What did you read in 2014?

Yet another list thread.

Mine is at the bottom of: What all did you read in 2013?

this was the first year in a long time that i didnt keep a list. i keep moving and going places and forgetting things. i reread a lot of stuff. all of trollope who i like a lot still, pullmans 'dark materials' which gets pretty soppy. all of the 'wheel of time'. i reread lots of proust cuz thomp complained about it to me once. i spent five weeks at my parents summer house reading for hours a day and i cant recall any of it. my bedroom had a large shelf full of books and i read all of them. a good 60% were about like headstrong modern witches and another 25% or so were lit 101 titles that i had read before the only specific ones i remember are 'mansfield park' and 'dubliners'. one of the others was 'gone girl'. there was also a steampunkish one about a magic circus that i thought was pretty good and one about victorian conwomen that wasnt. there were also some mysteries by a local writer that performed the same function as the decorative soap in the bathroom. i bought a fantasy novel that i vaguely enjoyed and now cant remember the title of which is killing me. i gave it to a girl i met at the swimming pool because i didnt want to pack it when i flew home. i read 'native son' for the first time and loved it. i read it again a few weeks later. 'nobody is ever missing' was probably the best new thing i read. i was disappointed in the lydia davis collection and the lorrie moore collection. the david mitchell book was maybe the worst book i read this year. in contention is vol. 3 of 'my struggle'. david hair and brain mcclellans new fantasy series were v enjoyable. i read probably another dozen nyrb classics but nothing that really sticks out. same with all the fantasy i read. although sandersons brilliant light forever vol. 2 has to win 'longest book i read this year'.

idk what else... 'appointment in samarra' was really wonderful. it was sort of a sponge for all these things i was thinking and feeling and then it was a rock that sat in my stomach. i read lots of dos passos on airplanes. 'magic mountain'. i stayed with a man in london for a month who had a bunch of stuff by merleau-ponty on the bookshelf in his guest bedroom. i dont think i got much more than 15 pages into any of it. i borrowed 'money' from the same friend and left it in a restaurant. i read that book when i was 15 and thought it was superb, funny, insightful &c &c. a decade later all i could think of was a well-dressed man in a casual setting pantomiming self-satisfied glee. like doing a soundless cackle and rubbing his hands together. or maybe a teenage girl rolling her eyes and saying 'wow... so clever'. i just wanted some outside authority to reassure me that everything was as terrible as it seemed. i read 'the time-travellers wife' and sobbed after i finished it.

i kept house-sitting this year and reading other peoples books. one friend had all of bret easten ellis books including the new ones i hadnt read before. they were terrible. i read 'everyday is for the thief'. i spent more time telling people i read 'capital' than i did reading it, probably. 'lila' was pretty good but couldnt make an impression. i read celan. i made notes and lost them. i read the first three dune books while house-sitting for a different couple. i would sit up all night with their cat in my lap thinking how stupid dune is. it doesnt make any sense. i also read 'north of the border, west of the sun' there. someone gave me the new murakmai but i havent read it. i read 'the laughing monsters' instead. there was more midlist-y stuff: 'redeployment', 'the dog', 'nora webster'. i disliked those all strongly but they arent bad. just false. theres lots more thats faded or never really signified. 'the bone season' was a huge disappointment. this post is too long now.

things i can remember

c.s. lewis space trilogy: out of the silent planet, perelandra (fave), that hideous strength
gaiman's sandman series
david lindsay - voyage to arcturus
louis-paul boon - summer in termuren
yourcenar - memoirs of hadrian (prob best thing i read all year)
mishima - temple of the golden pavilion (didn't quite finish, enjoyed it just got distracted)
the hundred thousand songs of milarepa
lotus sutra
reread sections of the diamond sutra
some writings by kalu rinpoche
foucault's discipline and punish
queneau - zazie on the metro
various books on shinto, right now reading one called "immortal wishes" abt female mountain ascetics in japan

probably lots i'm forgetting

yourcenar - memoirs of hadrian (prob best thing i read all year)

Keep meaning to read that - see cheap copies of it all the time.

suspect that you would enjoy the boon as well, definitely see if you can find a copy of chapel road (summer in termuren is the "sequel") -- one of the most remarkable modernist lit masterpieces

Was just reading a quick article about him: http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/louis-paul-boon/

Thanks, pick it up if I see it.

lamp I feel like actually it was you complaining to me about proust

I also read Gaiman's Sandman this year. I started reading it not long after my mom died and there were aspects of the series that really affected me as a result. A couple things in particular that hit me hard were the bits where Morpheus tells Orpheus "At times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on." and where Barbie says "I don't think Home's a place anymore. I think it's a state of mind." It resonated. That's not a bad thing - I'm glad I read it when I did because it actually helped a lot. But uh moving away from weepy/cheesy stuff, the middle of this series is pretty great - A Game of You/Fables and Reflections/Brief Lives is a good run.

I read Neverwhere a couple months ago as a Gaiman follow up but found it really frustrating. I didn't feel like I knew what anyone's motivations were or why I should care. Ennh.

ANYWAY. Other things:
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris - I really don't understand the hype, found it really boring.
John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
Robert Sheckley short story collection
Alasdair Grey, Lanark
Christopher Priest, the Adjacent
Margaret Atwood, all of Maddaddam series - started out alright, book 2 was probably my favourite, book 3 was pretty bad.
Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Helene Wecker, the Golem and the Djinni
Ursula Le Guin, the Lathe of Heaven
Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

And then a load of comics - some off the top of my head, Bendis' All New X-Men run, Hawkeye, Ms Marvel, Fatale, Lazarus, Simonson's Thor run, Translucid (which I thought was really great and I want to recommend it to people)

Overall a pretty good reading year. I five-starred the Sheckley, Wilhelm, Le Guin, and Tevis on Goodreads.

I gleaned all the WAYR threads for 2014 and I found this data:

Books completed (except the Rabelais, which I'll finish before year's end):

My View From the Corner: A Life in Boxing, Angelo Dundee & Bert Sugar
How Music Works, David Byrne
This Reckless Breed of Men, Robert Glass Cleland (SW USA fur trapper history)
Michael Holroyd Introduces The Best of Hugh Kingsmill
The Garden of the Brave in War, Terrence O'Donnell (memoir of 1960s Iran)
Life Among Giants, Bill Roorbach (murder mystery-ish)
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Ghosts of Everest, by many hands
Old Money, Nelson W. Aldrich Jr.
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed, John McPhee
The Wallowas, William Ashworth
Demons, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pevear & Volokhonsky translation
Four Fish, Paul Greenberg
Oranges, John McPhee
My Antonia, WIlla Cather
Aiding and Abetting, Muriel Spark
Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, Richard P. Feynman
The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
The Golden Age, Gore Vidal
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter
Berlin Game, Len Deighton
The Goliard Poets, translation by Geo. Whicher
The Comforters, Muriel Sparks
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Our Game, John LeCarre
Eric and Enide, Chretien de Troyes
Cliges, Chretien de Troyes
The Knight of the Cart, Chretien de Troyes
The Knight with the Lion, Chretien de Troyes
The Story of the Grail, Chretien de Troyes
Welcome to Hard Times, E.L. Doctor
The Great Crash, J. K. Galbraith
Buccaneers of America, Alexander Exquemelin
What I Saw in America, G.K. Chesterton
Psmith, Journalist, P.G. Wodehouse
My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin
The Civil War, Volume 1, Shelby Foote
Reality and Dreams, Muriel Spark
The Driver's Seat, Muriel Spark
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais, M.A. Screech translation

Books read only in part:

The Voice of the Coyote, J. Frank Dobie
As I Was Going Down Sackville Street, Oliver St. John Gogarty
Essays on Zen Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, Evelyn Waugh
We Sagebrush People, Annie Pike Greenwood (memoir of early Idaho)
The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
Blackwater, journalist's expose about the 'security contractor'

...plus an odd assortment of bits of poetry, which I rarely or never mention in WAYR threads

p much realized my yearly reading is gonna always be ~~ jcox2, updikex2, rothx2 until I exhaust them and i'm fine w/ that, best of these were prob jco - solstice & American pastoral fyi, tho several others id def recommend

collected interviews w/ joyce carol oates
didion - slouching toward Bethlehem
marisha pessl - night film
Jackson galaxy - cat daddy
yates - young hearts crying
fellini & Damian pettigrew - i'm a born liar
Jonah keri - the extra 2%
Nicole laporte - the man who would be king
updike - brazil; hugging the shore; bech at bay
roth - American pastoral; my life as a man
alice munro - too much happiness
Begley - updike bio
pizzolatto - Galveston
eggers - zeitoun
rivka galchen - American innovations
chad harbach - the art of fielding
maria semple - this one is mine
evan osnos - age of ambition re: china
jco - solstice; night-side
john Gregory dunne - the studio
Joshua ferris - to rise again at a decent hour
Eleanor coppola - notes
david Shapiro - youre not much use to anyone
Stephen Elliott - Adderall diaries
Curtis sittenfeld - American wife; sisterland
sam wasson - 5th ave, 5am
ken Russell autobiog
capote - music for chameleons

lamp I feel like actually it was you complaining to me about proust

fitting i guess :/

My list of the books I finished this year is in reverse-chronological order below. This was one of my heavier reading years and one of my weirdest years in existential terms (though it was literally transformative in a lot of positive ways). The highlights of my reading in 2014 were Proust, James Baldwin's non-fiction, Jean Rhys's novels, and the works of various trans women writers, especially Imogen Binnie's Nevada.

gertrude stein - the making of americans
gertrude stein - everybody's autobiography (reread)
stanislaw lem - solaris
nicholas rombes - the absolution of roberto alcestes laing
annie mok - bleedthroughs #2 + shadow manifesto: tall girl summer
lidia yuknavitch - the chronology of water
ingeborg bachmann - malina
mariko tamaki and jillian tamaki - skim
rebecca solnit - a field guide to getting lost
henri lefebvre - critique of everyday life i
jackqueline frost - young americans
caitlin kiernan - tales of pain and wonder
michele bernstein - all the king's horses
kathy acker - don quixote
annie mok - collected 2008-2013
caitlin kiernan - the drowning girl
lynne tillman - motion sickness
simon hanselmann - megahex
julie delporte - journal
georg lukacs - history and class consciousness
sheila heti - how should a person be?
roberto bolano - a little lumpen novelita
daniel clowes - ice haven
martin vaughn-james - the cage
gilbert hernandez - children of palomar
lynne tillman - haunted houses
dash shaw - new school
clarice lispector - selected cronicas
lydia davis - can't and won't
marcel proust - finding time again
giovanni arrighi - the long twentieth century
jeanne thornton - the dream of dr bantam
mattilda bernstein sycamore - the end of san francisco
lynne tillman - someday this will be funny
samuel beckett - proust
mattilda bernstein sycamore - why are faggots so afraid of faggots? flaming challenges to masculinity, objectification, and the desire to conform
john darnielle - wolf in white van
lynne tillman - what would lynne tillman do?
mary gaitskill - veronica
samuel beckett - malone / molloy dies / the unnamable
paolo virno - a grammar of the multitude
mary gaitskill - bad behavior
julie maroh - blue is the warmest color
osip mandelstam, trans. christian wiman - stolen air
marcel proust - the fugitive
marcel proust - the prisoner
maggie nelson - the art of cruelty
fabien vehlmann & kerascoët - beautiful darkness
leslie feinberg - trans liberation
david b - incidents in the night
gene luen yang - boxers & saints
georg buchner - lenz
casey plett - a safe girl to love
ariel schrag - adam
luc sante - kill all your darlings
fred moten and stefano harney - the undercommons
genevieve castree - susceptible
ulli lust - today is the last day of the rest of your life
maggie nelson - bluets
marcel proust - sodom and gomorrah
gertrude stein - lectures in america
charles olson - call me ishmael
herman melville - moby dick (reread)
aime cesaire - notebook of a return to the native land
mattilda bernstein sycamore - nobody passes: rejecting the rules of gender and conformity
leslie jamison - empathy exams
marguerite duras - the lover
eileen myles - inferno
marcel proust - the guermantes way
samuel delany - times square red, times square blue
karl ove knausgaard - my struggle 3
david wojnarowicz - 7 miles a second
anna anthropy - zzt
hilda hilst - with my dog eyes
marcel proust - in the shadow of young girls in flower
jenny offill - dept of speculation
ezra pound - confucius
chris kraus - i love dick
ann quin - three
samuel delany - trouble on triton
roberto bolano - 2666 (reread)
dean spade - normal life: administrative violence, critical trans politics and the limits of law
amelia gray - am/pm
james baldwin - blues for mr charlie
jane bowles - two serious ladies
andres neuman - talking to ourselves
w.e.b. dubois - the souls of black folk
james baldwin - the devil finds work
ezra pound - the cantos
jose munoz - cruising utopia
james baldwin - going to meet the man
joseph conrad - the secret agent (reread)
clarice lispector - the hour of the star
jean rhys - quartet
jean rhys - after leaving mr mackenzie
beatriz preciado - testo junkie
susan stryker - transgender history
james baldwin - no name in the street
james baldwin - another country
anne carson - red doc>
karl ove knausgaard - my struggle 2
clarice lispector - the passion according to g.h.
alejandra pizarnik - a musical hell
james baldwin - go tell it on the mountain
jaime saenz - immanent visitor
david wojnarowicz - close to the knives: a memoir of disintegration
james baldwin - the fire next time (reread)
thomas hardy - moments of vision
jean rhys - good morning, midnight
james baldwin - nobody knows my name
james baldwin - notes of a native son
michel foucault - lectures on the will to know
w.b. yeats - michael robartes and the dancer (reread)
imogen binnie - nevada
h.g. wells - the time machine
james baldwin - giovanni's room
jean rhys - wide sargasso sea
f. scott fitzgerald - tales of the jazz age
william gaddis - the recognitions (reread)
claudia rankine - don't let me be lonely
katherine mansfield - in a german pension
michel foucault - the birth of biopolitics
willa cather - the professor's house

did you happen to be bedridden the entire year but with well-working eyeballs

My eyesight is terrible, and I went out dancing pretty often in the summer and fall. It was a strange year, as I said.

Also, you can do a lot of reading when you're by turns working on a dissertation, avoiding writing a dissertation, and trying to understand yourself.

Just went through the unknown titles for a good half hour and have at least have a dozen to look out for.

fucking hell

i mean i'm busy with school and language study and all, and don't feel like i'm "wasting my life" or anything but sheesh

I'd be glad to comment on any of the books I haven't talked about in the other reading threads, but I also don't want to derail this thread. Also, clouds, I never claimed I wasn't wasting my life!

i highly doubt you are!

I don't want to derail it either, but um what was your take on Jean Rhys?

i didnt read much at all this year. well compared to previous years. split up from my long term gf, i dunno if that had anything to do with it, just one of those years where i wasnt really bothered to read and couldnt get into stuff either. lots of film books this year cos im studying film and the robin wood and robert b ray books were excellent and probably the best ive read this year. morrissey bio was great too.

Robin Wood – From Hollywood to Vietnam
Morrissey – Autobiography
David Remnick – King of the World
Jack Kerouac – Maggie Cassidy
Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Fooled by Randomness
Donal Ryan – The Spinning Heart
Cinema Colonialism Post-Colonialism (ed. Dina Sherzer)
Dan Whyte - Political Cinema: The Dialectics of Third Cinema
John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
The Cult Film Reader
Kevin Curran – Beatsploitation
Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs and Steel
Robert R. Ray – A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema 1930-1980
Richard Maltby – Hollywood Cinema
Film Theory and Criticism (ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen)

one way street - Have you read Bernstein's The Night? My library has it so I ordered.

lol

gertrude stein - the making of americans

just this in a year would be O_0 but with everything else it's just

i commend your reading o.w.s., it's inspiring

xyzzz___, I've been wanting to read The Night (and hope to when I can find a copy--I think it's between printings) mostly because I'm fascinated by the Situationists and I believe it's supposed to be one of the most detailed (though fictional) accounts of a dérive.

j., there's probably no way I would have gotten through The Making of Americans without a reading group with a contingent of dedicated Steinians (we're bound together by agreement that Two Serious Ladies is a perfect novel). It's fascinating and frustrating in that I still don't know quite how to read it (I enjoy the "difficult" Stein but more so in Tender Buttons and the portraits, which don't pose quite the same problems of duration).

dow, I don't really have a unified take on Jean Rhys, but (as I think I wrote in another thread), she has a remarkably pure and unadorned prose style and one of the most powerful visions I've encountered of the painful tension between unbearable isolation and abject dependence on others. Wide Sargasso Sea has the most searching treatment of race, madness, and the scars of colonialism, and handles its perspectival shifts more powerfully than some of her earlier fiction, but Good Morning, Midnight overshadows everything else for me with the claustrophobic intensity of its narrator's voice. I haven't looked much at much of the existing Rhys criticism so far (I should go back and reread Spivak's essay on Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre), but I like Jed Esty's reading of Voyage in the Dark (in his Unseasonable Youth) in terms of adherence to an "antidevelopmental time," informed by the colonial relation between London and the peripheral space of Antigua, that disrupts the traditional logic of the Bildungroman.

have you ever read "zero" by ignacio de loyola brandao?

Thanks for comments on Rhys. unbearable isolation and abject dependence on others makes me think of Jane Bowles, and also stuck by dedicated Steinians (we're bound together by agreement that Two Serious Ladies is a perfect novel): that Bowles achieved a Steinian ideal, or an ideal with plenty of Steinian appeal! I've read a lot of Stein (though only excerpts of The Making), and as I said elsewhere, almost all of Bowels' small trove, but somehow never thought of a link.
Saw the movie of Wide Sargasso Sea many years ago. Don't remember much except being tremendously impressed, still need to read her.

:Bowels' small trove," sorrreee. Three Lives was my gateway to Stein's way; "Brim Beauvais" was some kind of recognition (like just now reading online about the dérive).

The Making of Americans, The Cantos, all of Proust, Moby Dick, The Recognitions...

All one can do is stand back and admire.

xyzzz___, I've been wanting to read The Night (and hope to when I can find a copy--I think it's between printings)

Indeed it is being reprinted in 2015.

I just finished Two Serious Ladies tonight and I saw it more in parallel with Djuna Barnes' Nightwood - which is talked about in the intro, but also maybe Marguerite Duras. I haven't read a lot of Stein or Jean Rhys, so a lot of links to be drawn in the year to come.

clouds, I haven't read zero or anything else by Brandao--as interested as I am in Latin American literature, my engagement with Brazilian literature so far has been almost entirely confined to Lispector--but I'll look out for it.

xyzzzz__ and dow, I'd agree that Two Serious Ladies is much closer to Nightwood than to Stein in its interest in an ambiguous transcendence through abjection--I guess that's probably there in Duras, too, although I've only read The Lover and some of her wartime notebooks. My Steinian friends (there's just two of them, so calling them a contingent is a little grandiose) just share my love for Bowles's work on its own terms--one friend has been writing about Bowles, the other wrote a text for the journal Two Serious Ladies and so was led back to its namesake. (We also share an appreciation for oversized cats, dancing to Robyn, and neglected female modernists....)

Here's my list (I keep a Google doc so I can remember). Mostly fun fiction (by my definition anyway), mostly dystopian in one way or another.

M.T. Anderson, Feed
Bennett Sims, A Questionable Shape
Sergio De La Pava, Personae
Marlen Haushofer, The Wall
Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies
Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation
Christopher Priest, The Adjacent
Jeff Vandermeer, Authority
Marcel Theroux, Far North
Megan Abbott, Dare Me
Teju Cole, Every Day Is for the Thief
Dan Simmons, The Terror
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
Jeff Vandermeer, Acceptance
John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van
Fuminori Nakamura, Last Winter, We Parted
Sean Michaels, Us Conductors
Richard Powers, Orfeo

Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

Really want to read that - did you enjoy it?

the only brazilian book i read this year was gilberto freyre's the masters and the slaves

I was just reading this roundup of Clarice Lispector's books and finally got round to ordering a couple from the library. I sorta avoided reading her for some stupid reasons I can't remember. Between that and The Wall I am all up for this 'untutored' take on existentialism (Kushner's contrast of this stuff w/Malina)

Greatly enjoyed Rachel Kushner's guide through/personal take on Lispectorvision, thanks so much for the link. K's passing mention of Caetano Veloso reminds me of his multi-dimensional-as-hell Tropical Truths, speaking of guide through/personal takes on his life in Brazil and vice versa, drawn from notebooks kept backstage, in jail, exile, back home in the absolutely new/improved etc.
Oh, one more question for one way street: I just now noticed that you read The Professor's House; what did you think of that??

Really want to read that - did you enjoy it?

I did. It's a slog at times but you can take that as mirroring the tedium of the main character living out her days in solitude (or a metaphor for clinical depression, apparently), if you're charitable. It definitely stuck with me though.

was the new richard powers one good?

i used to really dig him but idk

xyzzz__, I'd missed or forgotten that Kushner essay, so thank you for that link; I'll be interested to see what you make of Lispector. dow, my impressions of The Professor's House are not as vivid as they could be, since I read it very early in the year: I still haven't read much of Cather's work, but a close friend of mine had called it one of her favorite novels, which sparked my interest. It's bleak and haunting in its sense of the barely visible fractures possible in what would seem like a stable and fulfilled life. It would be very easy to be heavy-handed about this "Richard Cory" kind of material, but Cather's treatment of it gave me a new respect for her subtlety as a novelist.

Death Comes For The Archbishop is supposed to be very fine too. Other than The Professor's House, I've only read her early novels about pioneer life, like My Antonia They're really different from her stark proto-modernism or whatever you want to call it, with surging anecdotal vitality and some idealism---Antonia is not one of her conflicted-to-tragic characters. Some short stories, however, foreshadow the darker novels (see what I did there). A transition from the financially necessary mainstream crowd pleasers might be One of Ours, a big novel of the Great War, but the central character is based on unwelcome insights/empathy re her obnoxious real-life cousin and his fate. Hope to read it this year.

xp one way street, holy mother of god

good picks though. i love rhys and lispector. also the lefebvre book on the everyday is interesting.

i think i probably read like 20 books this year but i forget what they were. the best ones were austerlitz and 10:04. in hindsight, open city was also a tremendous book.

my best reading experience though was probably shakespeare's julius caesar because i taught it. definitely not in the top tier of shakespeare plays, but aspects of it are very interesting. students pointed out to me that brutus is really kind of monstrously selfish, as he deludes himself in order to maintain this inner sense of moral purity that benefits no one else. either that or he is one of the dumbest characters in literature.

this probably isnt the right thread for this but i dont think theres an end of year critics lists thread for ILB so...

has anyone read any elizabeth harrower?

Rachel Louise Snyder - What We’ve Lost Is Nothing
Douglas Kennedy - The Moment
Terry Teachout - Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington
Tom Standage - Writing On The Wall: Social Media The First 200 Years
Peter Baker - Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney In The White House
Rachel Kushner - The Flamethrowers
A Scott Berg - Wilson
J Michael Lennon - Norman Mailer: A Double Life
Elmore Leonard City - Primevel: High Noon In Detroit
Elmore Leonard - Touch
Elmore Leonard - Freaky Deaky
Philip Roth - Goodbye Columbus & Five Short Stories/Letting Go Library of America edition
Philip Roth - Sabbath’s Theatre
Philip Roth - I Married A Communist
Philip Roth - The Human Stain
Philip Roth - The Counterlife
Walter Kirn - Blood Will Out
Michael Connelly - The Gods Of Guilt
Michael Connelly - Angels Flight
Michael Connelly - The Burning Room
Rose George - 90 Per Cent Of Everything
Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl
Jo Nesbo - Cockroaches
Jo Nesbo - Police
Jo Nesbo The Redcoat
Eileen Cronin - Mermaid
John Le Carre - The Looking Glass War
John Le Carre - Call For The Dead
John Le Carre - The Honourable Schoolboy
John Le Carre - A Small Town In Germany
John Le Carre - A Perfect Spy
Adam Begley - Updike
Anna Funder - Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall
Edward St Aubyn - Lost For Words
Justin Torres - We The Animals
Lorrie Moore - Bark: Stories
John Lanchester - The Debt To Pleasure
James Hamilton-Patterson - Cooking With Fernet Branca
James Hamilton-Patterson - Rancid Pansies
Rick Perlstein - The Invisible Bridge
Haruki Murukami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
James Elroy – Perfidia
Dennis Lehane – The Drop
Tim O’Brien –The Things They Carried
Ian McEwan – The Children Act
Martin Amis - The Zone Of Interest
Marlon James- A Brief History of Seven Killings
Richard Norton Smith - On His Own Terms: A Life Of Nelson Rockefeller
William Gibson - The Peripheral
Arnlaldur Indridason - Strange Shores
George Clinton w/Ben Greenman - Brothers Be Like Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You
Gustavo Faveron Patriau - The Antiquarian
Richard Ben Cramer - What It Takes

Lethem DISSIDENT GARDENS
Lethem THEY LIVE
Lethem YOU DON'T LOVE ME YET
Lethem AS SHE CLIMBED ACROSS THE TABLE
Lethem CONVERSATIONS
Lethem / Scholz KAFKA AMERICANA
Lorrie Moore BARK
Robert Sheckley STORE OF THE WORLDS
PKD SELECTED STORIES
James 'The Jolly Corner'
Fitzgerald THE GREAT GATSBY
Hemingway IN OUR TIME
Zora Neale Hurston THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
Joyce DUBLINERS
E McBride A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING
Jim Crace THE GIFT OF STONES
R.F. Foster VIVID FACES

some of these were rereading.
possibly I read other books I now forget.

Yeah, if I can't remember 'em, so be it.
I've commented re most of these on previous threads, but queries, comments welcome.

Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder, edited by DG Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
(Estimated Time of Arrival Hoffman, who deserves a new anthology, bio & much commentary; ditto badass Victorian fabulist Lucy Clifford, also Graham Greene, IB Singer yadda yadda modern madcaps like Rudy Rucker)

Tales Before Tolkien, edited by Douglas A. Anderson
(William Morris, George MacDonald, H. Rider Haggard, oh my)

The Lord of The Rings, JRR Tolkien (one of the more recent editions, with many typos corrected, and in one volume as intended)

The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope (so great)

A Century of Noir, edited by Max Allen Collins and Mickey Spillane (not a century, and not all what I'd think to tag as noir, a term Spillane hates, but mostly good-to-great, esp.frequent Howard Hawks screenwriter Leigh Brackett's step-by-step neurotic asskicking novelette, which should have been a classic b starring Robert Ryan and directed by Fritz Lang)

Kate Russell, Vampires In The Lemon Grove (stories, wide-ranging, call em magic realism or whatevs, most of it works)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (magical bits come to seem tacked on, but still works---although my lit prof emeritus Mom says she still prefers Borges, ooh! Not fair to compare, but I agree)

Kate Atkinson, Life After Life ( gets very good in some early and final passages, middle's a slog, but could be good, off-the-wall Anglophile movie/public tv saga)
George Saunders, Tenth of December
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
(rough patch, those three. though all worth reading)

Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Lock In, John Scalzi
(Chabon's police procedural is hard-boiled, sometimes poetically incisive alternate timeline; Scalzi's is an avatar x cyborg x restive flesh descendant of Asimov's robot detective stories)

Ramona Ausubel, No One Is Here But All Of Us (constructing your own alternate universe during WWII, then veering into ours, or somebody's)

Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time (good and see how she influenced development of YA Lit, except gets a bit CS Lewis w the wet xtian bits. I'm told the series gets stronger)

Old Mars, edited by George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois (dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Roger Zalazny, etc, but these are new tales of red sands, layered legacies, etc.)

Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (amazing the simple male mind)

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (amazing the ditto ditto ditto)

which dittos also:

ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (scary, funny, skidmark insights---"But it was also," as Chris Rock says, "Tuesday.")

was the new richard powers one good?

― johnny crunch, Sunday, December 21, 2014 12:50 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i used to really dig him but idk

― johnny crunch, Sunday, December 21, 2014 12:51 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm still in the middle of it actually. He's never clicked with me before but I'm enjoying this one. It's mostly about music and he does that really well (considering it's so easy to do terribly). There's a nested story about Messiaen and the quartet he wrote in a Nazi p.o.w. camp that might be worth the price of admission.

also read Hugh Kenner, A HOMEMADE WORLD !

various books on shinto, right now reading one called "immortal wishes" abt female mountain ascetics in japan

Any recommendations?

Another 15 or so half read, these are the ones I finished (my favourites very helpfully asterisked):

More of Peter Simple
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived In The Castle
Winston Churchill - My Early Life
Alan Watts - The Book
Karen Armstrong - Through The Narrow Gate
Stephen Spender - World Within World
George Borrow - Lavengro
Karen Armstrong - A Short History of Myth
Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South
Elizabeth Von Arnim - The Enchanted April, Elizabeth & Her German Garden
Julian Maclaren Ross - Of Love & Hunger
Evgeny Zamyatin - We
Tony Parker - Lighthouse
Bruno Schulz - The Street of Crocodiles
Molly Keane - Good Behaviour (***)
Alan Johnson - This Boy
Antoine de Saint Exupery - Wind, Sea and Stars
PG Wodehouse - Right Ho J, Very Good J, The Inimitable J, The Code of the W, The Mating Season
Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Ernest, Lady Windermere's Fan, Salomé
Fourth Leaders from The Times, 1951
Barbara Pym - A Glass of Blessings
Flora Thompson - Still Glides The Stream
David Thomson - Nairn In Darkness and Light
Wyndham Lewis - The Revenge For Love
Martin Amis - The Rachel Papers
Maupassant - Mont Oriol
A N Wilson - The Wise Virgin
Tarjei Vesaas - The Ice Palace
David Lodge - Changing Places
Arthur C Clarke - Childhood's End
Bernard Levin - Enthusiasms
Alessandro Baricco - Silk
Barbara Comyns - Our Spoons Came From Woolworths, The Vet's Daughter, The Juniper Tree
Rod Liddle - Selfish, Whining Monkeys
Nik Cohn - Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom
Patti Smith - Just Kids
William Bolitho - Murder For Profit
E M Forster - Abinger Harvest
Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped (***)
John Meade Falkner - Moonfleet
Adrian Mitchell - The Bodyguard
R K Narayan - The Painter of Signs (***)
John Banville - The Book of Evidence
John Meade Falkner - The Lost Stradivarius
R K Narayan - The Guide
Anthony Trollope - The Belton Estate
Al Alvarez - The Savage God
Halldor Laxness - Independent People (**********)
George Gissing - The Whirlpool
Colm Toibin - Brooklyn
Willa Cather - Death Comes To The Archbishop
Kate Chopin - The Awakening
Harold Nicolson - Some People
Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr Jekyll & My Hyde
Joanna Cannan - Princes in the Land
Rosamond Lehmann - Dusty Answer
Per Lagerkvist - Barabbas
W M Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Slave
Virginia Woolf - Between The Acts
Arnold Bennett - Buried Alive
Virginia Woolf - Flush
Lawrence Durrell - Bitter Lemons
Lawrence Durrell - Reflections on a Marine Venus
Doris Lessing - Memoirs of a Survivor
Molly Keane - Time After Time
Baroness Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel
Keith Simpson - Forty Years of Murder
DJ Taylor - The Comedy Man
Isaiah Berlin - Personal Impressions (***)
Vladimir Nabokov - The Luzhin Defense (***)
Jona Oberski - A Childhood
George Sand - A Winter in Majorca
Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey
Julia Strachey - Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
Sandra Brown - Where There Is Evil
Anthony Trollope - Rachel Ray
F Tennyson Jesse - A Pin To See The Peepshow
Anonymous - A Woman in Berlin
Ivan Turgenev - On The Eve (***)
Ian MacDonald - Revolution in the Head (***)
Derek Marlowe - A Single Summer With L.B.
Ivan Turgenev - Spring Torrents
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard (***)
John Lewis-Stempel - Meadowland
William Shakespeare - Macbeth
Hilary Mantel - Bring up the Bodies
Caroline Blackwood - Great Granny Webster
Alberto Moravia - Two Women (********)
Hans Fallada - Little Man, What Now?
Dan Davies - In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile
Alberto Moravia - Contempt
Evelyn Waugh - A Little Learning
Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb
Halldor Laxness - The Atom Station
Alberto Moravia - The Conformist
Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Magician of Lublin
Adam Nicolson - The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters (still reading)
Edith Sitwell - I Live Under A Black Sun
Ivan Turgenev - A Sportsman's Notebook (still reading)

Final list, updated for December (might as well post it all here instead of last year's thread -- first time I am properly compiling something like this). A few I haven't finished (*), and finishing a couple (**) (maybe by midnight ;-)).

Favourite discoveries were (these are books I had no idea I was going to find at the start of the year, never mind enjoy so much): Bachmann, Peter Weiss' Aesthetics of Resistance, Ferrante's Naples bks, Qiu Miaojin, Soseki.

For poetry the highlights were Brecht, Emily Dickinson, Trakl, Holderlin, Ungaretti (among all those Penguin Modern European Poets
vols), Enzensberger's Mausoleum

Prose:

Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis and Short stories/The Trial/Diaries 1910-1923/Letters to Milena/Letters to Felice
Ingeborg Bachmann - Malina
Elias Canetti - The Voices of Marrakesh/Kafka's Other Trial
Frank Wedekind - Diary of an Erotic Life*
Peter Weiss - The Aesthetics of Resistance/Leavetaking/Vanishing Point
Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters on Cezanne/Letters to a Young Poet/The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge/
Ernst Juenger - On the Marble Cliffs
Gert Hofmann - The Film Explainer
Georg Buchner - The Complete Plays
Paul Celan/Ingebord Bachmann - Correspondence
Peter Handke - A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
Peter Stamm - Seven Years/We're flying
Thomas Mann - Death in Venice and Other Stories
Arthur Schnitzler - La Ronde and Other Plays/The Green Cockatoo (plus more plays)
Robert Walser - Berlin Stories
Thomas Bernhard - Gathering Evidence/Wittgenstein's Nephew/Concrete
Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days/Antichrist
Carlo Emilio Gadda - Acquainted with Grief
Mishima - Confessions of a Mask
Marina Tsvetava - A Captive Spirit
Fernando Pessoa - Always Astonished
D.H.Lawrence - (Two Collections of Short Stories)
Cesare Pavese - The Suicides (short story)/The Beach
Miklos Szentkuthy - Marginalia on Casanova
Curzio Malaparte - Kaputt/The Skin
Gyula Krudy - Sunflower
Helen DeWitt - Lightning Rods
Celine - Rigadoon/North/Castle to Castle
Henry Green - Concluding/Doting/Nothing/Pack my Bag
Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmarte
Jocelyn Brooke - Image of a Drawn Sword
Victor Serge - The Conquered City
J.G. Ballard - (vol. of short stories)
Denton Welch - I left my GrandFather's House
Marilynne Robinson - Gilead
Montale - Poet in our Time
Elena Ferrante - My Beautiful Friend/The Story of a New Name/The Lost Daughter/Days of Abandonment/Those who Leave and Those who Stay
Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
Elio Vittorini - Women of Messina*
Natsume Soseki - Kokoro/Botchan*
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz - House of Desires
Various: Tales of the German Imagination - from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann
Various: Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida**
Heinrich von Kleist - Selected Prose
Jane Bowles - Two Serious Ladies
Elsa Morante - Arturo's Island**

Poetry:

Goethe - Roman Elegies and Other Poems and Epigrams
Heine - Selected
Holderlin - Complete
Paul Celan - Selected
Trakl - Selected
Brecht - Complete
Rainer Maria Rilke - Duino Elegies
Hans Magnus Enzenberger - Mausoleum: 37 Ballads on the History of Progress/Selected (Modern European Poets)
20th Century German Poems (ed. Michael Hofmann)
Marina Tsvetava - The Ratcatcher: A lyrical satire
Eugenio Montale - Selected (Modern European Poets)
Salvatore Quasimodo - Selected (Modern European Poets)
Ungaretti - Selected (Modern European Poets)
Holub - Selected (Modern European Poets)
Federico Garcia Lorca - Poet in New York
Emily Dickinson - Complete*
Petrarch - Songs & Sonnets
A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse (Richard Hamer)
Chretien de Troyes - Erec and Enide/Cliges
Verlaine - Selected
Szymborska - View with a Grain of Sand
Walt Whitman - A Choice of Whitman's Verse
Osip Mandesltam - Selected
Joseph Brodsky - Selected (Modern European Poets)
Four Greek Poets - Selected (Modern European Poets)
Giacomo Leopardi - Canti
Manley Hopkins - Selected
D.H Lawrence - Selected
Faber book of Italian 20th century poems
Nostradamus - The Prophecies
Kabir - Songs (NYRB)
Ovid - Heroides
John Donne - Selected
Ezra Pound - Selected

Overall I think poetry will become a bigger part of my reading. First year in which I sought it out in a big way instead of reading a volume here or there.

This was probably the best year of reading I've ever had, in terms of how much I enjoyed it and how much I got around to. There were only maybe five books that I didn't enjoy, and many of the rest will stay with me a long time. Looking forward to next year!

Despair - Vladimir Nabokov
A Visit to Don Otavio - Sybille Bedford
Oaxaca Diaries - Oliver Sacks
Pietr the Latvian - George Simenon
The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
Vertigo - WG Sebald
Break It Down - Lydia Davis
Your Face Tomorrow Vol. 3 - Javier Marias
The Lazarus Project - Alecsander Hemon
The Beginning of Spring - Penelope Fitzgerald
Innocence - Penelope Fitzgerald
Christine Falls - Benjamin Black
Dead Souls - Gogol
Almost No Memory - Lydia Davis
Samuel Johnson is Indignant - Lydia Davis
The Late Monsieur Gallet - George Simenon
The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald
Night at the Crossroads - Georges Simenon
The Yellow Dog - Georges Simenon
The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholein - Georges Simenon
A Crime in Holland - Georges Simenon
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute - Grace Paley
A Favourite of the Gods - Sybille Bedford
The Grand Banks Cafe - Georges Simenon
The Mating Season - PG Wodehouse
The Way By Swann's - Marcel Proust
Loving - Henry Green
The Carter of La Providence - Georges Simenon
A Man's Head - Georges Simenon
A Passage to India - EM Forster
Where Angel's Fear to Thread - EM Forster
Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley
Paris Stories - Mavis Gallant
An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics - Donald Richie
The Makioka Sisters - Junichiro Tanizaki
The House in Paris - Elizabeth Bowen
Bullfight - Yasushi Inoue.
A Time to Keep Silence - Patrick Leigh Fermor.
Bending Adversity - David Pilling.
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald
Netherland - Joseph O Neill
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
The Two Penny Bar - Georges Simenon
Alone in Berlin - Hans Fallada
King,Queen,Knave - Vladimir Nabokov
Never Mind - Edward St. Aubyn
The Shadow Puppet - Georges Simenon
Light Years - James Salter
The Knox Brothers -Penelope Fitzgerald

Slow reading year (new job, new child):
The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf
The Age of Capital / The Age of Empire - Eric Hobsbawm
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
Sightlines - Kathleen Jamie (the best book I read this year)
Little Tales of Misogyny - Patricia Highsmith
Miss Lonleyhearts / A Cool Million / Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farenheit Twins - Michel Faber

Lots of good intentions for this coming year.

i must have read some this and that here and there, but i just read this the other day and it was the first thing in forever i read straight through, avidly

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CEEQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FPublic_Goods_Private_Goods.html%3Fid%3D9hHcLSeo4_wC&ei=SH2oVLWKI4iAygS1x4KoAw&usg=AFQjCNGjawxJ-gWQsMlufgv2iygpJSPkhw&sig2=I2JYCyIbiTtlMnipi_IsXw

Oaxaca Diaries - Oliver Sacks
Pietr the Latvian - George Simenon Haven't heard of these---info please!
Also, what did you think of
Light Years - James Salter?

army of the potomac trilogy - bruce catton
a shropshire lad - a.e. housman
gulliver's travels - swift
claudine at school - colette
the man who was thursday - g.k. chesterton
legacy of ashes - tim weiner
three men in a boat - jerome k. jerome
the education of an anti-imperialist: robert la follette and u.s. expansion - robert drake
the trial and death of socrates - plato
free soil, free labor, free men - eric foner
the journalist and the murderer - janet malcolm
jfk's last hundred days - thurston clarke
perils of dominance - gareth porter
griftopia - matt taibbi
a colossal wreck - alexander cockburn
miami and the siege of chicago - norman mailer
an unfinished life - robert dallek
the bonesetter's daughter - amy tan
the united nations: a very short introduction - jussi m. hanhimaki
letters to a young contrarian - christopher hitchens
the riddle of the dinosaur - john noble wilford
a little history of the world - e.h. gombrich
five weeks in a balloon - jules verne
around the world in 80 days - jules verne
bonjour tristesse - francoise sagan
the graveyard - marek hlasko
the burning of the world: a memoir of 1914 - béla zombory-moldován
a summer bird-cage - margaret drabble
the obamians - james mann
not in our lifetime - anthony summers
dutch: a memoir of ronald reagan - edmund morris
my life and hard times - james thurber

i barely read this year but kept a list of the ones i finished

Jesse Ball - Silence Once Begun
Elena Ferrante - Days of Abandonment
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Don Delillo - White Noise
bell hooks - Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Jefferson Cowie - Stayin’ Alive
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
Julio Cortazar - Blow-Up
Thomas Piketty - Capital in the 21st Century
Benjamin Kunkel - Utopia or Bust
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Oaxaca Diaries - Oliver Sacks
Pietr the Latvian - George Simenon Haven't heard of these---info please!
Also, what did you think of
Light Years - James Salter?

― dow, Sunday, January 4, 2015 3:07 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oaxaca diaries is an account of a trip taken by a group of amateur botanists with a particular interest in ferns to the Mexican state known, in those circles, for its particularly large variety of species. I only read it because I was in Oaxaca at the time, but I thoroughly enjoyed it - his descriptions of the oddities of the group were charming and an insight into a world I knew nothing about. There's also some nice descriptions of Oaxaca itself. Its nothing earth shattering but if you're interested in either botany or Mexico its definitely a good read. (Although if you want to read a travel book about Mexico I'd definitely go for "A Visit to Don Otavio" by Sybille Bedford - I've read quite a few books about Mexico and its by far the best.

Pietr the Latvian is the first of the Inspector Maigret books, all 75 of which are being republished by Penguin in new translations. I'd never read them before but I'm now totally addicted. Its hard to say why, the endings are often not particularly satisfying and the writing can be fairly dodgy (I read a review which said he makes Ian Fleming look like Nabokov, which sounds about right!) but the way he conjures up an atmosphere is amazing, they're great books for when you want something that falls into the category of comfort reading, they're all about 150 pages and designed to be read in one sitting, so they're perfect for when you want to take a break from more serious reading, whatever that means. I feel like they're getting better as they go along as well.

I thought parts of the James Salter book were amazing, but I wasn't entirely convinced by it. There's an arrogance to the writing that you completely forget about when you're in the middle of some of the best bits, but there's times where it doesn't quite seem justified. Having said that the book stayed with me more than I expected and I'd say I'll end up reading some of his other stuff, the parts I found a little off putting don't seem so bad in retrospect and the evocation of the passing of time and accumulation of disappointments punctuated by occasional moments of joy was something that I suspect will stick with me as I get older.

Yes, it's stuck with me. Your experience with the book is pretty close to mine. Think I came to it directly, with a jolt, from The Hunters, which is very and appropriately taut (keeps lyricism on a short leash): it's based on his experience as a combat pilot, flying missions every morning, or very often. Later revised, dunno how that turned out.

I've read several Simenons, but they all had Maigret's name in the title. Black Snow and other non-genre novels can be better, but yeah I'm sure I'll get back to the series.

I've read several Sacks books and his 60s drug memoirs in The New Yorker, which may not be in a book yet. Only knew of Oaxaca via its excellent old-tyme reputation re weed; will check his book and Bedford's, thanks.

Was it The Hunters that was significantly revised or was it his second novel, The Arm of Flesh, which was reworked into Cassada

I wish you were right, but just checked his New Yorker profile:
He has also described his pilot years as lost ones. He was ashamed not to have achieved more in war. “I felt contempt for myself,” he wrote later. He felt similarly about the flying books. “Youth,” he has said. But eventually he wrote again of his flying years, in “Burning the Days,” and then, when a friend wanted to republish the old novels, he revised “The Hunters” and a second Air Force novel, “The Arm of Flesh” (1961), which he renamed “Cassada.” Glad he changed that title.

Maybe I'll do a comparative reading, but mainly, the first version seemed like exemplary self-discipline, with bits of imagery flying out at just the right moments. Must be nice.

been picking up various simenons secondhand over the last year, so been reading them in the old translations (at least one was even done by julian maclaren-ross!). just finished the first maigret which was okay, though there was some fairly rank & nasty anti-semitism and *spoiler* the twin thing was just slightly ridiculous. think the new translation for this has been done by the perec translator/biographer david bellos?. have been struck by his use of weather as an integral part of the general atmosphere for his narratives: very good at the oppressiveness of heat, especially in one of his early non-maigrets about a turkish consul newly arrived in a soviet port (forget the name of it but weirdly reminded me of robbe-grillet). and xposts: they are totally addictive!

Aieee! In the middle of the night, I woke up realizing I'd left Dubliners off my list!

Finally read Dubliners. Love the intent observation and the improbable navigation through all the detail: can't call it "omniscient" narration in the lordly sense: early 20-something author knows he's still got a lot to learn about women, for instance/especially, and like some of his male protagonists (generally older and more experienced than he), the sense of surprise, in sometimes possibly teachable moments, is a recurring source of vitality, a key center, maybe. Also, there's a sense of compassion, or fairness---well, justice anyway, 'cause life ain't fair. But art can be, sometimes.
Also, unusually enough, it's making me monitor and question my own behavior, incl the binge of high-class reading: am I really learning from this, or is it just more status-seeking, if very belated? Can't take it with you (not all the way, but how far?)

― dow, Sunday, November 2, 2014 4:23 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dubliners is really good. Perhaps only viewed as 'minor' because of who wrote it and what else he wrote.

― Thackeray Zax (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, November 2, 2014 5:01 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like dow I read the whole of DUBLINERS (in my case again). I liked it and I think dow has a point (implicit) re: maturity, reading it with an experience eye, etc.

I also watched the film THE DEAD (1987) again and liked that too.

― the pinefox, Monday, November 10, 2014 5:12 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks, yeah that's what I meant. It was like Dylan used to be my bold young uncle, and when I finally listened to Blonde On Blonde. I was struck by his being so much younger than that now--but still dropping science on me. Re Joyce, I read Portrait and Ulysses so long ago, in school, so was really amazed by his youthful voice here, more vulnerable in a way, for the lack of constantly-risking-absurdity literary acrobatics---if he failed in this kind of deep social commentary, via focus on individuals, especially with less outspoken well-wishers and guardians of the status quo watching so intently---you want an audience, you got it kid---would have been much worse than just going off into stylistic doodledom for the nonce. Not worse than court actions vs. obscenity maybe, but bad enough.

― dow, Friday, November 14, 2014 11:01 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The movie is very worthwhile; Huston always does right by his literary sources.

― dow, Friday, November 14, 2014 11:03 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"finally listened to Blonde On Blonde" *again*, I meant to say.

― dow, Friday, November 14, 2014 11:04 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also my first Colette, Four Short Novels:

Haphazard months, needy periods of waiting. Does all this, then, happen in a woman's life because of certain definite infractions and disobediences, through individual omissions, the breach of a companionship with one man, the choice of another, and then the fact of being chosen by yet a third? The long sequence of household cares, of toil with the needle, of turned skirts---"My dear, I swear it's better than right-side out!"---of ingenuities which one pretends are little triumphs, are not, then, the result of pure hazard, but of a hostile, almost fatalistic power? She thought without gratitude of old Becker's gratuitous alms-giving. She called to mind those little festivities of the flesh, swiftly conducted and swiftly forgotten, exasperated moments from which a broken masculine voice seemed to rise up to Julie's ears. 'It's not their real voice,' thought Julie, 'but the voice of an instant.'
..."Julie, you're not feeling ill, are you?"
She shook her head and smiled patiently. 'No,' she answered within herself. 'I'm just waiting for the moment when you are no longer there...You read through me into another man, and you treat him as an enemy. One would really think that Herbert has no secrets for you. You hate him and understand him. When I think of Esquivant you ask me if I'm feeling ill. What good advice you give me from the height of your twenty-eight years! An honest little counsellor, one of those plebeian marvels that chance sometimes places at the elbows of queens. But the bitches of queens go to bed with the marvel and turn him into a trumpery duke, an embittered lover and a misunderstood statesman. With you as my advisor I'd never do "anything silly," as you so nicely put it.'
She emptied her glass of brandy at a gulp, though it was a very old brandy, and worth serious attention, a smooth and civilized brandy.
"Alley-oop!" said Julie, putting her glass down.
"Bravo!" said Coco Vatard.
'If he only knew what he was applauding! Nothing silly any more---that's tantamount to saying I'll never be any use to anyone anymore---not even to myself. He'll keep me from ruing myself, or from being taken in. People can always ruin themselves, even when they've got nothing.'

original 2014 post cont.:
Ornamental Cabbage, thanks so much for encouraging me to read this collection of short novels by Colette! So many scary speed bumps for the simple male mind---I want to trot around Paris with Julie de Carneilhan 4ever, and sometimes feel that I have, with her American frienemies (can't really keep up, of course, but)

I read more books for pleasure in 2014 than I've read in any other year of my adult life (but it's still a fairly short list):

Caitlín Kiernan - The Red Tree
Jeff VanderMeer - City of Saints and Madmen
Nina Kirika Hoffman - A Fistful of Sky
Tanith Lee - The Book of the Damned
Edwin Abbott Abbott - Flatland
M. John Harrison - Viriconium Nights
M. John Harrison - A Storm of Wings
M. John Harrison - The Pastel City
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson - The Lottery and Other Stories
C. J. Cherryh - Cyteen
Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Alan Garner - The Stone Book Quartet
Clifford Simak - Way Station
Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass
Diana Wynne Jones - Hexwood
John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids
Patricia McKillip - The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Robin McKinley - The Blue Sword
Mervyn Peake - Gormenghast
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan
Jack Vance - The Dying Earth
Hope Mirrlees- Lud-in-the-Mist

books I didn't finish in 2014:

Mervyn Peake - Titus Alone (was immediately disappointed by the change in tone/style, but I plan to start it again soon — maybe I'll appreciate it more when the first two Gormenghast books aren't so fresh on my mind)
Isak Dinesen - Seven Gothic Tales (I like her flowery faux-Victorian prose, but I can only tolerate a little at a time)
Joy Chant - Red Moon and Black Mountain (an early Narnia/LotR clone. I gave up shortly after the epic battle between the good white eagles and the evil black eagles)
Ray Bradbury - Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (a lot of this is second-rate Bradbury, isn't it? I think I'm better off reading some more of his original collections or getting this)

I've also developed the habit of starting a series without finishing it. I didn't finish Vance's Dying Earth, Harrison's Viriconium, McKinkley's Damar, Peake's Gormenghast, VanDermeer's Ambergris, and Lee's Paradys. hopefully I can catch up on a few of them this year.

books I wish I didn't finish in 2014:

Nina Kirika Hoffman - A Fistful of Sky (blecch)