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

^^^^

it's strange, i am really really patient with books, i think it's the only thing i've abandoned in near-anger that i can recall, like besides when i was 14 or something and read things that were around the house or that family members had bought.

afair it wasn't the atmosphere that stopped me, it was that that atmosphere kept being broken by clanging bits of bad dialogue or half-sketched minor characters. the scene i mentioned where they discuss the dead war buddy was the last straw - i seem to remember a few precursors to that though, i know in the end i was tweeting excerpts in ridicule, which seemed to resonate with a lot of people even though they didn't immediately recognise the book.

but yeah, people fucking love that book, it was maybe two/three years ago when i had a go and it's even bigger now i think, it has a cult following that's growing all the time. i don't think my reaction was contrary or whatever though, i wasn't aware of its status so much when i read it, and i guess every old book i read tends to have a cult following of sorts.

When this was tweeted...
The Paris Review‏ @parisreview
“‘Kill your darlings’ is one of my favorite sayings.” —Michael Haneke (link: http://bit.ly/1RAepOg) bit.ly/1RAepOg

..i tweeted back "you misspelled ''Bosnians" as "darlings", but then i got cold feet about it and deleted in fear of being sued

I think you've (deliberately?) confused Michael Haneke with Peter Handke?

Uh-oh, now flopson's description does have me interested: sounds like the author might be setting up as many barriers as possible, challenging himself and readers. Once in a while, I've found myself unwillingly pulled in or near by the blunt charm of churlish charmlessness, a voice talking shit and sense. I'll give it the random read test if I see it around (won't seek it out---although wouldn't hurt to look up local library holdings online now...)

oooooh shit, ward, you're right. so I would have been an idiot as well as a sued smartarse.

stoner totally sounds like something i would dig. never read it. maybe i've never actually seen a copy. just read about it. i tend to remember things that get compared to richard yates.

this also reminds me that i need to finish watching criterion dvd of the browning version.

Fwiw I think Butcher's Crossing is a better book, but Stoner had a very strong impact.

A novel about the life of an inscrutably passive academic sounds is my version of hell

Sounds like

B-b-but it's so insightful about his inscrutable passivity! Oh wait.

I think you need the end to get Williams's point, like. Besides, Stoner's passivity (which involves a long tenure at a decent university) is actually kind of heroic relative to what his parents had to deal with.

I'm within a dozen pages of finishing the first volume of The Man Without Qualities. I won't have the second volume to hand until Christmas, so I intend to read The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald, in the interval, based on the superlative reviews posted by other ILBers.

A strong finish to the year for Aimless

Made possible by the innumerable gaping holes in my lifetime reading list.

Halberstam, Female Masculinity

The book Dylan's tour manager had dictated to tape as constructed after his death by his son. Another Side Of Bob Dylan.
Very interesting so far.

A Mark Kermode I bought in Dealz for €1.50. Hope it's still at home when I get back.

A few things I grabbed as I left earlier.
Patricia Highsmith Strangers on A Train,
Henry Fielding Tom Jones,
notes from underground Dostoevsky.

Hatchet Job is Kermode

Frank?

Oh, I see.

Kermode is Mark.

Quiff sporting film reviewer type talking about process of attending film screenings, meeting annoyed film makers and having to pay to see bad films released without press screenings. Normally as early as possible on Friday morning before needing to review that afternoon.

Been enjoying but left behind in a flat I might stop worrying about when I get back to.

Did anyone end up getting this edition of the Voynich manuscript, discussed in Spring and All 2k16? I'm intrigued.

https://www.amazon.ca/Voynich-Manuscript-Raymond-Clemens/dp/0300217234

"Pack My Bag" is probably my least-liked Henry Green book (I'm just not that interested in his years at school and college, even with the tug and tension of a youngish man anticipating being sent to war imminently) but he's always such a pleasure to read.

Now I'm also reading "The Bookshop" by Penelope Fitzgerald because I'm never one to ignore a trend.

I read the lovely NYROB editions of Back and Caught last month.

Mark Kermode
Born Mark James Patrick Fairey 2 July 1963 (age 53) Barnet, London, England
Residence Brockenhurst, Hampshire, England
Occupation Film critic, presenter, writer, musician
Spouse(s) Linda Ruth Williams

I've always wondered if he took Kermode after Frank - or for the pun on 'commode'?

it's his mother's maiden name

no pretty sure it's cause it sounds like shitter

It's Kerr-mode though, innit.

I read Janet Malcolm's In the Freud Archives, after reading about it on here (I think). I couldn't decide if it was a bagatelle, a vanity project, or if it cut right to the heart of Freud's legacy. Probably a mixture of the three. Masson and Swales come out of it seeming agreeably mental.

On a related note, having read and enjoyed a few of Adam Phillips' books, and Irving Yalom's Love's Executioner, are there other canonical 'literature of therapy' or books I could/should look for?

I've just started Don Quixote

yo también

Started readin orientalism (which I've only read parts of before) and Anagram by Moore. Also been given books by two old guys from the pub (James Herbert and wilbur smith, naturally) which I'll be too polite to not read. I liked Herbert when I was a teenager...

Herbert and smith wrote the books, they're not the old guys .

read the title story of Ted Chiang 'The Story of Your Life' last night. Haven't seen Arrival yet, but really loved the story

Finished Magda Szabo's The Door, it didn't make me feel bad about myself.
Sorry if this makes me an inhuman monster.

is it meant to? I've been looking forward to reading it for a while, have a copy in my pile.

Just finished Magda Szabo's The Door. Really excellent, mysterious, unnerving, but man. Some books leave me feeling worse about humanity, the future, the world, this is the rare book that left me feeling worse about myself.
― JoeStork, Saturday, December 10, 2016 6:40 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, for the record, Stoner bored me.

did you enjoy Szabo, though?

i hope i haven't painted a target on my back by sticking my neck out as a Stoner-liker :-P

I don't know about anyone else, but I hold a mean grudge about book recommendations. You're dead to me now.

It was more that the narrator's guilt over her failures and justifications for said failures had uncomfortable parallels to moments in my own life that i try not to dwell on too much.

I've been reading Homo Zapiens by Victor Pelevin and enjoying the hell out of it. Man is wow to man.

I've been slowly reading Eimear McBride's vivid, densely sensory Lesser Bohemians and feeling like I should be reading it aloud; I'm also starting Ishion Hutchinson's latest collection of poems, House of Lords and Commons, and Dorothy Parker's stories in Laments for the Living--I don't know that I'd call Parker underappreciated, but her use of dialogue is exact and unsparing in a way that goes beyond her reputation as a wit.

Started readin orientalism (which I've only read parts of before) and Anagram by Moore

After reading her three novels in the last month, this strikes me as the weakest (I read it first).

did you enjoy Szabo, though

It was fine, v good character study, some insight into Hungarian life, I wasn't particularly emotionally invested but that was my problem really.

It was more that the narrator's guilt over her failures and justifications for said failures had uncomfortable parallels to moments in my own life

If it's any consolation (I highly doubt it) I didn't blame her for what happened.

Yeah, I didnt think that her actions were wrong or indicative of a deeply flawed character or anything; it's more that I related to her method of self-examination, which admittedly is not super healthy.

Also, for the record, Stoner bored me.

I read Janet Malcolm's In the Freud Archives, after reading about it on here (I think). I couldn't decide if it was a bagatelle, a vanity project, or if it cut right to the heart of Freud's legacy. Probably a mixture of the three. Masson and Swales come out of it seeming agreeably mental.

There's a point where Swales seems like he is going to be the normal guy, compared to Masson anyway - and then suddenly, nope.

I'd lean towards bagatelle, but I'd read Janet Malcolm's bagatelles any day. Did you read about the court case? Seems so strange that he contested five single quotes, when he's so oblivious and obnoxious over so much of the rest of the book

I received the over-a-thousand-page second volume of the Pike/Wilkins translation of The Man Without Qualities for Christmas. I started it last night. I will decide about whether or not to read the over-600 page Posthumous Papers section of this volume after I drag myself another 400 pages, across the finish line on page 1130 of the 'official' novel.

(Aimless tilts his head back to gaze at the ceiling and lifts hands, palms upward, in an imploring gesture.)

merry xmas ILB

finished The Last Samurai and started the Rick Perlstein Goldwater book on xmas eve. verrry addictive so far

btw, if anyone has a remarkably clever title for the winter 2017 WAYR thread, ILB will soon be in the market for such a thing and will pay top dollar.