What are you reading - on or about October 2006

Now reading Potiki by the fabulous Patricia Grace.

So for a change of pace I started Dibdin's Ratking, which is the first in his Aurelio Zen series - and it's positively marvelous. Or maybe I'm just tickled to be reading something that's literate, gramatically correct, has vibrant characters, and is entertaining.

Oh, and my bathroom reading currently is going back and forth between Rabbit Health in the 21st Century and The Cornucopia: Being a Kitchen Entertainment and Cookbook, Containing Good Reading and Good Cookery from More than 500 Years of Recipes, Food Lore, etc. As Conceived and Expounded by The Great Chefs & Gourmets of the Old and New Worlds Between the Years 1380 and 1899, Copiously Illustrated - the latter is most excellent, the former informative.

How many?

beckett, murphy
stuff for 'popular fiction' and 'contemporary american novel' courses.

Oddly enough the publisher classifies it as "Crime Fiction" (you know, that tag in the upper left corner of the back cover, to guide where bookstores shelve it), because that is what the author usually writes.

Bob Woodward- State of Denial
Conservatize Me- John Moe
L.A. Rex- Will Beall

okay, i found something. I'm gonna read Amy Bloom's 2000 story collection *A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You* and then read *What Maisie Knew* by James. My copy of What Maisie Knew is one of those nice old Anchor paperbacks with the Gorey covers. I love those things. Those two books should take me to january!

Now reading Utterly Monkey by Mr Zadie Smith er I mean Nick Laird. It's a bit boring. And something or other by Mavis Cheek, who I guess would be my favourite 'guilty pleasure' author if I had any guilty feelings about books.

i'm reading schopenhauer, montaigne, and a book about wcw and the art world.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (great bbc miniseries btw)

A Perfect Spy

My non-school reading is "The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, about how he read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica. It's set up as a series of alphabetical entries running parallel to where he is in the encyclopedia at the time. I am a total sucker for this kind of book.

And now, "Gold - The Marvellous History of General John Augustus Sutter" by Blaise Cenrars. I wouldn't normally pick up a book with a title like that, but (a) a novel by my favourite of all the Swiss - Scottich poets! and (b) you have to love those Peter Owen Modern Classics, eh?

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Manuscript was one of the best works of fiction that I have read in some time. The Dick was disturbingly entertaining -- most of his books incite similar responses when I read them.

Now, I am beginning to commence reading Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel and some scholarly book on the devil.

mj, have you gotten to the toilet paper chapter yet? That's really all I remember from however little of that book I read. Also, I am hella overdue with sending you a package...

No rush on the package, really -- whenever you find the time works for me.

More Yuri business: "Envy" by Yuri Olesha. I'm only a few pages in but it's started marvellously.

So far I think it is rubbish because

a) I don't think it is particulalrly clever to find out what brain surgeons do and then show off about it

and

b) I hate the "blues musician" son and his autographed beer mat from Ry Cooder.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/syndicates/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003255156

I am currently reading nothing but textbooks and the latest NYRB.

IMO, Kittredge sprinkles veiled implications all over his chapters as if they were some sort of magic fairy dust for making vaguely suggestive writing into 'creative' writing. He seems to have been marked by Hemingway like some big ole' inky thumbprint on his forehead. He's not quite my style, but good enough for all that.

I have reverted to Titus Groan, which is like Fattypuffs and Thinnifers for adults, and quite enjoyable, if not entirely gripping.

But this morning I read the adventures of Rooney, Mourinho et al in The Guardian, and then I closed my eyes.

Cozen: Moy Sand and Gravel?

TH: good news!

Livy is transparently rooting for the Romans to win. Hannibal is this shrewd, faithless, evil genius who keeps beating the tar out of the true-blue Roman consulary legions, who mean well, but for some reason just can't win for losing, the poor fellas.

this week's classes: the time machine and the book of daniel.

Half-way through July, July by Tim O'Brien. he has a really lovely, dry, comic style which is incredibly "readable". Fits nicely into my interest in post-war US fiction.

Ya think?

I won't spoil the ending for you, though.

The battle of Cannae took place on my birthday, a few thousand years before my birth, according to the Wikipedia. I'm not sure how I should feel about that.

I am reading Nokter the Stammerer's Life of Charlemagne, which is awkwardly translated in the Penguin version (all the Latinisms are plain as day) but which, so far, is kind of hysterical.

Thank you. I wonder if I will become a subscriber, in my own right, eventually.

First 80-odd paragraphs are maybe the best philosophy ever committed to paper. I think he tends to lose me shortly after that though.

a cyberpunk detective thriller called a philosophical investigation.

Arf. I bought that, years ago, on the strength of the title. Disappointingly straightforward I thought, but dick lit ain't really my thing.

frank kogan's real punks don't wear black.

Been meaning to get that - mainly on the strength of his Wittgenstein tours de force over on ILX!

Currently, I am reading a book on African-Portuguese slave culture for a class, and probably will start Dangerous Liaisons within the next couple of days once all of the chaos has subsided a bit.

PL argument - I think it's just 'cause my sympathies lie in the opposite direction. While in general I buy his whole project of putting philosophy at the service of language instead of vice versa, in that particular instance I find the sceptical argument more compelling - irrefutable indeed; and the idea of being unable to follow a rule without a community just doesn't convince me.

it had a point! no tricks were necessary (although it does have an interlocking narrative from a previous book actually). i thought it was extremely moving which not something i could say about his other books, much as i liked them.

hey there's a link! apparently traci guest appeared on a manics track?

the bio's lame. the whole fucking book she says she hates talking about her porn daaazzze! i mean ffs 90 percent of the readers all buy the damn book to find out more about that period in her life, not so much about her experiences in the rave scene. she must know this.

(I noticed the recurring character, but the narrative structure is still very simple. Not that there's anything wrong with that)

Anyway, after finsihing that, everything else kinda pales in comparison (to coin a cliche) - I've picked-up and put down five books, at last count, and finally settled on The Coroner's Lunch, 'cause I figured that it was different enough I wouldn't keep comparing it to Suite. It's pretty entertaining, I must say.