'I FALL upon the spines of books! I read!' -- Autumn 2014: What Are You Reading?

i just read that! it's strangely haunting.

now reading Oakley Hall's Warlock. was inspired by it to watch Tombstone for the first time in 15 years and that movie hasn't held up well at all.

Warlock seems to be considered his best---haven't read it, but The Bad Lands feat. character development via action x sufficiently shaded/shady historical settings.

FAO Fizzles I am still reading THE GIFT OF STONES
it is getting more compelling!
as I mentioned, it is only a short book so I will actually finish it some time.

I am still plugging along slowly with Screech's Rabelais. I am thankful it is the sort of book that does not suffer much from being read in small increments.

Dracula. Another one I'm only now reading for the first time.

Kafka, The Castle

I am still plugging along slowly with Screech's Rabelais. I am thankful it is the sort of book that does not suffer much from being read in small increments

otm, I've got it ticking along on Kindle and read a few pages between other things – in fact I'm in this dipping mess on Kindle where I've got Screech's Rabelais and Montaigne (both were surprisingly cheap for Kindle on uk amazon), but I'm also looking at the same chunks in Urquhart's Rabelais and Florio's Montaigne.

(I think Screech's Rabelais is a lot better than his Montaigne, which was the first version I read, years ago – his love of arcane and archaic vocabulary & learning suits it better imo. I find him a bit wooden when he isn't dictionary-digging)

ion a train, but I think screech's Rabelais is excellent with Urquhart good in a diff way obv. Seem to recall either the introduction, notes or some sort of other sch apparatus by screech is also v good and a necessary counterweight to a critical over reliance on bakhtin in this area.

cockend next to me on the train is trading Legacy - 15 Lessons in Leadership. What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life.

wd love to read sthn good on the models that business devours. sportsthink is surely becoming yesterday's mode - feel that model was in itself inherited by sport from the army. boot camps and paintball. all that fuckin shit.

reading not trading tho

what's replacing jonny_wilkinson_kick_world_cup.jpg in the nu-management ppt deck? Breaking Bad?

maybe time for a 'faster you fuckers' revive.

There must be some top notch fascism in that.

iirc when I read Screech's Rabelais I dug the notes and scholarship. I think if he had annotated the Urquhart that would be best.

Tales of the German Imagination - from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann

Initial thoughts: no Thomas Mann seems like the right decision, although I would've wanted to see Lenz in here. So far I am not so much into Brothers Grimm, Von Chamisso's Peter Sclemiel is a much better idea than execution (the appearing and disappearing devil gets tiresome then it breaks off into a kind of finish). Von Kleist's St Cecilia is straight up awesome, need to read more of him. Onto ETA Hoffmann's Sandman next. xp

lol breaking bad am half expecting to see this now.

half-baked theory: there's a sector divide here.

corporate management and finance: sports and army theory. agro-bro bollocks.

corporate tech: agile, scrum etc (feeding into tech and dev heavy areas). all-areas incompetence. feel this is main mode for non-director types. (guy next to me shouting out some recruitment firm saying u got me a deliverer when I needed a business winner trouble is he costs 15K more and tbh I have a prob with that).

start-up tech: still some open-plan, out of box, free your mind hippy philosophy?

need to hit up the fuf thread again yes. wut are u readin no place for this.

I reread Bechdel's FUN HOME.
I didn't think I liked it much and was trying to articulate why, to myself.
But later I felt I liked it a bit more after all.

Do NOT read her follow-up about her mum. One of the most half-baked nitwitty books I've read in a long time.

I LOVED Fun Home. Should I still avoid the follow-up?

Avoid! Avoid! I loved Fun Home too, but the follow-up is a ludicrous thing.

that is interesting to hear.
can you say more about why it is bad?

Fizzles, I have just finished THE GIFT OF STONES. It's only a short novel - you'd knock it off in a day. I think it is quite good. It is about the TWILIGHT OF THE STONE AGE.

corporate management and finance: sports and army theory. agro-bro bollocks.

― Fizzles, Thursday, 27 November 2014 17:41 (2 days ago)

http://www.militaryspeakers.co.uk/speakers/simon-mann.aspx

just starting the new marlon james and chris bohjalian novels (a brief history of seven killings and close your eyes, hold hands, respectively). still occasionally returning to americanah.

i want to try some different types of novels. any good sites that review indie/small-press books?

Michael Orthofer's site Complete Review covers a great deal of books in translation (and sometimes untranslated European fiction) that are often otherwise neglected , and its sister site, Literary Saloon, is useful for collecting international literary news:
http://www.complete-review.com/new/new.html
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/index.htm

both of these sites seem great; i'm exploring them now. thanks.

There's also Rain Taxi, Bookslut, Three Percent, HTMLGIANT before it fell apart....

i saw a bookslut reviewer's twitter feed. looked interesting, but can't locate it -- or a bookslut twitter feed -- to follow.

don't need twitter, but it makes things easier to find these days.

I don't think Bookslut has a Twitter feed, but the editor, Jessa Crispin, has one here: https://twitter.com/thebookslut

finished infinite jest, my advice would be, dont bother.

yes! thank you. crispin's the feed i saw, then lost.

Rad!

generally found some interesting twitter feeds from authors i love and had kind of set-aside/forgotten about, like stephen elliott (@S___Elliott), author of happy baby. interesting feed. i went to see who he follows, and it's all basically dominatrix types, which shouldn't be surprising considering what he writes about. did find out he did a kickstarter campaign to make a (totally low-budget) movie based on happy baby! could be interesting.

Depending how slow work is tonight, I may be able to finish The Castle (about 90 pages left to get thru)

At the same time, I've been returning to Maurice Blanchot's The Space of Literature, which has some good insights into Kafka's, er... worldview? (outlook? significance?? 'whole deal'???)

Blanchot is also making me want to read K's diaries, which I didn't really anticipate, but if they're good...

What are your favorite criticisms/discussions of Kafka?

Read The Diaries (a real showcase of his intellect, a must), The Letters to Felice and Milena this year (as well as re-reading of his fiction although not The Castle) and its been really great.

I came across this review of the three volume biography.

As discussion there is the often cited Benjamin essay but I also like Canetti's Kafka's Other Trial a lot.

This looks quite interesting. I was also recommended this book by Deleuze and Guttari on here by woof but I haven't got around to any of it.

i want to try some different types of novels. any good sites that review indie/small-press books?

― Daniel, Esq 2, Saturday, November 29, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.bookforum.com/

^ If you look at the Daily Review on the right hand side it pulls reviews from other places.

I scan the In Tanslation site now and then.

thanks, xyz. i like both those sites (and intranslation's parent site, brooklynrail.org; led me to discover there's a sister-site called miamirail.org).

I am still reading A GIRL IS A HALF FORMED THING.

The prose is original in being derivative of Joyce to an unusual degree (and also different from Joyce).
I think that the author has talent.
But I don't find that I like this book much. It is vulgar, repetitive, self-indulgent and perhaps tedious.

^^^posts very much in character. A+

(xp to xyz) I actually have the D&G book, though I've never made much headway with it, perhaps due to lack of familiarity with K's oeuvre (had only read short stories up until last month, when I decided to do all the novels at one go)

& I'll make sure to pick up the diaries ifbit's still at the used book store tomorrow

I'm reading Simenon's The Yellow Dog, which may turn out to be my favourite Maigret story so far. Very tense and atmospheric, and Maigret is extra grumpy and barely speaking. I read Night at the Crossroads last week and it was great, but not as taut or bad-tempered. I didn't realise Penguin was reissuing all of the Maigret novels. May have to collect em all.

pinefox otm for once

thomp otm for once

Sorry, that was perhaps unfair. It just that you take the contrarianism to the point where it is hard to know exactly what you are on about.

I've been reading Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's debut novel. So far I'm impressed that she doesn't bother providing any likable, or even sane, characters.

True. Good movie too.

Awesome description

I didn't realise Penguin was reissuing all of the Maigret novels. May have to collect em all.

I saw that they're putting out a non-Maigret Simenon in January, too, not sure if they have any more planned beyond that but between them and NYRB it's exciting to have all this stuff in print.

Just read Alberto Moravia's terrific Two Women. This book should be better known I think.

just read John Fowles' 'notes on an unfinished novel' (1969). Striking in a way how he, in Existentialist vein, seems far from us - alien and different in a way eg Tom McCarthy would like to be? (A tentative thought.)

On my hazy recollection of The Magus, The Collector, and The French Lieutenant's Woman he does seem of his time (though not derivative) in a way that I don't think is true of, say, Ann Quin--but I think that's a different kind of distance than you suggest.

james please remind me of an interesting thing you've ever said about anything

Let me get back to you on that