The Decline and Fall 2016 of gILBert the fILBert: What Are You Reading Now?

Lorrie Moore's Anagrams. I'm laughing after every other sentence.

There was indeed at least one play of a The Invention of Morel which generated some interesting photos I came across once, let's see if I can find.

No can find, it has gone off the Internet, I'm afraid.

Good to know, regardless!

Judge Dredd: BLOCK MANIA

Anagrams is lovely. Was about to say more, but do not wish to spoiler.

Just finished Wolf hall. Sublime writing. May move on to Bring Out The Bodies since I have that lying around.
May finish off Ford Maddox Ford's March Of Literature since I have that about 200 pages from the end.

you guys, reading... it's just, so swell :')

Robert Bothwell - The Penguin History of Canada
Derek Parfit - Reasons and Persons, part III: "Personal Identity"

you guys, reading... it's just, so swell :')

currently reading:

J.R. Ackerley - We Think The World Of You

just got few a couple dozens pages on my commute but so far so good. I love british novels with bracingly smart narrators, of which this is one

Started reading the Vivienne Westwood autobiography last night when I couldn't drop off to sleep. Had picked it up cos I found it cheap in TKMAxx. Just at a time that I was reading about her in The look by paul Gorman.
just picked up a load of new stuff today too.

But hoping Vivienne might be inspiring in garment making.

The only JR Ackerley I've read is My Father and Myself, which is fantastic. An autobiography that takes in being gay in Edwardian London, fighting in the trenches in WW1, and a central mystery about his father that only comes to light after his death... it's a really compelling read.

His memoir about his dog, My Dog Tulip, is also great: the non-fictional treatment of the experiences he also fictionalised beautifully as We Think the World of You.

I've more than half-finished Caro's LBJ volume 4, The Passage to Power, JFK is dead. The whole gang is headed to DC on Air Force One with the coffin on board. As the most dramatic moment of the story, the day of the assassination and Caro's accompanying observations occupies a very substantial number of pages. 100 or so? I haven't counted them. Caro does a good job of convincing the reader that LBJ's tasks in the days and months following JFK's murder are nearly impossible to pull off, so that when Johnson manages to pull it off we'll be suitably awestruck.

Does he comment on the Paul Krassner story of what happened when LBJ was left alone with JFK's body.

finished 2000AD: THE APOCALYPSE WAR

Toni Morrison, SONG OF SOLOMON

the dialogue between Ackerley's stand-in and his in-laws is fantastic

Paul Beatty's The Sellout won Man Booker. Anybody here read it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/media/paul-beatty-wins-man-booker-prize-with-the-sellout.html?_r=0

comment on the Paul Krassner story

nope

The nobel went to a musician, now the UK book prize goes to an American. Does anything make sense anymore? ANYTHING?

Did it make sense before?

I finally finished volume 1 of "The Demons" by Heimito von Doderer, which took ages* and felt like a shapeless first draft of "A Dance To The Music of Time" (or something) set in inter-war Vienna. I am genuinely torn about whether to follow up with vols 2 and 3, it's such a swirl of character and event that6 I found it hard to keep up with and often even a slog. Very little happens in the course of the 470 pages of volume 1, but somehow I want (all of a sudden) to know more about what happens to these people.

*Admittedly, and slightly confusingly, I slipped in a concurrent read of "The Emperor's Tomb" by Joseph Roth which follows a similar milieu at a not-so-different point in history in the same geographical location, albeit to very different ends. A few times I expected character from one to turn up in the other.

THat Krassner story is in the bottom right corner of this page of the Realist from their Archives
http://www.ep.tc/realist/74/18.html
Looks like there's a stack of the 60s satirical magazine on that site.

Apparently the rumour started there was believed by a load of people at the time that came out. It's presented as an unpublished part of the Manchester book on the investigation into The Death Of The President.
I thought if they went into 100 pages on the flight they might have mentioned that somewhere.

why would a serious historian reference a story like that in his book?

Tim - at this rate you are going to make me read The Demons. I've read nearly everything by Joseph Roth.

What he said

something wicked this way comes - what a lovely book, enjoying this a lot. i waited until it got cold to read it and then on monday the chapter i was reading had a few lines about it being the 24th of october, which was good.

also dreamland sam quinones still, and just finished young skins by colin barrett, which i liked apart from some stupid indulgences, eg some dreadfully named characters, and calling the local chipper "carcettis" presumably due to liking the wire, almost unforgivable that one.

i just loaded Dreamland to my iPad! have you liked it?

Yes it is great! I don't think it's amazing writing and he sometimes repeats his own invented similes, but it is a brilliant story well-investigated. So sad and wrong, especially the stuff about OxyContin. my mum is a pharmacist and she saw my copy and bought it, should be interesting to hear how much she likes all the gang stuff in it.

Some recent readings:

Jo Nesbø: Blood on Snow -- never read any by him before, and this was perfectly OK, 1970s Oslo-set noir pastiche with hitman and femme fatale; won't be rushing to read more

Sjón: Moonstone -- this is the 3rd by him I've read, and probably my favourite: teenaged cinema-obsessed rentboy in Reykjavík gets job as body-lugger during the post-WW1 Spanish Flu outbreak

Nina Allan: The Art of Space Travel -- SF novella that gains almost nothing from being presented as SF, despite being well-written and thoughtful

Alexis Smith: Glaciers -- sweet, sad novella about a day-ish in the life of a woman in love with a fellow librarian who is about to go back to fight in the Gulf for no easily articulated reason

Georges Simenon: The Hand -- another excellent, harsh non-Maigret, apparently newly translated and published because David Hare has based a play on it

Ferenc Békássy: The Alien in the Chapel -- selected poems and letters by Hungarian poet who studied at Oxford was a sort-of friend of Rupert Brooke (they were both after the same girl) and was killed by Russians on the Eastern Front in 1915 at age 22

Reminds me, I just found a library shop copy of Simenon's Aunt Jeanne---is it good?

I've never even heard of that one, tbh. But you're probably pretty safe getting it!

I also recommend The Emperor's Tomb, which has some of the quietest pathos that's ever moved me in a book.

something wicked this way comes - what a lovely book, enjoying this a lot. i waited until it got cold to read it and then on monday the chapter i was reading had a few lines about it being the 24th of october

looking forward to listening to november rain every day next month

Reading Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys. Not to diminish her, but her sentences give very easily to poetry - chunks of this are positively Prufrockian.

I've had enough of these streets
that sweat a cold, yellow slime,
of hostile people, of crying
myself to sleep every night.

I've had enough of thinking,
enough of remembering.
Now whisky, rum, gin, sherry, vermouth, wine
with the bottles labelled 'Dum vivimus, vivamus. ... '
Drink, drink, drink.
As soon as I sober up I start again.

John Jeremiah Sullivan - "Pulphead". Just finished reading the piece about the Christian rock festival. Excellent stuff and not as sneery as you might expect

just finished Moby-Dick

there's a good story in there, probably 30 chapters of the entire thing. the rest of it reads like an afternoon hopping around on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cetology

(and then there's the buzzfeedy '10 worst depictions of whales in art')

i really want to read it after chatting to mark s about it. i love the other melvilles i've read but i don't expect it's like bartleby or the confidence man.

just started reading a collection of horror stories by e nesbitt, having finished something wicked this way comes. i am really loving the tone and rhythm of these and the posh british settings are v different from a lot of what i've been reading. also just great scary yarns.

after that i've got an in-tray of jon mcgregor, jl carr's a month in the country ( as recommended itt), and no doubt some more i'm forgetting.

Just finished Vivienne Westwood autobio and the book on Boutiques by Marnie Fogg which were both really interesting.
About half way through the Gangleader For A Day book and things are becoming a bit complicated for the sociology student since he's becoming involved with several sides of a community that the Black kings are living in.

Just started Wedlock by Wendy Moore about shenanigans in the 18th century concerning a conman and his conned bride.

Need to work out what the next book I read in bed will be. have several lined up. Possibly A man called Destruction the Alex chilton biography though I've read a lot of rock bios recently, so not sure.

I read another few Bradbury shorts after Moby dick (he did the screenplay for the film). Had read most of them before but it's never a chore to reread Bradbury. The one about the astronauts in the aftermath of the explosion. Marionettes Inc is a fantastic little thing. The city.

(Am 10% into the first of the two 1000 page omnibuses)

I'm reading The Professor's House, Willa Cather, and I'm halfway through it. It is definitely a weaker effort than O, Pioneers! or Death Comes for the Archbishop. She assembles her modest cast of nine or ten characters, but she seems barely acquainted with them in comparison to her deep understanding of the characters in those two other novels.

Structurally it's too neat by half, but the Tom Outland section is fascinating, and I like the homoerotic undertones.

going to Buenos Aires on friday so I'm reading...

Alfredo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel

it's weird as hell so far. with a great introduction by Borges

Moby-Dick is so good. Held out against reading but raced through it last xmas. The story is just a skeleton to hang stuff, and his prose.

Been reading Empson's complete poetry. The author's notes are absolutely hilarious and brilliant. Needs a reissue, a very peculiar book (like the man) (sorta want to read Haffenden's biography)

going to Buenos Aires on friday so I'm reading...

Alfredo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel

it's weird as hell so far. with a great introduction by Borges

Nice, Casares looks like another one to add to the list - am almost finished Hopscotch and am interested in The Invention of Morel, too. More weird-as-hell Argentine literature, pls!

Yeah, Morel is great. And a great example of SF for people who think they don't read SF.

Vladislav Vančura: Summer of Caprice -- this must be the most Irish novel ever written by a Czech; priests and lifeguards and soldiers hang around and have convoluted arguments in unlikely language, and a magician comes to town and everything goes mad