Spring 2007: What?! Are You Reading?

"weatherman" edited by harold jacobs - first-person accounts of the weatherman underground movement

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.

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.

This library thing is turning out to be some kind of pyramid scheme.

Still on <i>Don Quixote</i>. (sigh)

Started Kate O'Brien's <i>Land of Spices</i> which I'm enjoying, so far, even if she's a bit of a judgemental omniscient narrator.

Started Sarah Hall's <i>The Electric Michelangelo</i>. The cover and the jacket blurb did not prepare me for the opulent descriptions of diseased phlegm. What fun.

Bloody hell forgot it was bbcode.

"Ann Veronica" (published 1909) must surely be the first novel in which a woman fights off a potential date-rapist using martial arts learned in a self-defence class.

Asa break from the Russian Revolution I read Do Butlers Burgle Banks? by P.G. Wodehouse. Up to his usual snuff.

I've got a copy that Orlando Figes book I bought around Xmas that one day I'll get around to reading. I think I got distracted around page ten, after reading about the mysterious powers of Rasputin.

Chris or Michael, please explain the ordering of items 2 and 3 in the table on page 451 of The Story Of French.

I haven't reached the page ten milestone yet, but the first seven pages of Adam Rapp's The Year Of Endless Sorrows are pretty amazing.

I've been reading fluff as of late - dealing with a house full of sick animals (hedgie with pneumonia, another hedgie with kidney failure AND neurological problems, rabbit that was spayed and had a surgery to open an ear canal, two other rabbits that had amputations) and not getting enough sleep or having enough unbroken periods of time to devote to something decent, means that my mind is frizzled. Anyway:

- Finished Bryson's In a Sunburned Country which was light and fluffy and entertaining so long as I ignored his idiocy (the man's obviously intelligent and he can write, so why does he come across as annoying? And why does he just mention interesting facts and then rush off to something that makes him seem like a jerk?). Think I need to read a decent book about Australia, next.

- Read Helene Turston's Detective Inspector Huss and its sequel, The Torso - the first was marvelous and intelligent and charming and twisted - the latter was crappy, under-developed, need a basic proof-reading, was full of gratuitious violence and gore, and had far too many plot holes (trust me, if I'm noticing plot holes with my fogged brain, there's far too many of them!).

- Followed by Diana Wynne Jones' Dark Lord of Derkholm and The Year of the Griffin both of which I thought were marvelously entertaining and I can't believe I'd not read them before (they'd been sitting on my shelf for several years - a thread on ILE, I think, gave me the kick in the ass to actually read them).

- Which were followed by the last two books in the Detective Joe Sandilands' Mysteries by Barbara Cleverly, The Palace Tiger and The Bee's Kiss which were suitably trashy and made for entertaining escapism.

- And then, 'cause I needed a change of pace, came Ruhlman's The Reach of a Chef which paled in comparison to his first two books in that ... series? Grouping? Anyway, felt like he was flailing around and hit on some good stuff and missed other and didn't seem to offer a whole lot that was new (though I fell in love with Melissa Kelly and if I ever open a restaurant, I want it to run like her's, on the same principals).

- And now I'm about to start The Necropolis Railway which offers the following blurb on the cover (from Simon Winchester):
Guaranteed to make the flesh creep and the skin crawl, a masterful novel about a mad, clanking fog-bound world.
It can't be too bad, right?

MsLaura, you're my hero :) If I had all that going on, I'd end every day curled up in the corner, either weeping softly or laughing maniacally.

I finished Carved in sand : when attention fails and memory fades in midlife, which I had hoped would have some actual science incorporated but it turned out to be a whiny account of a 50-something neurotic who wants a quick fix re: getting her act together. Lots of doctor shopping, lots of "ooooo, I don't want to take PILLZ! (Gimmeh that one plz! More plz?!?)", lots of blaming (diet, lack of exercise, non-attachment mother, being dropped on head, thyroid, etc etc etc), and the references are mostly to other pop science books and magazine articles instead of actual studies. The author lost all credibility with me when she referred to the Orange County airport as "that palace of marble and gilt". WTF?? I've been flying in and out of there for months and it's just another damn airport. Also, when she kept referring to herself as "high-functioning". Uh, sorry lady, I don't buy it.

I've been reading Enduring Love by Ian McEwan - surprised by what a page-turner it has been so far.

Well, The Sea was good if not mind-blowing. I enjoyed sentences and scenes individually far more than I enjoyed the story, but the sentences/scenes were good enough on their own that it never got tedious.

Now onto Martin Millar's The Good Fairies of New York which reads like a fucked-up children's story in novel form. Awesome.

I'm almost through with Delillo's Falling Man--it's much better than I thought it would be. Also raced through Mievelle's Un Lun Dun while waiting for my car to be serviced--it was okay, but not oustanding.

MsLaura, "The Necropolis Railway" was great, I thought. It seems to have ended up the start of a series, though I haven't read the others.

Ken: Ha! Good call. I think the Hindi/Urdu number might be a typo? These numbers don't resemble the ones on, say, Wiki, all that much.

I can't talk to you right now, Chris, I got to go pick up another batch of library books on reserve, even though I am not returning any of my backlog yet.

i just finished omensetter's luck and will probably do tarzan of the apes before i go back to moby-dick. also i found another heinlein juvenile second-hand today which will probably come up another fifty pages into melville. i may start a poll as to what should be my next stupidly long book after that, hah.

halfway into PKD 'a maze of death'

started george melly 'revolt into style'

finished a bunch of essays on Alain Resnais (the old 'cinema one' paperback by John ward) and a maddening collection of articles written by commie composer Hans Eisler. Really interesting picture of a time.

<i>Enduring Love</i> is indeed good. <i>Don Quixote</i>, I could see why it has the reputation it has, but a dull read for me. The Grossman translation doesn't match the hype, but new translations of classics so rarely do. It may improve on re-reading but I'm not particularly minded to try.

I've hardly been reading, going through a patch where music is obsessing me. I skimmed the last 100 pages or so of <i>Carter Beats the Devil</I> after not really giving it a chance, read it in too small chunks over a long period. Now reading Arlington Park, I feel pretty conflicted by Cusk whose massive talent is too much at the mercy of her neurotic gloom.

Anyone else read Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives?
I just finished it about 10 minutes, and it's a great read. Good enough to convince me to order By Night in Chile before I was finished reading the first book, just to have it ready to go.

There's a nice article about Bolaño and The Savage Detectives here

Just finished 10 minutes AGO, I meant. 2666 is due to be translated into English and published sometime next year, and is supposedly 1100 pages. I can't wait.

I haven't read Savage Detectives yet, but By Night in Chile is fantastic. It has one of my favorite last lines of all time.

I'm picking up the new Miranda July collection today. Just finished the new David Mamet and Christopher Hitchens books (in that order).

I have that Miranda July book on request at the library. I will most likely get it some time in 2010.

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.