"I live in an immense activity, in which everything becomes morning" -- but what are YOU reading Summer 2014??

Been dipping into Juniper Fuse, by poet/translator Clayton Eshleman, a strange hybrid work interweaving personal essay, free verse, academic writing, and plenty of pretty pictures into an exploration of cave art and the phenomenology of creative imagination.

Also continuing to plug away at Bleak House, though with increasingly frequent "Who the hell was that character again?" moments, which means I'm either going at it too slowly or not slowly enough.

Nearing midway in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Hofstadter maintains the neutral stance of an impartial historian about 99% of the time, but he inserts delightful little digs every once I a while, when the nonsense gets too ripe for him to resist.

btw a courtesy link to the previous 'what are you reading?' thread.

well, that didn't work as planned. here's another attempt.

This piece on Gordon Lish is largely a rehash of the controversy over his editing of Carver, with a welter of links and quotes---a few from the man himself, in what may have been a brief or briefly productive interview, but long enough to get the money shots at Roth, Franzen, Lethem, Lydia Davis, the New Yorker, n+1, and, oh yeah, Carver---but it does have me wondering about his own fiction, especially the early novels, which DeLillo and others here highly recommend. Anybody read Dear Mr. Capote, for instance?http://www.newsweek.com/2014/06/27/angry-flash-gordon-255491.html
Also wondering about these writers, mentioned in Wolcott's comments on the Newsweek:
I'm not faulting Nazaryan, his profile got the evocative job done, but I wish someone someday would move beyond the Raymond Carver overhang and revisit the fiction authors published at Knopf and The Quarterly under Lish's tutelage and aegis--writers such as Mark Richard, Noy Holland, Yannick Murphy, and Nancy Lemann, among others--from a literary perspective, not through a Twilight of the Gods frame on the glory that was once publishing and the preeminence of print. That might be a nice project for some university press.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2014/06/captain-fiction-episode-six-the-lash-of-lish

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2014/06/captain-fiction-episode-six-the-lash-of-lish

(The Newsweek piece was worth reading for some of the links and quotes, actually, though they made it kind of an eyesore, but that's the Web for you.)

late to the bolaño party: sped through the savage detectives, not entirely sure i liked it that much... but now starting on 2666

and whoever it was who made the claim on the jacket that the savage detectives was the novel borges would have written: i really don't see it.

I found Savage Detectives somewhat undercooked compared to 2666. There was no doubt in my mind as to which was better conceived and executed.

Check the Bolano thread too.

i was left wondering if that last image was some kind of representation of absence/presence...

can't stop won't stop

I've not read Detectives but the 'final image' of 2666 was just about perfect...

Been reading the second half of Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. Mostly good to great, but the one about the dragger captain kinda, well, drags.

Really like the long story in that about the guy writing the vast, endless book: Joe Gould's Secret, I think it's called.

I found that story horribly depressing. I can't look at it again.

i have that in a little book of its own

i bought it because i read a thing tao lin wrote about it

Just finished Susan Choi's My Education. Immensely readable, but need to process it a bit.

Ian McEwan - Sweet Tooth
Max Hastings - Catastrophe 1914

Just finished:

Megan Abbott, Dare Me (noir lit + high school cheerleaders, the in-genre luridness earned me some raised eyebrows from my gf but the prose is really excellent & lyrical)

Teju Cole, Every Day is for the Thief (it's definitely a Teju Cole book)

Cheer up, Alimosina, Joe Gould actually did write this other little thing (a diary), which my contacts among the lumberjacks assure me is quite readable, in its own peculiar way--just like these reporters say:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2000-04-04/news/joe-gould-s-secret-history/

Joe Gould actually did write this other little thing (a diary)

Thanks for that. I guess his life wasn't entirely futile.

I went camping for a couple of days. I didn't want to bring a big hardcover book like the Hofstadter, so I took a crappy mass market paperback of an old Len Deighton spy thriller, Berlin Game. It was a quick read, and exhibited a very high level of craftsmanship for what was basically schlock. I always find that combination to be interesting, if it's consumed at long enough intervals.

What do you think of Le Carre? The only one I've read is The Little Drummer Girl, and don't remember that very well (was dense, but he was a convincing tour guide; got me grudgingly going along in some sketchy directions). Much enjoyed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and A Perfect Spy--original miniseries of both--and some barely remembered movies.

It's been a decade at least since I last read LeCarre with any attention and about two decades since most of my exposure to him. But I recall reading seven or eight of his books in the span of maybe four years, so I know I must have derived some enjoyment from him.

My general sense, looking back, is that LeCarre's prose style isn't flashy, but it isn't altogether barren of interest. The pacing is deliberate rather than fast and furious, the psychology is fairly sound, the plotting holds together without noticeable creaking at the joints.

His characters don't stray far from the standard-issue set of world-weary spies drinking bad coffee, having trouble with the KGB, their bosses and other human relationships, but he constructs them with better than average detailing. In fact, you could say LeCarre invented that character set in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. It's the book that made his name, and set a whole new direction for the spy genre, which was stuck in 007 mode at the time.

So, one thumb up, I suppose.

Many le Carre books are really enjoyable dark office politics stories--it's just that the outcomes of the power-plays in boardroom meetings are usually some poor pawn being sacrificed overseas rather than somebody getting stuck writing a report

responding to something upthread, it seems (after a quick search) that I was the one who made the Borges/Bolaño comparison...? in reference to 2666, though; and on further reflection it's a very strange thing to have said

really, the only way it even makes sense in the context of my own personal reading history is if you flip it into "huh, 2666 is a lot more Borgesian than the other Bolaño novellas I've read"... and even that mostly boils down to 'deconstructed detective fiction + fictional writers'

"other Bolaño novellas I've read" = an inelegant way of saying that I've not read Savage Detectives

it's not like Borges invented writing-stories-about-fictional-writers FFS

sorry I'm not sure what I was on about

ha, no: wasn't directed at your comment (still need to read the bolaño thread, but avoiding *spoilers*), that bolaño/borges thing is a quote from the jacket on my copy of savage detectives. all the blurbs on it seem like they were just reaching for any comparisons to other latin american authors, relevant or not. sorry for the confusion!

Stephen Donaldson The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever which I picked up cheap in the Omnibus edition from a charity shop a couple of weeks back. I read the first couple of chapters 20+ years ago when somebody had a copy lying around while I was in Belfast but hadn't read any further in the interim. Finding it pretty interesting but I don't read massive amounts of Fantasy outside of the classic Tolkien, Peake, Pullman which I dip into occasionally & whatever is in 2000AD.

Anyway am enjoying this , not sure how fast I'm going to read it though. Or at the moment if I'm going to go through all 3 books in here.

Just read Bathed In Lightning the Colin Harper John Mclaughlin bio which was very good and makes me want to read some other bios of him.

Need to find a book on repairing sewing machines cos my main pastime has ground to a major slowing down at least. My LIDL job won't interlock the threads from either side, so it doesn't work. I think I should be able to fix it myself but just can't so far. But am still handstitching and reading various books on making clothing. latest one being a thing on Tailoring by writers for CPI

If you're curious about an overview of the recently completed Chronicles, and don't mind possible spoilers (mostly re vol. 10), I pasted a piece by Tom Shippey into or onto the Speculative etc thread.

Elias Canetti - The Voices of Marrakesh. Not read much travel writing in my life, so I love Canetti's range as a writer and how he seems to pull it off. Its a short record, he seems to integrate, never too naive to the sounds and colours thank goodness.

Frank Wedekind - Diary of an Erotic Life. This is very non-literary, pared down descriptions. The problem is there isn't enough happening, his allegedly monstrous libido not on show (and we've all read the Kinki biog by now..) Into the Paris section, and it might change.

Rilke - Duino Elegies tr. by Stephen Cohn. Good set of notes, not too much explaining.

Nearing the midpoint of Bleak House... the scene with Chadband preaching & maintaining uncomfortable eye-contact with Mr. Snagsby while the latter's wife scrutinizes his reactions is a minor masterpiece of zany domestic comedy.

I just want to go on record as saying I haven't read it in a few years but I still think Savage Detectives is prob good but that the money scenes (the duel, Lima & Paz) matter less to me than say the gallery of Spanish writers who all show up one after another near the end of the long middle section, or incidental characters like Luscious Skin...

Very appealing Caleb Crain piece about Stephen Crane's life and art, with a new bio by debunker of previous:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/06/30/140630crbo_books_crain

Read about 100 pp of selected essays of D. T. Suzuki on Zen Buddhism last night. His aim is merely to introduce a general idea of Zen to westerners, using history and explication, but he does tell enough zen stories to give a very clear idea of the kernel of zen as direct personal experience, and repeats frequently that the techniques of zen (meditation, koans, etc.) are not the substance, which can only be grasped through satori.

reading the art of fielding chad harbach book -- started v avg/dull but it has gotten better tbh, cannot see it earning all its hype, the whole bidding war etc but ima def stay with it

Colm Tóibín - The Testament of Mary

Last night I bounced around reading here and there in The Goliard Poets, a book of translations by Geo. Whicher (1947, New Directions). He is very clever at his rhyme schemes, which could not duplicate the schemes of the originals, but he manages to bring across the meaning of the Latin while retaining formal rhymes that it impart some of the original flavor. The Goliard subject matter is rather slight: drinking, eating, and carousing, so a light, entertaining touch is U&K.

i am reading 'children of clay' by raymond queneau

it started out hilarious and has modulated to curious and regularly amusing

i feel something like i am watching a foreign film and unable to judge the story for what it is because of the atmosphere of classy european manners, but it seems like a kind of book that americans don't do

i've also been rereading philip kerr's bernie gunther books because i got a couple newer ones and wanted to get back into them from the beginning. the prose is harder to gobble up this time, sometimes seems like an impediment to just getting done as fast as possible (since it's not quite prose to savor). i'm looking forward to the next one because he starts out much more miserable during post-WWII interzone kinda stuff.

I didn't finish Wedekind. Its not pornographic enough.

Now onto Hamburger's translation of Holderlin. This obsession with Greece would wear you down except its contrasted with Germanic "weak in deeds, strong in thoughts" despair.

There is more, and Holderlin's preoccupation with the ancients is never a mere fetish, its something that occupies every fibre of his being - as if he transported himself back in time in his poetry with every mention of grape and lyre and wine and song.

You just reminded me of
Texts within texts.

trollope /:

I was reading "confederacy of dunces" but I put it aside with 100 pages to go as it wasn't doing it for me. I'm reading a book called "The Cult Film Reader". The term "cult film" is so encompassing, I'm not even sure it means anything anymore tbh. The book seems to focus on the audiences reactions and expectations to certain movies. I've only read the pieces on "El Topo" and "Ichi The Killer" so far.

I am reading War and Peace (mostly in the evening) and Capital in the Twenty-First Century (mostly during the day). Could someone please explain on page 68 of the latter how he got to "nearly 20 percent of African capital is owned by foreigners"? I've been plugging numbers into various equations with no luck. It is fine if it is a matter of accounting; I have given up on trying to be intelligent.

i really did not find 'confederacy' amusing

Reading a few stories:

Pessoa's The Anarchist Banker, in a collection of his writings (which I stopped and started since Spring). A Plato-like dialogue. The title is v promising (every banker you could say is an anarchist) but the modern meaning of the title is lost in the story itself, inevitably. The repetitions annoy.

D.H. Lawrence's The Sun (from a colleciton of short stories I picked up yesterday). Plenty of self-loathing (playing the inadequate husband with the stuttery dialogue and shy demeanour), as oposed to his rival (silent, 'animal' like Italian peasant, of the earth, with the obligatory ample member, of course). The sun-baked wife: well, you know what she likes...this is all provocation. I think the Ken Russell 'hysteria' surrounding his adaptations has put me off somewhat and I never considered reading him. Now I feel I'll be spending something w/Lawrence. Here he has repetitions too but they pay off in these quasi-mystical visions that have a hint of the fascist to them. Sensuous too.

Pavese's The Suicides - blow by blow account of a psychologically destructive relationship. Prizes all round. Pavese can write of these prisons like no other.

Back from vacation. Read the first volume of Sodoma and Gomorra (vol 7 of the new 13 vol edition of In Search of Lost Time - I'm halfway through!!!) Garcia Marquez' The General In His Labyrinth, Fitzgeralds translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khartoum, GRRM's A Dance With Dragons and Zweig's Chess Story. Proust was perfect reading for sitting in a Norwegian cabin without electricity, made me sad I didn't have more volumes with me. Some day I want to take a month off in a cabin somewhere, and just read Proust.

Its baffling conceit aside, Dutch is fantastic. He's just a good writer, with unusual descriptive and evocatory powers.

have only read the first of morris's TR books, but it was terrific. will probably get around to his reagan book some time -- is that the only major reagan bio to date?

Lou Cannon's, which is the best and least starry-eyed bio.

this quote, from the review dow posted, is really sad to me:

At the end of the book, Morris visits Dutch in late 1994 and the image of the isolated lifeguard returns unbidden. Reagan, closed off more than ever by Alzheimer's disease, rambles incoherently, but then poignantly he shows his visitor a watercolor of a riverbank. "This," Dutch says, snapping into focus, "is where I was a lifeguard for seven [\(sic) summers. I saved 77 lives. And you know, none of 'em ever thanked me!" The truth, as Morris reminds us repeatedly, was just the opposite. Reagan never thanked anybody for anything.

Coming from the opposite, more or less: my god the Roosevelts (just watched the end of the broadcast; whole thing or big chunks may well be on pbs.org soon enough)! it's like looking into another timeline, another universe, to see presidents and a first lady accomplishing so much, mostly for the good. Sure, FDR got 12 years, but so much in the first four, and beyondo.
Depression apparently ran through many well-populated branches of that family---for the most accomplished, it was doing your civic duty and then some, as one means of self-medication (slaughter of big game and soldiers also helped, according to quotations from TR). Note to self: pull up your socks. Go put some on then do it. Anyway my god.

the doc does an estimable job of showing how Eleanor was essential.

Just finished George Packer's The Unwinding. Stunning achievement which makes good on it's premise, taking the format of Dos Passos's USA and removing the fictional component. Extraordinary narrative skills. Liked it even more when I read that David Brooks criticised it for not being prescriptive enough, ie not being enough like a David Brooks book.

does anyone feel like defending Lars Iyer to me because jeez

weird annoying thing: sentences which recall McCarthy trying to do pynchon, which was annoying enough at first remove

"Last night, Mulberry smoked crack on the roof of his house, Doyle says. Up on the roof, the ridge tiles between his thighs, laughing like a maniac, he declaimed a poem about a coffin full of shit ..."

ellipsis, italics, in original, obv

I seem to have two books going atm. My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin and the big three volume, 2500 page history of the Civil War by Shelby Foote. I'll probably finish the novel soon and most likely will never finish the history, but it is a very well-written narrative, so there is some hope I'll stick to it. The greatest merit in the novel are the parts where it is most Australian in language, setting and detail; unhappily, the story is coming unglued about midway through.

Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook. Last time I had this feeling of compulsively reading a big-ish novel was when I got hold of 2666 about three years ago.

I quickly skipped my way through the remainder of My Brilliant Career, omitting completely a long episode of her being governess to a squalid family of filthy brats. I basically abandoned any pretense of really reading the thing. The adolescent fantasy aspects of the plot just became too overpowering for me (the author was 16 when she wrote it).

Now I shall plunge into the Civil War for a time, until I am sated with battle lore and battle gore.

unhappily, the story is coming unglued about midway through.

See the sort-of sequel, My Brilliant Career Goes Bung, where the heroine's life goes berserk due to the success/public reaction to the first book

I read aero's book in one go tonight and since I have something of a mental block some times around reading novels that are short enough to finish in a lifetime or novels in general I feel pretty good about that. It was really good and it's leaving showers of sparks inside my mind.

Aero nominated for National Book Award, omfg

Just to be clear, the posts above citing 'aero' are referring to underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned... correct? Any road, National Book Award is almost as big time as it gets, so awed congratulations are in order.

yes

this news is too big to confine to I Love Books

It's in the tmg thread in ILM, too, I believe

The Mountain Goats thread, that is.

I'm hoping to get to WIWV this weekend or next week. Someone with more standing here than me should start a discussion thread.

just think of how much standing you'll gain by authoring such a righteous thread

I can see it now

https://michellesgotsomethingtosay.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/mountaingoat1.gif

I finished my book of Robert Sheckley stories.

I read a lot of a guidebook about Norway.

does anyone feel like defending Lars Iyer to me because jeez

I read Exodus & enjoyed it, but I like books about academics gone bad

I read the Spurious trilogy and laughed and laughed, loving all that wonderful asshole friend stuff. Tbh, I can hardly remember any of the plot.

Finishing The Golden Notebook, its awesome but I'm not even sure where to begin, so I'll end here:

Sex is the opium of the people

Moving onto: Peter Weiss - Leavetaking.

Leavetaking's great!

Had a really good month of reading in September, but capped it off yesterday by starting the worst book I've tried to read in a long time. Figured it was the season to try some horror fiction; the local libraries don't have a lot of the stuff, so I ended up with _Horns_ by Joe Hill.

Ig, short for Ignatius, is the novel's protagonist. His girlfriend was killed a year ago, and most people assume he did it. In this scene, some 60 pages in, his brother tells him who the killer was.

'And if I had any idea (Spoiler) was going to kill her, I would've tried to stop it,' Terry said. 'I thought Spoiler was her friend. I've wanted to tell you so bad, but Spoiler made me keep quiet. He made me.'
'EEEEEEEEEE,' Ig screamed.
'He's awful, Ig,' Terry said. 'You don't know him. You think you do, but you don't have any idea.'
'EEEEEEEEEEEE,' lg went on.

I stopped reading shortly after.

I read a little bit of Hill's Heart-Shaped Box, about a neurotic, middle-aging rock muso, a minor star, it seems, who may have peaked, jittering around the home office (hated growing up on a farm, but being conditioned to farm hours messed him up on tour, so took drugs to adjust; didn't like that either) while his assistent orders something weird from EBay, as another investment of course. More plausible than usual "rock novel" set-ups, though I may well never go back to it.

Don't try this at home: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer, whose stories spin through glimpses of comedy, often closer to tragedy, "but it was also," as Chris Rock says, "Tuesday." Stories say, She whooshed through the green lights faster than the reds, which is the basic idea of greens and reds, after all; and "She was a big girl, too, " a boy said. "I'd be afraid to steer that wheel." Like you had a shot. Really great so far, with more consequential, make-me-care content in the first three than many whole novels.

Any of the booker shortlist any good, cause my flatmate just got all six in hardback and I've got nothing else lined up. Already read "we are all completely beside ourselves", crazy family story with a decent twist, fine for the tube but nothing earth shattering.

I am about 420pp into Foote's history of the US Civil War. I am beginning to think I may finish all 2500pp. It is squarely in the sweet spot for narrative history, in terms of my preferences. The events are clearly laid out and actions easy to follow. He generally confines himself to the salient parts of a battle and doesn't bog down in too much detail. He is deft at quick character sketches of the major actors. He drops in amusing or illuminating anecdotes and they leaven the grimness here and there.

Any historic event that covers many years, more than a million soldiers, a continental breadth of geography, and hundreds of battles on many fronts cannot be fully described by one author or one book, however lengthy it may be. But Foote's version of this war is quite lively, sometimes surprising, and almost made comprehensible.

I may read some lighter material in between volumes, though. Reading this book is no short task.

Leavetaking's great!

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Wednesday, October 1, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This edition also has another biographical piece called Vanishing Point that might be of interest to you.

Anyway I only read a couple of sentences because the library also came up with a copy of Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and that is simply one of the great books!

Oh yeah, the Penguin Classics edition of Kokoro was my introduction to Soseki, and it got me completely hooked

the Foote sounds like a great read but I'm not sure I'd be able to devote so much time to a narrative written by a guy so deeply invested in Lost Cause ideology

i'm kind of a civil war buff (insert george costanza joke here) but i always get bogged down about 50 pages into the first foote volume. he's a good writer but when a guy begins his 2,500 page civil war epic with a long chapter on jefferson davis's childhood it's...not hard to guess where he's coming from. there's a good chapter on foote in tony horwitz's 'confederates in the attic.'

i really like bruce catton's army of the potomac trilogy, which i zapped through earlier this year. catton isn't as good a stylist as foote, no one was ever going to interview him for the paris review, but the books still hold up wonderfully well.

I love the Civil War so long as I don't read about battles.

theoretically I am reading The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig, but it's too thick for a subway carry.

a narrative written by a guy so deeply invested in Lost Cause ideology

The odd thing to me so far is how, in the first year or so of the war that I've covered, he often shows the Union army and navy either victorious or else fighting their opponents to a draw, and he how often he shows the Confederate generals inflating their accomplishments or badly deluded by their own self-confidence. Their first year of war was a straight up disaster for the CSA.

In what I've read, Foote is basically showing up the entire project of the southern rebellion as rash, poorly conceived and riddled with a foolish grandiosity. Even Jeff Davis is described in far less flattering terms than Lincoln. He obviously admires the Confederate soldier, but doesn't denigrate the fighting qualities of the Union soldiers at all. He even explains how McClellan's handling of the army was actually rather competent, and his reluctance to engage in an all-out assault on Richmond was based on the highly alarmist misinformation he was being fed on a near daily basis by the Pinkerton spies the Union employed in Virginia, which inflated the size of the defending army by a factor of three or four times.

iow, he doesn't convey an overly nostalgic view of the South's cause.

that's entirely fair -- i'll give it another shot before long. i think my view is partly shaded by interviews that foote gave decades after writing those books, when he really did start sounding like a lost cause guy:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/the-convenient-suspension-of-disbelief/240318/

coates is spot on about foote's white romanticism. foote spends zero time so far examining what slavery was or how it pervaded the south's economy and culture. he gives only a glance at the political roots of the war. his history is about the conduct of the war and almost nothing else. even then, the use of slaves to do work like digging defensive fortifications is passed over in silence. in this book, slaves and slavery disappear from view entirely, as uninteresting details.

Just for the record, it moves here:

'I FALL upon the spines of books! I read!' -- Autumn 2014: What Are You Reading?

Just finished (ILXer) Sean Michaels' Us Conductors. It's lovely. I couldn't recommend higher.

― MaudAddam (cryptosicko), Wednesday, August 20, 2014 9:58 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And a bump to congratulate him on winning the Giller Prize tonight! Congrats!!

Wait he is on ilx?

Theremin

Oh wow, that sounds good.

Will check that, thanks. Also, is the documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey good?

Is that the one by the other Steve Martin? If so, yes

wow, THANK YOU!!! MaudAddam - really kind of you.