelf, shedding dark glamour. It is impressive, maybe, that you are reading it.

Awake in the wee hours' dark as usual I started on Sonata For Jukebox. I may be some time.

right. that's covered in p4s. contrary to the rumors farina started about himself, he grew up in a middle-class area of flatbush and studied at cornell before eventually dropping out. he spent a few weeks visiting family in ireland around that time, but the only thing anyone recalls about his stay is that he was very good about helping with the nightly washing up.

(Were the Vicar here, as perhaps he is, he would surely ask why it should be impressive to have hung out with Ireland with the IRA, though he would perhaps be as impressed as anyone by Castrovian rumours, and might even share again his theory about Che Guevara and Yasser Arafat.)

Also this time around I'm noticing that the translator is lazy, and takes too much advantage of English's bounty of Latin-based words. Whereas of course French is mostly stuck with the Latin-based words. I assume it comes off as more natural and less forced-academic in French.

http://www.fnac.com/Shelf/article.asp?PRID=300021&OrderInSession=1&Mn=3&SID=a60ff711-de38-f4a4-5429-f4856039d363&TTL=120120052324&Origin=FnacFR&Ra=-1&To=0&Nu=1&UID=05ab0a723-dcbf-e26c-7c2c-f3b0620c9365&Fr=0#DetailFiche

the translator is lazy
Chris, I always found that this kind of stuff in particular has a lot of wordplay in the original that can often dictate the path of the argument, so take that away and what you're reading will only seem that much more confused.

Lucky Banks, I wish I had an autopilot.

http://lrb.co.uk/v26/n09/jone01_.html

Also don't miss the Tarkovsky film.

something about it irritates me, but I can't put my finger on it.

Last night I read James Wood's essay on Jane Austen, in The Broken Estate. It's remarkably ordinary! His only insight is that Austen's heroines have interiority, and her other characters don't. I don't know the critical tradition, but I imagine that dozens have made this point.

It also made me reflect on how Austen is (the?) one major writer whom all praise and no-one ever criticizes.

I have started a THRILLER called THE STATEMENT by BRIAN MOORE (no, not that one).

Finished Fingersmith. Was suprised by the inclusion of the phrase "Girl fight!", but otherwise a great book.

Hi Jordan: I've just read Light too. I've been computerless for several days, but will be reviewing it on FT very soon. Certainly one of the best books I've read in the last year.

I'm reading my first Pellecanos right now. It's only okay so far, solid modern crime writing, but nothing to make him join current favourites like Block, Burke, Vachss so far.

This kind of is the trouble with the 50 books a year target. A couple of times last year I found myself in the middle of books I didn't really want to finish, knowing that if I gave up I would bugger up my total.

Perhaps a better, saner goal would be to read a certain number of pages a year.

Or an even better goal, as I'm sure someone will point out, is to be well-adjusted and non-competitive enough not to care, but that's never going to happen in my case, so don't even try suggesting it.

A load of vicars help a nazi bloke get away.

Will what section are you up to?

Martin, looking forward to your Light review! Hopefully I'll start reading it tonight after I finish Nova and get off my Sam Delaney kick.

Now I'm on to Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler. The only Marlowe book I haven't read yet (well, besides Playback. I'm afraid to read that one and spoil my impression of Marlowe and Chandler).

Phillip Larkin, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, some medieval lyrics in translation, and the Twentieth Century Volume 2 anthology by Library of America.

If it were anyone else I would say it wasn't, but hey, it's not like you need to bump up your total.

I've finished the Elizabeth Redfern book. Very definitely second-string but solid historical fiction. It was a pretty standard Arnie or Clint style story (his daughter has been murdered and the police don't care, but he's determined to follow up every clue. But has he stumbled onto something bigger? Well, yes, frankly, but we knew that from the beginning, really) with some stuff about the French Revolution and the fact that Chelsea still had farms in it thrown in for good measure. Okay, but she's no Patrick O'Brian or Philippa Gregory.

And now, the treat I've been waiting for. I'm gonna find out what happened to Stephen and Jack.

I'm not going to count, but I am going to blog. What's the idea, just a quick review? Or something more blogbound? Sometimes there's not much to say.

'In the Line of Beauty' (again)
'I'll Go To Bed At Noon'

Just to get my council tax's worth really.

Then, THEY'LL get your money, again !

I hadn't thought of that. It's a dangerous game I play.

The Statement just goes from strength to strength.

Maybe I should get into thrillers.

Alistair Reynolds' Century Rain (remember those Star Trek episodes where they end up in Nazi Germany or Chicago? another 500 page missive, that's 5 now - they are starting to look impressive on the bookshelf)

halfway through Iain Banks' Player Of Games at the mo. have discovered that books you last read 14 years ago are effectively new books.

(things i mean to re-read this year - Pattern Recognition, Neuromancer Trilogy...)

Started Bosnia: A Short History. Thought it was about little trees.

PJM, have you given up on In The Line of Beauty?

I have started Money again. I am trying to work out whether the word 'satire' is relevant to it. If anyone knows, tell me.

George Orwell's Down And Out In Paris And London and Joseph Heller's Then And Now.

Also recently made a start on Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series with Worldwar: In The Balance and just finished the graphic novel version of Ghost World by Daniel Clowes.

Oh, and a half read James Ellroy book I keep meaning to get back to (big fat intimidating 3-in-1 thing).

I have not read The Wings of The Dove. I wonder now why it is called that! I have found another book by Geoffrey O'Brien. It looks good. I have the Mills that Monkey read, also, waiting to be read, one day. It is funny that Monkey thinks that Monkey is a funny word. She must live at a laugh a minute, literally.

I am still rereading Money - no, I'm not, I'm skipping about in it, alighting on pages. I am actually still reading The Rotters' Club for the first time. Its slackness astounds.

Also, dipping into The War Against Cliche. A very bad bit in the introduction mentions Judge Time, which reminded me of Mark S's brilliant rejoinder to this (yes) cliche (I cannot get acute accents, right now): roughly, 'the next person to say "we must await the test of time" must shut up and wait to see whether their remark passes the test of time'.

I always found that remark of Mark's so pregnant with hitherto unthought truth.

Spooky, no?

And yes, my life is a laff riot.

I havem however, read The Wings of the Dove. I think there is a reason for the title, but I can't remember. I think steam trains were involved at some point. It's all very hazy.

The Rotters' Club is on the television tonight, repeated on Saturday. I hope they recreate a Berni Inn.

Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest-
I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;
Selah
I would hurry to my place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm.

Analysis of why this is relevant will have to come from elsewhere, I think.

I'm reading the books of 'Yes Minister'.

I have that Kelman on my shelf, above me, Martin.

I thought that The Rotters' Club TV programme was possibly a better TV programme than the novel was a novel. That could possibly be true even if the novel was better than the TV programme?

It had been at this point, however, that Kate flickered highest. 'Oh you may very well loathe me yet!'

Really at last, thus, it had been too much; as, with her own last feeble flare, after a wondering watch, Milly had shown. She hadn't cared; she had too much wanted to know; and, though a small solemnity of remonstrance, a sombre strain, had broken into her tone, it was to figure as her nearest approach to serving Mrs. Lowder. 'Why do you say such things to me?'

This unexpectedly had acted, by a sudden turn of Kate's attitude, as a happy speech. She had risen as she spoke, and Kate had stopped before her, shining at her instantly with a softer brightness. Poor Milly hereby enjoyed one of her views of how people, wincing oddly, were often touched by her. 'Because you're a dove.' With which she felt herself ever so delicately, so considerately, embraced; not with familiarity or as a liberty taken, but almost ceremonially and in the manner of an accolade; partly as if, though a dove who could perch on a finger, one were also a princess with whom forms were to be observed.

I was moved by the sad little boy in chapter 2.

I think it has something to do with THE SOUL, but I can't remember. I may well be talking out of a hole in my hat.

I haven't read anything today, because leading literary light Jerry the Nipper made me drink too much beer last night and my BRANE goes synapses, crackle and pop.

Am back to my book about Nelson, but am seriously hampered by having to run a table quiz last night. It was top fun.

'How many folding picnic tables do Argos sell, as of spring-summer 2005?'

I am reading JOB BOOKS.

I am seem to have given up on Bosnia. I lost all momentum.

It is good and I like it.

I really, really liked that book when I read it.

Am now reading The Law of the Playground by Jonathan Blyth at the dinner table, Funeral Games by Mary Renault in bed, and The Terror Before Trafalgar by Tom Pocock on the train.

It won't send you to sleep, even if you want it to.

So far I have read: What Is A Novel?; Defoe & Swift; Fielding and Richardson. Next up, is: Austen and Scott.

Also other various (mostly SF&F - currently The Dark hand of Magic by Barbara Hambly) books that are suitably handbag-sized for daytime reading.

The Hotel Majestic is not one of the better Maigrets that I've read. Maybe try The Hundred Gibbets or Maigret Goes Home.

I need to learn how to italicize.

The 39 Steps (anti-Jew)
Shampoo Planet (claptrap)
Something by Kenzaburo Oe in Spanish (too difficult)

I ended up reading:

Heavy Weather

This morning I have been reading:

The City

i'm about midway through al kennedy's indelible acts. it's extremely well-crafted but i'm finding it pretty unsatisfying.

PJ Stringything, Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling or PG Wodehouse? I simply must know.

It contains more typos and simple grammatical errors than any other book by TE. In the later chapter, it also perhaps becomes too intellectually casual: thus Truth in Henry James is moral, but also aesthetic - a bit like it is for doctors, who are scientists but also practical people; an infinitely fragile thing (OK), but also, in Nietzschean fashion, a matter of contest and who wins power-struggles (really?)... while Art, which is, remember, a vehicle of Truth (and also Morality - which it also undermines by dissolving the moral agent in too many impressions) is supremely disinterested, but perhaps not, and is also the greatest sacrifice (which is also a kind of triumph), and is anyway impotent cos it's about people who are made up.

It strikes me that TE in this vein is a little too much the alchemist, too ready to turn one term into another. Coming soon: his verdicts on Joyce and Woolf.

I don't like Heavy Weather either.

I have sold The Hotel Majestic.

I have reached WWI in Bosnia: A Short History. The real Franz Ferdinand seems like an unusual person to name your group after. It is quite funny, the story of how he reversed into his own death.

perhaps small (self-absorbed) truths, e.g., re: love.

Pinefox, won't you adopt me so that I might learn to read again? Take me away from here. I am dying.

I tried starting it several months ago, but wasn't in the mood. I'm definitely in the mood now and it's really captured me... Ever since I first read Peter Hoeg and Henning Mankell, I've been trying to remind myself that I need to read more foreign crime fiction/thrillers. Can anyone name some other authors I should try?

Yes I can! Because I've just finished 'Roseanna' by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, and it was wonderful.

It's a police procedural set in Sweden. It starts really slowly, gradually picks up pace as the investigation picks up clues, and gets unbearably tense at the end.

PJM, yes, TE does do that Bosnia thing - but I don't think that that's the thing that I was trying to describe him as doing: I was trying to describe the way a concept, in his hands, turns into another concept - which is energizing and exciting, especially for a wee teen, but maybe also risks losing what a concept was to start off with.

Youn, in reading that book, is probably closer at the moment to whatever HJ is really about than TE or I who are merely generalizing about him from distant heights.

I finished TE's book, by the way. I have written up my impressions, somewhere, either side of, either side of, Match of the Day 2 yester, yesterday.

I think that Alastair Gray is Important. I bought his Lanark, at last, not long ago. Will I read it soon, though? It's doutbful.

BTW, people - what book should I take to America? I think it should have America in it.

Press studs = poppers, I suppose. The repertoire expanded into baggy white dungarees and MC Hammer/harem trousers, but not much further.

I just finished 'The Trick is to Keep Breathing' by Janice Galloway, as well.

On the train this morning I started Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire, but had to put it away after ten pages and listen to some soothing Phillip Glass because the awful, tedious, blowsy prose was making my head hurt. Which only served to cement Mary Renault as a fantastic writer in my mind, because she managed to tell clearly the story of the tangled succession wars and riots throughout Asia and Greece after the death of Alexander, while Shirley Hazzard can't get a bloke off a train and onto a boat without me having to read several sentences twice to figure out what she's on about. I will not be finishing this book.

But now I have Lanark to start. So hooray! I am really looking forward to it.

I like Poor Things and The Rise and Fall of Kelvin Walker very much. I know, wrong thread.

I have nearly finished Bosnia. I read Heavy Weather to help me sleep. Next I will read A History of the Arab Peoples.

I think I am 'through' with italics.

I like Poor Things, too. Somehow that seems too slight a comment to justify a trip to the Gray thread...

Starski: yes, the Oh Mercy section is incredible.

I am wondering whether to take a Lorrie Moore book to the USA. That is, to New York City.

Did you have a particular Lorrie Moore book in mind, PF?

Regarding Lorrie Moore I have only read 'Birds of America'.

Bring Paul Auster or Jonathan Lethem. The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead is a good recent book of essays, along the lines of E.B. White's This Is New York; either of them would be great to read while you're here.

I'm staring at the cruise ship docked on the west side of Manhattan Island as I write this, and it reminds me of The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay.

There are hundreds and hundreds, but they're all slipping my mind...

I think I'll steer away from Auster, though I understand the recommendation. The geezer Lethem I have never yet read.

Yes, things do slip the mind, don't they?

Jealous, eh?

Before that I read "Appointment In Samarra" by John O'Hara, which had some great passages and scenes but was underwhelming on the whole.
Before that I read "Men & Cartoons'" by Jonathan Lethem. If you liked "Fortress of Solitude", it plays with the same themes, ideas and even plotlines in a couple of cases. But some of the stories are great.

I'm reading Nobilis by R Sean Borgstrom now.

I'd like to see what the original Give Me looks like. I think a trip to Brighton Beach looms on the horizon...

I'm also reading the more portable 'Queen of the Tambourine' by Jane Gardam.

If I expected this to actually be about tambourines, would I be disappointed?

Trekked home with a grand total of ten book from the shop today. Someone was getting rid of a whole collection of medieval history textbooks, which Bloke wanted, and some popular history books, which I wanted.

Denezhkina’s book ended up being interesting, if not a little bit stuttered (perhaps because Bromfield translated the slang noun for the male genitalia as “prick,” and called pot “dope,” which I think doesn’t sound right in the writings of a modern-day twenty-something). I think the interest in publishing her book was more because she talks about young Russians doing drugs and having sex, rather than any sort of great literary value. But I did love reading about these Russian parties in dachas where everyone drank vodka, sang songs, and then ended up just sleeping wherever. I remember quite a few of those.

I didn't read it all in one go - abt 20 pages and then nothing for a week, then the rest of it in a cpl of train journeys, coincidentally finishing it on the same day that 'bowling for columbine' wz broadcast on C4. I enjoyed it, found it quite pleasant, prob more so given that I'm familiar with his style - though I'll need to read it again...but for now and I'd like to get that Vigo 2 DVD set - did you post abt that somewhere?

After that I understood it a bit better, spatially, and had lots more thoughts about it, mainly about culture and ethnicity in UK vs US or something, until I finished it, when, as usual, my thoughts dissolved into the book's closure.

It might be the best magic-realist novel I have read, though that is not inherently saying much.

I see that Jed says it is 'mightily over-written', and maybe he is right. I guess I would sooner say that it can get too hooked on its own hip rhythms - though that is somehow not a very good-looking statement.

I wonder whether JtN likes the bit about the best Bwian Eno wecord ever (apart from all the other best Bwian Eno wecords ever), at the end.

I think that the answer that JtN did not yet get around to giving was probably David Thomson's The Whole Equation.

Come to think of it, what about The Last Tycoon itself?

A book about LA that you don't need to read is Less Than Zero.

It has gone upmarket I don't doubt (as per the latter stages of the book) but like I say - lots of problematically breakable glass. The, the ... 'bodega' is some kind of corner shop. I guess it always was.

The problem I had with the space was the casual way he writes things like "Dean, that's known. Somewhere up Nevins or in the wastes or Hoyt, you're an alien. It's not even Star Trek, there's no re-run Kirk on Schermerhorn" as though we know what all these things are and how they relate to each other. I thought it was really a book for people who know how all that stuff works (I mean, literally - what streets go N, S, E, W, where the junctions are, etc), Brooklynites, et al. But as I said - this cannot be a very cogent criticism coming from me, for a New Yorker reading Dubliners is in a similarly unaided void.

It is true, for me, what Youn says: things that feel very striking and vital when reading can seem abruptly to evaporate once you've finished the darned book.

It wasn't the dialogue that impressed me so much as the odd brief description. Something along the lines of 'a voice deep like the weeds at the bottom of a lake'.

It struck me as Woolfish, although that might be because of the servants and that. Ford MF struck me as Jamesian.

cozen I got the Vigo today, hoping to watch it soon.

finishing 'minima moralia' right now.

not sure what to read next...

julio }} that vigo DVD cost me £30 yikes. hope you wr a bit more frugal. I'd like to read minima moralia.

I am reading jacques attali, 'the political economy of noise' and frank kogan, 'the disco-tex essay'.

I had not thought of Waugh. I think perhaps the Woolf thing comes from a shared fixation with water imagery mingled with much murkiness.

Neil M Gunn will have to wait. It struck me as Morvern Callar-esque, only without the railway track.

"It is true, for me, what Youn says: things that feel very striking and vital when reading can seem abruptly to evaporate once you've finished the darned book."

this is true & terrible!

btw i think a month on wings of the dove is pretty friggin fast if it's anything like the ambassadors.

um what am i reading right now, white noise, the cash nexus, arms of krupp, mostly.

Unless it's a secret.

Now greedily raiding the BRAND NEW public library in all its loveliness! First off the pile: Wodehouse - Cocktail Time, Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude, Robert B Parker - Melancholy Baby.

"some pervert, who will not take the very thing he needs" [heavy paraphrasing]

I'm wondering why anyone would feel the need to log out before posting this opinion. Is there a horde of frothing-at-the-mouth interweb Lawrencians who will descend on you en masse if you dare to criticize him?

FWIW, I liked the first chapter.

and i remember he had a way at least early on of being all "see this is what i'm saying here i'll say it again for you", i dunno i'd have to read the 1st chapter again i guess.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=17756

Hmmm, so being #9 on the Modern Library's list of the best novels of the 20th century is a severe anti-s&l consensus?

cozen the vigo cost 30 quid, but You'll always come across something gd stuff second hand...these thing even out.

I am back on the Culture Club book. It's not that good really, except as a blast from the past of rock journalism.

Lewis Carroll - The Annotated Alice
Plato - Euthyphro, Apology
Philip Dick - The Man in the High Castle
David Lodge - Changing Places
? - Starting Electronics
Li Po - Selected Poems
Luis Bunuel - My Last Breath

At the moment...

Plato - Crito, Phaedo
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights
Douglas Hart - The Camera Assistant's Handbook

Slowly...
Douglas Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach
William James - Principles of Psychology
Bernard Williams - Truth and Truthfulness
ASC - American Cinematographer's Handbook
BKSTS - Projectionist's Manual
Ansel Adams - The Negative
Herodotus - Histories

Upcoming...
Tacitus - Annals and Histories
Abelard and Heloise - Letters
Vaclav Havel - selected plays
The Old Testament...maybe...
Simon Louvish - The Cosmic Follies

I've been suffering a bit from bookhating lately, mostly because the last four novels I started reading, I had to give up on after about a hundred pages*.
Finally something clicked though:
José Saramago - Blindness
Only downside is that the Norwegian translation isn't too hot, and included a fair number of typos and the like that could easily been fixed if someone gave it a final read-through before they sent it to the printers.

Aside from that, I'm also reading these:
"Dangerous Visions", the classic 60s speculative fiction short story collection edited by Harlan Ellison. Great fun so far.

"Reading Jazz - A gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now", edited by Robert Gottlieb. Seems like a nice collection of this'n'that, though it doesn't really seem to go much beyond the 60s/70s (the newest autobiography entries being Braxton and Cecil Taylor)

And Hunter S Thompson's "Fear and loathing on the campaign trail '72"
Yes. I am indeed one of those people who never bothered to read anything by him until he was dead. I dunno, I always expected lots of annoying Merry Prankster type of rubbish, which Tom Wolfe made me hate, hate, hate, so I never felt the urge to explore.

Lewis Carroll - The Annotated Alice
How is that? It sounds quite interesting. I love both of the Alice books and have been thinking that I get myself a nice volume of them to read to bits. I'm a bit afraid that heavy annotations will just be annoying when I want to enjoy the text without all the other rubbish prying itself into focus though.

*I'm sorry to say that Pullman's "The Golden Compass" was one of them. Helsike heller, I didn't even get to a hundred pages with that one.

now baraka's 'blues people'.

I wanted to move on to Wodehouse, whom I've never read, but didn't get too far and plan to pick it up when I'm more in the mood. Instead, I picked up Pnin and devoured half of it this morning.

I gave up on the stupid book about exorcisms. I mean, who really cares, right?

Just finished Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland. Hated it. All the worst whimsicalities of poor Coupland. Also read Mr. Phillips by John Lanchester, which I loved. Now reading The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler. I'm really stretching myself at the moment, huh?

2) A Certain Chemistry by Mil Millington. My mindless bus and bedtime book.

3) Hound of the Baskervilles. Reading this aloud for Matt's benefit.

4) Alice Through the Looking Glass. There's a promotion going on at the moment called 'The City Reads', effectively trying to turn Brighton and 6 other cities into a massive book group. The book is Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and they are giving the Penguin editions out free in the library! (I mean obviously there always free books in the library but um, you don't have to return this one.) Again reading aloud. Matt likes the chess element.

i just started all three of these books.

empirebyhardtandnegri
portrait of the artist as etc
lolita

actually i fibbed i have not yet started lolita but i hope to possibly within the hour.

Just finished Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage, another disappointing and formulaic book by someone I'm used to reading. Yesterday was my birthday (35! so old!) and Bloke bought me the complete Sharpe on DVD. So I probably won't be reading anything for a while.

"The Analyst" by John Katzenbach.
Why oh why did I even begin reading this? I'm finding it harder and harder to find schlocky airport popcorn novels that I can honestly read without a constant feeling of illwill towards the author and just about everything in the book. Ok, workman-voice and all, if the plot grabs, it can be fun for fast reads, but it's become dreadfully difficult to find ones that I don't lose all patience with.
I think about the point where I thought "hrmm, she's wearing a big coat, I hope she's not naked underneath and the author's planning to 'shock' us with this any moment now", only to have this happen, oh, five pages later.
That was the point where the paperback made a nice smack against the wall. Good grief!

I know there was one more I gave up on, but I can't recall what it was. Meanwhile, my poor copy of "Blindness" is coming unglued!

It means repellant, off-putting.

I've never read Lolita, so I can't help you there. But if Adrian Lyne can read it, how hard can it be?

pf: the setting for TFoS could hardly be more different from my own experience growing up but I'm not really finding it offputting, so far. Perhaps the actual 'obsession' with unfamiliar race/culture issues becomes more apparent later? But I think the book could definitely be tighter, with a bit less tell and a bit more show.

It is better than Mumbo Jumbo, you know.

is it pretty easygoing or is it all academic and abstract like EMPIREbyhardtandnegri?

Happy Birthday! yeah, i'm in the middle of The Amateur Marriage and it isn't doing much for me.

Well, if you're familiar with them, I see no reason not to. The pedantism usually doesn't go much further than is actually verifiably interesting, plus it gives a shitload of new dimension to the work - and I mean actually new meaning, not just new conjecture as to metaphysical meaning (although a shade of that too sometimes).

I wouldn't recommend it for the first time out on the Alice books, but if you see a copy in the bookstore, sit down with it and try reading it for a chapter or two (as they are short).

Fred: Whenever I trip over something in the woods, I always think of The Tommyknockers.

Is that the one about the history of the calendar? With the blue cover? It was all right.

Just finished reading Rats by Robert Sullivan. For a book which was supposed to fulfil my non-fiction requirement while still giving me creepy thrills, it was a bit of a let-down. There was just too much of him standing around in an alley looking at rats, and not enough gory stories about the plague and how fast rats multiply and people having their faces eaten and so on.

Now reading C.V. Wedgewood's The Trial and Execution of Charles I. It's fun. Still no creepy thrills though.

scott- yeah I know...i did enquire abt this a while back but mark is closer and he said he'd do it (I'm not at home so I can't check my inbox but I think that's what was agreed, actually there was a bit more but my memory fails me).

This seems to distill the general take on it. I wish there was a 'Fortress of Solitude Reader' with just the highlights.

Bloke is really pissing me off at the moment because I've finally persuaded him to read Boxy an Star and he keeps putting it down and wandering off to look at plastic bags blowing down the street or something, and I just want him to bloody well finish it so I can read it again. Save me, Jeebus!

I finished my book about King Charles and it was really good. I don't really know what to read now. I've got a good book about Lord Cochran around here somewhere. Apparently he helped Bernardo O'Higgins to liberate Chile.

I'm a fifth of the way through Donna Tartt's The Little Friend and really not wanting to read it at all. It's reminding me too much of The Lovely Bones, which I thought was just awful. Come to think of it, I wasn't raving about The Secret History when I finished it either, although it was an enjoyable read... perhaps I should just give up now. Unless someone feels compelled to convince me otherwise...

(Okay, maybe not as good as Levin and his peasants [AK, Book 3, Chapters 11 & 12], but that's a personal preference that I'll probably never get over.)

(I don't know how I missed them before, it's not like I don't look at the sci-fi section every time I go into a bookstore)

I'd recommend that you do not bother going back to it. If John Iriving had written To Kill a Mocking Bird really badly and without the help of an editor, it would be this book.

I'm reading Newton's Tyranny, which is a book about what a wiggy git Isaac Newton was.

the suffering channel by david foster wallace

LOLITA

civilwarland in bad decline by george saunders

i guess i'm gonig to re-pick up empire. i'm hoping it gets a little easier after the first thirt ypages. (????)

I've just realised that the title of this book is funny.

I'm reading 'The Promise of Happiness' by Justin Cartright (a good book ruined by outrageously unconvincing dialogue) and 'Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life' by David Boyle. Just about to start 'Nature Via Nurture' by Matt Ridley, or maybe 'In Praise of Slow' by Carl Honore. Basically I have an enormous pile of library books taking over my living room and I don't know WHERE to start.

I'd recommend that you do not bother going back to it. If John Iriving had written To Kill a Mocking Bird really badly and without the help of an editor, it would be this book.

I abandoned this also, not without misgivings, because there are passages in it as brilliant as anything I've read in any recent novel. But otherwise it's a baggy and infuriatingly self-indulgent mess. Accentmonkey OTM on the need for a good editor.

This new bookmarks function might mean I remember to visit ILB more often :-)

- I wonder what you mean by this. I would like to hear more.

It is nice that someone finds Myles's last novel hilarious.

I guess I found Boxy an Star hilarious.

One line that slightly tickled me, in a B&S-ish way perhaps:

When she was a nun, sooner or later one and the other of the Brodie set came to visit Sandy, because it was something to do, and she had written her book of psychology, and everyone likes to visit a nun, it provides a spiritual sensation, a catharsis to go home with, especially if the nun clutches the bars of the grille.

Kenneth Koch has lines like that. I will find proof in a moment.

Exp. was recommended to me as a hilarious book by someone who failed to be tickled by Nicholson Baker's Mezzanine. So I was curious. But unfortunately my undiluted hatred of M Amis was confirmed by Experience: his constant attempts to try to show how really brainy he is, all the while proving that he's a real man because he spent so much of his time wagging school, his ludicrously myopic view of Kingsley Amis' position in the history of literature: ie., thinking that the bloated boozehound B grade writer who struck lucky with Lucky Jim is some sort of literary great. But probably the worst thing that I found about the book was M Amis' unanalysed (he specialises in that) "grief" for his murdered cousin, all of the "Oh I can't bear to think let alone write about what could have happened to poor dear Lucy (or whatever her name was)", while all the time being quite happy to discharge in sly gruesome notes what happened to the other girls. For me, this grotesque double standard, or whatever it is, confirmed the uglynarcissism about Amis, that til that point had been restricted to his laughable lauding of the old King.

As for Cosmopolis, I hate to say that my main interest in reading this was to see how such a short book read. I finished a novel last year and am keen to start another this year, but with a second baby on the way concluded that, at best, it'll have to be a short book. I also read McEwan's Amsterdam with brevity in mind and was amazed that this insubstantial (ie in plot and structure, not just in weight) won the Booker.

In Cambridge, my landlord had this book on his shelf. This contributed to my high opinion of him, for the bit referred to above.

I was told, back in the day, that a lot of people consider Muriel Spark slight and inconsequential. So perhaps it isn't about anything very much, although that is no handicap in my opinion.

I am back on The Complete McAuslan.

I would like a book that is like The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society, if anybody knows one.

Started Tom Bissell's Chasing the Sea for a non-fiction break; wanted to read this before I read his God Lives in St. Petersburg collection.

Also (slowly) reading Roger Scruton's Introduction to Modern Philosophy. I loathe his politics but he writes about difficult subjects very clearly and I think it's probably the best short introduction to mainstream modern Anglo-Saxon philosophy.

Having several books on the go at once is a habit developed when I was a younger, more voracious and persistent reader. It doesn't make much sense given how relatively little I read now.

I quite liked Experience although I read it some time ago so have only a hazy recollection why. I certainly like it more than MA's recent fiction, which admittedly isn't saying much. I like Kingsley enough to be fascinated by him, which no doubt helped. And I dislike MA enough to be pleased to have so many of my prejudices confirmed. To be fair, I disliked him a little less by the end of the book, if only because it was the first book of his that I'd read for many years that I didn't regret starting.

I just finished Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer (loved it) and last night for some reason picked up an old copy of John Keats's Letters that was lying around. I devoured these in high school (actually pretty much anything by and about Keats), and re-reading his love letters to Fanny Brawne took me instantly back to that time. Funny how some things burn themselves into your brain like that.

The Origins Of The First World War by Gordon Martell which is a rather good analysis of the alliances, alignments and betrayals that led up to the war - but it is making me feel sleepy on the train.

All authors that I've never read before.

Wally Nightingale, the Forgotten Sex Pistol.

"His Excellency George Washington" by Joseph Ellis
"My Life In Orange: Growing Up with the Guru" by Tim Guest

good, if you appreciate the Hemingway school of short and direct prose (and machismo), too many of the stories have ended with a little existential twist that seems forced, but a few of them are pretty amazing.

Have also just given up on Slaughterhouse Five. I really don't get on with US lit these days.

I quite liked Alexandra Fuller, but I find the idea that her parents are still alive to read her books quite strange. Also her story is not as unique as she seems to think.

Houellebecq's "Lanzarote" - pointless but short.
Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint" - smart and short.

on:

Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty one day" and not finding it funny. I have laughed once so far.

Jed, try 'Santaland Diaries'. More laugh out loud moments I think.

Cozen, I meant it as an expression; but, I could see the ambiguity!!

I am also reading Underground London by Stephen Smith. It's very enjoyable but also pretty prosaic, which is fine, but compares unfavourably in my mind at least with other, more flowery writers (Ackroyd, Morris, Sinclair). The topic's a great one, though.

I think that is my favourite Conrad. But I have not read enough.

The Dwarves of Death indeed does decline as it goes. Never more than plain in its style, it becomes outlandish in its denouement. I am beginning to wonder if What A Carve Up!, rather than The Closed Circle, was the exception to the rule.

I have got What a Carve Up waiting for me!

(PUT ARCHEL IN CHARGE!)

I think you might like WACU!: it is very good, and the exception to the rule, etc.

I am not quite sure what to read next. I think I ought to read Lanark but I like reading short books, cos I get the satisfaction of finishing them more often and more quickly. It is the, instant gratification culture.

Well spotted, The Pinefox.

Although I'm sure you're right, about me.

A short book is A Month In The Country by, erm, JL Carr. It's so short it's not worth buying.

I'm sure I will like WACU! too.

I did that job in fact (briefly), the minion I mean. We'd have a little profile on the borrower and what they liked and had to go round packing up suitable goodies for them. It was great.

Unfortunately mobile libraries are rub :(

Personally, I hate free libraries. If they were abolished, people would spend more money in my shop.

I am currently reading the second of Alexandra Fuller's books about Africa - Scribbling the Cat. It has all the hallmarks of the second book in a two-book deal. Similar descriptions, slightly forced situation. And she does that thing I hate, where people try to see themselves in everything, even things that are nothing to do with them and they could have no possible experience of.

Next, I shall read Mauve by Simon Garfield. It seems to be very good, judging by its cover.

Aren't you thinking of Kes, Foxman? Except it's not mobile. And he doesn't steal it. And it's about kestrels.

That kestrel in Kes, when it first appears, is the greatest screen debut of all time. Knocks spots off Audrey Hepburn.

My mum also talks to other people on the mobile library van. They talk about grandchildren.

All of which makes me think the mobile library is not rubbish.

The System of the World - third volume of Neal Stephenson historical fiction trilogy mentioned waaaay above. There is increased Isaac Newton content, and it seems more broadly comic than much of the rest of the writing in this [grouped set of books: what is a general noun for trilogies/quadrilogies etc? 'Series'?]; perhaps he was getting tired after 3,000 pages.

Handbag reading: Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman, horrid purple paperback edition. He is very informative and amusing, too pleased with himself but that's his thing, you know? I'm very fond of the Princess Bride.

"As I should have known it would, the increasing current took me by surprise."

The book is High Tide by Mark Lynas.

O.Nate - and it is odd and pleasing to think that I now know O.Nate - : I have read that novel, c. July 2000. It took me a long time. It has a certain relentlessness, a plainness of voice perhaps? But I am very fond of it. The overall narrative is very odd, because the same characters seem to last about 40 years in it, sometimes (in the case of Ellen, if that is her name) under several different names.

Odd chapter titles too I recall: 'Fine Lady Upon A Cock Horse', 'Ferryslip', 'Fire Engine' (?). And odd interchapters whose distinction from the main chapters wasn't very clear (am I right? I don't own the book, see). I liked the notion of the firebug, in summer in the city, and the image of the fire engines - as in WC Williams and Charles Demuth: http://www.wisdomportal.com/Christmas/Figure5InGold.html

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

- odd, though, that in his reminiscence WCW says it was 'a hot July day', with no mention of rain, let alone darkness.

don paterson, "the dark art of poetry"

I've been making faster than my usual progress on reading it - though the motivation of having the book club is probably some help. I guess the fragmented structure can make it difficult to get into. There are narratives and characters that last through several episodes, but then there are lots of other episodes that seem to have no obvious connection (other than the place and time in which they occur). Also I agree that the handling of time is strange in the character of Ellen, who seems to age decades in her sections whereas there is no sense of time passing anywhere else. The titles are unusual and the little imagistic blurbs that kick off the various sections. I can see the Joycean influence in the sort of third-person stream-of-consciousness perspective and the playfulness with language - though there is a sort of steady workmanlike feeling about it that is different than Joyce's more lyrical flights - as well as a kind of social realist political angle that shows through some of the set pieces. The paperback copy I have has a blurb by Dave Eggers on the front - though that didn't stop me from buying it.

Yes, those blurbs were what I was mistakenly thinking of as interchapters - odd format!

No, it wasn't deliberate, PF. He's a good stick, but writes like an arse.

I write like a stick, but am a good arse.

I started a Jeeves book, obtained unprompted from the library by my wife. I bet you all wish you had a wife like that.

Yesterday I bumped into Ken Chu on Gower Street. We stood and chatted beside a Richard and Judy Book Club window display.

It has four dimensions.

(NB, it does not have four dimensions)

London-based book-loving chums may be interested to know that Waterstones on Gower Street are selling some 'academic' books at 'less than half price'. The stuff in the window looks quite good, and quite amenable to poeple with normal-sized brains. For example, they have John Bayley's Iris Murdoch memoirs, and Eamon De Valera biography and IBM and the Holocaust. And many, many more.

I haven't been in, I just saw them in the window this morning and thought of YOU.

I am reading a Smiths book by somebody Goddard, I think. It is funny and good.

Yesterday I bumped into the Pinefox in Russell Square and we expressed horror that I was on my way to the gym.

PJM, I have already bought the de Valera book, as announced, on I Love Books.

It is odd that you should approve the Goddard book. The standard old-sinister line, I think, is that he did a lot of valuable research but can't write for liquorice. I saw him recently and he spoke less problematically than he writes.

Despite my negativity here, I, too, still intend to buy the 2nd edition of that book.

There has been a lot of bumping into lately. Ken Chu was going to the gym too, although I suspect his intention was to eye up the birds.

I did not see your announcement, PF. Otherwise I would have kept my trap shut. I think Lauren likes book bargains.

All the funny bits in the Smiths book are quotations from Mozzer, so the other bloke doesn't matter much. Also, it is like an extended interview with Johnny Marr. Maybe the author is less prominent in this edition. I REMEMBER the Derby Assembley Rooms programme. I watched it. There were goths. Why isn't it available on laser disc?

Do you REMEMBER Tony Wilson's interview with Marr, echoing amp and all?

Thanks, Casuistry.

scott deveaux, the birth of bebop - social and musicological history, one of the best things i've ever read on jazz (which may not be saying a lot).

eric lott, love and theft - this was so intensely interesting that i forced myself not to start the first chapter proper yet because i have too much to do right now.

beyond that, a bit of wcw, melville, kierkegaard, wittgenstein, whitman to occupy myself in free moments.

meltzer's 'autumn rhythm' is fantastic - by turns record/bk reviews, poetry, biog and some extraordinary stuff - I couldn't quite work my feelings on this - abt his relationship with his parents, esp his mother.

now its trotsky 'art and revolution'.

Now I am reading Get Off, Jeeves! or something like that. It is good. Makes commuting almost bearabubble.

I also liked How Late It Was, How Late.

YES! (I agree) Maybe less is more sometimes, literary ambition-wise.

And lack of ambition is certainly something I cling to in my own writing. Ha.

I got tired of Notable American Women by Ben Marcus and started American Tabloid by James Ellroy instead.

It didn't help my attitude that RJM is currently reading Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist aloud and we are at the fiery stinky pits of Hell part.

Finished Mauve and am now reading John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure. He's so great.

Currently breezing through Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment, which, like most Pratchett, is quite alright, though it doesn't make me laugh like Wodehouse novels do. I've been thinking that Pratchett might be a sort of comfort read for me, as his juvenile "Only you can save mankind" is the first novel I can remember having read in English.

srh, have you read undset's axe trilogy? i got halfway thru and they were great!

josh, have you read "the presentation of self..."? i've been meaning to pick it up again.

Not the only one. I loved it dearly and can see myself reading it over and over again. I can't say that for many novels.

I loved the bit of magic realism in FoS, because really, I wanted to do the same type of thing when I was a kid. I'm sure at times I did convice myself I was a superhero, and it was my shoes or underoos giving me the power. I attribute it more to thinking out loud, a vivid fantasy rather than him actually flying around. It did take me a while to get used to the second part of the book, but I thought the obit was a beautiful interlude, and I really needed the closure that it offered.

found an interesting review last night that complains abt. collins taking (some) philosophy's self-valuation at face value, prioritizing metaphysics and epistemology over value theory, so that his whole map is distorted. don't know how viable a criticism that is yet but it seems fair; for a large stretch of history, collins would HAVE to include way more supposedly non-philosophical figures than the ok amt that he does (for purposes of comparison, etc., like ancient rhetoricians, modern mathematicians, etc.), if he wanted to keep his story adequate to the history of philosophy-/-value theory.

I am reading nothing but chess books.

Ken I just seem to have a resistance to this sort of thing and if I'd realised that was the sort of thing it was I wouldn't have started the book. Enough people seem to like it that I'm happy to admit the fault is probably with me. I've read enough of this kind of stuff, including the stunningly tedious One Hundred Years Of Solitude twice to feel I've given this genre enough of a chance.

How do you know you are in love? Did you look in the mirror?

It is centered around the author's travels in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Yemen, where he partakes of a large amount of the drug qat. The main interest is in the exotic locale and the fact that very little has been written about qat - which appears from his descriptions to be mainly a hypnogogic drug, with a few other attributes - or about Yemen. If either interests you, the book is worth reading.

Nope, nope, nope, really nope, and yes, it did seem a bit pointless. Sigh. If only I had known these things beforehand, I would not have bothered.

I am going on holidays on Friday - a reading week in a cottage in Yorkshire. I must choose my books with care.

I just spent a week staying in houses with TV, and my god it ruined my attention span. A few solid hours of daytime programming and I couldn't read at all! Even Wodehouse! I just can't handle The Box any more, obviously.

It is good that Youn is finally trying Lot Lot 49, I think.

Yesterday I finished Jeanette Winterson, The Passion. Only 160pp but oddly stodgy, slow going. Perhaps it is her messianic, sonorously serious voice. But I see that Michael Wood reckons it perhaps her best.

Archel: When you live with a TV, it becomes surprisingly easy to do both. I watch a lot of television, and still read obsessively. Often during the commercial breaks.

Cozen: Yes, Uncut.

PF: Yes, we have come a long way. I am delighted that I know tow people in real life who have written B&S reviews in Uncut.

Also, have you seen Chris Geddes's Reporting Back from Palestine? They have come a long way too. I thought it was going to be silliness. I disapproved. Also, this explains why Struan was a bit off colour for JtN's interview, I think.

http://www.belleandsebastian.com/newsstory.php?id=224

Ha ha, there is a picture of my mate Sean at the top. Except I think the pictures change.

queneau's 'exercises in style'
foucault's 'history of sexuality: 2'

now its greil marcus 'lipstick traces'.

Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis?

can't decide what next. maybe more medieval history.

I had my struggles with Lights Out a couple of months ago
http://oldrottenhat.typepad.com/oldrottenhat/2005/02/the_king_is_dea.html

A book I absolutely *love* is 'And The Sea Came In At Midnight', but I know JtN doesn't think much of it, so maybe it doesn't appeal so much to people who Old Erickson really works for?

I can't decide what to read next. Should I read Michael Frayn's Headlong, recommended to me by one of my volunteers, or a book about scurvy, called Scurvy, which I bought on holidays? Decisions, decisions.

I just finished 'Family Matters' and 'Summer Moonshine' [a slightly deeper Wodehouse than normal, not necessarily in a good way] and am now reading 'Fahrenheit 451'.

Also I love it when I get to throw around words like "anti-scorbutic".

I'm reading the Mortdecai trilogy. I'd never heard of it until Matt shoved it at me in the library saying 'well, you like noir/crime and Wodehouse, this should be your cup of tea?' or words to that effect. But possibly it's shit? I don't know yet.

I'm reading David Mitchell's "Ghostwritten" and it's fucking fantastic. I don't want it to end.

n/a: I loved that book. I think it would be odd to meet a person who didn't feel that way about reading Ghostwritten.I need to read it again...

(i mean the poetic not the book obv)

me:

w. 'on certainty', some books on northrop frye, empson's '7 types'

One big thing in its favour is that it is not like Wuthering Heights.

but as soon as I do I will let you know.

I am enjoying it a lot more than f.r. leavis.

I would like to think that you could enjoy Leavis also.

Cozen, have you read Austen? It (she?) possesses alterity, for me.