Spring 2007: What?! Are You Reading?

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bird by bird – anne lamott
lies, inc. – pkd
dr. bloodmoney – pkd
querelle – genet
in evil hour – garcia marquez

― remy bean, Monday, 9 April 2007 06:42 (seventeen years ago) link

Teenage - Jon Savage
With Chatwin - Susannah Clapp
The Levanter - Eric Ambler
Rum Punch - Elmore Leonard*
Blood Work - Michael Connelly

searching for a copy of Black and White - Shiva Naipaul

*snappy dialogue or no I've decided EL is way way over-rated

― m coleman, Monday, 9 April 2007 09:56 (seventeen years ago) link

In honor of Easter I re-read my copy of Alan Watts's The Wisdom of Insecurity. He wrote it in 1951. It was his first big statement of what became his perpetual subject matter, and it was a little less beholden to Zen literature than many of his subsequent books.

Since I can never seem to summon the discipline of regular meditation, reading (and rereading) this sort of book is the closest I ever come to manifesting the lessons of mysticism. Regular meditation would be much, much better, though.

― Aimless, Monday, 9 April 2007 17:02 (seventeen years ago) link

*snappy dialogue or no I've decided EL is way way over-rated
And yet you like Pelicanos, lovebug.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 9 April 2007 18:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Sorry, Pelecanos.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 9 April 2007 18:08 (seventeen years ago) link

that answers my question about whether you liked Soul Circus or not.

― m coleman, Monday, 9 April 2007 18:37 (seventeen years ago) link

or was it another one? anyway you probably got the gist. with guys like Pelecanos and Leonard either their individual twist on the hardboiled formula gets under your skin or it gets on your nerves after awhile.

― m coleman, Monday, 9 April 2007 18:42 (seventeen years ago) link

I have been reading some classic narratives of old gothic fiction lately in order to fill the reading void -- interesting to read pre-cinematic fantastical fiction to see just how differently it was conceived and thought of.

That being said, I give my hearty recommendation to James Hogg's wonderful Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. I've not finished reading In A Glass Darkly yet, but it is very worthwhile as well.

Conversely, I was not able to read more than fifty pages of Radcliffe's The Italian before stopping. What a silly little book. Most of the early English stuff is though, so it is not that surprising.

― mj, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 01:16 (seventeen years ago) link

Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: I was amazed how modern this felt - really great stuff (not because it felt modern, that was just part of it, but simply because it's a unique and wonderfully written novel).

Just finished the new Ian McEwan, which was very sad indeed, but also excellent.

― James Morrison, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 06:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Missed off my last post, " Interpretation of Murder", reasonably entertaining but not entirely successful -- preposterously convoluted denoument among other failings.

Just re-read "The Old Devils" by Kingsley Amis: I didn't get this at all the first time I read it, many years ago, but I thought it was much, much better this time. There are some fairly serious imperfections -- the large number of characters is not successfully managed, and even on re-reading I got confused about who was who, and who was married to whom, and had to keep checking back. The dialogue was often in a style that seemed too close to the authorial voice, although this may be explained by a semi-autobiographical element (it's obviously based on a social clique that included Amis, and it may be that everyone talked similarly, and that this is reflected his own style). Stylistically it was interesting: it moves away from Amis's early, very clear style into something much more convoluted, which works most of the time but can occasionally seem self-indulgent, or otiose or old fartish. There is definitely a suspicion that old-age and too much booze have taken their toll on Amis as a craftsman.

But emotionally I thought it was pitch perfect, and extremely moving in places. One thing I think it shows is that Amis was a lot more self-aware than his public persona suggests. The group's right-wing political prejudices (obviously similar to Amis's own) are not presented sympathetically, but rather as fragments that people made vulnerable by age and impending death have shored up against their ruin. Alun Weaver, the ruthless womaniser and literary celebrity who fears (quite rightly in his case) that he has prostituted whatever talent he may have had in pursuit of fame and a comfortable life, is obviously in some ways at least a version of Amis himself, and he is a monster.

I've just started reading "The Dream Life of Sukhanov” by Olga Grushin. Only read a couple of dozen pages, so early days, but it started quite brilliantly.

― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 10:12 (seventeen years ago) link

An x-post based on James' comments on Sinner:

Aside from the cautionary stance that the author takes -- I would say, rightfully taken -- against religious fanaticism and political strife, it is written in an incredibly dense fashion with multiple layers of narration. I was surprised at how much depth Robert Wringhim had, in addition to wondering how true any of the narrative was, since it was written by, in theory, a damaged mind. It was also funny to read about the author inserting himself into the text as a goofy Scottish man who might have written a load of rubbish in his "letter" about the whole incident.

"Melmoth the Wanderer" impressed me in the same fashion, but it did not undercut the narrative in such a lighthearted way. There, the focus on the main character came from several people who were perhaps creating the whole thing in their minds. Most often, by people who were under extreme religious torture and in a state of despair. Then said reports were related second-hand in most cases by people who had heard of their stories. Remarkable stuff, to me.

Or, "Saragossa Manuscript", where the focus seemed to be on the art of storytelling itself -- although I do not know if that is really Gothic in the sense of the other two.

At any rate, some of these old fictions really do amaze me.

― mj, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 15:25 (seventeen years ago) link

I just started going through A Good Man is Hard to Find, which is my first time reading O'Connor, and while it's very good, I read so many (now very obvious) knock-offs of her style in high school that she is seeming very 6th-form-exam-y to me. Annoying, but I think I'll get over it.

― franny glass, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link

goodreads

Like lastFM but for books.

― Michael White, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 22:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Yes, it was Soul Circus, Mark. A long time ago I read A Firing Offense and didn't much like it- it made me feel like I had been transported back in time to the early 70s and trapped in the basement of the King Karol's in Main Street Flushing with no route of escape.

I did just enjoy a book that was blurbed by Pelecanos, The Big Boom, by Domenic Stansberry, which is the second in a series featuring a character nicknamed The Pelican, Pellicano being a family name for both the character and the author. Maybe both authors are related from way back when.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 01:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Ken, if you have any further interest in persuing Pelecanos you should try The Sweet Forever, it goes beyond the WACKY idiosyncracy of some of his other stuff and is actually kind of affecting.

― C0L1N B..., Wednesday, 11 April 2007 02:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I must try 'Melmoth' - I think I saw a copy at the shop last time I was there.

Read Rachel Cusk's "Arlington Park", which was bitterly witty and engrossing, even though nothing really happens, and for some light relief, Anita Loos' autobiographical "Kiss Goodbye to Hollywood", which alternates between lots of fun and mildly irritating.

― James Morrison, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 04:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm interested in Arlington Park - there was a different Rachel Cusk book that I wanted to read, can't remember the title. I think I mostly wanted to read it because I liked the cover art, and I like the surname 'Cusk'. Have you read anything else of hers, James?

― franny glass, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:50 (seventeen years ago) link

x-post to myself: Interesting interview with China Miéville about Un Lun Dun on "The Bat Segundo Show," fascinating stuff (but laden with spoilers after the 1/2way point).

― Dimension 5ive, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:17 (seventeen years ago) link

"The Sweet Forever" was the Pelecanos I enjoyed most, although that may have been more to do with timing than anything else. I read "Right As Rain" a couple of years ago and thought it entertaining enough, but it didn't make me think I needed to read more. At the start of this year, after reading a few fairly heavy books in a row, I picked up "The Sweet Forever" for light relief and found it was exactly what I was looking for. I quickly read the rest of that quartet, followed by "Shame the Devil", but the law of diminishing returns has started to kick in now. I've started "Drama City" but I'm finding it difficult to get up much enthusiasm. I've also bought "Soul Circus", but have no plans to start reading it any time very soon.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 17:28 (seventeen years ago) link

Relations of the Things of the Yucatan by Fray Diego De Landa, in a fairly shitty Mexican edition (lots of typos and awkward translation) I bought in the airport in order to keep my mind in Mexico a little longer and block out the Boobi Americani coming back from Cancun.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 22:28 (seventeen years ago) link

That and a bunch of fairly easy short stories in Spanish in a reader I bought to practice.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 22:29 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm reading Konwicki's A Dreambook for Our Time and I love it so far. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but his language is lovely and haunting and engrossing. Not quite as good as A Minor Apocalypse, but I can't think of many books I liked as much as that one.

― wmlynch, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 22:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Re Rachel Cusk: I've also read "The Lucky Ones", which claims to be a novel but is a collection of (connected, and excellent) short stories, plus "A Life's Work", her non-fiction book about becoming a mother. That was really interesting, but I kept wondering how such an obviouslt intelligent person could have been so surprised by some of the stuff she came up against. My wife's a huge Cusk fan, which is how I got into her books.

― James Morrison, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:39 (seventeen years ago) link

Now reading Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", which is very good, but also very depressing and angry-making. }sigh{

― James Morrison, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:30 (seventeen years ago) link

Just finished The Time Traveler's Wife... not bad.

― sadie, Friday, 13 April 2007 11:34 (seventeen years ago) link

Lots and LOTS of cookbooks as I'm in a cooking mode.

― nathalie, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:55 (seventeen years ago) link

I took a break from the Le Fanu in order to read a thin primer about some of the impressionist artists. I've also got a book about Monet that I will probably start in the near future.

Right now, I'm back at the Le Fanu, and I will hopefully finish reading it in the next couple of days. Haven't gotten to "Carmilla" yet, so it is helping to push me along.

― mj, Saturday, 14 April 2007 23:38 (seventeen years ago) link

querelle

― 冷明, Sunday, 15 April 2007 06:38 (seventeen years ago) link

mj it's too bad that you couldn't finish The Italian. I revelled in the silliness.

I've read 19 books this year, a bit low for me because I've gotten into journals in a big, big way.

Currently reading Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars (so very very very different from what I'm used to) and The Wedding Jester by Steve Stern.

― Arethusa, Sunday, 15 April 2007 08:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Lately:

A survey of the Renaissance and Baroque-era music.
Beckett "Malone Dies"
B.S.Johnson "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry". Very funny. Need to read the rest of them.

Wondering whether to finish Patrick White's "Riders in the Chariot", got bored about 150 pgs in. Probably go onto some Faulkner instead.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 15 April 2007 09:59 (seventeen years ago) link

just read some kawabata, planning to read some more. anyone recommend any good contemporaryish japanese fiction that isn't murakami? also just read some saunders to see what the deal is and surprised by how... unsurprising... his language really is. maybe after civilwarland he got better? i mean its nice and all, but sort of disjointed and taxing for the payoff which i find more sentimental and simpler than the trappings warrant.

also some bolano stories, which are amazing! they're like candy. i'm absolutely reading more of this guy. he seems like a master of exposition, almost. sort of reminds me of walser

― s.clover, Sunday, 15 April 2007 11:22 (seventeen years ago) link

also this reading coming from having read a bunch of spy novels just prior makes me wonder if the first person somehow became the default mode of literary expression at some recent point and the third is now more relegated to genre work? and if so, what lovely cultcrit type generalizations can be derived from this. and if not (or if partially so) then what good literary fiction is still being produced in the third person.

i mean, the valuation of emotion and feeling over action... some multicult sense of the equality of experience and perception, etc?

speaking of which, is there a good work on the history of narrative tense in literature? sort of just applying bakhtin's stuff on the development of topos to the modern canon, etc? i mean we have the interior domestic novel rising and falling as one central trope of american fiction this century, for example (speaking of which, going to start reading richard ford v. soon too) and then the extension of the notion of the unreliable narrator as another trend, and we can then slot metafiction in because, hey, meta is a topos too and the page is a place for the text to take place as well, and etc.

― s.clover, Sunday, 15 April 2007 11:30 (seventeen years ago) link

anyone recommend any good contemporaryish japanese fiction that isn't murakami?

Kenzaburo Oe? Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness was the first of his I ever picked up, attracted by the title.

― Jaq, Monday, 16 April 2007 01:12 (seventeen years ago) link

Which, that one isn't fiction btw. Maybe Bud Nipping, Lamb Shooting or Letters to My Sweet Bygone Years.

― Jaq, Monday, 16 April 2007 01:16 (seventeen years ago) link

Something Wicked This Way Comes. anyone dig?

― Stevie D, Monday, 16 April 2007 07:59 (seventeen years ago) link

Songlines, my first Chatwin ever. Maybe it's because I am reading it in translation, but it feels awkward and fragmented in a way that I don't like. I am planning to read something flowery and green and dramatic next, but do not know what exactly yet.

― misshajim, Monday, 16 April 2007 11:28 (seventeen years ago) link

You are not deceived. Songlines is rather disjointed.

― Aimless, Monday, 16 April 2007 17:12 (seventeen years ago) link

Empires of the Word. It is not so convincing, but there are good bits.

― Casuistry, Monday, 16 April 2007 22:42 (seventeen years ago) link

Read over the last few days...

Jim Crace: "The Pesthouse" - perfectly well-written, some clever ideas, attractive central characters, and yet a bit so-what-ish
William Woodruff: "Vessel of Sadness" - WWII novel made up of numerous fragments, very few named characters (and those who are named tend to die after 3 pages), mostly excellent with occasional not-so-excellent poems scattered throughout

Now reading:
Fanny Fern: "Ruth Hall" - 1855 American autobiographical novel about female journalist/single mother - its flaws (occasional sentimentality, and a heroine who is too good to be true) are more than compensated for by a nicely ironical authorial voice, and exchanges like the following (between the heroine's parents-in-law)...

"And there 's Ruth, as I live, romping round that meadow, without a bit of a bonnet. Now she 's climbing a cherry-tree. A married woman climbing a cherry-tree! Doctor, do you hear that?"

"Shoot 'em down," said the doctor, abstractedly, without lifting his eyes from the Almanac.

― James Morrison, Monday, 16 April 2007 23:28 (seventeen years ago) link

richard ford's independence day is starting to piss me off because i'm just getting angry at the whole suburban character suburban issues thing no matter how well its done and ick... divorce and fatherhood and baseball halls of fame and real estate and ok the thing with him thinking back to when he almost bought a volvo but didn't was pretty brilliant still, but it feels like mid-period delillo with all the irony squooshed out maybe. anyone like ford here and care to mount a rousing defense?

― s.clover, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 07:15 (seventeen years ago) link

I felt pretty much the same way -- like I'd seen the same thing, or something sufficiently similar that the differences weren't interesting, done less boringly. I just didn't believe in this guy's inner life: other writers have done that kind of cauterised detachment in a way that I at least found convincing, even if I wasn't sure that it was something I wanted to read about. Annoyingly I lost my copy getting on for half way through, replaced it, then read another 10 or 20 pages and decided I couldn't be bothered with more. So, not only a boring book that I couldn't finish but one I paid for twice.

― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:04 (seventeen years ago) link

ILB is informing my reading these days, in conjunction with the hold process at the library. I finished Hangover Square last night - what a gripping read! And am just starting Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner because - wow what a title!

I'm like number 1246 on the list for Un Lun Dun and am impatiently waiting my turn.

And, while I was home for a few days, Mr. Jaq read The Wind in the Willows aloud to me. I'd never read it, though have been on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland, twice.

― Jaq, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:17 (seventeen years ago) link

How do you like it so far, Jaq? I must admit, the title is wonderful. But hopefully it appeals in other ways.

I am about to finish "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which will probably be the last of the gothic narratives that I will tackle for some time. The Le Fanu was excellent.

I reviewed "Turn of the Screw" and still found it to be genuinely odd in a way that is peculiarly Jamesian in nature: "He...stole, stole letters..oh..my...god." I am convinced that the governess is simply a nutcase, and that the ghosts are just her creations.

Reading still continues about Monet -- I've been focusing more on the fiction lately, though.

― mj, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 03:11 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm liking it a lot so far, mj - I find myself laughing uncomfortably at the depictions of utter fanaticism: the woman at her own wedding, the second son at the tennis match. The realization that there is nothing, nothing! that will deter some people from their belief that they are right, no amount of reality or argument, is providing a terrifying undercurrent.

I fly home tomorrow, and will have to be careful not to read too much of it tonight.

― Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:21 (seventeen years ago) link

You could always finish it and buy some more Patrick Hamilton. Can recommend the "20,000 Leagues Under the Sky" trilogy.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 15:19 (seventeen years ago) link

frankiemachine, I am being strong in my resolve not to buy books. I don't think the little book kiosk at the John Wayne Airport will have any Patrick Hamilton tomorrow, so I won't be tempted. I have however put all his books on my library hold list!

I'm actually reading more, now that I'm using the library like this. Once the books I've put on hold come available, I figure the forces of the universe have decided it is time, now, for me to read THIS book, and so I do. Before when I was just buying books all over the place, they would languish in the to-be-read pile for years, plaguing me (and my indecisiveness).

― Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 15:49 (seventeen years ago) link

After finishing Destinations, I did some eclectic browsing in the local public library last week and have been reading what I culled there.

The Women Troubadours by Meg Bogin. Mostly notable for being the first study in english to examine the women troubadours as a group. It was written at the high tide of the feminist revival in the mid-1970s and so is a bit too highly colored by that particular perspective for my taste. However, it contains many of the original poems and their english translations, which was way cool.

The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis. A darn good survey aimed at the general reader. It presents a readable narrative history on the discovery of the caves, the paintings and their subject matter, and the succesive theories about the paleolithic artists who painted them. I really appreciated the author's breadth of sympathies, intellectual curiosity, and commitment to making the subject understandable.

Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy by Moises Naim. This was mentioned in the thread for international conspiracies and it sounded interesting. Couldn't finish it. The author spends about 80% of the book making endless repetitive assertions about how awful the whole situation is and how different from anything that preceded it and how concerned we all should be (and did I forget to mention how awful everything is?), and then makes almost no effort to corroborate his scary hand-waving outside of offering some anecdotes and some sketchy items that vaguely resemble facts. Not a serious book, IMO.

I am seriously eyeing Don Quixote, but I don't think I will tackle it quite yet. Maybe this summer.

I've got this collection of Raymond Chandler's short fiction I haven't read, yet. Guns, molls, saps, snitches and lowlifes. That sounds more the ticket.

― Aimless, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Are you going on a long long hike again this summer, Aimless? Don Quixote would be great for that, I think. Also, I gifted a copy of your book to some birding/camping/hiking friends and they were most delighted.

― Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Why thankee kindly, Jaq. I always love to hear that someone read my book and enjoyed it. I often wish it were only $1 a copy so I could give it away promiscuously to strangers on the street.

As for a long hike - probably not any single hikes longer than 50 miles this summer, but I haven't entirely decided. As a school bus driver, I do get the summers off -> hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!

― Aimless, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Laura Wilson: A Little Death - very well-written crime fiction with an excellent evocation of time/place (1890s, 1920s and 1950s England in this case)

Can't recall author name off-hand: Goya and the Duchess of Alba - shortish non-fiction book about said relationship, full of lovely painting reproductions and mildly hamstrung by almost complete absence of documentary evidence about said relationship, to the point where she had to quote several times from an awfully purple-prose German novel about said relationship

George Eliot: Mr Gilfil's Love Story - will start this on my lunch break

Apparently Patrick Hamilton's Gorse trilofy is about to be reprinted, for all those who haven't got it yet. And read 'Slaves of Solitude' too, also recently reprinted - it's brilliance in a brilliant sauce.

― James Morrison, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 23:59 (seventeen years ago) link

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