javier marias a heart so white was pretty great
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:48 (fourteen years ago) link
The big problem is not having good new novels to read, it is finding them among the hundreds of new novels you do not want to read
^^^this
― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:48 (fourteen years ago) link
i feel like this thread is delivering. I really wanna order a shitload of these and come back in a month or two and be like "thanks guys"
― plax (ico), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:49 (fourteen years ago) link
i haven't read quick and the dead yet. i read a story collection called "honored guest." it was an intensity.
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:49 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm almost done with the 3rd vol. of YFT & think it's totally incredible btw
― get your bucket of free wings (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:50 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah, compiling recommendations from this thread for my summer reading list.
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:50 (fourteen years ago) link
but is there anything particularly important about new novels where you ought to read them now versus waiting for the winnowing?I mean is there some value attached to their currency where it won't be quite the same reading them some years later?
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:50 (fourteen years ago) link
whenever I see any of the yft books I kind of shuffle away quickly
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:50 (fourteen years ago) link
ooh someone else fairly recent I forgot to mention who is obviously a heavy-hitter that I dug: Saramago (RIP)
― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:51 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, Saramago was good.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:52 (fourteen years ago) link
sometimes i like to feel like i have a sense for the current moment in literary culture. also, i do like to feel like "aw who the fuck cares if this novel doesn't reflect my superior literary taste" and it's exciting to feel like you're just reading a bunch of uncharted territory stuff. both those things are probably just related to my own reactionary moment against my attitudes toward literature my whole life, though.
xposts to Philip
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:52 (fourteen years ago) link
― Philip Nunez, Friday, June 25, 2010 1:50 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
you wont get invited to any of the good parties
xp what horsehoe said
― max, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:52 (fourteen years ago) link
shakey i would join ur bookclub btw
― plax (ico), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:53 (fourteen years ago) link
barry hannah also p good and dead
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:53 (fourteen years ago) link
Another big problem is being broke and relying on an underfunded suburban library system for the majority of your book needs. That might be why I've read Dostoevskey and Proust and Wilde this year instead of the newer writers that the library will never get.
― franny glass, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:53 (fourteen years ago) link
eh you can never read too much Oscar Wilde imho
― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:55 (fourteen years ago) link
but yeah I echo plax that this thread has delivered on some interesting recs that I will check out. will be good to have a nice long list for my next trip to Powell's in Portland on July 4th
oh i have to buy everything, public libraries in ireland, i mean i don't know what they're like elsewhere but they always sound better than the decayed donated 70s paperbacks that bulk out the galway city library
― plax (ico), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:56 (fourteen years ago) link
okay i should stop being so chickenshit about recommendations. i have been listening to the lol new yorker fiction podcast lately. obvs this is more for people who aren't looking for experimental stuff, but i have recently enjoyed stories by Leonard Michaels and Andrea Lee and I plan to search out more by both of them.
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:56 (fourteen years ago) link
is there anything particularly important about new novels where you ought to read them now versus waiting
Books mean different things at different times and at various ages when you read them. A perfect book for a younger person may not speak to you in middle age. Also, there's the exciting sense of discovery around newer work. No one bothers to write ponderous Introductions to recent novels; the appeal is straight from the author to you.
― Aimless, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:57 (fourteen years ago) link
Look, I started Bleak House yesterday, and it's such an unfamiliar world that it feels "new." Read what you want when you want at your own pace.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 June 2010 17:58 (fourteen years ago) link
of course if it's a new novel about now or an historical novel that's sort-of about now then now can be the most interesting or, if it's less good, the only interesting time to read it.
― jed_, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:59 (fourteen years ago) link
how would you guys characterize the current moment BTW? I was flipping through the Raymond Pettibon reader which is compiled from excerpts from Plato to Charles Manson and pretty much could not tell what era any selection was from without looking at the author.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:00 (fourteen years ago) link
Alfred is right, of course. You should always read exactly what you feel like reading. There's no merit points for slogging through something you hate.
― Aimless, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:01 (fourteen years ago) link
in the thread on "The Tale of Genji" someone posts about the world of the novel (11th C Japan) being so alien it's really like reading some quasi-sci-fi novel. that kind of piqued my interest.
― jed_, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:02 (fourteen years ago) link
i mean it's impossible to characterize the current moment in a way that is accurate; these things are only possible in retrospect and then they're always kind of lies. also i am trying to come up with a useful lie about right now and i can't.
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:03 (fourteen years ago) link
It does suck for me that a lot of friends who love Foer, Murakami, Palahniuk, etc won't touch anything written before, say, 1930; it's baffling!
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:03 (fourteen years ago) link
There's no merit points for slogging through something you hate.
― Aimless, Friday, June 25, 2010 2:01 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
for sure. that's why i asked upthread how recently people who don't like modern fiction have read a lot of fiction. when i have felt that way it has usually been during periods where i wasn't reading much fiction at all. which fucked with my sense of identity, but i mean, whatever. sometimes you don't feel like reading fiction. it's okay.
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:04 (fourteen years ago) link
by "felt that way" i mean "felt like, 'god everything that's being written these days sucks'"
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:05 (fourteen years ago) link
people who love palahniuk are generally best avoided ime
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:06 (fourteen years ago) link
uh oh
― plax (ico), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Tell me about it. He's one of my closest friends and he wrote his masters thesis on Palahniuk's work.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:07 (fourteen years ago) link
But you had a good point above, Aimless. Netherland, for example, struck such a chord with me partly because it's the first post-2001 novel I've read that deals with 9-11 in a completely honest and real way. I don't think someone who was born in 2010 will be able find the same resonance when they read it at age 25 or whenever. That said, they'd likely find their own resonance from their own perspective, but sometimes I just want to read fiction about NOW.
xxxposts man, I type slowly.
― franny glass, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:07 (fourteen years ago) link
plax: if you loved Infinite Jest I'd highly recommend Bolano. he's the first *contemporary* author I really got into after reading everything by DFW. I read Savage Detectives a while ago and enjoyed it a lot, now I'm almost halfway through 2666 and loving it.
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Friday, 25 June 2010 18:07 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah I don't have any time for Palahniuk either
― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:12 (fourteen years ago) link
i was really into palahniuk when i was in school and i would probably still enjoy his first few if i read them now, i lost interest around the time of diary though
― plax (ico), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:13 (fourteen years ago) link
i read something by him in HS, don't remember the name of it. hated it.
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Friday, 25 June 2010 18:15 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm really glad the dude exists though. If only to endlessly misspell his name. Also he seems really earnest.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:21 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah he is, but invisible monsters explained felching to me and is intercut w. descriptions of different kinds of vaginal construction surgery and recreational uses for prescription drugs
― plax (ico), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:23 (fourteen years ago) link
I have some knee jerk reaction against new fiction and I can't exactly say why. The writers always seem like people I don't want to spend much time with, but of course who's to say that wouldn't also be true of Christopher Isherwood or W. Somerset maugham or Mikhail Bulgakov or whoever?
― Kiitën (admrl), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:25 (fourteen years ago) link
all my favorite old-timey writers kind of seem like they would have been horrible to be around.
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:26 (fourteen years ago) link
I quite liked that Michael Chabon book about comics and I liked Stephen Millhauser's "Martin Dressler".
xp - yes, sure
― Kiitën (admrl), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:26 (fourteen years ago) link
I have a similar knee-jerk thing that I consciously try to overcome. Threads like this help, also I find reading good, thoughtful interviews with living writers gets me excited about trying their stuff.
― franny glass, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:28 (fourteen years ago) link
I am reading Under The Volcano now, which is great, but by all accounts Malcolm Lowry was a prick, yes?
― Kiitën (admrl), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:29 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah he sounds crazy
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:29 (fourteen years ago) link
Speaking of which, wasn't there some profile (The New Yorker, I think) that mentioned his incredibly small penis
that profile is my source for thinking he was bonkers. strangely didn't recall the thing about his penis.
― horseshoe, Friday, 25 June 2010 18:30 (fourteen years ago) link
more importantly, did he eat any truffle fries
― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:30 (fourteen years ago) link
sometimes i read things that are not the new yorker btw :/
I have some knee jerk reaction against new fiction and I can't exactly say why. The writers always seem like people I don't want to spend much time with,
The novels are better company.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 June 2010 18:30 (fourteen years ago) link