2006: what are you reading now?

So, how are you going about reading those collected poems?

The whole thing at once?

I gave up on actually reading Morrissey and Marr by the time I got to the "Meat Is Murder" era and just skimmed to the end. I think I've recovered from the last semester and am ready to read something non-frivolous again. After I quickly go through Jean Smith's The Beginner's Guide to Zen Buddhism (because I'm thinking about going back to regular sitting practice), I'm going to tackle Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (because I'm thinking about sitting in on a Wittgenstein seminar next semester; I was skim-reading secondary material preparatory to doing this before the holidays).

yes, i am trying to read all of cerebus at once. although i'm trying to at least make a cup of tea between individual issues, which i think is where i went wrong the first time, making me not notice e.g. "hey that conversation was one whole issue and structured quite clevely", and these little micro pleasures in it are a larger part of the total pleasure to be gained from the thing, it having problems on the macro level that anyone familiar with even the idea of it knows about. (although i think there's a case to be made for the whole thing considering how the themes set up include 'masculine folly' and 'overweening ambition'.) i just finished church and state book one, the last half dozen issues of which are just remarkable. (although it does his annoying thing of hoping you'll remember a gag character from two years before - ) (which another thing i did my first attempt, read it out of order, really did not help with. i read the first half and bits of form and void and latter days, which means i have avoided the whole women-read-minds-guys spell - o, wait, i read guys)

i am reading empson's collected poems by opening it at random, but empson was one of those people smart enough not to write more than about eighty pages of poetry in his lifetime, to the eternal gratitude of uh of well me; - he did write about two hundred pages of notes to it, tho.

(i have some kind of fear of turning on that setting. what does it do if i have a thread with 51 new messages?)

It's bilingual. I don't have it (yet) though.

I know I've fallen prey to that a bit myself. I found some random single issues from the "Church and State" storyline in a used bookstore last summer, and as I was paging through them I got a much greater aesthetic charge from the individual pages as page compositions than I had gotten from reading the collections. (I've not actually read all of Cerebus-- I started skimming pretty heavily once I got up to browsing the "Going Home" days, and I only actually own the series up to Women.) Yeah, I think in some weird metaphorical way the male/female symbology holds up, but the caricatures of the Cirinists gets to be a little too much almost immediately after they're introduced. Sim's some kind of brilliant, but, yeah, by its nature Cerebus is lumpy as all hell and eventually I get to the point where I'm tired of his bullshit takes on everything, so I don't know if I'll ever expand my Cerebus library to encompass Reads and beyond. Sounds you're in for a fun project though.

Do you have that new translation?

No, I've got it out from the school library so I have the 3rd edition instead. I wonder what Anscombe changed-- I was reading some of the secondary stuff Jaakko Hintikka's done, and he makes all sorts of remarks about the inaccuracy of Anscombe's translations. Some people seem to think that she really didn't understand Wittgenstein at all, which is problematic for me since she's the primary English translator of his stuff.

It's a very readable interesting history, actually, but it seems hopelessly biased by the fact that, well, the West won -- so it becomes kind of circular, and it's all too easy to prove WHY the West won.

I also have a feeling that there's a flaw in the simplistic division of "Christendom" and "Islam," sort of implying that today's Arab states are nothing but outgrowths of the Ottoman Empire, and also that all European states, even the weakest ones, were successful by virtue of being part of Europe.

Did that make any sense?

trying to get to the end of "The Master and Margerita" after my initial enthusiasm died under the weight of slapstick. "A Supposedly Fun Thing To Do..." which i bought because of the recent DFWallace threads - i was surprised at how much i like his style and cleverness (!) so i picked up "Oblivion" with christmas book tokens as well. just about to start Knut hamsun's "Hunger" bought for me for christmas by my b/f (it's a key book for him). i'm also reading ILX waaaaaay too much.

some of them may have been made with the benefit of the genetic-critical german edition that came out in 2001. david stern sez in his 2004 book on the investigations that no english version to date has included the motto, which i suppose means that none had included the motto up to the fourth, bilingual, edition (since it does). so, there's one difference.

the literary executors have chopped 'part ii' off the end of the latest german edition; i reckon eventually they'll bring the english editions into line with that decision? i'll hafta get another one then. woo!

and I'm beginning to dip into the first volume of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, Palace Walk which is lovely but a bit intimidating. Should I keep it up?

I really enjoy Mahfouz's work - thought that Palace Walk was excellent, but kind of burned out by the final book (Sugar Street?).

Have you read any of his other works?

And to take me to the end of this hopelessly compromised four word December, I (like jed_) am reading "The Master And Margarita". I am enjoying it, but my enjoyment keeps threatening to turn into a raging kind of (literary) love, and never quite does. Or hasn't yet.

Recommendations for books entitled "The _____ of the ________" still gratefully received.

Too much punctutation, I'm still saying (note: '"You're An Animal, Viskovitz!"' has the speechmarks in the actual title, making it positively engorged with punctuation. This must be unacceptably decadent to civilsed folks like, er, us?).

Only Sebastian Barry to go after the Banville, although I may be tempted to give myself what I hope will be a treat by reading 20,000 Streets Under The Sky first.

what the upshot of that was, tom, is, read whatever version you can find.

PS Cheers, HNY'06!

And I've got about a hunderd pages of Don Quixote left to re-read.

aimless, i wonder if you could try alternative ways of reaching the text.

Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism; and
Slavery in New York, published in conjunction with the New-York Historical Society exhibit

Mmm - I remember thinking that Silver On The Tree especially was *enormous* when I was little.

I watched a little of your Devonian boys last night. Is it two up automatically this year?

I found reading "The End of the Affair" far more painful than I had expected. I don't really want to talk about it.

Are you reading the tinily printed bits of GB84 or are you treating them as illustrations?

I'm still reading the Football Man. The Observer reckons it one of the top five sports books of all time. The author used to write for the Observer, though.

I'm on The Dark is Rising now. Only a few pages in and already it nearly made me miss my train station this morning.

I have been rereading books, including the Barthes mentioned above.

'Cyclops' was tremendous again.

Still need to finish Michael Wood's Kafka very soon.

I wish I had copies of The Dark Is Rising, I never remember to steal it when I'm at my mother's.

I've just finished The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (Nabokov, pronounced NabORkov, apparently), I'm in the middle of The Truth about Sascha Knisch by Aris Fioretos (titular similarity a some kind of serendipitous event) and next on the list is Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing, which I have to read for uni. Looking forward to it though.

PF: I was avguely planning to read the timy bits as they coem along, and then read them again as a story at the end. I might not feel like doing that when it comes to the end, but that's a chance I'll have to take.

I just bought 'The Soccer War' by Ryszard Kapuscinski, because Geoff Dyer is always going on about him. The first chapter was good.

I've just started on Projection Privée by Kazushige Abe.

'The Ongoing Moment' - yes. There are good bits, but overall I found it a bit disappointing. It would have been improved if:

a) he could have got reproduction rights to all the photos he wanted; and
b) the standard of reproduction was a bit better.

As it is, the book falls too easily into a series of essays which get a bit formulaic: "Many photographers have taken pictures of gas stations. Take photographer A, for example. Photographer B, however, photographed gas stations a bit differently. And then photographer C came a long and looked at gas stations in a whole new way!". I enjoyed the biographical bits about the rivalries and friendships between the different photographers, I guess.

Now that this thread has exceeded 350 postings and it is likewise the start of February, 2006, would it be acceptable to start a new incarnation of the now-traditional "what are you reading" thread, rather than hammer the ILX server and frustrate our dial-up patrons by extending this thread to fantastic length?

Saul Bellow, "Humboldt's Gift"
Gary Shteyngart, "The Russian Debutante's Handbook"
David Foster Wallace "Oblivion" and "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"
Chris Ware, "The Acme Novelty Library"

The Lost Continent, by Bill Bryson
Travels, by Hans Christian Andersen
Remarks on Colour, by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Shut Up And Eat Your Showshoes!, by Jack Douglas

That last one is my nth time rereading that book.

Now, I have to say, I don't normally read so voraciously, but it really was an ideal train ride. I attempted to finish the Iliad instead of reading the Douglas, but it so wasn't happening.

I haven't been to Union Station DC, but of the ones I've been to, I think Union Station LA is the nicest, well, assuming we don't include Grand Central of course.

Grand Central is magnificent!