Fall 2017 Happy Families Are Alike. What Are You Reading Now?

I am now idling about in The Kings of Nonfiction, an anthology of short nonfic edited by Ira Glass. There's some nice stuff in there.

Yemen Endures: Civil War, Saudi Adventurism and the Future of Arabia by Ginny Hill.

Really good discussion of khat culture in the first few pages

Does anyone know of interesting end-of-year fiction lists? I'm not seeing much that looks appealing among the most frequently recommended novels (Exit West, etc).

― jmm, Saturday, December 2, 2017 6:56 PM (six days ago)

Largehearted Boy is keeping a running list of all year-end lists:
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2017/11/online_best_of_75.html

I have started The Greek Alexander Romance, in the Penguin version translated and edited by Richard Stoneman. It should be a quick read. It's a fantasy, in the same way that the Arabian Nights are fantasies, but incorporating Alexander the Great and some bits and pieces of his life and history.

The textual footnotes seem mostly concerned with untangling the many corrupt texts one from another and explaining the translator's decisions for how they've been cobbled together in this version.

Is it good?

Noah Feldman -- The Three Lives of James Madison
W.S. Merwin -- Unframed Originals
Robert Forster -- Grant and I

That last is an import, I assume

I bought it quite easily on Amazon and got it in two days.

I finished Little Big Man. It's a big, rollicking, fun read, and I highly recommend it. Not sure I really love the Battle of the Little Bighorn as the bravura finish, with its perhaps too tidy symmetry with the Washita massacre portrayed earlier. Though the author wisely refrains from drawing his thematic threads together too neatly and the ultimate feeling one is left with is a chastened ambivalence, yet it would have been perhaps more satisfying to have the ending focus more on the colorful figure of Crabb himself and less on the dutifully historic cardboard Custer. In my view, Troubles is ultimately a more successful model of how to interweave a tale with historic events, without letting them usurp the novel's essential prerogative to create its own world.

An hour ago I closed the back cover on Jakob Wegelius's FABULOUS children's novel, "The Murderer's Ape." It is a long (588 pages!), slow, old-fashioned adventure story typed onto an Underwood by a non-verbal ape (Sally Jones), about a three year attempt to exonerate her best (human) friend from a false murder accusation. It takes place in Portugal and colonial India, and features a depressed fado singer, an accordion manufacturer, an anarchist plot, scheming seamen, a lovelorn maharajah, life-and-death chess games, and amateur aeronautics. It is like Joseph Conrad by way of Beatrix Potter.

I want to recommend it to... everybody. It is beautifully illustrated, translated from Swedish by Peter Graves (who translates Strindberg and Linnaeus), and deep, and introspective. I know this board as a whole is not into whimsy or children's literature, but this is a totally weird and genre-transcendent book.

Capsule review here
Sample chapter here

I bought it quite easily on Amazon and got it in two days.

Is it good?

I'm well past halfway through now and I'd say no. It is more of an artifact than art. The historically founded parts are filled with garbled nonsense. The fictional set pieces that are dropped in are of poor quality.

This "romance" may be the portal through which much of the world came to see Alexander in the period from about 300 CE to 1500 CE, but if anything it diminishes the historical figure of Alexander, even given all the resources of fiction and imagination with which to aggrandize him. Not worth seeking out, in my opinion, unless you wish to understand it as an artifact defining the ignorance of past ages.

Poo. I might get the murderer's ape then.

"Murderer's Ape" sounds fab!

Finished Brownstein's autobio a few days ago; enjoyed it a lot, despite a lack of interest in 90's alternative rock (I came for Portlandia, which the book doesn't really cover). I should stop being surprised that good lyricists are often also really great prose writers.

Now it's E.M. Delafield's Diary Of A Provincial Lady. I was expecting something satirical, perhaps somewhere akin to a female Wodehouse. And it's certainly funny, but sad too - you really feel for the protagonist, with her idiot husband, hellion children, "friends" constantly invested in rubbing her money troubles in her face. Complaints about the uppity service evoke less sympathy, but that was the age, I guess.

Diary of a Provincial Lady's sequels maintain the quality

I am now reading a book by one Sue Burrell, Waiting for Aphrodite. The subject matter is invertebrate biology, but handled gently, with a minimum of jargon and only a wee pinch of academics. She assumes the reader knows almost nothing, writes only to mend the largest holes in their ignorance, then thoughtfully provides a bibliography at the end of each chapter for those who care to run some experts to earth. It is soothing in its way. I like it.

Correction: Sue Hubbell (I was trying to read the spine across the room.)

Primo Levi: Natural Histories -- mostly darkly comedic science fiction, with occasional vertiginous glimpses of horror that remind you of the sort of things the author must have seen in Auschwitz

Yikes! Any good?

Yes! If you like Calvino's fables and tall tales, especially.

Thank goodness for xmas break, getting through a fair bit:

Wolfgang Hilbig - Old Rendering Plant
Muriel Spark - The Abbess of Crewe
Kristen Roupenian - Cat Person
Muriel Spark - The Hothouse by the East River*
Slowomir Mrozek - The Elephant
Marguerite Duras - Yann Andrea Steiner

Hilbig and Duras are the keepers here. Very different styles and aesthetics. The Duras starts as a brief account of her relationship with a much younger man. From one of their conversations it then jumps into this fictional account of love between two jews (a big age gap here too, except the woman is an adult and the man is actually a young adult, no older than 10) that provides some sort of cathartic release on the holocaust, or somesuch. Its a real high-wire act, what unites the two strands is the care of one person for another (damaged) individual - of course, its something she explores in Hiroshima Mon Amour and many of her books. The Hilbig is an extraordinary account of a boy's obsession with a coal plant. Its transformation of the landscape into this magical realm is reminiscent of Proust's walks around Combray, but even more so Tarkovsky's stalker (its the gothic). Both will pay and re-pay much re-reading.

The Muriel Spark books were sorta boring, couple of interested ideas un-followed (I didn't finish The Hothouse). Mrozek's collection of short pieces is from Penguin Central European Classics strand and there are bits of Schulz, Walser, Kafka. Its diverting enough, worth a read but I wouldn't go out of my way.

Finally Cat Person was a remarkable story in The New Yorker. Tell you all more about it later, but do read it - I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

delighted to be catching up things i hadn't got round to or in some cases finished this year. first up This Little Art by Kate Briggs, which I bought and started earlier this year, but then put down. That's because I was battling with it a bit - my own fault - I tend to want to be a bit ruthless with the evident difficulties of translation. It means that 'when you say you've read the translated book, does that *actually* mean you've read at the book do you see' stuff quite tiresome.

that really isn't what the book is like at all though, and now I've broken the back of it i'm finding it really enjoyable. the main substance of it centres around her translations of Barthes' late lectures:

...a critic, theorist and writer whose very last piece of writing, the one that was left on his desk on the day of the accident that led to his death, was titled: 'One Always Fails in Speaking of What One Loves.'

Or, in an alternative translation: we always fail to speak of what we love.

Or alternatively again: you (a general you that includes me, the you we use in English, sometimes, to embrace both you and me),

you always fail to speak, when you speak of what you love.

that passage hit me quite hard. (actual French title was on échoue toujours à parler de ce qu'on aime and was an essay on Stendhal apparently.

also read a shit load of poirot. five little piggies is *excellent*, really interesting and impressive, with a couple of cruxes that are done extremely well. the big four is *dire*, really spectacularly bad. it was written aiui when Christie was at a very low ebb, and it shows, she even mutilates poirot at one point, and it's making me want to understand more about what she was going through at that time.

of course one of the persistent comedies of poirot is that he speaks in english nearly all the time, apart from the most basic words any person would learn immediately. in this sense, as was pointed out to me last night when talking about this, he actually speaks very like the archetypal english person in France - ie basic words in french, anything even slightly beyond that in stilted english.

xp Yeah my twitter's been all over those (except that last one, dunno what that is)

I'm sure the fact that he killed himself this year is significantly affecting my response, but mark fisher's the weird and the eerie is a lovely little book. It could maybe be a little more rigorous at times - I remember seeing somewhere (maybe here) that the eerie is poorly defined, which I don't agree with, but I do feel like the case for certain works belonging to the eerie aren't convincingly argued - but in general it gets across what's valuable about these modes and makes me want to spend more time in them.

Just started Voltaire in Love, Nancy Mitford. Too soon to say anything else about it.

five little piggies is *excellent*, really interesting and impressive

That's good to know, as I'm coincidentally just about to read it!

After your post I read the Wikipedia page for The Big Four, it sounds very WTF in a tantalising way, but I'll avoid it on your advice.

I tend to read 3-4 Christie books every year, usually as a clear-the-decks exercise after something more challenging. Was really impressed by Cards on the Table - although impossible to explain why without spoiling - and HP's Christmas, which is a generic "posh patriarch cops it" mansion mystery, but the solution is quite ingenious.

A few week ago there was an unsurprisingly annoying Front Row episode discussing Christie, with Giles Coren, Sophie Hannah and whoever's been adapting those fucking awful recent BBC Christmas specials. Coren kept saying the books were terrible, the BBC lady was rambling about how she hadn't read much christie but preferred the outside-the-formula books without detective characters, and Hannah kept trying to position Christie as a great social satirist, and it was like JFC how much wrong analysis can you get in a six minute segment.

Had Voltaire in Love for ages, never read it--will be interested to hear what you think

Theodor Fontane: On Tangled Paths -- really enjoying this after a somewhat wobbly start (lots of local colour peasant types getting up to shenanigans, but then the political and sexual intrigue kicked in); annoyingly I already had another copy of this, but under a different title ('Irretrievable') and from different translator

Never could get along with Christie, I have to admit. I just want to punch Poirot in his face.

I've been reading At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell. It was an unasked-for gift from last year. I guess I feel a little guilty for not just reading the primary sources, but that's a silly reaction to have, especially when Bakewell has done such a fine job of research. It must be difficult to write a fairly light and entertaining book about philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and de Beauvoir. Also, I should be honest with myself, I was never going to read Heidegger or Husserl anyway and at least now I have some sense, however superficial, of their thought.

I'm in a reading trough and am desultorily reading:

Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild, which is beautiful and clear-eyed and wise and all the things that make Snyder 'one of our best humans' (trademark). It does feel a little dated, but I don't think that's his fault.

Anita Brookner's Look At Me, which is limpid and arch and precise and all the things that make Brookner so good but hell I find her hard work sometimes.

Brian Vaughan's Saga, which is magnificent.

Never could get along with Christie, I have to admit. I just want to punch Poirot in his face.

Read The Stone Tide by Gareth E Rees, sits somewhere in the psychogeography - autofiction - old weird England continuum without being squarely any of them, and also taking a wry look at those modes, I enjoyed it. Mostly set in Hastings, and a bit in Bexhill-on-Sea.

I read Old Men In Love by Alasdair Gray, it's the first of his I've read, and I enjoyed that too, feels like Proper Old Fashioned (but not that old fashioned) Lit Fic, takes the ruse of being The Collected Papers Of the main character, includes diaries and drafts of part-finished novels. Well done everyone. Set mostly in Glasgow.

I read Worlds From The Word's End by Joanna Walsh, tricky and rewarding "experimental" short stories, she's very good indeed. Set nowhere in particular. Eley Williams remains my short story champ this year, I love "Attrib" beyond all reason.

Now I'm reading "After Leaving Mr Mackenzie" by Jean Rhys. Would like to keep reading it forever. Set in Paris so far.

I have a fresh unopened copy of attrib. sitting waiting for me at home as I type

(along with the ya novel THUG and spufford’s golden hill. all recommended by the what page are you on podcast)

Richard Holmes - Shelley: The Pursuit
Katherine Anne Porter - "Old Mortality"

The Odyssey, tr. Emily Wilson. Spare, swift, and true.

I'm back for air after sequestering myself with Proust since late summer (am halfway through - just finished the first vol. of Sodom and Gomorrah/Cities on the Plain, to be precise - and am taking a small break, but still very much engrossed).

I've heard nothing but excellent things about the new translation of the Odyssey and am looking forward to reading it. I'm hoping to read a few other books during my holiday break before returning to Marcel.

As it's the time of year of year-end recaps, in the spirit, I thought I'd share a few highlights from 2017 which may be of interest to some (a few of which were taken from recommendations from threads earlier in the year - thanks all :))

Distant Star + Last Evenings on Earth - Roberto Bolano
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Transit - Rachel Cusk
The Malady of Death - Marguerite Duras
Youth - JM Coetzee (am meaning to read the other two in the trilogy, as well)
Torpor, I Love Dick - Chris Kraus
Lightning Rods - Helen DeWitt
The Sellout - Paul Beatty
Bartleby and Co - Enrique Vila Matas

The Economics of Global Turbulence - Robert Brenner
Detroit I Do Mind Dying - Dan Georgakas
October - China Mieville
Memoirs of a Revolutionary - Victor Serge

Also hoping to read these over the holidays (meant to include in earlier post!) and also hoping to eventually get to Henry Green after finishing In Search of Lost Time.

The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10581.html
Autumn - Ali Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_(Smith_novel)

It's so weird that smith & knausgaard both have books called winter out now, that are the 2nd volumes of "season" tetralogies

Diary of a Provincial Lady's sequels maintain the quality

Turns out I had purchased an omnibus of all of these! Had a buncha flights so binged, which is perhaps not the best way to read them (some comedic tricks do repeat a lot), but overall am very very impressed. Foreword rightly points out how modern Delafield's character is in balancing home life and professional ventures; I also enjoy the frequent shout-outs to plays/books/movies the protagonist has enjoyed. Am in total agreement w/ her on René Clair's Le Million and the moment where she confesses that she would leave her husband and children in a heartbeat if propositioned by not Ivor Novello or Douglas Fairbanks but CHARLES LAUGHTON is <3 <3 <3 Also, the frequent hopes for a bolschevick revolution when she has to deal with her snotty neighbour. Very interested to check out more Delalfield.

Now reading the second volume of the Penguin Book Of The British Short Story and the early selections being of course filled with Wodehouse and Wharton I was a bit wary I'd OD on English whimsy, reading this right after Delafield, but then it gets into the WWI era and jesus. The story that's impacted me most so far is "The German Prisoner" by James Hanley, whom I'd previously not heard of. It's like an EC Comics war story but with Italian cannibal movie levels of violent gore. Can't say I enjoyed it, and am not entirely sure what I think of it (Author's Intention, although a red herring, always seems to pop up in this kind of thing, I think), though it's certainly a nice corrective to the rah-rah nonsense of Buchan and the like. Anyway, it's certainly something. Approach with caution.

I've been reading At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell. It was an unasked-for gift from last year. I guess I feel a little guilty for not just reading the primary sources, but that's a silly reaction to have, especially when Bakewell has done such a fine job of research. It must be difficult to write a fairly light and entertaining book about philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and de Beauvoir. Also, I should be honest with myself, I was never going to read Heidegger or Husserl anyway and at least now I have some sense, however superficial, of their thought.

Really liked this. I've mentioned this a few times but there's a section she quotes from De Beauvoir's memoirs that is basically the end speech from Blade Runner.

(Wharton? I meant Waugh, duh)

Some good ones I read in the last couple of weeks:

Jennifer Egan - Manhattan Beach
Gerbrand Bakker - The Twin
Sayed Kashua - Second Person Singular
Magda Szabó - The Door (thanks, ILB!)
Sebastian Barry - Days Without End
Emmanuel Carrère - Class Trip

The best one was probably Days Without End. A really good novel about the American Civil War, told by a very modern protagonist.
The Door took a while to get going, but turned brilliant in the last 80 pages.

The story that's impacted me most so far is "The German Prisoner" by James Hanley, whom I'd previously not heard of.

Highly recommend James Hanley's novel Boy, equally grim in its way and successfully prosecuted for obscenity during the author's lifetime. Love this from the Wiki entry on it:

Novelist Hugh Walpole, in a review, described Boy as "A novel that is so unpleasant and ugly, both in narration and in incident, that I wonder the printers did not go on strike while printing it"

Yeah, I saw that mentioned in the author blurb at the back. E.M. Forster repped for it!

'Boy' is one of the most depressing things I have ever read, and I've read a lot of depressing things.

Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar + her poetry from '62 till her death. I liked the novel, its very much of a piece that is comfortable (as with a few Hollywoood films at the time) in taking in psychoanalysis, mental health, certain (now controversial) treatments. What she does in the book that the films wouldn't do is slap an agreeable ending.

Bernard Sumner's memoir Chapter and Verse. Still at him being a kid, just taking his 11 plus and trying to avoid the local non-Grammar High School.

I Swear I Was There about the first 2 Sex pistols gigs in Manchester teh ones put on by Howard devoto and Pete Shelley.

FOPP has a stack of great titles in the 2 for £5 section
also got a thing on the Who in the 60s and 77 Sulphate Strip.

Might go back for a couple of the books on style, The Bag I'm in for one.

New thread: And The Snow Fell Softly On ILB: What Are You Reading Now Winter 2017/18

In last weekend's WSJ, Daphne Merkin reviewed massive new collection of early letters from Plath, with at least one more volume to come. Her mother had her trained to report back on everything, everything, and she seems to have enjoyed it, is DM's impression, plus the "microscopic" focus, though disconcerting at first, becomes very involving, hypnotic even. But not too zone-out/in for perspective/patterns.

I've got a vol of Letters Home to come, and really looking forward to cracking on in 2018. I do like Plath's poetry but the talent of course was cut short, and from reading her I felt there was so much more to come (which I possibly don't feel about Kafka, say, but there was so much more of it, and it was miraculously something on a sentence-level.)