June 2009 reading

A monthly thread, as requested, instead of the long unwieldy quarterly one.

Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism, Cathy Gere

The Land That Never Was, David Sinclair

Boy's Life, Robert McCammon (sucks, but I have to do it for school)

The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald

I'm going to be focussing on books about Apollo 11 in the run up to the Moon Landing's 40th anniversary next month. First up is First on the Moon by Aldrin, Armstrong & Collins, and 30 pages in it's already proving a pleasant surprise -- not many books by astronauts would mention Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Whitman and Sir Richard Burton. I take that to be Michael Collins' influence...

Geoff:

Mebbe I'm out of the loop but I don't seem to hear much about McCammon any more. Used to be, Stephen King would publish a book and a few months later the new McCammon would pop up and it would have a suspiciously similar storyline/central idea. I'm afraid he falls into the "hack" category for me--certainly not a prose writer of the quality of Sebald.

No doubt. I'm reading the McCammon book because my school (a Jesuit h.s., 8-12th grades) chose it as our summer reading book. I can't imagine anybody older than about 15 finding the book meaningful or well written, but supposedly educated adults (and former English teachers) chose and seem pretty excited about it. . . .

In addition to the insult to taste, the other bite from my perspective as a novelist (one you can share) is that we sold 1400 books for McCammon. He's also coming to campus next fall and probably picking up a couple thousand dollars to do so.

I knew the danger of floating McCammon in front of this group, but honesty compelled me to include him. . . .

We don't blame YOU, Geoff.

It's a sick, sick world...

I'm reading IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, which includes "Magnetic Field" and other seminal texts of surrealism by Breton and Soupault. Reading a few pages triggered an hour of "automatic writing" this afternoon, out on our sun-dipped patio. Just putting pen to paper and letting all preconceptions tumble away. Amazing, the prose that flows out when you open your soul up to possibility, random chance and blessed inspiration...

Started the "Drafts and Fragments" section of Pound's Cantos I'm approaching the peak of the Mount Everest of Modernism.

just started Mieville's noir detective novel, the city & the city as well as Verghese's cutting for stone. The books are different enough that i think i'll settle into reading the Mieville and then getting back to Cutting for Stone.

Karl -there's a novel, the secret history of modernism set amongst the 50s English literati that you might enjoy...it's not about modernism as a movement - but rather the insulated, hothouse literary life of the time as witnessed by a colonial boy from NZed who's won a place in the rarefied London university environment. Quite funny, in parts and quite moving.

#9 - It may be heresy around these parts, but despite some overwrought prose I really liked Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Neat ideas at least.

Still plugging away at War and Peace, and My Name is Asher Lev is actually starting to get some attention when I can take no more of 30 Russian characters with 5 names each...

9: Bob, sounds like the memoirs of Clive James, that critical polymath for Oz.

Just finished Sourcery this morning. Planning on starting Guards! Guards! In about an hour. Revisiting the Discworld novels has actually been quite pleasant.

10> I read My Name is Asher Lev earlier this year and enjoyed it. I'll probably read The Gift of Asher Lev before the year is through.

I just finished Liquidation by Imre Kertész, and I'm more and more convinced that his 'trilogy' of novels (Kaddish for An Unborn Child, Liquidation, and Fatelessness) are one of the greatest literary achievements of the last century. I say that without having read Fatelessness yet, and it's the one that got him a Nobel prize.

Finished Pound's Cantos ... finally! The last few cantos were quite mesmerizing, a fine recapitulation of the whole project. I'm planning to write a lengthy blog article about the experience. It's not everyday one completes such a towering achievement of High Modernism. And like any quality piece of literature, it will be worth revisiting and exploring, since it becomes an impenetrable labyrinth of languages, experiences, philosophies, and arcane cultural references.

Would be interested to read that blog post. Make sure you post the link in here.

Currently reading:

The City and The City by China Mieville
The Getaway Man by Andrew Vachss
Sanctuary by Ken Bruen
High Life by Matthew Stokoe

Forgot to add Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale in my original post.

I've been on a noir kick for the last few months.

Love noir. Love, love, LOVE it.

Have you followed Akashic Books' "noir" series of books:

http://www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm

I picked up copy of DC Noir, since I've lived in or around the city all my life (and Pelecanos edited it). The others are on my list. I'm concentrating on the Vintage Crime/Black Lizard catalog at the moment. My next purchase will be The Big Book of Pulps.

Ah, Black Lizard--wonderful imprint. I have a number of their Jim Thompson titles.

And as for crime in general, I've written frequently of my love and reverence for James Crumley so I'll say no more on that count...

I keep meaning to pick up a Crumley title; thanks for the reminder.

He's the best, the absolute best. Wipes the floor with all of 'em, including Chandler (and I'm a big Chandler fan)...

Oh I own and enjoy all of Melville's stuff, except for Un Lun Dun, which may actually have been my favorite so far - but it happened at our local library has a copy. The city & the city is very different from anything he's done before. His writing style is far more pared down, as befits the noir-ish mystery set in a nonexistent former Soviet bloc country.

I am reading Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr by ETA Hoffman right now. I am also trying to finish up an environmental book I got through early reviewers, Early Spring.

17-18: I have said elsewhere on this list that I also love the Akashic Noir series. The Istanbul one was very good. Also there is a noir series called Crimini or something like that and I read their Italy anthology.
(ETA:Touchstone)

Started reading The White House Years by Henry Kissinger; along with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Portrait of a Lady, and Fulgrim A full plate, to be sure. The variety keeps it interesting.

And you can fault Kissinger for a lot of things, but not his writing, which is always excellent.

...and "Hitler Painted Roses"...

Kissinger is eloquent, meticulous, and long-winded to the extreme. "White House Years" (the first volume of his memoirs, there are two more) runs a brisk 1400 pages of dense prose. Big book, small print.

It's like tackling War and Remembrance or A Suitable Boy Once you tip past the 1000 page mark, things get a little nutty. I'll see what endurance I have, reading 1400 pages of wonky diplomacy-speak, Inside-the-Beltway gossip, and Kissinger's trademark manipulate lying.

It'll have to do, at least until I can get my hands on Alexander Theroux's Laura Workaholic and Littell's The Kindly Ones

24: White House Years: Another doorstopper that was the subject of a whole series of Doonesbury strips....

A memoir that doubles as a blunt fighting weapon. I'm reading the hardcover and it weighs quite a bit. Almost as much as my 7-volume edition of Rising Up and Rising Down

Goddamn, I had to look up A Suitable Boy and now I kind of want to read it. As if War and Peace and Infinite Jest in one summer weren't enough...

I guess I'll have to take my Indian lit half that size, with A Fine Balance sitting unread on my bookshelf for a little longer...

For excellent...and shorter, Indian lit, just about any of Amitav Ghosh's books are excellent. the glass palace, a wonderfully expansive historical novel about the intersection between Brit colonialism, East(ern) Indian, Malyan and Burmese cultures via generations of history of several families is my favorite. But the hungry tide set in the swamps of the Sundarban archipelago where an Indian/American cetologist is researching the fast disappearing freshwater dolphins is excellent as is the calcutta chromosome - a S/Fish alternative history of malaria and in an antique land - more of a autobiography of his immersion in Egyptian village culture as a budding anthropologist are all really fine. One of my favorite authors (obviously pimping hard here).

I gave up on a suitable boy, but that was just me, i think.

Anyone read Ghosh's new book, SEA OF POPPIES? I've added it to my inter-library loan list.

And for Malayan culture and British colonialism, there's always A Long Day Wanes

Do I get a prize for finding a way to shoehorn a Burgess reference?

no - it's on my list too, even if i still tenuously hold onto a decent job

Karl: no, you have The Right to an Answer.

(see what I did there?)

I read and LOVED A Suitable Boy. Yes it's long. But I found it very easy reading. This was several years ago. I read Arundhati Roy's God of Small things and Rushdie's Midnight's Children around the same time. Indian fiction is great. I also like Seth's poetry ("All you who sleep tonight" for e.g.). I listened to Bob a few months ago and read In an antique land which was terrific and anyone who has not read it yet should put it on his/her list.

I just started The Wisdom of Donkeys by Andy Merrifeld. It's a bit overwritten in the beginning, but that actually makes it endearing... since the overwriting is about his love for the donkey he's traveling with. I picked up the book because the author had previously written critical biographies of Debord and Lefebvre and book about Marxist takes on urbanism. The Debord bio was good, and this was such a big departure from those themes that I had to check it out. So far so good.

As far as Indian lit goes, I just grabbed Kanthapura by Raja Rao. Thank g-d for New Directions!

26: 1400 pages of wonky diplomacy-speak, Inside-the-Beltway gossip, and Kissinger's trademark manipulate lying

I dont know how wonky the application of brute force is. Kissinger has too much blood on his hands to be classified as a policy wonk. He is from the If you mess with the bull somebody is going to get the horn school of diplomacy.

If you think he is lying to you what do you hope to gain by reading it?

I'm a historian by trade, so I enjoy the intellectual fencing gained by reading his utterly duplicitous memoirs. There was a lot of reading in Mein Kampf too and I think it should be read.

Kissinger has blood on his hands, arms, and covering the rest of his body. He was instrumental in getting Nixon to control foreign policy from the White House. Another thrill is that it's like reading a meticulous foreign policy history as written by Satan.

Cliff and Bob, I enjoyed Sea of Poppies enough that I have it on my to-buy list after returning it to the library. I always like when I get to learn about something I knew nothing about before and I now know just a smidge about the opium trade.

Which brings me to a topic I've been thinking about for a few days and wanting to bring into conversation here somehow. I have a horrible memory about books that I've read. I really don't remember plot lines or characters unless they just completely blow me away, and even then only for a short while. For instance, I have read several Hermann Hesse books and have only a vague idea what the books were about. (One was about Buddha and another about a student. It has been a few years.) I have an impression of him that is good, and I have him listed as a favorite author, but I have absolutely no idea why. I don't keep a book journal, perhaps I should, but, frankly, I have way too much going on in my life to keep up with this. I'm only 41 so I don't think it's senility - not just yet. Am I alone here in this? How do you all keep authors straight?

I do keep a book journal and that helps immensely. I'm also one of those idjits who has trouble balancing his bank book but is KILLER at "Trivial Pursuit". A mind for minutiae. I can recall the director of photography for a 1949 noir film but ask me what I was doing last Tuesday and I'll just scratch my head and heel the dirt in embarrassment.

I think Hesse is a youthful enthusiam--I hear a number of people praise him/his books but when you ask when they last read Hesse, it's been a while, in many cases a LONG while.

I have a soft spot for SIDDHARTHA but nothing else by the man had the slightest impact on me. STEPPENWOLF was DREADFUL.

I reread The Glass Bead Game every decade or so and find new richness in it each time. It was about life and art.

Siddhartha was pleasant, but I haven't reread it. It was about Siddhartha with a surprise ending if I remember correctly.

I have Der Steppenwolf in German, but I've pretty much given up the idea of ever reading more than a sentence at a sitting in German. It turned into a rock band.

Robert

I read a lot of Hesse when I was younger. I've been meaning to get around to the Glass Bead Game, another epochal literary work on a long list. Since I'm reading 4 things at once (5, if you could Rising Up and Rising Down), I want to start eliminating things from the list. Winnow it down to one or two things. When I get employment again, I know my reading time will be drastically cut.

See? Unemployment DOES have its upside.

But, like I've said, mon: smart geek like you isn't going to be overlooked in the job market for long. So you hang in there...

Cliff,

I hope so. All a matter of keeping my options open, being inventive, and making progress on other projects (novels, blog, reading queue) while time affords it. That said, I'd really like a job and an income.

#40 one of the benefits of getting older getting to reread books that i read 5-10 yrs ago and being surprised all over again. Plot/character details fly out of what remains of long terms storage.

Defn. be on the lookout for sea of poppies.

#40, emaestra, There is a field on the book page for a book in your library that is for private comments. After you read a book a brief passage of ideas, strengths and weaknesses (not a review, just for you) in that field may help you later on remember why you thought a particular book was good or bad. Of course it won't help the past, but it could be useful going forward.

Just a thought.

I'm still reading Swann's Way (out loud, to myself; just works for some reason). Have just begun The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe and am almost finished with Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, the Private Years by Charles Capper. I may continue with the second volume (The Public Years), which has just been published.

I'm planning on Shakespeare's As You Like It . But whether I actually get to it this month remains to be seen .

VERY snobby reading. My kinda folks...

L'Immeuble Yacoubian by Alaa El Aswany in French translation, in my effort towards Weltliteratur - a great look at Egyptian culture, religion, society and history.

well. I REALLY liked Mieville's latest, the city and the city - prose far more spare than his prior New Crobuzon steampunk fantasies, as befits a novel which draws upon noir urban settings for police procedurals. It MUCH more than an procedural set in a vaguely familiar alternate near history, but i think i'm going to have to reread it after i finish cutting for stone before i can think intelligently about "the cities." But readers who have been put off by Mieville's baroque tendencies might appreciate the very different style that sets off this last novel. The basic commonality between this and his prior novels is that "place" is as much a character as the actors.

"baroque tendencies"

Robert, is that a euphemism for over-writing? You clever bugger.

What's wrong with a little over-writing? It's a nice antidote to the lifeless, gutless, bloodless, dickless, otherwise anemic, anonymous, boring, and dull prose that permeates 99.8% of speculative fiction aka "beige prose" (Heinlein, Asimov, etc.).

It's like the art world and the constant back-and-forth between icy Apollonian design and Dionysian excess. The style and glories of the Renaissance led to the excess of Baroque and Rococo that led to the reaction of Neclassicism which led to Romanticism and Art Nouveau/Jugendstil/Arts and Crafts which led to Modernism and the sterile Bauhaus. I appreciate all those movements, but I prefer the excessive, grandiose, decadent stuff. Good to keep a long-range historical perspective on these things.

It's also like the rivalry between the Mandarin writers and the Vernacular writers. A useful distinction, up to a point ...

Baroque writing is fine...when employed by a master like Cormac McCarthy (for instance). When lesser talents fall victim to it, it's just silly and embarrassing.

Rmember my challenge people... I'm seeing too many familiar names!

William Vollmann has been accused of over-writing. Then again, all of his books are really long. A nice parody of his writing here:

http://www.edrants.com/william-vollmann-turns-in-uncharacteristically-slim-child...

As far as familiar names, I blame the publishing industry. It's unfortunate that they will only bankroll a small stable of literary names. One has to check the small presses and PODs (shout-out to Cliff) to find buried talent.

A couple of lesser knowns:

*Satanskin by James Havoc ... writing like the leatherclad love-child HP Lovecraft and Bob Guccione

*Specimen Tank by Buzz Callaway ... a darkly comic tale of medical experiments gone bad. My copy has art work by lowbrow bad boy Robert Williams on the cover.

Karl, in your genealogy of art you forgot the Bauhaus to Velvet Elvis step.

New to the group, and, indeed, LT groups in general.

This year I began keeping a list of the books I've read by month on my blog, here: http://nicomaramckay.com/reading/

Currently I'm reading The Jungle Book in between two catalogues written for Austin Osman Spare exhibits.

Just recently finished Antonia White's The Lost Traveller and I'm finishing up, on my Kindle, Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population.

Just started Jenny Uglow's Nature's Engraver, a biography of Thomas Bewick (whose History of British Birds, vol ii, "Water Birds," was the book that the ten-year-old Jane Eyre was reading while hiding behind the curtain sitting on the window seat at her Aunt Reed's house).

I've found a copy of British Birds (not a first edition, but at least one published before Bewick's 1828 death) at what I consider an affordable price, but I want to read this biography before I contact the rare book seller about it. It's a real shame the Folio Society has never, at least as far as I'm aware, published a facsimile edition for two to three hundred dollars.

Wow, Austin Osman Spare, there's a name I came across while I was researching my occult/supernatural novels. One of my bad guys had a Spare piece in his art collection.

Can you tell me more about these catalogues and the exhibits?

Nifty, what's the title of your book?

The one I'm reading at the moment is Austin Osman Spare: Artist, Occultist, Sensualist, by Geraldine Beskin, which was produced for the exhibition held at Marx House in London in August 1999.

The other is Borough Satyr: The Life and Art of Austin Osman Spare by Robert Ansell, produced for an exhibit at London's Mass Gallery in November 2005.

Unfortunately I didn't attend either exhibition (or the more recent one this year), but I collect the catalogues and books by and about Spare because I'm fascinated with his life and work.

Well, we'll avoid plugging my book here. Just check out my profile page and it will pass along the necessary information. Spent ages doing the research and came across some amazing material, all of it true (wink, wink) and fascinating. Aleister Crowley, John Parsons, John Dee...creeeepy.

How do you like Spare's work? Would love to see an exhibit of his weird oeuvre...

Also check out the work of William Beckford who wrote Vathek, more Victorian occult wierdness. Alfred Kubin is another sensualist oddball.

i defn. don't mind overwriting at times, even some books where the style really goes over the top - actually both Mielville's earlier books as well as one of my favorite recent fictions, the orphan's tales by Catherynne Valente which is very "baroque" and features stories within stories within stories, yet works like an exquisitely faceted ruby.

It's a fine line though, Bob, innit? Ian sent me a review of NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR by Mark Charan Newton, who has Mieville as an influence and it includes lines like "violently febrile". The reviewer, Mark Lewis, talks about "dissonance" and maybe that's the key. Rich writing must be in context and handled by a truly gifted writer.

Hello. I'm new to Library Thing. (I'm also a newly minted librarian looking for a job!) My favorite example of "overwriting" is Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Frankly, I enjoy a bit of youthful exuberance every now and then. But only if written by someone with real talent and intellect, as has been mentioned.

Annie Dillard (sigh).

My hero.

HOLY THE FIRM is prose touched by the divine. But, really, I'm in awe of every closely considered word the woman puts on paper.

Welcome to LibraryThing and welcome to the group. You've joined a clan of rabid bibliophiles, devotees of the printed word. You should fit right in.

Here is my review of Pound's Cantos:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/the-cantos-by-ezra-pound-a-c...

Your CANTOS review was a hoot, pal. Keep it up!

Here's a critique of another book I know you've read, James Wood's HOW FICTION WORKS. Directly from my book journal (volume 3):

"I was fully prepared to despise this book. Mr. Wood, after all, is no big fan of three writers I absolutely revere: Pynchon, Colson Whitehead and David Foster Wallace. Wood's reviews are personal, pointed and (admittedly) well-composed but hardly (in my view) definitive. Like Pauline Kael, he lets his personal enthusiams color his critical faculties.

That said, that acknowledged...

HOW FICTION WORKS is fascinating, insightful and erudite. It reveals that Mr. Wood is extremely well-read and able to speak with some knowledge and conviction on complex writers and (to me) incomprehensible theorists like Roland Barthes.

I rarely read books on writing and writers (unless they're biographies) and critical theory holds little interest to me, but I found HOW FICTION WORKS considered and smart, particularly when Wood comments on the work of Flaubert, Henry James and Nabokov. I tip my hat to him.

The bastard."

P.S. In New York, the book is titled HOW FICTION WOIKS.

I haven't read How Fiction Works, but I always try and check out his reviews, usually in the New Yorker. Nothing wrong with an erudite, enthusiastic reviewer.

Glad you enjoyed my Cantos review. I'm fast approaching the end of both Fulgrim and Portrait of a Lady Then I can FINALLY get to my Early Reviewer books, the Last Prince of the Mexican Empire and the Spiders of Allah

Worth though looking at all the other reviews that lavish praise on this book, in comparison to Lewis's. Remember how messy Mieville's PERDIDO was, and how that was received well too. Lewis is famous for such bad reviewing.

I have no faith in genre reviewers--too many of them are fans and their critical faculties are, um, suspect. As in they're poorly read morons. So when praise is lavished on a genre book (SF or fantasy, in this case), I tend to take that with not just a grain of salt but an entire ocean full.

I've mentioned this before but I know one SF/F/Horror reviewer (and a good one) who shies away from tackling books he's pretty sure he won't like because of the vitriolic and personal attacks bad/negative reviews often inspire from fan-dumb. "I just got tired of it," he admitted.

Doesn't bode well for creating a strong, literate, critically minded community, does it?

#72 Since when has Lewis been "famous for such bad reviewing". I've not read Nights of Villjamur but I have read Newton's The Reef, so I recognised some of the issues Lewis raised in his review. Instead of counting the number of good reviews versus bad, you should be looking at the names of the reviewers, because a thousand gushing reviews on blogs which do little more than pimp the latest fantasy "masterpiece" are going to tell you nothing useful about a book.

Yep...

On that note, I finished Fulgrim and will write a review shortly. A little pimping might be involved, but I don't know any place that actually reviews these books with any regularity (or from an RPG player's perspective). I think Ian and I are the only one who read these books.

Started The Spiders of Allah Looks like a fascinating book, tackling the issues of the Middle East and religious fundamentalism without the booze-reek of Christopher Hitchens The author is a London Times reporter, so at least it won't have Hitchens's patented Beltway blather. (Not a fan of Hitchens, if you haven't gathered already.)

Nearly done with Portrait of a Lady and then I'll start The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

At long last, finished Portrait of a Lady On to the Last Prince of the Mexican Empire and eventually some Alexander Theroux.

I'm almost done with Beneath the Underdog by Charles Mingus. He's not quite Wilt Chamberlain, but if this guy had sex with half as many women as he claims... goddamn!

Had no idea Mingus had written his autobiography. Could listen to Mingus Ah Um daily--well, almost.

OK - finally finished Cutting for Stone. While not quite as gracefully written as Verghese's previous non-fiction book the tennis partner, CfStone is, non the less a terrific "modern historical" novel. The stories follow the interlocking lives of two twined Indian brothers, and their family (which extends into the hospital and local community) born in an Ethiopian mission hospital in the 1950s. The novel IS long, filled with detours and details both about medical history and practice as well as Ethiopian history and all the expat communities who've lived there. But the details are generally engrossing, rather than superfluous. As a sequelae of my particular, odd educational background (cultural geography/history of medicine) i knew something both of the history of the Horn of Africa as well as a reasonable amount of the history of medicine and found the details both new and generally fascinating. (There is a nice, relatively short, discussion of source material and references @ the end).

And the family story, too, increasingly sucked me in. In some ways i guess one could say this is a book about karma and family. Every action has its impact/reaction, usually in totally unexpected ways. The narrator flees Ethiopia, in the wake of a Eritrean hijacking in which suspicion falls his way (at the time, post Selassie, Ethiopia was in the grip of the Mengistu dictatorship); he flees and we suffer with him as he winds up in the halls of "Our Lady of Perpetual Succour" - one of the many urban hospitals that have been more or less abandoned to "Foreign Medical Graduates" as a default means for last ditch care for America's urban poor. But as he finds himself immersed in this mashup of multiple cultures in America (his skill in cricket is most imp. to his fellow residents), he's still linked by family/karma/history to Ethiopia and family. I don't usually spend a week reading one book, but i don't begrudge Cutting for Stone a minute of time spent. Very highly recommended - 4 1/2 or 5 stars. Maybe down half a star for minor flaws in style/structure - esp. since i've read Verghese's previous two non-fiction books - but, i'll give that star back because the story and book were so absorbing in all regards.

In-depth review, Bob. Lovely job, old man. The book sounds like a winner.

My reading this week:

Fiction:

THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY by Philip Hensher

Short-listed for the Booker. Set in Sheffield in the year of our Lord, 1974. Lots of characters, folks from different strata of society and ages; secrets and betrayals, set against a grimy industrial city. The book has been described by one critic as "extremely funny" but I'm 150 pages in and not seeing THAT. Sad, very realistically drawn, characters revealing themselves layer by layer, incident by incident. If it hangs together, this is gonna be a good 'un. One quibble: too many similes. I really dislike similes.

Non-fiction:

THE DREAM OF TROY (Arnold Brackman)

The story of Heinrich Schliemann's lifelong quest to discover the "lost" city of Troy. Most in the academic community believed Troy was a myth and dismissed Schliemann as a bumbling amateur. The man had an extraordinary life: taught himself numerous languages (including ancient Greek), made a fortune in commerce and gave it all up to devote himself to his passion. This book isn't definitive or especially well-written but Schliemann is such a fascinating character, I find myself carried along.

George Orwell once described Sheffield as "possibly the ugliest city in the Old World". It's not that bad - in fact, if you like Brutalist architecture (which I do), it has some striking examples.

Thought that "grimy, industrial city" bit might grab your eye.

What is the state of those "demonic mills"--coal not exactly a popular source of energy these days. The piles of coke and rubble sound really lovely. Send me a set of picture postcards of the slag tips, will ya?

Done with THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY--a good book but not great. Certainly not worthy of being a finalist for the Booker. The author's very effective at creating characters from all over the political and social spectrum and gives an authentic sense of what it was like to live in England from 1974-94...

But those dang similes kept popping up and he tried to tie the book together too neatly in the end, including employing a device (no spoiler) that has ALWAYS annoyed me.

*** (out of 5)

Reading The Milk Train Doesn't Come Around Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams. One of his lesser-known plays. Apparently the movie version starred camp idols Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter

Also read a bit of The Glass Menagerie last night.

Just in one of those Tennessee Williams moods, I guess. Gotta love the 8-volume New Directions anthology of Williams plays. A treasure in my collection.

Karl--I don't why, but I'm surprised that you're reading Williams. I used to be a huge Williams fan. If you haven't yet, read A Streetcar Named Desire. Don't think you know it from the movie; there's more to it. Also, have you ever read The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, which is the much better--and later--version of Summer and Smoke?

I'm a big Williams fan. I enjoyed reading the play and watching the film in high school. Haven't read "Nightingale" -- I'll have to check it out.

I'm also a fan of other gay writers like John Rechy and Jean Genet

88--Loved Genet. I was in a workshop production of The Maids--very long time ago, in another life. Not familiar with Rechy. I'll have to check him out.

Our Lady of the Flowers is also extraordinary. One of the best post-war European novels ... ever.

The Balcony was also cool. An interesting examination of fantasy and reality and politics and performance. Susan Sontag remarks how BDSM "theatricalized sex" as does the action in the brothel in The Balcony.

Since we're on the theme of gay playwrights, Tony Kushner has a new play out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/theater/14stev.html

The Maids is probably the best depiction of class hatred ever written.

Just read the last page of J.G. Ballard's COCAINE NIGHTS--think it was his last 20th century novel and it's a good one. Another ugly view of the rich and blameless, written with his usual caustic touch.

***1/2 out of 5.

Aw, those poor wealthy people. My heart aches, truly. As if.

i thought i'd mentioned Mieville's latest here - but i can't see what i said, if anything...So.

Read and will reread the city and the city. well. I REALLY liked Mieville's latest, prose far more spare than his prior New Crobuzon steampunk fantasies, as befits a novel which draws upon noir urban settings for police procedurals. It MUCH more than an procedural set in a vaguely familiar alternate near history, but i think i'm going to have to reread it before i can think intelligently about "the cities." But readers who have been put off by Mieville's baroque tendencies might appreciate the very different style that sets off this last novel. The basic commonality between this and his prior novels is that "place" is as much a character as the actors.

Actually the book is a LOT less weird in its overt format/characterization/plot than Mieville's earlier "new weird" novels. But, really, when i thought about it, TCandTC is "intellectually" (cause i can't think of the right word in my dotage) more adventuresome than his earlier work despite being more low key on the surface. Defn. a noir sensibility - i was reminded more of some movies (LA Confidential, Dead Again by way of Hitchcock than of other books.

Gotta say, when someone uses "baroque" to describe a writer's style, I usually run in the opposite direction. I'm a minimalist at heart. That said, I've heard good things about Mieville and will give the lad a shot someday...

He's defn. trying something different here, compared to his prior work. Exactly why i used "spare" - not really as the opposite of "baroque" - "rococo" actually might have been a better word anyway for Meilville prime - but in the sense that while the sentences and paragraphs are easy to read, some, not all, a laden with meaning. And the style DOES honor noir conventions. Jack Daniels out of a hip flask (joke...different drink of choice in the former Sov. satellite states) ; sardonic, perceptive female member of the protagonists working crew (NOT his secretary, though).

Almost finished The Pilgrim Project by Hank Searls. Was going to bung up a review on my Space Books blog as part of my Apollo 11 40th anniversary celebration, but I think I'll stick the review up as soon as it's done. Also started Second Stage Lensman. I've only read the first half-dozen pages, but I'm already bleeding from the ears...

Has anyone yet encountered The Elegance of the Hedgehog? I'm about halfway through it and don't know whether to love it or through it out the window (into my neighbor's cowpen, incidentally).

Thanks for mentioning The Glass Bead Game. I was mildly obsessed with it as a youngster, then found the connection to Gramsci's "class of useless intellectuals" very interesting.

I've read "Full House" by Stephen Jay Gould It's about evolution and baseball. Gould was notoriously prolific and sometimes his style became excessive and frustrating. Like other author celebrities, once he got really famous, it seemed his editors became hands-off and his writing became excessive.

Still working on War and Peace, but the end is in sight - I've only got about 350 pages to go. Woohoo!

Other than that, I occasionally listen to an audiobook chapter of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat on my drive to work. Surprisingly funny for something written in the late 1800s.

So true about celeb authors: their books get fatter and fatter and less interesting. And literate. Doesn't matter, they still get richer and their readers will buy ANYTHING they put out.

Started On the Road yesterday, and am enjoying it. Light and leisurely reading.

I'm about halfway through Jean-Claude Izzo's A Sun for the Dying and very glad that I'm not homeless.

Irieisa, good for you! I mean it! you are just the right age to read and enjoy Kerouac. Once you get older, stream of consciousness tends to get in the way of the writing. The joyousness of life, the thrill of go gets knocked out of you by that nasty old kiljoy, responsibility, and unless you are remarkably lucky you wind up a wage slave somewhere, and go is the first syllable of your dreams. Ask Ian, he'll tell you. If you like On the Road you might want to give The Dharma Bums a try.

>104 geneg: - Thanks! I've heard that Kerouac, among other writers, is best enjoyed while still young. Thought I might as well dig in.

The book I have that contains On the Road is a Library of America volume, which includes The Dharma Bums, so I can move onto that next. I've enjoyed On the Road so far. I find it rather peaceful to read. Has a bittersweet feel to it (for me, at least).

Wouldn't it be rather awkward to ask Ian, though?

That was at least partially a rhetorical question. Ian, just a year or two ago wanted to see what all the fuss was about with regard to On the Road, read it for the first time (I have no idea how old Ian is, but apparently old enough not to be convinced at the irresponsible recklessness touted by Kerouac) and didn't care for it. He probably has the freshest perspective. He has a review on his blog, but don't know how to search to find it.

Don't pay any attention to us who've been beat up with that ugly stick called life, you read what you like and enjoy. Maybe when you get done, you can write a thoughtful review from your perspective.

>106 geneg: - Oh, I see. In regards to the irresponsible recklessness, I personally wouldn't want to be involved with it in any way, but I'm quite all right with reading about it. A bit later I'll see if I can find Ian's review.

Perhaps I don't make the best snob in that there are few books I've read that I can say I truly think of as God-awful (I can think of four right now that I absolutely deplore). This may devalue anything positive I have to say. I do see the problems in most books and I don't mind pointing those out, but I generally can't call them awful. On the bright side, when I say a book is awful, it says a lot.

Here's Ian's On the Road review: http://justhastobeplausible.blogspot.com/2008/12/different-road.html

It came from his monthly series on "Classics", legitimate or alleged, which he had never yet gotten around to.

I concur with Ian's review. But, Iriesa, you're at the perfect age for Kerouac, so tuck in. Don't let us bitter old farts influence you.

And then tackle Wm. Burroughs CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT. It's magnificent.

#98, it's worth hanging in there for Elegance of the Hedgehog. It gets much better in the second half.

>108 sollocks: - Thanks!

>109 CliffBurns: - I don't really disagree with what Ian said. Definitely agree about the dialogue, but I can't bring myself to criticise very much because I'm not at all good with dialogue. It either is obviously bad or I feel it must be bad because I'm not a very social creature, and thus my experience regarding discourse is limited, and my imagination doesn't seem to fit right with reality.

Also, on the topic of bitter old farts, d'you think the difference between bitter old farts and bitter young farts is the former have more/legitimate reason to be bitter farts?

I'll have to find a copy of Cities of the Red Night, then. Thanks for the recommendation!

#110, thanks. It's not so much the pace as a few philosophical inconsistencies. For a book that questions initial impression, the main characters certainly have their opinions! (But they are all well founded, of course, because these characters are smarter than the rest of us poor drones).

That, and there is a lot of philosopher name-dropping, as if to say, "See, I've read these guys!")

For the nonce I am going to be using this thread mostly just to keep track of reading before I forget that I've read the books, rather than going into a slight detail about the books. That caveat aside, recent books include:
Mockingbird - a lovely and affectionate story of family, family secrets , voodoo, sibling love and rivalry set in the city which zoning forgot, modern Houston Texas. The mater familias (sic) has died, and her gift of being ridden by the voodoo gods has passed on to her "good" actuary daughter, Toni. Who would like nothing more than to have magic disappear totally from her life; while passing over her younger sister Candy who would like nothing more than to inherit her mother's burdens and talents. But it's really not so much a story about magic as it is about a family being able to pull themselves together when all of their lives seem to be flying apart when the emotional maternal black hole that has more or less kept everyone in thrall has dissipated. Humor, affection, fairness, love and just plain old good writing permeate this gorgeous short novel. (working hard at trying to dictate rather than to type these brief summaries).

Stalin's ghost By Martin Cruz. Another one of his Moscow detective novels, rich in setting, past, vodka and then new generation of Russian "Mafia." If one has read the other Arkady detective stories and enjoyed them, I suspect this one will be enjoyed too (I liked it). Nice convoluted plot full of betrayals, support from surprising people, a classical musician-harpist/pole dancer/garrotte expert is about par for the course for a typical character. And of course chess.

also gone through a graphic novel binge, Bayou set in the American South in the 1930s (on line here: http://www.zudacomics.com/bayou) dealing with racism, Jim Crow, American folklore, justice, is up there with Satrapi's memoirs of post revolutionary Iran and Sfar's the Rabbi's cat as an exemplar of the appropriation of the "silly" genre for profound art.

next up, Notes from the underground having been convinced by tomcat ( and others) that I really do need to fill a gaping hole in my reading history.

Wrote about Second Stage Lensman here, June's book in this year's reading challenge.

"But scale alone is not sense of wonder, and it's a mistake to confuse the two."

My favorite line. And let's apply that to the CGI-filled comic book adaptations and franchise flicks that are over-flowing the screens these days. Spectacle without the slightest amount of depth. Movies for the mall rat generation.

Ye Gods, that book sounds dreadful. I have one Smith book, TRIPLANETARY ("First of the Famous Lensman Series"), and have never been able to summon the nerve to open the fucker. Grabbed it at some used bookstore or library sale over a decade ago. Not exactly sure why. Masochism?

Good review, Ian. Vicious without being unfair. The way I like 'em...

Finished Eats, Shoots and Leaves yesterday. It's a must-read for every snob.

This month I started working my way through the Europa Editions catalogue (just began reading The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante), and I cannot get enough!

Spiders of Allah continues to astound. A great read and a nice look at the stories behind the stories of the Iraq War. His tales of combat in Falluja are worth the price of admission.

Still slogging through White House Years and Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Both of those will take a while to get through. Well, that's what Winter in Minnesota is for.

#113 I love Notes from the Underground... if you read that you might as well tackle Ellison's Invisible Man (if you haven't already)...

#116 I haven't read Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Honestly, I don't even have a decent excuse as to why not... Maybe I'll read it this summer.

read invisible man decades ago - so i remember virtually nothing at this point, except that i liked it.

I remember there was a basement in Invisible Man. That's all I remember. It's probably been about a decade since I've read it, myself, and I didn't really get it at all.

Started Infinite Jest. See you all in a few weeks.

Finished Life and opinions of the tomcat murr and read a mystery novel this weekend, Borderline, as palate cleanser. Almost done with Early Spring which is an early reviewer book. Before reading something else serious I am going to read the new Chris Bohjalian.

Finished Ulysses. My first time through. I'm about halfway through Falling Man.

Read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler yesterday. Enjoyed the film when I saw it earlier this year. The book is clever, although more lightweight than I'd expected. One of these days, hopefully, Fowler will write another science fiction novel...

Finished Spiders of Allah, like reading a modern Michael Herr

Working to finish The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, then I can start on An Adultery I'm craving some Alexander Theroux.

Reading Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes. Should have it finished by the end of the night. Can I keep up this book-a-day rate for the rest of the week?

I've got that one but haven't read it. Run sort of hot and cold on Barnes. Remember to post a link to your review, puh-lease, Monsieur Sales...

I'm almost done with The Days of Abandonment; next up is No Aloha: The Friendly Happy Music of the Past.

125--Please do post a link. I read it last summer and would be interested to read your thoughts on it.

Actually, No Aloha: The Friendly Happy Music of the Past will have to wait. I got Crying of Lot 49 at the library today, so I'm taking the plunge into that...

Is that really a touchstone? Somebody needs to undertake a project to put some sense in the touchstones. the idea is great. The execution, not so much.

Sounds like a book about cattle lowing in pen number 49. Or is this a lot of 49 objects being cried at an auction? either way it has nothing to do with Pynchon's novel other than it shares a bunch of words and numbers with the title.

I see this kind of crap all the time when using touchstones, please, can someone straighten them out?

Yeah right. They changed it so LT only accepts dates in US format, but won't change it back. Despite the rest of the world using an entirely different format.

Well, after all Ian, our way is so much more sensible than the way the rest of the world does it. Just take a deep breath and think Year, month, day, year, month, day. You'll get used to it. It's not hard. It's just like being left handed: you adjust.

Actually, in real America it's month/day/year. So LT's year/month/day isn't any more American than Year/Day/Month would be. I suspect it has to do with sorting and such. After all, data processing is the only place the date format is crucial.

Y2K showed the inadequacy of anything less than the entire year, the main date division, followed by month, the second date division, followed by day, the least date division, so year/month/day is much more sensible. Isn't it?

It's the metric system of date conventions. the one that makes sense in the modern world. So we'll keep our eccentric miles, feet and inches, pounds and ounces, gallons and cups, you can have your eccentric day/month/year (or is it year/day/month these days). After all, when a yard was the distance between the tip of the King's nose and the tip of his middle finger with arm and hand outstretched there was a human dimension to it all. Now as with so much else we have turned our environment into a less human friendly, more machine friendly place to live. Not only are we cogs in a wheel, we have constructed a world of gears rather than levers. Just think of it as doing your part to create an anachronistic human world. We do.

>132 geneg: - Wow, I didn't even know it was done differently; I was only familiar with month/day/year.

Year month day is ISO standard. Not US standard. LT accepts ISO and US standards. It used to accept day month year too. Which is the format that comes most naturally to me.

Oh, and the sorting thing... databases sort dates irrespective of format. And you can display them using a format mask. Very simple.

"You crazy Europeans and you're differently shaped plugs. That's why you lost World War 2!" -- Some Midwestern Patriot Nutcake.

That "you're" really kills me.

listening to Notes from underground driving back and forth to work to my job as a government contractor... I am obviously going to have to listen to it more than once since themes keep on repeating themselves recursively with slight variations. I hope I'm not totally out to lunch finding a lot of it quite ( intentionally ) humorous? Did later existentialists totally lose their sense of humor?

Camus, apparently, told a helluva version of the old "farmer's daughter" joke...

Finished Last Prince of the Mexican Empire -- a fascinating read about a historical footnote of a footnote.

Started reading An Adultery by Alexander Theroux, aka God. Dude can write and his anti-prolific nature matches literary Ubermensch Pynchon

Found this line and made me think of Cliff for some reason:

"I was single-minded, unkempt, prolific, but too canonical and still making nonlucrative quixotic imperfections."

He also has a 3-page tirade against New England gentry and the academic classes that reads like Francois Rabelais and Henry James had bitter hate sex. I nearly burst out laughing.

Can't wait to dig into Three Wogs and Darconville's Cat, not to mention his epic Laura Workaholic

Great line from Theroux.

Here's my short write-up for No Aloha:

"Imagine a world where Nancy Reagan is First-Lady-For-Life, a large chunk of the midwestern United States is sold off and turned into a giant pig farm, and Colorado is ruled over by a theocratic Christian cult who kill off thousands of unbelievers in the "Surgical Jesus Mind Project" until the UN finally (sort of) intervenes to stop the bloodshed, at which point a civil war ensues. Meanwhile, what remains of Team Jesus - the religious militia responsible for carrying out the "Surgical Jesus Mind Project" - roam around indiscriminately beating people to death with metal crosses; other cults cut off their own ears and head to Texas for the second coming of Christ.

The protagonists are three teenage sumo wrestling fans who try to navigate their way out of that hell, reflecting on pederasty and such as they go. And oh yeah, there's a little cross dressing boy who might be the Messiah.

Pretty good book."

141: But what part of it is fictional?

That there are teenage sumo wrestling fans in Colorado, clearly.

Finished The Alchemist at my girlfriend's request.

It was... um... allegorical?

Finished The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire a few days ago. Here's my review:

http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-last-prince-of/

***

Also into Volume 3 of Bone by Jeff Smith

I'm reading Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick. New York Review of Books Classics series has yet to let me down.

>145 kswolff:, enjoy Bone. It's some sort of fantastic, although the end tries to get a bit too 'epic' for me. Still, the Bones are such great characters.

Spent the last two days reading most of On the Road after putting it off for a while; now I'm done with it. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. The dialogue wasn't my favourite, and that's being generous, and certain terms I didn't particularly like (i.e. "dig"; used a bit much for my liking). When all is said and done, however, I enjoyed it. It is oddly endearing for me, in a somewhat pitiful (towards the characters) way, and I can understand why it was popular. I wouldn't call On the Road a classic, but I'm very glad I read it.

Also, really "dug" the travel descriptions. Relaxing stuff, and fun. On the other hand, I still find the prospect of traveling miserable and to be avoided at nearly any cost.

Follow that up with a stiff martini of Naked Lunch It'll blow your socks off.

An Adultery continues to impress. Theroux gives a great rant about how horrible New Hampshire is. Gold!

I would like some suggestions on smart, humorous books. I've not found any author I like as much Harry Leon Wilson (especially Professor, How Could You?, but I am searching for something more contemporary. Ideas, anybody?

Alexander Theroux kicks ass. And Evelyn Waugh is a funny guy. Another funny Wilson with 3 names is Robert Anton Wilson.

Finished Isaac Bashevis Singer: An Album yesterday, when it was still June.

Funny authors?

David Sedaris comes to mind, as does a guy named Mark Leyner. Hunter S. Thompson's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS remains one of the funniest books ever. A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole. COCKSURE and BARNEY'S VERSION by Mordecai Richler. BEWARE OF GOD by Shalom Auslander and Richard Russo's STRAIGHT MAN are hilarious. I'm a big fan of Evelyn Waugh's too: the first half of DECLINE AND FALL is a hoot.

This one might be worth a thread unto itself--do we have a thread for funny books? Just to help fight the image that snobs are made up of the "doom and gloom" crowd...

Q: What is the difference between a prize-fighter and a man with a cold?

A: One knows his blows, the other blows his nose!

That's probably the first joke I ever learned. It was from a book titled Jokes, Jokes, Jokes. Doom and gloom have had a hard time getting a toe-hold on me ever since.

I think that would be an excellent thread to start! Thanks for the great suggestions. Confederacy of Dunces has been on my list for a while. Maybe I'll bump it up in the queue.