July, 2014--taking time to relax, read a good book...and tell us about it

This past weekend, I took my pal Sandi a copy of Wilton Barnhardt's GOSPEL, telling her: "THIS is what summer reading is all about--diving into a big, fat, smart, fun book."

I envy her reading that novel for the first time. It's magical. I also note it's been recently re-issued, likely a crass publisher trying to capitalize on the success of THE DA VINCI CODE and other Biblically-related rot. GOSPEL is far superior--well-researched, imaginative, featuring a fine assortment of characters. "Indiana Jones" with brains.

it looks interesting. As for zombie-Jesus-cult novels, I chose to read Gilead and am dozing as we speak....

Saunders's Tenth of December. Reading Saunders is weird--I enjoy it, but guiltily--I realized I'm reading someone who's now imitating himself, who's doing the same three or four strange, fascinating tricks over and over again. My thought is that this book got such attention through a kind of accumulation from his earlier books (which were at least as good and in which the tricks weren't old).

James Wood's The Fun Stuff. Good essays about MacEwan, Ishiguro, Lermontov, Tolstoy, etc.

Kafka's diaries. Dude was already a really good writer at 28.

I got out The Snow Leopard for July. Looking forward to it.

Matthiessen is remarkable.

'Finished Gilead. Lyrical, pastoral, spiritual. And sometimes, boring as snot.

>5 Sandydog1: Home is more of the same, although on reflection it's perhaps a better book.

Currently reading The Moon is not Enough for research. Amused/horrified that her family considered a "mixed marriage" one with someone who is "outside the church". It's all very overwrought, and she never uses one adjective where three or four will do. But I'm only mining it for detail and atmosphere, so I'm not bothered.

Finished Anabasis by Xenophon and am most of the way through Schach von Wuthenow by Theodor Fontane, which I am enjoying. Both books give a fascinating insight into the mores and psychology of their respective epochs.
Before that, 12 Years a Slave, which I downloaded to my Kindle from Project Gutenberg. To me the most memorable part of that book was where the newly abducted Solomon Northrup is being transported by ship past the Capitol building and other monuments to freedom and the irony does not elude him.

Back from my brief, idyllic sojourn in northern Manitoba, I find myself working my way through Donald Barthelme's SIXTY STORIES (like scotch and Guinness beer, Barthelme is an acquired taste) and TWENTIETH-CENTURY GERMAN POETRY (edited by Michael Hofmann).

Feeling much smarter and cooler as a result.

I took perhaps two months to read The General in his Labyrinth, because it was hard to read it. Not from an intellectual standpoint so much as the knowledge that it's not going to end well. I'm still left with sorrow for a man who died long ago; I'd guess that's as much an attestation of Marquez's power as it is the story.

I'm planning on reading some of PKD's shorter works, for relief. I don't think I can take more sadness right now.

Nothing relaxes the mind like a good read in modern physics. (Maybe after all the knots are untied.) I've got Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos about 30% read and about 14.5% truly comprehended.

I'm trying to make heads/tails out of Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin. Macit is a diplomat trying to help hold his country together on the verge of WWII, while he must deal with the problem of his wife's sister, estranged from her family for marrying a Jew and who is stuck in France but wants to return to Turkey.

A/C is a must for reading both these books comfortably.

Reading Thomas Bernhard´s autobiography. Not in his usual style, but great, great.

Has anyone here read a good book about the U.S. drone program?

Yesterday I read a big chunk of Philipp Meyer's multi-generational epic about a prominent Texas family, THE SON. Bit of a rocky start but after the first 5-10 pages, the book takes off. The scenes set among the Comanche are grue-some.

Geoff: any of these books strike your fancy:

http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-ke...

I've got 3 books going now:

Crime and Punishment for the ideas. Dostoevsky is brilliant. (I also have a student reading this for her summer assignment in AP Lit and I promised I'd help her with it - it's been 5 years since I last read it, so it seemed like a good time to revisit.)
The Ground Beneath her Feet for the writing. Gosh Rushdie's prose is great when he's on his game. I've heard this one falters near the end, but I'm enjoying his cosmopolitan take on rock music.
And, just for fun, I'm in the middle of Stephen King's Dark Tower series - it's not perfect, but I do love me some epic quests. I haven't read the series in full since the final one came out in 2004 so this is all sorts of nostalgia-inducing for me.

Cliff: I loved The Son, probably the best book I read last year.

Just finished THE SON and it was pretty durn good.

Will keep an eye out for his previous novel, AMERICAN RUST. And apparently a third novel is in progress, completing a kind of "trilogy",

Finishing up on Letters from Earth. Great angsty Twain.

I'm also plowing through Thucydides like the 29th Marines through Sugarloaf Hill.

I'm on page 13.

Tackling Richard House's THE KILLS.

A thousand (+) pages, my second lengthy book in a row. Must be trying to develop my forearms. THE KILLS is a good read, a conspiracy involving civilians contracted to work in Iraq. Lots of money going missing, wheels within wheels. About halfway through and it's holding my attention.

(I add a note that the three LibraryThing reviewers who have critiqued THE KILLS have completely missed the boat. I question their ambition and courage as readers--this book deserves better than it's received from some of our members.)

To totally relax I reread (for the umpteenth time) "The Enchanted April," a lovely book (its movie version also a pleasure).

Only 19 posts for July, and the month is almost over!

I'm reading The Reckoning at the moment. There aren't many authors that can really bring history to life like Sharon Kay Penman.

>20 jordantaylor:: We're either reading longer books or spending more time outsider doing outsidey things (instead of reading)!

Reading Suddenly, a Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret. A disappointment so far. The author has nothing to say.

Finished Barchester Towers and starting The Old Curiosity Shop, encountering the overlapping "who wears the pants in a marriage" theme. Mrs. Proudie vs Daniel Quilp would draw even odds in Vegas.

Finished Thomas Bernhard's autobiography--excellent.

About 50 pages into The Sexual Life of Catherine M--frigging brilliant so far.

Also 50 pages into The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing--quite a bit less brilliant. It reads like a repurposed dissertation--in other words, excessively scaffolded, afraid to assert anything unequivocally, full of grammatical obfuscation. Somewhere around page 20 I started crossing out unnecessary adverbs and prepositional phrases and started adding nouns after pronouns without antecedents.

Good on you, Geoff. If you did the same thing with every self-published effort you encountered, you'd have to be institutionalized.

Picked up a few big books from last year - Life after Life and The Interestings - at the library. On the ereader I'm reading Boris and Arkady Stugatsky's Roadside Picnic. A Russian sci-fi classic from the 70s, and very good so far. I've been getting into some of the more classic science fiction authors, like Ursula K. Leguin and Philip K. Dick, and I really enjoy their ideas and the conciseness of it all - having grown up on Star Wars novels and sci-fi saga after saga, it's really refreshing.

Started Bob Mould's (from Husker Du) autobiography yesterday. SEE A LITTLE LIGHT is diverting but it has the feel of every other "as told to" memoir or tell-all I've read. A depressing similarity of tone. Spoken into a mini-recorder, cleaned up by his ghost-writer.

Member has been removed for multiple personal attacks on multiple topics.

Finished Schach Von Wuthenow by Theodor Fontane, which I found interesting for its depictions of old Berlin society but, as expected, a little one-dimensional.
Finally persuaded myself to bite off Justine by Lawrence Durrell. It seemed appropriate since I was on the island of Rhodes, where Durrell spent some time. He also wrote about Rhodes, Reflections on a Marine Venus but the book's description and even title seemed just a bit too precious. So far I'm intrigued by Justine. In places the writing is brilliant, in others ludicrously pretentious, but he probably would never have achieved the brilliant bits without the kind of ambition that leads to the overblown ridiculousness of other passages. It doesn't help, of course, if you have read his brother Gerald's work which pokes a lot of fun at Lawrence.

>30 augustusgump:, being interested in the work of both Durrells, I'll take your advice and start with Lawrence when I get to them.

Hah! I need to read Gerald since I had a really negative reaction to Lawrence. (One of my dad's favorite writers)

I read Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals at school, as I think a lot of British schoolkids of my generation did. It was one of the least difficult books to force me to read.

Started Shaman this morning.

Ian--hope you like SHAMAN, I know you're a big fan of Robinson's stuff.

Needed something fast and nasty so...back to Chandler. THE LITTLE SISTER and it's fun so far.