Autumn Reading

1 - the Magic Mountain. Hard work. I'm reading it because I think its going to educate me, and that's never a good primary reason to read a book. 2 - the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which was absolutely fab. I found myself reading it along the pavement and bumping into people.

i. *Folly* - Laurie R. King, near beginning, potentially great but perhaps too intense and dark already, about a damaged woman building a house on a lonely island. She's a brilliant writer.

ii. *Invisible Man* - Ralph Ellison, extraordinary, really as good as Joyce, a Candide-like black man's journey from the South to New York, written in the late-40s, rambling and passionate. Wonderful.

Currently Reading: 'Flashman' by George Macdonald Fraser. Picked it up in a charity shop after reading a thread abt this series right here on ILE. V. easy and enjoyable read: also shockingly sexist and racist (tho 'historically accurate' I'm sure). My copy, which I think is a paperback first ("for what it's worth"), has a truly horrible photo cover that makes it difficult to read on buses and tubes. Also picked up 'Flash For Freedom' and 'Flashman's Lady' at the same time, for a whopping total of £1.30 (typically bizarre and inconsistent charity shop pricing. They also had 'Flashman And The Redskins' for 80p - at least twice the price of the others - but being a cheapskate I baulked at the price. ) My sense of history generally pisspoor, so am enjoying actually picking up the odd titbit of fact amongst all the roistering and caddishness - sure that's part of the appeal of bestsellers, the promise of both knowledge and entertainment.

Before that read Art Spiegelman's 'Forms Stretched To Their Limits', his dissapointingly brief bk abt Plastic Man artist Jack Cole, designed by the ubiquitous (and IMHO overrated) Chip Kidd. And have been slowly working my way through a trilogy of novels by the Americian author John Hawkes.

i. 'Not Fade Away' by Jim Dodge. Amercian road trip gubbins. Not my normal sort of thing. Good.

ii. Hmm.. can't remember but it may have been 'Shopping' by Gavin Kramer, a fairly good novel about English people working in Tokyo.

i) The Unconcious Civilazation- uses adam smith to disembowel neo cons, fucking brilliant, nasty and hopeful at the same time
ii) The Flounder - Gunter Grass - The far of the sexes perprated by the flounder who gives wishes . A bizzarre and clever movie that is piss enducingly funny in places
iii) Agnes Martin Collected Poems- Rarely does an artist write effectivly , but it is as holy and ephmeral as her paintings

let me edit that . I meant move instead of movies and i meant writtings instead of poems.

i. Donald Barthelme's 40 Stories. partially because of ILE recommendation (comapred to Donald Antrim, who i like a lot). not really enjoying this though, although it has to be noted i am not a huge fan of short stories.

ii. Nicola Barker's Wide Open. really enjoyed this, which surprised me. i wasn't sure if it would be the kind of thing i would like. sparse but not spartan if that makes any sense. reading customer reviews on amazon people were saying it was difficult and pointless, but i don't see that at all. in a strange way it made me think of early Tindersticks but in a more *wide open* way, perhaps inverting their claustrophobia? anyway, it was good

i. 'In Siberia', Colin Thubron. Fast read. Too much natural descriptions, I want to see more drunkenness and squalor.

ii. 'Pig Tales', Marie Darrieussecq. Reminded me a bit of Anna Kavan, with society disintegrating first in the shadows of the narrative and then bleeding entropy all over everything.

have just finished (in less than 15 hours including sleep as a result of being ill in bed and unable to speak): Douglas Coupland-All families are psycotic. Very enjoyable complex twisting plot a bit let down by a soppy hollywood style ending. Otherwise good, probably be quite a good one for communting, lots of short chapters and good break points.

i. richard powers, the gold bug variations. it is good, yes; powers is one of the best out there right now, i think. his galatea 2.2 was one of my faves of the 90s. billed as the gravity's rainbow of the last decade and i can see the comparisons, at least in terms of breadth of knowledge and intricacy of the plot. involves science and dna and music and stuff -- it's a perfect josh book i think.

ii. last week i finished rushdie's the moor's last sigh and roth's zuckerman unbound. moor is like midnight's children -- a indian family through the ages, told from the point of view of the scion -- but without the allegories so it's better. zuckerman unbound was great, but felt a bit insubstantial, as do most roth's prior to the counterlife; i seem to tear through them like my sister goes through james patterson novels.

Not sure what to start next. I have Moon Palace by Paul Auster, a collection of Harlem detective fiction by god knows who, Love and Money (?) that Julian Barnes book... and possibly more, but my brain has been slowed by WURK.

On the train back to London yesterday: finished What a Carve Up! . I was emotional anyway, but after crying at the midway and end point, felt like I shouldn't start reading anything heavy or affecting for a while. So I read Confessions of a Shopaholic or something, that my mother had given me. Read it in about 30 minutes. It was rubbish. Plot: financial journalist girl can't manage her finances. In the end she becomes a TV star and starts dating rich guy and her bank balance ends up fine. Turns out she was actually a financial whizzkid after all, but could only express it through the medium of TV. Pile of unentertaining arse.

Note to fred: did you know Jonathan Franzen's latest is on Oprah's Book of the Month Club? ;-)

Between my 2 classes, I have a lot of reading to do: mostly about records management and archival materials, and yes it is as dull and boring as it sounds. As a result I'm too burned out to read anything for fun at the moment, with the exception of fluffy stuff like Vogue. It's sad, but I don't even remember the last book I finished for fun, even though it was probably about a month ago. It must not have been that good, obviously.

Currently rereading Lord of the Rings in advance of the movie and the fact that I might never get to read them again with my own vision in my head. ;-)

Last read Hunter Davies' The Glory Game, an in-depth study of Spurs in their 1971-72 season. And quite good it was too.

The Peloponnessian Wars - Thucydides. Pretty great, although one notices that he was a warrior himself, you don't get a lot of details of, you know, the impact of the war on everyday Greece. When I tire of reading that I read a story from this nice collection of Japanese Science Fiction stories. Has a great story of a box that is born and starts to figure out what its purpose in life is. After I finish that I'll start on DeLillo's 'Great Jones Street'.

nicole: YES! which is why i submitted my "story" to oprah in hopes of appearing on the show!

So that Dr. Phil can talk to you about your problems? Cos Oprah doesn't have a Story of the Month club...

1. I am, I suppose, rereading At Swim-Two-Birds - *again*. Yes, it's ace, but still not my favourite of your man's.

2. I guess the last book I came near finishing was Myles Before Myles, also by your man. This is, for the most part, *much better than AS2B*, though AS2Bis ace as already stated.

Apart from that - I did pretty much finish Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn. That was very good too. Come to think of it, I also reread The Third Policeman. This is terrific, but maybe not quite as impressive second time as first? I'm not sure.

I also read the bulk of Sue Asbee's book Flann O'Brien (1991).

Oh, dear.

Just finished: Tom deHaven's _Dugan Under Ground_. Very good, I thought - a fiction story about brothers and lovers with the 60s comix underground as a backdrop. Better than that description sounds. 3rd in a "trilogy" (covering the history of the graphic sequential narrative, from the funnies to the Crumb years). A quick read. Read for business, but was very pleased.

Soon to start: Not sure. Either this Freudian-esque analysis of the collector's impulse (which I started, but left aside after some distraction - probably porn - grabbed my eye), or any number of fiction books I haven't read yet (a collection of Harlan Ellison stories, the newest Michael Chabon book, some Walter Mosely sci-fi book I rescued from B&N for $4, a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book retrieved on the same rescue mission, etc.) I still have some Harold Bloom tome about The Canon that bored the shit out of me the last time I gave it a whirl, too. Oh - and The Three Kingdoms (which I now reference as "The Bible on crack").

Reading - compulsively - Andrew Rawnsley's Servants Of The People. Excellent gossippy political journalism, a few insights into Blair's current mentality, and generally invaluable and intoxicating stuff for anyone even thinking of undertaking a Big Project (politicised or otherwise). Has got me away from ILE (and work!) for a whole day almost.

Also Montaigne's Essays. Early days yet but comfortable and interesting going. Geezer.

Finished: Pelevin's Babylon - very funny but either I lost my grip on the plot or it lost its grip on me. A wonderful realist black comedy struggles somewhere to get out, as does a great satire on the marketing industry.

1) mitchell's numer9dream - not bad; a joe queenan book - average; faulner's sound and the fury - i'm trying but i just don't geet it.

2) the passion of michel foucault - bloody brilliant, headfucking biography of phiolosophical fistfucker.

Hey Pinefox, I was meaning to ask whether you have caught up with "At Swim, Two Boys" which was reviewed in all the papers recently? It seemed to coincide with some of your literary interests and I was wondering what you thought. I haven't read it, you understand.

I am re-reading my recently recaptured copy of "England's Dreaming". The first time through I had various problems with matters of fact (in the main had to concede I was wrong, of course). This time through I had vague issues of principle with bits of it, but they're not very well-formed. Yet.

i. "The Shah of Shahs" by Ryszard Kapuscinski. He captures entire national moods in a sentence or two. This kind of travel-writing mastery usually gets me all suspicious but right now I'm taking it all on faith and I do like it.

ii. "Acting" by John Harrop. Surprisingly enlightened yet predictably "eccentric" twunty English musings on what it is that makes an actor good. Fully up to speed on post-Method Mametesque "the action and nothing but" technique, sussed to Brecht and Artaud, but prone to bad puns etc. that should not have survived the translation from lecture-notes to book.

nicole: no, no. as you may know, she has monthly shows that discuss the book show selection. on the website, it said, "did the corrections affect you in a special way? send in your story and you may appear on the show!" so i did. even without me on it, it should be an interesting show since franzen is a BIG FREAK.

dave: the chabon book is quite good. it has great pacing and he's an excellent storyteller. (and if you ever had any interest in comics, it's that much more appealing.)

i. Notes From Underground, Dostoyevsky; Eugene Onegin, Pushkin. The one great, the other good, obviously.

ii. The Double, Dostoyevsky. Godawful fucking filth.

i) George Orwell, Selected Writings (it's a Heinemann Educational copy I got for free when my old school's English dept. had to offload a load of books - get the essays in other volumes all over the place...) anyway, Orwell is great, isn't he? His essays and novels seem to be what I'm looking for so he can do no wrong in my eyes. Apart from some of Politics and the English Language which gets a bit OTT, I thought.

ii) War and Peace. Tolstoy. Surprisingly readable (it has a bit of a heavy reputation, doesn't it!). Very well written, at points couldn't put it down, despite it's immense weight. (The £1 edition - bargain!). Could have done without the heavyweight philosophy invading a very good novel, especially at the end. If you have philosophy in a novel it should be subtle, or just intertwined, a la Orwell. Or keep it seperate, also a la Orwell.

Oh, I forgot...finished: Uptight: The Story of the Velvet Underground, Bockris and Malanga. Very good overall coverage, especially EPI years. Worth it for Malanga's hilarious diary entries alone.

At the moment I'm reading X-Men: From The Ashes and Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. They are both good, but not to the same standard as other things I've read in the genre or by that author.

The last book I finished was South of the Border, West of the Sun also by Murakami, it was excellent. Last comic type thing, Marvel vs. DC, surprisingly worthwhile!

1)'How The Dead Live' by Will Self. Read a lot of his, but after the last one ('Great Apes') being unadulterated shit on a shitty stick I wasn't sure whether to even start this. But I did, and I like it actually.

2)'V' by Thomas Pynchon. Saw it in a 2nd hand bookshop, thought of the ILE massive, and bought it. Cheers guys, I love it, and am going to try and find more of his soon.

Oh, right, I just finished Anna Karenina a couple days ago. Gotta love Tolstoy, the man can really bring the fluff.

i. I'm not in the middle of any book right now, I need to get to the library. ii. The last book I read was How to Stop Time by Ann Marlowe, an autobiographical account of heroin use. Before that I read Sputnik Sweetheart, I haven't read anything else by Murakami, any suggestions?

Hopkins: like my editor, who raised the same buik with me yesterday, I have not (you understand) read it have gleaned many opinions to shake around over a pint from one or two reviews, at most.

We offer the following opinions: title sucks; he says: pointless to write derivative book over 15 years; I say: 1916 as date re. Ireland is awful hackneyed - as though your book on radicalism was set in May 68, or your book on pop in August 1976, or - you see.

Book Handling Service also available.

Your judgments on the punXoR book: fabulously Hopkinsian.

I just ordered Murakami's collection The Elephant Vanishes last night. A net friend of mine put one of his shorts online.

I've been reading Charles Simic's Night Picnic which is quite great. Smart, funny, and accessible. As well as some some Yeats.

My link above fucked up.

Just got hold of JG Ballard's 'Super Cannes', so I'll read that when I've finished reading 'You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again' which is... amusing in a tabloidy way.

i. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a birthday present. It's good, although I'm still getting over the private stigma of reading something labeled "New Age." (I really like the no grades idea. What have I been telling people for years?) I've still got a third of the book left, though, so it could turn bad.

ii. Great Expectations, which I liked very much because the characters were interesting and it seemed to be exactly what a basic novel should be before doing anything modernistic or avant-garde with it. Exaggerated imagery delights me. (Also, I spent an hour looking for Miss Havisham music with a friend. We finally decided Alanis was suitable.)

Thanks for that link BNW!

1. Have just started Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind which is about the rise of the movie brats (Coppola,De Palma, Scorscese etc) in the earky 70's. I've only read about 20 pages but it looks promising.

2. Strictly speaking it was Very old engines by the Rev Awdry which is one of the Thomas books to my son this evening. The last book I completed was Noel Cowards diaries. Entertaining in parts but he was a bit of a self obsessed bore as well. Started Tony Parsons Man and boy but gave it up half way through, as I could imagine Parsons voice too well in the narrator and it seemed astonishingly misogynistic too.

I've a massive pile of books to get through but top of the list are The Business by Iain Banks, Awaydays by Kevin Sampson, History of the world by JM Roberts and the Tao of Muhammad Ali by someone who's name escapes me.

i. I've just started Lust by Geoff Ryman. When I say "just started" I mean I've read like 2 pages. They're both quite good though.

ii. Well, the last books I read were during my holiday a few weeks ago. They were (in no particular order): Breakfast At Tiffanys, Truman Capote (good); The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (bad); The Perfect Fool, Stewart Lee (actually quite good for a book written by a stand-up comedian); The Little White Bird, J M Barrie (ace); The City And The Pillar, Gore Vidal (ace); The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting, Milan Kundera (good).

i. "The Decline of the West" by Oswald Spengler. Don't know why I'm reading this (probably cuz I found both volumes in a used bookstore and had to buy them), but it's pretty outlandish stuff. Reads more like german romantic poetry than history so it's pretty entertaining. Also sort of timely, as the "clash of civilizations" meme arguably started here.

ii. "A History of Genetics" by Arthur Sturtevant. Excellent, mostly first-hand stuff about the origins of fruitfly genetics.

I can't read fiction at all anymore. I haven't finished a novel in years.

The Making of Smile The Story of Ed Wood The Life of CG Jung Emotional Intelligence

I am currently reading Bertrand Russell's book on Western Philosophy. The people I am staying with have his book on maths. I am tempted to pick that up as well. I have bought a couple of books on art at SFMOMA.

i. Let's see... understanding that I am leaving some things off this list because I haven't touched them in long enough... A Philosophy of Mass Art by Noel Carroll, Languages of Art by Nelson Goodman, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, the Cantos by Pound, The Icon and the Axe by Billingsley, Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon, Fateful Triangle by Chomsky, Berryman's Dream Songs, and Plato's Euthydemus. And: yes, maybe but it's damned obscure, yes, not feeling anything yet, appears to be, my favorite book being reread, perhaps but his style is aggravating, one of my favorite poets, and perhaps but I'll know when I finish it tomorrow.

ii. My list says Pale Fire but I have probably finished some Platonic dialogues since then, Ion and the Hippias Major. I was a little disappointed by the Nabokov. My dislike for Kinbote made it hard to enjoy some parts of the book. I'm not sure how exactly that worked. I didn't exactly think Humbert Humbert was the world's most lovable narrator, but then again he was probably at least an order of magnitude or two less grating.

are those golden books Josh?

Well, these lists put me to shame. At the moment I am reading books to review as I am the Literary Editor at the Edgy Style Magazine where I work. These are by Stephanie Theobald ('Sucking Shrimp', not as good as her last, 'Biche'), Jennifer Belle ('High Maintenance' which is good fun if not great art), plus waiting for my delectation David Byrne's 'The New Sins' (update of Bible smut, which, sight unseen, indicates he's a good 15 years behind 'Circus Maximus' which will tickle Nicholas Momus no end). There will be others but it's unclear until I get to my heaving postal sack at work which they will be. None of you would * believe* some of the dreck I get sent -- which goes straight to MVE's book shop to be sold to raise dosh for my Sin Fund. Worst thing I read recently was Emma Richler's 'Sister Crazy' which appears to have been published because Mordechai died and someone felt sorry for her who happened to be a publisher or literary agent. It's PANTS. But my job is fun when I get, say, Zadie Smith *months* ahead of y'all or get to tell 100,000 people how good Michel Faber is. One to watch for next year will be Hari Kunzru, whose book The Impressionist comes out in March. He's been paid zillions for this so there will be an unpalatable publicity overdrive, but he's worth it (I trust the publisher who bought it for the UK and Hari has been writing for places like Mute for years). I am also going to laugh my arse off when The Guardian start kissing up to him as they ignored his freelance incarnation...stupidly.

And yes, having insider information about the publishing world does make me jaded and annoyed.

Books I've been dipping into are various Derek Jarman diaries and autobiography (they're all essentially remixes) and Doris Lessing's 'The Good Terrorist' (stupid squat commies fall victim to internecine squabbles and their own delusions). I would spend more time reading better stuff/filling gaps in my literacy but there's often scarce amounts of time. Which is saying something, because I can read a review book in about three hours so should have plenty of hours left over. Agggh.

None of you would * believe* some of the dreck I get sent -- which goes straight to MVE's book shop...

Those of us who worked in MVE's bookshop would believe it all too readily.

The last book I read - Bram Stoker's Dracula. It made me realise that no film has ever even come close to doing it justice. It's a triumph of humanity over evil, a classic story. The epistlary style threw me at first, it all consists of diary entries and letters between the main characters, but that just added credence to the whole account. I wasn't expecting it to have such a powerful emotional impact.

Still wading through Tolstoy's "The Resurrection", the last novel he wrote before his death, and certainly the heaviest, he wrestles with all the big issues in this one, religion, justice, redemption, society, love, guilt, warfare. It's all there - I can't help but feel the weight of the world on my shoulders every time I dip into it - you can sense the writer's struggle. I haven't got a clue how it's like to resolve itself but I'm hanging on in there.

And speaking of films not doing books justice - I caught the start of Matthew Lewis' gothic classic "The Monk" on telly a couple of nights ago - I turned off in digust after about fifteen minutes. A totally shabby performance all round. Too many films based on books just turn out soooo diluted - they take the main (read obvious) themes and tear out everything else.

I just finished a fantastic piece of pulp eigties horror called The Fungus. Its bout an enzyme which enlarges and speeds up the growth of all fungi - so ends up with people exploding due to massive yeast fermentation in their gut, being consumed by their own thrush and other visceral and visual ways of dying. Descrip[tions of London overcome by fungi brings to mind a fantastic alien landscape - completely unlike Goomba City in Super Mario Bros. The actual story is bobbins, but it gave my imagination a solid workout. It has screenplay (with different plot) written all over it.

Noel Carroll is a pinhead: discuss.

josh: you're still reading gr? and, yes, kinbote was an aggravating fellow, but in a very amusing way, i thought, with his self-importance and his willful misinterpretations of the poem.

josh is always reading GR.

To appreciate Pale Fire in all its glory, it is essential to read it in the correct order. I didn't read the poem until I'd first read all Kinbote's footnotes. It added so much to the novel's impact, because that way you really feel the full weight of Kinbote's quixotic lunacy. I found it tragic and hilarious by turns, easily the best of his exile-themed novels.

i. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence. Not enjoying the "she wanted to be happy, to be natural like the sunlight but he wanted her to be dark, unnatural" nonsense, but struggling on because I.. must... finish... books.

ii. The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket. Brilliant, funny and it only took me an hour.

Wot's this, Mark?? I've got a ways to go and have not read any of his positive views at all but Carrol's treatment of some popular anti-mass-art theories at the beginning seems well-handled. I think he's going to be at the American Society for Aesthetics conference that's meeting here in two weeks, woo hoo.

I was delayed for a couple-few months in the middle of section 3, Fred. I just started reading again the other day and finished 3, will probably make short work of the rest.

When reading Pale File I decided to ignore Kinbote's instructions (why the fuck should I trust him?) and read the book in bursts of poem followed by commentary, sometimes reading more commentary until I knew it would get me through the next few stanzas, or so.

I'm pro-Josh and anti-Fred on the Kinbote issue. I just wanted to throttle and/or slap the pompous twit. It's funny - when I read it I assumed everyone would feel the same way, but many, like Fred seem to be able to muster some affection for him at the same time.

i think i am confusing him with david carroll, josh: who wrote para-aesthetics: foucault, derrida, lyotard?

(mark s is a pinhed discuss)

I am now reading REAL COOL KILLERS by Chester Himes who was a BADASS jewel thief back in the days before DVD players and "white goods". He bogged off to France and wrote THRILLAZ about badass Harlem cops and getting beaten up. I admit I've only read about ten pages of it before I went to sleep but it looks vv nihilistic and violent and promising. BADASS.

Pale Fire is better than Lolita, I think. It takes some time and work "deciphering" and playing puzzle games with. Me? Finished "Transformer: The Lou Reed Story" by Bockris. Man is Lou an asshole. Good book though. Reading "The Battle Cry Of Freedom" which is a teriffic book on the civil war era.

That's "D.", presumably David, Mark. MARK S IS A PINHED

I guess I had some affection for Kinbote, Nick, but it accrued near the end and it was still not enough to make me like want to be his friend or anything.

you people are still posting! jesus!

nick, i hope only this is so on the pale fire issue alone. i did muster some affection for him, affection that, on the nabokov scale, falls somewhere between timofey pnin (a lot) and van veen (not a lot). he's pompous and a twit but he seems to use both to paper over his sometimes palpable pain and rejection.

That seems fair, Fred. But - you had less for Van? Oh dear. Ada is on my start-soon stack...

i. Remembrance Of Things Past: I'm in the chapter 'Swann in Love'. The description of the sonata is really frustrating. So far I prefer the chapter on Combray - the description of the church, the foreign perspective of childhood.

ii. White Teeth: I nearly finished it, but then I had to move and stopped reading it for a while. It was too boring to continue so I gave it away to a friend. I found out interesting things about the English middle class (not all of which, I think, carry over to whatever is the American equivalent).

Gunter Grass : it has these raptures of beauty and elegance, then these sections of almost BEckett like absurdity. Then it switches the dissociative persoailty midsentence. It is so hard to explain but it makes me hungry every 15 pages or so,

I just finished reading a childrens book called The Golden Horseshoe by Patrick Duggan. It was written very cleverly - the evil guys were really slapstick. I missed that when I read it as a child.

Don't know what to read next. Probably some non-fiction or another childrens book.