It's Time For Another "What Are You Reading?" Thread

So what's anybody else reading?

dang I meant to put this on ILE

Algren's "The Man With the Golden Arm", finally. I'm ashamed to admit I'm from Chicago and just getting around to reading this in my 34th year. Has anyone ever made the poor so rich? Also, and incomprehensibly, still trying to choke down Eggers' latest. I don't know why I'm so determined to finish this uninspired story. But I keep waiting for the payoff (no pun) that may not arrive. Bukowski, "Tales of Ordinary Madness": nice to have some Buk going.

marlowe's faustus

Right now, I'm reading "the Bobby Gold Stories" by Anthony Bourdain. I just finished the Jonathan Richman bio, "There's Something About Jonahan" by Chris Somebodyorother.

woah, is that a new Bourdain book? He really is a great writer.

The Man With the Golden is so unbelievably great. God, what a book. I've wanted to see the movie forever and I still haven't.

lately, thanks to that "overacademic bullshit" thread I've been rereading Aesthetics of Rock and skimming around Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought.

The last novel I read was purchased at an airport: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I think I heard about it on Oprah.

Now I'm reading Screened Out by Jean Baudrillard, and The Woman that Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--one of the first radically feminist sociobiologists, in case you were wondering.

I heard about her from Discover Magazine.

Reading too many books at once, of course. Usually results in me never finishing one. But...

Notes of a Madman by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Hold Hands and Die by John Maguire (yet another book about JJ and the People's Temple - i'm a borderline expert at this point)

Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks

Fruit-Gathering by Rabindranath Tagore

and Tape Op magazine when on the toilet

I'm reading The Last Party at my house (and kind of The Groundwater Diarys, but I kinda gave up on it) and at Joe's, I just finished Einstein And The Solar Eclipse and I'm still slogging through The Selfish Gene. The Selfish Gene is utterly amazing. It zings through the most incredible scientific stuff with the utmost of ease, but then just when you're prepared to dismiss it as dry and academic, it inserts (heh heh) a random anecdote about the evolutionary derivation of the human male errection. Blindingly brilliant.

(I also thought that I bought a book on linguistics but I seem to have misplaced it.)

currently reading Blood Meridian (or the Evening Redness in the West) by Cormac McCarthy.

I think it would be pretty if ILM had one book thread (we also read books you know, its not just music all the time etc etc!).

I am going through Steve erickson's 'Rubicon beach' which is a real page turner.

Afetr that I think I'll start reading Thomas Kuhn's 'The essential tension' for the Kuhn thread on ILE.

I am reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche and Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller.

I just got on a biography kick. Right now, reading about Neil Young, Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. And getting them all confused. Hello Absinthe Cowgirl in Jerusalem, or something.

Oh, and fictionally, a reasonable literary mystery called "About the Author" by JOhn Colapinto

I'm very, very slowly trying to read Francoise Sagan - 'Bonjour Tristesse' in French. Nothing else.
How are you finding Tropic of Capricorn, Mike? I've made a couple of failed attempts to read Tropic of Cancer, but couldn't seem to get into it at all, without actually disliking it.

A book about Carvaggio - the man Brett Anderson always wanted to be. Eugene O'Neill's - A Long Day's Journey into Night and by my bedside - Flannery O'Connor's short stories and JD Salinger's Franny and Zooey.

Magazines? NME, Heat and the National Enquirer (got a coffee table about the National Enquiry for X-mas - it is, brilliant...).

word virus/w. burroughs
annuals for dummies

I just finished a short, but very interesting, and surprisingly enjoyable, book about Wahhabism, entitled Wahhabism: a Critical Essay, by Hamid Algar. It's hardly a neutral account, but it packs a lot of information into one slender volume, and the author's sarcastic asides are often quite funny. It left me quite interested in knowing more about the Wahhabi origins of Saudi Arabia.

I just finished Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari, which I enjoyed in spite of the author's superior grumpiness. I'm not sure what's next, though The Emperor and the Wolf, a recent twin bio of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, has worked its way to the top of the bedside stack. And speaking of superior grumpiness, David Thomsen's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film just ascended to its new home atop the toilet tank.

James Crumley - The Collection
Again, for the 4th or 5th time, the best hard-boiled since Marlowe....

Who Moved My Cheese
Unlimited Power!
How to Seduce Any Woman

Just finished Only a game by Roy Keane's mate Eamon Dunphy.

I'm now onto Antony Beevor's The Spanish civil war. I shouldn't be surprised, but I still am at people's casual cruelty in pursuit of an ideal.

multitasking:

David Cavanaugh's The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize (which i've been reading on and off for awhile---is good, but dense and i just haven't felt like lugging it around with me, which is the only way i get anything read anymore); this book on the history of food in China called, quite amazingly, The Food of China by i-forget-who; Diana Wynne Jones' A Sudden Wild Magic; the May issue of Mini Magazine.

other things might sneak in once in awhile. the only two in my bag today are the last two.

An early collection of Joe Bob Briggs' film reviews. Dave Q's only challenger.

currently juggling "bubblegum music is..." anthology, "young gifted and black" and (still) "midnight's children"

Joan D.Vinge's The Snow Queen and Alien Blood. light, Summery fare, good for bus-stop waits. still chipping away at Danielewski's House of Leaves, though i'm starting to wonder why i bother.

Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser -- his follow up to Fast Food Nation, which was an incredible book. This one's taking a little longer to get into.

Ball Four by Jim Bouton
Rythm Oil by Stanley Booth

Like Roger, I keep my copy of the current Tape Op mag in the head.

Also: Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Jimmy McDonough's Shakey. Has there been a thread on this Neil Young bio yet? McDonough certainly has an axe or two to grind, and a tale or two to tell.

Simone: I love Blood Meridian. I've always thought it would make a good movie too, although not one that a lot of people would wanna see.

I'm reading Stanley Elkin's "The Magic Kingdom" and it's staggeringly good.

The McSweeney's Mammoth Blah-Blah-Blah of Some Stories That are Thrilling and some that just plain stink.
Boogaloo, by don't know who, about black music in America.
Tishomingo Blues by Elmore Leonard
just finished I Don't Want to Go to Jail by Jimmy Breslin, loved it.

Background to Beekeeping, by some decaying Englishman. 20p from the library!

just started both murphy by beckett and ways of seeing by john berger

Books are rockist. I've been reading articles instead.

got down to re-reading Why Mildred Skis/ Wear Mildered Sheets #5 the other day

I have some of them winging my way I think

(note: Julio, Mark, Frank - if you're reading this - a thousand thanks + 1 - I've been silent during the whole correspondence but THANKS - thanks Mark - I WILL pay, obv. - I'm normally disorganised but I WULL pay, obv - Julio, I have finished making your CD today and will send it soon :)

anyone read London Orbital?

Bulgakov's "The Master & Margarita" (Norwegian translation, my Russian is rather... no)
Keith Lehrer's "Theory of Knowledge"
Deitel & Deitel's "C++ How to program.."
Piers Paul Read's "The templars"

Oh, and for some reason I got an urge to learn German, so I got a couple of schoolbooks from the library to try my hand at it.

What a geeky summer, indeed. I usually only read one book at a time, but hey, only one of these is a novel anyway.

Just finished recently:
The Club Dumas - Perez-Reverte - very good
Ishmael - ? - the one with the talking gorilla - nothing special
The Climb - Anatoli Boukreev - Another view of the 96' Everest tragedy - good
Otherland - Tad Williams - I'm actually on the 3rd installment of this enormous saga - enjoying it very much so far

yeah i read ishmael a while ago,the writing was terrible,but the idea was quite interesting by the end of it...
master and the margarita is really good

I've not been reading anything heavy. I am currently reading "The Long Orbit" by Mick Farren and re-reading "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Mick Farren is a fun writer. I found a stash of his paperbacks for a buck each at a used bookstore in town and have been going through them one by one. In the past couple of months I have also read "Necrom" and "The Feelies". I still haven't heard any of his music, but I plan on checking out that first Deviants record someday.

I'm reading 'The Ill Tempered Clavichord' by S.J. Perelman and 'Shirley' by Charlotte Bronte. That Jonathan Richman biography someone mentioned early - what did you think of it? Quite boring and repetitive?

''(note: Julio, Mark, Frank - if you're reading this - a thousand thanks + 1 - I've been silent during the whole correspondence but THANKS - thanks Mark - I WILL pay, obv. - I'm normally disorganised but I WULL pay, obv - Julio, I have finished making your CD today and will send it soon :)''

thanks. and of course when i get my copy of wms I'll make sure you get it.

re: that jonathon richman bio. Definitely the worst music biography I have ever read. Boring and repetitive, yes. And, given that the author appears never to have talked to the subject, unsurprisingly lacking in insight. Hell, even lacking in interest in the subject, I thought. I only finished it 'cause I was very jetlagged at the time.

I'm reading Ambient Century, which stinks, unfortunately, and Will You Still Miss Me When I'm Gone?, which I'm enjoying. Finished DeLillo's White Noise last week & loved it.

I´m reading this book about the Surrealists talking about Sex, very funny and interesting.

Jose Saramago: Blindness
Ken Saro-Wiwa: Sozaboy
Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Mark Leyner: The Tetherballs of Bougainville (again)

just finished James Lincoln Collier's two young adult novels from '67 and '75 again: The Teddy Bear Habit and Rich and Famous. He was a crap jazz writer but George Stable is a great character. Loved them books when I was a lad.

Oh, and waiting for Emma to finish Lemony Snicket #7 so I can read it. Dude is the best prose writer in the U.S.A., no question.

I'm currently reading The Russian Debutante's Handbook the frequently funny, picaresque debut novel by Gary Shteyngart. I discovered Shteyngart through a short story and an article about T.a.T.u. in the New Yorker. He also has a colorful travelogue about Montreal online at Slate.

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon.

I'm loving this book about 1/3 into it. It's a murder mystery written from the perspective of a 15-year old autistic boy. Very entertaining with some math and logic bits thrown in for flavor. All chapters must be prime numbers!

I'm now reading "Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York" by L. B. Deyo and David Leibowitz.

Alex, I got that exact same book with my Amazon order for the afforementioned book. I'm looking forward to reading that next.

I'm only ankle-deep into it, but it's cool so far.

I just finished Tom Robbins' Villa Incognito which was hella fun and fulfilling, and am cautiously delving into a very strange and ridiculous piece of print called Teach Yourself Fucking whose author's name I can't remember and has photos of his fully exposed (and aroused) genitals on the cover, the majority of which's content is goofy scribbles.

"miami" by joan didion, the new lester bands anthology, "necropolis railway" by andrew martin, an orwell anthology, and "love signs." i will always be reading "love signs."

Just finished Aleksander Hemon's Nowhere Man, which I really liked. About to finish ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which I'm really liking. I'd been meaning to read both those books forever. Also the Believer, Entertainment Weekly, and the New Yorker. Oh, and Classic Material: the Hip-Hop Album Guide, which mostly sucks, but I paid 16 bucks for it on impulse so I might as well read it.

Oh yeah, I finished the Shteyngart, which ended up being slightly disappointing - the second half didn't seem as funny as the first half. After that, I read Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh, Moon Palace by Paul Auster, an autobiography of Nikola Tesla, and Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser - all of which were pretty good. Now I'm reading If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, which I've been meaning to read for years.

Reading a novel for the first time in far too long - Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate. It's OK.

I just finished Bill Drummond's 45, and am about to read John Faheys How Bluesgrass Music Destroyed My Life and Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

I am reading Argall by William Vollmann, because I am dumb.

I'm reading Sense and Sensibility, and it's taking em AAAAGES. It's the grammar - I just don't get it. I'm on chepter 29 of 50. Getting there eventually.

I have a theory that Jane Austin is like porn. You have the cool dialogue every so often, and that bit's REALLY cool (like the sex), but then you have pages of annoying "then she went here, and then she did that, and found it most disagreeable" and it's boring as hell, just like the acting.

Why don't you try something with less subtlety? And your theory is total crap mate.

It's Jane Austen (with an e) incidentally.

I'm making my 10th(ish) attempt at "Gravity's Rainbow". I'll beat the fucker this time if it kills me.

Good luck w/ the Pychon, Jim. I've tried it quite a few times myself.... and failed each and every time. I know it's commercial, but i just finished "Seabiscuit" and was absolutely blown away. The horse-racing scenes make you feel like you're there.

Julio Cortázar's Cronopios and Famas, which i'm enjoying immensely, and Gaddis's The Recognitions, which still feels like far too much work.

I just finished a one volume history of the US civil war called "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson.

I'm leaning towards starting up "High Rise" by JG Ballard, which I found at a libary sale a couple of months back. What is funny is that the copy of the Ballard book came out of the US Naval Observatory Libary in Chicago, which I found as rather strange.

I read a lot of essay collections (maybe I have a short attention span). Most recently, I re-read "Men, Women, and Other Anticlimaxes" by Anatole Broyard (my favorite writer). Also, "The Difficulty of Being" by Jean Cocteau, and "Nalda Said" by Stuart David (Looper/Belle & Sebastian).

finished flann o'brien 'at swim two birds' this morning.

now PKD: The zap gun.