Now the year is turning and the eeriness comes: what are you reading in autumn 2021?

I finished Treason by the Book, Jonathan Spence, about a peculiar set of events that revolved around a conspiracy during Qing dynasty China (ca. 1728-32). The multiplicity of characters and places involved, the level of details recounted, and the inescapable cultural strangeness of late imperial China for modern westerners, taken all together make this a difficult sort of book to read. Yet, its very foreignness is its central attraction.

The author understood how challenged his lay readers would be to enter this world and he did an admirable job of smoothing the difficulties as best he could. This is definitely a niche book that explores a curious byway of history. Not for everyone.

Trying to decide what's next: a newish book by a friend, or a book by the odd experimental poet Hugh Tribbey, who publishes mainly through POD and obscure online journals, and seems to have spent his entire life in smalltown Oklahoma.

the turn of the screw (& other stories)

Several things bought and started.

Soldaten Sonke Neither & Harald Welzer the collection of German POW conversation showing their epistemology etc. Supposed to be pretty harrowing. Casual talk of killing civilians etc. Based on transcriptions made at the time.

Ngugi Weep Not Child
My dad knew him from them lecturing at the University of Nairobi in the late 60s.
Think I need to read a load of his work.
It being good and all.

Also got another bell hooks out of the library.
Sisters of the Yam.

Also Arthur Miller Echoes Down Th e Corridor
a collection of essays spanning about 50 years I'm now in the late 80s/early 90s . he's worried about what teh meaning of German unification post the Berlin Wall coming down is going to mean after living at the time of teh holocaust, been with Harold Pinter at an ambassador's house where Pinter has wound up insulting the ambassador and had to leave and thinks the 2 should pair up to shake things up.
Good collection of essays and it has taken me way too long to get through. I think I borrowed this late summer last year.
I think I've just discovered a much longer set of his essays on the library system which I might look into. That and the rest of his prose, I like his writing.

Audrey lorde Anthology The Cancer Journals
been meaning to read her for a while. Hope i can get hold of a copy of this and another couple of her works cheaply. keeping my eyes peeled while i'm in charity shops and local remaindered ones etc

Still reading Another Tuneless Racket by Steven H Garner
Just read him talking about John Foxx era Ultravox! and interested in picking some up

I've been reading Helen Dewitt's short story collection "Some Trick". I was looking for "Last Samurai" but this was the Dewitt they had at the library. Seems to be a mix of more recent work and some stories from her Oxford student days in the mid-80s. Some stories are more commercial (one was published in Harpers) and some more formally experimental. I generally skim a bit when she delves into post-structuralism, higher calculus, or breaks out the Latin or French, so I'm probably missing a bunch. The more commercial stories are fun - the pace is zippy, the tone knowing but playful. She writes a lot about authors or artists occupying a zone of semi-celebrity not unlike her own, and the gentle absurdities of dealing with publishers, fans, etc. who have a strong relationship to the work but in a very different way than the author.

Went with my friend Ted's book, 'AN ORANGE.' It is sort of an inheritor of the New York School---> New Narrative continuum of gossipy, philosophical work that is disarmingly casual while doing some very heavy lifting. I like it, tho it isn't "my thing" poetically.

Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell

the anomaly, herve le tellier

Anna Kavan - Ice
Gerald Stern's poems.

Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell

― youn, Wednesday, December 15, 2021 4:18 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i love this book!

whats up table. i'm a bit of a poetry dilettante, but i love bernadette mayer. i've been making my way slowly through the complete ted berrigan this year too, spent a few pleasant weekend afternoons with a few beers and his poems

i have also started reading alison rumfitt, 'tell me i'm worthless', which i haven't found too much to like in yet, but it's early days, and i started james baldwin's 'another country', which is wonderful

i've been dipping in and out of 'intersecting lives', a joint biography of deleuze and guattari. i always thought guattari was the 'weird' one, but now i'm starting to think it was the other guy, deleuze

Deleuze? A weirdo? No way!

Ha, anyway dogs, that's cool that you're into Bernadette's work and have been reading Berrigan. Do you dig Notley, Berrigan's wife at the time of his death? She's great, still alive, too. Here's one of her more famous ones: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50834/at-night-the-states

I finished Ted Dodson's 'AN ORANGE,' and think I'm going to go with Hugh Tribbey's "EF Zero" next

My next book is The High Window, Raymond Chandler. It was selected specifically to be easy reading, because I've been agitated and discouraged lately and I need something entertaining and soothing.

I think Backlisted did an episode on that one.

The High Window is the densest Chandler I think. The Backlisted episode is a good one.

I'm reading Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth. Good enough to feel like I've read it before.

Aimless, you might also try John D. MacDonald's The Empty Copper Sea: Travis McGee is trying to defend the good name of a friend or acquaintance, but gets as down on himself as he does the slow destruction of Florida by citizens-denizens, who seem as oblivious its and their own decline, for the most part: may be more neurotic than Marlowe, regarding himself as an over-qualified "beach bum," which can affect his behavior, uh-oh. Pretty entertaining.

as oblivious *to* their own decline (incl. ethical) I meant

can we talk about backlisted

QI is a dismal product... miller really comes across as sort of a blowhard or two, like your nightmare of yourself down the pub (and I can't imagine wanting to look at any of his books)... & there is this clubbiness I can just barely stand, really the opposite of the alleged parasocial value of podcasts (I am glad I am NOT friends w these people!)

and yet I do like it a fair bit

I basically agree with all of that. It's beyond parody - the clubbable enthusiasm, the lack of any sort of critical acumen, the endless line of posh voices presented as diversity - and I battle with myself for listening to it, but I've found lots of great things.

I read The Year of Reading Dangerously so you don't have to.

I'm reading Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth. Good enough to feel like I've read it before.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, December 17, 2021 1:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i bought a copy of this for my girlfriend as a christmas present, it is truly the greatest

xp yeah I think I'm just into hearing genuine enthusiasm about books bc I am somewhere between their critical largesse and the reflexive assumption that everything is shit you see elsewhere. also I've never been to an ilb fap. Just wish one time someone would yell "waterstones is a shit chain that doesnt pay a living wage" during one of their reveries

Tried an EP of backlisted once and couldn't hate it enough but I find book people who just talk books and nothing else hard going.

Chinaski and Brad, have you read The Fourth State of Matter, the essay by Beard?

If not get ready for a big gut punch. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter

Oh wait, it's in that book. Christ it's good.

If the rest of her writing even approaches that I should probably order a copy.

It's in the book Table and what led me to it. I swear I read about it on here but it might have been somewhere else. An extraordinary essay.

Xp - yep!

i also bought the book bc the fourth state of matter blew my mind. it's all great

Also just finished the high window - quite dense but I find it easier-going than the big sleep (too chaotically plotted) and the long goodbye (one of my favourite books but a hard book to write straight through)

I’m an unqualified fan of backlisted and pay for their patreon (which includes an **even more sel-indulgent** free extra fortnightly podcast). I’m not blind to (or un-annoyed by) their cultural blind spots and chummy self-satisfaction as presenters, but I find them both very entertaining company, and they’ve led me to a lot of good books, just like ILB

"At the end of the hallway are the double doors leading to the rest of my life. I push them open and walk through."

just finished the high window - quite dense

my favorite parts are where Chandler tosses in a brief chit-chat between Marlowe and some totally peripheral character with whom he just happens to talk to as he wends his way through the plot: security guards, elevator operators, bartenders, apartment managers and such like. these conversations are uniformly hilarious.

long-time ilx lurker here, since 2003 or so... (more of a *reader* than someone inclined to share, I guess). anyway, in compiling my list of books I read this year I thought of my debt to these threads' suggestions, & decided to pipe up w/ a little thanks for that and try a post -- from this year eugene lim's dear cyborgs and a couple peter culley books are 2 examples of recommendations I've taken to. other books I've read & loved this year include fanny howe's random love novel collection, john edgar wideman's homewood trilogy, marge piercy's woman on the edge of time, camille roy's honey mine, nikki wallschlaeger's pizza and warfare chapbook, amiri baraka's the system of dante's hell, joyelle mcsweeney's flet, bernadette mayer's sonnets (some mention of her upthread I see), alice notley's noir epic negativity's kiss, jim dickinson's memoir i'm not dead, i'm just gone...etc., many more... and more in keeping w/ the thread theme, at the moment i'm reading harmony holiday's negro league baseball and sesshu foster's atomik aztex. anyway, cheers all --

Hey zak - some interesting things there to check out. Nice one.

I was probably a bit chippy about Backlisted last night. I like it and they seem like good people. I did try the Locklisted episodes - the Beatles obsession gave me hives!

Lily, is that THE BELL JAR?

That's from "The Fourth State of Matter" by Jo Ann Beard.

Nammalvar - Endless Song, a cycle of 1102 stanzas and its my very much jam as far as poetry goes. A voice in the hightest pitch is hit over and over in this set of devotional music. There is an NYRB piece about it here, and its great to be introduced to a tradition (Tamil poetry), history, place and a time by reading an incredible work that survived, at all.

is it end of year time? is there normally a separate thread for that?

40 according to goodreads, although i think that's missing a couple. total was helped by a month of reading a dozen things of <200 pages each, some of them much less (although it still reckons the shortest was The Old Man And The Sea at 90 pages)

back on Stamped From The begiing by Ibram X Kendi
Currently reading about some semiu hypocritical misunderstandings by W.E.B. Du bois and other things contemporary to it. Last chapter had been on the Birth Of A nation. Kendi has been describing ertas since ther 17th century in realtion to one figurehead figure so late 19th & early 20 th century tie in with Webby and KIendi is not afraid to show some serious flaws I think he has shown some reason for his epistemology but it is not a fully balanced one anyway.
I just read about a feud with Marcus Garvey who I have to read . Did try I think in the mid 80s. But do want to know more right now. & now setting myself up with way too much to read in way too short a time. Which is never teh best set up. Just aware taht there is a lot of reading I should have done a lot earlier. Alsdo want to read Ida Welles and Booker T Washington though the latter does seem to be way too wishy washy. Oh & want to read Pan African stuff though not sure if teh focus of what was umbrellaed by that term would still be right.
Du Bois did set up or help set up the initial meetings in the early years of teh 20th century. hope things are way beyond taht now but don't know and probably should do.
Anyway I enjoy Kendi I enjoy learning about what he is saying and it does make me want to read more by the people he is talking about.
I am aware taht he has his own biases and i think he is too. But every human being has biases and it is better to acknowledge and try to show what those are in order to get a more objective perspective. Though taht very idea may be mythic.

Just finishging the appendices to Steven H gardner's first volume of Anothe rTuneless Racket.
just read him talking about the mysoynistic thuggery of teh Stranglers and how he can't get beyond the 1st 3 lps or at least those are the 3 he mainly focuses on. I think he has picked up copies of later Cornwe;; era stuff but doesn't listen to them much.
So have enjoyed reading himn talking about a bunch of bands taht I am semi aware of and a few i know a bit better. So will move onto his next volume some time soon. JUst got so many books taht I want to have already read right now that I want to read. & a stack that I keep buying. & still a fw i regret not having grabbed when I had the chance etc.
this was my bog book for teh last while, is set out in a good way for that purpose I think.
Havea few books set up to replace it. May go back to the history of torture in the Uk since the 1940s or carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World or THinking Fast & slow by Daniel Kahneman

"is it end of year time? is there normally a separate thread for that?"

We make a new thread every year. Here is last year's.

What did you read in 2020?

yeah, thought as much but the ilb board posts didn't scroll back that far

Xpost Hi Stevo, don't know how available Library of America editions are in the UK, but their DuBois collection is incredible---as an analytical scholar, pioneering sociologist, farseeing polemicist, artist---always a magnetic read---he's as strong as any American author I can think of---totally agree w the blurb here: "It is no exaggeration to say that [Du Bois] anticipated, and influenced, many of the events that led to the making of the modern world."---Washington Post
https://loa.org/books/39-writings?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3J_Csbbw9AIVE4eGCh3qGQ48EAAYASAAEgIPzPD_BwE
Also the collection Blackwater, which incl. his essays, allegories, science fiction, fitting together, back and forth through the "walls" of genre and subgenre.

"Allegories" may not be the right word: no codes, just extensions of his characteristic concerns, thought patterns, stylistic excursions.

That's not an LoA publication, may be more widely available in the UK.

Hi zak m, nice list there. I'm always glad to see someone reading Peter's work :-)

I finished Julia Drescher's 'Disarticulation' as well as Hugh Tribbey's 'EF Zero' between Friday and yesterday evening.

I was in the mood to read an older novel, and so decided to pick up Silas Marner for a re-read. Love this book so much.

i've been working on mailer's the executioner's song for about a month, picking it up and reading a hundred pages or so, then giving it a rest. just reached the midway point and am feeling mildly frustrated that there's still so much of this thing left to read. i did find it very gripping for a while, and there's a genuinely vivid sense of the bleakness of this landscape, the depressing hollowness of so many of these characters' lives, the pointlessness and cruel randomness of the violence...but i can't shake the sinking feeling that the guy at the center of this epic is just not a very interesting person. maybe that's the point, though.

also picked up a collection of melville stories and am making my way through that. bartleby is still a perfect story (funny, too, even if it's also crushingly sad), and the sketches are amusing. reread billy budd for the first time in many years. it's a very strange story, in some ways an off-putting one, despite its greatness; even in such a brief narrative, melville can't stop himself from going on tangent after tangent, circling around what he really wants to say...