Springtime 2010, and fancies lightly turn to what are you reading?

Today is the vernal equinox. It is time for a renewal of the perrenial question.

I have been reading The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox by Stephen Jay Gould, wherein he makes a lengthy and (I would hope) unnecessary argument that the sciences and the humanities may peacefully coexist, supporting and encouraging one another, each being a valauble ornament to human knowledge and understanding.

He even argues that scientists able to write in a lucid and pleasing prose style ought to be commended for this accomplishment. Was this in doubt?

Later on, in the part I have not yet read, he apparently will take issue with E.O. Wilson's book on this same subject. Given that Wilson is a highly influential scientist, perhaps Gould's answering tome was not entirely unnessary.

Huzzahs. Maybe this timely augury of spring will cause that rucking great black cloud to bugger off somewhere before I have to go home.

Just started Agape Agape by William Gaddis - one to read in one session I'm feeling at the moment, so I might save it for when I've got a day of lounging ahead of me (specifically Monday I think).

Aimless, or indeed anyone, would you recommend any SJ Gould in particular (even this one perhaps?). I read some of the essays from his earlier works and enjoyed them (more than others writing in the same vein iirc) but for some reason never actually engaged properly with him.

flann o'brien, the dalkey archive

That Flann O'Brien single-handedly saved me from a bout of intense gloom last year.

the first few pages are great, think this may be one for a single session too

GR, if you would like to read some Gould apart from his essays, I would recommend Full House. It contains a well-developed set of ideas about the nature of evolution, as viewed through the lens of statistics.

You do not need to be a math geek to appreciate the argument he makes, because Gould was quite adept at expressing the nub of the matter in ways that a lay reader can easily grasp. For example, in order to lay the groundwork for his argument, he spends a fair portion of the book discussing the disappearance of the .400 hitter in baseball.

The books of essays are generally clustered around some theme. The one that springs to mind as especially interesting to me, was The Mismeasure of Man. It addresses the false path taken by 19th and early 20th century scientists who tried to put a scientific underpinning beneath racism, and uses this to talk about issues of scientific bias and how to counter it. The essays are nice, because you may take them individually and finish them in a fairly short time, in between other reading.

Thanks Aimless, I'll have a look at both of these at some point. Speaking of the scientific racial theory/racism, was reading The Yellow Face (Sherlock Holmes/Conan-Doyle) the other day - had forgotten it was one of the literary expressions of the unhappy Victorian belief that inherited racial characteristics could make a reappearance in the descendants - specifically the belief that mixed race parents could produce a black child, a throwback as it were. It's good therefore the story's tone is one of compassion.

Shd probably stress I don't think it'sthe belief itself that's unhappy (apart from being wrong), rather the way it became an immutable genetic shibboleth, preventing people with mixed or even uncertain backgrounds from marrying into 'pure' white families, was unhappy. Didn't this play a part in the Robert Browning/Elizabeth Barrett courtship?

Didn't this play a part in the Robert Browning/Elizabeth Barrett courtship?

Thinking of the Bowyer/Keeney courtship?

I'm just finishing Whoops! Great, as expected - knew I'd be getting the LRB essays again, but there's lots of stuff I hadn't seen before & it's good to have it together. Do like his comic timing - like he'll throw out a lol at just the right point to keep things moving.

Have so far read the cover, spine and epigraphs of The Pregnant Widow. Stunning return to form, though spine and cover were a bit samey.

Bowyer/Dyer relationship shurely?

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41126000/jpg/_41126056_dyer.jpg

'Meanwhile how much I loved him
I find out now I've lost him'

Ha ha. "My mum says you've got something 'in' you." Maybe his mum had alerted him to the possibility with Dyer as well.

I've been reading "The Sportswriter" by Richard Ford. I started this couple of years ago and didn't get on with it -- I could see Ford was a very talented writer but his world seemed a very gloomy place to spend time. I thought I'd give it another crack and I'm enjoying it a lot more this time.

I've also been rereading Shakespeare and Yeats after buying better editions of their work. It's all about the notes. The RSC complete Shakespeare supplies a pretty comprehensive glossary at the bottom of the page. No excessive scholarly stuff, no idiosyncratic interpretation of meaning, just an explanation of obscurities or words that have changed meaning, and on the same page. Perfect. I also got a copy of the Everyman Yeats because the notes in my paperback Selected Poems were totally inadequate. The notes in the Everyman edition are slightly too fulsome for my taste, and at the back of the book, but it's still a very very nice edition, an attractive hardback at a low price. Much better than the one I had before.

About halfway through Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. Whenever things start to go well for the main character, I get nervous, waiting for the next shoe to drop. I haven't quite figured out yet whether Yates just hates this guy or sees him as some kind of tragic figure.

about 2/3 of the way through Lord Jim, which I'm reading mostly in order to better appreciate Fredric Jameson's chapter on Conrad in The Political Unconscious. it's enjoyable enough so far, although I'm not sure if I'll end up going through with my original plan to move on to Nostromo as soon as I'm finished.

sat down and read Flaubert's "A Simple Heart" yesterday, which was pleasantly devastating. I kind of want to read A Sentimental Education at some point, but I'll probably read the other two of his Three Tales first.

also been diggin' Manuel DeLanda's War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, a surprisingly readable mishmash of Deleuze, chaos theory, and history of technology.

Carlo Gadda - Acquainted with Grief

Finishing this now: really exuberant prose about his (abusive, painful) relationship with his mother, with the 'action' taking place in a fake South American country. Been ill-ish while reading so its been tough. Even so, something very strange and hard to get at. Looking at his bibliography he has some varied stuff (writings on science, philosophy, history of fascism as well as more fiction) but no translation. Took nearly a hundred years since the publication of Journey to the End of the Night for all of Celine's novels to get a translation, and he has fans like Burroughs and Philip Roth.

Don't have a lot of hope for a similar job on CG anytime soon.

Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World. Harrowing, political, with enough sentences to get at you...lots of symbolism and irrational logic in the stories to wade through...

Currently ignoring the fact that I'm going v. slowly through Madame Bovary w/

Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. It's in parts lol, sweet and headslap.

Finished Infinite Jest last weekend. Admired it more than enjoyed it, but occasionally v. funny.

Read Great Gatsby as a palette cleanser during the week. That is a sad book.

Now Hollywood by Gore Vidal. I think this was an ILX recommendation although I forget who.

p.s. 45 minute train commutes with guaranteed seats are the best. one is crushing books in 2010.

http://members.multimania.nl/forzacm/cantona.jpg

Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King dispatched at the weekend. It was enjoyable, but suffered a bit from the lack of involvement of Eric himself. The author went halfway towards making the book about Cantona's effect on his interviewees instead, which I think was the right approach, but he might have gone further. As it was the book suffered a little from a certain disengagement.

Lots to interest in there, though, in particular that Aime Jacquet specifically wanted Cantona to turn himself into the France's centre-forward from 1996 onwards, post-ban, Zidane and Djorkaeff having taken to his playmaker role in his absence. But Eric basically wussed out, for no particular reason other than the disillusionment that led him to retire early. He should've been the target-man/workhorse when they won the world cup, and that he wasn't was his own doing - certainly not how I'd remembered it.

I started 2666 last night. Really not the opening I expected, but strangely gripping all the same.

Gilead. A+++++++++ amazing and beautiful

Now on to The Lost City of Z.

Recent readings:

Penelope Gilliat: One by One (1965) -- well-written but compromised by the fact that it doesn't know whether it's a suburban middle-class tragicomedy or a novel about London devastated by a plague outbreak. Check out this cover (not the one I have, sadly):
http://pantherhorror.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/penelopegilliatonebyone.jpg

Lono Waiwaiole: Dark Paradise (2009) -- Hawaiian-set crime novel. Wanted to like it, but the first 50 pages kept on introducing more and more new viewpoint characters, none of whom I gave a shit about, so didn't get very far.

Peter Watts: Maelstrom (2001) -- seriously grim, seriously hard sci-fi; really excellent stuff

Shen Congwen: Border Town (1934) -- much-banned-in-China Chinese classic - enjoyable, but oddly simplistic in tone

Ian mcEwan: Solar (2010) -- loved it! Increasingly morally compromised scientist attempts to save world from global warming

Platonov is going slowly but should finish the remaining stories today: striking when he inserts the language of hope and optimism (presumably of the Bolshevik time) then completely flips that by 180 degrees to dehumanize and humiliate the characters that say those thoughts.

Also started on:

John Fahey - Vampire Vultures

Finished the above as well as The Age of Sinatra by David Ohle who is not really talked about at all on the boards. Creates a world you'll get to know just well enough to get by, but the obscurity he creates isn't off putting in the least. Then there are a lot of shit jokes. That helps.

Gonna start on: JG Ballard - High Rise. Can't believe I haven't read this before.

Just finished The Slap by Christos Tsialkos, which was really damn good and recommended. I've been wanting to read it for months and my stupid library finally got it in...worth the wait, for sure.

45 minute train commutes with guaranteed seats are the best. one is crushing books in 2010.

― caek, Saturday, 27 March 2010 19:09 (1 week ago)

I am experiencing this too. When I can stay awake - this is improving, though.

ts: sleeping on trains vs reading on trains.

oscillating between in praise of older women and mailer's advertisements for myself, right now, just skimming through his advertisements and comment at the moment.

i'm on a Henry James tip and loving him much more than i ever thought i would:

Washington Square was the eye opener.
Turn of the Screw i just didn't get the love for
The Aspern Papers i really enjoyed
The Spoils of Poynton is my favourite thus far
The Portrait of a Lady i felt lagged a bit for the first 200 pages then i got into it and now i'm on the home strait i'm extremely keen.

next: The Europeans and then i'll take a break but i intend to read everything i can get my hands on.

in the interim i think i'll take a stab at Balzac.

Jed this is good stuff. I stare into my copy of The Golden Bowl every now and again and wonder. Maybe I'll give Washington Square a go.

what does xyzzzz__ see when he stares into the golden bowl? it's just like you to go for "the difficult one" straight off, j! i recommend The Spoils of Poynton for you, it's very subtle, everything seems to turn on the unsaid, it's very interesting. it has a less satisfying conclusion than Washington Square but it's more "difficult" as well as subtle, which i know you like.

ps i will email you this week re. a dance performance at sadlers wells in may which i may come down specially for, i'll let you know if i book up.

What Maisie Knew!

I wouldn't necessarily go for difficulty, jed! :-) There was an article about The Golden Bowl I read years ago that made it sound quite fascinating.

Actually I recalled today that I have read a couple of his short stories...maybe this will be a Henry James summer.

ps excellent stuff, would be up for the dance! let us know...

Two of the five books from 2666 read now, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm delighted that it's not difficult at all - in fact it's quite inspiring, that the relative straightforwardness of most of it gets me thinking 'Yeah, I could write like this'. Possibly delusionally - the horrible menace everywhere is quite something, particularly seeing the murders have barely appeared yet.

Bolaño pulls one of my favourite tricks quite a lot, which is creating heart-stopping dread by telling you what's going to happen before it does - but he adds the twist that sometimes the thing never happens at all, or if it does it's way off-camera. Not sure what I think of that, but I presume there's some serious delayed gratification building up for later.

i'm enjoying white teeth at the moment

Jed if you love mid-period James (as I do) don't overlook "The Bostonians", it's superb.

I finished Revolutionary Road. I think I admired it more than I liked it overall, since it was a bit grim, but it was pretty good. As writing, there were many deft characterizations and startling sentences to admire. As psychological insight, I'm not sure I buy the main female characters, esp. April Wheeler - the characterizations seemed a bit stuck in a sexist '50s Freudian mentality. But as a time capsule of '50s social conformity and as a window into the narcissistic male soul it was pretty great.

Reading Slaughterhouse 5 at the moment... shortly to move on to a rather interesting looking one I found recently. Let Our Fame be Great by Oliver Bullough. "Journeys among the defiant people of the Caucasus".

On my to read list for the rest of the holidays:

Shades of Grey (Jasper Fforde)
A Book of Silence (Sara Maitland)
The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick)
Women (Charles Bukowski)
Russia - A Short History (Ascher)

Just went through 2 Agatha Christies, and am about to start 'Baba Yaga Laid an Egg' by Dubravka Ugresic.

Tarjei Vesaas - The Ice Palace. I got this recommended to me on the Scando Lit: search thread. It does fit any preconceptions of what a Scandinavian literature could read like. Not sure what I feel about that however it is quite a piece of writing, really captures how affecting a memory and their secret knowledge could be so affecting.

The mirroring of that to the landscape is really well done, too.

Finishing: Kenzaburo Oe - Rouse up O Young Men of the New Age!

Also started on Edmund White - A Boy's Own Story

xyzzzzzt, i've been meaning to read that david ohle for ages. there's a sequel, as well, isn't there? or is 'age of sinatra' the sequel itself?

Its 'Motorman', 'Age of Sinatra', then 'The Pisstown Chaos'.

Have given the books back so can't re-check but apart from Moldenke I'd say its a pretty loose link between the first two. 'The Pisstown Chaos' is something else, hard going..

oh ok

right now i want to finish rereading infinite jest and then read some books on lacan and some sci fi and some books of short stories and then hopefully finish the man without qualities but who knows

I've been kicking back and re-reading some of the final few Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian. These require little or no concentration, as the plots, scenes and dialogue are eminently clear, even to the meanest understanding. If you have once read through the series, rereading any part of it is like a homecoming.

Yesterday I went out and bought a pile of used books, which may soon tempt me back onto the path of venturous reading.

I've started reading We Think the World of You by J.R. Ackerley. I like that the narrator makes no effort to make himself seem more likeable or noble than he is. Some pretty funny passages so far.

A good way through A High Wind In Jamaica, which probably shares the same font/design style as the Ackerley title immediately above. Picked up largely thanks to the babies-as-another-species quotation that opens The Book Of Leviathan. The narrative voice is priceless stuff.

'We Think the World of You' and 'A High Wind In Jamaica' are both fantastic books!

Bolaño pulls one of my favourite tricks quite a lot, which is creating heart-stopping dread by telling you what's going to happen before it does - but he adds the twist that sometimes the thing never happens at all, or if it does it's way off-camera.

I agree with you on this. It's amazing how he continues to build tension through the whole book again and again. Last weekend I finished '2666' and I was so concerned with following the main story that I missed quite a lot of references to a lot things. The thing also with Bolaño is that all his books are their own reference material, and there are cross-references to his other material all over the place, also to his poetry, essays and lectures. It's basically one book.

Kenzaburo Oe - Rouse up O Young Men of the New Age!

this book sux iirc

Literature and Life, by Jorge Semprun

Had not heard of this, but LOVED his 'The Long Voyage', one of the best Auschwitz-related books I've ever read--fierce, moving, wonderfully written, staggeringly unbitter

starting The Imperfectionists by Thomas Rachman

Me too! Not quite what I had expected, but really really enjoying it, actually. It's very much linked short stories so far, rather than a novel proper

Oh, and...

london youth gone wild, naturally. you'd love it. anarchy in the streets and all that. really hard to find in hardcover. i sold my copy cheap. just glad it went to a good home.

I'm sold! Or I am if I can find a non-pricey, non-French-translation version...

I'm 3/4 of the way through The Imperfectionists. I love the geeky journalistic detail, and the way that after so many poignant, understated stories the one about the Cairo stringer is unexpectedly flat-out hilarious.

Just over half-way through <em>Bleak House</em>. Quite good.

Inspired by the Miles Davis exhibit I saw here last week, I went to the library looking for a bio or something. Ended up picking Running The Voodoo Down not realizing Phil posts here. Its great so far.

I started Libra by Don DeLillo at the weekend. Two chapters in and it's quite engaging so far. Premise is intriguing, and he does the minutiae of street life very well I think - the kid in the first chapter here, and the New York bits in Underworld, are very good. He's often cited as a wonderful stylist, and I don't quite buy that because he makes you work so much harder than someone like Roth - Roth's dialogue pours off the page, but with DeLillo it feels like I'm having to piece it together a word at a time.

Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee. Does everyone smoke on rooftop terraces in NYC? I wore a short-sleeve button-down shirt with a tie attached to the collar today. But no hat.

Before that (in reverse order) Kaaterskill Falls and Intuition by Allegra Goodman.

Next up The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, but I need to save this for a flight or find another book. Any help appreciated.

Gyula Krudy: Life is a Dream -- fantastic!

Just finished the final story in Life is a Dream last night. I'd been putting it off because I didn't want it to end. Krudy at his very best. Does for food (and drink) what Sindbad does for sex. The Green Ace is a particular standout, but it's all great.

Just so... although I can't say I want to try eating "sour lungs" any time soon.

the trial. Have tried to read it before but never finished. Find it oppressive and excrutiating (suppose that's the point, but still).

I picked it up last year for the first time since I was a teenager, and was surprised (and slightly disturbed?) at how funny I was finding it.

There's a touch of the Larry David about becoming inextricably involved in a snowballing set of drily related inescapable circumstances that tend towards your ultimate, complete unjust, culpability.

Haha - that's exactly it!

Larry David will often dig his own grave tho'.

Yep, as an aside - I think the first two series he was rarely if ever at fault ('I was just trying to be affable!') whereas the later ones he's a bit more of an asshole, which is why I enjoy them less.

I picked it up last year for the first time since I was a teenager, and was surprised (and slightly disturbed?) at how funny I was finding it.

Me too--esp the bit where he opens a cupbioard door at work and discovers some morrid scene of beating (it doesn't sound funny described that way, but it's the way he tells them)

bleak house was too big for my luggage allowance (no joke), so i printed out a copy of the project gutenberg version simple soul by flaubert. not sure about the translation and i keep trying to read it in bars, but am enjoying.

I started Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov, a couple of nights ago. It seems like the kind of book that requires a quick reading, and I doubt I will be able to give it that. Too many competing responsibilities and chores gobbling my time and attention. We'll just have to see.

I like what I've read so far better than I like most stuff by Nabokov - maybe because he wrote the original in Russian. His English generally seems a bit too high-flown and artificial to me, too much like a butterfly collection.

I must admit I tend to prefer the the Russian novels translated into English in terms of style - less American cultural garnishing, which is flimsy (deliberately I guess) compared to the Russian world, and less word gadgetry.

Read it a long time ago, and only really remember Invitation as almost an existentialist adjunct to Camus and Beckett, which I'm sure must be wrong, in light of everything else I read subsequently by him.

Don't remember it being as fun, say, as The Defence, or The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (which was English, but early, and one of my favourites), or Despair.

I ended up reading The Imperfectionists over the weekend, so I got Middlemarch and Independent People for (before) my flight. I looked for Krudy at 2 bookstores but found nothing.

There is not a lot of Krudy around is there? The new stories are issued as a Penguin edition and I'm not sure how available they are if you don't live in the UK.

Gore Vidal - The Judgment of Paris
Hitchens - Hitch-22

Finished the Arabian Nights. Fantastic!

Only about 400 pages (it is a kind of rockist edition), wish there was a lot more by the end. Takes a while to get into reading stories (like they used to do in the old days, or so it seems) where the turns and twists come so quickly, and there can be so many of them, and bits are told in a highly concentrated sentence that would normally be told in several paragraphs and pages.

Now I've gone onto The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. xp

has anyone read Ian McEwan's Solar? i got On Chesil Beach the day it came out and I've read a bunch of his other stuff, but i haven't looked into this one yet

I really enjoyed Solar, though everyone else round here seems to hate McEwan. It's pretty amusing, though it involves at least 2 unlikely coincidences. Really it's like a C21 version of Victorian lit: "big issue' theme, lots of coincidences, larger than life characters, and some lovely prose

Am now on Karel Capek's 'The Absolute at Large', from 1927: a man invents perfect, clean atomic power, which has the unexpected side-effect of producing vast fields of a kind of energy which induces religious belief and the working of miracles. Turns out that the animist were right, and that every object has part of god in it, so when you completely annihilate the mass of an object (via E=mc2) you liberate all of that previously restrained God-ness, and it gets out into the world to create trouble.

It's a hoot.

xpost

awesome! thanks. i'll definitely be reading it. i like McEwan. i should get the new Delillo too. and Coetzee published a new one last year, right? oh man, so far behind

That Coetzee is ace---much better than 'Diary of a Bad Year'.

the last one I read was Elizabeth Costello, iirc -- good to hear this one is good!

Thanks for the report on Capek James!

AND NOW: Jakov Lind: Soul of Wood -- quite bleak and astonishing

http://184.73.187.38/media/images/productimage-picture-soul-of-wood-45.jpg

I don't know quite how to describe it. The blurb says 'Set during World War II, “Soul of Wood” is the story of Wohlbrecht, a peg-legged veteran of World War I, who smuggles Anton Barth, a paralyzed Jewish boy, to a mountain hideout after the boy’s parents have been sent to their deaths. Abandoning the helpless boy to the elements, Wohlbrecht returns to Vienna, where, having been committed to an insane asylum, he helps the chief psychiatrist to administer lethal injections to other patients. But Germany is collapsing and the war will soon be over. The one way, Wohlbrecht realizes, that he can evade retribution is by returning to the woods to redeem “his” hidden Jew. Others, however, have had the same bright idea.', which gives the bare bones of the plot, but nothing of the style. Plus there are 6 other stories in it, equally dark and amazing.

And all this from a Jewish Austrian author who, as a child, escaped the Nazis and took an assumed identity in Holland, then escaped back into Germany and ended up working in a Nazi government ministry building in Berlin, successfully hiding his Jewishness.

I finished "Lowlife" by Luc Sante, which I liked about as much as I expected to - now I'm on to "The World of Yesterday" by Stefan Zweig.

Finally got on to Black Swan Green by David Mitchell - I wanted to see whether my slightly indifferent feeling to Thousand Autumns was me or him, if you see what I mean. It's great! Who knew? (Obv everyone). There's the odd duff note, but that's only because in general it's a really coherent tone and mood, really is quite an achievement I think.

Now - Paracelsus - Browning.

Yeah! It's my favourite thing I've read by him, glad to see it get praise. The duff notes for me were the Crommylenk-type bits - which might be what he's known for, but if he could iron them out completely that'd be nice.

finished with the trial, about 13 years after first beginning to read it, now reading the castle. after that i've got america and metamorphosis and other stories to read.

xpost to IK - Yeah, I still find his tone a bit hard to take at times - the rhythm of his description can feel cackhanded (tho not the meat of it) but what I liked about it most was the rural spookiness (slightly reminded me of Jocelyn Brooke in fact), how he captured the violence fantasy lies and proportions of the childhood world. And yes, the cloth of the '80s is very well woven

I think, unlike Thousand Autumns, Mitchell does the voice well, only on a few occasions does Jason feel like he's speaking in tones not his own - the slightly out-of-kilter stuttering poet aspect of him allows a good combination of childhood pov + searching but not writerly metaphor. For the most part anyway.

A nice feeling of strangeness and imminence really transforms the finely detailed material.

James OTM on Solar

(looks at his watch)

Dang! Summer already?! I had better start thinking of a new, clever thread title, unless someone else would prefer to take the honors.

I don't dare - the title sits there, perpetually perking its coxcomb's ears in your face, a recurrent wince-inducing reproach to the vessel of those flickering embers of sunken wit so-called, its little frivolous life only throwing into sharper relief the cumbersome feet of clay with which you have been anchored to this mundane existence.

I'm speaking for myself of course.

The answer for that is, of course, Ask A Drunk, assuming that Ask A Drunk could be coaxed into voluntary motion, which ability seems to evade its powers more and more these past few years, rather like a rat with tertiary syphyllis (if such were possible).

"Solstice is past, and Aestas asks what you are reading".

?

"And that high-builded stack / Shrinking at summer's pace." What are you reading?

While we try to decide, I read these two books...

The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis
http://184.73.187.38/media/images/productimage-picture-the-murderess-86.jpg

Weird, striking novella about a serial child-killer, written in Greek around the 1880s(?)

The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF, edited by Mike Ashley
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1849013055.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

500 pages of short stories about the end of the world. Am halfway through, and only a couple of duds so far.

Nice to see Peter Levi as the translator. I have his book, The Hill of Kronos, about Greece under the Colonels' junta.

i'm reading the satanic verses but it's been summer for a couple days tbh

Lost in the thickets of Martin Amis' The Pregnant Widow -- acres of dialogue, to no purpose.

Also:

Julian Barnes - Nothing To Be Frightened Of
Tom Lutz's study of neurasthenia at the turn of the century.

acres of dialogue to no purpose in a nice way?

The Raw Shark Text by Steven Hall - Not brilliant, but alright. Best bits are the big daft ideas in the Grant-Morrison-plot-what-plot? vein that pop up every hundred pages or so. Fun; Murakami-ish.

i really enjoyed that - thinking about giving it a reread. i just found the whole idea so... inventive and fun and a real page-turner.

new thread: Summer sun, something's begun, but oh, Louis Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night - what you reading, summer 2010?