Autumn 2007 - Which books' leaves are you turning?

I finally finished Consider the Lobster, not sure what I'm going to read next. Options: Michael Tisserand's Sugarcane Academy (New Orleans dude writing about kids and post-Katrina stuff), the Interpretation of Murder, or maybe try out some Philip Roth? Or Samuel Delany's new one?

Delany's new one is in the mail. Outside of class textbooks, I'm leafing through "Hannah Weiner's Open House", a nice looking selected. Oddly I've been reading poetry lately.

Ben Dolnick: Zoology - very enjoyable. Weirdly, though, the narrator/writer ALWAYS notes when a character is black, yet doesn't (for example) note that one character is a dog. It's one of those odd tics that once you've noticed it, it nags at you every time it turns up again.

Before that, Keith Waterhouse's autobiog, 'City Lights', about growing up in Leeds and getting into fairly ramshackle-sounding journalism, and James Lovelock's 'Revenge of Gaia', which was full of good things, but didn't quite feel like a coherent book--more like a bunch of connected essays pretending to be a single book. And I still think he's wrong about nuclear energy.

Ripped through George Saunder's Braindead Megaphone on flights to and from Atlanta. Enjoyable, made me cry several times and LOL also.

The library has a book on microfinance ready for me.

Also, for work, I am having to read Good to Great, which is very meh.

Byrne, Aimless? By Anthony Burgess?

Yes, indeedy. By Anthony Burgess, the same. As detailed in the 'summer 2007 what are you reading thread' linked above.

i've just read "the ugly american", by lederer and burdick. (the same guys that wrote 'failsafe') good, quite good, in fact.

i have just about finished "journey into russia", by laurens van der post, which is a 1964 travelogue through the soviet union. it's good; i like the writing and am really happy to read an outside take on the USSR at that point that avoids politics for the most part.

i am starting "open secrets" by alice munro. i expect that it will be fantastic. of course, i am also reading "the global transformations reader" for class.

just started Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. very straightforward, "newsy" and crisply written w/short chapters and heading. LOTS of staggering US bufoonery from the early cold war so far.

finished Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks' new one. It's about music-related neurological conditions and also quite memoir-ish and reflective, maybe even a bit rambling but fascinating stuff for the most part.

been in a travel book phase recently: VS Naipaul's An Area of Darkness about India in the 60s and his late brother Shiva's North of South about Africa in the 70s. Respectively, the stern-but-sensitive observer and the brilliant bumbler. Shiva Naipaul is my current Great Underappreciated Author. gonna search for his novels -- Fireflies & The Chip-Chip Gatherers -- next.

The Twenty-Seventh City by Franzen. Also trying to finish the Elegant Universe, but it gives me headaches.

Really want to read Ravelstein, Herzog and Humboldt's Gift when I'm done with Franzen.

did you read augie march?if you didnt'you should it's better than almost anything bellow wrote,except from herzog

Shiva Naipaul's a great fiction writer too. 'A Hot Country' (also known as 'Love and Death in a Hot Country') is very good stuff.

Am reading Tom Drury's 'Hunts in Dreams', which is very funny.

Yesterday had a day of work, and bounced back and forth between...
Flannery O'Connor: Mystery & Manners
Karl Marx: Dispatches from the New York Tribune

Yeah, I read Augie March, and I loved it. Then I read a Philip Roth article in the New Yorker on Bellow and Bellow's essays on Ralph Ellison, and I thought I had to check out his other books.

Has anyone seen Mad Men and suddenly gotten the urge to read Cheever's Shady Hill stories?

I am regretting buying and reading the Miranda July book. At first I was afraid of being afraid of being offended. Now I think it is just bad.

Desperately need a breather between slabs of slow-moving Vergil translations, I turn to The Inimitable Jeeves.

I am regretting buying and reading the Miranda July book. At first I was afraid of being afraid of being offended. Now I think it is just bad.

I'm with you on that. I can't believe it just won that $70,000 prize. Yikes.

I don't think it's great, and it bothers me that she has one theme and one voice, but it's not bad writing. I was kind of surprised to find myself defending it in a book club discussion the other night.

You've got a point, Jordan, although it's definitely the 'one theme, one voice' aspect that bothered me most. Taken individually I may have really liked each story, but all together they were irritating. It felt like I was reading about the same character in every story, making the whole book seem like a really confusing novel with no plot.

It only took seeing the reviews that July's book got to get me irritated. And yes, I am the sort of misanthrope who roots for certain people to fail. Her movie was so noxiously precious, and so weighted with scenes where characters archly and portentously express their deepest thoughts and feelings in lieu of, you know, character development. This is what we're fucking lauding these days? Sorry, sorry. I get worked up about... Miranda July movies, apparently.

So, since I flaked on the Summer reading thread (I did read an awful lot, but nothing terribly great and I was ashamed and so I didn't post about any of them - now I've decided "To hell with being ashamed of my crappy taste in books these days!" and will post with great joy, shouting from the mountain top: "I read crap and am damn proud of it!"), here's my first contribution to the Autumnal thread.

Currently reading: Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 by Daniel James Brown - not marvelous, not horrid, pretty much in the vein of stuff about the Galveston hurricane and the 1906 earthquake and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the General Slocum boat fire and the Johnstown Flood (actually, the book by David McCullough was pretty good) and the Hallifax explosion, etc. Basically "last century horrible event that you don't know much/anything about so here's a book aimed for the masses with grisly details and a few uplifting moments."

In the past couple of weeks have read:
The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers (really, really damn good reading)
Thy Neighbor's Wife, by Gay Talese (fascinating)
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Teri Jentz (kind of liked it, was quite annoyed in many places)
Southland, by Nina Revoyr (interesting but amateurish - not that I could do any better, though)
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield (rather fluffy and escapist)
Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon, by Garrison Keillor (don't know why I bothered, except that I keep waiting for something by him to sweep me away)
All of P.D. James' "Adam Dalgliesh" mysteries (quite addictive and absorbing)
Orchard on Fire, by Shena MacKay (most excellent)

I finished the rest of the stories beginning with Something That Needs Nothing, which I thought was terrific since first reading it in the New Yorker. The stories after that were also much better. The stories in the first half frustrated me because they would build up to nothing, sort of writing as performance art, but without the substance to sustain something that is not immediate. I didn't mind the same voice as much. I thought the stories in the second half were better structurally.

so weighted with scenes where characters archly and portentously express their deepest thoughts and feelings in lieu of, you know, character development.

I haven't seen the movie or anything, but this is a weird criticism, as if movies were created as a character-development delivery system, and if a movie fails on that count, why would you even watch it.

I'm sorry, Casuistry, I'm not exactly sure what you mean, and I'm afraid I risk sounding patronizing in response, so if I do, I don't mean to.

What I'm saying is I found the movie obnoxious and the characters cardboard. I watched it because it got good reviews, and was totally baffled, once I saw it, as to how. The worst is a scene where this family gets a bag of goldfish from a pet store and the father or whoever forgets it on top of the car, and all these people in traffic watch it happen, and everyone's transfixed in this fit of existential angst over the fate of the goldfish. David Denby, though I'm not a fan, had it right when he said it's a bad sign that a goldfish gets more thought and consideration in this movie than any human character.

Sorry to go so far off topic from this thread.

I'm also not wanting to sound patronizing, but: Again, this criticism is only "there aren't good characters, there isn't good character development". And therefore, you say, it's a bad film.

But nothing I know about the film -- the title, July's performance art background, the scene you just described -- makes me think it's the kind of film that attempts to tell a "good story" with "strong characters" who "develop" and all that standard narrative jazz. So the criticism seems like complaining that Silas Mariner doesn't scan very well, or that the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't have much of a plot, or that The Waste Land is marred by its piss-poor cartooning.

I mean, nothing I've heard about July makes me all that interested in her, and I haven't actually seen the film, so I can't exactly give a very nuanced critique here. But I like a lot of films that don't have any humans or characters in them at all, so your criticism struck me as strange.

I'd say it would be better if you had seen the movie, but it wouldn't. It's a shit movie, and you've stated you aren't terribly interested in her work anyway.

I think the problem with July is that reading and writing depend upon what the writer and the reader bring to the text: it assumes a context. Performance art and other performing arts depend more upon experience. But I think it just doesn't translate that well to writing because language has its own life and has a different sort of relationship to being.

PS How do you say her last name?

Ask Orson Welles.

Like the month.

What? You pronounce it "September"?

Started De Sade "120 Days of Sodom". Then had to stop so as to finish a library borrow - as i had to give it back - called "ABC of dialectical materialism". A book published in the late 70s, basically this materialism for dummies comes down to the following: "Lenin ws always right!!". I knew it ws gonna be a laugh the moment I saw the note at the back asking the reader to write to the publishers (USSR addy) asking for any feedback.

But I picked up bits. It ws kinda fascinating.

After that I had to start reading EP Thomspon's "The Poverty of Theory", his essay raging on Althusser/structural linguistics that ws, according to him, taking over history departments. Also published in the late 70s and really brilliantly written and quite angrily-funny. Finish this tonight.

I'm about halfway through Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." I don't really see why it is one of, if not the most famous 19th century French novel--it seems quite lackluster compared to a lot of others I've read. I thought at first it might be due to how controversial it was or something, but it really doesn't even seem that much more scandalous than others either.

If I understand corectly, Flaubert's reputation was based on his extremely nuanced and precise prose style (which doesn't carry the same effect in translation), on his detailed portrayal of the psychology his characters, and the rigor with which that psychology drove his plots. All this was seen as quite revolutionary at the time.

Flaubert's influence on subsequent novelists made each of these innovations much less novel. In much the same way, Hemingway spawned so many imitators that what was seen as revolutionary in his first novels became commonplace and trite in the literature of the next several decades.

my best friend just sent me some beautiful books today:
"summer blonde" by adrian tomine, and "curses" by kevin huizenga (both graphic novels).

and i also received the crowning glory of my book collection: mark ryden's "fushigi circus". it's absolutely beautiful, and i've wanted it for so long - i couldn't believe it when i opened up the package from my friend and found it inside.

(Confidential to Aimless: I'm reading at Borders again next Monday, 10/8, at 7pm, if you're interested.)

"Flaubert's "Madame Bovary":
masterpiece of the objective realism style,where the author "opinions" are impossible to observe,at least on the first reading level, but with hidden large amount of irony towards human behaviour (prejudice,stupidity,fashionable,hypocracy,thinking in cliches etc...),that resembles the efect of the chekhov irony used in his prose.

i'd recommend the wonderfull Julian Barnes novel "Flaubert's parrot",half novel-half essay about Flaubert,very amusing and also very touching to read.

I'm reading Flaubert right now as well: _Bouvard and Pécuchet_. It reads like a comic tragedy about two clerks' adventures in enthusiastic dilettantism. I haven't gotten very far into it, but it's a real treat, despite the recent Norwegian edition I'm reading seeming rather rushed. It's funny, I'm a fairly impressionable chap and am easily allured by reading about people doing something really well. It makes me want to be able to do it as well. Here, however, I'm reading about these fellows making a hash of everything and it STILL sounds great!

Also reading Dawkins' _The God Delusion_, a book I had no intention of reading, but decided to give a shot when I received it as a birthday present. It doesn't hold any great surprises, but is better than I expected after reading some of the online discussions of it last year. I've been a bit sick of Dawkins after seeing a bit too many of his television appearances.
Incidentally, has anyone here taken the plunge and tried to read Hitchens' book? I assume it's an entertaining bit of vitriol, though at book-length I fear its charms will wear thin.

Also: Fuck Vergil.

Finished Roth's Professor of Desire, now reading Jonathan Lethem's Wall of the Sky, Wall of the Eye (short stories, already almost done b/c I've read a few of them in other places).

I read some more essays in Reporting by David Remnick. The one on Havel was interesting. The one on De Lillo did not inspire me to read him. Tomorrow I am looking forward to going to the bookstore to get Special Topics in Calamity Physics. No spoilers please.

Other unread or unfinished books that might be good to pick up again: Ulysses, Maldoror.

I'm reading Trollope's "The Way We Live Now". It's ages since I read any Trollope, although I have at some point in the past read all the Barsetshire novels and one or two of the Palliser series. Trollope seems clumsy and prosaic when you're reading him, and yet somehow he manages to write books that are very enjoyable. I certainly prefer reading him to Dickens, although I admit he's not remotely in the same class as a literary writer.

I'm also reading the second volume of Paul Griffith's Stravinsky bio.

Recent reads include Scarlet Thomas's "The End of Mr Y", which was highly enjoyable, and Philip Roth's "The Counterlife", which was superb. Also a novel called "The Concert Pianist" by Conrad Williams, which I read because it's had some good reviews and I tend to like books about musicians even if they are not very good otherwise, but this was utter rubbish.

It is past time to make a report.

The Buried Book, about the unearthing of the Gilgamesh epic was both interesting and workmanlike. The most fascinating bits of the book were in an appendix, which discusses the literary carreer of Saddam Hussein (yes, after the first Gulf War, he began to write novels) and how his novels were influenced by Gilgamesh.

Byrne is witty and bravura throughout. As the final accolade, I just bought a copy for myself.

After these I read the two lesser works of Nathaniel West, A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell. They are somewhat small beer. The first-mentioned is a rather heavy-handed satire that inverts the Horatio Alger formula. The other is an immature work that shows a lot of precocity, but it's like a box of fireworks going off randomly. Luckily they are short and could be knocked off in a few hours.

I'm not sure what I will read next. Possibly some of Shelby Foote's civil war magnum opus or some Henry James.

I'm currently reading Lovely Bones. Not really a classic by any means, but I find it quite emotional. I noticed there's a huge amount of haterzzz and on the other side a lot of people who rave about it. I dunno, I think it's sweet and lovely but not something I would really think is essential reading. A quick read.

Before that I read a book on Veronica Mars, Neptune Noir, which was okayish.

Also read a book on Xuxa (The Brazilian soft porn/kiddie program presenter), Lady Snowblook (vol 1), Harry Potter (vol 1).

All in all these are light reads. Not up to read any heavy stuff yet and I doubt that will change in the near future as I'm going to have my second baby which means brainsucking sleepless nights. :-)

Currently reading Patrick Neate's Twelve Bar Blues which is surprisingly absorbing and touching and readable.

No idea what I'll read next (although Aimless' reference to The Buried Book has me thinking I might need to go to the bookstore later today).

Finished The Lovely Bones and am now reading Watching Dallas.

Read 'The Arsonists' Guide to Writers' Homes in New England', which was fun, but too long. It was a bit like reading a 300-page George Saunders story, with all that sociopathic whimsy wearing you down after a while. Every nice 2-line observation was couched in a 3/4-page paragraph, and it had several instances of idiot plotting, too (ie the characters have to think and act like complete idiots or else the story will wrap itself up in 20 pages). In fact, the more I think about it, the less I like it.

Now reading some Thomas Hardy short stories, which is more the thing.

I finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics today. It ended up being much better than I thought it would. I think my only choice now is to take up Ulysses again. From the beginning.

Rereading

Angela Carter, <i>Nights at the Circus</i>: histrionic, unbalanced

Salman Rushdie, <i>Midnight's Children</i>: better written than Carter, but overlong and irritating in the familiar way; its one great distinction now is to seem to be the template for TV show <i>Heroes</i>

Julian Barnes, <i>Flaubert's Parrot</i>: a bit too dryly droll, too English for such a French book perhaps; that chummy chattiness can be his flaw; yet still more genuinely full of interesting material than the previous two, and a lot shorter; also, ultimately serious and perceptive about grief and despair

--- <i>A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters</i>: see flaws above, but still a bold, original idea, and his disquisition on love soars beyond anything Rushdie (who had the temerity to criticize this book when it appeared, for lack of depth and weight - as if his own work would recognize those things if they fell on it from a great height) or for that matter Amis could ever have managed. I don't want to sound overboard on Barnes, but the previous two make him a relief by comparison.

Oh, dear: I see that the rules for italics have changed. You get the idea.

+

Miranda July's movie was on last week; if anything I think it put me off her stories - which I like, or think I like, if only perhaps because their bright yellow cover is so seductive. Thinking that the movie was (perhaps) how she visualized her stories made the stories seem less good to me; but perhaps the cross-media comparison is unhelpful, for there are things she can do in prose that she can't do in film, etc.

Will this do?

Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus: histrionic, unbalanced

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children: better written than Carter, but overlong and irritating in the familiar way; its one great distinction now is to seem to be the template for TV show <i>Heroes</i>

Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot: a bit too dryly droll, too English for such a French book perhaps; that chummy chattiness can be his flaw; yet still more genuinely full of interesting material than the previous two, and a lot shorter; also, ultimately serious and perceptive about grief and despair

--- A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters: see flaws above, but still a bold, original idea, and his disquisition on love soars beyond anything Rushdie (who had the temerity to criticize this book when it appeared, for lack of depth and weight - as if his own work would recognize those things if they fell on it from a great height) or for that matter Amis could ever have managed. I don't want to sound overboard on Barnes, but the previous two make him a relief by comparison.

I still didn't get HEROES right. Jesus - I'll get me cape.

But it's true about Rushdie and that programme.

At the risk of repeating myself I think Ross can be open minded in the most damming and forced way -- anything that touches on Germanic negation he has condemned w/out a care. Unfortunately that provides some the richest vein in all music for me (from German composers or not).

But Ross, most unusually for a classical music critic, isn't at all prescriptive about what other people "ought" to like. It's a big part of his charm.

Pinefox we agree about the relative merits of Carter, Rushdie and Barnes.

I've been reading Sir Vidia's Shadow for a couple of nights now. As is often the case with Paul Theroux, he writes more convincingly in a non-fiction framework than when he transposes his ideas into fiction.

I appreciate the fact that Theroux plainly understands the difference between facts which are external to him and his reactions to those facts; he distinguishes well between these two modes of thought, doing so both exactly and unobtrusively. This puts him in a different camp from, say, Joan Didion, who, when she is exact does it obtrusively and when she is inexact she does it implicitly.

Ross interviewed in The Guardian.

I'm ok with critics who push the stuff they like in an at times if necessary aggressive manner.

Had I encountered him a few years I suspect I would've enjoyed this quality of his you describe a lot more, frankie - will def get reading, though I'll suspect I'll hate the conclusions. And hate myself if this rpediction turns out to be accurate.

Kelman, The Busconductor Pines, I mean, The Busconductor Hines.

Finished the Theroux. Liked it. I noticed he laid some slug-trails of "thematic significance" for readers to follow, but they were more or less contentless, so there was no penalty for overlooking them.

I am now reading a literary biography. I never read literary biographies, so this is a cause for raised eyebrows. The book is John Donne: The Reformed Soul by John Stubbs.

Because the primary historical material is rather sparse, Stubbs does an elaborate job of scene setting, but the scene is so full of color and detail that it doesn't wear on one's patience. The author also has internalized some of the better lessons of Tudor prose and writes idiomatically and well. After all, I never read literary biographies and yet I am reading this one.

I finished Memoirs with Hadrian, finally, and my response was admiration more than anything else. Just a really well-done piece of historical-biographical fiction.

Now reading Calvino's Mr Palomar, and am enchanted.

Ross interviewed in The Guardian
When did Chris Bonanos start writing for The Guardian?

What an excellent book club that reads Dog Soldiers. I've been picking up a lot of YA at the workplace. Currently reading Before I Die by Jenny Downham and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Just finished Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. For children's lit I've been reading Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyve and for adult lit I've been dabbling very slowly in the new Schulz bio.

Terry Eagleton, After Theory

Andrew Sinclair, Arts & Cultures, a history of the Arts Council

The second Gossip Girl book. (Yes, yes, I'm double the age which is the target audience. SHOOT ME.)

Dana Thomas' Deluxe

Cash Nexus which is dying a slow and lonely death I fear. It's a bit too dry for my liking.

Like some mentioned upthread, reading Bolano at the moment. Most of the way through Los detectives salvajes and absolutely adoring it. I have his posthumous novel 2666 to start once I'm finished.

Recently finished Wayne Koestenbaum's Moira Orfei In Aigues-Mortes (sad) and Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Man (riveting, but left me with mixed feelings). Meanwhile, slowly plowing through Proust's In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, which I don't expect to finish any time soon. Maybe read McCarthy's The Road next? Maybe not.

Tried to read at least some of The Pushcart Book of Poetry, but the uniformity of tone is brutal. How is it that some 200 poems (by nearly that many poets) written over a 30-year period and selected by nearly 50 different editors ALL SOUND EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME? Like they were written in the same small, comfortably-appointed room in the same quiet but culturally active university town by the same late-middle-aged white person in a wool sweater? Using the same damn flower bud and fish scale metaphors? Maddening.

Michael Perry, Population 485

How is that? It has winked at me from the shelves.

I'm reading James Boyne's "The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas". If you were 12 and had never heard of the Holocaust, it would be really exciting.

In fairness, it does get better as it goes along, though I think maybe it is doing a bit too much of the Making All The Characters Fully Rounded.

Charlie Wilson's War, George Crile

oh that wascally CIA

Illuminating (?) factoid from the John Donne bio: in midlife, when he was Dean of St. Paul's cathedral, he became deathly ill with a "spotted fever". King James was so concerned for his health, he loaned Donne his personal physician to consult with Donne's own physician, so presumably Donne received state-of-the-art health care.

As part of Donne's treatment during the worst of the fever, his physicians tied dead pigeons to his feet! This was thought to draw certain harmful humors away from his head. It must have worked; Donne survived.

I'm in the last chapter of Morris Bishop's The Middle Ages - which is a charming and very readable tour through a fascinating period of history.

How is that? It has winked at me from the shelves.

-- Casuistry, Wednesday, November 28, 2007 12:24 AM (20 hours ago) Bookmark Link

It's fine so far. He's walking some lines (between plain language and the occasional writerly/lyrical passage, etc.) but he's a pretty good writer, and I like the small-town Wisconsin stuff (the firefighting/EMT stories I'm slightly less keen on, but it does add action scenes I guess). It seems like the people who speak really highly of him have all been to a reading, apparently he's a charming dude.

Ce grand cadavre à la renverse by BHL

Oh, that Morris Bishop book was the first one I read when I decided to start reading up on the Middle Ages a few years ago! I wonder what I would think of it now.

Dead Certain:The Presidency of George Bush by Robt Draper

almost finished w/this, very readable and revealing despite covering familiar ground. what makes it fresh is the fact that Draper isn't part of Wash DC press corps but a lifelong Texan who wrote about and knows Bush (and his hench-people) from their Lone Star days. for instance I didn't know the extent of animosity between Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. possibly better than Woodward's State of Denial. better written, anyway.

I just ordered a copy of Shiva Naipaul's outta-print first novel Fireflies, can't wait cause his non-fiction is SO good. oh and I'm reviewing an upcoming book about Alexander Graham Bell called The Telephone Gambit.

PALE FIRE.

The Great Mortality - to continue my Middle Ages kick.

Finished Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night". Gotta love that grime.

Currently on Genet's "Our Lady of Flowers".

Les Voix Du Peuple/Verbum Dei: Le bilinguisme latin-langue vulgaire au moyen âge. My fun school break reading!

I'm wading into the front end of the Argonautika of Apollonius Rhodius, as translated into English by Peter Green. It's choppy so far. I am waiting for the action to pick up a bit, or the poetry, or maybe both if I hit it lucky. I'm sticking with it for a bit longer at any rate.

Orson Welles vs Hollywood by Clinton Heylin

http://www.thegrillstoreandmore.com/image/products/big-pics/743472b.jpg

What's the emoticon for eyes glazing over? The only good thing is that this is part of a process which might get me back into doing some real reading on a regular basis.

I realize I have violated this thread by posting an image of such a quotidian text, but as I say, I'm reading it for a good cause.

Good luck, Scientist.

I am almost through Pale Fire. It's one of those ones that seeps slowly through your brain, and with about 50 pages to go this morning I am pissed off that I had to put it down when I got to work.

Sometimes I try to make up new lyrics to the Rolling Stones's "Hang Fire" to make it be about Pale Fire, but I never get anywhere.

I think Henry James might work better with that, as he used the phrase "hang fire" fairly often in his novels.

Apparently I need to step up the pace of my reading in order to create more fosser for this thread. Have all ILBers begun drinking heavily and staying out all night?

fosser == fodder

I finished the final book of Robertson Davies' Cornish trilogy on the plane home last night. I wish he were still alive so I could write him a gushy fan letter declaring my eternal devotion.

But now, what should be next?

I've not been drinking much, but I moved on the weekend and therefore have not started anything else since Pale Fire. All books are in boxes.

That new Delany book was pretty breezy and nice. It was written "November 2006" and I kind of suspect it to be a NaNoWriMo.

maybe because it's not autumm anymore...

First day of winter is Dec. 22 - we got 10 days of autumn left.

lol @ delany nanowrimo :>

"First day of winter is Dec. 22 - we got 10 days of autumn left"

you are right of course, but it's really cold and rainy outside.

So I guess we got ten days until the David Lodge/Dodge controversy heats up again.

Sorry- I was just being a troublemaker. I'm okay with absconding to the Winter thread at any convenient time.