As 2012 learns to toddle: what are you reading?

Bernard Cornwell - great! An author mentioned in passing in one of Nick Baker's books that I have finally gotten around to reading.

so that it would be disingenuous of him

I think this is a thing with Nabokov, perhaps by a more circuitous route than the word is usually used, and the extent to which you mind can affect your enjoyment of him, perhaps.

i quickly read Gil Scott Heron's murder mystery novel, The Vulture
http://www.amazon.com/Vulture-Gil-Scott-Heron/dp/1847678831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325964620&sr=8-1

When ilx went down I was reading James Franco's Palo Alto, which I liked. It's a collection of short stories where fairly well-off, bored teenagers do teenagey things, to varying degrees of unpleasantness and occasional horror. He writes well, there's a pleasing immediacy to his stuff.

Then I read Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, which was marvellous. The characters are great, very entertaining, and the portrayal of Berliners as largely passive subjects for whatever political fate decreed for them I found very interesting.

Then Fat City by Leonard Gardner, a story of midranking and below boxing folk from Stockton, California. Really gritty and accomplished, without going out looking for grand drama, just examining the everyday failures, mostly, and compromises in people's lives.

Then Nile Rodgers' autobiography, Le Freak, which is super-charming. Nile clearly doesn't see himself as a big star, because Chic is a relatively small part of the book, whereas he really gets gushing instead when he gets onto working with Diana Ross, David Bowie and Madonna. Loads of amusing anecdotes and interesting insights into the music. The pre-fame section is something else though, all this crazy stuff about his part-terrifying-part-amazing childhood and the ridiculous characters in it. He just comes across as the best guy ever, basically.

Now I'm reading Londoners by Craig Taylor, which is a collection of interviews with people about their Londons. Normally these quasi-journalistic things can be cliched and unrewarding through trying to cover too much ground, but this has mostly an unusual cast so far and is showing promise.

Just started Imperial by William Vollmann. One chapter in and it's pretty interesting so far, but I'd put my chances of finishing it at 50/50.

Jonathan Romney - Short Orders. Compilation of the S&S/Indy and various etc reviews of films, mostly from the 90s, most of which I've seen. Come across him on S&S when he is often reviewing something which happens to be all Brechtian and Marxist and auterist, and often from that period from the mid-60s to mid-70s so coming to this and seeing him review a lot of bullshit from the 90s like Reservoir Dogs and Schindler's List and actually coming out with the goods is great. Rare to find someone who cares. I guess he had little known gems like Quince Tree Sun to watch too (probably the best film about painting, which sounds gd until the moment you say its a 2hr flick about a man drawing a tree).

i like jonathan romney. think you can read him & kent jones discussing bresson in sync w/the current retro, somewhere online. you make quince tree sun sound good! i would put greenaway's edward munch up against it tho

& then there's that one of picasso, painting

& my kid could paint that

You mean Watkins' Edward Munch? That's great as well, yeah.

Guess when I said that about Quince Tree Sun I imagined talking about it ramdomly to someone. Making it sound more exciting might be a challenge.

that's what i meant yeah
no for sure ikwym. there's a funny lede in a sight & sound article about theo angelopoulos this week, about some joke people used to tell at festivals, that they said you start watching one of his movies at six o'clock and then three hours later you look at your watch and it's five past six

love Fat City so much

there's a funny lede in a sight & sound article about theo angelopoulos this week, about some joke people used to tell at festivals, that they said you start watching one of his movies at six o'clock and then three hours later you look at your watch and it's five past six

Poor, misunderstood Theo :-)

Read The Sisters Brothers, and was quite surprised and pleased to see it was as good as everyone had been saying

Now reading a collection of Arthur Machen novellas and short stories (currently on 'animals arise and destroy us' tale The Terror), while avoiding the introduction from super-hack Guillermo del Toro

Coriolanus
Griftopia

Anybody read Thomas Mallon? He specializes in Washington novels. I finished the pretty good Fellow Travelers, about two male lifetime civil servants who start a romance at the height of Senator McCarthy's power.

I like Mallon quite a lot, though I've only read a few of his novels ('Dewey defeats Truman' and 'Aurora 7' were especially good. His book on plagiarism, 'Stolen Words', is pretty great.

starting Babs Gonzalez's autobio

going to read steven levy's in the plex next

'murphy'

Recently read:

China Mieville, Kraken - Fun, but way more uneven and scattershot than the other two of his I've read (Embassytown and The City & the City. Which is exactly what I expected based on reviews, but those two were so focused and great I had to know for myself.

Ben Ehrenreich, Ether - Very quick, read it in two sittings, which was good because I felt pretty filthy after each one. Not sure if I could recommend to friends but I'm glad I read it.

Now reading Stone Arabia, love it so far.

Love Murphy.

but way more uneven and scattershot than the other two of his I've read

That has me reaching for the whisky with shaking hands.

i am reading kerr's 'a philosophical investigation'. and stephen mulhall's book on 'wittgenstein's private language'. and some rousseau. and rilke. i think next i will reread 'berlin noir' before reading kerr's next three bernie gunther books. i'm also reading nietzsche. still. again.

that one of mulhall's made a lot of the diehard philosophy-student types in the class very uneasy. to be fair i never finished it myself so maybe they were right. i meant to read his other book on the investigations first.

i mean, the sections on same in 'inheritance and originality', not that he has a whole other book. (maybe he has a whole other book i don't know about, i wouldn't know.)

Helen Dewitt's Lightning Rods. Enjoyed it a great deal, while marveling at each chapter that anyone would write a book like this. Perverse in many, many ways.

Currently reading PKD's The Divine Invasion, kinda love that much of it is set in Chevy Chase, of all places.

yes, t, it is a whole other (short) book - explicitly continuing the reading of 'inheritance' into the 'private language argument' sections of the 'investigations'. so far i don't see that it's anything unexpected for people familiar with his other stuff (or with cavell on other minds, which it's engaged with), but it is extremely good. o, the energy i've wasted trying to write my own versions of some of these paragraphs...

The Great War and Modern Memory - Paul Fussell

no j i meant a whole other other book

i should proofread my ilx posts more better

'watt'

picking up david graeber's "direct action: an ethnography" again--his account of the planning & execution of major protest actions outside the FTAA meeting in quebec city in 2001. eerie how so many of the conversations & arguments are near verbatim the same conversations i'm involved in today with occupy dc.

also cracking "ours to master and to own," a history of worker-owned workplaces.

thomp on an enviable Beckett binge

i think i'm stopping after this one tbh

skimming about 50% of all the procedural gags in watt, also i have other things i really should be getting around to

like not understanding 60% of the gags in murphy

i feel like i get at least two thirds of the gags in murphy

"and their nights were serenade, nocturne, and albada. yes, albada."

Ellen Willis - Out of the Vinyl Deeps

Nicholas Thompson - The Hawk and the Dove, a readable but facile study of George Kennan and Paul Nitze that, thanks to John Lewis Gaddis' new Kennan bio, is now obsolete.

Wodehouse - Right Ho, Jeeves!

Ben Ehrenreich, Ether - Very quick, read it in two sittings, which was good because I felt pretty filthy after each one. Not sure if I could recommend to friends but I'm glad I read it.

filthy? i really liked this and im... surprised, i guess, by this reaction?

Lem - Solaris (2011 Johnston translation)

Finally a non-audio version and they fuck it up by leaving out a bunch of spaces in the Kindle copy. I read the Polish->French->English translation last year but I couldn't tell you what the differences are, apart from the character names being changed. Turns out that the original, lousy translation got the gist across.

i liked it too lamp, i just mean the world he creates is so grime-encrusted, everyone is in destitute circumstances, lots of gross scenes involving small animals. not saying it was gratuitous, just that i don't know if i'd want to spend 500 pages in that world.

oh, is that in print or just e-text? xp.

Teenage by John Savage. Bought it when I was in London 2 Xmases back. was overweight for flying so it got left there til a few weeks ago when I started reading it again. Am now 4/5s of way through it. Very interesting.

Lemmy White Line Fever picked up very cheaply in an HMV recently. Makes interesting light reading while I'm on the bus etc. Not really followed too much of Motorhead's career. Have been aware of some of the earlier & more popular stuff though. Plus I love Hawkwind + Sam Gopal are pretty decent.
Guess this is the memoirs of a guy who's lived through a lot.

Also Patti Smith Just Kids again very interesting memoir this time of her early days with Robert Mapplethorpe. Will finish this finally when I get through the above 2.

No Go the Bogeyman by Marina WArner. Have this out the local library, started it before Xmas and it was too heavy to carry. Found what I read of it so far pretty fascinating. Mainly got this cos I couldn't afford to buy From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers when it appeared in the local 2nd hand/remaindered bookshop before Xmas.
Wanted to check out her writing though. Will hopefully get that in the future though.

One reason I couldn't afford to get another book was having pickled up Dreamers of Decadence by Philippe Jullian in the same bookshop. Found it on the recently arrived shelf and it seemed to call out to me. just the kind of book that needed to be in my possession. Seems really reminiscent of the time it came out, back in '71. Not that I'd be completely conscious of the time having been a toddler but having gone through things like the psychedelic revival and having been aware of music & alternative culture of the time in hindsight it seems very resonant.

Was back in the shop today browsing, trying to make sure i didn't miss anything else neccessary but I'm really broke after Xmas. I'm also aware that I have a lot of other stuff I've picked up in there over the years that I've yet to read.

I took two bags' worth to the charity shop today. It's barely made a dent in my library.

went to the library, got whatever NYRB Classics they had that looked interesting, ended up with "Fatale" by Jean-Patrick Manchette (really quick read, wasn't super-impressed) and "The Ice Trilogy" by Alexander Sorokin, which I'm enjoying so far.

sorry, Vladimir Sorokin

just finished munro's /too much happiness/

wasn't as blown away by it as i was with /open secrets/ but still...sentences like this one make it worthwhile

She should have understood, and at that moment, even if he himself was nowhere close to knowing. He was falling in love.

Falling. That suggests some time span, a slipping under. But you can think of it as a speeding up, a moment or a second when you fall. Now Jon is not in love with Edie. Tick. Now he is. No way this could be seen as probable or possible, unless you think of a blow between the eyes, a sudden calamity. The stroke of fate that leaves a man a cripple, the wicked joke that turns clear eyes into blind stones.

or this

The college library was a high beautiful space, designed and built and paid for by people who believed that those who sat at the long tables before open books–even those who were hungover, sleepy, resentful, and uncomprehending–should have space above them, panels of dark gleaming wood around them, high windows bordered with Latin admonitions, through which to look at the sky. For a few years before they went into schoolteaaching or business or began to rear children, they should have that. And now it was my turn and I should have it too.

yeah its not her best collection but a couple of stories, particularly the one about girls at a camp and 'deep-holes', which was grinding to read but powerful, have stayed with me

yeah, the camp one is child's play -- very very good. i also liked wenlock edge (the one with the weird old man who has girls read to him in the nude)