All out of doors looked darkly in at... the belated winter 2013 'What Are You Reading' thread!

knock yrselves out, kiddos

Feeling cabbagey, read a chunk of Francis Wheen's biography of Tom Driberg (triggered by ILB - the novels/powell/class/hitchens chat before Christmas made me remember this article); exactly what I expected/wanted – very readable, poppy, heart in right place.

'heart in right place', god, brain clearly off, fingers just typing worse-than-cliches. I mean it's a portrait of Driberg that sympathetic to the best in him, and doesn't snipe – not shy of sex but not prurient, and not jumping on the contradictions of haute bohemia socialism.

I'm about halfway through 'The Instructions' at this point, and it's really, really good.

Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.

the first half of the instructions is best first half of a debut novel in english in the past decade or two

i am reading 'language truth and logic', for my sins

Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.

Anticipating ur review

Two hundred pages later, it's as nuanced as a Newsweek essay.

For easy future reference, here is the previous wayr thread from autumn 2012.

sheila fitzgerald -- the russian revolution
muriel spark -- the girls of slender means

fitzpatrick, not fitzgerald. it's a shortish but surprisingly dense and informative book.

Anna Kavan - Sleep Has His House

Stopped by library, came out with Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins.

the first half of the instructions is best first half of a debut novel in english in the past decade or two

...i hope the second half isn't the worst second half of a debut novel in english in the past decade or two.

I'm halfway through Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (now public domain in Canada!), a book I was supposed to read for English 101 a decade ago but never got past the Benjy chapter. Now that I can recall some of the class lectures, that part's not so bad. First half of the Quentin chapter has a lot of unreadable nonsense in it though.

Antonia White: Strangers - short fiction, mostly excellent and uneasy-making
Noémi Szécsi: The Finno-Ugrian Vampire - entertaining in a weird, affectless way, but could have easily been only half as long and got its point across. Not sure how the author's surname is pronounced, but I really hope it's "sexy"

Last night I picked up a copy of Riding Toward Everywhere by Wm. T. Vollmann that was sitting in one of my book piles. It presents itself as a book about hopping rides on freight trains, but so far it is mostly about Wm. T. Vollmann, who, even though I've only finished a couple dozen pages, I am guessing has some pronounced sexual issues centered on urine and urination. I could be wrong about that, but the hints in that direction are numerous.

It remains to be seen whether this book can be rescued from its current lack of interesting things to say.

^^ "SAY-chee," alas.

Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? New year's resolution.

Just finished Gore Vidal's "Myra Breckenridge." Loved it. Hilarious.
Now I'm on to Barth--"The Sot-Weed Factor." I'm amazed by his skill as a writer but sometimes my eyes glaze over.

started santantango. opening pages excellent - mixture of mysticism, decay (of futures & pasts) and dostoevskyan rural cunning, in a symbolic almost beckettian-feeling environment (ie this is our existential position).

oh and v quickly skim read The Fellowship of the Ring (read it a lot as a child). It was like playing WoW - a lot of dull running/trudging between interesting locations.

Our Friends from Frolix 8 is great so far. Bizarre and entertaining.

Max Hastings' All Hell Let Loose, a single-volume history of the Second World War. It's very good. It leans much heavier towards snippets of personal anecdote, mostly sourced from the correspondence of ordinary people, than the Antony Beevor one I've just finished. As a consequence Beevor is stronger on the flow of events, and Hastings on feeling. Both have their merits, though it suits me to have read Beevor first.

started santantango

get to the chopper thread!

oh yeah, forgot about that. during my Internet purdah.

Now I'm on to Barth--"The Sot-Weed Factor." I'm amazed by his skill as a writer but sometimes my eyes glaze over.

― Romeo Jones, Wednesday, January 9, 2013 4:51 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

started santantango. opening pages excellent - mixture of mysticism, decay (of futures & pasts) and dostoevskyan rural cunning, in a symbolic almost beckettian-feeling environment (ie this is our existential position).

― Fizzles, Wednesday, January 9, 2013 8:16 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you've made me want to read this with just that one line. i'm currently reading alice munro's hateship, loveship... thanks to ilxors saying good things about it (and i'm really enjoying the stories i've read so far), so i guess ilx is becoming my one and only reading recommendation source.

I'm now about 2/3 of the way through Riding Toward Everywhere, WTV. I will probably finish it, just because it is short. It has improved slightly, but not much. My final comment on this book is that Vollmann reveals himself to be a wholly unreconstructed romantic idealist whose imagination tyrannically insists on its primacy over all evidence of his senses. Authors with this mindset should not write non-fiction, imo.

I'm reading David Byrne's "How Music Works" which has just about held my attention for the first third or so. I'm not enough of a fan of Byrne or his approach to music to be in the target audience for this so I didn't really expect it to be more than moderately interesting. He comes across well personally although with a slightly creepy over-confidence that seems basic to his character rather than a consequence of his success.

Also started reading "Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont" which I think is the only Elizabeth Taylor novel I haven't read. It's reputedly one of her best but I've put off reading it for years for fear I'd find the subject matter too gloomy. I'm about to find out!

Wm. T. Vollmann, who, even though I've only finished a couple dozen pages, I am guessing has some pronounced sexual issues centered on urine and urination

These are not his only pronounced sexual issues... He's got some weird prostitute thing going on too, from my very limited reading of some of his other non-fic

Reading Penelope Houston's short book on the 1942 Germans-invading-Britain movie 'Went the Day Well?', which is interesting but contaisn no major surprises

He's got some weird prostitute thing going on too

Well, he seems to like them, which I guess isn't all that weird. But he's not ashamed to write about it, which is.

Also started reading "Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont" which I think is the only Elizabeth Taylor novel I haven't read. It's reputedly one of her best but I've put off reading it for years for fear I'd find the subject matter too gloomy. I'm about to find out!

Mrs P at the C is great, frankiemachine. Yes, it's death and ageing treated in a fairly unwinking way, but the sympathetic depth of its humour and insight makes it v enjoyable to read, even if the subject matter can't help but mean that h&i is v bleak. (I am normally one who, if they saw the phrase "sympathetic depth of its humour and insight" in a review, wd react very angrily, but I can't think of a better way of putting it).

I think what I'm saying is that for it to be so bleak and funny without being mocking needs great sympathy. There's one particularly awful scene towards the end where the avoidance of mockery is impressive (a man behaves v foolishly so that you go "aaaargh" and squirm in embarrassment). You end up being aware of the awkwardness of individual incommunicable feeling, the acts of awkwardness that engenders - a v English thing made into an existential thing - without there being a sense of folly or malign knavery/wickedness of misguided action.

Istanbul - Pamuk
The Witness - Jose Saer

v much enjoying 'beyond a boundary' by clr james, cultural criticism & political history disguised as cricket memoir

Vollmann is behind me. Last night I started on Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz.

spent the last week or so slowly advancing through Under the Volcano -- can't tell if I'm savoring, or just not that into it

Helen Garner: Cosmo Cosmolino -- very much enjoying, but Garner always has these female characters who will put up with any amount of filthy shit from a man as long as he has long hair and can play guitar

finished the swimming-pool library by alan hollinghurst last night. in the end i found it... disagreeable

I read it last fall and enjoyed it, especially after the slog his last novel was -- his first real dud.

the prose was great, but i just really couldn't get into the upper-class white solipsism of the main character. maybe that was the point and i'm confusing narrative POV with authorial intent, but i dunno! there were so many gross things going on that just never really got resolved or examined. perhaps reading more hollinghurst will revise my opinion of this one.

Holinghurst is aware of it and his protagonist is rather dim at points, from what I remember

yes, the protagonist is plainly uncurious and self-involved. i guess part of my response to the book or the experience of reading it is also to its critical reception, which (from what i saw) seems to have been along the lines of: this is a fun, sexy, literary book about homophobia and the gay experience. maybe if i had approached it from the beginning as a dark, very dry satire. i guess that's not really the correct mode to read it in, either though.
i'm torn about this book, because it's definitely a well-written, honest portrayal of a loathsome but sometimes sympathetic character, but at the end it's like... well? and of course there's the implication that the protagonist might soon be dead or dying of HIV/AIDS, which... does that foreclose on any chance of redemption? just rambling here obv

Anyone want to recommend standout novels from 2012? I've tried a couple found on year-end lists.

I liked Shani Boianjiu's The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, about three girls in the Israeli Defense Forces. I also read Elliott Perlman's The Street Sweeper, which has some fatal plot problems, too many convenient "small world" connections between far-distant characters.

the prose was great, but i just really couldn't get into the upper-class white solipsism of the main character. maybe that was the point and i'm confusing narrative POV with authorial intent, but i dunno! there were so many gross things going on that just never really got resolved or examined. perhaps reading more hollinghurst will revise my opinion of this one.

It just seemed like Hollinghurst had created himself this character he was too in love with to bother making the rest of the book as interesting as he thought it was

I also liked Shani Boianjiu's The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, except for that disaster zone of a final chapter/story, which an editor should have cut out and binned.

Of the stuff making best-of-2012 lists, off the top of my head I'd also add 'A Naked Singularity' by Sergio De La Pava and 'At Last' by Edward St Aubyn (but read the earlier books in the series first). Kevin Powers's 'The Yellow Birds' was good but over-hyped, I thought.

I've read the Patrick Melrose anthology, not gotten to At Last yet. I liked the third volume, the most straightforwardly comedic. He's good when he's being funny. I'm not so interested when it's about trauma and family issues.

Isabel Allende The House of The Spirits. Maybe I disregarded obvious magical realism warning signs but finding these fantabulous people rather wearying. I'm guessing there's going to be no plot beyond birth/life/death unto many generations. Gruesome tragedies occur routinely and are forgotten about within a page. Sentences and paragraphs long outstay their welcome.

Darcy O'Brien's A Way of Life, Like Any Other. Very droll.

Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time - very entertaining stuff so far. Maybe I should be reading the Nabokov translation, but this one by Martin Parker and Neil Cornwell seems good enough.

Try Brighton Rock.

I loooooved Brighton Rock. Also The End of the Affair is good too.

I've rec'd/described 21 Stories and Collected Essays (re-reading eccentric inspirations, vs. buzzkill of occasionally mentioned Gt. Depression and approaching Luftwaffe) on prev What Are You Reading threads. The collected film reviews are ace too, though mine lacks the one about Hollywood pimping Shirley Temple. And of course his autobio, A Sort of Life.

Booth Tarkington - The Magnificent Ambersons
Daniel Yergin - The Prize

Nabisco did not have astounding lucidity. He was verbose.

I am reading A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD for the 3rd time.

Putting those two posts together suggests you need to reevaluate your life.

Lol

I would add about Nabisco that he was verbose because he sought nuance. He often achieved it, but he paid a marginal cost in clarity.

Just started Wells Tower's Everything Burned, Everything Ravaged having read his piece on Burning Man. The first story was excellent so I've got high hopes for the rest of it.

Read Wildlife by Richard Ford this week. Not sure if I enjoyed the slightness of it or was annoyed by the narrator. Anyone else read it?

i cant remember it much now but acc'ding to this post of mine, i liked it

has anyone read the new Richard Ford?

Weird I thought I posted in this thread the other day. I finally finished my friend's crappy book & can get back to reading actual lit, thank god. 100 pages into sybille bedford's a legacy, loving it so far. Some of the prose is really beautiful.

I loved wildlife too fwiw.

put Graham Greene on hold for the time being while I read The Moonstone, which caught my eye at the used bookstore for several reasons

- on a bit of a mystery kick right now (obviously)
- blurb on the back from T.S. Eliot calling it "the first, longest, and best of modern detective novels"
- Wilkie Collins has an amazing name & equally amazing jacket photo

Have you ever read The Woman in White?! It's so good!!

... I think not! you forgot that I had never even heard of this bro until like 4 days ago.

America Over the Water arrived a couple of days back, been meaning to read that for years. Book Depository still has it in hardback but I think the paperback is rising in price where it's available.
I assume that means its OOP and BD still have copies they got earlier. THough to complicate things further I think they have it as usually sent in 48 rather than 24 hours.
In short if you want a copy grab it while stocks last & I think it's on something like 33% off.

Finally finished Shepperton Babylon which i started a few years ago but only got part of the way through before it disappeared into a pile on my floor or something. Which might mean it was in my shoulder bag when i decided to clean it and then got separated or something similar.
Anyway interesting history of the unsung history of British Cinema.

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick - second time's the charm.
The Baron In The Trees by Italo Calvino - 3/4ths of the way through. A blast.

For reasons which are not clear to me, one of my great uncles became a very close personal advisor to the first president of the Republic of South Korea, although he was not a Korean. Apparently, he even became a 'registered lobbyist for a foreign nation' in Washington D.C. on behalf of Korea. The past two nights I've been reading a book he wrote, "Why War Came in Korea".

It is a fact-heavy book, hurriedly put together. So hurriedly, in fact, that although the invasion of the south began on June 25, 1950, his introduction to the book is dated to August, 1950 and the publication date is also in 1950. Given how thoroughly ignored the Korean conflict has been in the USA it is quite interesting to read a step-by-step recounting of Korea's politics and an analysis that had not yet been obscured by official US propaganda.

I won't bother recommending it to ILB. It's hard to find and unlikely to align with anyone's interests. But it's cool to read an intelligent takedown of the colonial systems of Japan, Great Britain and France in asia, as well as a frank acknowledgement of US colonialism as being only slightly better and for accidental rather than noble reasons. He also has a lot to say about how incompetant the US policies were in postwar asia, outside of Japan.

that kind of is my interests tbh

not really my interests, but it sounds cool

sorta relatedly i finally bought former ilxor g00blars phil roth book, looks good~~

I liked Gooblar. When I talked to him about Roth and literature he was intelligent, well-read and nuanced. I was impressed when I saw that his book had come out. I wrote and congratulated him.

I bought it recently too. Would it be odd if we bookclubbed it?

Yes.

What's the title?

The Major Phases of Philip Roth

Black Swan Green (Mitchell). Re-read. Really enjoyable but very episodic and I'm not convinced it coheres as a novel.

House of Mirth (Wharton). Superficially this sort of thing should be right up my street but I didn't like it much at all. Beautifully written but I didn't sympathise with Lily Bart or have any patience with Wharton's social determinism or snobbishness.

I'm now about quarter way through Paul Kidea's bio of Britten which has been very good so far.

I mean Paul Kildea.

i just finished wharton's 'summer' -- 1st wharton ive read, i will def read more of hers

it's sexy!

Beautifully written but I didn't sympathise with Lily Bart or have any patience with Wharton's social determinism or snobbishness.

can you elaborate? Wharton as author makes assumptions about her class, but for me the beauty of THOM is the extent to which Wharton delineates the rules of the game. That's why her fiction isn't snobbish to me (and it still wouldn't dilute its impact if if she were!).

I'm struggling a bit to understand it myself. I like some writers who are snobs (although always despite their snobbery - I don't find it part of their charm). Waugh, Powell, Austen. So why does Wharton's snobbery bother me?

I have some tentative thoughts.

Writers like Waugh and Powell are partisans and know it. At some level they know their snobbery is unfair. It's not a simple failure of empathy or imagination. They feel their situation is precarious: there is real fear, so they go in to bat for the home side, whatever its faults.

Austen's narrowness I can just about accept as exigent. The social and economic penalties for slipping through the net seem real. The wrong sort of sympathy for the wrong sort of people might lead to your becoming one of them.

There's none of this with Wharton. Slip a couple of rungs from the place on the ladder she's perched on and what most people would regard as a good life is still on offer - reasonable financial comfort and intelligent companionship. And there is no sense that her snobbery is willed or unfair. She clearly thinks herself more generous in her judgement of her social inferiors than her peers. Her snobbishness therefore seems complacent, a failure of imagination rather than a response to fear.

The social determinism seems of a piece with this. If Lily's values are a product of her social situation then her sense of entitlement (as well as Wharton's) is substantially excused. It also gives the book a claustrophobic feel.

As I say these thoughts are tentative. Mainly I found myself really not enjoying a book that I'd have expected to be my sort of thing. I do find the snobberies of Waugh etc grating but there are obviously enough pleasures to compensate. It may simply be the case that in Wharton I didn't find enough pleasures to compensate - although I loved the clarity of her writing.

Going for 50 book challenge this year. There's so many classics I haven't read I need to start catching up. All of these are first time reads.

So far:

James F. Simon - FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: Very surface level and mediocre
Peter F. Hamilton - Judas Unchained: Mindlessly entertaining modern sci-fi, fine for a change of pace
David M. Potter - The Impending Crisis: Really well written and educational on a period of US history I know nothing about.
Graham Greene - The Power and the Glory: Really good, moving character study. One of the best novels I've read in a while
Lemony Snicket - Who Could That Be At This Hour?: Way too self-consciously eccentric. Disappointing.
John Quiggin - Zombie Economics: Awkwardly straddles the line between public policy and hard economics and as a result fails to satisfy on either front.
David Bayles & Ted Orland - Art and Fear: About 1/3 of a great book and 2/3 of filler
Mo Yan - Live and Death Are Wearing Me Out: This was a blast. Funny and original. Want to seek out this guy's other works right now.
Horace McCoy - They Shoot Horses, Don't They?: Pretty good, but man what a bummer. Basically the same as the movie except a little more sexist.
Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Seance: Really well written but most of the stories were pretty boring. Need to read an anthology because the good stories in here were some of the best I've ever read.

In progress:
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility: Basically the same as her other books, which I really enjoy
Stephen King - Night Shift: With all the King I read when I was younger somehow I missed out on this one.

That's impressive!

Slip a couple of rungs from the place on the ladder she's perched on and what most people would regard as a good life is still on offer - reasonable financial comfort and intelligent companionship.

Imagine what middle class readers of Wharton's time thought: is Lily's descent to stuffy hotels and being a companion to a vulgar mondaine so bad? But Wharton makes clear that this slippage offends Lily; she is trained to be much better than smelly hotels.

About to get into bed with Richard Yates' Disturbing the Peace with high expectations after having loved Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade to bits.

The Wells Tower book is REALLY really good isn't it!

Recently read:

DFW, Broom of the System (a little weird to read this after having read almost everything else he's written, but also fun)

Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods

Adam Levin, The Instructions (love this)

Christopher Priest, The Islanders (lots of semi-nerdy world-building and the writing is ehh in parts, dialogue especially, but the setting is great and I like all the recurring characters and unreliable narrators)

Now almost done with Teju Cole's Open City, which is great. For people who have read it, you know the part with the 'bootblack', who talks about his memories of Haiti and NYC but circa ~1800? Did I miss something, or is this just a one-off bit of surrealism? It seemed like it was presented as one of the narrator's real experiences, not a dream or reverie, but there's nothing else quite like it in the book.

Jordan we had a whole thread on Open City- one of our most successful book club effects, I think-where we discussed exactly that kind of thing. But you might want to wait until you are completely finished to read it. Teju Cole: Open City (ILX Book Club #3, starts 27 June)

Huge Christopher Priest fan, have a copy of The Islanders, although I haven't really got going on it , but really liked the other Dream Archipelago stuff of his I've read. Actually that reminds me, I just read the first few chapters of A Dream of Wessex a little while back, I need to finish that first.

effects=efforts

hey what did you think of the ending of the instructions jordan

the whole second half, even

I've almost nearly finally finished DFW's The Pale King. I've been reading it on and off for nearly a year now (!) and the long tedious bits were a total slog. There was a point halfway through the book where it felt like I just wasn't getting any more than a page further at a time; a temporally obfuscating read if ever there was one; but once I broke through those ghastly chapters I suddenly found myself racing through. Currently getting to the end of the excellent bar room conversation, which is making the whole thing feel a bit more worthwhile.

Meanwhile, my "to read" stack of fiction and non-fiction is growing. What should I delve into next?

Stuart Sutherland - Irrationality
Jeremy Paxman - Empire
Donna Tartt - A Secret History
Michael Chabon - Wonder Boys
Philip K Dick - The Man In The High Castle
Jonathan Lethem - Talking Heads: Fear Of Music
Rob Young/Various - No Regrets: Writing On Scott Walker

I should also go back to the chapters I skipped in David Byrne's 'How Music Works' which is very very good, but does tend to repeat itself a bit (necessary - his approach towards music becomes a sort of holistic mantra).

I can vouch for Wilkie Collins' 'Woman In White' mentioned upthread - such a great book.

Lanz and the Court of Enquiry: a writing group for anonymous authors and nonymous critics

I forgot to advertise this on here - a writing group that works by emailing submissions to me, and then me reposting without attribution, for criticism by all. Anybody fancies submitting, email me by 31 March. Address is at the top of the thread.

> Philip K Dick - The Man In The High Castle
> pssstttt, Hey you (dog latin), Tuesday, March 19, 2013 12:45 PM

i have also just read TMITHC and am currently reading Jude The Obscure where someone uses the phrase 'dog-latin'...

"A Secret History" is an easy read and p good fun. "The Man in the High Castle" is excellent. Not sure Paxo on Empire worth the bother, though coincidentally I picked up a copy of James/Jan Morrison's Pax Britannica trilogy the other day, so will be reading that soon.

Just finishing Moby-Dick and Fowler's End by Gerard Kersh, next up will be Simon Schama's "Citizens" I think. Anyone read that?

Jordan we had a whole thread on Open City

Oh thanks, I'll definitely read it when I've finished.

hey what did you think of the ending of the instructions jordan

Well, the coda felt like a cop-out and the book probably would have been better off without it, but I didn't dislike it as much as some of my friends. As for the second half, it could almost have been longer? Not the Damage Proper setpiece, but I wanted more out of his parents, Flowers, etc.

Re: the whole long climax, I was into it but I've had some long conversations with people who liked it less. So much of it is about how you see & feel about Gurion as a character, and the queasiness of the violence set against wanting him to succeed (whatever that means) and realizing how deeply fucked up he is worked for me.

I'm guessing you didn't like it as much?

so (this is getting kind of fuzzy in recollection now) but it seemed like the first half existed in a place where you couldn't straightforwardly resolve it to either, gurion (and his family) have powers, vs., gurion is batshit insane; whereas by the ending it seems like that's your option?

i could have done with more gore in the Damage Proper actually. maybe that was why it didn't quite work for me. hm. lol at philip roth obv. i think he still succeeded pretty admirably in managing gurion's bizarrely biased account of his 12yo emotions, and in maintaining forward motion through a book that progresses pretty at real time.

gurion (and his family) have powers, vs., gurion is batshit insane; whereas by the ending it seems like that's your option?

I think by the ending it's both! Or rather, there's still more to it. Just because some crazy shit goes down (or at least he's telling you it did in his scripture) doesn't quite mean he's the Messiah, or if he is, it doesn't he's a good one or that his actions are justified (see his father's Kabbalah story).

Yeah the Roth thing really put off one of my friends, but another one saw it as a response/parallel to "The Conversion of the Jews", which I hadn't read until after finishing The Instructions.

i could have done with more gore in the Damage Proper actually

Whoa. I was pretty tense all through this section, especially at the beginning when you're wondering how far things are going to go. Then the first death happens and it all felt visceral enough to me.

i think he still succeeded pretty admirably in managing gurion's bizarrely biased account of his 12yo emotions, and in maintaining forward motion through a book that progresses pretty at real time.

Agreed.

i mean tbf whenever i saw it in the remainder bookshop i thought "man, i should read that again" which how many 1,000-page debut novels does one say that about right

haven't read the story collection though

Just started Rebecca West's 'The Fountain Overflows' - pretty terrific so far. Also read this week Willa Cather's 'A Lost Lady', which was certainly good but not the masterpiece some seem to regard it as.