Dan Brown wins Nobel Prize in Literature ... whatcha readin' this month?

I'm continuing to read Atlas Shrugged, perhaps the greatest novel ever written, as it explains the awesome philosophy of selfishness, greed, and hatred of charity and altruism. Ayn Rand is the pinnacle of human virtue and kindness.

I'm also reading the last volume of memoirs by Henry Kissinger, diplomat and humanitarian, who totally shouldn't stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Das Kapital, Volume 2, is riveting reading, each page more exciting than the next.

And I'm also reading The Years of Rice and Salt, which is OK. Still not as good as the alternate history novels written by Newt Gingrich

... April Fool's!

Your April Fool's joke would have been funnier if I had remembered who Dan Brown is.

Very clever!

I am reading I don't want to talk about it, which is (as one might expect from the subject matter) quite the downer.

I just finished Digging Deeper. It was very good.

I'm still on my memorial Diana Wynne Jones kick, reading Witch Week. And watching a lot of baseball.

I am reading Selected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. You may detect a national poetry month theme in my selections ... it seemed an opportune time to clear the unread poetry books from my pile.

I just finished The Power and the Glory, one of Pope Paul VI's favorites.

(...Along with Naked Lunch, of course.)

I'm currently reading All the Pretty Horses because all I can handle about now are very simple words and teenage cowboy conversations.

5: Have you read the Enderby series? In one novel, Hollywood does some not-so-nice things with "The Wreck of the Deutschland" by Hopkins.

6: Greene and Burroughs. Like stampeding cattle through the Vatican ...

Have you read Earthly Powers by Burgess?

The Years of Rice and Salt continues to impress. Kim Stanley Robinson can write a ripping epic alternate history -- spanning 700 years. Sometimes draggy or overly didactic in places, the scope and plausibility of the worldbuilding make up for it. He's no slouch. Stylistically, the novel has a flat, journalistic feel to it, closer to Bolano

1> you poor thing, how long have you been working on Atlas Shrugged? Doesn't it ever end? (Though, I suppose, the alternating it with other books would drag it out.)

8: I ask myself the same question. It's not like I read it everyday. My eye-balls would have to be made out of Kevlar for that. I haven't picked that polished turd in quite a while. Decisions, decisions. Read the remaining 3 chapters in a burst or preserve my sanity?

Once I finish this monstrous literary abomination, I plan to read JR by William Gaddis -- a postmodern satire of capitalism from the 1970s -- and Against the Day by Pynchon (anarchists and meteors and Chums of Chance, Oh my!)

And I read Das Kapital, Volume 2, quite rarely. It's arid and technical and otherwise rather drab. The "lost volume" of Das Kapital, since most people read the more polemical first volume or sometimes just skip to the controversial Volume 3. A massive difference from the snark and bombast of his shorter political works.

Although I'm reading Marx, Rand, and Kissinger at the same time and my brain hasn't imploded from the cognitive dissonance.

Karl> Savor those last three chapters via webcam. You can do for Atlas Shrugged what Alex Day did for Twilight! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L253VLwH3w

As for my reading, I've been a bit under the weather so am a bit burned out on reading, but I've started reading Among Thieves by Doug Hulick. It's going to be dark. Starts with a nasty bit of torture, and I'm sure it will get darker from there.

& either it's too shiny new a book to have touchstones, or the touchstones are going down again.

In times of stress I tend to turn to romance and feel-good fantasy for comfort, so my serious reading hasn't been progressing much lately. Still reading Blood Meridian and stories from L'homme qui a vu l'ours. Should also pick up Objectivity again, it's a paper copy and too big and heavy for me to take on my travels, so I've been neglecting it these last weeks.

Read Engineering Infinity, allegedly an anthology of hard sf but more an anthology of, well, sf. Some good stories in it. Then read Blindsight by Peter Watts, which many people had told me I'd like. And I sort of did. Lots of interesting ideas in it, but it's a pretty nasty book, too much of it is carried in dialogue (I like me some descriptive prose, I do), and something about it bothered me all the time I was reading it. It wasn't until I'd finished it I figured out what: it's a 1990s sf novel, not a 21st century one. Then read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Some lovely writing, but I never quite bought the narrator as the character he purported to be - he struck me as too, well, maternal... Now reading Ghostwritten, David Mitchell's debut. Enjoying it, so far.

I just finished The Book of Disquiet (not my cup of tea), and am going to start Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies tonight. I'm looking forward to it as I enjoyed his Invisible Cities a great deal.

No further comment on Atlas Shrugged.

#12: I came to Ghostwritten after reading most of David Mitchell's other books (still missing Number 9 Dream) and enjoyed finding the seeds of some of the others, especially Cloud Atlas. He has yet to disappoint me.

Interesting comment about Gilead. I had a harder time with the characters in Home, the follow-up. She does write beautifully.

I finally picked up 2666 and was so deep in von Archimboldiana that I forgot -- until there was just a passing mention -- that it's largely about murders in Mexico. I'll have to decide whether to read all 5 books at once or give it a rest. I have the 3-volume edition, so at least I don't have to schlep 900 pages around.

Speaking of Cloud Atlas, I was at a museum and saw a set of George Washington's teeth. They know he had 8 of them in his life, and yes, they were made in part with human teeth so I was thinking of Cloud Atlas and the guy who was combing the beach for human teeth to sell.

Hi, I'm new to this group, as I've put a few books into LT I thought it would be good to share some of them. Currently I have a pile of books waiting to be read, but it would be embarrassing to list them here and then not get round to reading them!

I'm currently reading The Accident by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare, finding it very strange and dreamlike, not at all like the others I've read, some of which (The File on H, Broken April) are among my all-time favourites. Not sure what I think of it yet.

I just quickly read Restoration by Rose Tremain because I found it in a hospital waiting room, a very enjoyable read and in my opinion at the same time quite profound. I'm not usually a fan of historical fiction.

I surprised myself by giving up on a book - What I Lived For by Joyce Carol Oates - usually I can't put her books down, but this one verges on unreadable.

#14, I hope you can stomach the 300 pages or so of murders in 2666 - I found it hypnotic

Just returned from a brief trip down south, came back with a batch o' library sale books from Regina, some used stuff from Moose Jaw. Tired tonight but maybe I'll post the roster tomorrow...

Atlas Shrugged continues to be a total mess. Best mixed metaphor thus far. Describing John Galt's hidden lab: "She (Dagny Taggart, John Galt's love interest) gasped: the long, light-flooded, windowless space beyond the threshold, enclosed in a shell of softly lustrous metal, like a small ballroom aboard a submarine, was the most efficiently modern laboratory she had ever seen." WTF? Ballroom on a submarine? Must have been reading Jules Verne that day she was popping diet pills like Tic-tacs. But don't be fooled, Atlas Shrugged isn't science fiction, or so Objectivist Randroids will tell you. Then again, that excuse goes as far as saying Scientology isn't a giant Ponzi scheme with Z-grade science fiction elements thrown in.

I enjoy books with scientist heroes, but this is positively crass. I've seen better plotting and characterization in the Zucker Bros. movie "Top Secret."

Picked up Blood Meridian again. Honestly, I swear this man must have made a bet to use every single obscure word in the dictionary. Lemniscate? LEMNISCATE? I can't even understand the dictionary's definition!!!

And I'd need to get a Spanish dictionary too.

But, well, it's still beautiful even if he just picked words at random in the goddamn dictionary.

That's how the 500 chimps in the room will begin to write Shakespeare. ;)

Honestly, I swear this man must have made a bet to use every single obscure word in the dictionary. Lemniscate? LEMNISCATE? I can't even understand the dictionary's definition!!!

Then you wouldn't like Alexander Theroux either:

http://www.themillions.com/2010/06/linguistic-revenge-an-alexander-theroux-prime...

On the second last chapter of Atlas Shrugged At least now the looter idiots are torturing John Galt. They almost get to the point of killing him, then the Torture Machine breaks. Ugh, facepalm! They evil socialist oppressors should have went with low-cost rat-cage-on-face used by the Party in 1984 Plus rat-cages-on-face are eco-friendly, sustainable, animal-friendly, and have a low carbon footprint. Seriously, the torture scenes is Sade's novels weren't half as tedious as this one.

Of course the torture machine broke. It was designed by lazy socialist scum riding the coattails of great men.

Have you learned nothing from this experience. Perhaps you should read the book again to fully absorb its lessons, Karl.

Rings of Saturn was wonderful. Do you ever wonder how you can have been reading for years and not found time for a particular book before now? That was the feeling I had with the Sebald. It felt so intimate, as if he were speaking to me alone, as if the text had been waiting for me to be receptive to its wisdom.
Still that's possibly bleed-through from The White Goddess, slowly boggling my brain.
I was back at my folks for a week so reading whatever I could get my hands on, to wit The Railway Children which more than stands up to a reread as an adult. I don't think Rand would approve though, as it's full of selfless kindness to fellow men.
I also read The Incomparable Atuk, which the Canadian Literary Establishment come out of like a bowl of cold sick. Not really my thing, a little broad in its satire for my tastes, but I feel that had I known the scene at the time it would have hit harder.
Works on Paper, Eliot Weinberger's collected essays from the early eighties, continues to delight, and I'm now turning my attention to The Lost Books of The Odyssey, which I don't want to end

I've just looked up lemniscate and, super word though it is, I don't think I'll get much chance to use it.

Ben et al: What? You mean you don't often do arithmetic involving p to the second power equals a to the second power cosign 2 of the funny symbol?

22: Spoil sport. The machine breaking would ruin whatever minimal drama is left in this stupid novel.

Have you learned nothing from this experience. Perhaps you should read the book again to fully absorb its lessons, Karl

Actually, I'd prefer to have Alan Greenspan use the novel as a weapon and simply bash in my skull. It's not like Objectivists are biologically capable of subtlety. Luckily Canada hasn't been run by Rand's minions for decades. I place most of the blame for the current global economic apocalypse at her doorstep and the developmentally disabled day-traders who lap up her philosophy like lines of cocaine. And since Rand is against such evil notions as charity and mercy, I enjoy taking a hard-line with her comically epic ineptitude, especially when it comes to such inconsequential things as language usage, logical fallacies, and acting like a Bolshevik thug to anyone who criticizes her alleged genius. The real tragedy is that the machinery of the Gulag missed her.

Solzenitsyn, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Akhmatova ... those were writers! Rand is a ninth-rate hack with a psychotic fandom of sexual retards. Sometimes the fish in the barrels need to be shot.

Finished a non-fic travelogue on Montana past and present, written by the great grandson of one of the state's early movers and shakers.

GHOST HUNTING IN MONTANA by Barnaby Conrad III.

I haven't traveled much in the United States but Montana is my favorite of the ones I've visited so far. GHOST HUNTING is informative and well-written and the reader is introduced to a good cross-section of the region's interesting, off-beat, ornery, oddball populace. Place definitely produces or attracts mavericks of one kind or another.

21: Hey, I didn't say I don't like him. But I can't help wondering if this wild vocabulary of his is really a necessity, or if he isn't maybe showing off a tad. And sometimes going out if his way to pick up a particularly obscure word or ten...

I'm hoping I can use lemniscate at scrabble some day. If only I could remember it for more than 10 seconds...

Rereading George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books... which I forgot I loved. Too much resentment built up towards the author, not enough appreciation for some damn good readin'. I haven't jumped into the fantasy discussion much, but I do love these books.

Other reads: Brideshead Revisited, which is pretty witty, and City of Thieves, which scratches my Russia itch. (And the author of City of Thieves is one of the producers of the Game of Thrones series...)

Finished Freedom with a sense of relief. Can't say I enjoyed my time reading this book, and I found myself nit-picking because of my grumpiness with the book. Had some good things, but mostly I'm just glad it's over and I can return it to the library.

Moving on to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet which is also due back at the library this weekend.

29: I agree, the Ice and Fire books were great, but I'm not sure how I feel about taking the series up again. I found the last one disappointing, maybe because it left out about half of the characters. And I forgot most of the story, so I guess I'd better re-read the whole thing if I want to read the latest one. Which is apparently not the last one, and how long will it take till the next? So many questions...

#31> FlorenceArt, the next book is due out (July 12th) and I *think* is about the other half of the characters who got missed out.

I'm curious about re-reading them, because of the upcoming HBO series (I think Australia's getting the series on a pay TV station; I refuse to get pay TV, I'll just borrow the DVDs one day). I think I gave up at about book 3, my memory's not good enough to cope with the delays between books. :}

I gave up on book 3, which seemed to consist only of half of the cast tramping one way then the other across Westeros. Why do all epic fantasy series get bogged down sometime after the second or third books?

Finished Woodcutters by Bernhard--best book I've read in months.

Don't you just LOVE it when a book rings your bell like that, Geoff?

#33 I honestly think the authors get bored with their creations before the readers do, so they try to change it up some to keep themselves interested. Or they add characters that no one really wants to read about (Davos, in this case).

I also suspect many of them have manic-depressive tendencies and cannot sustain the interest and energy that they apply to the first book or two. Scott Lynch seems more like that type to me.

>33 iansales: - why does ALL fantasy now come in trilogies or series? Most of it is barely interesting enough to cover a postal stamp nevermind 8 volumes. I like Martin's early work, his short stories and great vampire novel, Fevre Dream but just am not willing to commit to his mammoth series.

Reading Kafka The Trial, Beckett Waiting for Godot and MacNeice Collected Poems.

"why does ALL fantasy now come in trilogies or series?"

Idiot fans, greedy authors, agents and editors.

Next question? Man, I'm really firing on all cylinders today.

38: I did enjoy William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy Compared to any high fantasy stuff, his books were all rather short and his prose was glittery neon-tinged hardboiled wonderfulness. Can't say the same for his new sort-of trilogy. Pattern Recognition was awesome; Spook Country was fascinating in parts, underwhelming as a whole, and I haven't read the latest volume.

Speaking of short, after I finish Years of Rice and Salt, I'm planning to read Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker. Short, acidic, experimental, punk rock literary anarchy. Sure beats the solemn dudgeon of your basic garden variety High Fantasy schlock.

Cliff, you forgot the marketers!

How funny, on the bus this morning, I was whinging to myself that fantasy would be a lot more fun to read if it didn't require so much investment of time (and bookshelf space). Nothing wrong with a good, short, pithy book. Shame fantasy novelists have gone in the other direction.

Decided I didn't want to rush The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I'll get another copy and read it at my leisure.

And have picked up Parrot and Olivier in America, which I am enjoying. Luscious. (Sadly, I'm supposed to be rushing this one too, as bookgroup discussion on it starts in a couple of days. Methinks I'm just going to have to be late for the discussion, I don't want to rush.)

>19 FlorenceArt:

I'm reading some very different McCarthy works. I just finished a story of teenage John Wayne as Romeo, All the Pretty Horses. Prior to that, No Country for Old Men. The most simplistic prose imaginable.

And, what's with all these characters who get slashed, stabbed, trampse all over God's creation, and just suck it up and keep driving? If it were me, I'd howl, whine, and reach for my insurance card.

Sandydog> LOL! It's an author's job to beat up their characters.

I knew nothing about Ayn Rand until I joined LT, (although there was a reference in Mad Men), over here in the UK I don't think her books are in bookshops. Judging from the comments here, I don't think I'll bother.

Finished Ghostwritten. Mitchell's books never quite add up to the sum of their parts. This one has some nice bits in it, then goes all weird in the middle with some discorporeal entity riding in the mind of one of the characters, and transferring across to others; and then it goes completely bonkers at the end when it introduces an AI charged with preventing war from ever happening again. There are some death-defying leaps of logic and narrative in Ghostwritten.

Now reading Evening's Empire by David Herter. And very good it is too. Reminds me of John Crowley.

42: Haven't read the two McCarthy works you mention, but I must say I like the "simplistic prose" in The Road much better than the "baroque" one in Blood Meridian (who was it called it baroque here, I can't remember).

I've since finished The Castle of Crossed Destinies and also If on a winter's night a traveller, and am almost finished with Candide. Hopefully I'll be able to complete it tonight. I've really enjoyed the style (of the translation, sadly) and story. I knew I should have read Voltaire earlier! D:

CANDIDE surprised me--its cynicism and humor frequently had me in stitches. Not at all stodgy--a classic book with a black heart.

48: You've said it much better than I can. I agree with you completely about Candide. :) I am almost sorry to be near the end of the story, except that Candide's never-ending optimism and naivety are beginning to irk my cold, unsympathetic heart and even the last red sheep has exited the story (I love the idea of red sheep). :(

Wow, I read Candide at school and have absolutely no recollection of it. Maybe I should re-read it...

I've also been thinking about re-reading Montesquieu's Lettres persanes lately. It contains a phrase that all French schoolchildren of my generation must remember: "Mais comment peut-on être Persan ?" (How can one possibly be a Persian?).

Can't say enough good things about Years of Rice and Salt Highly recommended. Plausible alternate history; compelling characters; hermetic worldbuilding that makes sense. The part I'm reading is basically a lot of talk in schoolroom classes and cafe conversation. It's actually exciting to read, since the history class is examining the previous history that was the focus of previous chapters. Makes Harry Turtledove look like a slacker. I'd put this on par with Man in the High Castle by PKD and Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin. All the more amazing because this Muslim- and Hindu-centric alternate history came out in 2002. (I'm not sure how long Robinson took to write this, but the synchronicity to world events is chilling.)

Karl> I'll have to wishlist Years of Rice and Salt. You don't get easily excited about a book... in a good way that is. Rand certainly gets you excited, but thats more in a bodily harm sort of way.

Candide! I read it in college and remember loving it. I can't imagine totally forgetting the experience though. Florence, you must have been under a deadline and reading it when you were very, very sleepy. Candide's love kept offering up body parts of herself for everyone to eat. She couldn't let anyone starve! How's that for sickeningly self-sacrificing?

52: You got me. Rand does get me excited, at least inspiring me to act like a DAF Sade character whenever some Objectivist sociopath opens his pie-hole. Makes one nostalgic for the times when people were flayed alive or publicly flogged.

"Dear Comrade Stalin, You forgot one. When you're done taking thwacks at Trotsky's noggin, come on up to New York City and take a few thwacks at Rand's thick skull. Bring crowbars and blow-torches. Also, duct tape. Crazy broad doesn't know when to stop talking. Sincerely, America."

I never met a Rose Tremain novel I didn't love, so I'm reading The Road Home.

Reading The Fiery Cross for pleasure and David Copperfield for school - both are fabulous, IMO!

53> Yes! Lots of duct tape.

Finished Evening's Empire. Proved a surprisingly quick read. The early Crowley-eseque fantasy took an abrupt left turn somewhere about the middle, before finishing up somewhere quite strange. Excellent book. Herter is certainly worth reading.

Now started Say Goodbye, a mainstream novel by Lewis Shiner - see here (second to last photo).

52: Well, I was a teenager and that's a loooooong time ago, and I HAD to read it for school so I might not have paid a lot of attention, and I always forget the books I read anyway, which is why I can/have to re-read them. Or possibly I didn't read Candide but only Zadig, though I doubt that. And before you ask, no, I have no idea what Zadig is about.

I downloaded Candide and the Lettres persanes to my e-reader last night, now I just have to set aside some time to read them...

In the meantime still enjoying Blood Meridian.

SPOILER ALERT
Can't remember (but as I said that doesn't mean much) a book I've read where I was actually HAPPY to see most of the cast slaughtered.
/SPOILER

I'm planning to read Zadig too, but I've started on Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before first, what with the library deadline hanging over me and all that. There's a comparison on the back of the book to Candide, but so far I'm not convinced. Umberto Eco is a lot wordier, for one. ;)

Hmm, I don't recall Candide's love, or anyone else in the story, offering up body parts for human consumption (though there was mention of a missing buttock), but she did get very ugly at the end of the story.

59: Hope you enjoy The Island of the Day Before as much as I did! I read it at roughly the same time as An Instance of the Fingerpost, and though the two are very different, they are linked in my mind because they got me curious about the birth of modern science.

60: Thank you. :) I'm generally quite fond of Umberto Eco, though I haven't read all his works. From the ones I've read, he manages to insert enough humour into his writing to keep me amused. (I usually prefer light-hearted and/or humourous stories to sombre or sad ones.)

It's such a coincidence, but I also have An Instance of the Fingerpost out from the library in my pile of to be read books. Looks like I'll have to bump it up my reading list!

58: You know, I misread that as "happy the cat was slaughtered," and was absolutely horrified for the few seconds it took to occur to me to read it again.

62> Yes, far less horrifying to read a book where the whole cast is slaughter than one in which the cat gets it. ;)

Finished Years of Rice and Salt and I will begin Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker. Nothing like a wild change in tone.

Finished Blood Meridian. Wow, this guy really knows how to get under my skin.

Went to the library today and picked up The Savage Detectives (in a French translation), because 2666 seemed just too bloody huge to carry around. I read a few pages already and it looks like Bolaño's writing has at least one thing on McCarthy's: humor! I like it already.

"The Savage Detectives (in a French translation)"

All at once, I feel even dumber than usual...

Why? It's just that since I can't read the original text, I'd rather read a French translation than an English one. French is my mother tongue, and if I read an English translation I will add my own imperfect understanding to the intrinsically imperfect translation.

Did I really type intrinsically? Never mind, I had too much Beaujolais with my dinner.

Florence, truly you belong here. You make up for people like Ian.

Well, Ian isn't, strictly speaking, "people". Not according to his last DNA test.

But you know what I mean...

67: Every time I hear the word "beaujolais" I feel like I miss France even though I only lived there for 9 months and that was more than 20 years ago. Sigh.

I hope Bolaño's French translator is as masterful as Natasha Wimmer, who did the English translation of The Savage Detectives, 2666 and many of his other works. Not that I can ever know how closely a translation captures an author's voice but I instinctively make such judgments anyway.

I'm in the middle of Book 3 of 2666, working up to "The Part about the Crimes." The 3-volume edition makes it fully portable but I don't know if it's available in French, which I'm certain was my mother tongue in some prior life but, sadly, is woefully inadequate in this one.

I've just finished 2666. While I thought it was fantastic, I couldn't help feeling the ending was missing a little something - I'm not sure exactly what.

I'm now about 2/3 through Room. It's a good story, but I'm finding the Donoghue's style uneven.

Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker is wonderful. Anarchic, confrontation, sexually explicit, politically radical.

Reading about the Angolan Civil War in Years of Upheaval by Kissinger. What a mess. The word that comes to mind is "catastrafnck." 3 factions, Soviets, Cubans, and CIA, oh my! And then it went on for nearly 30 years. Ugh.

70: Well no, the translation doesn't seem all that good. Like you, I can't tell if it's faithful to the original, but I can tell it has that slightly awkward feel that screams "this is a translation!". I think I can live with it though.

After all, I managed to finish My Name is Red even though the translation was not only awkward but sprinkled with grammatical errors, especially one that drove me nuts because it was connected to the main character's name and popped out every couple of pages. If a French author wrote like this, I would just leave the book in the métro for a less difficult reader to enjoy (yes, I did this once). But I'm more forgiving knowing that the fault is probably the translator's.

I've yet to read My Name is Red, although it sits on my TBR shelf, but I notice that it has a different translator than Pamuk's more recent books, e.g. Snow, Istanbul, Museum of Innocence, which are ably translated (I think) by Maureen Feely. Maybe he (or his US publisher) upgraded his translator.

74: the French publishers certainly did, his other books don't have the same translator, thankfully. I checked, but haven't tried them yet.

I like The Savage Detectives, but the translation is really not very good. I checked it looks like there is no other French version available. Maybe I should try the English one? I don't think I've ever done that. Reading a translation is bad enough in any case, but reading a translation from a foreign language in a foreign language seems rather stupid...

About halfway through Edmund Morris's THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT; it's the first of three volumes, terrific biography. T.R. has always fascinated me...

After Say Goodbye, which was good if a bit lightweight, I read The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, the sf debut of 2010. Still working out what I think to it, though.

Now reading Robert Irwin's Satan Wants Me.

Started reading Brothers in Arms by Camille Tawil True to form for current affairs books, it's immediately outdated, since the revolts in the Middle East have thrown a monkey-wrench into the plans of theocratic jihadis. But the events in the Middle East are unfinished, much like the revolutions of 1848 and post-Cold War independence movements in Eastern Europe.

Funny reading this at the same time as Empire of the Senseless, since Acker's work is all about "terrorists" and ethnic groups rising up against their oppressors.

kswolff: You should try Acker's Blood and Guts in High School if you liked Empire.

80: Read it. Great stuff, if you're into that sort of thing.

you're making me sound like a pervert

...not that there's anything wrong with that...

Just don't run for elected office, the American public likes their make-believe political figureheads to be as monotonous and family-friendly as their processed microwave cuisine. Ironic how the pro-family types always end up turning out to be skeevy degenerates? Seriously, Ron Jeremy has more moral superiority than Mark Foley or Larry Craig Ewww ...

Going a little older with Women in Love and getting my Greene kick with The Heart of the Matter.

I have finished Room and also a book by an Australian woman who (at least according to her account) was held hostage by the government of Laos, Standing Ground (touchstone not working - couldn't seem to force it either). The latter was desperately crying out for an editor, or at the very least, a better proofreader.

On to something much lighter now with Wodehouse's Thank you, Jeeves.

Only 150 pages left of Doug Hulick's Among Thieves. It's new and touchstones aren't working. It's nice & dark, with well written fight scenes, and I can't read it at work because I'm getting reading-induced deafness from it. (Proctoring tests right now, and trust me, reading is okay. Proctoring is so boring and it only requires you to look up once in awhile, but hey, that's not going to happen with this book.)

My review of The Quantum Thief is now up here.

Empire of the Senseless continues to shock and amaze. Kind of like a literary equivalent of Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend." The prose is disarmingly simple yet poetic and horrifying, interspersed with parodies, instruction manuals, histories, and subterranean testimonies of the oppressed. In the novel, Algerians take over Paris and pirates do battle with the CIA. Hallucinatory and confrontational in the best. I may be going out on a limb here, but I see Kathy Acker as the bridge between William S. Burroughs and Roberto Bolano

It's strange that no-one is reading Dan Brown considering he has just won the Nobel Prize.

89: just followed the touchstone link on Empire of the Senseless, and the latest review sold me:

"not a good read unless you are especially fond of robots, politics and terrorism."

91: Never stopped the masses from reading poorly written genre fiction with the same elements. Maybe that same reviewer thinks "The Wire" and Battlestar Galactica suck too?

92: For me the thing is, I care very little what a book is ABOUT. It annoys me to see so many people apparently walking around in life and bookshops with a checklist of subjects in hand to select their books. This one has vampires in it, I must read it. This one is about a serial killer, oh goodie. This one is about some guy chasing a whale around the globe, how exciting. This one is about some guy walking about in Dublin, booooooring!

I don't care if a book is about vampires battling for world domination or about raising sheep in Scotland in the mid-20th century, what I want to know is if it's a well written book.

Well, of course that's not 100% true, some subjects turn me off (war, religion and zombies and probably a few others), and for some I tend to lower my standards of good writing (romance and fantasy). But still, judging a book based on what it's about annoys me, because it's so limited and limiting an outlook.

93: I know, Florence. What kind of idiot would want to read about some guy walking about Dublin? Or some dude who remembers stuff after he eats a French cookie?

Acker's stuff tends to be divisive in the same way as Gertrude Stein Not sure how to quantify her on a "well-written" spectrum, since she takes a claw-hammer to such bourgeois notions. But that's like saying the Sex Pistols can't play guitar very well. Which they can't. Which is the point.

Acker plays with parody, pastiche, and plaigarism, like the band Negativland -- the band that got those benevolent do-gooders in U2 so pissed all those years ago.

Hey! Calling a madeleine a "French cookie" is like, is like... calling foie gras "goose liver", you tasteless barbarian!

I'll have to try and find a copy of Empire of the senseless to read an excerpt. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available as an e-book, so I guess no excerpt from Amazon, but maybe they have a "look into it" button. Or whatever it's called.

>94 kswolff: - the Sex Pistols can't play guitar very well. Which they can't. That's bollocks. Both Jones and Matlock were/are more than competent musicians.
And it wasn't U2 who took umbrage with Negativland, it was their record label who were more annoyed at the packing than the music. U2 went on record as stating they were unhappy with the way Island dealt with the matter. (No, I'm not a U2 fan).

Steve Jones is the one guy from the Pistols I'd most like to hang out with. Lydon would be amusing, no doubt, but I've seen a couple of interviews with Jones and, to me, he's the Man...

96: No one likes a pedant.

Lydon advertises butter on British telly.

But I'd still love to see an episode or two of the show he (Lydon) did on creepy crawly things. That looked fun.

So I got tired of reading serious stuff. Put down The Pale King for later and read a very short YA type fantasy by Anne McCaffrey called No one noticed the cat. It was kind of silly. But it took all of an hour to read, so who cares.

101: But did anyone notice the cat?

Eventually. It ended up killing the evil queen so everyone could live happily ever after.

Anna, I'm in the opposite mode. I read 3 Diana Wynne Jones books after she died, and now I'm devouring Rose Tremain's The Road Home. It's so delicious reading delicately crafted prose, with nuanced adult characters doing things that might actually happen in the real world.

Late one night, couldn't sleep, flipping through channel after channel, and there's Johnny Rotten on one of the TV court shows. Yeah, it was "Judge Judy"; cracked me up.

http://youtu.be/K3L7xIJ3aDo

I once tried to read Acker's Don Quixote. I stopped reading once Don Quixote (a woman who'd had an abortion) watched Richard and Pat Nixon have sex and then turn into dogs. It was just... a bit too much for me.

Starting JG Farrell's Troubles soon; I read and loved his Siege of Krishnapur and so now I'm reading the other two books in his Empire trilogy.

About a third of the way through Philip Kerr's IF THE DEAD RISE NOT. Very good crime novel thus far...

I'm reading Here on Earth, which is quite fascinating, and Millennial Mythmaking, which I received through Early Reviewers. About to start A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (it took me forever to remember the correct title, I kept getting it confused with "One Day in the Life of..."); I'm hoping it will help somewhat with the AP exam for European history. I really wish we read more literature in that class.

106: To each his own. I'm starting to think I've read Empire of the Senseless before? During my eponymous Kathy Acker Phase.

If I you have a really high tolerance for literary masochism, try reading all 3 volumes of Henry Kissinger's memoirs.

Brothers in Arms by Camille Tawil, an Early Reviewers book, is turning out to be really good. Interesting to learn about all the various jihadist factions and their disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood Sure puts the Middle Eastern uprisings in a different perspective. I consider myself pretty knowledgable in Islamic politics and Middle Eastern affairs (I know the doctrinal differences between Shiites and Sunnis), but this book is an education. A fascinating book to read just after finishing Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Finished Thank you, Jeeves (anyone who doesn't like Wodehouse must have had their sense of humour removed).

I've moved on to Clezio's The Book of Flights.

Silly old guffin...

Going very slowly through Parrot and Olivier in America. Just haven't quite clicked with it. And I'm too tired at night to try clicking with it, so picked up Dame Agatha Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles as an entertaining read. Must say, either her prose gets a lot more polished over her writing career, or I'm more affected by Carey's prose than I thought.

It is her *first* novel, I am making some allowances for that. But it doesn't seem as deliciously fun as some of her later ones.

Almost finished with Empire of the Senseless Now one of the characters is going on about a British Road Manual. WTF? What does this have to do with piracy and robots?

Karl, picky picky! You expect characters to stay on task? ;)

Brothers in Arms by Camille Tawil is fascinating, especially the country-by-country profiles. Saddam Hussein sponsoring Libyan terrorists because he has a beef with Gaddafi; Libyan-Egyptian border disputes; and the theocratic melting pot of Afghanistan's jihad against the USSR. Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis has now been thoroughly trashed.

Started reading Expiration Date by Sherril Jaffe. I'm only a couple chapters in, but I'm not "feeling it." Usually something can propel through a book, unfortunately this book seems "merely well-written." A carefully engineered product of creative writing seminars and the Church of Gordon Lish.

Well, I'm reading Play the Monster Blind by Lynn Coady. Coady is very funny and has a deadly ear for dialogue. I'd rather read a hundred writers like this than plow through Proust's french cookie reminiscences just to be able to say that I did it.

Reading WHEN ONE MAN DIES, a crime novel that got some pretty decent blurbs. But after the last Philip Kerr offering, this one seems pretty tepid and cliched in comparison. Just not getting into it.

116: Reading anything SIMPLY for the bragging rights seems silly. A habit for philistines, hipsters, and poseurs. To read a lot to be conversant about the Canon and literature in general is an admirable thing.

I guess that's why I see those 100 Book Challenges with a jaundiced eye. Reading a lot doesn't inherently require anyone to absorb, distill, and interpret what he or she is reading. It's just another notch on the metaphorical bed post.

Read a good chunk of David Markson's READER'S BLOCK. Exceptional and profound.

I finished Doug Hulick's 10772200::Among Thieves and loved it. Very complex world and complex "personal interactions" for lack of a better term. A little Godfather.

I'll be starting a YA ER book next, The Girl who would Speak for the Dead.

In the past week or two I've managed to finish Instance (which, despite detestable characters of varying degrees, was overall an extremely enjoyable read), the YA title The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, which was lovely but I like more complete endings, and Italo Calvino's Our Ancestors, which is somewhat reminiscent of Candide... without the elegance and rhythm, sadly.

I'm now reading my way through another Calvino, this time Adam, One Afternoon.

Over the weekend read Cinco de Mayo, a sf novel by a friend that was published last year by EDGE. Good book, enjoyed it. Then read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea by some French chap. Bit boring - pages and pages of descriptions of fish. The book has my name and school number in the front, so I've owned it for more than 30 years, and I'm assuming I must have read it before, but I can't say any of it felt familiar.

I collect non-sequiturs, and the title of this Thread has become one of my favorites:

"Dan Brown wins Nobel Prize in Literature > Whatcha reading this month?

My all-time favorite is by a bartender in greater Boston. It was said about language maeven Bergen Evans (in the 1960s):

"What does HE know about ʻAMERICANISMʻ? > Heʻs DIVORCED!

A close secpmd is by a Gr. Boston judge, said to a defense attorney:
"If youre talking about one of MY cases, forget it> because I donʻt even remember it!"

About a third of the way into George Saunders's In Persuasion Nation.

122: What is it about fish? Both Verne and Melville* devote pages and pages to prattling on about aquatic life. I think Melville's verbage is a little more forgivable, given that I'm guessing few people had actually seen a whale in the 1850s - still, I don't think that's an excuse for being so boring about it.

*Yes, I am aware that whales are mammals not fish, but that kind of ruins the argument, doesn't it?

Also, in case it's not clear, my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek

Fiasco by Imre Kertesz.

Maybe my favorite Kertesz so far. Absolutely incredible.

DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS by Joe Bageant. Wonderful essays on the working class in America. This guy was a treasure and his recent death a terrible loss to the progressive cause (progressives are rare creatures on the American scene these days).

126: I think I've seen Imre Kertesz's name somewhere, but I've never read anything from him. I'll add his name to my list. I'm in Budapest now, so this would be a good time to read one of his books...

Taking a break from Bolano (the bad translation takes a lot of the reading pleasure away unfortunately) and reading Robin Hobb's Dragon Haven. Not her best IMO, but a nice lighter read, perfect for hotel nights after a hard day's work.

>128 FlorenceArt: - probably because he won the Nobel Prize in 2002. His most famous book is Fatelessness.

Just finished Next, by James Hynes. First 2/3s wasn't very good. Very unsympathetic character bumbling around Austin and flashing back to all the times he's screwed up his life. Last third was a change of pace and wrapped up the threads pretty well. Surprisingly emotional, considering how much I hated the character.

127: I need to read that. Should be funnier and less preachy than Michael Moore's two books I have read.

Hey everyone, speaking about nonfiction (well, maybe fiction, actually) has anyone besides me read Three Cups of Tea and is kind of bummed about the controversy coming up now? I read part of the transcript of the CNN report though I didn't see it on TV. Sounds pretty damning.

I am also sort of sad about Krakauer being involved in this whole thing. I have not read Into Thin Air but I thought I'd heard here and elsewhere that it's a really good book. I guess if he thinks people are being taken for a ride it is a good idea for him to blow the whistle but it seems like everything comes down to marketing ploys and people trying to sell books.

Any reactions here?

It's a fine read, Anna. Hunter Thompson mixed with Studs Terkel--that's one comparison I read and I'd say it has some merit. I liked it enough that I'm going to seek out a copy for my collection (this one was from the library).

INTO THIN AIR is a fantastic book. One of the best true-life adventure tales I've yet encountered. Far superior to TOUCHING THE VOID (which was pretty darn good).

I finished reading Here on Earth and am now reading Fatale (my first NYRB read, I was so excited to get it).

Into Thin Air was gossipy, reflective. The Climb brought another perspective, and several others who were on the on the mountain that May night, chimed-in as well. As for Boukreev, who left clients and descended to make tea, heck who knows. I wasn't there. Who could possibly second-guess someone who is actually up in that bat-shit crazy environment.

I've always wanted to read Beck Weathers' (sp?)book about that event. He was abandoned twice up there got frostbite and left several important body parts behind.

I've read all of Krakauer's books EXCEPT Into Thin Air and thought they were pretty good stuff, and I'm not usually into nonfiction.

Finished Expiration Date by Sherril Jaffe The first Permanent Press book I've read that was an utter dud.

Halfway through Gary Giddins' collection of film essays, WARNING SHADOWS. Quite good.

138: your touchstone links to Expiration Date by Tim Powers. That's not the one you're talking about, is it? I liked that book (the one by Tim Powers), and I just found out that apparently it's part of a trilogy and I never read the first book!!!! I read the last two but liked Expiration Date best I think.

140: Nope, I didn't read the Tim Powers book. I read the Sherril Jaffe book and it sucked.

Sorry to belabor the whole adventure-travel schtick here, but there are some other really well-written accounts among these 100:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0404/adventure_books_1-19.html

Great link, Dawg. Thanks.

On a big JG Farrell kick - finished The Siege of Krishnapur last month, and finished Troubles today. Up next is The Singapore Grip. I'm really loving Farrell's humor about crumbling empires. Troubles was especially funny, detailing the inhabitants of a crumbling luxury hotel (who are, for the most part, poor old ladies and feral cats) in the midst of Sinn Fein uprisings.

Have gottone 1/5 into my ER book The Girl who would talk to Dead People which is loosely based on the Fox sisters. I love the concept, but so far, I'm not loving the book.

Black Swan by Chris Knopf is turning out to be pretty fun. Interesting premise and compelling characters. It's part 5 in a mystery series, but I'm just riding with it. I did the same with the Burke series by Andrew Vachss, bumping around from one volume to another.

I'm on a RL Stevenson sojourn at the moment, as a break from more serious books. I finished Kidnapped and am currently on The Black Arrow. Of the two, I have to say I like The Black Arrow more, and have trouble putting it down when I need to sleep (which is, I imagine, what Victorian schoolboys must have felt! :D).

Quickly read The Woman in Black because I saw a trailer for the movie and because it has Daniel Radcliffe in it, we're going to be fairly inundated with info about the story soon, and I do like going into books fairly cold. Knowing only that this was an English ghost story suited me fine.

I thought it was an excellent, chilling story. The ending is inevitable, but that made it no less powerful for knowing what was coming.

Looking forward to the movie now.

Have read the first few pages of Solo by Rana Dasgupta. Liking it so far.

I discarded fiction in favour of The Working Springer Spaniel by the late Keith Erlandson. That, and The Shotgun Reloading Handbook, which makes for some real thrilling reading, let me tell you, if you like staring at charts until you go cross-eyed.

The spaniel book, written by one of the UK's best spaniel trainers and published/allowed to go out of print by a succession of small presses, is surprisingly well written and occasionally quite witty.

I read The Stranger by Camus last night. I didn't really like it.

Europeana, on the other hand, is awesome.

I just finished Truman Capote by George Plimpton and am now reading The Letters of Katherine Anne Porter. They overlap a little, though it's depressing to read dozens of letters written to/about now forgotten writers of the 1940s. I'd like to know more about Porter, because the letters are rather puzzling without context. I didn't much care for Ship of Fools but I just read some of her collected stories and really liked them.

150: Too much existential angst, not enough zombies?

I've found that's a weakness of all of Camus's work.

153: Yet oddly a strength of all Ayn Rand's work. Although distinguishing a brain-eating zombie and a stoic entrepreneur may prove a challenge to the reader.

I just fillled a gap in my Western Civ knowledge. 'Finished 1066 The Year of Conquest a wonderfully written, 201-page Wiki article of the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror was a lucky man indeed: favorably sailing weather, invasion at the one time Harold was diverted, a successful Papal approval scam, little post-battle resistance from the large Brit population.

I also finally finished that bawdy, wordy door-stop Gargantua and Pantagruel. Clifton Fadiman was right. The best way to read Rabelais is no more than about a dozen pages at a time.

#150 I loved Europeana too. The opening line is a killer.

>147 sakayume:

Parts of Kidnapped slowed, the writing and construction are top notch and since it takes place in his native Scotland, parts like the trek David and Alan share through the heather are wonderfully conceived. I read Catriona a little later. Same thing with Bass Rock and the solans.

Ebenezer and Alan are truly great characters.

Finally finished The Road Home. meh. The first Rose Tremain novel I didn't like. Main character was milquetoast until he suddenly assaults and rapes his girlfriend, then back to milquetoast. I get that he was dealing with grief but it was just way clunky in a way Tremain usually is not. Plot contrivances galore, too.

Anyhoo, I am now reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Fascinating, but there's this annoying tendency to dramatise things that don't need dramatising. Do we really need a "scene" with the lab tech eating her lunch and sighing with boredom and complacency when Henrietta's magic cell sample is delivered to the lab? We'd already established that HeLa cells were unique. I do like the direct quotes from Henrietta's relatives with their actual speech patterns, tho.

I started reading Vile Bodies a few days ago. I think I was properly introduced to Waugh in a previous Snobs thread, and then learned more about his books during SantaThing...and now I'm finally reading one of them.

It's such a fun book, I'm surprised that I never had to read it for school, but I suppose since I did attend Catholic high school, it mightn't be terribly appropriate for us.

Finished one ER book and on to my last one, The Infamous Burke and Hare. OMG! I'm more shocked by the Edinborough medical community than by our two lazy serial killers. You can't tell me the anatomists didn't have a clue about where B&H's fresh and drunk corpses were coming from. So is this why Scotland Yard was created? Seems like a lot of people managed to safely cover up their involvement in this.

I'm re-reading The Sportswriter, a novel that truly rewards re-reading. I re-read it last year and was going to do Independence Day this year, but there were some quotes I wanted to pull out of it:

"It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?"

161> ouch! That's putting things in perspective.

The narrator, for those who haven't read it, is a failed novelist.

The Sportswriter was Ford's third novel. His first two novels, A Piece of My Heart and The Ultimate Good Luck received good reviews but failed to sell. Like his narrator, Ford actually quit writing fiction and took a job writing for a NY sports magazine. When the magazine went out of business, he wrote The Sportswriter, which was published straight to paperback as a Vintage Contemporary.

Then came Rock Springs. (Cue admiring post from Cliff.)

Excellent! There's hope for me yet when the paper goes under. Look for my breakthrough novel: The Deputy News Editor.

Reading a short book of Samuel Taylor Coleridge poems (Rime of the Ancient Mariner, etc.) while I'm waiting for B&N to send me Little Big.

Reading Baudolino now, after finishing The Three Musketeers, which I admittedly rushed through towards the end. My excuse is that Milady was terrifying! :P

>157 DanMat: I fully agree that Ebenezer and Alan are wonderfully constructed, as far as characters go. And the highlight of Kidnapped for me was the journey of Alan and David together across the Scottish countryside. Unfortunately my unfamiliarity with Scotland somewhat marred my enjoyment of the story, and I also had to expend some effort to understand their dialogue. On the contrary, The Black Arrow was much easier for me to understand, and I therefore enjoyed it more.

I've been meaning to read The Sportswriter, but I have something like 60 books waiting unread, so it'll have to move to the end of the queue...

Started JG Farrell's The Singapore Grip as the last book in his Empire Trilogy. Haven't gotten very far yet.

Planning to pick up Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence. I need more Rushdie in my empty life, haven't read anything by him in about 6 months.

I am so bored at work and the interwebs get tiresome, so I began reading The House of Mirth yesterday at work off of Project Gutenberg. PG is such a wonderful thing.

Gave up on Bernhard's Frost about 80 pages in and felt so guilty that I reread Concrete, which is still amazing. I've got The Loser up next.

166 -
Milady is such a fascinating character!

168: Is it mirthful?

About halfway through Black Swan by Chris Knopf The second book I've read by him. Pretty good stuff. Great characters, interesting mystery, and a dog named Eddie Van Halen

Currently halfway through Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It's not what I expected. It reads like a report aimed at people who are already familiar with the subject. But then it has these odd flashes of lovely prose.

I finished Millennial Mythmaking and A Tomb for Boris Davidovich within a day of each other (hooray for spring break, I can being to catch up on reading!) and started Jasper Jones, which is an Australian coming-of-age/mystery novel set in 1960s Australia.

Hey, Ian: the new Philip Kerr/Bernie Gunther novel, FIELD GRAY, is waiting for pickup at my local library. Whoo-hoo!

#171 Sardonic, witty. But mirthful, no.

eta: I think that's what the kids call "irony."

I am reading Civil Disobedience and other essays. I am on the essay about John Brown. Pretty powerful. I need to read more Thoreau. My dad reads a section of his Journals every day.

Cliff, there's a new one due out later this year, Prague Fatale.

Noted. My thanks.

Ten pages away from finishing Brothers in Arms by Camille Tawil Excellent investigative reporting into the different factions and ideologies of the Islamist movement.

Montaigne's essays arriving in the mail tomorrow. . . .

Finished 2666, now awaking from the trance...

Amyl nitrate helps goose the ol' synapses.

I just zipped through Philip Kerr's latest, FIELD GRAY. A bit on the choppy side, lots of twists and turns in this complex Cold War, 1950's-era thriller. Episodic, plenty of flashing back and forth between different times and places. I managed to keep up and found myself racing along, reading great chunks at once. Smart, brutal mystery, a worthy addition to the "Bernie Gunther" series. Will be keeping my eye out for the next one, PRAGUE FATALE (see: Message #177).

If you like Cold War spy thrillers, I highly recommend The Company by Robert Littell

Someday, someday...

Currently reading The View from Lazy Point. There's a new, gloomy meaning to the term natural history.

I also picked up (for a proletariat price of $0.45) and read, a beat up copy of The Communist Manifesto. Crammed full of blue and purple-ink highlights, the 1955 Crofts paperback had an inscription from "Olney Hall". LaSalle? UMASS? Marin? We'll ever know.

I finished reading The Infamous Burke and Hare. Quite a good historic true crime. My review is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/10349030

I'm back to reading a penguin collection of short stories in Spanish. They've been rather slow going, but I can do it. (Positive self talk. Ya like it?)

I finished Rana Dasgupta's Solo. It was bloody brilliant.