What are you reading

Just starting "The Princess Hoppy, or, The Tale of Labrador" by Jacques Roubaud which appears so far to be a crazy Oulipian fairy tale run through with maths. Actually, if any mathematicians are reading this, you might be able to help me. At one point early in the book, the dog says "a rou ith our eleents is autoatiall outatie". Now this clearly means "a group with four elements is automatically... " what?

Just finished a long biog of Howard Hawks by Todd McCarthy - it was ok (lots of old Hollywood goss, which I love) but the author admits that Hawks was a v. secretive character - never wrote letters or kept a diary, was generally thought to be a bit of a cold fish - so you never really get any idea of what motivated him (apart from gambling, cash and the casting couch, anyway.)

Omar - that's one of my all-time faves. I wonder if we'll see that fictitious scenario happening for real in the near future? I think that novel has never been more relevant than it is today. The most poetic and poignant book I've ever read.

Currently skipping through Final Cut by Steven Bach, a brilliant book about the legendary film disaster Heaven's Gate by one of the participants (he was the production executive at UA in charge of it). Read it before, so I'm just indulging in some of the better bits -- Bach's an excellent writer, witty, trenchant, and not above beating himself up for errors of judgment. After that, I'll probably work on reading more of the Avram Davidson collection, while I just got the Philip Pullman trilogy yesterday, along with a Fredric Brown anthology and the two new Earthsea books from Le Guin.

If This is a Man-Primo Levi, about the third time I've read it, fantastic. Also for College interestingly enough.

And The Lords Of The Rings-Book I found in my house about corruption in the Olympics. pretty good.

Also, a book on the Taliban named "Taliban".

Backburner: The Brooklyn Book of The Dead.

At some point: Letham's This Shape We're In.

I just finished The Elementary Particles (aka Atomised. skimmed A Drink With Shane McGowan over the weekend. trying to get into Kavalier & Klay which I know I'll like, but I kind of have a non- fiction craving right now.

'lynch on lynch'. by lynch, I guess. and some editing bloke?

katsuo ishiguro-'an artist of the floating world'

anthony bourdain - 'a cooks tour'

The book I'm currently reading "most" is Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, for the second time. The book I'm reading second-most is Culture and Value, miscellaneous aphorisms and remarks from Wittgenstein's manuscripts. Mike Daddino got it for me! He is ace, you know. Also I'm reading some articles by Patricia Hertzog on Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and musical aesthetics, and skimming some Kierkegaard and such for that, and then reading a couple things on artistic intentions and on rap for another paper, and some of Aristotle's metaphysics for another paper. And of course the 500 books I also still have going.

I'd also strongly recommend "Brothers of the Head", a similar title to the above, but a totally unrelated Aldiss novel about siamese twins that form a rock band. Imagine the Gallagher brothers joined at the hip (god forbid) and you're halfway there. They also share a third head that doesn't do anything - a bit like Bez.

Also am reading 'Mythologies' which is great. The vision of Barthes, no doubt a soft-spoken, trenchcoat wearing, pipe-smoking man attending wrestling matches in ugly halls somewhere in the pits of Paris is amazing. I wonder if he really got into it and started shouting "salope" at key moments. :) And then when I have time to spare I read a chapter from 'The Order of Things'. It's the sort of thing I read as alternative sci-fi these days.

letters of abelard & heloise.

man, i wish i cld write such grebt letters.

Cocksure by Mordechai Richler

The Dubliners.

man, i wish i cld be james joyce.

But, y'know, not dead.

shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafon

Y'all are invited to visit I Love Books, where this exact question is our bread and butter.

And there's pretty much one thread, just like this one.

dude, i read at a snail's pace (??) (and my brane is fried so i kant schpell for shit). hence why i post here and not on the ilb board. :-( i feel like a dimwit (but in reality i am a mom of two with very little time)

http://www.guerilla-ciso.com/

Maybe Aimless can write something about parenthood like he always does for marriage.

Ah, parenthood! Thy name is on my lips.

What can I say about parenthood that I have not already said, while shrieking at the top of my lungs, tearing at my hair and foaming at the mouth? Nothing, I fear.

starting Tobias Wolff's new short stories

Is there any way of getting the new ones without getting all the old ones too? As far as I can see it's one of those 3-new-stories-plus-greatest-hits jobbies.

I hope not, I think I have (or had) all the other collections.

i didn't know he had a new collection. love this guy.

am currently reading 'the heart is a lonely hunter' by carson mccullers. i started this ages ago and just picked it up again.

- 'Lug Your Careless Body Out of the Careful Dusk' by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
- 'Blue on Blue Ground' by Aaron Smith
- Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams (I finally have come around to him!! Very excited)

coming up:
- some book by Jessica Grim
- the Far Mosque by Kazim Ali

I'm reading a whole bunch of nursing textbooks. I started reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett in January, and am about halfway through. I won't be finishing it until this semester ends, though.

Sara, I have that one. Actually I have two of his, one in audio format (YUCK, I hate audio books, never again!) and one in paper format.

this thread.

Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, by James T. Patterson, and Open Gate: An Anthology Of Haitian Creole Poetry, edited by Paul Laraque and Jack Hirschman.

I was reading The Exception, by Christian Jungersen, but it got too intense/uncomfortable for me (the character I liked the best started putting herself in increasingly tense situations, which was just hard for me to take). Great book though (at least up to about page 300). I bought Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl, which I know is supposed to be great, but I haven't been able to get into it at all.

three books i recently checked out of the stacks for a paper:

the geography of meanings: psychoanalytic perspectives on place, space, land, and dislocation (edited by marisa teresa savio hooke and salman akhtar)

dark age ahead (jane jacobs)

nonverbal communication (ellen steele mccardle) (i shd scan the cover of this; it's very 1974)

I'm not a mom but I too read pretty slowly, mostly because of having to read a lot of other job/school-related thingies. Currently I'm halfway through Daniel Handler's Adverbs - which I could finish in a day under normal circumstances, but I'm sort of slogging through it now one short story per night.

Next up, Gentleman On the Road by Michael Chabon.

er, that would be "Gentleman of* the Road".

i am reading the new glenn greenwald book <i>great american hypocrites</i>. i don't think it was really necessary to buy since i read his salon column regularly, but i figured he should get $paid$.

next i'm going to read the alice sheldon/james tiptree jr. biography.

anyone read 'let the great world spin?'

really liked parts of it; other parts felt like he was wallowing or stretching for emotional impact iirc.

I just finished Joy Fielding's uh book Still or whatever it's called in English. Fucking awful. Great idea but it would have been better had it not been made into a book. YUCK.
Now I am reading "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher." Based on a true murder (1860). Mr Whicher is one of the first real detectives. Fun read. And it mentions a lot of fictional books so I am FINALLY going to check out Charles Dickens. And also Duhess of Malfi and the like. YAY

Finished Memoirs of a Geezer, the Jah Wobble autobiography, last week. About half way through Herzog On Herzog. The Jah Wobble book is quite entertaining, he quite frankly dishes the dirt on others but I'm sure that he's glossed over his own antics..

I work in univeristy campus shops so both jobs of mine are completely dead atm, so I'm cruising through:

Will Self - Junk Mail
JG Ballard - Miracle of Life
Paul Virilio - The Futurism of the Instant
Joan Didion - Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Finished new Ford Canada. It takes a long time for not much to happen. It feels quite a remaindered memoir.

But Beautiful - Geoff Dyer

xpost so is it any good? I am very tempted to get it.
Still reading Suspicions of Mr Whicher. After that maybe some fictional detective from that period. Bleak House? Maybe. Or something else. Hmm.

Still working my way through Canada...the pace has slowed down considerably, but I'm still enjoying it's clinically precise prose...really makes me want to go out for a walk in the country and see nature in the way that Ford does.

Read Tao Lin's Shoplifting From American Apparel before bed the other day, loved it. Pretty psyched for his new one next year. I'm also proposing to writer my Master's dissertation on realist fictive strategies used by contemporary authors, so will probably include some stuff on Lin.

Who's yr favourite contemporary 'realist' novelist?

foucault's lectures on the hermeneutics of the subject
leaves of grass
david graeber
bouvard and pecuchet
lipstick traces

recent:
peter blauner 'casino moon'
lawrence block '8 million ways to die'
richard stark 'the green eagle score' & 'the black ice score'

current:
lawrence block 'strange embrace'
joe gores 'a time of predators'
'repeating ourselves: minimal music as cultural practice' (title may not be exact, don't remember author off the top.)

just finished - "hark", sam lipsyte

now - "blindness", henry green; "on the origin of species & other stories", bo-young kim

"Blindness" was the first Henry Green I read and enjoyed. If you like reading and want to see what other ilxors are digging into, you'll find a lot more company in I Love Books, particularly this thread:

Lilacs Out of the Dead Land, What Are You Reading? Spring 2022

The Martian

In which Andy Weir answers the question, "Is it possible to make the harrowing story of one man's struggle to survive alone on an alien planet boring?" in the affirmative.

Loads of bell hooks. Things I ordered last December. Teaching to Transgress a few days ago and now all about love.

Salsa by Sue Steward
Which was mentioned in David Toop's Flutter Echo. He turned her onto some music he was enjoying and she went head over heels for it to the extent she became a bit of an expert. & this is the resulting book

Augusto Boal Games For Actors and non Actors.
Radical theatre theorist heavily influenced by Paulo Freire book on how to apply his process etc. Wish I could find a group that didn't intentionally remove the radical element. Seems a bit naff to do so and add levels of white gaze etc to things. But local group has done so. bleurgh. White feminism with a white saviour streak. Gosh how annoying.
I did just read that Freire is quite sexist in the original form which might also apply to Boal but need to read more.

A lot more on racism some stuff on indigenous turtle islanders. Half way through a Nelson Algren book too.

Egyptian Book of the Dead