― James Morrison, Monday, 7 May 2007 00:16 (seventeen years ago) link
― o. nate, Monday, 7 May 2007 20:14 (seventeen years ago) link
― Casuistry, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 03:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― thomp, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 12:08 (seventeen years ago) link
― m coleman, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 10:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― clotpoll, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 11:52 (seventeen years ago) link
― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 12:53 (seventeen years ago) link
― FnordSlayer, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 19:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― onimo, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 23:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― Aimless, Thursday, 10 May 2007 17:12 (seventeen years ago) link
― nathalie, Friday, 11 May 2007 12:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― franny glass, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:35 (seventeen years ago) link
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 12 May 2007 11:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― James Morrison, Saturday, 12 May 2007 12:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― Jeff LeVine, Saturday, 12 May 2007 20:48 (seventeen years ago) link
― milo z, Sunday, 13 May 2007 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link
― youn, Sunday, 13 May 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link
― James Morrison, Monday, 14 May 2007 03:29 (seventeen years ago) link
― MsLaura, Monday, 14 May 2007 19:08 (seventeen years ago) link
― James Morrison, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 01:03 (seventeen years ago) link
― wmlynch, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 04:43 (seventeen years ago) link
― Zeno, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:03 (seventeen years ago) link
― wmlynch, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 17:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― Zeno, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 18:52 (seventeen years ago) link
― James Morrison, Thursday, 17 May 2007 02:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 18 May 2007 13:15 (seventeen years ago) link
― Casuistry, Friday, 18 May 2007 14:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 18 May 2007 16:50 (seventeen years ago) link
'The Man Who Went Up in Smoke' by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (there should be double-dots diacritics above all those Os) - great 1960s Swedish crime stuff and 'Family and Kinship in East London' by Young & Willmott - fascinating classic book of sociology
― James Morrison, Sunday, 20 May 2007 03:57 (seventeen years ago) link
Oh, I keep meaning to read the Sjowall/Wahloo stuff - good to hear it's great.
I finished the new Chabon - think I'll need to re-read it, 'cause I just didn't have the time or concentration to really ponder what I was reading.
Now onto Bryson's In a Sunburned Country which seems to be a lot closer to my speed these days.
― MsLaura, Sunday, 20 May 2007 06:04 (seventeen years ago) link
Is that his book on Australia? It was thrillingly and originally entitled 'Down Under' here. Is it any good? He is hugely popular in Australia, but when I flicked through this one, it seemed very much, 'Gosh, what a lot of poisonous spiders/octopi/snakes they have, how funny that is! Ho ho!'
― James Morrison, Monday, 21 May 2007 00:50 (seventeen years ago) link
James, you nailed it. The poisonous or otherwise murderous fauna of the antipodean continent play a star turn in that book. They are inescapable. Bryson wrings them dry and then makes the reader chew on their dessicated corpses and swallow them down to the last morsel. Spit is optional.
He's fallen a victim to his own reputation, I fear, and now must toil to make us laugh forevermore, no matter how he feels about the matter.
― Aimless, Monday, 21 May 2007 01:04 (seventeen years ago) link
Sounds like he's trying to give Paul Theroux a run for his money.
Just finished Martin Amis's House of Meetings and lovebug was otm, it starts out strong but runs out of gas at the end. Now am enjoying Nicole Krauss's The History of Love.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 21 May 2007 06:27 (seventeen years ago) link
ethel wilson, swamp angel. a classic of BC lit that i have not yet read. 36 pages in, it is delightful.
interesting to hear the take on delillo's americana. he's probably my favourite author, but i've passed on most of his early stuff, excepting end zone and players, both of which i find very formative. after 1982's the names, incidentally my favourite, it's all really good.
― derrrick, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 03:50 (seventeen years ago) link
Re DeRrrick on DeLillo: Yes, I've enjoyed all the other books of his I've read (except The Body Artist), but Americana is one flawed book. But as I said, the first 2/3 are pretty nifty.
― James Morrison, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 04:18 (seventeen years ago) link
The Story Of French, which is so far pretty dang good!
― Casuistry, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 04:35 (seventeen years ago) link
Some Frenchie guy was running it down in his Amazon review.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 11:17 (seventeen years ago) link
But then he would, being French.
Just started George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I thought it was supposed to be a funny one, but so far it's just really fucking depressing.
― Jeff LeVine, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 16:59 (seventeen years ago) link
Funny? Not that I can recall.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 19:23 (seventeen years ago) link
Me neither.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 20:34 (seventeen years ago) link
I thought it was funny, but then again I've worked in a bookshop that was very like the one the main character worked in, with very similar customers.
― James Morrison, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 23:21 (seventeen years ago) link
Am reading the wonderfully odd 'The Pendragon Legend' by Antal Szerb.
It's a bit like a 1930s Scooby Doo written by a Hungarian genius version of PG Wodehouse.
http://www.pushkinpress.com/images/szerb_pendragon01.gif
― James Morrison, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link
Is it the Amazon reviewer who says this:
"A more specific comment: "Ave maris stella" means "Hail, star of the sea", not "Hail star of Mary" (p. 217)."
Because, uh, it was a common pun (which is to say, commonly understood to mean both) in Medieval Latin, as far as I can tell...
― Casuistry, Friday, 25 May 2007 06:24 (seventeen years ago) link
Yeah, that guy.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 25 May 2007 14:29 (seventeen years ago) link
Actually now that I've finished it, that guy is totally off -- yes, one of the major points of the book is that French isn't solely of France, but it's not the complete Quebeckathon he makes it out to be.
― Casuistry, Monday, 28 May 2007 00:55 (seventeen years ago) link
Started Banville's The Sea last night, and am enjoying.
― franny glass, Monday, 28 May 2007 13:56 (seventeen years ago) link
in between days... about to start Against the Day
― youn, Monday, 28 May 2007 17:49 (seventeen years ago) link
This past week: Milan Kundera - The Art of the Novel George Saunders - The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil & In Persuasion Nation Dag Skogheim - Sju Mann ("Seven Man") Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
Think I'll do more short novels now. I'm a slow reader, so it feels like a rare thing for me to ever finish anything. Just barely started: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. For the first time! The only Twain I've read has been short stories and essays.
Considering it took me nearly three days to read The Crying... (weekend days, at that) I can only imagine it would take me months to read one of his other novels.
― Øystein, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:08 (seventeen years ago) link
Over the weekend I bought:
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep Murakami, After Dark some dude, the Interpretation of Murder (that one about Freud's one visit to America and trying to explain why he hated it so much in the form of a murder mystery)
And borrowed that new Anthony Bourdain book.
― Jordan, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:10 (seventeen years ago) link