April, 2015---Time for some smart reading

Started off April reading Ken Kalfus' novel THE COMMISSARIAT OF ENLIGHTENMENT.

Kalfus is one of America's great short story writers and it turns out he's a pretty fine novelist too.

The book concerns the machinations surrounding the last days of Count Leo Tolstoy. There's revolution in the air...

Finished Alice Munro's The Love of a Good Woman. Marvelous, as usual.

I'm currently reading 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write which I am enjoying very much.

I gave up on Under the Volcano. Wanted to slap the narrator.
Found Lady into Fox by David Garnett on Librivox. Very curious about this book. Borges had included it in his Biblioteca Personal project. We'll see.

Polished off THE FEARFUL VOID, Geoffrey Moorhouse's account of his attempt to cross the Sahara Desert from east to west.

A good read but marred by Moorhouse's contempt and dislike for his traveling companions and many of the people he encounters. Written in the early 1970s but it's almost Victorian in its author's snooty antipathy for poor people, individuals who survive under extremely trying circumstances.

Today I read Matt Sumell's MAKING NICE--a comic novel with a crazed narrator (no impulse control, terrible temper). Laughed out loud on numerous occasions.

Recommended.

Started Gilead. I haven't gotten very far but the words pellucid and calming come to mind.

I'm reading Jane Eyre because, for a former student of English and literary snob, I haven't eaten very many of my classics vegetables. I've somehow managed to never investigate the plot of this one, either, so everything is a delightful surprise. I love how broody and tempestuous and weather-y it is without ever being melodramatic. Very interesting to read such strange, high-gothic atmosphere swirling around such a placid, level-headed narrator.

Lady Into Fox by David Garnette was weird. Not great, just weird.
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, a collection of Japanese folk-tales by Lafcadio Hearn, is for the most part very interesting and entertaining.

>9 mejix: Lady into Fox was one of the early James Tait Black Memorial Prize winners (the oldest English lit. prize). A. S. Byatt riffs on it in part of her novel The Children's Book.

Just started Claire North's Touch. Her previous novel, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, was very good - it made both the BSFA and Clarke Award shortlists.

My wife just finished THE FIRST FIFTEEN LIVES OF HARRY AUGUST and thought it okay. Not blown away. But she's not a big SF fan.

Any idea who the real "Claire North" is, Ian?

Her real name is Catherine Webb:

http://io9.com/claire-north-unmasked-why-1-life-isnt-enough-for-harry-1570371004

Thank you.

>10 justifiedsinner:
Justifiedsinner I read about the prize, I did not know about Byatt riffing on the story, thanks. It is very well written, that is for sure.

>15 mejix: Byatt's novel is based on Edith Nesbit, the Children's author, and her openish marriage to Hubert Bland. Both were heavily involved with the Fabians and the novel is a sort of roman a clef of the leading Late Victorians/ Edwardians.

Just started The Quest for Christa T..

I am currently reading two books, a memoir and a novel, by two different LT friends.

Finished The Quest for Christa T.. Wasn't especially enamoured of it. Now reading Prayer.

Just finishing up with Barnaby Rudge. It isn't nearly so bad as I anticipated, being a neglected Dickens.

Finished THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST. Lauded by some of my favourite writers, including Jim Shepard and George Saunders, but...well, it turns out the author, Daniel Torday, refers to Saunders as a "mentor" in his acknowledgements. Torday also served as head of a writing program in a prestigious university which no doubt helped his connections. In publishing, like anything else, it's who ya know, having friends in the right places, knowing the correct handshake.

Because the novel isn't that good, that involving or that remarkable. Merely okay. No hole would have been left in the universe if it hadn't been published.

I am trying my best to get through Ulysses. My copy has copious notes in the back, but I'm not sure if they're aiding me in comprehension. As it is, I try to muddle through the best I can, occasionally finding a neat turn of phrase or insight that I really like amidst the rest of it. The last book to make me feel this defeated was Gravity's Rainbow. But hey, to paraphrase George Mallory, I keep tackling these Everests "because (they're) there."

I like your spirit. Never quit, never surrender.

ULYSSES is something of an ordeal...but let the language wash over you, try to absorb it through your pores. Have you tried reading portions out loud? That always works for me with challenging efforts--I start hearing some of the tonalities and rhythms. I never really "got" William Burroughs until I heard him read. Then everything started making sense.

>22 chamberk: Try reading while alternating betweens sips from a large glass of Jameson's and gulps from a tall glass of Guinness. Eventually, all will become clear.

Just started Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Not sure how I came across this book on Librivox but it is really really interesting, volunteer readers and all.

>23 CliffBurns:, >24 justifiedsinner:, noting your advice, since I'm planning to climb that mountain next year myself. I've been taking a slow approach to it via the hills of Homer and the lesser peak of Portrait. It sounds like one you need to absorb as you would a foreign language, not trying to parse its every line.

I was going to say, we'd best not compare Ulysses to Everest because there's still the Wake to factor in, but let's call that Olympus Mons on Mars and the metaphor can stand. Most of us (including myself) will be content to stay on Earth.

It took me years to prepare for ULYSSES. I read every Joyce bio/book I could find that might give me insights into its complex intricacies and allusions. It helped but I know I still only scratched the surface. Helluva ride, though...

I'd add Dubliners to the mix before reading it. I've read it several times and got more from it each time. The film version with Milo O'Shea is worth seeing.

I read Ulysses with a group, here on LT, made up at least partly of actual Joyce scholars, or else I do not think I would have made it through the book. The final chapter is like a present for having made it to there, though.

I just purchased Finnegans Wake a few weeks ago, and planned to read a page or so every night at bedtime for the foreseeable future (an idea for reading it that I think I got from someone here on LT), but have not started that yet. There it sits on the bedside table mocking me. Talk about intimidating!

A book that was VERY helpful to me when I was prepping for ULYSSES was JAMES JOYCE: THE YEARS OF GROWTH (1882-1915) by Peter Costello. It talks about many of the events, characters and environs that inspired ULYSSES.

Anna, I wonder if scholars will have a different view of FINNEGANS WAKE now that we're learning more details about Joyce's deteriorating state of mind, due to the effects of tertiary syphilis. The condition and its effects were described on my favourite non-fiction tome last year, THE MOST DANGEROUS BOOK by Kevin Birmingham. A book that a lot of toffee-nosed people have always held up as a kind of literary I.Q. test may, in fact, be the muddled ramblings of a dissolving mind. More to come, apparently...

Have been meaning to look up that book (the Birmingham one). Thanks, that's really interesting.