November, 2011: Time to pull on a good book to keep warm

I started November off with Elmore Leonard's first western (written way back when) called THE BOUNTY HUNTERS. Not very impressive thus far.

Still plowing my way through Das Kapital, Volume 2: Electric Boogaloo. Prescient and erudite, but not as bombastic and polemical as the Volume 1.

I'm about a third done with Jeffrey Eugenides's newest, The Marriage Plot. Don't really have an opinion one way or another right now, but the writing is nice.

I also have a collection of Fitzgerald's short stories at my desk at work. I've only made my way through about 3 of them, but they've all been wonderful.

Finished Story of O over the weekend; moving on to both: Counterculture Through the Ages, tracing the social movements from the Sufis and the Troubadours down through the Transcendentalists, etc, and forward into the global/digital age. Looks really good and sports a forward from Timothy Leary.

Also starting The Lime Twig by John Hawkes. So far it is stunning.

As usual, I've got a few underway: Yukio Mishima's collection of short stories, Death in Midsummer, is proving to be great, if one can use that adjective for tales that are often (unsentimentally) sad and sparse. Slavoj Zizek's On Belief is, as are most of his works, brilliantly insightful and simultaneously entertaining; Robert Graves's I, Claudius is just sort of ho-hum, and I'm trudging through it out of a sense of duty.

While recycling an older presentation on Mishima's death, I got my hands on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion again. Also, I'm trying my best to read Maihime by Mori Ōgai, as I promised a friend of mine, but the old Japanese and giving me headaches.

I'm nearly finished The Far-Distant Oxus which is a delightful holidays book in the vein of Arthur Ransome. It's giving me a warm glowy feeling inside. I've just started on Great House, 50 pages in, it has drawn me in and I have high hopes. I wanted that to act as a buffer between the Oxus and The Third Reich, Bolano's 'new' one, which came recommended and, if I like it, might finally spur me on to read the rest of 2666

Mostly reading That Deadman Dance - this year's Miles Franklin winner - for book group. Very good so far, but quite dense, I have to pay attention! (And, of course, it's a busy week. Sigh.)

anisoara (a response from last month's thread): I think I find The Scheme for Full Employment irritating because there are no characters to speak of (the names, even of the main character, at least through now 50 pages, are interchangeable) and no plot. I do understand that the 'joke' of the book sort of resides in both of those facts, but the joke is wearing thin by this point.

Hey you history buffs, who among you has read the Shirer book about the third Reich? (I'm betting KSW has...) Is it worth while for a dilettante like myself? I read A World Undone about WWI last year and am feeling kind of ignorant about some aspects of WWII. I also deal with some acquaintances who are holocaust deniers or are easily manipulated by holocaust denialism and would like more ammo to respond to them. Hours spent at Nizkor helped, of course.

I finished Cat's Eye. The parts about her childhood were great but the rest was just meh. I couldn't figure out how or why suddenly she & her oppressor switched personalities, nor how she could remember everything so well despite amnesia. I guess the paintings were supposed to jar it all loose, but I don't think this is how it works IRL. Anyway, this is what happens with Atwood; some of it is fantastic, some of it is just head-scratchingly awful or clumsy. She's great at the micro (beautiful sentences and word choice) but stumbles with the macro (shallow or obvious themes, poorly drawn characters and uninvolving plots, although she's pretty good at pacing). I keep on getting sucked in by the lovely style.

Not sure what to read next, maybe a mystery. I'm working my way through Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley novels and also Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series.

11> You're picking on Atwood's characters, and yet you read Elizabeth George? I'm having trouble with that image. I read the first Linley novel and was horrified by the simplistic and caricatural characters, and the ending was simply laughable. I trust she has improved since then, but still... What am I missing?

Infinite Jest update: still reading, and even actually enjoying it at the moment. Hope it lasts.

Going back to Manguel's a reader on reading - bit more of a stream of consciousness compared to his other books, and yes, we get it Alberto, you were a friend of Borges. Always good to inspire a few more snobbish reads though.
Also got Philip Hensher's The King of the Badgers on the go.

I'm reading Lynn Coady's latest, The Antagonist, and while I'm a big Lynn Coady fan, I'm not stepping into line with all the people who say this is her best book. I think it's the kind of book that people who feel self-righteous about "male violence" will call Great Literature, but nowhere near her last book, Mean Boy.

12 I have a different standard for mystery novels. They're my palate cleansers.

Finally got through the Waterloo segment of Les Miserables. Not even Victor Hugo could make lists of events interesting, especially as I've got an undated Modern Library hardcover without any footnotes. Now it's back to the story of Jean Valjean and I'm making good time again. It is truly a great novel.

Otherwise, making excellent time on The Lime Twig, which reads like the world's grimiest dreamscape. I will definitely be reading more from John Hawkes. Published by New Directions - between this and Stand Still Like the Hummingbird I think New Directions has just become one of my favorite publishers.

I'll always be grateful to New Directions for their L.F. Celine translations. For awhile, those were the only writings by Celine I could lay my hands on. I remember cackling with laughter at various points during JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT. What a book.

I finished Jeff Eugenides's The Marriage Plot. While not quite as epic or impressive as his other two books, it was a solid read. He can't really write women too well, but the two suitors were both interesting fellows. Still not quite sure why it was set in the 80s other than flavor.

Ahh, Celine, who knew such a horrible human being could write such literary gold? "Journey" is a fun read. Celine excels as the Comedian of the Abyss, poking holes into the idiocies and hypocrisies of the human species -- can't imagine his bedside manner?

On a similar note, read the Playboy interview of Vladimir Nabokov in Strong Opinions I think Cliff and Vlad would have got along well with each other.

17, 19: Celine's on my TBR list. I feel obligated to read him anyway, since if it hadn't been for him, my mother would never have stuck me with "Celine" for a middle name.

Meanwhile, completed The Lime Twig, and it even fit in a revenge (the only possible one) against the unstoppable villians of the piece. Not that that means a happy ending. Great little book, and I'll keep an eye out for more of Hawkes.

Nabby and I have the same low view of editors...

I read Franzen's How to be Alone and Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History.

Horrified to discover I had never heard of the literati's darling, Jane Bowles, I ordered a copy of My Sister's Hand in Mine - so far, delightful prose but nothing that shakes my world

Based on a recommendation in last month's thread I read Black Swan Green which was gear, or brill, or spaz or...no, it was epic. Yeah, epic.
From that right into Retromania, which seemed to fit. Rip It Up and Start Again made my adolescence respectable and I've agreed with the basic theme of Retromania for a long time. I skipped a few chapters on electronic music and hauntologists, though.

Nearly done with The Radix by Brett King, a book I'm reviewing for Joe Bob Briggs. An entertaining yarn about evil Borgias, magical artifacts, and dark conspiracies. Well written, but doesn't really do anything new with the Catholic Artifact Conspiracy genre.

I do want to read The Crow by Ted Hughes -- spend an afternoon reading some dark, anarchic, visceral poetry. Reading some of the poems reminds me of the "visceral realism" term bandied about in The Savage Detectives

Can anyone here comment on Where the Air is Clear by Carlos Fuentes? About 1/3 in, I'm enjoying the sections that look back into Mexican history and give some insight into the characters but I'm pretty impatient with multiple scenes of the dissolute upper crust at parties, drinking and nuzzling each other.

After watching the film Generation P at the Russian Film Festival, I've taken Babylon from my shelves, blown the dust away and finally begun reading it. It's written by Viktor Pelevin and translated by Andrew Bromfield. I really enjoyed Pelevin's Life of Insects, but this is quite different, if only because it's not told from the perspective of insects. (Life of Insects is excellent, too.) I really recommend the film - if you get a chance to watch it, do!

>26 alpin:. I'd like to help, but I haven't read Fuentes since college. I have a vague memory that one of the books I read was Where the Air is Clear (was it one of his early books?) but I don't recall getting much out of it.

Where the Air is Clear is Fuentes's first book and --I'm told -- considered his "masterwork." Thanks for trying.

Finished the Radix -- I was entertained, but the author didn't really push the genre towards anything new. Alas, a by-the-numbers effort.

On a completely unrelated note, I started reading Tales of Heresy, a Warhammer 40K novel. Need a little palate cleanser before I dive back into some highbrow lit.

Finally finished I, Claudius, and really wasn't impressed enough to have much to say about it. I also began reading Belief, by Gianni Vattimo, and so far, am pretty intrigued by the author's combination of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Christian tradition.

I'm currently horribly addicted to Anna Karenina. I can't even look at another book right now, when I usually read a couple of books at a time. This is my second time through Leo's slightly smaller work, and I'm just floored by it. Even the Levin-goes-farming bits aren't that bad!

Yep, love Anna Karenina.

Rereading The Moviegoer and feeling inadequate about my own writing. Really good stuff.

I think Anna Karenina is definitely the sort of book that would be worth re-reading a number of times. So far, I've only read it the once.

Finished That Deadman Dance and thought it was quite excellent. It was a challenging (to me) read, jumping about in time all over the place, touches of the Dreamtime to some of it, what felt like contradictory passages (but may have just been an effect of the jumbled timeline), and beautiful and clear descriptions of the traditional dances and music of the Noongar people. And a first contact story, which has to be hard to beat. And a fabulous main character in Bobby Wabalanginy.

Have moved onto The Library of Shadows which is annoying me with clunky writing/translation. Will give it a bit longer to see if the story grabs me, once we're past the exposition.

Currently reading The Castle. Funny, bureaucratic, hopeless.

I've just ordered Marina Warner's Stranger Magic, which I understand to be a great big collection of essays. I was inspired by Daniel Hahn's review of a new translation (or 'imagining') of the Arabian Nights, which you can read here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/one-thousand-and-o...

I will also get this new translation of the Arabian Nights. I've already got three versions on my shelves - why not one more?!

Working my main job plus a holiday job for awhile, so you may not see too much of me. I'm reading Riverrun by S.P. Somtow. I'm not very far into it, but am already laughing over his odd Chinese-American-whatever restaurant owner who talks like the stereotyped Chinaman from an old b&w movie. Maybe it wouldn't be so funny, but I know Somtow is Thai who learned British English and then very carefully changed his accent to Californian because he got sick of people giggling when he sounded like he was an announcer for the BBC.

The Letter Killers is great stuff. Can't really explain it, since I only just started. Something akin to Endgame if it was written by the Mad Magazine staff from the 1950s.

Tales of Heresy is enjoyable.

Started Mary by Vladimir Nabokov, his first novel. I want to see if I can tell, without having read anything else by him, that he had talent and was going places. So far, I would call the book snooty, trivial, and unpleasant... yet surprisingly enjoyable. It mixes the "Proustian" theme of memory with the sort of disgustingly matter-of-fact descriptions I found at the start of Orwell's Coming Up for Air. I'm not sure if Nabokov just didn't like his characters, but at any rate, he treats them without an ounce of mercy - all their foibles, bad manners, delusions and eccentricities are held up for inspection, which can be surprisingly funny. He has no trouble using words like "crepitated," and makes no effort to rein in his sartorial opinions. A strange little book.

Flying out to Edmonton:
The Antagonist by Lynn Coady, shortlisted for the Giller where her better novel, Mean Boy, was not.
Going Down Slow by John Metcalf: if you want to read a stylist, he is it.

and starting The Big Dream by Rebecca Rosenblum.

Also recently read Facing the Hunter, the latest from the vaunted David Adams Richards, where his tendency to sentimentalize rural life is on full display.

Also recently read Facing the Hunter, the latest from the vaunted David Adams Richards, where his tendency to sentimentalize rural life is on full display. Sounds like something the political gasbags of the Right excel at, prepackaged for maximum impact by their Madison Avenue puppetmasters. Excelsior! Cloying blather about the distilled pure awesomeness of the yeoman farmer gets boring almost immediately. Plus agri-business and the Industrial Revolution has made rural life as obsolescent as the gadgets in a steampunk novel.

The Letter Killers Club is amazingly good.

Finished The Scheme for Full Employment--one star.

Just finished the marathon slog of The Kindly Ones which was a mixed bag, possibly inevitably for a book of that scope.

I've now started on Room which, 65 pages in, seems like a quick and engaging read.

43: I have a plan, to read The Kindly Ones, Europe Central, and The Tunnel back to back to back. Although I probably won't read them in the winter, since the bleakness and horror would have me throwing myself in front of a bus.

The Letter Killers Club is highly recommended. Almost done with it. Under 200 pages, a rich experimental genre-stew of invention, philosophy, humor, and literary heresy (re: the story of the competing Hamlets). Glad to see NYRB got it into print.

THE TUNNEL---that one's been on my TBR list since FOREVER...

#44 mine too! I will if you will...

#43-46 I read Europe Central, liked it a lot. The Kindly Ones is on the TBR pile and will probably sit there for a while. But I think I'll pass on The Tunnel. I can't even think about it, especially having just finished Where the Air is Clear by Carlos Fuentes, which felt like reading a school assignment that would be followed by a bitch of an essay test.

THE TUNNEL looks murderous. But one of my resolutions for the coming year is to read longer, more demanding tomes. So...

Finished Daniel Woodrell's THE OUTLAW ALBUM. Lyrical, dark, literate short stories. The man's use of voice is something to witness. Recommended.

Flying back from Edmonton, three short story collections:

Finished Rebecca Rosenblum's The Big Dream. Really, nobody writes awkward characters in awkward situations like RR does. Her writing works with a strange combination of deep empathy and ruthless candor.

Finished Lynn Coady's Play the Monster Blind. Above all else, Coady is a great writer of dialogue.

Started Cathy Stonehouse's Something About the Animal.

The Moviegoer--five stars. It's got extra layers of fun for people living in New Orleans, but a stunning book (I would think) from any angle.

Finished Anna Karenina - what a killer book. Now working on another Rohinton Mistry book - his first, Such a Long Journey.

I got a birthday gift card, so I bought three books I would either never get in the library or have to wait a long time for: The Beauty and the Sorrow, Pulphead and Blue Nights. Haven't started any yet.

Nearly done with Tales of Heresy, my Warhammer 40K guilty pleasure. Then back to After Lyletown, a Permanent Press work.

Approaching the end of The Birth of the Clinic by Foucault. A challenging and rewarding book, albeit written in Foucault's trademark allusive elliptical style.

Reading Luis Bunuel's selected writings, AN UNSPEAKABLE BETRAYAL.

Wonderful.

Finished The Museum of Innocence, and was tremendously disappointed, especially because I'm usually so impressed with Pamuk. Got started on The Intuitionist, as well as Jean-Luc Nancy's The Inoperative Community.

Finished Mary, which dragged in the middle and got really good in the final segment. Throughout, a great eye for detail was evinced, and there were occasional poetic asides, usually coming at the end of descriptions of grubbiness. So I liked it well enough to try another of Nabokov's books at some point, and what I wonder is: should I proceed to hopscotch through his work or should I keep to a linear approach and see how far I get?

In the meantime, I get to find another book to read. Maybe Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, since I read A House of Pomegranates earlier this year. Finish off his fairytales while I'm thinking of it....

nysmith, I can't recommend one approach or the other to Nabokov, but my personal favourites are Pale Fire and Invitation to a Beheading. Lots of people put Pnin at the front. Probably you know this! But it might get tiresome reading his work in the order that it was written.

Finished The Crow by Ted Hughes -- Violent, anarchic, funny, pagan. All concentrated in 80 tight pages.

57 and 58: I enjoyed Speak, Memory.

#56: Sorry to hear that about The Museum of Innocence. It's on my TBR shelf and I've been looking forward to it.

Read The Happy Prince, and have wrapped up Oscar Wilde's stories. Next year, I may try his non-fiction. Good little collection, less poetic than A House of Pomegranates, but more accessible. I was often reminded of Vathek, though I much prefer Wilde. I don't think children would get much out of his fairytales, somehow....

Of the individual stories, "The Remarkable Rocket" was by far the funniest, and "The Nightingale and the Rose" had the most vivid imagery and the most dismissive ending. I would be VERY curious to read a good biography of Oscar Wilde. Will have to keep an eye out.

Richard Ellman wrote a standard biography of Wilde years ago, which I have read a number of times. There may be newer stuff out there but I do recomend it.

Finished The Magic Mountain last night. Kind of a mixed bag. Still too early to tell. I feel like the boa constrictor that ate the cow.

Re. #64, I can certainly empathise, it's the only monster-sized Mann I've ever got through, Dr Faustus and Joseph and his Brothers have been sitting unread on my bookcase for a decade. I still have a fondness for Castorp even after all these years. I've actually just finished Mann's 'Mario and the Magician and other stories' and really enjoyed them. The title work being a brilliant portrait/study of fascism in Italy.

Great metaphor!

I actually prefer Ellman's biography of Wilde to his more celebrated book on Joyce. Wilde was much more interesting, likeable and quotable, a far better subject for biographers.

Finished Tales of Heresy and began After Lyletown by KC Frederick.

Finished Never Let Me Go part of my break from McCarthy's Border Trilogy. Lingers in the mind long after you've read it.

On tap: Camera Lucida, Barthes and Austerlitz, Sebald.

Finished Rohinton Mistry's first novel, Such a Long Journey. I've read all his novels now; all I've got left is his short story collection. Like everything I've read by him, Journey was funny, intelligent, poignant at times, and wonderfully written.

Now considering what to bring on my semi-vacation to New York. Maybe 1Q84 or that book of Fitzgerald's short stories - I've read a few and they're delightful. And that new Stephen King tome, 11/22/63, keeps tempting me...

>65 maddesthatter: Maddesthatter, this is the first long Mann that I've read. Very different from what I expected. I'm still curious about Buddenbrooks.

And I'm STILL plodding up The Magic Mountain.

I've had several recent diversions, The Castle and it's bizarre, beauracratic ravings, and a real behavioral yawner, The Hidden Life of Dogs.

Should I read Northanger Abbey or North and South?

Gave up on Magnus Mill's Three to See the King 50 pages in. Dreadfully bland stuff. After The Scheme for Full Employment, I'm giving up on Mills.

74: Depends on your mood. Do you want a satire or a serious novel at the moment? Satire? Northanger. Serious? N and S.

74: how about both? I liked both anyway. Northanger Abbey has a lot more humor, after all this is Jane Austen. North and South has none but is still good. I found the description of industrial North very interesting.

Still plodding through Infinite Jest, interspersed with lots of other books. I'm not sure I will finish it this year, but I am pretty sure now I will finish it. Probably. Some day.

Re-reading Good Omens following a discussion on another forum. I like it, and it makes me nostalgic for the Gaiman of Sandman. I recognize his subtle melancholy humor. I think he lost that in his novels. I sold all my Sandman comic books years ago, now I'm contemplating buying them again on my iPad.

I already got sucked into Northanger Abbey. Austen is always funny, but when she's going for broad satire, she's hilarious.

Reading Mark Kermode's cinema-related collection of essays THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE MULTI-PLEX.

Kermode is one of my favorite film writers. If you've got a pal or partner who's into film, this is the perfect pick up for Christmas.

77> What page are you on? I read it earlier this year, and it felt like the 'pace' of the novel accelerated at the end.

80> I suppose you mean Infinite Jest? I don't know, I'm reading on an e-reader. About 1/6 I think. I'm not sure the "pace" is the problem though, but maybe it would help if something happened, I don't know.

The strange thing is that the small errors that made me grind my teeth are gone entirely. I'm talking about things like using "mostly" and "always" in the same sentence where they contradict each other, small blunders that should be eliminated during editing. Maybe there is something wrong with the edition I'm reading? It wouldn't be the first time I'd happen on a poor quality electronic edition of a classic. Still, it's strange that these are only present at the beginning and seem to have disappeared now. Plus they don't look like OCR errors, just poor editing.

Finished The Letter Killers Club which was amazing. And pages within finishing The Birth of the Clinic

Recently read Patriotism, a 57 page story by Yukio Mishima. Short, but it packs a punch and lingers in the mind for days. A graphic portrayal of seppuku (made even more disturbing by the author following suit) and at the same time a love story, since the wife asks to accompany the husband. Reminded me of some of the Medieval myths of romance, rendered with even more simplicity. Disturbing little read.

83: Not sure, but I thought "Patriotism" was part of his cycle Sea of Fertility Not sure. Might require a Wikipedia check.

On a similar note, started Citizens by Simon Schama Great stuff. He knows how to write a ripping yarn.

Patriotism was a short film by Mishima as well, a recreation of an attempted coup in the 1930s.
I've been reading the Sea of Fertility books. The first two are great and the second one, which overlaps with Patriotism, has an almost modern feel as the study of the suicide bomber mentality...someone who doesn't care if he dies for a cause, even a losing cause, because death is better than life, anyway.
I didn't care much for third book, though, and I'm not sure I'll read the fourth.
Last night I finished Let's Kill Uncle which I never would have found if not for LT.

I loved Spring Snow, but I got stalled out with all the skinheads in Runaway Horses.

Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter. The prose is a bit florid for my taste. The writer takes a little bit too much license in imagining situations. Somebody had to write about Joan Mitchell though. She deserves it.

EVERYTHING IS CINEMA, a look at the film career of Jean-Luc Godard. Fascinating.

Re-reading David Carpenter's A Hunter's Confession, the antidote to David Adams Richards's Facing the Hunter, mentioned above. Carpenter's book is even-handed, widely sourced, and well argued.

But what else would you expect from a Saskatchewan writer? Intemperate ranting? Savage complaints? Wild and unsupportable claims of persecution by the literary establishment?

Also reading Ray Robertson's Heroes, his second novel. Missed the chance to see Robertson (and Rebecca Rosenblum) in Calgary last night; couldn't get away from work.

"But what else would you expect from a Saskatchewan writer? Intemperate ranting? Savage complaints? Wild and unsupportable claims of persecution by the literary establishment?"

Ah, A.J., ya devil.

Carpenter's from Saskatoon, even. Just read the back flap and noticed that. Proves that at least two people live there.

Nah, I don't live in Saskatoon, about 80 minutes to the west.

But I have a strong sense Saskatoon is where I'll end up eventually--too many good things about that fair little city (260,000) to keep me away forever. It's far cooler and hipper than our provincial capital, Regina, which is full of civil servants and dullards.

I think I met Dave years ago, at some Saskatchewan writing event. But these days I associate with few scribblers in my home and native land--I have little in common with them in terms of aesthetics, approach to writing, etc. Some of them are very nice people but that's hardly a reason for seeking them out and associating with them. For that, I'd have to join the Saskatchewan Writers Guild and that is a notion that fills me with horror. Regional writers are the WORST of all, in terms of paucity of talent, personality defects and prickliness. Hobbyists and wannabes and part-timers; hacks and cultural flacks. No, thanks...

You Canadians sure do love bashing Canada, CanLit, CanWeather, CanCulture, CanMusic.....

It seems to me you're a pretty self-loathing bunch.

Well, better that than arrogant ponces like the fookin' Brits.

In other news, am really enjoying Counterculture Through the Ages. Mind-expanding stuff, though only touching each subject briefly. Chapter on the troubadours was especially good, fostering an immediate interest in: the High Middle Ages, the influences from Islamic culture that showed up at around that time, the music of the troubadours (as revived by groups such as the Martin Best Consort), the music of the whirling dervishes, the poetry of Rumi, the Catholic Church, Martin Luther's reformation, the Renaissance and what exactly was up with the Knights Templar.

Currently reading about the Enlightenment and the French and American revolutions. I'm left wanting to track down the writings of everyone from Voltaire over to Thomas Paine.

You put the French and the British in the same country and tell them they have to live together, you're bound to end up with some pretty fucked-up people...

95> With a title like that, I am feeling both intrigued and suspicious: counterculture is one of the main myths of our culture. Is there really a possibility that any early 21st century writer can have an unbiased view on this? Well, of course there is no unbiased view on history, but on this specific subject it may be even more difficult to be objective.

I read the first book of Michel Onfray's Contre-histoire de la philosophie (Counter-History of Philosophy, not translated in English I think), and it was very frustrating because I found myself agreeing with a lot of his opinions (we both can't stand Plato) and feeling extremely suspicious of his telling of the "facts" which seemed to rely more on his opinion of what pre-socratic philosophers should have been like than on the few facts we know about them.

Ah, Sales, "Black Friday" finds you in your usual form.

93, 96: Look, I'm half Irish Catholic and half Irish Protestant. It's a good day when I don't throw a Molotov cocktail at myself.

And isn't it a bitch trying to mix and match your green and orange clothes?

Well as a half Brit, half Mick I never know whether to sing God Save the Queen or kneecap myself.

They're still trying to decipher my DNA. It gave Crick a crick.

I might be part Martian...

I'm French Canadian, and I don't even know how to drive a Ski-Doo OR put up sheet rock...

But your children work in an asbestos mine and are given cold rations of poutine to eat by their savage Jesuit over-seer and...

100: I try to avoid those colours. They only inflame my self-hatred.

Read The Murders in the Rue Morgue on an impulse today. I wonder if this is the first "locked room" mystery? I liked Dupin's little soliloquy on the difference between chess and checkers.

I read an ARC of the new Cesar Aira book Varamo and the Don DeLillo short story collection that just came out, The Angel Esmeralda. Both were excellent!

Inaudible: I've got Varamo on order. Glad to hear you liked it--I read How I Became a Nun and wasn't crazy about it.

Finished and loved both Camera Lucida by Barthes and 'Raymond Roussell and the Republic of Dreams'--no touchstone for some reason--by Mark Ford. I'm guessing some of the snobs know about Roussell; I didn't. But what a fascinating dude.

Have started On the Road. So far...

The characters come across as psuedo-intellectuals, whose attempts to define and describe things in philosophical or intellectual ways are just plain ridiculous. Carlo Marx and Dean Moriarty talk in the exact same way. The writing style relates the most mundane events with feverish excitement. Feminists will hate the book.

On the good side, Kerouac's stand-in is actually quite likable - a quiet, enthusiastic guy who spends most of his time observing his friends and seems remarkably sane by comparison. His "spontaneous prose" works really well describing the excitement of travel and jazz - it doesn't have nearly the same effect when he's holed up in Denver apartments waiting for things to start happening.

I really think On the Road would be better if the "spontaneous prose" was used for emphasis, since it gets numbing after a while - I keep wanting to tell him to lay off the benzedrine.

Unfortunately, after he gave up the benzedrine, he hit the booze. And that's what got him. He'd get my vote for one of the most over-rated writers of the 20th century. Just never saw the attraction...

1Q84 is so far going quite well. About a third through, so this one I won't be finishing in November...

I did finish Black Swan Green, which someone on this board recommended. GREAT book, captured what it's like to be a 13-year-old kid completely...

Loved BLACK SWAN GREEN...and IQ84 will be one of the "big" books I'll be reading in 2012.

110: I read Kerouac and William S. Burroughs in high school, but not JRR Tolkien I also read The Fountainhead Amidst all that, I'd have to say I enjoyed Naked Lunch the most. I enjoyed On the Road, but mostly as a formative experience. I still have a soft spot for the Beats and I appreciate what they did at the time -- basically giving the gray-flannel-suit wearing drones and homophobic scum voting for Ike and Nixon a flagrant middle finger, albeit one misted in pot fumes to a free jazz soundtrack. I guess that's why I like Genet and DAF Sade and punk rock

Citizens by Simon Schama is marvelous. Any historian who can make discussing the finances and tax structure of Louis XVI's France sound riveting gets my vote of confidence. Sure beat the obligatory genuflection towards Greatest Generation gods one finds in the works of Stephen Ambrose, a big yawn from me.

Going back to a bit of a Bolano last evenings on earth - makes reading an unadulterated pleasure. Girding my loins for 1q84 in the new year.

Read the whole Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors. Limited by keeping to English language writing and futher hemmed in by being 3/4ths American writers, it was good for what it was. Amusing write-ups of books for every mood. Trash lit was well-represented alongside the pinnacles of respectable literature. The difficult writers, the "transgressives," and the counterculture favorites now on the decline also put in appearances. Not the greatest reference, but it still added about 30 writers to my TBR list, so it was time well spent.