What are you reading - on or about October 2006

i really liked this until the end, which i found really awful. it was all build up but the payoff didn't work for me.

i'm reading a 70s sci-fi short story collection, "Where Do We Go From Here?" it was collected for high schools by isaac asimov, and as such has leading questions for discussion after each story to engage the class/serve as homework for lazy teachers. i've got about 6 or 7 of this sort of short story collection, with various themes. they're always really enjoyable.

next i want to read ray bradbury's something wicked this way comes, because it fits the weather nicely.

I haven't decided on my next book, but I did pick up The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley and started in on it last night. It may be a bit too introductory to hold me for long.

70 pp of Titus Groan to go.

Please do not come back here trying to get us to buy Noel Edmonds' book. If you do, I will assume you are being paid by a viral marketing company.

I am still wading my way through The Scramble for Africa. Too many wars and not enough exploration for my liking, at this point. However, I took a break from it at the weekend and read Affinity by Sarah Waters. I'm not sure I'd describe her books as pastiche Victoriana really. Although Fingersmith certainly does have a great deal of lesbianism in it. Affinity is slighter, shorter, and very gothic.

Just started Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express and so far it's giving me aching wanderlust (not much use when you're 5 months pregnant).

Now: "The Goodbye Kiss" by Massimo Carlotto, which is brutal Italian hard-boiled crime fiction. I'm about halfway through and it's all too macho for me, I think. It looks like I'm the sort of person to enjoy the more bleeding heart liberal Scando version.

That being said, "Portrait of a Lady" was a fairly smashing book, and I feel wonderfully happy being lost in the jungle that is "The Golden Bowl." Strange, too, because I had always heard that Henry James was a tedious read -- I guess I'm just a sucker for florid prose.

Rabelais has been put on hold until I can find a better version.

But, to reward myself for actually finishing them, I've just started Suite Francaise which is achingly beautiful ... at least the first couple of chapters. But it's going to be getting grim really soon, I fear. And, knowing what happened to the author and all, I have this overall feeling of bleakness.

glad to hear you say this to know that i'm not just mad. it was so wonderfully delightful until the very, very end, and the anticipation makes the lousy payoff seem all the worse. i felt cheated :(

this week, i am cracking into turkey: a modern history and terrorists or freedom fighters: reflections on the liberation of animals.

So now I'm reading "Portnoy's Complaint", which is much more up my proverbial alley. NO I DON'T MEAN BY WAY OF IDENTIFICATION WITH THE LEAD CHARACTER, cheeky.

*I have met more first year undergraduates who take this self-congrtulatory and fruitless line than I have any other broad group, please don't take this as some kind of blanket condemnation of undergraduates!

Have you read anything by him before? The early work is actually written in a fairly straightforward manner -- it just isn't as interesting as the later stuff (to me, anyway). The ornate style only really confuses in the final works.

Could I recommend one of his novellas to you? "Daisy Miller," perhaps? "The Aspern Papers"? Those probably wouldn't require a whole lot of time if they interested you.

I like them, but I definitely wouldn't start with The Bostonians or What Maisie Knew.

LRB has not yet shown, but a letter arrived, with a little slip on it, a little slip I completed and returned by return.

The next day the same letter arrived (with a date two days later than the first) , with an identical little slip. I thought it best not to return that one, it might have confused them.

I have not yet seen a real actual LRB, but I hope to and I remain very grateful for your kind thoughts.

DESCRIPTION OF STRATA

Tarmac

Dense Brown Granular FILL - MADE GROUND*

Firm / Stiff Red Brown silty sandy
gravelly CLAY*

Soft Mottled Brown clayey sandy
SILT some gravel*

Loose Brown silty SAND*

Medium Dense Brown silty gravelly
SAND

Medium Dense Grey Brown silty sandy
GRAVEL with cobbles*

(Continued...)

right? sometimes I'll think I'm actually understanding one of his ridiculous labyrinthine metaphors in those intros and all of a sudden, it'll turn a previously-unimaginable corner of insanity. Like in the preface to Portrait, when he's describing the "house of fiction" and it gets all out of control.

it's funny, because in academic novel studies, a lot of critical weight is given to those prefaces; they get cited a lot as seminal in the formation of the field. but it's not clear to me that anyone who cites them has actually read them, because the idea that you could actually easily lay out, like, a blueprint for a novel from one of them is totally absurd.

anyway, I'm glad you like What Maisie Knew. I had a weirdly emotional reaction to that book. I think it's generally regarded as cold.

This thread is making me want to read Henry James, a writer I've never remotely considered before and about whom I know basically nothing. I am totally a sucker for florid prose. I didn't know James was florid.

Just finished The Man With the Golden Arm (finally). It reminds me of that line of Rilke's about lying down with a leper and warming him with your warmth, and I think Algren has come closest to achieving that (in a metaphorical sense) than any other writer I know. It was pretty wonderful and haunting, and I had bizarre dreams about morphine and snow and elevated trains last night.

And now I feel like kind of a twat for quoting Rilke, and I started Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing this morning.

That is probably going to take another week though, since "Golden Bowl" doesn't lend itself to fast reading.

Cozen: Moy Sand and Gravel?

TH: good news!

Livy is transparently rooting for the Romans to win. Hannibal is this shrewd, faithless, evil genius who keeps beating the tar out of the true-blue Roman consulary legions, who mean well, but for some reason just can't win for losing, the poor fellas.

this week's classes: the time machine and the book of daniel.

Half-way through July, July by Tim O'Brien. he has a really lovely, dry, comic style which is incredibly "readable". Fits nicely into my interest in post-war US fiction.

Ya think?

I won't spoil the ending for you, though.

The battle of Cannae took place on my birthday, a few thousand years before my birth, according to the Wikipedia. I'm not sure how I should feel about that.

I am reading Nokter the Stammerer's Life of Charlemagne, which is awkwardly translated in the Penguin version (all the Latinisms are plain as day) but which, so far, is kind of hysterical.

Thank you. I wonder if I will become a subscriber, in my own right, eventually.

First 80-odd paragraphs are maybe the best philosophy ever committed to paper. I think he tends to lose me shortly after that though.

a cyberpunk detective thriller called a philosophical investigation.

Arf. I bought that, years ago, on the strength of the title. Disappointingly straightforward I thought, but dick lit ain't really my thing.

frank kogan's real punks don't wear black.

Been meaning to get that - mainly on the strength of his Wittgenstein tours de force over on ILX!

Currently, I am reading a book on African-Portuguese slave culture for a class, and probably will start Dangerous Liaisons within the next couple of days once all of the chaos has subsided a bit.