Everything is Whirling and Twirling! What Are You Reading this Summer 2023?

"new Lorrie Moore" are not words I need to see when I am in the homestretch of my dissertation, with no time for unrelated reading.

Stevo, I've only read Bogle's first book, which includes Lena Horne also, don't know about overlap otherwise, but it was really good, with very vivid, nuanced appraisals---wiki sez:

Bogle's first book, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in Films, was published in 1973. In it, he identified five basic stereotypical film roles available to black actors and actresses: the servile, avuncular "tom"; the simple-minded and cowardly "coon"; the tragic, and usually female, mulatto; the fat, dark-skinned "mammy"; and the irrational, hypersexual male "buck".[2] In the second edition of the book, Bogle identified a sixth stereotype: the sidekick, who is usually asexual.

His review of the recent Sam Shepard "biography" was terrible: slinging sneers around, no indication that Shepard ever did any worthwhile writing, that there might be something more to him than cartoon anecdotes.

Last night I took a brief run at Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury. I picked it up more or less as a 'name check' exercise, having heard about it and knowing nothing else. It was an immediate fail for me. Too directly aimed at kids (mainly boys) of roughly 11 to 15. And the writing style was a romanticized to within an inch of its life.

So now I'm re-reading Human Voices, Penelope Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald's run from Human Voices to The Beginning of Spring is incredible.

yep

I picked it up more or less as a 'name check' exercise, having heard about it and knowing nothing else. It was an immediate fail for me. Too directly aimed at kids (mainly boys) of roughly 11 to 15. And the writing style was a romanticized to within an inch of its life.

what's wrong with aiming books at boys?

I'd say nothing but it's fair to list "I'm not the demographic" as a reason to drop a book.

I’m….not so sure about that

Well, I was reading too much into it, “age demographic” does make sense to me. Otherwise the statement gives me pause

Read a few new chaps yesterday, and then today decided that I will try to read as much of I can of Olson’s The Maximus Poems at breakfast each morning until I finish. I’ve never read more than sections of it and his other work, and frankly never understood the hype or how his own theories are played out in the poems. But I’ve read much related to his work, and Prynne and a few others I admire were friends with him, so I figure: why not?

i must admit to being slightly disappointed in SWTWC it when i finally read it. love bradbury, just not this bradbury. SWTWC read more like stephen king or koontz (both no doubt influenced by him)

I read it I think on a trip to visit my Dad so mid teens and maybe just a little olkd for it. Thought it was an interesting book and I know they made a film of it in the early 80s.
So haven't read it in like 40 years but did enjoy it when I did.

I guess its visiting a scenario that has been used elsewhere but I did think it pretty good at the time.

Looking at IMDB for year film was made I think the film poster may have been the book cover on my copy so I was doing some more adult things at the time but still in my mid teens. Possibly in Kenya rather tahn NYC as i was first thinking but did occur to me that I might have been there.

And the writing style was a romanticized to within an inch of its life.

there are two 900+ page volumes of Bradbury's short stories out and they still don't contain everything that's in the various smaller collections afaict.

favourites, so far, are The Scythe, The Emissary (the one about the boy stuck at home and the dog that fetches for him) and, obv, There Will Come Soft Rains.

currently rereading Fahrenheit 451 and, short though it is, i can't help but feel it'd make a killer short story.

Ireland At The Crossroads Theresa O'Donohoe
book by an activist organiser about a situation arising from a DP centre being announced in Lisdoornvarna the small town/village that is best known for a matchmaking festival for horny farmers. She gets involved when a friend who attended teh initial information evening needs support to allow her opinion to be heard when right wingers take over the meeting and subsequent agenda. I think this was a really informative book since the way the author responded to things seems really rational and thankfully she had some related experience in activism. She sets up a welcomi9ng group and a FB page that then get misrepresented by the far right.
I found this a really fast read , took mew about 2 1/2 hours , some of that is because a lot of pages have reprints of screenshots from social media used during this. & her writing style is pretty clear. I can now pass this back to the library and get it to the next person waiting to read it. But yeah recommended. I think methods used may be more universal for welcoming incoming groups and dealing with the right wing.
Events described happened in 2018 and I think book came out this year.

I found a cheap copy of
Kate Lister Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts while looking through a sale box in a local bookshop because I had gone into town to get the O'Donohoe book.
I read this last year and do like teh author a lot. I listen to her podcast Betwixt The Sheets when it comes out twice a week .Did really want a copy of this so now have one. Still need to read her other book A Curious History of Sex though which I hope to remedy before long.

I love Ray Bradburys stories but haven’t read any novel by him. I always lose patience.

I’m counting Martian Chronicles as stories.

Right

I read SWTWC more than once as a kid, I do recall the prose style but I guess I just accepted it. Lots of memorable scenes and images have stuck with me.

Just started Alex Haley's Roots. Hopefully I will finally get to know what Sinead O'Connor is singing about in Mandinka.

it's an amazing story of how a slave ended up as chief engineer on the Enterprise D.

The soundtrack by the Everly Brothers is pretty good.

The John Lennon soundtrack would have been good too if Morris Levy hadn't tinkered with it.

For good and ill, reading Bradbury is to be aware that he wrote, by his own admission, 'at the top of his lungs'.

Which reminds me once again of Henry Kuttner telling a young Ray Bradbury: “You give away all your steam. No wonder you never finish your stories. You talk them all out. Shut up.”

"Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth".

Was that for the Wes Anderson thread?

what's wrong with aiming books at boys?

Alfred, please point out to me where I said there was anything wrong with aiming books at boys, because fuck me if I can see where that comment came from. What I thought I was saying was that I (as in me, this reader) couldn't find a toehold in the first several chapters capable of holding my interest, in part because I was far from the intended or ideal audience, which was children, mainly boys, entering their adolescence. We both know that any book can be a good book for the right audience.

Exploring the dark and twisted mind of Garth Marengi via his Terrortome; also started Joyce's Ulysses for some light relief.

xp accuracy of aim
power of throw
trying to quieten down the rest of the class in the aftermath
possibly parents suing?

Alfred, please point out to me where I said there was anything wrong with aiming books at boys, because fuck me if I can see where that comment came from. What I thought I was saying was that I (as in me, this reader) couldn't find a toehold in the first several chapters capable of holding my interest, in part because I was far from the intended or ideal audience, which was children, mainly boys, entering their adolescence. We both know that any book can be a good book for the right audience.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless),

I wasn't attacking you. Thanks!

Listening to the audioboook of Papillon. Even if it's largely fictionalized (or borrowed), it's immensely entertaining. Of course, I can't not think of Steve McQueen as the narrator.

The Managed Heart Arlie Russell Hochschild
The book that introduced the idea of emotional labour. The idea that if one is doing a public facing job as well as physical work one is working with management of emotions e.g. keeping a fixed smile directed outwards regardless of the way one is feeling inside.
She is looking at reasons why and how so the various schools of the humanities are coming to play philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history etc which all have heavy venn overlap anyway. I'm finding it a ery interesting read. I may have read it a couple of decades ago so glad to be rereading it. I think if I'm remembering when right it would have been the summer f 2003 when I was reading a massive stream of different books while I still had access to the University library. Anyway recommended read.

Robert Conquest The Dragons of Expectation
Found this while walking around the library and it looked interesting.
He is virulently anti communist, but I am finding it to be a somewhat interesting read. Has me wanting to read James Burnham for probably closely related reasons. It's not very long so I'm reading it pretty fast.

Martin Bulmer (ed) Racism
A great selection of short pieces on teh subject of Racism in various forms . Has selections from a load of writers I really want to read more by . & has a great bibliography of further work that I need to look further into.
I let this slip onto teh backburner when I should have been reading it faster. I've read a load of other stuff in the time I've had it out from the library.
BUt now I'm back on it I really want to get it read.
Or more ingest the contents in a meaningful way. Maybe get a copy for further revisiting.

finished Joe Nigg's Fabulous Creatures last week and thought it was a very interesting read I'm glad i have read since it coversa lot of historical descriptions of imaginary and semi imaginary animals that inhabited the unmapped regions of the world.
It has introduced me to a couple of animals I hadn't been aware of previously . hadn't realised a Yale was an animal before.
It has me wanting to look further into the lore about unicorns and dragons now since there is a wealth of stuff I'm not fully familiar with.
IT was also interesting to read about the adoption of more classical animals in the medieval era as symbolic of Christian teaching. Deeply syncretic.

For the last week I've been reading Sean O'Casey's AUTOBIOGRAPHIES.

This work comprises 6 columes. From the library I have a book with the last 3. I've been reading that. I've read all of volume 4: INISHFALLEN, FARE THEE WELL, and a fair amounrt of volume 5: ROSE & CROWN.

The book can be repetitive and self-indulgent. It mostly flows along. You confront the many pages thinking this would take a long time to read: then start reading and soon you're 30 pages further on. Thus it's often marvellously readable.

The volume I've read is about Ireland 1922-1926. Now I'm on England, c.late 1920s.

On the whole my respect for O'Casey has grown greatly in recent times. You can point to flows: as a writer he wasn't the most precise or beautiful; he perhaps didn't leave a large number of major literary works; he was quick to anger and self-defence, and might hold a grudge. Worst, his politics made him naive about Stalinism - arguably for longer than he should have been. And yet he was so open-hearted, generous, honest. He had a commitment to socialism and emancipation from inequality and poverty that was deeper than most writers'. He was sceptical about religious authority and dogma, while maintaining a sense of the wonder of nature and the world. An essay I've just read on his letters concludes by citing a number of letters he wrote to obscure people who'd written to him, including for instance an American housewife who was dismayed by the state of her life and the world. He took the time to reply at length, offering comfort and fellowship to these unknown people he would never meet. Few major writers have acted quite this way. O'Casey reminds me a little of Alasdair Gray: the eccentric ingenuousness, the instinctive kindness, the disarming directness.

After finishing Human Voices I'm well into another Ross MacDonald novel, The Barbarous Coast.

Self Help by Lorrie Moore
The last book I read was an endless cast of characters and made me wonder how a reader or writer keeps track of them all without being able to search the text.

Finished 'Gods Without Men' by Hari Kunzru, eh it was ok. An earlier work that's both longer and not as good as his more recent ones ('Red Pill' etc).

Also closing in on the end of 'His Master's Voice' by Stanislaw Lem, it's bone dry compared to his fun sci-fi stuff but there's always just enough of interest to keep me in. I appreciate the super realistic approach to a scientific project deciphering a potential extraterrestrial message (reminds me of the "competence porn" being discussed in one of the other tv or Star Trek threads).

Got some fun ones lined up, which I'll need for some medical treatment visits. New David Grann and Patrick DeWitt books, can't wait.

Finally getting around to The Well of Loneliness, about a third of the way through. I like it more than I thought I was going to - I figured it would be an interesting artefact of the time but not necessarily a great book. But the prose is nicely melodic in places and I'm finding it fairly compelling. The interaction between sexuality and gender in historic lesbianism is fascinating, as well.

Still reading the William James bio by Richardson, on chapter 80 of 90. Seems a pretty solid and well-researched book. Aims to be an "intellectual" bio, focusing a lot on intellectual influences on James, starting from his father, Henry Sr., an eccentric thinker and writer (nowadays perhaps would be called a crank) who was self-funded from his inheritance (his father was one of the richest men in the country at the time and though he tried to cut Henry Sr out of the will, Henry successfully challenged the will after his death) which enabled him to self-publish a voluminous output of religious-philosophical works, on the nature of evil and such, apparently influenced by writers such as Swedenborg, and take his large family (though not for the time) around Europe for a good chunk of their childhoods, often moving cities on a whim. The children's education was haphazard, but Henry Sr made a special effort with William, even to the point of sometimes changing cities because he'd heard of some school or instructor that he thought would benefit William's education. If nothing else, and despite the fact that William later expressed the view that he would have preferred staying put in America and having a more conventionally grounded childhood, William did become fluent in German and French, which served him well when, after a troubled young adulthood, he finally landed on the newly forming field of psychology and his life's work. There's plenty of interesting material in the book, although even despite its length, its treatment of certain lines of James's though can feel cursory.

Impressive study from o.nate here. (I'm not certain but have an idea that he lighted on this book after I cited a very old LRB review of it -- this makes me glad to hear of his reading.)

Yes, that's correct! That's how I heard about it.

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

I read an excellent recent bio of the James family a couple months ago.

Got confused for a second and thought this was part of the Eagles/Steely Dan discussion.

I've started on Botchan, by Natsume Soseki, published in 1908. It's much loved in Japan and I can see why. The main character, who is also the narrator, is somewhat naive, but unusually straightforward and irreverant, never mincing his words. From what I've read about traditional Japanese culture, everyone was (and still is) expected to be self-effacing and deferential, at least as their public, socially-adjusted face, so, the idea of a naive truth-speaker is delightful.

I read *A Book of Silence* by Sara Maitland. Maitland is from a noisy, large family; she is Roman Catholic; she has a family of her own, and lived in a vicarage for many years in East London. Post-children, she finds her marriage breaking down and, over several years, decides to move gradually further and further into the wilderness, in search of silence. This book tracks those years: her research into the desert fathers and occluded female eremites; her experiences in an isolated cottage on Skye; and a retreat in the Sinai desert. Finally, we're with her as she moves into a remote area of western Scotland, looking across the yawning expanse of heather to the hills beyond. I've read some other interviews with her and she's still there and is now basically described as a hermit.

I did enjoy the book, though it never quite catches fire. It's got rather too much on its mind and some of the explicatory sections - about psychoanalysis, astronomy - are a bit thin. The autobiographical sections were the richest and I admire her drive and fortitude.

william empson - seven types of ambiguity

minimum 1 laugh to be had on every single page of this wonderful book

Suddenly bothered by the question of whether Nick Carraway gets too much in the way, I re-read The Great Gatsby and ended up believing that he seals the deal, inextricably part of the total effect: insecure yet avidly curious and observant, even while being dismayed, put off by juicy Big Apple's downside ov hordes swarming Gatsby's wide-open fanstasy castle (becoming unadjusted as he sees them again through Daisy's eyes, they are more than ever "Broadway, from nothing to nothing"( provincially supercilious, from an insular, proper family (Daisy of Louisville's second cousin once removed!), revolted and picking up on waves and trickles of gossip, popular delusions and the madness of crowds, rubberneck gawker taste for fuckery----also initially cautious as hell, monitoring Gatsby---he comes all wrapped up and almost unraveled in spectacle, in the events and his fever dream of Gatsby's dream, of his life and death and still can't shake it, becomes a ghost of all that, at least in his reverie---somewhat like Proust's narrator's vision and narrative of Swann In Love, this is also something of a novel-within-a-novel, that can be read and read around the edges of, as Nick reads the room and writes it, replays it who knows how many times in his head, seeking perfection, out of his depth like everybody else in there, like everybody, he thinks, and says

'compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired'

A few short books to start the summer:

Marie Darrieussecq - Pig Tales
Jean Paul - Prefaces
Halldor Laxness - The Atom Station
Gerald Murnane - Last Letter to a Reader

Loved the Murnane - its a great idea (writer reflects back on each of his books -- including the one you are reading -- as a 'final' work). Its full of ego, in that he is very precious about what he does, but I can't help but really enjoy what he does so its not that off-putting. They are different from Prefaces, such as the ones collated in the Jean Paul book (which have some very good writing (if you like the Baroque) in it but as I haven't read any of the works its all a partial view) (Sublunary Editions are an interesting publisher and I might do a thread on them).

also reading short books:

what tech calls thinking by adrian daub. pretty accessible (normie?) theory/literary/historical perspective on silicon valley.

annihilation by jeff vandermeer. reread. not as good as i remember it.

no country for old men. interesting to see what got cut for the movie, but otherwise minor mccarthy.

three o'clock in the morning by Gianrico Carofiglio. if you like before sunrise you might like this.

foster by claire keegan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_(short_story), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/02/15/foster. short and very plain, so you can see why it's apparently taught in schools. but very good. even better than small things like these (which was good).

and then i read "it" by stephen king which was ridiculous and not a good use of time in hindsight.

There Will Be Fire - Rory Carroll

vv compelling read, covering the IRA's plan to/failed attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher by bombing the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Not having known much about this story, it's fairly astonishing just how close they got to pulling off the unthinkable. The before mostly covers Thatcher's policies w/r/t Northern Ireland, bomber Patrick Magee's path towards this event, other bombings carried out, and the during is a fairly horrifying recreation of what actually occurred. The after is the tracking of the suspects, and the race to track down an IRA operative in Scotland who is part of a seemingly separate plot (and he is, but they're connected.) It achieves a nice balance without being "actually, both sides are etc etc..."

Like an old German I knew said of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler, the devil saved her.

My third Richard powers, Bewilderment. kinda meh

Also recently finished Robinson’s the dark beyond the stars. Way too long

I am about 3/4 of the way through Harlem Shuffle. It's very well-written. Some passages are just gorgeous. However, if I'm comparing it to his last novel (which, tbf, won the Pulitzer), it seems a little . . . the words that come to mind are "light" and "directionless." It's more of a caper than anything weightier. I suppose it's unfair to expect every book from a writer to be as impactful as his or her best work.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, September 16, 2023

Haven't read Harlem Shuffle yet, but it is apparently the first part of a trilogy. The second book, Crook Manifesto, was just published this summer.

I really loved the two books I've read by him, The Underground Railroad (which won the National Book Award) and The Nickel Boys (The Pulitzer)

Going through Le Carré's books in order, I've now read or reread all of the Smiley novels - "Call for the Dead", "A Murder of Quality", "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", "The Looking-Glass War", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy", and "Smiley's People".

I'm a long way away from "Legacy of Spies", the distant follow-up published in 2017

My next book is "The Little Drummer Girl" from 1983, which I remember being my favorite Le Carré at the time

I've heard that The Crook Manifesto is better than Harlem Shuffle, maybe more of a genre/lit (or at least character study) balance, like his zombie-hunting Zone One(clean-up of v.valuable Manhattan real estate, cause you know the plague is over). I really enjoyed that one.

still, the preview of Harlem Shuffle seemed promising: POV of a fence, usually a flat weasel in crime stories, here a scuffling small store owner lured into the shade.

How did you find Smiley’s People? Got it on the shelf, tempted if put off by the size. Certainly it opens well.

It's time again to wind down this summertime thread and move into our shiny new digs at I'm in Love With Books and I Feel Fine! What Are You Reading in Autumn 2023?. See y'all there!

xp I really liked Smiley's People, it seemed more coherent to me than The Honorable Schoolboy and less difficult to follow than Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (the two previous books), and brought the original series to a nice conclusion