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

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.

The Man Eater Of Malgudi, R.K. Narayan -Protagonist works as aprinter whose front office doubles as sort of hang out space for the denizens of the (fictional) Indian village he lives in. One day a burly taxidermist (!) muscles his way in and unilaterally decides to become his tenant, all the while bullying his friends at every opportunity. This has the sort of cozy, gently satirical bent that makes you feel like you've known the characters for agees. There's a bunch of books in the series it seems. This one's dedicated to Graham Greene "for many years of friendship".

read Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo, which is the 4th? Kosuke Kindaichi mystery (the 3rd released in english) and it was less good than the previous two. 70+ more to go...

On a brief vacation I read The Moving Target, one of Ross MacDonald's earliest Lew Archer novels (the first one?). Now reading Our Man in Havana, Graham Greene, which so far as I've read merits the descriptor: droll.

Our Man in Havana is one of those books I read as a kid that embedded itself in my brain and pops up at odd moments.

xp I loved The Moving Target, and the rest of the Lew Archer novels that I've read. They are like a travelogue of the underbelly of 1940s - 1950s Los Angeles.

Finished The Buddenbrooks, which was a bit of a morbid slog. Each character briefly flickers, chokes, and stays around for another 250 pages to watch another character do the same thing as the cycle repeats. Each character is ultimately quite internal, the only meaningful interactions happen within the family, one or two secondary characters excepted. Everything remains at the domestic level of alliances and marriages and buying houses, with the political developments (1840 to 1880 or so) treated very discretely. I have loved family novels where nothing happens inside / the agitated outside is blocked out (The Leopard), so maybe I just need to accept some dislike of young and old Thomas Mann (he wrote The Buddenbrooks in his twenties, and he was old at the time of Dr Faustus) while considering The Magic Mountain one of the greatest masterpieces.

The next book to come with me in my bag is Mysteries (Knut Hamsun) if that's what's it's called for you guys too.

Finished Mouthful of Blood by Toni Morrison where a lot of her shorter non fiction work is compiled.
Enjoyed it, but it took me a couple of years to get around to. Picked it up during first year of pandemic.
Pretty good anyway. Now need to read her fiction work that I've picked up over last few years.

Ilan Pappe The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Have had this for a while too and again should have read it long since. But have had it lying around and thought I really should read this and another couple of titles on palestine and the Israeli state structure. I am surrounded by books, quite literally and do want to read most of them.
So hoping I can eventually do so.
I was going to get around to Angela Saini's Patriarchs next but now think that will wait .

Alfred Metraux Voodoo In Haiti
late 50s ethnological look into the syncretic religion in one of the places it most prevailed in.
Quite interesting .

August Meier & Elliott Rudwick From Plantation to Ghetto
70s book on black history in what became the United States.
INteresting to read this when I'm used ti much more recent books on the history which have come out after years of decolonisation and anti racist thought being more prevalent.
Pretty good and i do think I am coming across some details that I don't remember from elsewhere. Not sure to what extent this is a go to source for later books. I came across it in a bibliography from something anyway.
Both writers seem to have written quite widely in similar areas black history and human rights and things.

The Power of Language Viorica Marian
recently published book on the effects of multilingualism on the individual and the society they are part of.
Looks at linguistic relativity and things. & associations created by the resemblance between different words and even momentary triggers of initial letters etc.
So somewhat interesting.I think I was looking for more on something I read about how language speaking breaks down within families . Where if the family is multilingual it can come down to communication between different individuals within that family being primarily in different languages between specific individuals. So father talks to daughter in language a , to son in language band mother to daughter and sibling to sibling may be primarily in a different language than one to another member of teh family. Which is something I came across in a Guardian or Observer review of a book a few years ago. NOt really seen that in here so far. But what's here is interesting.

Oh yeah, scored a copy of Richard Morton Jack's book on Nick Drake from a different library a few days ago too. Bit not really started it yet.

& just read a book on the history of Motown called Dancing in the street : Motown and the cultural politics of Detroit by Suzanne Smith

and David Olusoga's Black & British which was pretty good but he seems to have left out details I read in his other books that I would have included in this . SS Verdala the troopship carrying the BWIR troops from the West Indies to Europe detouring into a storm in waters way further North than the troops were provisioned for and causing death and a great deal of damage thanks to frostbite etc to about 600 of them. Would have thought it was important enough to repeat. It's in his The World's War whichis earlier,
Think I did notice a few others but otherwise pretty good history that covers a lot of areas I wasn't as familiar with. I like the author and am reading through a lot of his work.

The Narayan was a delight! Laughed out loud a few times, and it's just such a cozy delightful environment - will def pick up more of his novels when I see them.

Now on to Junichiro Tanizaki, The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi. Currently our lord is still in puberty and having a sexual awakening seeing women wash the decapitated heads of enemies brought back from battle. So there's that.

Susie Boyt's Loved and Missed (New York Review Books) is described by an American reviewer as "a disarmingly droll tragicomedy about imperfect motherhood and fractured families," without getting too cuet about it, apparently (also: New York Review Books). Mentions that this is the only Boyt book published in the States so far, other than My Judy Garland Life, which looks like my kinda memoir. International correspondents! Are her novels good??

I'm about to finish Hugh Eakin's Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America, have cracked open Hua Hsu's Stay True, but am uh hesitating before opening The Netanyahus.

The Power of Language Viorica MarianThe Power of Language Viorica Marian
finished this may have to come back and reread in future. Author is running a Lab dealing with multilingual behaviour studying it etc.
It did touch on some interesting stuff .
Ideas of effect on cognition of having more than one language etc.
Just out I think or at least library system just got hold of it and i got 2nd loan on this copy

Hua Hsu's Stay True

My sister gave me this for my birthday. Will probably get to it next year.

My 2666 reread has reached the part about the crimes. I'm not sure I want to keep going.

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.

― Chris L, Thursday, October 5, 2023 5:20 PM (one week ago)

Commitment by Mona Simpson (in progress)
before that Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood (improbable but endearing)

The two novels make me aware that writing is a skill that perhaps up to a point can be taught. Not to disparage the latter, which I recommend for the anguish of motherhood (the soft unformed back -- from another novel by Mary Gaitskill; the trust (and what to do with it); the rejection later).

i am finally reading some of the various collected writings of myles na gcopaleen. no doubt i'm missing a lot of important context, but nevertheless excellent stuff.

Reading the Netanyahu’s atm Alfred… if ever there was a time

Morning reading of Clark’s Heaven on Earth continues. I’m on the Poussin chapter at the moment, and it is as extraordinary as Clark’s whole book on Poussin.

During snatches of the day and at night, I have been switching back and forth between Stephen Van Dyck’s People I Met from the Internet and Emily Martin’s Making a Salt Ridge.

The former is essentially a long annotated list of people that the author met from the internet as he was discovering his sexuality, grieving his mother, moving to LA, etc. It’s engaging and is giving me some more ideas about a piece I am working on around queer millennial aesthetics.

The latter is a book of poems from one of my favorite poets working today— strange looping pieces that are invested in melding the personal and emotional with more material and abstract elements of language. That it goes between many forms helps keep engagement up.

I wanted to read something spooky so I picked The Cipher by Kathe Koja, it won some awards 30 years ago. Started off well, very edgy / grungey, and an unusual take on eldritch horror. But it was far too long, didn't go anywhere interesting after the first few chapters, more characters kept coming each more awful than the last.

i got about 1/4 of the way through "thinking fast and slow" which is supposedly one of the few things worth keeping from the TED talk/unreplicable psych experiment era. it was not.

that's been on my long list for a while, what's up with it?