Spring 2007: What?! Are You Reading?

I have the Savage Detectives at home but I can't bear to open it up. Over the weekend I read Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed--good summer reading. In that vein, I checked out David Bowie: Living on the Brink, but I think I've already read it.

Having polished off two more parts of the Russian Revolution, I paused to refresh myself with Glacial Lake Missoula: And Its Humongous Floods by David Alt.

It describes the physical evidence for the existence of a mammoth lake in Montana, half the size of Lake Michigan, that filled behind a series of glacial ice dams, then repeatedly drained itself when the dams broke, releasing all its 500 cubic miles of water in a matter of days. Yes, I said days. That's about as dramatic as geology ever gets, except maybe for supervolcanoes.

Ooo! I have that book! Dramatic Palouse Falls in eastern Washington is probably the result of it draining.

I started reading that Iggy bio this weekend and had trouble putting it down, although I haven't finished it yet, when I went to bed on Sunday night I had just gotten to the part where they bulldozed the Fun House.

I think I read McPhee talking about that flood. Or something.

I need to decide which books to take on my trip...

For a second I read that as "talking about that blood" referring to Iggy's blood.

I've been reading Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstader, and am amazed I put it off for so long.

I'm reading Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass by Bruno Schulz, a book I've adored immensely over the past few months (including random recommendations to friends, associates, and well-wishers), despite having not yet read past page 50 - I imagine I've committed some sin there, but I can't be bothered to fully analyze my actions.

ALSO, I'M REREADING: The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov - actually I've been opening this up at random over the past few months and basking in whatever passage I come upon. I'm probably up to my fourth readthrough at the moment.

I've been wondering for the last five years or so, why the hell isn't Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass in print?

I'm thoroughly addled by that - I had no idea it was out of print (used copy, natch, from the "Writers From The Other Europe" box set released a few decades back).

Stephen Crane: "Active Service" - excellent

if you like Bruno Schultz, read the other genius,most original write from poland (who was also bruno's friend, and also was influenced by Kafka and avant-garde) witold gombrowicz:pornograpfia,cosmos,trans-atlantic,ferdydurke, all masterpieces.the sort of books Nabokov and the south american metaphysics writers (sabato,cortazar..) would have liked (and maybe they did,if they managed to read them).
he has this upgraded vision of the Faust myth, that is originay it's own, and it's fascinating.

about Bolano, i was kinda dissapointed by "night in chile", not as superb as some people said it would be,but "savage detective" and "2666" suppose to be much much better.

Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment, a graphic novel by Bryan Talbot just arrived for me. It looks amazing. I love to be the first borrower of a library book, when it is all new and pristine and untouched.

http://www.grahamrawle.com/books_womans/cover.jpg
The rather amazing 'Woman's World' by Graham Rawle, which I'd heard about a while ago, but happened upon in a bookshop yesterday. For those who don't know about it, it's a (proper, somewhat Patricia Highsmith-like) novel constructed entirely from words and phrases cut out of 1960s women's magazines.

Like so: http://www.grahamrawle.com/books_womans/spread-large.jpg

I am all too tempted to say that, when a dog walks on its hind legs, we do not applaud that it does it well, but that it does it at all.

Yes, but have you read it? It's actually a very good book even if you read it without the context, and, though I can't say how without giving the plot away, the manner of its production has a real point.

Is that what Dr. Melfi was reading on the penultimate episode of the Sopranos?

the narrator's actually a guy

n.b. i haven't read it

is one of the people on this thread julio desouza? does he still come here?

Btw I watched Notes on a Scandal the other night and thought it was Patricia Highsmithy as fuck.

ha i said the same thing after seeing NoaS

I also watched NoaS the other night and thought it was poor, though many of the problems are there in the novel.

I just didn't believe that Sheba would have had an affair with Connolly, also true of the book, but made worse by Blanchett's never-out-of-your-face glamour and picking such a young looking actor to play Connolly. I also didn't believe that Sheba would have gone to live with Barbara near the end, either in the book or the film.

Dench's performance was good, but in the book Barbara's character is slowly revealed: it takes a bit of time to realise how unreliable a narrator she is, and to work out that she is a monster. Dench is a monster from the start. I'm not sure how much this is Dench's fault and how much the director's.

The lesbianism is also more in-your-face in the film than in the book --in the book Barbara is motivated by loneliness, social aspiration, lust for power, and dimly recognized sexual infatuation in more or less equal measures. They are all present in the film, but the lesbianism dominates.

I finished Zadie Smith's White Teeth, which had its moments - but overall I found it a bit overrated. Maybe three stars. The bits of small-scale observational comedy were better than the quasi-allegorical, portentous sociopolitical plotting that tends to take over in the last third, despite her attempts to keep the tone light and knowing by wink-winking the more obvious improbabilities. She seems to share her weakness in this regard with some other trendy young po-mo writers, like David Foster Wallace, who seem to have absorbed a baleful influence from writers like Pynchon.

Hello thomp...I come here every now and again, yes.

Just finished this little comp of essays on the politics of music (from the late 80s) that I picked up off the library shelf. A cpl of ok things but the essay on Ligeti ws...I dunno, he didn't even address Ligeti's break from serialism. The essay on minimalism had some of the (usual) unquestioned (not good, that) generalizations of the differences between European and US composition. Couple of ok ones, but I had to give it back so I couldn't re-read.

The 'Art into Pop' by Simon Firth and...somebody else. Nice enough history of the role of the art school in rock and pop, with some discussion of how certain concepts made their way.

Agree about Smith. She's a phenomenal talent, but she under-rates what she's good at (creating psychologically plausible, finely nuanced character) and over-rates the whole baggy po-mo nonsense - I think she feels she HAS to do that kind of thing to be taken seriously, and ends up imitating "big boys" like Rushdie who are not remotely as gifted as she is.

Yes, I agree - it's a strange pass that we've come to in literary history that in order to be taken seriously you have to be strenuously silly, but there we are.

julio, could i get your email address? i'm t✧✧.w✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.✧0m. if it's not an imposition i'd like to pick your brains about something related to the london free improv scene. cheers.

-

i don't seem to have read much lately. i read a louis sachar novel.

huh. that's obscured my email address a whole bunch more than i was expecting. why'd it do that?

Yeah, I was wondering how anyone was going to decode that.

I've recently read Herman Hesse's 'The Prodigy', which was OK in a sub-Goethe way, and Gertrude Atherton's 'THe Bell in the Fog'. a collection of her Edwardian/Victorian suspense stories. THe title one is interesting - the central character is patently based on Henry James and his writing 'The Turn of the Screw', and the Henry James analogue develops a frankly creepy obsession with a beuatiful 6yo girl. Good, but odd.

i'm reading the second book of the 'prince of nothing' trilogy by r scott bakker. it's very good, but i don't think it looks as good on a book cv as the other reads here. but then i don't read for self improvement.

Experiencing pure enjoyment can be very self-improving.

Tom just seen it - as I think I know your surname I've emailed you from an account of mine. Let me know if you get it.

Been having probs w/home internet access so will check back/reply to anything on saturday.

The library has 2 of the Updike Rabbit books for me! In the week of not having anything from my hold list, I reread Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday.

Soon we shall need a new 'What Are Your Reading' thread for Summer 2007. I am not dissatisfied with this fact.

I plan to the next week camping and hiking, not forgetting to bring many books with me - ratty paperback books that I can read with grubby hands. The Russian Revolution magnum opus I am (still) reading shall not go with me. It is unsuitable for such pastimes, being both nice and pig-enormous. When I return, I shall reveal all.

speaking of the Rabbit books, I finally bought the Everyman's version w/ a gift card from xmas and am now mid-Redux and its been a great read so far...really enjoying, though I knew I would to be fair.

skimming through, someone mentioned Adam Rapp's Year of Endless Sorrows a while back. Read it maybe 3+ months ago, did like it quite a bit, can basically only remember hilarious workplace party scene w/ main character escorting bosses' daughter.

Just finished The Road this morning. It was my first c. mccarthy and I was somewhat disappointed. It was somewhat enjoyable, and a rather quick read, but it all just seemed rather pointless. And I guess I just didn't take to his prose, it seemed a bit boring to me.

Before that was Black Swan Green, which I enjoyed immensely. I was sad when it was over. Most sympathetic narrator evah.

Has anyone here read and enjoyed The Electric Michelangelo? I had to stop after 60 or so pages because it was all melodramatic, stylistically out-of-control pap. Not a moment could Hall let pass by without adding ornaments to make it profound. Why Hall? Why.