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

i read 'great granny webster' a year or two ago, loved it. i could read portraits of spiteful old bony scottish ladies all day

I started reading Crucible of War by Fred Anderson. It’s about the Seven Years War, aka French and Indian War, as it’s known in North America. It’s a cliche to say that a book makes history come alive. But I can’t think of a better way to phrase it (it’s late here). At 800 pages this should keep me busy during the upcoming week when I should have more than the usual amount of reading time.

Picked up Terry Graham's Punk Like Me and read a few pages. He's currently 12 years old and getting to go to one day festivals to see bands in 1968. Has had a set of drums bought for him to redirect his antisocial energies into.

Stuart Cosgrove Detroit 1967 The Year That Changed Soul I'm about half way through this. Enjoying it so far. Florence Ballard has just been edged out of the Supremes after nerves etc have been leading her to drink excessively.
Has several appearances by the Detroit rock contingent notably MC5 and John Sinclair.
JUst heard yesterday that Wayne Kramer has a memoir due out in August, it's up and advertised on Amazon. Should be good.
Also I'm intrigued about the Memphis 1968 book that is presumably a follow up to this Stuart Cosgrove one.

Under a Hoodoo Moon. Dr John's memoir.
I'm getting closer to the end of teh book, been a good read.
makes me want to check out his work beyond the Atco years which I picked up in boxed form last year.

I finished Tropic Moon, Georges Simenon. It started strong, and continued strong, but completely fell apart at the end, making it a worthwhile book to read, but lacking in satisfaction when it concludes hastily in a trite cliché.

I've a few dozen good choices waiting to be my next book, but I haven't made my choice, yet.

The Inimitable Jeeves
Complete Cosmicomics (Italo Calvino)

Last night I started What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, John Markoff. a book published circa 2004, thus emerging at the apex of the PC era and pre-dating the smartphone era by a few years.

Already in the first 50 pages it is very interesting to note the strong sidelights thrown upon the ideals of the PC pioneers by the evolution from PCs to smartphones. The smartphone is almost exactly the sort of device envisioned by Doug Engelbart in the late 1950s as an ubiquitous handheld tool to augment and extend human minds. Except mega-corporations have co-opted them as tools to manipulate us for their own benefit and staggeringly huge profits, and as part of law-enforcement's surveillance of everyone in society, which is the exact negative image of the ideals promoted by the hippie-inspired computer counterculture of the late sixties to mid-seventies, which the books traces.

taking a break from my slow crawl through the anatomy of melancholy to read/browse a critical study cum anthology of bataille & his document colleagues (made up of a curious mix of academics & renegade surrealists)

The new Julian Barnes, AND I LIKED IT SO THERE

YOU TAKE THAT BACK.

I am reading "The Fountain In The Forest" by Tony White, which I bought because there was a rave about it on the Backlisted podcast, and it's apparently a London-based oulipian police procedural (sounds fun), and it turns out Mr White is going to be at an event I'm going to on Monday. It's good so far, though I'm getting a slightly uncanny feeling from it because it turns out that the life of one of the characters - so far absent - in the book is based to some extent on a fellow I know. (I had no idea this was going to be the case, but I'm not imagining it, my friend is mentioned in the acknowledgements.)

Is it Robin Carmody?

It is not.

is it the pinefox?

How did you guess?

The Door. I checked it out of the library, thanks to you rubes.

As it turns out, What the Dormouse Said is more or less a heap of shallow anecdotes with very little focus, and a cast of dozens of (mostly) engineers, who the author has no gift for portraying as interesting people. Only someone with a very deep interest in the early days of Silicon Valley would bother with it.

Now on the new Hofmann version of Berlin Alexanderplatz, which is very entertaining so far. Never read the old, much criticised translation, but would trust Michael Hofmann to do anything.

Except be nice about Stefan Zweig, obviously.

Around the time Grand Budapest Hotel was released I took a quick look at an article from a German paper that had this puzzled tone of "he is the kitschiest, most old fashioned writer - why is Stefan Zweig so popular all of a sudden?", so I guess Hoffman's in agreement with dude's image in Germany?

I love him to bits anyway, and think probably any bad rep comes from a bias against writers who are openly sentimental.

Hey, take it over to Michael Hofmann: poet, translator, critic

Yeah, i love Zweig and am glad he's getting so much attention in English.

Lol, I'm reading The World of Yesterday for a book project I'm working on, and it really is incredibly kitchy and old fashioned. Quite good, still.

Of Grammatology - ol' jackie Derrida.

Tl;dr: stop being mean to writing

I took out a bunch of books on Jean Renoir and I'm picking out chapters based on the films I've seen. The highlight so far is Alexander Sesonske's chapter on The Rules of the Game (in Jean Renoir: The French Films, 1924-1939). It's beautifully written and gives a deep analysis of all the major characters, as well as the film's influences in French theatre. I have a copy of Marivaux's The Game of Love and Chance, one of Renoir's models for the film - that might be then next thing I read.

Taschen's Renoir coffee table book is cool too.

I liked Buddenbrooks (trade edition tie-in w ancient, handsome international Public TV miniseries), so I might like Zweig, right?

I went through a big phase of those German-speaking authors from the Weimar era (for lack of a better definition): Mann, Remarque, Zweig, Erich Kastner's Fabian, Tucholsky. None of them as experimental as Siegfried Lenz (or, say, Kafka) and all a bit soppy to some degree, but I dunno, you live through two world wars and economic chaos, writing with open-hearted sentimentality is admirable imo. Tucholsky has a lot of awesome sharp satire to balance it out, though I don't know if it translates well. Mann a bit more prone to going philosophical (also posher), but feels of a kind with a lot of big 19th century novelists to me.

I'm also reading Joseph Roth's Radetzky March for the same reason, and I prefer that as a sorta sentimental but also clear eyed look back.

Re Daniel_Rf, I've been on a bit of a Tucholsky binge recently: Castle Gripsholm was amazingly good.

I read a lot of Roth in 2015 -- "cold-eyed look backward" is closer to his approach than nostalgia.

Yeah, Castle Gripsholm is lovely. As I said, there's a component to his poetry - satirical, angry young man stuff, deeply informed by his hatred of authority and experiences in WWI - that doesn't really show up in his other work. Mind you it's also usually written in Berlin dialect, dunno how a translator would tackle it (has anyone? I should check up on that).

I bought a super cheap ebook of his,poetry which I haven't started yet: looks promising.

Just adding my 2p to say how disappointing Weimar-era fiction is. Berlin Alexanderplatz, reissued in a new translation just a couple of weeks ago, is not a thing I am that keen on - found the novel quite hard-going when I read it ten years ago (though that was probably my still small ability to read modernist fiction). I had a look at a couple of (positive) reviews that basically quote some of the slang Hoffmann used and I wasn't rushing to get it. Great TV series so can't complain.

Castle Gripsholm is really great, kinda minor though. I wouldn't count the really great writers like Kafka or Joseph Roth as they were part of Austro-Hungary. Plenty of great great writers from that region.

Ultimately my very favourite Weimar-era Lit was some of the poetry: Brecht and Benn.

I quite like to pick up some Kastner and Jakob Wasserman someday.

Since discussion began with Zweig I think it's okay to include Austro-Hungarian writers ;)

The discussion has now moved on :)

I'm now reading a book that I gave my wife as a gift last summer, at her instigation: The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben, a German forester. Its great interest is in presenting relatively recent research findings about forest ecology and the surprising degree of communication, coordination and cooperation among trees, and their high degree of sophistication in fighting against parasites and insects.

The writing style of the book is odd and a bit off-putting. I strongly suspect the author has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours speaking to elementary school students and this book is modeled on those talks. This gives the book the tone of an adult telling stories to children, but the information he imparts is genuinely fascinating and makes the childish tone worth tolerating.

read a lot of crime novels that i got from my dad this winter. PAUL DOIRON - KNIFE CREEK. pretty cool. Maine's answer to CJ BOX. 8 novels in 7 years! would read more. i dig game wardens. DON WINSLOW - THE FORCE. epic dirty cop novel. the only problem with dirty cop novels is i rarely care if the cops die or get caught. JOHN SANDFORD - DEEP FREEZE. i love that fuckin' flowers but john sandford is 73 years old and his best crime-writing days are kinda past him. not the best flowers book by a long shot. REED FARREL COLEMAN - WHAT YOU BREAK & WHERE YOU HURT. two by this guy. he certainly knows his way around Long Island - every road and town is accounted for - but it must be said: Long Island is fucking boring. WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER - SULFUR SPRINGS. would read more in this series! very entertaining. did not read the DICK WOLF novel i got from dad though. and didn't read the 4 LISA SCOTTOLINE books he gave me either. a later series of hers about a law firm. maybe if i get laid up with rubella or something i'll get to them. for now i'm back to the sci-fi.

Found a trashy 1991 copy of RED DRAGON. Surprised by how wooden it is, but it's enjoyable enough. Sadly none of the writing beats this plot blurb on the first page:

https://i.imgur.com/peYAS4A.jpg

Berlin Alexanderplatz, reissued in a new translation just a couple of weeks ago, is not a thing I am that keen on - found the novel quite hard-going when I read it ten years ago (though that was probably my still small ability to read modernist fiction).

I would've thought it'd be right up your alley! Experimental, angry, bleak. I'll admit I only got one third in myself.

There's obvious differences between Weimar and Austro-Hungary but in the end I think that, say, Zweig and Thomas Mann have enough in common that it makes sense to group 'em together.

I've changed man! :-) (joking not joking - I am not really into very experimental styles anymore - modernism, roman etc. just want to read 'voices' now.) Much less keener on the city novel as a thing than I used to be, too.

(One other good Weimar type novel is Koeppen's A sad Affair which I finished a couple of weeks ago)

I finished By the Open Sea, an early novel by Strindberg - it has some beautiful descriptions of nature (he is good on ice, enjoy it before it all melts), the story had the hints at the madness and paranoia you encounter on the later ones I've read like Madmen's Defence, but its not in full flow so it relies on a skeletal plot instead. Now ambling along with some stories by Antonio Di Benedetto, as collected in Nest in the Bones, issued last year by Archipelago and to much less aclaim than Zama, but it has many of the themes and his rapid-fire writing. Very journalistic: sets the mood fast and rolls on and on till its over.

The Scots Kitchen - F. Marian McNeill

gillian rose’s love’s work. a book about love and and death, specifically the approach of death through illness and decay, used to explore each other. philosophy as unsparing emotional rigour, thought not at all abstracted from power, love and pain.

it is odd and exhilarating to read love's proliferating language, the language of desire and loss, confined by a good writer, and used as the elements of thought.

Cancer, and the grammar and language of medicine,and iatrogenic power struggles are set alongside the specifics of painful love. it makes this a strange book with strange thoughts, powerful enough to give a sense of hidden truths. This is welcome as both Death and Love are overwhelming concepts and can brush off well-meaning attempts at exploration or description, turning them into bland truisms.

The only other passage i've read that similarly manages to meet and match their force, is the devastating opening passage to *Voices from Chernobyl* by Svetlana Alexeivich. i remember reading the opening words “i don’t know what i should talk about - about death or about love? or are they the same?” and raising a sceptical eyebrow about this observation, one that is a cliche but difficult to fully and fairly reason through. by the end of the short section i was in tears (on public transport ffs) following a horrific demonstration of the interrelation of love and death.

love’s work is v good and this nyrb edition includes an In Memoriam poem by Geoffrey Hill, which i read, and an introduction by michael wood, which i didn’t.

Anyone deprecating 1930s German writing needs to read Irmgard Keun.

Good call. Child of all Nations and After Midnight are great (the former especially so).

I thought "The Fountain In the Forest" was excellent - I don't read many procedurals so a procedurals fan might find it sub-par (maybe? I have no idea) but I romped through it. The fact it referenced a couple of record shops I used to frequent in Exeter, both of which closed more than two decades ago, helped. Briefly met the author last night, seemed like a decent fellow.

Now I'm reading "The Unmapped Country", a recently-issued selection of short stories and fragments by Ann Quin.

Log of the SS The Mrs Unguentine: Stanley Crawford -- enjoying this a lot, but it's very wise to have made it only 100p: suspect it would wear out its welcome at any greater length.

Getting a lot further into thr Terry Hraham memoir Punk Like Me.
He's been involved in the L.A. punk scene for a while hsnging out at the Masque and sharing an apt. With the woman who books the Whisky a gogo.
He's seeing Jane who has just joined the gogos on rhythm guitar. He's just taken up drums witu the Bags. Joining at the same time as Rob Ritter though Patricia Morrison is still playing bass. maybe Ritter only swapped to bass when he joined the Gun Club since Brian Tristan was already on guitar.
Tristan has already appeared a couple of times as someone who is around on the punk scene as has Jeffrey Lee Pierce. I don't think they have a band together yet. & Tristan doesn't become Kid Congo Powers until he joins The Cramps.
Grahams also trekked down to Texas to see the Sex Pistols.
Interesting book nglad it finally arrived after me paying for a kick starter campaign copy 5 years or so ago and being left in limbo for most of that.

Last night I picked up A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor. I first read it decades ago, so this is another re-read of a book that's faded from memory that seems worthy of getting reacquainted with. It may prove to be a tad too youthful and highly wrought for my immediate desires, but I'm going to take a run at it and should know soon enough how its flavor sits in my mouth.

I tried his novel, The Violins of St Jacques, recently, but it was too arch and 'ha, people who don't speak perfect French are such peasants' for me to continue with

I like the idea of a police procedural set in now closed Exeter record shops.

With the Duke of Harringay as a key witness to the theft of a racing bicycle.