Spring 2007: What?! Are You Reading?

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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

And a third - Andre Gide: The Vatican Cellars

― James Morrison, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 00:35 (seventeen years ago) link

gah! The library-hold-powers-that-be have decided it is time for me to read a pile of mysteries: a Tony Hillerman, a Carl Hiaasen, a Martha Grimes, a Michael Dibdin, along with Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Perdido Street Station. Just finished Ian Buruma's Inventing Japan, 1853-1964, which was enlightening.

― Jaq, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 17:12 (seventeen years ago) link

The Wedding Jester confirmed my belief that Steve Stern is one of the best living American writers around. He's a favourite of mine, anyway. :p

I've started The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford and tomorrow I will commence the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote.

― Arethusa, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:32 (seventeen years ago) link

Ooo, 'The Good Soldier' is - well - really good. If it's your sort of thing, follow it up with Malcolm Knox's 'Summerland'. It's a book whose plot is overtly modelled on 'The Good Soldier', and which includes a writer who creates her "masterpiece" by ripping off 'The Good Soldier'. No, wait! Come back! It's actually not at all irritatingly post-modern - it's really good, and maintains all the groovy storytelling verve of Madox Ford's original book.

Myself, I just finished 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union' by Michael Chabon, which I enjoyed so much I can forgive its flaws, and am now on Jed Mercurio's 'Ascent', which is ace so far, and making me wish I was not at work so that I could read it (not that I'm actually working, gievn that I'm looking at ILB).

― James Morrison, Friday, 4 May 2007 00:30 (seventeen years ago) link

I finished The Well of Lost Plots (brilliant) and am now waiting to pick up Beckett's Three Novels from the library holds desk. I read Godot last week and am a bit pissed off I waited this long to read Beckett.

― franny glass, Friday, 4 May 2007 12:10 (seventeen years ago) link

I've been reading American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips, in which he says that many things are wrong with the way the USA is currently governed, most especially:

1) the growing power of Christian fundamentalists and theocrats,
2) the lack of government response to obvious problems, such as peak oil and global warming,
3) the enormous and fast-growing national debt, both federal and personal,
4) a weakening dollar, which might collapse in value, and
5) lastly, an overreaching and expensive foreign and military policy.

All of which goes to show that Mr. Phillips reads the newspaper attentively.

In his favor, he does a very nice job of tying all these trends into a broad historical context, both in terms of US history, showing where these trends came from, and in terms of global history, comparing the current US hegemony to several earlier empires and what undermined them in the past. It seems the USA is travelling a well-trodden path to imperial decline and our chosen way to go to hell is not very exceptional.

IMO, if the USA can decline without dragging the whole world down with it, then it might be no bad thing. This is a big 'if', sadly.

― Aimless, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link

I started Beckett's Three Novels last night. 300+ pages of unbroken prose without even so much as a new paragraph sounds like exactly what I need right now.

― franny glass, Sunday, 6 May 2007 12:58 (seventeen years ago) link

" 300+ pages of unbroken prose without even so much as a new paragraph sounds like exactly what I need right now"

i think those books are more importand and ground-breaking than really good.(though of course they are good),Beckett i think,is one of those writers whom the writers who took influence from him are better than the original.
yet again, at the 40's those books probably looked better

― Zeno, Sunday, 6 May 2007 20:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Just finished "Wounded" by the criminally underrated Percival Everett. One of his best, too.

― James Morrison, Monday, 7 May 2007 00:16 (seventeen years ago) link

I finished reading Walter Lippman's Preface to Morals, which despite the kind of off-putting title is actually a very interesting piece of cultural and psychological observation that is surprisingly still fresh and relevant considering it was written in 1929. Now I'm back finishing up White Teeth.

― o. nate, Monday, 7 May 2007 20:14 (seventeen years ago) link

Molloy is pretty nice. After that they sorta jump the shark.

― Casuistry, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 03:44 (seventeen years ago) link

i should get back to the big box o' beckett, probably. oh, for my dissertation to be finished.

― thomp, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 12:08 (seventeen years ago) link

just finished Why God Is Not Great by Christoper Hitchens. somebody gave me a copy, problably wouldn't have looked at it otherwise but it was less hectoring/polemical than I feared, actually quite informative though it didn't convert me to atheism (from agnosticism)

just started Kingsley Amis: A Life by Zachary Leader and predictably got absorbed right from the get-go.

― m coleman, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 10:27 (seventeen years ago) link

Just finished Lolita. Just started The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by Amos Tutuola, and I'm already in love.

― clotpoll, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 11:52 (seventeen years ago) link

The Amis bio is a great read.

Just abandoned "The Book of Lost Things" by John Connolly, tedious fairy tales by numbers with none of the charm of Gaiman/Clarke/Pullman or Rowling, and started "Carter Beats the Devil" which I'm enjoying very much so far. The characterisation is a bit two dimensional, stylistically it's adequate rather than inspired, but any weaknesses more than compensated for by great storytelling and atmosphere.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 12:53 (seventeen years ago) link

-Collected Fictions by Jose Luis Borges
-Dune by Frank Herbert
-The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Phillip Kindred Dick
-We by Eugene Zamiatin

Recently gave up on the new Pynchon, might try to crack open V.

― FnordSlayer, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 19:42 (seventeen years ago) link

- One Door Away From Heaven by Dean Koontz

I can't remember buying this but I found it gathering dust on the shelf and gave it a go. Koontz attempts X-Files with added humanity and redemption themes and almost pulls it off. I think I prefer his frenetic page turners but he has some good characters here.

- Rip It Up And Start Again by Simon Reynolds

A history of post punk and the bands that made it happen. Not a bad effort and it's fun to listen to some of the bands as you read.

- A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick

Probably my favourite PKD novel, rereading it after finally getting round to watching the movie.

― onimo, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 23:54 (seventeen years ago) link

Been reading Farthest North by Dr. Fridtjof Nansen. It's the record of his failed attempt to reach the North Pole by intentionally sailing a ship into the ice, where it became frozen in the sea ice (by design) and was allowed to drift with the slow currents of the Arctic Ocean for three years.

Nansen had a theory that the current would take the ship across the pole, or near enough to it that he could dog-sled the remaining miles. He was very nearly correct, but was unable to reach the pole all the same. He was able to claim a new record for traveling the farthest north and he created a sensation when he returned to civilization. Everyone survived, I believe - another first for an arctic expedition!

― Aimless, Thursday, 10 May 2007 17:12 (seventeen years ago) link

I quit Crash and now started on Money (by Amis). *sigh* I'm not in a reading mood. Maybe I should just wait a couple of weeks. :-( Anyone else have this problem and how do you solve it?

― nathalie, Friday, 11 May 2007 12:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Bookslut has some good tips on how to overcome Reader's Block.

I find any essay of Bertrand Russell's to be a good motivator for reading, personally. He's so enthusiastic and knowledgable, it makes you want to read EVERY BOOK EVER.

― franny glass, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:35 (seventeen years ago) link

Happily struggling w/ Empson.

Hazlitt collection of essays -- some fun stuff on that.

After that gonna go through a collection of essays/interviews by/with Fassbinder.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 12 May 2007 11:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Hazlitt's great. As for overcoming reader's block, maybe it's just 'Crash' block - I'm a big Ballard fan (except for his recent few, which just recycle his earlier books), but 'Crash' defeated me.

Just finished... 'Then We Came to the End' by Joshue Ferris, which was a very funny, very bleak look at office life.
Now reading Tatyana Tolstaya's 'White Walls', her collected short stories, which is pretty damn excellent so far.

― James Morrison, Saturday, 12 May 2007 12:54 (seventeen years ago) link

Just about to finish up Rue des Boutiques Obscures, which I've been liking a lot. It's the first Patrick Modiano I've read - the tone is great - an interesting mix of the seemingly straightforward but with a sort of mystery to it that keeps you on your toes - perhaps not so straightforward after all. I'm curious to see if there is a twist at the end. I'm thinking the life he is remembering having lived proves to be all in his imagination - but maybe not.

I was thinking of picking up that White Wall collection - are the short stories, short, medium or of the kind of longish variety?

How was We? Been think about picking that up too...

― Jeff LeVine, Saturday, 12 May 2007 20:48 (seventeen years ago) link

http://1heckofaguy.com/wp-content/lastgkiss.jpg

― milo z, Sunday, 13 May 2007 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link

I finally finished Sodom and Gomorrah and started Suite Francaise. Next will be Against the Day, which I got to assert my independence and freedom between conference sessions in Pasadena, and in memory of the description of circuits and suburbs.

― youn, Sunday, 13 May 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link

I was thinking of picking up that White Wall collection - are the short stories, short, medium or of the kind of longish variety?

Mostly in the 10-20 pages range. There's an online sample here.

Now reading Don DeLillo's 'Americana'

― James Morrison, Monday, 14 May 2007 03:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Finished John Harding's One Big Damn Puzzler (not bad, not great - for the life of me I can't recall the ending, which is not a good sign).

Just started the new Chabon and am finding myself annoyed by it - it's probably great and I'm just not in the right reading mindset. Wish I had something round here to read that doesn't require a lot of concentration.

― MsLaura, Monday, 14 May 2007 19:08 (seventeen years ago) link

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