HAL 9000 asks "What are you reading, JAN 2010?"

While fending off rival gangs of monkeys and using bone tools to smash said rival gangs, I'm reading:

Things We are Not

Das Kapital, Vol 1

White House Years

I Think, Therefore Who am I?

Which will lead to the inevitable 2010 joke.

I'm reading...
The Fortress of Solitude, and Gravity's Rainbow, along with A New Literary History of America (One essay per day is my current plan).

Big books. And I've got more big ones on deck (Gaddis, Peter Gay's book on Modernism, etc.)

Zipping through a large print edition (hey, it was on sale, no cracks about my age) of Stephen Pressfield's VIRTUES OF WAR. Another historical novel, this one based on the life of Alexander the Great. I love Pressfield--if you haven't read his book on Thermopylae, GATES OF FIRE, you're missing a treat. It'll make you realize just how horrible "300" was...

White Noise.

And Once by Rebecca Rosenblum, which never seems to have a working touchstone.

And The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2.

Zooming through Steve King's Duma Key. Very good read and starting to get very creepy.

Also am starting Crying of Lot 49, Shadowmarch, and The Children's Book.

I figure I'd start out the year eclectically - some pop horror, high fantasy, a paranoid conspiracy farce, and a fancy-shmancy Victorian-era novel.

Second time through The Rings of Saturn.

Two issues of Glimmer Train.

Waiting on Ways of Seeing in the mail--Amazon said I was supposed to have it on the 23rd...

Things We are Not is pretty decent as far as SF anthologies go. Some good stories, some bad stories. Like the salad bar at Old Country Buffet. Unfortunately for this reviewer, his review copy has random pages that keep falling out. Kind of irritating. Granted it wasn't produced by a major publisher, but it would be nice for a paperback not to self-destruct upon its first read-through. If I wanted shoddy production values, I'd watch a SyFy original starring Bruce Campbell

I just finished The Domain of Arnheim by poe. It was a bit too flowery for me. I need literary pieces with a bit of dialogue to keep my attention. Overattention to describing scenery makes my eyes gloss over. Maybe that's just a sign of a lazy reader though :/

Nah, Poe does that for me, as well. Flowery, baroque writing ain't my cuppa. There's a word for long, descriptive passages: EXPOSITION.

Have just started Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, John Crowley, which I've been meaning to read for a while.

I'm reading The Land of Mist, which is disappointing after The Lost World, and also 1984, and Ecotopia.

about to start enemies of the people - family history/autobiography of the family of a pair of Hungarian journalists who got out @ the time of the first harsh crackdown. Based, in large part, on the huge files compiled by the Hungarian secret police that were made available to the author recently.

I've picked up that Crowley novel at our local library a couple of times but put it back on each occasion. One day, when I have the time and energy to fully immerse myself in it, give it a fair read, I'll grab it. Make sure you review it and drop us a link...

I decided to work through the Canada Reads list this year. I'd read Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott earlier. I finished Douglas Coupland's Generation X last week and am most of the way through The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy. Next up is Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner but I'm not sure whether to read the original French version or the translation. My French is pretty rusty these days. The last book on the list is Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald.

Any other subscribers to the McSweeney's quarterly? The latest issue takes the form of a fat, full-color newspaper. I've read about 1/5 of it so far, and I'm just loving it. I haven't touched any of the fiction yet, but the essays have been a lot of fun.

Making my way (slowly) through Dr. Zhivago. Next up: The Optimist's Daughter, and then 2666.

Finished Cosmopolis some days back.

Started Romeo and Juliet today - on Act III now. I can tell I'm missing some of the nuances of the language, but I imagine it will be delved into in school since it's the next piece of assigned reading we'll be working on, and I know some of my classmates will have considerably more difficulty than I.

Shakespeare is startlingly fun to read.

He's the shit, as my young pals would say. He da man. Not a fan of R & J, I thought it lame, especially the ending, which is contrived and ridiculous. See if you can lay your hands on the Zefferelli film adaptation (with the GORGEOUS and aptly named Olivia Hussey), it's the best. Please, no one mention the Decaprio piece of garbage...

I like the Baz Luhrman (sp?) production, too. DiCaprio is awful in it, of course, but Clair Danes and the dazzling visuals make up for him.

The Zeffirrelli (sp again?) one is very good. Mercutio, especially.

18: I bite my thumb at you, good sir. But seriously, not much of a Romeo and Juliet fan either. Tromeo and Juliet, on the other hand ... I'm more a fan of Titus Andronicus, especially the Julie Taymore adaptation, and Ian McKellan as a Oswald Mosley-esque Richard III

Just finished the portion in White House Years where Nixon meets Mao and China is "opened." Highly relevant, given our geopolitical and economic situation right now. Makes me think Joss Whedon was on the money with the whole US and China thing. Shiny.

My friend and I both thought that Romeo and Juliet was the stupidest play ever when we read it in class. Romeo's in love with another girl at the beginning, Juliet's 13, and they KILL themselves after knowing each other for a WEEK?! Not tragic romance, just ridiculous.

#21 I think that's the point, or one of them.

Anyhoo, I'm beginning my new year with a reread of The Brothers Karamazov. It's been a while since I read Dostoevski, so I'm hoping it's still as great as I remember.

I'm starting the new year off with Mansfield Park and a nonfic called Hot , Flat and Crowded .

Just started Beloved for my English class. We spent the entire class period reading it aloud and going over the symbolism. We got through a whole 2 pages.

Oh, and this is my teacher's favorite book. Yikes.

Well not every Shakespeare play is "great" i guess - i've never regretted reading any of them (i've not done all the "history" plays.) He reads brilliantly, regardless of the aimlessness of the plotting in some of the earlier works. All of his sonnets are up on the wall, beside the desk where my computer sits.

I think Julie Taymor's production of the tempest is due out this year? Should be breathtaking in its visuals.

Just started Good without God - Greg Epstein's apologia for humanism.

>18 CliffBurns: - Not a huge fan of the story myself, but the language... now that's a story unto itself. I don't like to think of it as a romance, and this seems to help in making it seem less contrived than it otherwise would. Still contrived, though. I question why it is so frequently called his masterpiece.

And added to the Netflix queue - although it would be nice if our Lit teacher would play the movie in class. Right now we're watching To Kill a Mockingbird, and I don't like it any more on film than paper.

>24 SilverTome: - Oh my. I despise that book.

Morrison's good, but I feel like she's the new "YOU MUST READ HER" book for college literature profs. I was taught The Bluest Eye twice, by two forgettable teachers... still like it, though.

Just started John Berger's Ways of Seeing. First essay is a Cliff's notes version of Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"--might as well read the original. We'll see.

25: Peter Greenaway also made a visually brilliant film of The Tempest

28: The Collected Works of Walter Benjamin includes several different versions of "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

26:
Yeesh, has anyone ever called Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare's masterpiece? I was under the impression that Hamlet/King Lear were more or less unimpeachably in possession of that distinction. I read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade, and our teacher played parts of the Zefferelli film for the class. I'm still not quite sure what to make of showing a movie with a naked 15 year old girl in it to a bunch of 8th graders at an all-boys school. All-in-all, probably not the most efficient way to promote helpful discussion that day.

Got your attention though, didn't it?

The best version of R & J for my money is the one done in Shakespeare in Love.

One of the great lines in any movie is delivered by Ben Affleck. As Ned Allyen studies the great part Shakespeare has for him, that of Mercutio, he marvels at the dialogue and then is quickly brought up short and with great surprise he says, "And then he dies!?" Priceless.

28/29: Interesting, especially given what the essay is about.

We watched the Zefferelli film when I was a 9th grader. Our teacher had a piece of posterboard that she used to cover the naked bits, haha.

I agree, Sutpen--I've never heard anyone claim R & J as Shakespeare's masterpiece, and Hamlet & Lear sound about right to me.

I started the year off with the Collected Poems of David Markson... alongside his old Western novel The Ballad of Dingus Magee.

His poetry was very funny and generally good, and the Western is ridiculous!

I'm going to read The Last Novel and This is Not a Novel soon. I loved Wittgenstein's Mistress, so I'm not sure why it took me so long to read more of his work.

>30 Sutpen: - Actually, yes, they have. I've always held more interest in Hamlet, but I've heard Romeo and Juliet talked of as his masterpiece at least as often as it. But if that is coincidental, then so much the better.

Othello's always been my favorite Shakespeare. Iago's a great villain.

Well, as the son of a Shakespeare prof ... it's Hamlet and Lear. This is what them Shakespeare profs return to again and again and again.

'tho I do like R & J, convoluted and improbable plot aside. I'd seen the Zeffirelli production about ten times before I got into high school.

Finished Duma Key and gave up on Children's Book - the plot sounded interesting enough but the writing was a little too much for me. (Anarchists? Cool! Oh... you're talking for a page about how the anarchist dressed...)

>24 SilverTome: Your post make me LOL--good luck with that!

HAMLET has smashing great speeches but I don't think it hangs together as well as some other efforts. To me, the best Shakespeare: LEAR, OTHELLO, MACBETH, HENRY V. Those are the ones that affect me, no matter how many times I read or see them...

Henry V has some great speeches, but I don't remember much of the play beyond those. At least Henry IV pt 1 had Falstaff...

#39 I gave up on Children's Book, too. I'll probably go back to it, but yeah, it drags. Plus I'm pretty sure she's insulting her audience in there somewhere, as well as herself. I mean, how many books of fairy stories for adults has Byatt written?

While I really like Hamlet, I love Macbeth. I have to teach Romeo and Juliet and I'm already over it. It is just a little too sweet for me. I am going to get a copy of King Lear as I haven't yet read that one and you all are praising it so much I definitely want to now.

Re: Romeo and Juliet, well, sorta

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2010/01/11/100111crth_theatre_als

I am surprised by the rude bits covered by cardboard. My entire convent school, with nuns, went to see the Zefferelli Romeo and Juliet in the cinema in the late 60's. I can't have been more than 12 at the time.

Was I educated by particularly liberal English nuns?

I would bet that an average Texan would beat an English nun for prudery, no contest. If we had seen naked flesh in class, some kid would've gone home and told his or her parents, and the whole town would've been up in arms. Seriously.

Americans have the most gawdawful, screwed up relationship with nudity imaginable. Publicly we deplore it, privately we can't get enough. It would be seriously funny if it weren't so sad.

I'm having a very French Revolution new year. Fatal Purity and The Gods Will Have Blood.

My favourite waggledagger has always been Lear, but I was under the impression it was less-well-regarded by... well, everyone else

i am working on my snob credentials by reading war and peace. well, listening to the audiobook version. Just crossed the halfway point on monday.

also reading the print version of a life of picasso: the triumphant years by john richardson. i am 2/3 into that one.

The nudity in Zeffirelli's R&J is so brief that it hardly counts.

Obviously you didn't see it for the first time when you were thirteen years old. I felt like Moses catching a glimpse of the promised land that I would never be allowed to enter.

I read Zefferelli had to get special permission for the nudity because Olivia Hussey was only fifteen. Dispensation from the Pope?

52: I was, in fact, 12 or 13. I felt that the director at least could have asked her to sit still.

I was out sick that day. I came back to find that I had missed what was most likely going to be the best day of the semester. :p

I am such a deprived child in that we never did Romeo and Juliet in high school and I never saw this film. However doesn't everyone remember the first film they saw that had any nudity in it? In my case it was a very silly comedy called Holy Moses. (May have been a Mel Brooks film.) I was appalled (I was about 12 or 13 I think). Seems so funny now.

#56: ah, Life of Brian...

"How shall we f*** off, oh Lord?"

A bit more Shakespeare. Actor Brian Cox coaching a young drama student on the fine points of delivering a great soliloquy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loDMRzPiCic&feature=player_embedded

Still reading White House Years by Kissinger.

Stephen Colbert interviews Kissinger on his possible transgender status:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/08/colbert-grills-henry-kiss_n_416013.html

Finished CULTS, CONSPIRACIES, & SECRET SOCIETIES by Arthur Goldwag. Very fun and a neat little reference book to have around.

61: I recommend Conspiranoia by Devon Jackson. Fun stuff! Surprising how George Bush pere fits into nearly every conspiracy in the book. He has a long entry that encompasses a lot of nefarious organizations.

>(9) exposition....thank you!

I just finished King Pest by Poe. I feel like I'm never ever going to finish his complete works. Does anyone else ever feel like this when they've been reading a book for a very long time? hopefully you've already guessed that I havent been listing every single work of his i've read...Just occasionally i'll mention one of his stories. It's taking me forever... lol.

Apparently Poe wrote one novel and it's the last tale that's in the complete works. It's called The narrative of Gordon pym After that I have all his poems to read.

I love the guy just frustrated at how long it's taking me. Impatience is eating me up inside.

I'm reading White House Years by Kissinger. It's 1400 pages long and taking forever. I passed the 1100 page mark. I finally see the end of the tunnel.

Going to start Paradise Lost this weekend. Am reading the His Dark Materials trilogy at the same time to get the parallels. I am still bogged down in the Marius section of Les Miserables but plowing doggedly onward. (as Palin says, "pummeling ... like a jubilent beaver." - Actual quote from Going Rogue)

Like I said before, Alan Keyes reading Going Rogue over a 70s porno bassline. The jokes just write themselves.

***

Good call with the reading parallels. Speaking of which, I'm reading Kissinger and Marx at the same time. Kissinger's global campaign of diplomatic anti-communism is diametrically opposed to Marx's indictment of the cruelties of capitalism. The section about kids working in the match factory is as anything in Apocalypse Now

Someone recommended I read DelCorso's Gallery by Philip Caputo, so I'm doing that. It has been a mistake.

I liked his RUMOR OF WAR and some of his journalism...

I'm currently reading The Leaves of Grass. Repetition, repetition, repetition, subtle homosexual erotica, American pastoral splendor, repetition, repetition, repetition.

So it's no different than the Book of Leviticus or the memoirs of Larry Craig?

69: I read The Rumor of War in college. Amazing Vietnam War novel. I'd also recommend Novel without a Name to get the Vietnamese perspective.

A Rumor of War is a memoir. Maybe Caputo should steer clear of fiction: clichés, awful dialogue, clumsy exposition.

On deck when I've disposed of Caputo is Jim Harrison's newest, The Farmer's Daughter. And to prepare for that, I'm reading Conversations with Jim Harrison from the University Press of Mississippi's Literary Conversations Series. (I have this thing for reading interviews).

Jim Harrison. Ah, me boyo, there's a writer...

Finished Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land by John Crowley. Very good, although I suspect a fan of Byron and his poetry would have got more out of it than I did. All the same, very cleverly done.

Now I've started Pawn of Prophecy, the first book of David Edding's Belgariad, which I am reading for this year's reading challenge. I will each month read, and subsequently blog, the first book in a popular fantasy series - to decide if a) they're any good, and b) they entice me to read the rest of the series they begin. I am mostly not hopeful on either score.

David Eddings, dear God. You got your work cut out for you with that one, Monsieur Sales. Who comes after him? Tad Wiiliams? Yike!

So far I have KJ Parker, Joe Abercrombie and Raymond Feist. But yes, Tad Williams is on the list.

You're going to need YEARS of therapy after that particular bout of reading, chum...

Tad Williams' first book was a fantasy about cats, Tailchaser's Song, that was actually really good. I don't read "high fantasy" (with exception of LOTR - the rest are just derivative anyhow, right?) so have not read anything he wrote since. Is it really bad?

I read some of TAILCHASER'S SONG because a friend offered those fateful words: "I know you say you hate fantasy but..."

I just thought it was standard fantasy/quest, with cats instead of hobbits. And the writing was plain jane, thoroughly nondescript and colorless. And grotesquely padded, at least 500-600 pages, much of it filler...

80: Hm. Fair enough. My children and I liked it, but I thought of it as a young adult read, meaning I was not as hardnosed in judging the writing style etc. as I am for books supposedly written for adults.

I agree that it was a fantasy quest, but I also thought it owed a lot to Watership Down in terms of the way the animals dealt with other species as well as their language, myths, etc. As I really liked WD as well, I guess I was predisposed to like it.

Just my opinion and to be taken with a grain of salt, considering my dislike of high fantasy, quests, and furry-footed bastards with a tendency to get into trouble...

I am finishing up The Imperial Cruise, by James Bradley. This is not much of a spoiler, but guess what? Bradley does not like Teddy Roosevelt very much.

So far, I like it, and find it well-researched, but he had made his point about Theodore half way in. By now, in the final act, he has knocked him out, and put him in a coma, but Bradley keeps pummeling away, and he could have spent more time on the consequences of the first Roosevelt administration, in my opinion.

well i've finished The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Poe...now i'm onto his poetry. But first, two or three articles from him on HOW to write poetry.

:P

I wholeheartedly enjoy Tad Williams. He's not 100% original, of course - what high fantasy writers are? - but I enjoy his writing and his characters. He also knows that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end - a fact that most fantasy authors don't seem to be aware of.

Currently reading his Shadowmarch in preparation for the third book in March. Also starting True History of the Kelly Gang, which is a pretty decent read so far.

Just posted my review of Stranger in a Strange Land on my blog - see here.

Good piece, Ian. If anything, I think you were too scrupulously fair. Personally, I am not above giving authors as irredeemably awful as Heinlein and Asimov a good, sound drubbing, not neglecting a groin shot when the ref is looking the other way. And their fans howl and complain, mewling about how cool their ideas were and how ground-breaking they were for their time...and I read a single paragraph from any of their books or stories and feel my stomach lurch. Heinlein was a better writer than Asimov but that isn't much of a stretch. Both were tone-deaf and appeared to have only an elementary understanding of human nature and inter-relationships. Juvenile in outlook, sloppy stylists, exhibiting all the weaknesses and deficiencies of pulp writers. Their "charm" resides largely in nostalgia and their longevity is subject to debate, to say the very least...

Some of Heinlein's juveniles, while dated, aren't bad reads. Having said that, it's been a while since I last read them. Um, perhaps I might dig out my copy of Space Cadet... I expect I will end up throwing it at the wall.

Having said that, Heinlein was a master at deploying sf tropes - he could slip them into a story better than any of his peers. So he did have some beneficial effect on the genre.

87. CliffBurns: Once upon a time, long ago, I read science fiction. But then "ideas" became less important to me as a reader, and a writer, than at least "an elementary understanding of human nature and interrelationships," as you put it. So I pose this question to you, or anyone else: Where in the scifi genre would one find this understanding?

89: Not to drag this away from books, but I was just remarking to my wife last night about exactly that in TV sci-fi. It has moved from adventure stories to "big ideas" and now, most recently, to being more strongly character-based. The emphasis is now, as much as anything else, on characters themselves. I call it the "Battlestar Galactica Effect."

I don't read sci fi anymore -- read a lot of Heinlein and Asimov as a kid, and they didn't bother me then. But they probably would now.

Oh, I think there's good, literate SF out there...but Ike and Bobby Heinlein don't come close to matching the best the genre has to offer. Of the Golden Agers, I'd much rather read someone like Arthur C. Clarke or even Alfred Bester. SF didn't truly come of age until the New Wavers showed up (Ballard at the forefront) and then in the mid-late 60's, writers like Phil Dick and Harlan Ellison, Sturgeon and Farmer really started to stir the pot. And today we have Iain Banks and Alastair Reynolds and Vernor Vinge and Peter Watts and Richard K. Morgan and Charles Stross...

Okay. You obviously read more scifi than I do, and know more. But Philip Dick? How does he jibe with your desire for "an elementary understanding of human nature and interrelationships"?

I think there are a number of Phil's novels and short stories that address questions like identity, what it means to be human...including the enigmatic nature of the heart. Many of his works detail relationships--usually failed ones (remember, the guy was married 5 times)--and in one particularly powerful moment in his novel FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID, an unsympathetic character experiences a kind of epiphany when he is the recipient of an act of kindness bestowed by a complete stranger...

I thought that some of the female SF/Fantasy writers were good at characters - Sheri Tepper for one. I also liked Ursula Le Guin as a child but have not read her recently but she has a pretty good reputation for being a decent writer, at least for that genre.

If you imaginative fantasy, just pick up Flaubert's Temptation of St Anthony -- a glorious sensual hallucination based -- like LOTR -- on religious mythology, except that Flaubert can write the pants off of Tolkien

Nearly done with Things We are Not, a nice varied anthology of Queer sci fi. Some hits, some misses. Though nobody reaches the stylistic echelons of, say, Storm Constantine or William Gibson, although some push beyond the beige prose of Asimov and Heinlein

Editing so many different genres--more than I actually read for pleasure--I find it interesting how the genre itself, which is a path to publication for many writers, calls forth different aspects of writing. Of course science fiction can present the reader with aspects of psychology, for instance, that might transcend the usual genre limitations. But for myself, I find novels of detection ideal for the writer who might want to say more than a genre might confine him or her to, because character--the kernal of all good writing, so far as I'm concerned--is or can be a key in such novels, so long as they're not what in the trade are called "tea mysteries," or facile whodunits.

Genre considerations and tropes should never confine a writer. Transcending and/or confounding expectations and over-turning tightly held preconceptions are traits exhibited by the best authors, regardless of their field or niche...

I agree with that.

97: The best writers in the anthology work to confound and transcend the genre with homosexuality being the common thread. The stories that bored me the most were predictable sci fi fare.

One of the perks of self-publishing is that one doesn't have to grovel before editors and kowtow to genre expectations. Publish what you want, how you want, etc. Considering the terribleness of, say, Baen Books:

http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/2009/05/baen/

I mean, my God! The cover says it all.

What makes Vollmann so interesting to read is his mishmash of genres.

Scifi authors that have some psychological insight: Ray Bradbury & Stanislaw Lem.

I like a lot of the older (as in pre-1926) sci-fi books; a lot of these focus on feminism, Socialism, and other ideas for what would make a utopia or dystopia. A lot of these integrate psychology, philosophy, sociology, and the politics, religion, and culture of the time.Walden Two is a good one of these, dealing heavily with psychology, though it's outside the time period I usually read and is not science fiction, just a utopia.

On a whim last night, and despite the fact that I already have way too much reading going on right now anyway, I started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I've read only the first two chapters, and so far I've been...disappointed in the quality of the writing. I've never read any Dick before, but this guy is held in such high regard by so many smart people and I was expecting a little more, I guess. I'm going to finish it--maybe it'll grow on me.

To be honest, I've never rated him that highly - yes, I'm the one Brit sf fan who doesn't think PKD is the greatest sf writer evah. But I did read a A Scanner Darkly recently and thought that was pretty good. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I wasn't so impressed by, and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said read to me like he made it up as he went along.

Game Change:Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime...came in the mail today. I am ready to devour it.

I'm with Sutpen and iansales when it comes to Philip Dick. And with SuzieBookworm on some of the older sci fi, like Brave New World Revisited, which after all is science fiction. And I like Stanislaw Lem too, littlegeek, though I don't recall his psychology so much as the neat way he composes a story within a story within a story.

Finished Things We are Not -- meh, it's OK.

Started Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. A nice palette cleanser before I start The Line of Beauty by Hollinghurst.

The Hollinghurst no good? Didn't it win the Booker? I've seen a few copies in local charity shops and have considered getting one of them.

The same happened to Vollmann's Europe Central I don't think it is a matter of literary worth ... both Hollinghurst and Vollmann are master stylists ... but the microscopic shelf-life afforded to them by mainstream book distributors. I saw The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell and Laura Warholic in Barnes & Noble for, like, two weeks, then they disappeared like an US citizen falling victim to "extraordinary rendition." Pinochet disappeared his victims with less efficiency and speed. But you gotta make room for "____ Cross" by James Patterson or Tom Clancy Presents "Novelization of Video Game with my Name on It."

In summary, people are dumb.

Tunnelling to the Center of the Earth, short stories by Kevin Wilson. Two appeared in New Stories from the South. A bit disappointed so far.

I'm reading a collection of George Orwell's essays and also in the home stretch of War and Peace. Also listening to Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything on audiobook.

George Orwell's essays! Good for you, mathgirl40!

Just finished Charles Stoss' The Jennifer Morgue:
A light hearted romp through Charles Stross' weird and humorous world the Jennifer Morgue that combines computational magic, modern spying, Lovecraft's old ones, and LOTS of geek computer jokes. I don't remember my James Bond canon properly, but the archetypical billionaire Bond villain, with his usual plot to take over the world, sets a geas in order that forces the participants to (against their natural characters) to take on the roles of other typical Bond archetypes...the "bad and good" Bond girls, the techno (geek) helpers, the evil fluffy feline, as the bad guy seeks to recover an artifact of the "old ones." Stoss gets in MANY digs on Microsoft in passing.

IFF the general genre appeals, 4 light hearted stars. Not quite as good as his previous The Atrocity Archives which features the same geeky band of British agents. Stross' "real" SF leaves me cold, but the Bob Howard/Laundry (the Brit magical spy bureaucracy) are a hoot. And his afterword, discussing Bond stories as Mary Sues, his interview w/ the long misunderstood Blofeld (sic) SPECTRE's misunderstood director, etc are a bonus.

I finished Pawn of Prophecy. Blog post to follow shortly. Am now reading Machine Sex and Other Stories by Candas Jane Dorsey and The Rim of Space by A Betram Chandler, the first of the UK version of the Rim Worlds series. (They were originally published in the US by DAW - ABC is Australian - and the UK editions are in a different order, and only include four of the six books.)

Bangkok 8 is pretty rockin' so far. A great combination of exoticism and noir.

111: I'm enjoying the essays. Just finished "Good Bad Books" yesterday. Like everyone else, I'd read Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I'd read very few of Orwell's essays up until now.

Orwell was a prolific essayist; maybe the most prolific ever. Having not gotten enough of him, I bought the four volume The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell years ago and tapped a whole other source of his stuff.

Some of what he wrote just bubbles up when my numerous relatives in Israel, for instance, want to know why I don't visit: From "On Shooting an Elephant," I think, in Burmese Days, in which he writes that when you're in a situation where either choice (I'm paraphrasing) compromises your moral and/or ethical response, it's best to remove yourself from the situation altogether.

That famous essay about escorting a prisoner to the gallows in Burma--the epiphany as he watched the man step to avoid a mud puddle, the soul-freezing realization that in moments this same human being would be dead, his neck snapped, life extinguished. Amazing piece...

116> Why would going to Israel be any different from going somewhere else?

If going to Israel was the same as going anyplace else, there'd be no point in going. Why go to Israel, when it's the same as going around the corner?

Gotta watch that logic. ;)

I mean in terms of ethics and so on. Context clarifies!

Bangkok 8 was terrific - evenyone i know who's read the sequel, Bangkok Tattoo including myself, was pretty disappointed.

Finished Wells Tower's EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED, one of the best short story collections I've read in ages. Tower is right up there with the finest short fiction writers America has to offer, Jim Shepard and George Saunders. Not a weak tale in the collection--no wonder it made it onto a couple of "Best of..." lists. Remarkable, lucid, unadorned prose with a perfect command of voice. This guy is very, very GOOD...

We were chatting about Orwell a few posts ago. Here's a piece on his last diaries:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/articl...

122: Jim Shepard? No relation to Jean Shepherd? Also an excellent short story writer.

Finished Shadowmarch and picked up Jasper Fforde's Well of Lost Plots. Fforde can be a little over-clever, but it's fun reading. Also got Shadow of the Wind at the library, looking forward to that...

123> Interesting stuff, or I find it so at any rate. Thanks for the link.

Share the resources, share our love of the printed word, that's what we're here for. Whatever differences we may have, whatever geographical or political gulfs may separate us...

123: Interesting article, Cliff. Thanks for the link.

Started Jonathan Littell's the kindly ones - I think it's v. good - i don't know if i have the stamina to read a 1000 page novel from the POV of an overly self-aware former SS officer who's made a successful post war life as a small time French industrialist.

On the wait list for the girl who played with fire, the sequel to Stieg Larsson's the girl with the dragon tattoo which i enjoyed immensely.

Finally finished I Think, Therefore Who am I? Good stuff all around. I'll be writing a review of it shortly.

I look forward to it.

Finished Brothers Karamazov. I still like Crime and Punishment better, BK is a stacked deck. I need a break, so I'm reading Harpo Marx' autobiography Harpo Speaks!.

This Marx Bros. fan loved that one. Nothing like a little anarchy and mayhem to put some fun into a dull afternoon. I've got just about all their movies and even the weaker ones have moments of true brilliance. I watch them frequently.

I'm now reading A Journey in Other Worlds; the writing for the most part seems dense, reminds me of Lilith - confusion for 100 pages, a clear 15-25 pages, then more confusion and a few clear pages, and the end. I'm also reading Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

I just inherited an aspidistra. An ugly plant, for sure, but alive since my grandfather first nursed it, seventy years ago. How could you not love a plant like that?

I've never seen an aspidistra or heard of it before I got the book - and, judging from the questions about the title that I got yesterday, neither has anyone else where I live.

Orwell goes into it, in an essay somewhere, coming close to using it as a metaphor for the class-based reality in depressing row house England; sturdy people despite their circumstances. Perhaps that's where I got the impetus to admire my own ugly aspidistra. It looks like something a dinosaur might have munched on.

Finished Neil Gaiman's CORALINE this morning. It was a neat, macabre little fairy tale but, again, I've never understood the cult of Gaiman. He creates likable stories, has a few interesting kinks to his mind but he's never come CLOSE to creating something as fine as Jonathan Carroll's LAND OF LAUGHS, Nicholas Christopher's VERONICA or Banks' WASP FACTORY.

CORALINE was diverting but there was no masterful prose or staggering insights. I liked the feisty protagonist and the story's fun but nothing blew me away. Sorry, Gaiman geeks...

137: I remember reading Keep the Aspidistra Flying years ago ... like when I was in high school or early college. I was interested, since it wasn't the usual Orwell -- Animal Farm and 1984

Umberto Eco has a great essay on "1984" in Apocalypse Postponed Briefly, he says it isn't the best written book ever, but that doesn't take away its power. He also says it isn't "science fiction" for a number of reasons. He calls it "satire without humor" and a visionary book, but it is visionary about the past, not the future. That's because it was written in the shadow of WW 2, the defeat of Fascism and the rise of Communism. In 1949, the UK was still deep in the Austerity Years, rationing and whatnot. And since Orwell remained a committed Socialist all his life, reading it as a libertarian indictment of socialism is a major misreading.

138: I don't understand the Gaiman cult, either. Sometimes I find his work pleasantly entertaining, and sometimes I don't like it. I even tracked down some of the Sandman work because it's supposed to be great, and mostly it left me cold. Obviously his fans are seeing something that I don't.

I agree. I'm a sometime fan, but not a fanatic. Like many prolific and successful -- read, he makes a lot of money -- he seems to rehash the same stuff over and over. The whole dream shtick just gets boring after a while. William Gibson, another cult writer, has recently switched gears and is now writing techno-thrillers set in the present day. Same general motif -- the intersection of technology, capital, and humanity -- but in a different key.

Then again, some fandoms demand nothing more than their author act like Chuck Berry and write the same song, albeit a good one, over and over and over ...

My short attention span and adventurous palate demands more than the "same-old same-old" from an author. So I'll switch from, say, Alexander Theroux to a Warhammer 40K novel and then back to Henry James or Balzac or David Foster Wallace and then some hard-boiled Andrew Vachss novel.

I guess some people would rather lay back, stare at the ceiling, and think about the British Empire ... at least in their book-reading preferences.

I enjoy Gaiman's stuff - he's got a niche and he's sticking to it. Not saying it's high literature, but like Stephen King, he's a good storyteller, and sometimes I enjoy a good story.

Right now, I'm enjoying a very, very long good story - King's It. Hefty.

I'm currently reading ol' Mr. Billy's accessible pot-boiler, Sanctuary.

Manituana and Cassandra at the Wedding for me.

re: Gaiman

I like everything of his that I've read. The two that stick out as better than just simply "good" are Neverwhere and his collaboration with Pratchett, Good Omens. Actually, I'd like to re-read both of those at some point. Neverwhere is pretty well known, but has anyone else read Good Omens? I never see it getting discussed.

I read GOOD OMENS years ago--it was cute but nothing substantial enough to sink my teeth into. Gaiman is an entertainer, like King, like Pratchett, like Rowling. And that sort of writing just seems entirely too insubstantial to me, the writer has one eye fixed almost condescendingly on the reader, making sure they're HAPPY when a book is finished--for the most part, the hero survives and wins the day, the earth saved from the forces of evil, whatever.

It is a type of fiction that has little or no interest to me. Escapist, light, frothy. Like Kafka, I prefer works that inflict some punishment, demand a toll from readers...and absolutely refuse to cater to their hopeful expectations and ironclad preconceptions.

re: Gaiman

I read American Gods, at the insistence of my girlfriend. Didn't someone say something about a book's worth being inversely proportional to its hype? I dealt with that reading American Gods. It was good and I was entertained, but it wasn't The. Best. Book. Evar!

While Gaiman did capture small-town Wisconsin life with uncanny accuracy, I was left unimpressed with the supernatural stuff. It just seemed like a comic book writing "describing comic panels." Hence my giving it three stars.

I guess because he's prolific and writes with the fan in mind, that he has accumulated such a ridiculously gigantic following and near-deified whenever a sci fi / fantasy fan wants to prove themselves "cultured."

If you want quality fantasy, read R Scott Bakker and if you want good sci fi, read William Gibson

Slow day at work, so I read I Am Legend.
I read it as a feminist rejection of machismo, which probably says more about me than it does about the book.

I prefer Matheson's short stories to his novels--except HELL HOUSE, which was pretty darn good, through and through...

Reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. Liked Gilead when I read it last summer. This one seems a bit precious at the beginning but hits its stride around p. 20.

I loved Gilead! I have Home on my shelf but not got around to it yet. What I enjoyed most about Gilead was its pacing - confident, assured and enthralling.

Cliff - Legend was my first Matheson. Where do I go next?

Well, like I said, HELL HOUSE is fine and some people like WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (sticking with the novels) but, really, the stories (many of which became classic "Twilight Zone" episodes) are where he really shines. I think there are editions of his collected stories. I've got THE SHORES OF SPACE and THIRD FROM THE SUN and (not to brag) a couple of old collections (SHOCK I and SHOCK II) that he inscribed to me years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Matheson-Collected-Stories-Vol/dp/1887368620/ref=s...

Starting Shadow of the Wind by Zafon. Intriguing so far. Continuing with It (a real page turner) and True History of the Kelly Gang (not quite as much a page turner, but still very good)

153: My one and only experience reading Stephen King was with The Stand ... the revised, uncut, uber-bloated 1990s version. I had the peculiar experience of reading a page-turner I hated. To be fair, it did have some well-crafted passages. Unfortunately, like JRR Tolkien, he chose to bury those beautiful passages under a mountain of tedious dreck.

Finished "The Working Day" chapter of Das Kapital by Marx. Wow ... just wow! Polemical, bombastic, supported by ample evidence, and written with literary flourish. Not something usually found in writing on theoretical economics. To be "fair and balanced" -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more -- has anyone read The Wealth of Nations and gotten seriously pissed off? (Meaning, from the content of the writing, not the style of the writing. Since Augustan Age economics might be a wee bit dull to read.)

I really liked the Stand - yes, even the uncut version - but it does have its weak spots. King's wildly uneven. (Just look at the Dark Tower series - starts out great, ends embarassingly) IT is just as long as The Stand, but I think it's a halfway decent rumination on youth and loss of innocence tied in with a very creepy Lovecraftian horror story. That is, of course, until a really awkward and nasty out-of-place scene at the end that I -still- dislike. However, the other 1000 pages of the book outside of that scene are still good, and this'll mark my third time through this book.

Reading L.J. Davis' A MEANINGFUL LIFE. It's a re-discovered mini-classic, published by the New York Review of Books' lovely l'il imprint (I have a couple of their editions), with a Jonathan Lethem introduction.

I think you could read this one back-to-back with Richard Yates' REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. Davis isn't nearly as depressing and you don't feel cranky and exasperated toward his characters (I mean that as a compliment toward Yates, by the way) but I think some interesting parallels and comparisons could be drawn...

I am currently in the middle of a fantasy novel I'm reviewing for Interzone. It's not very exciting.

I'm also reading Animal Farm, for a bit of light relief.

Next up, something for the Space Books blog, I think. Probably Moon Lander, about the design and construction of the Apollo LM...

Oooooo...

(Space nut rubs his hands together in anticipation)

157: Does the fantasy novel involve a quest and a chosen one?

157: You must like very grim books to consider Animal Farm "light relief." I thought it was darker than 1984.

I thought Animal Farm was humorous in its own way, and 1984 was much darker.
I liked Keep the Aspidistra Flying - I'm not sure whether that one or Animal Farm is my favorite of the books by Orwell that I've read, though, like 1984, I only started to like reading it close to the end.

I liked Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language." It's online at:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

I think Orwell's ideas about language are really prescient.

I'm not sure if it was in a review or here on LibraryThing, but one person wrote that 1984 was like Animal Farm only with the gloves off.

162> Ah. So you're the one responsible for the list in the Writing Well thread. You gotta be a jackrabbit around here to follow the path.

#162 Reminds me of my best college English prof. Whenever I see "the fact that" or not-un construction, I think of him fondly.

My review of I Think, Therefore Who Am I? by Peter Weissman

http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-i-think-therefore-who/

the idea of justice Amartya Sen

At least from the intro and first couple of chapters I think Sen's goal is to provide an overarching account of his work and place it in relationship to that of other political / economic thinkers - so there's (probably) more discussion of the historical progenitors of his approach (ie the enlightenment-idealist concept that "perfect" institutions can lead to a just society is more or less a dead end; rather the side of enlightenment thought (Bentham/Smith/Condorcet..on to Marx ) that appraised social systems "comparatively" and generally believed that perfection was not in the cards, nor should be, but "reasonable" men (and women) could discern manifestly unjust arrangements (slavery, primogeniture) and take appropriate action to ameliorate particular situations.

And then an appreciation followed with detailed descriptions of where he differs from classic "Rawlsian" political/social justice. More or less by accident I do happen to know a bit about classical Indian history and thought - so i can actually appreciate his bringing Manu, Akbar as well as concepts derived from Hinduism (which is more "pick and choose your bits" than just about any other major religion! though he starts w/ Krishna as the "transcendentalist" and Arjuna as the "situationalist" in the classic Indian religious story, the Gita. But though the book is well written, this will be slow going and bits and pieces along the way may be dropped in here. Though i'll take the odd break like reading The Red Tree - a good horror novel by Caitlin Kiernan the other evening.

>166 kswolff:. No one has compared me to Nicholas Pileggi before, Karl. Or, as I noted in my private comment to you, Wiseguy.

168: You were both "street soldiers" ... in a way. Also, both provided "bottom-up" perspectives on eras that have become stereotypes. Wiseguy, compared to the Grand Opera style of The Godfather And it is nice to read about the Sixties from someone not involved in the recording industry or political field.

Started reading My Friend the Fanatic, it looks at how Indonesia is changing from a prosperous inclusive society to a bigoted fundamentalist loony bin in the space of a generation. Oddly appropriate, since the Christian Right in the United States basically wants to the same thing.

Bob, please post a review of The Idea of Justice when you are done with it. We don't have much on it here, and I'd like not to buy it just out of compulsion.

Thanks,

Robert

finished war and peace. almost done with a life of picasso:the triumphant years. not sure what i'm reading next but its gotta be short.

Re-reading The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, and realizing I should do it more often.

Finishing up The Shadow of the Wind, still flying through It, and now I've got to pick from my enormous 'to-read' pile... I'm leaning towards Middlemarch or Sometimes a Great Notion.

I just picked up The Union Jack, a newly translated novella by Imre Kertesz.

173: I hope you find Sometimes a Great Notion as wonderful as I did. I think of it as THE quintessential Great American Novel. Of course, I'm from Oregon so maybe a bit biased.

173/175: And I hope you find Middlemarch as wonderful as I did. I read it in November and it was instant love. Wrote a gushing review (and I don't bother to write reviews often), and have found it personally inspiring in my creative work.

Well, I think they'll both be up once I finish Shadow of the Wind, which I should be done with soon enough. Highly recommended if anyone wants a good mystery yarn with decades of history.

So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away by Richard Brautigan; Downstream of Trout Fishing in America: a memoir of Richard Brautigan by Keith Abbott.

After this I'm gonna be done with Brautigan for a while.

Just started Moon Lander, Thomas J Kelly.

Between U.S. History class and chemistry I managed to finish Ecotopia (shows how much we do in school), and I've started Out of the Silent Planet.

I finally finished Sanctuary. Enough violence and perversion for now.

I just finished reading The Cherry Orchard.

i enjoyed the shadow of the wind alot. I'm going to be a while, as i'm going through Sen's the idea of justice one well written, but very dense chapter at a time. In between i'm just doing easy and familiar rereads.

Oh, woe is me (not this thread, you say?) I'm reading Les Miserables, Paradise Lost, The Idea of Justice and next week will start on Infinite Jest. Oh, woe is me!

Hope you've got strong forearms and well-developed frontal lobes, Gene...

just read, and really enjoyed Firmin, and am now on to Trilby, which is pretty average but has great illustrations.

Geneg- are you sure that's a good idea in January? Jings, I coundnae hack that at this time of year

183: I am starting IJ in March and hope to have finished PL by then.

Man, I've been having strong urges to start re-reading IJ recently. I must resist, though. Too much unread material.

I have several books going all at once. The one I'm reading at school is Cutting for Stone. This one is taking longer than it should - the fault of life, not the book. Parts of it are quite gruesome, but overall it's a very good read. The book by my bed, that might get twenty minutes attention a night, is This is How. I've read Hyland before and I really enjoy her style. Over my breakfast, I've got Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. None of the characters in this book are at all likeable, yet somehow I do like the book. And as backup, I have Sarah's Key and Notes from a Small Island in my car and purse, respectively. Maybe one day soon, I'll even finish one of these.

(trying to get touchstones going....)

I just finished Jackdaws by Ken Follett; what a great read.

I've just started The Professor.

I'm in the middle of My Cousin Rachael by du Maurier. I'm interested in other peoples' take on this novel as well as her other works.

I read some of her stuff when I was a kid, nothing since. There was a volume of her stuff at my grandmother's and I used to read everything I could lay my hands on. One of DuMaurier's stories was the inspiration for Hitchcock's "The Birds", wasn't it?

Other than that, I draw a blank...

191: I read My Cousin Rachel and Rebecca when I was fairly young. They are both very good examples of that sort of creepy gothic psychological thriller story. Like the movie "Laura."

I read SHADOW AND LIGHT yesterday (in about two sittings). A mystery involving UFA studios in Germany, circa 1927 (the beginning of sound films). Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou and Peter Lorre make appearances. The book was blurbed by Philip Kerr and I can see why: it brought to mind Kerr's BERLIN NOIR trilogy, which I commend to all whodunit fans.

As I read SHADOW AND LIGHT, it quickly became apparent that this is a followup to a previous book involving the same character investigating the murders of Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht. There are a few references to that case but SHADOW AND LIGHT is a stand-alone effort and a darn good one...

I may reread Infinite Jest five or six years down the line. Right now I've got Gravity's Rainbow and 2666 in my sights... though before that I'm going to keep going with Sometimes a Great Notion and Middlemarch.

Getting near the end of Bangkok 8 -- a pretty amazing mystery thriller. I'm usually a reader of the Burke novels, but this is a nice change of pace.

After "Bangkok 8" it will Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst and then Against the Day

Got to the part about "the creation of relative surplus-value" in Das Kapital ... zzz. More math, less polemic.

Since I've tabled Leaves of Grass due to sheer tedium, I've picked up Ovid.

I've started Metamorphoses. So far, it is all about the gods going to 3rd base with Laurel trees, cows, you name it. Great stories. Ovid and his Greek literary ancestors, must have been smoking some serious Indo.

197:
From what I remember, the Metamorphoses is largely a chronicle of rapes perpetrated on humans by Zeus, and rapes that Apollo fails to perpetrate.

I think I'm still reading about the latter. What's next, morphing into a toaster oven as a rape preventative?

198: Inevitable Atlas Shrugged joke about rape ...

Duly noted.