As 2012 learns to toddle: what are you reading?

i think they eat in 'adam bede'!

austen -- emma (a writer i've never gotten with, but am enjoying this one. funny, exasperating.)
the presidency of james buchanan -- elbert smith (christ, what an awful president.)

just finished reading Positively George Street by Matthew Bannister. I liked it; I've wanted to read something about the Flying Nun 'Dunedin sound' scene for a while, and this--the slender memoir of the guitarist from the Sneaky Feelings--wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Sneaky Feelings is probably the one band that I was least interested in, but he had some interesting ground-zero insights in the whole NZ scene and though his pissy putdowns of the more punk/noise elements of the scene certainly grated, dude had an engagingly honest and cheerful voice. The exact opposite of vainglory. I can't imagine another rock autobiography where the writer talks about accidentally pissing on an electric fence, at least without turning it into some wild anecdote of endless, crazed partying (as opposed to showing it as the stoned and stupid mistake that Bannister sheepishly admits that it was).

well, stone arabia certainly petered to a halt. need something new now.

hey julio, the Durgnat is extremely entertaining, as you might expect, and makes you want to see a load of Boulting Brothers movies double-quick. The book is VERY scattershot, and of course some of Britain's political/historical circumstances have changed since it was written, but it's surprising how often he's clear-eyed and accurate about class, society, and so on. I'd like to know more about the class composition and sympathies of the people who actually made these films - was filmmaking in Britain really the utterly middle class and rigidly bound profession it seems in hindsight? - but that's probably the work of a different book, or books.

*checkes wiki* oh ok, Brighton Rock! I didn't know it was a (twin) brotherly team that made these.

Everyone claimed the remake shamed it but I wasn't fussed either way.

Thx for the comments - sounds like the book for me. I think I finally (finally!) made a breakthrough w/British film last year and so need to carry that on.

Juan Pablo Villalobos: Down the Rabbit Hole -- as good as everyone said it was (70-page novella told from the point of view of a spoiled, isolated kid living in his Mexican drug kingpin dad's compound)

Satyajit Ray: Indigo (Selected Stories) -- some good ones, but weirdly a lot like a collection of MOR Edwardian pulp/genre fiction (amateur detectives, giant carnivorous plants, time displacement in dreams, etc)

A D Miller: Snowdrops -- not bad, but plot hinges on main character not asking a really obvious question, and continuing to not ask over a period of time, in order for the plot to actually work (ie idiot/'Lost' plotting); given its Booker nom last year, I see what they mean about the nominations being very middlebrow

have to leave 'middlemarch' aside. reading 'the great gatsby' for class now. last time i read it was 17 years ago!

Joseph O'Neil's Neverland. At last.

J.D., how's the Buchanan bio?

marjorie perloff's memoir is the first thing i've finished since the beckett binge

hrm

read helen dewitt's 'lightning rods' - bleh, ultimately kinda pointless i thought

oh, almost totally pointless, but pretty hilarious, i thought.

I am currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons - big monster SF like momma used to make. I will also be reading a chapter a day of "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy. It is about people who go to soirrees a lot. I think the reference to war in the title may be ironic.

little sad about the dewitt, if that is the case

i just read 'absalom, absalom!'

having not read faulkner in a while i thought 'oh, a 300 page novel, i will get through that in an evening'

i did not get through it in an evening

alfred: it's enlightening and readable, tho a bit disappointingly short (it's part of a series -- planning to check out the one on john tyler next). the big revelation for me was his chapter on buchanan's foreign policy; he calls him "the most aggressive would-be imperialist in american history." there's something comic about the way every one of his attempts to set off a war fizzled out.

well, the DeWitt isn't really a follow-up to The Last Samurai in any way, it's a novel she wrote in 1999 when she couldn't get TLS published, and it's been sitting around on her hard drive for a decade. Apparently she has 4 or 5 other books in the same state. I still think it's worth reading, you just can't expect it to have the same impact.

Reading War and Peace too. The war part is coming don't worry. But tbh, thus far i think i prefer the soirées stuff to the war stuff. also since i'm reading it in short spurts i sometimes forget who some guys who show up once in a while are which always bothers me.

Reading "The Mind Thing" by Fred Brown, read "Mustaine: a life in metal" before that.

reading Lydia Davis translation of Madame Bovary before the Art of Fielding because the library had it

Just finished The Art of Fielding. It was really very good; well worth the hype I feel. It's not a romp exactly, but has the same thing of just being really fun to keep reading. I enjoyed very much.

Crash next, I guess. I'm a bit scared of going from warm-hearted characters, faintly comic yet totally sympathetic, to the kind of robotic cipher I'm expecting here.

Colby Buzzell, Lost in America
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad
Matt Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

i have been reading 'self-portrait in a convex mirror'.

and it turns out ashbery is DOPE.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. Chesterton (nearly put "by a sofa", just for fun)

I'm halfway through montano's malady by villa matas. It's pretty good I guess but I have a number of reservations about the dude, but I guess this is based off this one book so it's probably not fair

like this book is kind of unecessary if you've read the first chapter of the rings of saturn

it's something I'm wrestling with when reading, like especially based on a writer whose mo is playful biting or homage or whatever, like, I like the act of reading, so I'll just read whatever, but sometimes it just seems so unnecessary when they're in the shadow of sebald or borges or roussel

and maybe the most horrible thing of all is that this is how I feel about writers whose work I actually consider worth reading

no the most horrible thing of all is that the sebald/borges/roussel comparison means I'm probably gonna get sucked into reading whatever it is you're talking about even if you try to warn me against it

currently reading: Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion. first novel I've tackled in a hot minute, we'll see how it pans out.

Loved Bartleby & Co - was hoping the ILX Book Club would read it- and been meaning to read Montuno's Malady but haven't gotten round to it yet.

Reading 'Great Expectations' for class now. Another book I havent read since school.

The last volume of Taylor Branch's MLK bio. Damn.

Star Trek novelizations, specifically the Destiny Trilogy.

Shantaram autobio of an Aussie fugitive holed up in a Bombay slum. Very interesting book, has had me trying to work out who I knew recommended it to me some time ago. I got it as part of a regular haul of great books from one charity shop I used to pass last year. Started it on the bus back into town from that trip and then lost it into a mess on the farside of my bed.
Now refound, am 300+pp into a 900+p book and it's fascinating.

Just finished Patti Smith's Just Kids which I started some time last spring. That's pretty good and has me wanting to find some of her rock prose. Couldn't find a collection of that stuff before, so is there one around? Her writing for Creem etc?

need something new. if i'm going to read some salman rushdie for the first time, should i start with 'midnight's children'?

I liked Haroun and the Sea of Stories if you wanna go in easy.

Haroun is good.

I'm mired in the middle of foucault's discipline & punish. it's holding up the rest of my book reading because i feel like unless i power through, i'll never get through this book and the time i spent on the first half will have been a waste.

Rafael Honigstein's Englischer Fußball, which is a see-ourselves-as-others-see-us piece, and very entertaining too. Lots of stuff on the mystifying importance of the captain leading his troops into battle, which is all very timely.

god yes. quite fancy reading that, Ismael. Mystifying obsession with concept of footballing captain. the media-led set-up of figurehead/fallen figurehead doesn't quite get me to where this comes from.

cricket captain makes sense as a concept, and my inclination about how the Sky representation of football wd look for US/NFL. precedents, but that doesn't hold any water here afaik - captain not an important figure in US sports? also cricket captain too different from football captain for it to be meaningful.

Is this some post-Victorian hangover of popular reciter type values? (the boy stood on the burning deck/Macauley's lays/Kipling?). Or is there another strand I'm missing here?

Macaulay - iPhone typing in pub.

His take is really interesting - it's essentially that the historical class development of the game here means that a player can either be a 'loyal warrior' or a 'noble knight', but if he owes his prominence to effete qualities like flair or technique he will be ostracised:

Beckham broke down the old prejudices but he could not eliminate them entirely ... people said he lacked nerve or self-control. His quality was not in doubt, but his grit, his courage, his manliness. When Beckham relinquished the armband, John Terry, the humourless and guaranteed unfeminine enforcer in Chelsea's defence, took over.

There's a kind of religious undertone too, identification through self-control and suffering. It's quite a powerful image and quite persuasive, and I reckon there's no way JT will jack it in, in fact he'll be loving this extra layer of martyrdom even more.

It is time for my February dose of wilderness longing. I am reading Skywalker: Ups and Downs on the PCT, Bill Walker.

In 2009 he attempted to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, as do about 400 other people each year (the number keeps growing). I've read a clutch of these books over the years and they are all remarkably similar, and for the non-hiker-trash crowd, remarkably mediocre. This author seems to have a slightly better grasp of storytelling... so far. Knock on wood. I read these for certain non-literary pleasures connected to personal obsessions.

hope: a tragedy, shalom auslander

ben marcus - the flame alphabet - 50 pgs in - if i didnt know better, this feels on its way 2 being "if phil roth & raymond carver did a zombie book" or sum bs

yeah that does sound interesting (and yep, Terry a sucker for the whole badge-thumping captain thing). But most football fans I know, old and young, don't give a shit about captains. Yet the media keeps pushing it. I'm a part-time fan at best, so may be totally off beam. But it feels media created and I don't understand where from or why, and the only possible explanation I've got - it's a macguffin that just helps create more news - seems insufficient.

anyway there are better threads for these speculations. Will seek this book out! (er once I've read crash obv - that thread bookmark keeps reproving me for not having started yet).

Drop me a webmail if you want me to send it to you - I'll be finished in the next day or two.

ben marcus - the flame alphabet - 50 pgs in - if i didnt know better, this feels on its way 2 being "if phil roth & raymond carver did a zombie book" or sum bs

yeah i wd probably swap in a different two authors x and y there but did i spend a whole lot of time thinking of the stand. then i opened up the age of wire and string and wondered what had happened to the guy

i just started reading your face tomorrow

Reading Edmund White's City Boy (on the iPad--first digital book ever) and enjoying it a lot, more than the similar Just Kids, actually.

faulkner light in august.