Spring 2007: What?! Are You Reading?

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Are you going on a long long hike again this summer, Aimless? Don Quixote would be great for that, I think. Also, I gifted a copy of your book to some birding/camping/hiking friends and they were most delighted.

― Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Why thankee kindly, Jaq. I always love to hear that someone read my book and enjoyed it. I often wish it were only $1 a copy so I could give it away promiscuously to strangers on the street.

As for a long hike - probably not any single hikes longer than 50 miles this summer, but I haven't entirely decided. As a school bus driver, I do get the summers off -> hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!

― Aimless, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Laura Wilson: A Little Death - very well-written crime fiction with an excellent evocation of time/place (1890s, 1920s and 1950s England in this case)

Can't recall author name off-hand: Goya and the Duchess of Alba - shortish non-fiction book about said relationship, full of lovely painting reproductions and mildly hamstrung by almost complete absence of documentary evidence about said relationship, to the point where she had to quote several times from an awfully purple-prose German novel about said relationship

George Eliot: Mr Gilfil's Love Story - will start this on my lunch break

Apparently Patrick Hamilton's Gorse trilofy is about to be reprinted, for all those who haven't got it yet. And read 'Slaves of Solitude' too, also recently reprinted - it's brilliance in a brilliant sauce.

― James Morrison, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 23:59 (seventeen years ago) link

State of Denial -- Bob Woodward.

― m coleman, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:28 (seventeen years ago) link

Walter Lippmann - "A Preface to Morals"

One of the founding editors of the New Republic on the dissolution of the Christian framework of meaning in the West and the contemporary difficulties (this was written in 1929) of forming a moral system based on humanism.

― o. nate, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:05 (seventeen years ago) link

I have readers' block. I have the day off, all to myself, and there's literally nothing in my 'unread' pile that I want to start. Shit.

― franny glass, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Aimless, if you print enough of them, they will be only $1.

― Casuistry, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link

I, too, have heard this rumor, o poetical one. Lead my feet to the path of understanding (and maybe a quoted price) and I shall respect your wisdom forevermore, o man of the shining face and radiant heart. Then we'll see what comes of it.

― Aimless, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:39 (seventeen years ago) link

Well, I finished reading the book about Monet, which was very helpful and informative. In particular, it shed a great deal of light about those series and water lily paintings that he painted later in his life.

I tried to start a book on Gauguin, but it was written by an author who had an agenda against him. She was convinced that the man was horribly abusive and suffering from sexual issues a la Freud. Ho-hum. I know that the man was not a saint, but this treatment was so heavy-handed and vituperative that it will be returned promptly for something that is better and not so openly prejudiced.

Biographies sometimes trouble me because of books like this one.

― mj, Saturday, 21 April 2007 05:22 (seventeen years ago) link

the nanny diaries. roffle. i am so serious.

― nathalie, Saturday, 21 April 2007 08:05 (seventeen years ago) link

I just went to my tiny, dismally-stocked local library branch and was surprised to find a few things that weren't Janet Evanovich or Clive Cussler. So over the next week or so I'll be reading The Outsider, The Bluest Eye and Waiting for Godot.

― franny glass, Saturday, 21 April 2007 16:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Finished "England's Dreaming" (has anyone got a look at Savage's new bk on the evolution of the teen before the term was invented?).

Finsihing "The Killer Inside Me" by Jim Thompson.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 22 April 2007 08:49 (seventeen years ago) link

(has anyone got a look at Savage's new bk on the evolution of the teen before the term was invented?).

yeah yeah yeah I just read Teenage and REALLY liked it. at the risk of egomania (haha)I'll link my review when it runs in a week or two.

― m coleman, Sunday, 22 April 2007 13:00 (seventeen years ago) link

Kim Stanley Robinson: "Sixty Days & Counting"

― James Morrison, Sunday, 22 April 2007 23:38 (seventeen years ago) link

m coleman - cool, I'd like to read yours - only read one so far, and it ws v negative on it.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Just read P.D. James' An Unsuitable Job for A Woman and The Skull Beneath Her Skin - enjoyable escapism and now I'm looking forward to reading her Adam Dalgliesh series.

Since I've been on an not written in English mystery/thriller kick, I also read Arnaldur Indridason's Jar City which was oddly compelling and disturbing (what is it about these Nordic folk that they can crank out such delightfully twisted stories?).

And now, for a complete change of pace, I've just started (four pages in) John Harding's One Big Damn Puzzler - this is blurb from the back of the book:

"On an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific, Managua—the only native who can read or write—is busily translating Hamlet into pidgin English when a plane interrupts his noble work. Strapping on his false leg, he makes his way to the landing strip to greet the unexpected arrival: William Hardt, a young American lawyer driven by his misguided ambition to win reparations for the island's inhabitants.

Hardt is not the first white outsider to pay a visit; the British came earlier, bringing their language, the small pigs that run wild in the jungle, and Shakespeare . . . and the Americans followed with guns, land mines, and Coca-Cola. But in this place of riotously logical ritual, Hardt's determined quest to do good could make him the most devastating visitor of all.

Profoundly moving and achingly funny, One Big Damn Puzzler brilliantly explores the collision of the twenty-first century with unsullied pagan reality—and establishes John Harding as one of the most imaginative contemporary chroniclers of the human condition."

Sounds a bit overblown and yet I'm feeling optomistic that it'll bring some good escapism (which is what I really need right now).

― MsLaura, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Hrm, what's a good first P.D. James novel? I've read very little crime fiction, but suspect I could enjoy some of it.
I tried to read her Children of Men a few years ago when I was on a big ol' dystopia-kick - but barely got ten pages in.

Currently reading the new Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest. I'm rather loving this. "Adie" Hitler, devils, the theory of greatness through incest, stories of the tough lives of bees... what's not to love? First time I read Mailer, too. I didn't realize Mailer was funny! I've always had the impression that he was some dull old troll.

After this, I intend to read Franzen's The Discomfort Zone. I avoid memoirs and the like, but a (very negative) review someone posted here really got my interested in this one.

― Øystein, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Carolyn See" 'There Will Never Be Another You' - dystopia-ish book set in 2007 (and, at the end, beyond), published in 2006 - she didn't give herself much time for her dire predictions to kick in

Just started - Joseph Conrad: 'A Personal Record'

― James Morrison, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:49 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm in the middle of Moby Dick. That chapter with the catalogue of whales slowed things down a bit, but it's all good.

Recently reread The Good Soldier and Cruddy, both classic. Still need to finish Tropic of Cancer.

― clotpoll, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 04:32 (seventeen years ago) link

I like P D James -- I've read most of her detective fiction, also Children of Men and her autobiography. She's very consistent, you can start just about anywhere. Her Toryism will make her hard to take for some people though. She's the sort of person who genuinely thinks that Tories are nicer people and have higher moral standards than socialists. Related to that her work is drenched in nostalgia for a past of better manners and decent values that never existed outside the imagination of people like P. D. James.

I just finished Olga Grushin's "The Dream Life of Sukhanov". I was hugely impressed -- the best first novel I've read in ages. It's a kind of "Master and Margarita" lite, but more sophisticated and original than that suggests. She handles the intrusion of surrealistic elements beautifully, more Grass or Bulgakov than "magical realism" (a style I don't much care for).

It's not perfect -- the main thematic concern is the nature of art, the function of the artist etc and her point of view is a kind of old-fashioned High Romantic exaggeration of the importance of Art that seems to me conventional, overblown, self-regarding and slightly dotty. She has real talent as a descriptive writer, astonishing for someone whose first language is not English, but can occasionally be self-indulgent and too eager to explain everything, especially in the last quarter of the book. All the same I can't recommend this book enough it sounds at all like the sort of thing you'd enjoy.

― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:07 (seventeen years ago) link

LB is informing my reading these days, in conjunction with the hold process at the library
I've finally returned to the library after many years, and being able to reserve online and check on the status and renew online thereby not being restricted to your own branch is really working for me.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 20:55 (seventeen years ago) link

As a result I haven't bought one single book in about a month although, since the library doesn't seem to have any of those interesting-looking Patrick Hamilton books, I may have to change that soon.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 21:13 (seventeen years ago) link

I had the same thing, James, and after effectively exhausting what the library did have of Hamilton's, I ended up buying Hangover Square and loving it. But it's pretty sad that your library doesn't have ANY Hamilton.

― franny glass, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 21:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Hey, don't knock my library, apparently it's got the highest circulation of any system in the country, and that's even without the help of its other, still-prodigal ILB son, Casuistry.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Hm, looks like they've got some copies of Angel Street, some DVDs of a miniseries of Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse, and a copy of Hangover Square in some branch somewhere that I'd have to actually goto since it's not requestable in the system. Also, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope comes up for some reason.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:11 (seventeen years ago) link

That reason being because he wrote the play!

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:12 (seventeen years ago) link

And Angel Street being the play on upon which Gaslight,which also had a third title at some point, The Murder in Thornton Square), is based.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Are you in the US or the UK, franny?

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Hangover Square seems to be included in something called Three Unusual Crime Novels, marked as reference only located in something that doesn't even seem to be a real branch, so I guess if I want to keep up my non-buying streak I have to read the play Angel Street before buying the new NYRB Slaves Of Solitude with introduction by David Lodge.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:34 (seventeen years ago) link

Neither! I'm in Canada.

My library (Toronto Public) also has most of Hamilton's stuff marked reference-only and un-requestable, which is such a pain. Slaves of Solitude is one they did have available, which was lucky as it's freaking great. Definitely worth buying.

― franny glass, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Haha, that was going to be my next guess.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link

That or Australia.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Does it count as "circulating" if you never return the books to them?

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Good question. I'll have to dig a little deeper.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Perhaps lots of people exercise their fifty books maximum out at a time option, which inflates the numbers.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I've nearly finished Life With Father. It is a quick, bouncy read, where every chapter is an amusing anecdote and none are more than a dozen pages, and most are around six. Many ILBers would finish it in one sitting. The writing is quite solid (and refreshingly untouched by Hemingway's influence, since it was written around 1920), while the psychology is both sound and insightful without being obtrusive. It stands up well, I think.

― Aimless, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity - David Brakke

The Swimming-Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst

Still with the Steve Stern short stories collection.

― Arethusa, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 21:51 (seventeen years ago) link

'Six Degrees' by Mark Lynas - great but very depressing

What do you think of The Swimming-Pool Library, Arethusa? I wanted to like it more than I did, having greatly enjoyed The Line of Beauty, but Hollinghurst seemed so much in luuuuurve with his own protagonist that it really got on my nerves.

― James Morrison, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 23:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Hahahaha. I know exactly what you're referring to, but I'm still charmed by the obvious fact that Hollinghurst had a lot of fun writing this. My attitude to Beckwith is a little more ambivalent but I'm not annoyed yet. It's fair to say that my interest always spikes when he's interacting with other characters though (especially James) rather than when I'm left with him and his inner thoughts.

It's my first Hollinghurst. He never caught my interest until his fantastic TLS Commentary article on Ronald Firbank was published not too long ago.

― Arethusa, Thursday, 26 April 2007 18:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Am now reading John Updike's 'S', which is fun, but slightly hamstrung by the fact that, for the story to work, the first-person narrator needs to be a nitwit.

― James Morrison, Friday, 27 April 2007 00:14 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh S is great fun. She's not so much of a nitwit, later on. The bit about reminding her soon-to-be ex about airing out the sheets to get rid of the "body smells" and dust had me laughing in embarrassed recognition.

― Jaq, Friday, 27 April 2007 01:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Actually, I think you might be right - I posted the above when only 30 pages in - now I'm getting on for half-way and she's definitely growing on me.

― James Morrison, Friday, 27 April 2007 05:02 (seventeen years ago) link

Instead of reading more Moby Dick, I read Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Quite fantastic, though it does make me hate humanity a bit.

― clotpoll, Saturday, 28 April 2007 11:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Jasper Fforde's The Well of Lost Plots. It's (I think) the third in the series, and I've not read the first two, so I'm taking a while to get oriented, but it's made me laugh out loud several times already and I'm only at chapter 3.

― franny glass, Saturday, 28 April 2007 19:55 (seventeen years ago) link

ballard's crash

― stevienixed, Sunday, 29 April 2007 07:00 (seventeen years ago) link

With Chatwin - Susannah Clapp

how was this M. Coleman? i think i threw Shakspeare's Chatwin bio across the room in frustration before he got to the good stuff - mainly because he was taking so long to get there but also because his constant reiteration of what a remarkable gifted child chatwin was through anecdotes i could barely believe was wearing me down and making the child Bruce seem like an annoying little prick.

― jed_, Sunday, 29 April 2007 11:56 (seventeen years ago) link

quite compelling I thought, an unusual mix of publishing memoir (Susannah Clapp was Chatwin's editor) and regular biography. she manages to be affectionate and still frank -- adult Bruce could be precious and annoying too and his capacity for self-mythologizing seems to be boundless. her accounts of editing Chatwin is fascinating if you're into his writing or a writer yourself, all his books were drastically cut from lengthy manuscripts which I never would have guessed. she's fairly critical, doesn't seem to think the novels were completely successful and strives to clarify some of his blurring of fact and fiction. of course that's a theme in his personal life too.

― m coleman, Sunday, 29 April 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link

m coleman - cool, I'd like to read yours - only read one so far, and it ws v negative on it.

xyzzzz here's my take on Jon Savage's Teenage. Cut by about 25% but that's the reality of newspapers...at least it wasn't re-written.

http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-coleman29apr29,0,4384212.story?coll=cl-books-features

― m coleman, Sunday, 29 April 2007 17:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I have to say Hollinghurst has half convinced me that I want to be a rich and fabulous gay man.

― Arethusa, Sunday, 29 April 2007 20:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Two absolute blinders over the weekend...
Booth Tarkington: Penrod - genuinely hilarious, and surely an inspiration for the Richmal Crompton 'William' books I reread obsessively as a child
Gert Ledig: The Stalin Front - like a WW2 version of 'All Quiet on the Western Front', only nastier

― James Morrison, Monday, 30 April 2007 00:32 (seventeen years ago) link

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