― 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
I've started reading A People's Tragedy, Orlando Figes. I mentioned it already on the 'books recently purchased' thread. I finished Part 1 (or was it Part I?) last night. Pretty good. Not as riveting as the jacket blurbs would have it, but pretty good.
― Aimless, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:44 (seventeen years ago) link
I'm about to finish The Charmer, another darkly funny suspenseful story by Patrick Hamilton. It's the last of the ones the Seattle library system has. Next up, probably Carved in sand : when attention fails and memory fades in midlife, but maybe Messenger of truth : a Maisie Dobbs novel, since both are the next ones due back.
― Jaq, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:47 (seventeen years ago) link
Next up, probably Carved in sand : when attention fails and memory fades in midlife...are the next ones due back.
If you didn't return it do you think they'd cut you some slack?
― Jordan, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:55 (seventeen years ago) link
Doubtful. Mr. Jaq is now very very tired of my joke, the one where he makes some comment about needing to read that book and me saying "oh, but - you read it last night dear!".
― Jaq, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:09 (seventeen years ago) link
Right now for me it works like this:I read 60 pages of a library book the day I get it and then I put it down to try to finish whichever other ones I'm going to have to return soon.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:15 (seventeen years ago) link
Although sometimes I can make a sprint to the finish line with the new book, like with the new Susanna Moore novel, which I've got 20 pages left to go on.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link
The library gods laughed at me a week ago when I attempted to renew Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I'd just gotten to the party and someone had died. I had to return the book before finding out who. It's back on my request list, but I am number 167 :(
― Jaq, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 18:34 (seventeen years ago) link
(I'm hoping it was the narrator's ne-plus-ultra father.)
― Jaq, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 00:46 (seventeen years ago) link
broke my library dependence and ordered an oop book from amazon -- black & white by shiva naipaul, about guyana/jim jones/jonestown. he's vs naipaul's brother, wrote a few novels & travel books before dying young in the 80s. highly recommended by my pal martin amis.
in related news I finished The Life of Kingsley Amis which was good as advertised though I was a bit surprised by how much author zacary leader drew from kingsley's letters and martin's memoir experience.
currently breezing through mike connelly's echo park. another year, another serial killer. reading crime novels is like TV for me.
― m coleman, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 11:17 (seventeen years ago) link
kingsley's discipline as a writer was ever stronger than his dipsomania.
inspiring -- the everyday writing sessions, not the liquid lunches.
― m coleman, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 11:21 (seventeen years ago) link
Considering Leader edited the letters, maybe not so surprising? I disliked the letters, and like you I suspect regretted the bios apparent overdependence on them, but in the end what better source?
Martin's blessing was always going to matter after the Eric Jacobs fiasco, which may explain the willingess to follow the Experience line. MA convinced me in Experience (much better than his fiction) so I didn't mind.
― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 13:08 (seventeen years ago) link
yeah experience feels pretty reliable. i liked kingsley's letters more than you, certainly a book to read in selectively rather than straight through. larkin's letters are worth a look, leader draws on them a bit.
― m coleman, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 14:48 (seventeen years ago) link
Bruce Catton's "The Civil War"
― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 17:03 (seventeen years ago) link
"weatherman" edited by harold jacobs - first-person accounts of the weatherman underground movement
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 18:36 (seventeen years ago) link
How's that Weathermen book? I was obsessed with them a few years back. I'm currently reading: Robinson's Housekeeping for the second time--it is just as moodily riveting as the first time through; McCarthy's Outer Dark which so far is much more Faulknerian than anything else I've read by him; and Through the Looking-Glass for the millionth time because why not.
― wmlynch, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 18:52 (seventeen years ago) link
I really like Shiva Naipaul, but I haven't read "Black & White" yet, though I do have a tatty old 2nd-hand copy in a box somewhere.
Having read the final Robertson Davies Salterton book (again, great fun), I'm now reading HG Wells' "Ann Veronica", which is ALSO great fun.
― James Morrison, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 23:48 (seventeen years ago) link