As 2012 learns to toddle: what are you reading?

ILB has returned in time for the new year, as the Sandbox Reconstruction Era recedes into the dim reaches of 2011.

As noted in the last throes of the sandbox thread, I am embarked upon Pale Fire, but not without misgivings. It seems suspiciously like a Chinese finger trap.

As mentioned on the sandbox - Either/Or, which I'm thoroughly enjoying... and I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Also reading Racing in the Dark by David Millar. Reading it very quickly is as often the way with sports books. It was a requested Christmas present from my brother and is excellent. A lot of sports biographies you look at and think 'You're only 12! This is at best a monotone narrative of success! Get thee hence!', but this is not the case with Racing in the Dark. For a start David Millar actually wrote it, with help, yes, but he put in the hard yards at the word processor. Does this matter? Well, in one sense no: I've read plenty of good sports biographies that were put together by professional writers from interviews. But you do seem to get a sense of him wrestling the demons out of his head at the typewriter, a certain writerliness in fact (sorry, horrible word). He can describe Biarritz, where he lived as 'Fur versus neoprene. I loved it.' That sentence alone might have alerted me to something I knew before I came to it, that Millar had wanted to use JG Ballard as a model. There's no sense in which it reaches JGB's artistic levels, but the worlds of expat Hong Kong, southern France, suburban schoolboy England are evocative purely on a level of place. Then there's the drugs, and the single-minded manias, reality and morality warping dive into the abyss, which is described very well. He's a ferocious character (and a bit of a hero of mine) and that ferocity comes out for much of this book as directed at himself. Anyway, it's excellent, and I can't recommend it enough.

Dipped in and out of A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620 by Peter Mack (wonder if he's any relation to Maynard). Some of the names are familiar, big ones like Erasmus and Melancthon obviously, but also Lorenzo Valla and GeorgeTrapeszuntius (who I'd just read about before Christmas. Where? Thomas Browne?). The rest are not familiar and the detail of rhetorical textbooks and their development too detailed for me to want to go into as a part of casual reading, but it's informative and clearly good at what it's doing. Very useful list of rhetorical terms at the back as well.

Other brother got me The Elements of Typographical Style by Robert Bringhurst for Christmas as well, and am opening it at random pages and having a quick scan. Looking forward to getting down to reading it properly.

Back at work tomorrow though. (spits). Fun over.

To fulfill one of my resolutions to read more Wodehouse, I breezed through Joy in the Morning this weekend.

Also: The Brilliant Disaster, Jim Rasenberger's excellent account of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Just finished Delany's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

finished the beckett trilogy, back to dickens. the canon! woo!

Finished the 1960-election book--JFK won--just about to start Kevin Avery's Paul Nelson bio. I figure I'm the only person in the world who got the Nelson book and a National Review subscription (from the same person) for Christmas.

which election book? not 'the making of the president'?

No--this one:

http://www.amazon.com/1960-LBJ-vs-JFK-Nixon-Presidencies/dp/1402761147

I have read the Theodore White book, many years ago.

I'm still working on Grossman's Life and Work. It's completely awesome, but reading slowed to a crawl after September. Made a huge dent in it last month & hope to finish it - realistically - next two weeks? Every week I think "if I bear down I can finish it up this week" but 1) baby in the house 2) Skyward Sword 3) work

xpost - that looks interesting. i tried reading the theodore white book but it was too close to hagiography to cope with, unfortunately. still keep meaning to work myself up to a dance with lyndon johnsons, maybe after school finishes

The Pietrusza book is very even-handed (which I guess is another way of saying it's even-handed towards Nixon). There's a great sequence near the end (obviously) where he describes a whole cast of characters going out to vote: Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Hannah Nixon, Richard Daley, Stevenson...Those days are gone forever, etc.

Important question: should I press on with David Copperfield or no? Kinda lost momentum a while back and started/finished other books.

I enjoyed what I read but it didn't exactly fly along, though that was reader error, not author error.

I mean Dickens is pretty awesome, gotta say.

Not much reading over Xmas but as I go back tomorrow I'll be cracking open some Plato I got for Xmas: Symposium

Also Short Orders by Jonathan Romney, since all I've done at Xmas is youtube a lot of films in between all the Turkey consumption.

Recently:

The first two Per Wahloo sci-fi/crime novels, 'Murder on the 31st Floor' and 'The Steel Spring'

Don DeLillo's story collection The Angel Esmerelda (some great stories, a couple of infuriating ones)

John Sayles 'A Moment in the Sun' (enjoyed this a lot, but it didn't actually need to be 1000 pages long)

Dubravka Ugresic's 'Karaoke Culture' essay collection -- never read her before, but will definitely read her again; great stuff, and funny too

The first two Per Wahloo sci-fi/crime novels, 'Murder on the 31st Floor' and 'The Steel Spring'

haha what? details, please -- i imagine in the future, too, the weather is always bad, the government is always no use, and everyone is always getting divorced

Pretty much: they're set in an unidentified European country, but it's very likely a Scandinavian one from incidental details, run by a government known as 'the Accord': a sort of capitalist-extremist conglomeration that mostly stifles opposition by buying it out and absorbing it.

the weather is always bad: the weather is basically a thick shroud of vehicular exhaust, so yep!

the government is always no use: or actively evil

and everyone is always getting divorced: certainly nobody's fucking--there are almost no kids, pretty much no romantic relationships, etc

Even more oddly, nobody is ever named, except the central character (Inspector Jensen), though it doesn't feel forced. And he's more a tool of the Accord (with occasional bloody-minded rebellions) than a hero fighting against it.

They're very good, in any case. There's at least one more (The Generals) that comes between these two, but it hasn't been translated into English to go with these two

Don DeLillo's story collection The Angel Esmerelda

i feel like there were two outstanding stories here and a bunch of not great stories...

I liked most of it a lot, but the one about the guy in prison whose kids do a financial analysis show was an incredible trudge to get through.

And I do wonder if DeLillo's ever heard actual human beings have a conversation.

which stories did you enjoy? I slogged through the book waiting for a payoff that never arrived.

Barely reading between Christmas and New Year (social life + skyrim). Felt deathly last night & realised that all I wanted was to be in bed with some easy books. Reread a chunk of Brideshead Revisited - goes down quickly, plus wanted to see if I still had the usual probs with it.

Important question: should I press on with David Copperfield or no? Kinda lost momentum a while back and started/finished other books.

How far did you get? One of his greatest till the last third, then becomes rotten iirc.

i feel like there were two outstanding stories here and a bunch of not great stories...

I forgot the title of the one about the two college-age friends who make up stories about townspeople. It had beautiful passages and was genuinely eerie.

midnight in dostoevsky, i loved that one so much. i've read a couple of these in print but have the book waiting on the shelf. i actually like the financial prison one someone mentioned above - not as much as MiD but still, it feels good, I believe it.

It had beautiful passages and was genuinely eerie.

a long while since i've read this but yes, the subtle romance of the two kids in class is so charged & quiet.

finished emerald city by egan. really liked the first few stories but became sort of tedious by the end.

reading munro's too much happiness. and once it gets here from the library, will be reading munro's hateship, friendship, etc book, which won the book club poll. i feel like there's a bit too much munro going on for me but i kind of like it too. i find that i can't read her stories straight through. usually after i finish one story, I have to sit and digest and think about it and usually go back and reread parts to see if I really understood what was going on...but it never feels like work or tedious.

They do all blur together, so much so that when I went on a Munro rereading binge last year I wrote terse tags ("the one about the crazy boy") next to each story title in the table of contents.

which stories did you enjoy? I slogged through the book waiting for a payoff that never arrived.

I liked pretty much all of it up to and including Midnight in Dostoevsky, which was the best--eerie/beautiful as Alfred says. The few after that dropped away sharply in quality. But as to the earlier stuff I'm a bit of a sucker for that air of nuclear dread that permeates some of them.

yeah 'midnight in dostoevski' was the best story but i thought 'hammer and sickle' was excellent as well: purposeful and funny

ray i think one of the best thing abt munro's stories is how all-consuming they tend to be

I do wonder if DeLillo's ever heard actual human beings have a conversation.

otm

I'm elated that I read the story collection first; when I trudged through Underworld two weeks ago I thought the novel, despite the Hoover-Tolson passages and the virtuoso opening a waste of time.

Re: early Wahloo books not part of the Beck series, above - the one titled 'A Necessary Action' or 'The Lorry' in English is worth reading, kind of aimless in its plot but I found it unique and poignant for some reason.

Conrad's Victory (gotta love the conrad)
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (this will go with me for the next few months probably)

Victory is such an odd novel.

i'm only at the beginning but why?

Its pace is unlike any novel I've read. Conrad asks the reader to idle with Heyst as he waits for the assault, then cuts to the three villains of Krypton. The novel's a triumph of pov -- maybe better than Under Western Eyes -- but I'm not sure the results were worth it.

By all means read it though! Conrad deserves it.

"then cuts to the three villains of Krypton"

those narrative cuts are one of his trademarks though..

No doubt, and it's the novel's most lasting virtue. I didn't find enough tension or interest in Heyst's dilemma imo.

The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse by Lonely Christopher

Hey, a good friend of mine has a novel out today called The Fallback Plan. Very nice blurbs from Gary Shteyngart and others. Could make her famous.

i posted in the sandbox thread but will post here too. goal for 2012 is to read a lot more.

finished last year with a run through dana spiotta's novels--starting with eat the document, then lightning field, and finally stone arabia the other day. now attempting isaac babel's collected stories.

Just finished Ten Thousand Saints; I liked it.

Just finished Ten Thousand Saints; I liked it.

I've been thinking about reading this.

I recently finished Disturbing the Peace by Vaclav Havel. It's still amazing to think that a guy like this could be president of a modern nation. The book is pretty engaging - even to someone like me who's never read any of Havel's other work - and kind of inspirational. There's a helpful glossary of Czech names at the back to help you keep track, though obviously a lot of the references went over my head.

Hey, a good friend of mine has a novel out today called The Fallback Plan

I won a copy of this by asking her for advice online! It hasn't arrived yet, but it looks promising.

About midway through Pale Fire. Damned peculiar so far.

i'm itching to read 'oblomov' by goncharov but from what i've gathered there are varying opinions on which translations are the pick of the litter. most folks seem to rep for the pearl one (top), but i've heard good things about the schwartz one (bottom) published by yale (and it claims to work from a heretofore untranslated version preferred by goncharov, iirc?) don't know if someone has read one or both and can suggest one over the other.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41nn1iFgVGL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41RV8NhJVvL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

yeah ive heard good things abt the schwartz one as well but the version i have is neither of those, sorry :/ from what i can remember the schwartz translation is supposed to be more 'contemporary'

I've only browsed those two translations in the bookstore. I opted for the Pearl, as it seemed to capture more of the wit and humor of the dialogue. For a book like this one, I decided that fidelity to the original text would consist in whatever was funnier. For me, that appeared to be Pearl, but my copy is still sitting unread as of today. (I bought it ~4 months ago.)

I am reading "Catface" by Clifford D. Simak...it's pretty silly, but I'm enjoying it.

I for-real clicked the img to LOOK INSIDE :(

still reading 'middlemarch' and enjoying it. why am i liking this but couldnt wait to finish the jane austen a month or so ago? elliot's got a bit more wit and a little more savage than austen i guess.

rong

Suicide No Compromise the biography by David Nobakht.
Very interesting, has me wondering if any early tapes survive.
I have several from '77 & the Blast First reissue of Martin Rev/Alan Vega the 2nd lp has rehearsal tapes from '75.
But would love to get hold of something before the drum machine appeared. Were supposed to be pretty different

nick, I see you are saving the best for last, Dog of the South

Jordan, I enjoyed your friend's framing of the novel, especially the ending, which wouldn't surprise Tavares at all. But the novel, as described and quoted, seems pretty generic, schematic; imitative fallacy re theme of mechanical man,mechanical desires, blah-blah.

agreed, it sounds too didactic for my tastes. i guess it all comes down to the quality of the writing (and translation), but the review doesn't make it sound like the focus is on beautiful prose.

i think i'm going to read them in chronological order!

btw, in between Parzival and the local guy's memoir, I read a collection of Nick Hornby magazine essays called The Polysyllabic Spree, from circa 2005. Diverting shop talk about reading books, straddling the line between book reviews and epistolary chit-chat.

can't between if i want to read "the lifespan of a fact" or not

argh "can't decide if"

haha i finished that last night. its 'interesting' w/o really managing to illuminate the topic of editing or even really the subject of the original piece. its sort of gratuitously inside-baseball, i think, in a way that helps the forest get lost for the trees? idk i mean its really short

Lamp, did you read André Aciman's Eight White Nights? Yours were the only posts that came up when I searched his name on ILX. I loved it, and found it deeply immersive, but it seems to divide opinions.

It's taken me forever but I am about 10% away from finishing REAMDE. First half >>> second half.

Next is Hunger Games.

Feeling smug as have just scored a proof copy of the new Alan Furst 3 months before its release

Oh, well done! Spoilerfree review idc please.

I'm about halfway through, and it's great. Hero's an Austrian-born Hollywood actor who is in Paris in '38 to film a movie about the end of WW1 (he was given to Paramount France for 1 film so Warners could get Gary Cooper for a western), and he finds himself being used by various pro-German propoganda people.

I noticed the title has changed, which was a good move I think.

very close to the end of murphy, by beckett, after a long hiatus in which i lost it and then another hiatus when my bag with second copy in it was robbed and held as evidence by the police. great book.

just bought and skimmed this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Wraps-Sky-Vladimir-Mayakovsky/dp/0374281351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331373337&sr=8-1

reading granta american short stories on the reg.

I finished the local writer's memoir.

Next I attempted A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch, that I picked up for 50 cents a while back, but I found her characters too difficult to live with. The combination of their Englishness, their upper classness, their occupations, their personalities, and the language through which they were presented to me, made them seem so ethereal, so attenuated, that even though I could believe in their existence, I wanted nothing to do with them.

I fled to Bouvard and Pecuchet / The Dictionary of Received Ideas, Gustave Flaubert, in the Penguin paperback edition. These characters, although they are reduced to their essentials and presented through a series of bare signs and gestures, seem more human to me than Murdoch's did.

The dog circled over the garment and lay down.

Finally, with utmost precaution, they ventured, one to come down off his scale, the other to climb out of the tub. And when Pécuchet was dressed, this exclamation escaped from his lips: "You, my dear fellow, will come in very handy for our experiments!"

What experiments?

They could inject the dog with phosphorus, then shut it in a cellar to see if it would breathe fire through its snout. But how would they inject it? And besides, no one would sell them phosphorus.

Wanted to read Bouvard and Pecuchet for some years. Not got round to it yet. Maybe Aimless reading it will prove the necessary spur.

couldn't get into patti smith's just kids. then a book about the economy of sushi was written in such an off-putting way that i put it down 10 pages in. now reading the pale king.

I'm like 2/3 of the way through the Patti Smith book while reading other stuff. I kind of enjoy her sincerity, and I think it's a nice portrait of an era in NYC's music and art scene that feels very remote from today's internet-turbocharged, high-rent-everywhere situation.

yeah i gave up after only like one or two chapters. i am actually interested in the subject matter, so i think i'll dive back in after a break. i think maybe the sincerity was too much for me??

It was the last book I bought, I might have a go at it this weekend.

Had a dozy read of Adelard of Bath's On the Same and the Different (De Eodem et Diverso) from the 12th Century, very much in the traditional of renunciation of worldly pleasures and material goods (in the female form of Philocosmia and her attendant handmaidens) and study, knowledge etc (in the female form of Philosophia).

Extremely dull in many ways of course unless you're making a study of such things, but for some reason it seemed just right to sit in an easy chair with early spring sunshine warming my bonce, idly flicking through the writings of a 12th century scholar. Especially when he was talking about leaving the clamour of the city to sit under a tree by the banks of the Loire, listening only to the rippling of the water and the song of the birds, while contemplating, idk, the quadrivium or w/e. At that point I very much wanted to be by the 12th century Loire contemplating the quadrivium/resting my eyelids. And if Philocosmia and Philosophia and their handmaidens want to come to me in a dream and have an argument about stuff, that's cool too.

ahh! i have given up on the pale king too. maybe i'm just not in a reading state of mind these days.

Harlot's Ghost at last. Thoughts?

Also: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.

So I'm getting the creme of the New York intellectuals.

yeah i gave up after only like one or two chapters. i am actually interested in the subject matter, so i think i'll dive back in after a break. i think maybe the sincerity was too much for me??

― rayuela, Thursday, March 22, 2012 10:01 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well the beginning is about her childhood, but it pretty quickly gets past that and into hanging out with Robert Mapplethorpe, seedy NYC life, the Chelsea Hotel, trying to get into the in crowd at Max's Kansas City, etc., but all still told sweetly. Which is maybe somehow better than childhood told sweetly.

yeah i gave up after only like one or two chapters. i am actually interested in the subject matter, so i think i'll dive back in after a break. i think maybe the sincerity was too much for me??

― rayuela, Thursday, March 22, 2012 10:01 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well the beginning is about her childhood, but it pretty quickly gets past that and into hanging out with Robert Mapplethorpe, seedy NYC life, the Chelsea Hotel, trying to get into the in crowd at Max's Kansas City, etc., but all still told sweetly. Which is maybe somehow better than childhood told sweetly.

The protagonist in the Patrick Melrose novels gives up on books a lot.

I'm on #3 (Some Hope). Really didn't like Bad News. It's actually quite ironic that, in becoming a junkie, Melrose becomes incredibly BORING, especially given all the talk about fear of being a bore in the first novel. Maybe that's the point. I still couldn't deal with the lengthy drug fiending descriptions.

The protagonist in the Patrick Melrose novels gives up on books a lot.

maybe i should try that one next...

reading yukio mishima's confessions of a mask & really enjoying it so far!

Its awesome, he's got such a vision that you'll always come back once you're hooked...been reading this interview from 1970, barmy and I love it, of course.

Reading "There Are Little Kingdoms", a short story collection by Kevin Barry who gets a lot of Flann O'Brien comparisons. Really good stuff, especially the dialogue which is where he's closest to Flann. That kind of imaginary Ireland where everyone's a storyteller. His novel, City of Bohane, got some good notices so i'm going to give that a go next.

Just picked up the Simon Reynolds book on Retro for €5 in town. been wanting to read that for a while. ALso the Barney Hoskins book on LA.

Justfinished the David Nobakht book on Suicide which was a great read. & makes me want to pick up the rest of their catlogue.

Also started the Greil Marcus book on the Doors. About 3 chapters in so far.

I am still reading the Lydia Davis translation of Madame Bovary. It is beautifully written (and translated) and very visual and flaneuresque -- you can come and go and pick it up when you please and sink and float again.

keep meaning to get that

greil marcus wrote a book on the doors? o dear

Intrigued by the bitsd I've seen online of Demolishing Nisard by Eric Chevillard, a seemingly pointless attack on a stody 19th Centiru French lit critic

He is the slime at the bottom of every fountain. Irretrievably, there has been Nisard. How can we love benches, knowing that Nisard often pressed them into service? Gently stroking a cat’s silken fur, my hand inevitably reproduces a gesture once made by Nisard . . . Did Nisard ever make one move that we might want to follow or imitate? Did he ever incarnate anything other than the tedium of being Désiré Nisard, definitively, forever and ever?

bits! stodgy! can't type!

finished updike's "rabbit run". its the second time ive read it. the last time was '98. would still stan for it but theres problems. his attitude towards women is a bit dodgy and the sex-as-religion stuff can be a bit laughable. ive just started toni morrison's 'song of solomon' now.

Song of Solomon is incredible.

the perfect antidote to Morrison imo

?

i think he meant its a good book as oppose to her other works.

i don't agree - it is a great work, might be even her best, but she had several other good novels as well.

I've only read that and Sula and thought both of those were v v goo, though Solomon was much more satisfying

v v good

Holy shit! Just came here to post that I'm finishing up Sula, getting ready to (re-)start Song Of Solomon. If I knew you you were readin', I'd a' started a book club.

Philip K. Dick - We can Remember it for you Wholesale (short story collection)

Ben Marcus- The Flame Alphabet

Loved this book so much.

Wonderful, bleak and absurd.

We're far enough past the equinox, I suppose it is time for another thread. I mean, ile or ilm can have their 5000 post threads if they like, but they're just unwieldy imo. So, here goes nothin'...

2012: The northern days advance, the southern recede: What are you reading?