March 2006: So, what are you reading?

At home, but not yet started:

Arthur & George
The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Value

99 days to the World Cup!

Oysters, naturally!:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345476387/002-3821789-3074440?v=glance&n=283155

As far as an inside look at law school (from a practical standpoint) it can't be beat, but as literature it's pretty sub-par, and pretty dull.

It's OK so far. Illuminating, I suppose.

neither did flaubert.

i think he must be one of my least favorite of the classic or canonical authors.

I also bought, yesterday, William Gaddis "Carpenter's Gothic" but I haven't started it. It was bought at hstencil's suggestions, when we were in da junk shop.

I bought it from the book stall at Spitalfields market. First time I've been in about three months and was expecting an architectural disaster after reading about the redevelopment. It was far from that. I like the walkway with the glass roof framing Christchurch.

Acoid the tapas bar at Spitalfields. Very poor.

i enjoy that book.

I have just started 'The System Of The World'.

I am now reading "London Psychogeography Rachman Riots and Rillington Place" by Tom Vague.

He has a very singular style, not far from note-taking and I'm not sure everyone would think this worthwhile but I like this book and I like Tom Vague and I'm finding out how much I didn't know about the 10 Rillington Place murders, and the Notting Hill race riots of the late 50s, and the fabled slum landlord Rachman, and tons more stuff.

I finished "The Foundation Pit" and it's as dispiriting a book as I know, so I'm glad it made me laugh several times along the way.

What's wrong with sidebars and historical trivia? This is my favourite kind of reading! Sadly Salt actually degenerates into a list of recipes and doesn't really tell you anything that Cod didn't.

Currently reading Ludmila's Broken English by DBC Pierre and I can't decide if I like it or not. His ear for bizarre dialogue is excellent, and I like the story, but his actual prose is terrible, and his descriptions are disastrous. Even something as simple as the layout of a room becomes a syrupy mess of dagger looks and shaky similes. Amateurish.

Seriously though. When it comes to books about historical trivia, I am expert (as they say in The Big Lebowski).

The book jacket ranks it up there with Ford and Brennan. We shall see. "Spain conquered the world then didn't know what to do with it." That's a bit of a crass statement for the opening chapter. You only need to look at the tin and silver mines throughout the Americas to work out what they wanted.

I liked Fup too.

It may be a bit emo.

Mikey I hope you like reading about little Romanesque churches.

I didn't read anything this morning. I rested my eyes.

I don't mean I then played in the game. No, just watched it. Christ, Man Utd got lucky. I had rosti and steamed brocoli for tea and a rather heavy new world shiraz.

I keep meaning to read "Salammbo" but my copy is too big, and it's a hardback, but you should see the pretty illustrations.

Now I am reading Thomas Hardy's first novel, Desperate Remedies, which, if the introduction is to be believed, firmly inserts Hardy into the realm of the sensation novelists, a genre that will continue to impact upon him throughout his novelistic career.

see what you think, US reviews were mixed. I actually like it better than Atonement but not more than Enduring Love.

Anyway, I'm reading Stuart - A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters. I'm two thirds of the way through and not sure how I feel about it.

Mary, I didn't. But if it went to the address on here then I wouldn't have, yet. But I will, soon. If it went to my work address then we need to think, again.

Archel I found "Loving" slower than the other HG books I've read, too, and none the worse for it.

Not very good really. Seems to go on for ever.

"I don't see any sense in owning something you can't kick..."

Also, joie de vivre is sort of the opposite of what you need to enjoy Schulz (and arguably the Muppets as well).

after this, "swann's way" or milan kundera's "art of the novel."

I just finished Banville's 'The Sea'.

also a little wittgenstein to pick me up (lots of zingers in 'zettel'), a bit about epictetus, some hume and some charles taylor.

and amelie rorty's great essay on descartes, 'the structure of the meditations'.

I have very nearly finished At Swim Two-Birds, for which I congratulate myself. I shall be neeeding a thorough explanation though.

Hmm, what next? Bollocks to Alton Towers?

Next, it's either the Ukrainian tractor thing or that David Winner book on British football which I've flicked through and it looks bollocks. I hope not, his Dutch one was tip top.

I am buried in Frank Kogan, taking it slowly, trying to think about it as I go, liking it very much.

from the library yesterday: more cold-war thrillerz

Judgement on Deltchev Eric Ambler
Epitaph for a Spy Eric Ambler

also borrowed a friend's copy of Deus Lo Volt! by Evan S Connell, non-ficiton on teh Crusades. I returned that big book of Connell essays after reading only a couple, it was v. good but I guess pop anthropology isn't really my thing. But he's still the best "unknown" author I've come across in years.

And I'm still at it. Yesterday I bought one of the Wire CD reissues. Incidentally, the CD liner notes are great, "Wire were a big influence on the Dusseldorf art punk scene in the late seventies." Ha.

no I'd heard of him but your post there encouraged me to read him! thanks big redd!

Mati Unt - Things in the Night
Curtis Sittenfeld - Prep
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman vol.1: Preludes and Nocturnes
Joan Didion - Democracy
Dubravka Ugresic - The Ministry of Pain
bits of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds

I'm now halfway through Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker on my mom's recommendation. She makes good recommendations.

It does a pretty good job of building its theses and is interestingly written enough. But like a lot of scholarly history, it tends to take a couple of modest ideas and then treat them as if they were so novel and controversial as to merit the 150 pp. of back matter (!!) appended to the 300 pp. of exposition.

Next, I read The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist by Richard Feynman. It isn't really fair to father this book onto Feynman. He didn't seek to publish these transcripts of three lectures he gave in 1963. That was someone else's bright idea, as part of the continuing mini-industry of fobbing off whatever Feynman's fans will buy.

I can see why he got so popular. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics and he talks like an ordinary Joe. He's folksy. He talks around all the hard stuff and uses words like "stuff" a lot, and phrases like "a lot" a lot, too. And these lectures are something of an embarrassment, except he never pretended they were profound or worthy of preserving for posterity, so he's off the hook. I blame greed and idolatry.

Also, perhaps more urgently, have you heard his voice?

This one, though, was not worthy of publication, IMHO. It rambles all over and has very few interesting things to say - and these few things are fairly perfunctory and disconnected. It would work OK as a lecture - you'd listen to him and walk out of and remember one or tidbits and be satisfied with your evening.

I've never heard a recording of his speaking voice. I'd expect he had good timing and delivery for his jokey bits.

I haven't read that book (I saw it recently but didn't look closely, thinking it was a collection of other pieces I had already read).