We're now in Spring 2008 and I need to know - what are you reading?

andrei beli - petersburg. (one of the picks of modern prose according to Nabokov, and myself), quite ahead of it's time (1905).
also in the middle of bolano's "savage detectives" which is brilliant, though could have used a little editing imo.

so far this year:

Alex Ross - The Rest Is Noise
Erik Larson - The Devil In The White City
Phillip Shenon: The Commission: Behind The 9/11 Investigation
VS Naipaul – The Return of Eva Peron w/The Killings in Trinidad
VS Naipaul – Guerillas
VS Naipaul – The Enigma of Arrival
Kingsley Amis – Girl, 20
Kingsley Amis – The Anti-Death League
Michael John Carley – Asperger’s from the Inside Out
Terry Eagleton – The Meaning of Life
Martin Amis – The Second Plane
Elizabeth Royte – Garbage Land

Garbage Land is great. Royte is an intrepid reporter and good writer w/dry wit. she puts herself in the story to telling effect, her quest - following the path of her family's garbage -- pulled me in like a good travel book.

I was looking in my local public library just today for some V.S. Naipul. Their selection of his work was pathetic, so I took a pass.

At the same time I checked out No Other Book: Selected Essays of Randall Jarrell. I intend to start it tonight. He has a good reputation as a poetry critic, probably the best rep going in the period after T.S. Eliot kicked off. We shall see what we shall see.

naipul's "house for mr. biswaz" is a masterpiece

There was a profile on Naipul on BBC four earlier in the week.

William Empson: finished his essays on Renaissance Literature.
'She' by H. Rider Haggard, 30p and looks like I'll be doing lots of page turning tonight.
Hazlitt's essays on comic writers.

Mr Biswaz was not on the library's shelf. I want to start there. It seems to be the consensus as "best VS Naipul".

that and "bend in the river", which i liked much less gotta say

been reading lots of Roth. on portnoy's complaint now...

Frederick Douglass's 'Narrative', which people were recommending somewhere on ILB recently. Amazing: a gripping story, beautifully written.
C P Cavafy: Selected Poems

A House For Mr Biswas is Naipaul's best novel IMO but I haven't read them all.

Among The Believers is the place to start with his non-fiction.

Lawrence Friedman - A History of American Law

(gulp. here we go.)

andrei beli - petersburg

I read this a number of years ago after reading Nabokov's praise and was underwhelmed. I'm really curious to know why you thought it was ahead of its time.

Right now I'm reading Richard Price's Clockers and I just finished Lush Life.

mainly because it might be the first major work of modernist prose.
all the writers that resmeble Beli will come later (except Gogol and Dostoevsky):Joyve (fragmentation),Proust (subjective consciousness),Alfred Doblin (expressionism and the use of a city),Beckett (elusive definition of the self) and Nabokov of course (the masks,mirrors,shadows and games of the mind).
i dare to say even, "petersburg" might be the first post-modern book, like a long Borges story, with all it's big universe vs. small people connections.

in short, it's a masterpiece.

Still reading "Motherless Brooklyn" after which point I'll move to Bastard Out of Carolina. Then hopefully some Ginsberg essays & a Ben Johnson anthology I just got.

I'd assume Nabokov's praise was for the original Russian novel and not the translation that we non-Russian-speakers would be stuck reading, so I'm guessing if you read it and didn't quite see what he was on about, that might be why.

ha even in Russian the book can be difficult. So many historical/social references incoded that aren't transparent to someone today. It's more that Nabokov represented the novel as a way forward for Russian lit and I just didn't see that in Bely's book. Mostly because of the two exceptions Zeno makes. Also not free of Tolstoy either in a macro sense? at least re: big universe vs. small people connections. My thinking was in the context of Russian literature I guess, rather than the larger W.European one. Petersburg also suffered from my teenage self reading Zamyatin ~ the same time and loving it w/entirely unabashed enthusiasm.

tbh I should just reread the book since I can't argue a position I formed when I was sixteen v. well.

i didn't read the english translation,but it was still a "wow" experience, even in a different language. of course the original is always the best if you hsppen to know russian.

p.s. another great thing about this novel, that also resemble Faulkner,Joyce and many others, is the influence of greek mytology in it.

i guess nabokov liked the novel because: the pushkin quotes,the gogol influence,all those elusions of light,mirrors,colors,shadows (and butterflies!), and the sometiems cynicaal POV of Beli

I was mixing two arguments a little. I'm wholly unqualified to qn the masterpiece argument I do qn the idea that the book was ahead of its time and/or represented a real opposition to socialist-realism. This is the claim that Nabokov makes in... Strong Opinions, maybe? Google has no answer for me.

From what I've heard the English translation isn't v. good? I actually that it was oop but apparently not.

you shoud def. re-read it Lamp.if you like the 20th century's classics cannon, theres no reason you wouldnt admire "petersburg" might be less known, but not less magnificent.
(just checked wikipedia about the book and they mainly talk about how much pre-Joyce's Ulysess the book is.it is pre-even-more-than-that.)

I do remember reading Dubliners and thinking of how closely some of the stories esp. the middle ones seem to follow from Petersburg.

anyway,petersburg is difficult because of it's fragmentation, the broken dialouge, the word games, the heavy symbloism, but its worth the effort,which is not so big, cause the book is relatively short, and the macro story is very clear and it's basicly a suspence novel , with a bomb thats about to explode in its center, which is of course the biggest symbol of it all.

i'm not sure Joyce knew about bely, which was translated into english much later

I just finished Black Swan Green (loved it), not sure what I'm reading next. Maybe some Richard Price (seems to be going around right now) or another David Mitchell book.

I'm still reading James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin - which is making me interested in '50s rock-and-roll for perhaps the first time ever.

Alain Robbes-Grillet: 'Jealousy'--weird how a book can be quite compelling and frequently boring simultaneously. It was a bit like being hypnotised.

Frigyes Karinthy: A Journey Around My Skull
Amazing stuff--here's the blurb.

The distinguished Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy was sitting in a Budapest café, wondering whether to write a long-planned monograph on modern man or a new play, when he was disturbed by the roaring—so loud as to drown out all other noises—of a passing train. Soon it was gone, only to be succeeded by another. And another. Strange, Karinthy thought, it had been years since Budapest had streetcars. Only then did he realize he was suffering from an auditory hallucination of extraordinary intensity.

What in fact Karinthy was suffering from was a brain tumor, not cancerous but hardly benign, though it was only much later—after spells of giddiness, fainting fits, friends remarking that his handwriting had altered, and books going blank before his eyes—that he consulted a doctor and embarked on a series of examinations that would lead to brain surgery. Karinthy's description of his descent into illness and his observations of his symptoms, thoughts, and feelings, as well as of his friends' and doctors' varied responses to his predicament, are exact and engrossing and entirely free of self-pity. A Journey Round My Skull is not only an extraordinary piece of medical testimony, but a powerful work of literature—one that dances brilliantly on the edge of extinction.

reading jakob von gunten now (robert walser), will probably read nadezhda mandelstam's hope beyond hope next, or maybe bunuel's my last sigh.

Capital, Vol 1.

HL Mencken: A Religious Orgy in Tennessee - his collected articles about the Scopes "monkey trial". Great savage stuff.

Ashbery - Chinese Whispers.

"Alain Robbes-Grillet: 'Jealousy'--weird how a book can be quite compelling and frequently boring simultaneously. It was a bit like being hypnotised."

Yeah I read one of his last month and that was roughly my experience. I felt that if I turned to the first page as soon as I finished the last I would read it over and over again for a month no probs.

There is a Mencken collection I'll be getting round to soon.

In the meantime I'm starting on a selection from Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets'

Finishing Jim Thompson's 'Savage Night', move onto 'The Grifters'

Started: History of the Conquest of Mexico by William H Prescott.

I'm getting ready to move and most of my books are packed, so I went out and bought a new one. But there wasn't anything on-hand in my apartment that I was really in the mood to read anyway. I hope this old classic history is really still worth reading.

Robbe-Grillet's In the Labyrinth is by far the most interesting thing I've read by him, but then I'm not even sure I ever made it through any of his other novels. I liked the very geometric descriptions of things, and I remember being especially taken with the way he moved between a picture hanging on the wall (in a bar?) and an actual real life scene. His whole blurring of real/illusionary schtick gets old kind of quickly though, imo. (I vaguely remember a short story involving someone trapped in an area where the tide was rising.)

nadezhda mandelstam's hope beyond hope

Is really good. I hope you like it.

My friend was all into Prescott for a while. He raved about him.

I read the Hugh Thomas book, but he said Prescott had already done it all before him.

Thanks and thanks.

thanks lamp!

also bought yday, been looking for for a while: tha world of yesterday by stefan zweig.

Finished a bunch more essays by Hazlitt. 'On Disagreeable People' had a bit of 'oh dear I recognize myself' here to it. Bastard :-)

Simone De Beauvoir 'A woman Destroyed'. Nicely going along, but I wanted this to hit me harder than its doing so. Thought she'd be right up my street.

Really enjoying 'The Grifters', but Thompson can do no wrong.

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

I was liking this more than I expected til the end. don't want to spoil it but a certain cataclysmic recent event in our history is deployed as deus ex machina/plot tidy-upper. maybe the first time I actually wanted to throw a book at the wall. did anyone else read it and react this way?

is the grifters the one where dude gets punched in the stomach and thompson tells you "HE DIDN'T KNOW IT BUT THAT PUNCH WOULD BE FATAL" but then later on it turns out means "BUT THAT PUNCH WOULD HAVE BEEN FATAL, HAD IT REMAINED UNTREATED, WHICH IT ISN'T GOING TO"

guys what should i read now

Pop. 1280.

I never finished "South of Heaven"! Does that mean Thompson isn't palatable for me, or did I just read the wrong one?

I never even heard of that one! Is that one of his early New Deal books?

March / April:

Rudyard Kipling -- Kim
Christopher Isherwood -- Diaries I: 1939 - 1960
Christopher Isherwood -- Isherwood on Writing
Christopher Isherwood -- Christopher and his Kind
Milorad Pavic -- Dictionary of the Kazars
Aldous Huxley -- Time Must Have a Stop
Alvaro Mutis -- Adventures and Misadventures of Magroll
Margaret Atwood -- Oryx and Crake

on deck

Huxley -- Heaven and Hell
Ibsen -- Peer Gynt / Doors of Perception
Capote -- Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel
Isherwood and Upward -- Mortmare Stories

Is that one of his early New Deal books?

-- James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, April 25, 2008 12:50 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I don't know what that means! lol

on deck

Capote -- Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel

-- remy bean, Friday, April 25, 2008 1:01 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

let me know how this is!

Hazlitt - Liber Amoris
Starting on plays by Genet and Nathalie Sarraute
Primo Levi - The Sixth Day

Jordan, 'My Name is Red' is indeed a totally legit novel, very involved and smart and one of a handful of novels I will eventually re-read rather than read something new. Pamuk's 'Istanbul' is also great, but I never finished his 'Snow'.

i am now reading:

http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/illinois/images/gargoyles.gif

i would rate hecht's novels below his screenplay work, below his short stories (which at their zingiest have a great damon runyon/john o'hara pep to them), below his massive and cool and strange autobiography, and way below his peerless newspaper columns (a big influence on me). but they still retain some (dated) 20's boho charm.

Try the Thomas Bernhard's Gargoyles. it is awesome

Currently engaged in:

YOUR FACE TOMORROW: DANCE AND DREAM,

though "engaged" is perhaps too strong a word - it has its singular delights, but perhaps I've fallen out of Marias' wavelength. It hasn't quite clicked for me, despite being halfway through...I suspect my loyalty to DARK BACK OF TIME (perhaps my favorite book of the 90s) will see me through to the end.

couldn't finish knockemstiff

me neither. i was pretty excited about it but only made it about half way through before i had to concede defeat. while i found them genuinely affecting, the stories were numbingly same-y. he's a powerful and talented writer, but i wanted the stories to branch out more than they did (if that's the right way to say it), to consider more than just brutality and absurdity. many favorable reviews cite the dignity and the hope found in the stories despite the terrible circumstances, but i didn't get a sense of that. at all. there's plenty of time before it has to go back to the library, so i may try starting from the end of the book and go backwards as the later stories seem to be a bit fuller, not just wham-bam catastrophe.

just finished the dud avocado, by elaine dundy. terry teachout compares her to dawn powell in his introduction, which is a bit of wishful thinking, but it's a charming and funny book (depending on your tolerance for smart-mouthed girls abroad who stumble into white slavery rings).

The Easter Parade, Alice Munro collected stories, George Saunders something Megaphone (essays)

Umberto Eco - Travels in Hyperreality, an ace essay collection on anything from Casablanca to football to terrorism (often he'll mix it all in the same essay). Shame I gotta give this one back to the library.

Predictably Irrational, which so far is like a sophomore marketing class.

Also, I have given up on the Skippyjon Jones books, which are not as charming as they could be.

I've been knocking around with books that barely rate a mention: The Secret History of the American Empire (written with a crayon), a recently published history of Byzantium (v. generalist and loosely focused), a book about the founders of the U.S.A. (rather tired old ground to walk over). Not bad books, but not ones to chat up, either.

All I really want to do is drag my sorry bus-driving ass to the end of the school year (June 12 for me) and then disappear into the backwoods for a while. Once I rest up a bit, I am sure I will turn up some more interesting books than these.

terry teachout compares her to dawn powell in his introduction, which is a bit of wishful thinking

wishful thinking = his speciality. and living in the past. he's a good writer but what a reactionary oddball.

I'm still on the VS Naipaul kick. Just finished The Mimic Men, a late 60s novel about an expatriate island politician in London, presented in first-person as his biography. touches on all the Naipaulian themes.

a good one, aimless, if you see it around.

Had a terrfic BRAGGIN' + WEEKEND = good books read lately in order of personal enjoyment:
01) The Secret Life of Oscar Wao by Junota Diaz
02) World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
03) Selected Poems by Frank O'Hara
04) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
05) The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier

The last being the only one that I didn't enjoy since it read more like a research proposal than an actual book made for people to read + terribly flat and awkward writing + repetitive/?? thinking

I was surprised how much I enjoyed 'World War Z'.

I finished We Need to Talk About Kevin yesterday in an obsessive most-of-the-day read-a-thon. The most gripping and horrifying book I've read in a very long time.

I had last week off, so I read:

The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (fantastic!) by Sally Armstrong
Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai (good, but not quite as good as above)
& An Equal Music by Vikram Seth which I am really enjoying and about 90% through.

Back to work now so not likely to get as much reading done.. boo.

I finished Sacred Games and I'm about to finish History of the Conquest of Mexico. I think I'm going to be mostly reading fiction (especially by Southwest authors, I guess) and Spanish and Latin American history. Up next, I think, is Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead.

Jonathan Coe: The Dwarves of Death (very much his least impressive book)
Robertson Davies: On the Pleasures of Reading

Elaine Dundy's 'The Dud Avocado'. This is such a 'me' book.

I saw Salman Rushdie the other night read from his new book, which sounded good, but I couldn't get over my shame - we were 15 minutes late because of a friend getting stuck in traffic, slunk into the theatre only to find that somehow our seats were FRONT ROW and directly in front of the podium he was reading from. I got Rushdie cuteye!

glad you're enjoying it, michael.

i rescued the deptford trilogy by robertson davies from a box of unwanted books, so that's what i'm on now. so far it's functioning more as a placeholder until i find something i really want to read, but perhaps i'll surprise myself and get engrossed in it. there's plenty of time for that to happen, as it's certainly long enough.

Plays by David Mamet, including Barthelme fave Sexual Pervesity in Chicago, and is the best of the bunch.

Chekhov - The Story of a Nobody

Friederich Durrenmatt - Writings on Drama. Sadly not many reflections on his own fiction, which I suppose I shouldn't have expected much of.

I finished Judith Rich Harris's The Nurture Assumption, which I found more interesting and thought-provoking than Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, which covers some similar ground.

Now I'm starting David Rockefeller's Memoirs.

finefinemusic I bloody loved an equal music...untilo you posted I'd forgotten I read it. Must reread, ta.

Reread City of Glass, Ackroyd's Dan Leno

Currently deep in Tom Raworth's collected poems, genius.

Lauren, give 'The Deptford Trilogy' a decent try. It's a great series of books, imso.

Seconded!

oh, i will! and i'm definitely enjoying it. i just have my greedy eyes on a few books that are making their way to me via interlibrary loan (yes, i still use the library).

Right now enjoying Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger. Does anybody else around here like his stuff?

Robertson Davies is good but you should also take note of what David Lodge said about him.

Just finished 'Earthly Powers' by Anthony Burgess. Lots of fun.

Yeah, that's his magnum opus.

finished the first book of the trilogy, enjoyed it very much, and am now putting the entire thing aside for the moment to start apex hides the hurt (colson whitehead).

But the second one is the good one! N.B. I am the only person in the world who thinks this.

omg netherland

Have just got Netherland AND 'A Nervous Splendour' (see Stefan Zweig thread) and several others, am in panic over which to read first, aaaarrrgh, etc

I've decided that the way forward (for me, right now) is reading several at once. Along with Neverland, I'm reading the stories of Ellison's Flying Home and Anatole Broyard's memoir Kafka was the Rage. I'm hoping this circumvents my recent non-finishing tendencies.

I can't remember much about 'Flying Home', other than that I really enjoyed it.

So far it's pretty great--the first story (which the intro does warn is an anomaly of sorts), "A Party Down at the Square," about a lynching, is extraordinary.

omg netherland

For real, right? So, so good. I really hope this book gets a wide audience.

I'm kind of stuck on what to read right now since I've started my MCAT studying in earnest. I've been unethusiastically reading Tom Lloyd's Stormcaller but I need something that will hold my interest w/o taking up to much mental space.

I always see 'Earthly Powers' as about Maugham at some level.

Finished Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (btw the Amazon reviews on that one are pretty interesting) and started Lush Life.

Keep your feelings and oppinions to yourself! Do not write a book showing "facts" of the life-style of religous just to bring people to think badly of them. No wonder the author wrote for the LA Times, a known and proven anti-simetic paper!
I am not immpressed by someone who wishes to bad-mouth a group of people and putting in a book.

OK, am now reading 'Netherland', and it's wonderful. Realised about 50 pages in that I read another book by this chap years and years ago--'The Breezes', which was a very funny novel about "the unluckiest family in Ireland".

A volume of Ionesco's plays
Raymong Queneau - The flight of Icarus
De Sade - Incest

Is 'Incest' any good? I'm not much into de Sade's porn, but I've liked some of his Gothic tales.

Its not gothic as such -- I've only read a few short stories, he just works his themes (atheism, cruelty, evil power games, classic 'French' stuff) into this tale.

I don't know how it would compare to Justine

I'm about a third of the way into War and Peace; loving it, but am seriously considering switching my commuting mode from bicycle to train simply so I can get more pages under my belt.

I like how broad our definition of "Spring" is on this thread.

The Three Musketeers of all things. It's, unsurprisingly enough, a lot of fun.

"I like how broad our definition of "Spring" is on this thread." :

Summer 2008 - Pray tell, what readest thou?

scott seward, man of action.

thanks guy.