I'm in Love With Books and I Feel Fine! What Are You Reading in Autumn 2023?

Finished Loop by John Taggart, moving onto Mohammed Zenia’s Tel Aviv, a book of poems that is doing a lot of interesting work around colonialism’s signifiers while also being very strangely beautiful. I don’t know the poet well, but have read with him twice in somewhat strange circumstances, and have always enjoyed his work— glad I found out he had a book!

I finished Lark Ascending, it was a lovely book. I also finished The Elegant Universe, which seemed like a real accomplishment. I started in on another of Greene's books, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. I find this stuff daunting but fascinating.

I'm reading A Month of Sundays, a candidate for some of the worst sex writing I've ever read.

Just got Paul Crooks' Ancestors about him
Managing to trace his family back through Jamaican slavery. I know he eventually traced things back to Africa not sure that's covered here.
So analogous to Roots but by a working class British West Indian guy.
I've seen webinars by the author so am very interested in reading this.

Slogging through Powers’ Bewilderment. Narrative is zzz but I am thinking differently about having respect for other sentient beings

yeah it's a mistake

i wanted to respond to the wondering of youn. i will share my experience and general feeling. it is not unlikely especially when talking about a language pair like korean-english that nobody proficient in the language apart from the translator themselves ever looked at the text. even if they engage an editor that knows the language and/or has read the original, readability in english rather than fidelity is the focus. sometimes, a step earlier than this, submitting a translation to the author's own agent or when getting permission to translate, the agent or author might have quibbles over actual translation errors (these will be in a sample)(these might require overliteral translations that get reversed by an editor later) but that seems rare.

moving out of romance language to romance language, it's usually possible unless you have produced a text in english unreadably faithful to the original (this plagues asian languages in translation still, where translation is dominated not by writers but academics), to rip them apart line by line, looking for the infidelity required to produce something readable in english.

I've run out of freebies, but translator of a (linked) Korean short story discusses it here: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/this-week-in-fiction-yi-mun-yol
Han Kang on her own story: https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/han-kang-02-06-23
Which is also in this round-up of linked commentaries: https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/sunday-reading-lost-and-found-in-translation

Real grab bag on my bedside table at the moment:

Emmanuel Carrere - 97,196 Words: Essays
James Ellroy - Silent Terror
Polly Barton - Fifty Sounds

I'm reading a pop history book I picked up at my favorite charity bookshop, The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley. Its 'hook' is describing a large delegation of US government diplomats and legislators, more than 60 of them, including the Secretary of War Howard Taft, who sailed to Asia in 1905 in furtherance of President Teddy Roosevelt's intense desire to acquire more colonial possessions and expand a US empire across the Pacific. Its real purpose is to expose how deeply white supremacy was embedded in the highest levels of the US power structure, founded in the exact same Aryan mythology that the Nazis later made use of.

So far, it has delineated just what lying, racist pieces of shit everyone connected to the conquest and brutalization of the Philippines were -- which nastiness I had read about long ago in contemporary anti-imperialist tracts written by Mark Twain, but now with added disgusting details. It's an encouraging thought that books about the violent racism of late 19th century imperialism can become best sellers and their truths percolate into some fraction of the US consciousness. But it seems like popular national mythologies are almost impossible to dislodge once they become well-established.

I remember The Imperial Cruise being a good read.

Here We are, Graham Swift (book club choice) - Kind of a big shrug for me. The stuff about being sent off as a kid during the war was good I guess. Nothing truly bad or hack about this I don't think but just kinda pointless?

Finished The Swimming Pool Library. Will is an entirely tedious protagonist - "My vanity which was so constitutional that it had virtually ceased to be vanity", lol nice try - the sections from Charles' diaries are no consolation. There was a feeling of a gathering of energies towards the end, before the last little burp of plot. I'm aware that I complained about lack of plot in my last read, I know a book can be perfectly fine without one but I think I'm just craving a good substantial story right now.

Read a decent amount of things on vacation. Highlight was probably Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris, which I mostly read while in Trieste, kind of corny I know but it was very enjoyable. Reflects on the strange history of the city and its pull upon her and a number of other writers despite its comparative lack of great sights and cultural/economic/historical importance. Found it tremendously moving towards the end, it was Morris's last book and it concludes with her musing on her own feelings about aging and irrelevance and how much that plays into her own perception of the city.

The Tartar Steppe, by Dino Buzzati - real bummer! But pretty incredible, the sort of novel that you can sum up in a brief sentence but is filled with odd, otherworldly detail and atmosphere that makes it hypnotic to read.

On The Marble Cliffs, by Ernst Junger - very odd semi-supernatural allegory that may or may not have been a swipe at the Nazis, didn't really get this tbh but it was pleasant enough to read.

The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor Lavalle - I really should have read the Lovecraft story it's riffing on but I thought it was a really compelling and surprising little horror novel.

still in the middle of The Garden of Seven Twilights, by Miquel de Palol - recently published by Dalkey Archive, long novel of stories within stories within stories, which I'm always kind of a sucker for. Most of the stories are pretty fun though there are some jarring shifts in tone and not a ton in the way of characters.

Travellers and The Settled Community: A Share Future John Heneghan, Mary(Warde) Moriarty , Michael O hAodha
book onIrish travellers . I wanted to get hold of some reading matter on the subject in teh wake of the Misleor festival last week. I think this has been on the shelves in teh local library for a while so I should have got to it faster. Came out in 2012.
Various essays on various factors on traveller life and interaction with settled community. I read the first couple of sections last night and it looks good.

Faith, Hope and Carnage Nick Cave and Sean O'Hagan
book based on several conversations between the two from the early days of the pandemic lockdown in 2020. Gives some insight into Cave's headspace. Glad I read it, would still like a memoir from him though

Finished The Swimming Pool Library. Will is an entirely tedious protagonist - "My vanity which was so constitutional that it had virtually ceased to be vanity", lol nice try - the sections from Charles' diaries are no consolation. There was a feeling of a gathering of energies towards the end, before the last little burp of plot. I'm aware that I complained about lack of plot in my last read, I know a book can be perfectly fine without one but I think I'm just craving a good substantial story right now.

― behold the thump (ledge),

I read it after The Folding Star, The Spell, and especially The Line of Beauty, hence its slightness, its insularity.

Good to know I picked the duffer (impulse charity shop purchase).

Might get round to those others (and reread TLoB) one day.

Having just recently learned of the existence of the Two Month Review podcast, I am rereading 2666 as I listen to their episodes discussing it.

To stay with the TD world for a bit longer, I started a book of Thomas Ligotti short stories. The story I read last night, 'The Frolic', is a curious thing. There was a Cheever vibe in the uneasy middle-class calm of the set and setting but everything was underlit by this kind of diseased atmosphere that built as the story progressed. I fell asleep pretty much directly after I'd finished the story and had the most intense bout of sleep paralysis, where I was being consumed by a sallow, clinging fog. Which is a 100% recommend in my book.

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Tuesday, September 26, 2023 11:12 AM (one week ago)

this was my september, all contemporary japanese authors, all cheap on amazon the month before, and all quite short and light.

Before The Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Last Children of Tokyo - Yoko Tawada
The Nakano Thrift Shop - Hiromi Kawakami
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
Tales From The Cafe - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

a coffee shop with a side order of time travel, japanese Children of Men, and two about female shop assistants.

there's a cheap lovecraft omnibus in the amazon uk's monthly deals btw, someone was asking (actually, the delphi omnibus is always cheap). and there are plenty of lists of top 10 lovecraft stories (i can never remember which names go with which stories so i'm kinda useless. The Cats Of Ulthar had cats in it fwiw)

I read Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet for the first time; to observe as Rilke gently repeats advice to his much less talented acolyte brought on a few giggles. I picked up Mario Vargas Llosa's entry Letters to a Young Novelist too.

I always preferred Lovecraft's dream stories to the Cthulhu mythos.

Thanks for the Lovecraft advice. I've not read a single thing but have read so much stuff that references him (however obliquely) it feels like I'm missing something.

I've never made it through Letters to a Young Poet. It's short but I still found it a slog.

It's a very 19/20 year old sort of book.

I despise Rilke lmfao

It's a very 19/20 year old sort of book.

― xyzzzz__,

I'd say fin-de-siècle or at least early 20th century.

After a dip into ILB archives confirming Mario Vargas Llosa's rec, I'm gonna start Juan Carlos Onetti's A Brief Life.

Love Onetti, though I've not read that one.

Rilke's novel was really good imo; a lot of his letters are fantastic and have all sorts of things in them, like his letters to Clara has some really nice art criticism.

After a few days of flitting around in some various books, I’ve settled on the recent gift of TJ Clark’s Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come. I loved his book on Poussin, which I read in August, and this seems equally fascinating and “up my alley” so to speak.

The Sight of Death I loved that book. His Picasso book is fantastic too.

Uh, meant to put a question mark after that title

yes, The Sight of Death is the “Poussin” book. Of course, Poussin is in Heaven on Earth, too, but we also have Brueghel the Elder, Giotto, Veronese, and a few others.

I am reading Paul Morley's book "A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love with Classical Music (and Decided to Rewrite its Entire History)". I am struggling with it. This guy really needs an editor. Its so overwritten and unfocused, digressing all over the place and yet I dont think he really gets under the skin of classical music. There's plenty of lists and facts alright but fails to engage really except for some funny anecdotes about him attending the Classical FM awards. His central thesis is that streaming is changing the way we look at classical music - it's all there and its not as hide bound to the past anymore. Streaming has made classical music more democratic. Argues that it's even looking to the future more than current pop music which seems even more quaint and showbiz now. Not an argument, I'm totally interested in but whatevz. I'm not entirely sure that I buy it.

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 - Max Hastings. Not being British, it's hard for me to gauge how much and how rightly this guy is detested around here, but I'm finding this to be a very readable overview of 30 years' worth of folly.

Up in the Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell. Collected New Yorker articles. Highly recommended to anyone who loves reading about antiquated eccentric characters of the 20th century.

I'm reading Remain In Love by Chris Frantz on a post-Stop Making Sense Talking Heads kick. Late getting to it because I thought it seemed mostly inessential give or take a few pull quotes. About halfway through and I'd say I was only half right. I'm having a lot of fun, it's balm for a tired mind. The voice is so clear. In the world according to Frantz, parents are great, girls are beautiful, Tina's a knockout, food is delicious, art is cool, celebs are friendly, bands rock well, David Byrne is an asshole. Every sentence is one clause. There's just enough wry humour and self awareness here and there to keep you going but mostly it's just immersive dining, boning, rocking and gossiping from somebody who's been very fortunate in life and is happy to embrace it. I guessed he was a Taurus about 30 pages in.

Slightly interested to see how sour it might get when times get hard, but so far, I am knocking this back like a packet of Skittles.

I started reading Mary L. Trump's 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough about everyone's least favorite fails-upward-son. First impression is that it has enough substance to have made a good in-depth magazine article, but was padded out to 200 pages in order to wring a book out of it. It has some explanatory power for the origins and development of Donald's warped personality, but the time for explanations has long passed and the time for long overdue consequences may finally be in sight.

Honore de Balzac - The Quest of the Absolute

After Bovary it's an inescapable impression that 19th century French writers were utterly obsessed with mapping out the contours of boredom.

Having just recently learned of the existence of the Two Month Review podcast, I am rereading 2666 as I listen to their episodes discussing it.

― The king of the demo (bernard snowy)

Doing an ilx search on "2666" turns up page after page of interesting commentary. It prompted a lot of engagement and conversation from at least a couple dozen ilxors.

I don't do podcasts, but that is tempting. 2666 is one of my favorite books I've ever read. I never reread books these days, but I will be rereading it again at some point.

Rereading Kokoro, Natsume Soseki. Think it's been less than a decade since I read it but my memory of it is mostly "wtf this guy gets so obsessed with this random old dude and is such a dick to his parents"; I was perhaps still too close to student age myself, if only psychologically, and at this stage of my life I can see the guy's callousness from more of a distance - yeah he takes his parents for granted, that's what ppl in their late teens/early 20's are like. Quite gripped by the mystery of what lead sensei down his road of misanthropy - I have no memory at all of what it turns out to be!

I've been forcing myself to do a reread every ten books I finish - by nature I never do this, just move from book to book with that stupid checklist, pokemon collecting mentality. But forcing myself to do it reminds me of an uncomfortable truth: often enough, even with books I loved, I will remember very little from them and given enough time it's like I've never read them at all.

Good discipline, I should try it. I'm painfully reminded of the very recent episode where I finished a book and on adding it to goodreads discovered that I'd read it eleven years before. It did not stir a single shadow of a memory.

I recently read Either/Or by Elif Batuman, the sequel to her debut novel, The Idiot, which I read a couple of years ago. It seems that her skills have improved. The novel feels sharper and more focused. It still has that somewhat aimless quality of reading a real-life diary. Things happen one after the other, sometimes with no discernible connection. But that feeling fits well with the coming-of-age theme, as questions of agency and purpose are central. Selin often wonders why other people seem some definite and well-defined but to herself she seems so vague and numinous. It's a lovely and funny book, and I'm looking forward to the next in the series.

Sergio Pitol - Mephisto's Waltz (Selected Short Stories)

Pitol is one of the very best dozen or so writers I have discovered over the last few years through translation and his take on the short story is really interesting because they are at times like sketches of what a writer could do with a story.

Also very few writers integrate their reading into their fiction. The last story starts with a commentary on Thomas Mann. A couple finish with a commentary on the story just told.

This could be a bit like Borges but in between you have the story of fictional people doing fictional things. He integrates a lot of his life in them, so they take place while in a place he was put in through his real life as part of Mexico's diplomatic service.

I went through most of it yesterday and in the morning these are the impressions.

I finished Mary Trump's book. It was OK-ish, but didn't tell much about Donald that wasn't already obvious in 2020 to anyone who had been paying even a modest amount of attention and whose head wasn't buried in the personality cult. My conclusion: overhyped and underdone.

I started Evelyn McDonnell's The World According to Joan Didion and finished Elizabeth Bowen's Eva Trout.

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (which is about finding the right words)

I'm between book club novels, am on pause in my obsession with John Le Carré and Dennis Lehane, and am listening to an audiobook of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I'm assuming you are all more acquainted with this novel than me.

I love the story. A fantasy horror novel written in purple prose about two 13-year old boys trying to overcome evil in a small town, and a father trying to help them. It is a good book for Halloween

Henry Green - Caught. Besides the goings on between two firefighters it has some great writing on The Blitz.

that'll leave me with two hardy's to read, bott of which would probably be Pointless answers

Desperate Remedies: A Novel (1871)
The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (1876)
and 100000000 poems

i also have the recent biography by the same woman who did the the dickens biography and i think it might be even longer

(hardy's, hardys?)

wikipedia says there are probably 50 short stories that i should go through and check - i've read a bunch in various collections. penguin has various anthologies of them, probably the same things in a different order.

Distinguishing a mediocre from a good or great Hardy poem is hard -- and part of the fun.

Got my bundle from the Sublunary editions sale.

Osvaldo Lamborghini - Two Stories
Horacio Quiroga - Beyond

Really good to go much much deeper into Latin American writing with these two short translations.

I finished American Poetry Wax Museum, which truly is the most important book to understanding the US poetry canon. (Returning to discussions of yesteryear, it also does a handy job of explaining why a mediocre poet like Robert Lowell continues to be so ‘popular’). Highly recommended for those interested in that kind of thing.

Have since plowed through:
- Wendy Lotterman, A Reaction to Someone Coming In: a fine if a little too neat book of poems by young psychoanalytic theorist and queer scholar. Honestly was a little bored reading it.

- Zan de Parry, Put It In See What It Does: de Parry is one of my favorite living poets, and the way this large chap absolutely nails the cadences and verbiage of middle America in an earnest and not-mocking way is incredible. Can’t wait for this guy’s first larger-press book this year.

- Oswell Blakeston, The Cobra King: A collection of pithy queer erotic poems from this legend of the 20th century. Excellent small book.

Like others, I am currently reading About Ed. Per usual, Bob’s prose is incredible, though I expect things to get more messy as I am only two sections in.

It will -- in the best sense.

I read Lawrence Block's *Sins of the Fathers*. I loved how stripped back it was (even for a noir) but the central theme was kind of on the nose.

Now reading Barbara Pym's *Quartet in Autumn* (my first Pym). It's essentially a comedic miniature about the 'grey lives, thinly led' of four characters approaching retirement but there is something savage about it, almost existential. The comedy comes from how straight Pym plays it: there is no attempt to ennoble the characters, no vast secret visionary interiority (take your pick: Ford, Updike, Salter etc); equally there is no accumulative undertow, no sense of something being 'held back', like *Remains of the Day* or whatever. There's lots of Larkin here, some Patrick Hamilton. The author she most reminds me of is Elizabeth Taylor, although there is a sense that at least love can save us in Taylor's books. Maybe it's just the shitty December weather but dang, it's hitting quite hard.

I love the Scudder books but haven't read that one - my local charity shop has a copy so might pick it up. Yes, Block's recognisable stamp (for me) is that strange combination of subtlety and sudden over-on-the-noseness (as well as his meticulous but nigh-invisble mystery plotting).

I like reading old kids books at Christmas and this year its "The Dark is Rising", which I didn't read as a child because there's no anthropomorphic animals as main characters. It's very good on atmosphere in a way that I appreciate as an adult but probably would've bored me as a child. Incredible sound design.

The early Scudder books (Sins of the Fathers is the first) are thinner, more straightforward mystery novels. There's a three-year publication gap between the third (Time to Murder and Create (1977)) and fourth (A Stab in the Dark (1981)) books, and you could almost say the series doesn't really start until then.

I really enjoyed "Eight Million Ways to Die" but "Ginmill" (four years later) is a whole other, spectacular thing

The book version of 'it gets good in S9'!

It will -- in the best sense.

Osvaldo Lamborghini - Two Stories

Please let me know what you make of this one. I'm a big big fan of Sublunary, and I have pretty decent exposure to experimental writing, but I thought this was genuinely complete nonsense, a chaotic surface with nothing underneath.

Didn't think much of the first story, but the second held some interest with it's exploration of different relationships and sexualities in that period of oppression in Argentina's history. It reminded me a little of Hilda Hilst's writing though yeah a lot more chaotic (or modernist lol)

Would probably get hold of another book of his, were it to be translated, which I am not sure it will.

Osvaldo Lamborghini sounds like a mysterious author from a Bolano novel.

There is a quote by him in the PR for the book:

"It scares me."

I am guessing we should begin a new thread for winter, yes? I will do so later today.

Glück’s About Ed seems to find me weeping over my oatmeal every morning, an image just bathetic enough that I have to question why I am crying— is it for Bob? For Ed? For all of my dead friends? Past loves? Who knows. It’s an incredible book.

A new WAYR thread has been hatched:

Nothing Doting Living Loving: What Are You Reading In The Winter of 2023?