Spring and All 2k16 / what are you reading now?

I saw recently that he cowrote? a book with elizabeth jane howard, the style of which i have trouble imagining

They had a relatively torrid affair/relationship I think and yeah, collaborated on a book of short stories, albeit it was a collection of published stories as opposed to things they'd worked on 'together' as such. Howard worked for Aickman as well - for the inland waterways commission.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

The House by the Borderland. just got to the time lapse bit. woah- that's incredibly well described for the time. did time lapse even exist back then at all? I doubt it

The frenzied, hallucinatory nature of House... really stuck with me after reading it

the description of the first 'vision' is so close to 2001 space odyssey, it's uncanny

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51lO1bJParL.jpg

It's in English too

https://www.amazon.fr/Brothers-Karamazov-Illustrated-Platinum-English-ebook/dp/B017YB4AJ4

i believe we have a thread dedicated to those covers somewhere

Cool story bros

I'm still in the grip of a Robert Aickman obsession. He's such a strange writer, oddly out of time and out of place in the wider sense of British writers of his time. His antecedents are Henry and MR James, I suppose, but he most reminds me, albeit obliquely, of Ballard in his obsession with the unconscious and his externalising and extending of inner neuroses into the outer environment. (Aickman's vision of the unconscious as the 'magnetic under-mind' isn't as developed as Ballard's dwelling place of the aeons of pre-history, but it's just as productive.) I also keep thinking of Sebald when I'm reading him, which is probably to do with his style that hearkens back to various European writers and essayists of the late 19th century and that sense of his writing orbiting an absent centre.

I also find him genuinely 'keep me awake at night' creepy. I might have to switch to something a little easier on the mind for a bit.

― Sunn O))) Brother Where Art Thou? (Chinaski), Thursday, September 22, 2016 1:18 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i had never heard of aickman but holy moley does this sound like exactly my kind of thing. cheers!

No Simple Highway by Peter Richardson
a Cultural History of the Grateful Dead. Trying to put the band in context.
Though for some reason the author skips Garcia picking up electric guitar when rock'n'roll appears which other band histories have.
Pretty readable I guess.
Was available locally which Jesse Jarrow's Heads hasn't been so far.

Groucho and Me, Groucho Marx's autobio. Interesting read. So far he's a late teen buying cars and picking up women. On tour with his brothers Harpo, Chico and Gummo.

the jesse jarnow book is really enjoyable

I went with 1493. It hasn't covered ground that was as little understood as pre-Columbian civilizations, but it has informed me of some lesser-known global history, such as the degree of trade between Philippines-based Spaniards and Ming China in the 1500s and the very rapid spread of potatos and maize in China.

yeah it doesn't quite have the holy shit factor of the previous book but it's fascinating stuff all the same

finished the villiers de l'isle-adam novel about edison and his android: read much more like a long and wordy play than an actual novel. first hundred or so pages really draaagged.

now onto the complete short stories of andrei bely.

Robert Walser: Girlfriends, Ghosts & Other Writings.... New nyrb collection of very short pieces, mix of excellent, fun and fluff

A Month in the Country by JL Carr. Carr makes world creation seem so easy: 5 pages in and I felt I was a part of the landscape (inner and outer) and understood the implied hierarchies of the community. And his writing is like a warm bath.

Love that book. The perfect example of how a novel doesn't even need to break the 100p mark to have everything in it that it needs.

Reading now a book I reckon most everyone here would enjoy, unless you hate stuff that's fun and clever and sad: 'Let Me Tell You' by Paul Griffiths. It's Ophelia from Hamlet telling her own story, but using ONLY the words given to her in the play by Shakespeare. This Oulipian restriction is actually used to great effect, despite the fact that she can't even say 'Hamlet' or 'Laertes', for example. I'm struggling to imagine the practicalities of actually writing this book under tgese restrictions.

heh, i picked up a copy of 'A Month in the Country' just the other day :)

currently reading Martin Weitzmann - The Share Economy. which is NOT about the 2016 Neologism that ppl use to refer to Uber and Airbnb; it's a book written at the peak of 1970s stagflation by an economist who argues that Keynes had only come half-way in treating the symptoms of the business cycle, and that the true cure was to move a system were workers are paid in shares of revenue or profit, rather than in fixed wages. It's very well written, but as far as i know not very widely-read (judging by the price i paid for a used copy on amazon) so kind of a lost classic. it's the kind of gripping, ambitious, speculative big solution to a big problem you don't see much of anymore in the era of an abundance of technocratic micro-fixes, the kind of stuff that's fun to read whether or not you agree with the conclusions (so far i haven't made up my mind)

bought a month in the country based on the mention here - sounds really interesting!

No endless summer on ILB so: The Decline and Fall 2016 of gILBert the fILBert: What Are You Reading Now?

Oh wait were we supposed to wait out the year? Sorry if so

It's fine by me to re-up for autumn.

Momentarily reviving as i missed this at the time:

iyengar's book light on life is one of the more moving quasi memoirs ive read, it has lots of prescriptions for yoga practice but phrases them a bit gentler than light on yoga and places them in the context of iyengar's interpretation of the yoga sutras. recommended if you're looking to go further with his writings.

xyzzzz__ do you practice at an iyengar studio?

― he mea ole, he kanaka lapuwale (sciatica), Tuesday, July 19, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks I like to read it sometime.

I do most of my classes at yoga studios (although I've done some in a church space), most of which have ropes and props so get to do inversions and downward dog the Iyengar way sometimes.

because grief is the thing with feathers

― Number None, Wednesday, 31 August 2016 18:42 (eight months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did anyone else read this btw

^ he says casually, referring obliquely to H IS FOR HAWK

no, 'grief is a thing with feathers' the separate short novel. sorry, unclear

I've read the slender T.H. White book, The Goshawk, if that's any help.

Keen to read that book, deems, not read it yet tho. Got great reviews.

thought it was a phenomenon nb i dont read very much tho. caught me in the gut several times

I'm reading Pascal Meringeau's massive Jean Renoir bio, the first major one in decades.

let's not get side tracked and forget we have this contemporary thread

Confusingly, here's a link to a few posts in the Contemporary Lit thread (not the contemporary lit thread) where I read GITTWF: Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction