February 2010: What books are the snobs reading THIS month?

Yup, time for a new thread.

What are you reading to keep warm in the month of February?

Starting off the month with some sf: have just started Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon, which was a Christmas present a few years ago.

Finished Bangkok 8 -- it was pretty awesome. And started up The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. Quite a change in locale, sensibility, and climate. Like switching from Mai Thais to gin and tonic.

Still pounding away at Kissinger, Marx, and My Friend the Fanatic

I'm halfway through The Communist Manifesto - should be able to finish it today, and Lost Horizon.

Just started Michael Slater's Charles Dickens

About ready to finish up the fascinating read The Evolution of God. I'm thinking a book about the Scopes Trial next.

INHERIT THE WIND, perhaps? (Recalling my high school days...)

Strangely enough, I've just ordered Summer for the Gods: the definitive work on Scopes, apparently. We shall see.

Winding up The Vesuvius Club, by Mark Gatiss. Next on to either Steinbeck's Log from the Sea of Cortez, Shriek by Jeff Vandermeer, or The Cyberiad by Lem. Tough choice.

I'm about to start Chronic City. Love me some Lethem.

I've finally started Ulysses. I just never got around to it before now. So far, I'm 180 pages in and am enjoying it immensely. I do find, however, that I'm not reading as quickly as I normally do.

For those times when I want something more straightforward, I have a book on the side - just finished The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and am now reading some of Charles Lamb's essays.

I would *love* to re-read Ulysses. And I had the same experience in terms of slower reading. I'm still working through Gravity's Rainbow and it's giving me Ulysses deja vu in that respect.

Currently reading Veronika Decides To Die . Its an easy enjoyable story .

Keep a bottle of Jameson's Irish whiskey beside you as you go through ULYSSES.

On second thought, never mind: the prose is intoxicating enough.

Finished War and Peace and A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years. Been looking at The Portable Picasso and Complete Mondrian. Will start Oryx and Crake this weekend.

Ah, I think I'm going to start The Handmaid's Tale soon. Never read any Atwood before.

Started reading Chuck Palahniuk's last book, PYGMY. Very odd (needless to say) but we shall see. I haven't liked Palahniuk's last few efforts and I hope this one is more of a return to form. FIGHT CLUB and, especially, LULLABY are fine reads...

Plodding through Moby Dick and planning on starting Just Kids by Patti Smith.

16: You should read Going Rogue in parallel with A Handmaid's Tale, since they share the same plot ;)

I agree. Ulysses was a good book. I have just finished The Great Gatsby again.
I need to find more books to read soon...

I just bought Infinite Jest for a group read beginning in March. It looks like it will be yummy.

I am in book 4 of Paradise Lost. I am loving it, but I find it does not work so well for commuting (the times I usually have to read are when on the bus to and from work) so it is very slow going. I have two new Early Reviewer books that just arrived, The Postmistress and Papa Sartre. I also wanted to read our group read for this month, Pamuk's My Name is Red, but I don't know when I'll have time.

I need to somehow take a month or so and just get caught up on all my reading.

I've started City of Bones, which I was given by a friend for Christmas - it's surprising how little can happen in 100 pages, though I can read the author's writing very quickly.

Mountains Beyond Mountains, a non-fic book about Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health in Haiti. Amazing dude.

just read Neverwhere, which I enjoyed more than I expected to, and I'm still ploughing through Trilby which isn't terribly good, although I'm at a loss to explain why. Next up is either The Twyborn Affair, Away or The New York Trilogy

Struggling with Middlemarch at the moment; just can't get into it, though the writing's impressive. Definitely enjoying Sometimes a Great Notion, the multiple narrators make it a pretty heady experience. Finally, plowing through Shadowplay, cause I like me some high fantasy readin'. It's snack food.

Gave up on Bright of the Sky. If I wanted to read Cherryh, I'd read Cherryh. And the characters were so unlikeable. There's a style of sf I can never really get to grips with, and its writers are all ex-journalists...

Have started Chris Beckett's award-winning collection, The Turing Test, instead.

I don't know if it's snobby to read Russell Greenan, but it certainly isn't commonplace. I just bought Heart of Gold and The Bric-a-Brac Man (he's so little known that someone else's book showed up in blue-face type here), and as I soon as I finish the final edit on my novel, I intend to plunge in.

I am about to jump into Brief Lives: Gustave Flaubert by Andrew Brown and City Boy, the new memoir by Edmund White. I received both through the LT Early Reviewer program.

Tsk, tsk on your tastes, Ian. Your fellow LibraryThing reviewers have given that particular effort an average rating of ***1/2 stars.

Toffee-nosed limey git...

It received some good reviews as well. But after 75 pages, I just didn't care about the characters or the story. It all felt too manufactured.

Unlike the light reading Ian favors (hee hee), I've put a dent in that new Palahniuk (mentioned above) and, re: non-fiction, have been tackling John Felstiner's study of the life and work of Paul Celan--PAUL CELAN: POET, SURVIVOR, JEW. Monsieur Felstiner was good enough to let me use a couple of his peerless translations in my novel SO DARK THE NIGHT (no touchstone for that one 'cause it ain't out yet)...

I was tempted to start The Kindly Ones, but I suspected other passengers might want to use the tram as well and the book does take up a lot of room. Not to mention that carrying it to the tram stop in the first place might well do me a serious injury...

Sounds to me like the boy needs an e-Reader, folks. Shall we pass the hat for poor Ian and his puny forearms?

32: I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell last year and was annoyed that there was no way I could really comfortably read it on the bus. Although I am a diehard Luddite when it comes to e-readers, I can see they'd be nice in lieu of those really heavy tomes.

I'd like one of those readers you can write on - be useful when I'm reading books for review.

You can write right on the screen using a permanent marker. Works great!

#35 You can annotate and highlight on a Kindle.

Anna, what did you think of JONATHAN STRANGE? I admired its erudition and intelligence, it just didn't seem to go anywhere and when I got to the end of the book I was completely dissatisfied: no payoff, little suspense and after 300,000 (or something) words, I expected something far more. It's well-written, no question, but the storyline meanders and I got a strong sense the actual tale at its heart could have been told in 1/3 of the final page count...

38: I liked it because of the pseudo-Jane Austen style and the funny pseudo-historical footnotes. Yes, the storyline does meander. I didn't really mind that so much though I would not say that it was really memorable.

It actually reminded me a great deal of the YA Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud - except that the style probably would have turned off most YA readers.

I read the unabridged, three volume, Gulag on the bus one year. It was something of a hassle, but worth it. What a thoroughly depressing book.

JONATHAN STRANGE was marketed to the YA market, which I thought a bit odd. Most kids wouldn't have made it past page 50...

#41 I know lots of young people who plowed through that horrific POS Wuthering Heights just because "it's Bella & Edward's favorite book."

Jonathan Strange was great, but I love Victorians so the style was actually a plus for me. I have a signed hardback, but if I read it again, I'm doing it on my Kindle.

Hearing how YA audiences wouldn't like Jonathan Strange makes me want to read it....but then I usually enjoy that sort of writing style (but not Wuthering Heights; I like Charlotte's books, though).

#42
I read the Twilight series and did not realize that Wuthering Heights was their favorite book. I wonder why? There's a lot of better books.

"I read the Twilight series and did not realize that Wuthering Heights was their favorite book. I wonder why? There's a lot of better books."

Exactly.

I really need a ereader. I read through novels like there's no tomorrow... or so says everyone I hang out with.
I'm reading through {The Thirteenth Tale} by Diane Setterfield. So far not much is happening (except here where I'm working, I really need some free time so that I can read this).

Finished Chuck Palahniuk's PYGMY and I'll give it a B+. A return to form after a couple of efforts that just didn't work for me. If you were an early fan of Chucky's and gave up on him, give this one a shot...

Nearly done with My Friend the Fanatic

I've almost finished Turgenev's A Month in the Country.

With Middlemarch giving me so much trouble, I've decided to take a break from that and go for some shorter material - A Long Day's Journey into Night and Invitation to a Beheading. The main read is still Sometimes a Great Notion, which is great.

I've started The Tin Princess after finishing A Month in the Country.

Read Michael Connelly's THE SCARECROW--good, slick suspense novel. Dedicated to James Crumley (a far better writer than Connelly)...

Anybody read China Mieville's book The City and the City? I just read a couple of reviews and it sounds really interesting. I'm thinking about bumping it up to the top of the TBR pile.

I'm in five books right now, and they total nearly four thousand pages. This is getting a little out of control.

The Stand (for the 40th or so time), Infinite Jest (for the second time), Oblivion (also by DFW), 2666 (hard going, and I'm probably going to need to switch to the translation or I'll just never finish. Maybe I'll take another shot at it in Spanish if it comes out for Kindle, with its handy dictionary function), and How Not to Write a Novel (fun, but I'm annotating it with all the ways my favorite books break all the rules in it!)

Good grief K in S, how are you getting any sleep?

I'm reading all of them very slowly :)

I'm reading Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald from the Canada Reads list and Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. A friend also just passed me Stephen King's The Green Mile.

At this point, I really need a break from the suicides, incest, serial killings, financial woes, etc., and want to read something more fun. So I just bought John Scalzi's The Android's Dream for my eReader (from Kobo, not Amazon, for those of you following the drama on Scalzi's blog).

Walked over to a B&N while my laundry was spinning this morning and picked up Point Omega. I imagine I'll be finished with it either later today or tomorrow, depending on how the rest of the day goes.

Make sure you drop a review in here--sans spoilers, natch...

53> When you finish 2666. throw your ideas into the discussion Sutpen and I are having!

Sutpen: I read The City and the City a couple weeks ago. It lives up to the reviews. Very confusing, though. I picked it up because was interested to see if an author could pull off convincingly the premise of two cities existing simultaneously in the same physicality. While I had to really force myself to finish the book, I think Mieville did a good job with it.

Finished The Turing Test, a collection of short stories by Chris Beckett. Quality generally high, but some were better than otehrs. Have now started A Very British Coup by Chris Mullins.

My review of Moon Lander now up on my Space Books blog here.

Was VERY BRITISH COUP a mini-series? I recall liking it very much...

(P.S. You forgot to provide a link to your blog for the review. You dolt.)

Yes, they made a TV series of A Very British Coup. I remember enjoying it - which is why I picked up the book when I spotted it in a charity shop.

Gah. I did have the link in there, but a space inserted itself between the angle bracket and the "a href" in the HTML. Sorted, anyway.

Transcript of last conversation from LM "Beavertail", on final descent to moon's surface, August 2019.

CB: Cliff Burns, pilot and captain
IS: Ian Sales, Dead weight and useless baggage

CB: What's our RAD?
IS: What's that, old boy?
CB: Rate of descent, you stupid--
IS: I must say, I've grown frankly resentful of your constant barrage of criticisms and overall unhelpful attitude. That incident with the short circuit, which you blew completely out of proportion--
CB: What sort of arsehole pours tea in zero G? And the crumbs from your fucking crumpets getting all over the place--
IS: Tea and crumpets are a cultural imperative where I come from.
CB: So are effeminate men with over-arching egos and upper class twits who can't unhook a bra without--
IS: This is exactly the sort of petty slander I am referring to.
CB: Y'know one more word and you're going into the fucking air lock.
IS: At least then I'd have some assurance of reaching the surface.
CB: That does it--

(Sounds of violent struggle, high-pitched shrieks with a decidedly British accent. Roar of an explosion.)

65: You momentarily distracted me.

I just tore through Papa Sartre which was an Early Reviewer book. Off to do a review.

65: Sounds far more compelling than anything Peter Hamilton ever wrote.

Unfortunately, I didn't leave room for a sequel. Maybe, like James Cameron, I'll wait until my vignette makes a billion bucks...

Pfft. As any fule no, Cliff, the LM didn't have an airlock.

the fourth part of the world - social/cultural history of cartographic history and world exploration from ~ 1200 AD -> . And the story of the first map that portrayed the Americas as being surrounded by water.

Also PG Wodehouse on line.

And Sen on Justice

Just posted one of my semi-frequent round-ups of my reading and watching on my blog here here.

About halfway through Das Kapital, Volume 1. A fascinating, bombastic monument of radical economic thought.

And about halfway through The Line of Beauty Finely-wrought prose, fully-formed characters, and witty, subterranean satire of 80s Thatcherite decadence in Londontown. The style reminds me of The Heart of the Matter: well-written but not showy. Or how the protagonist Nick Guest describes the writing of Henry James: a writing style that both reveals and covers itself. In a peculiar way, the novel's "passing" as Garden Variety Realism mirrors Nick's "passing" as a straight amidst the Tories he's living with.

Read Project Constellation Pocket Space Guide yesterday for a planned review on my Space Books blog. My timing always did suck.

Currently reading Moonraker, Ian Fleming... well, I would have started it this morning but it was standing-room only on the tram on the way to work. Also reading The Desert King *, David Howarth - a biography of ibn Saud. It's like Dune without the spaceships. Or the giant worms.

* heh - the touchstone for the title brings back a load of romance titles first...

yesterday i finished oryx and crake by margaret atwood. i have mixed feelings about the book. some things didn't quite work. some worked very well. the bottom line though is that i came across the year of the flood at the library and picked it up on impulse. i also picked a scanner darkly so i must be on a sci-fi streak.

last week i started andy warhol by arthur c. danto. guston in time is still waiting on deck.

EVERYBODY needs a little sci fi in their life. A SCANNER DARKLY is Dick's best, you'll love it. My wife read ORYX and quite liked it (I just can't abide Atwood's writing so it's shtum as far as I'm concerned). She hasn't read YEAR OF THE FLOOD yet but I know she wants to. She just started Cintra Wilson's COLORS INSULTING TO NATURE, which should appeal to Sherron's twisted sense of humor and love for wacky characters.

(Hmmm...and for some reason an entirely different book by Wilson pops up as a touchstone. Ian's right: the fucking things are haunted.)

Cintra Wilson is great. I'll have to find that book.

Just finished one of the best books on cinema I've read in a long while: Sidney Lumet's MAKING MOVIES. Not exactly a "How to...", just a good intro into how movies are made, with anecdotes and clear, uncluttered (and non-technical) explanations. Budding film-makers should definitely seek this one out...

>75 CliffBurns: ive been meaning to read more phillip k dick. his do androids dream of electric sheep? was such a big surprise for me last year. i thought it was going to be like the movie. boy was i wrong. this was a completely different thing. really looking forward to a scanner darkly.

almost finished with why evolution is true and have been reading selectively from Modern Critical Views
James Joyce edited by (who else these days) Harold Bloom.

Just finished Moonraker, Ian Fleming. It's crap. I'm only read the 007 books to say I've read them. And because they're quick reads. But they're definitely vastly over-rated.

"Over-rated?"

Will anyone still admit to reading Fleming these days? How are the new Sebastian Faulks-penned efforts selling (I never keep track of such things)?

The Line of Beauty continues to be awesome. Second book by Alan Hollinghurst that I've read -- I read The Swimming-Pool Library years ago. Such gloriously written prose.

I'm about to start The Way of All Flesh after finishing Lost Horizon. The last part, minus the final 20 pages, was great.

Considering picking up Midnight's Children or Broom of the System. Then again, I might save heavier reads until I'm done with Sometimes a Great Notion, which I'm enjoying a lot.

Midnight's Children is a bit of a slog, especially in the beginning. Broom is fairly light, though.

I didn't find Midnight's Children that bad, then again, I'm a bit of an Indiophile. One has to have an ear for the distinctive cadences of Indian English beyond the Apu stereotype.

I'm reading David Thomson's biography of Orson Welles, ROSEBUD. A tad annoying in places (there are these authorial asides and interruptions I could do without) but a solid bio by someone who knows his cinema...

82: I read The Folding Star a few years ago. Again, beautifully written.

"I didn't find Midnight's Children not that bad..."

What does this sentence mean?

So far in February, I have been reading..

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
What is the What by Dave Eggers
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by Dave Sedaris

-Sea
http://www.readingwithsea.wordpress.com

Moving through through Tortilla Flat by Steinbeck. Poignant for these economic times.

>91 gonzobrarian:: Loved that book. Probably my favorite of Steinbeck's short novels.

Finished Sometimes a Great Notion - loved it, loved it. Making my way through Invitation to a Beheading and Murakami's Underground and starting Midnight's Children. Lots of good stuff to read.

*blink* I did not know Wuthering Heights was considered an un-snobbish book. Perfectly misunderstood by idiot teenagers, maybe, but I've always found it ensnaring.

Anyway.
Lately I've finished T.C. Boyle's Talk, Talk, which was excellent except for the end which means to be ambiguous but just ends up being confusing.

I'm about a third of the way through Vollman's Europe Central, which couldn't be a snobbier book if it tried. I understand I think about two thirds of its historical and literary references, and that mostly due to Alex Ross' incomparable The Rest is Noise, but so far the book is entrancing and thoughtful and completely up my alley. It's even introduced me to new people in history who are fascinating even when they aren't fictional characters.

Man, I hated Oryx and Crake. The science was dubious and it was sooooo heavy handed.

Anyhoo, I'm reading Dragon Keeper, the latest Robin Hobb Elderling book. I really like Hobb's world building but she needs an editor. Too much repetition and the characters talk everything to death.

I have a Philip K. Dick (Ubik) up next on the TBR. I'm ashamed to say I've never read any of his stuff. I know, I know, I can't believe it either.

That just means you have all of his work to enjoy. I've started reading his earlier "realist" works just to round it out; though I have to say I am enjoying his work even without the trappings of science fiction (though with him, they really aren't trappings).

UBIK is great fun. One of PKD's five or six best...

Just finished The Bric-a-Brac Man, by Russell Greenan, a seriously underappreciated writer, and just began Heart of Gold, by the same author (though the touchstone ascribes it to a Sharon Shinn).

Just started reading At the Back of the North Wind.

Have decided to dive back into Jane Austen with Emma.

Last Evenings on Earth by Bolaño. I can't get enough!

Received a self-help book in the mail yesterday from the Early Reviewer program. It's about parenting while divorced. I skimmed it - it was not that great. I reviewed it.

http://www.librarything.com/work/9358676

I am still working on Paradise Lost - in the middle of book 6. Also reading another Early Reviewer book, about World War II, which I am enjoying - The Postmistress.

I was on vacation last week and did no reading. San Francisco is a great town!

When I'm vacation, and not editing books, is just about the only time I do so-called reading. But then, who am I kidding: if I were back in San Francisco again, I probably wouldn't read a word.

Finished another bio of Orson Welles--hey, I'm obsessed, what can I say?--Clinton Heylin's DESPITE THE SYSTEM. Could be considered a hagiography--at the very least, a spirited defense of Welles' work and character, countering less than complimentary takes on O.W. penned by the likes of Simon Callow and David Thomson. Too one-sided, but blunt force arguments in favor of a film-maker I admire more and more as the years go by...

I've just started The Three Musketeers . After enjoying the many film versions over the years , I'm looking forward to this classic !

Just finished The Line of Beauty by Hollinghurst. Great stuff! Beautifully chiseled prose.

Plan to start on some Alexander Theroux -- but which one? Darconville's Cat or Laura Warholic? Not like one needs to read Theroux in any sort of chronological order.

I've seen the Hollinghurst in a couple of charity shops, and plan to get it when the TBR goes down a bit.

in between bouts w/ the idea of justice a chapter at a time, and the Fourth part of the World in larger chunks - both first rate, but 1 is very dense in every sense and the 2nd is an easier read but VERY information dense. i've been reading a LOT of v. light material. Worthy among them - assuming one likes graphic novels - are Mike Carey and John Bolton's rather brilliant "The Furies" - eg the Kindly Ones, the Eumenides; and the new Daytripper series set in modern Brazil..by modern Brazillian writer and artists, brothers Fabio and Gabriel Moon/Ba. As well as the conclusion the the alternative European history suite, Rex Mundi. And various collections of poetry i'm dipping in and out of: Philip Levine, Jay Parini and Rodney Jones which i've all enjoyed but haven't read enough to comment on, even totally superficially.

Just started A Fraction of the Whole and liking it quite a bit so far.

Also reading Cliff's The Reality Machine!

For that plug, Geoff, there's a special set of wings waiting for you at the pearly gates. Your favorite team's logo on the back...

(P.S. Your book has yet to arrive but I'm watching for it.)

Re-reading On Photography by Susan Sontag -- and I'm reflecting on how much has changed in the last 30 years that fundamentally shakes this book's foundations.

Began reading Laura Warholic Love how the jacket synopsis refers to modern society as a "garish, dunce-filled Babylon."

Still working through The Way of All Flesh, but I'm about to begin Ape and Essence.

Ape and Essence rocks! Another novel Burgess selected for his 99 Novels Maybe somebody like Spike Jonze or Terry Gilliam could turn the screenplay-novel into a hallucinogenic postapocalyptic ape-tastic movie.

fits this weather...i'm dabbling in Canticle for Leibowitz...work9ing on a lecture of science and religion

I've read Canticle at least twice, maybe three times. Alas, the last time I visited I felt differently about it. I should stop doing that: rereading things I read a couple of decades ago.

I'm looking forward to Ape and Essence - I really enjoyed Brave New World and After Many a Summer, and I like science fiction anyway.

I'm actually pondering a reread of Canticle soon. I read it about 2 years ago and really liked it.

Or I could get off my ass about Pale Fire...

Finished Louis Begley's WARTIME LIES.

Was interested in this book because it is one of the projects Kubrick was pondering during the last decade of his life.

The book didn't have nearly the power or unforgettable qualities of other literary efforts relating to the Holocaust; it didn't move me the way Elie Wiesel's NIGHT did or Jorge Semprun's THE LONG VOYAGE.

Give it *** (out of 5)

>117 chamberk: The problem I had with Canticle the last time around, chamberk, was the third of its three parts. The feeling and ambience of the first two parts are wonderful. It's what makes the book special, I think. But I'd forgotten about that last, far less charming, "modernistic" section.

Just finished Tortilla Flat. Beautifully simplistic yet so profound.

On to Ambergris in Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer.

After Laura Warholic, I want to take a crack at How it is by Beckett. A nice contrast between encyclopedic maximalist farce and Beckett's spare minimalist prose.

Really? I hate Paulo Coelho! Think he is a self proclaimed kind of prophet, with a "new philosophy" and I sincerely loath any thing like that.
Glad u enjoying it, though.

Reading Mission to Mars by Michael Collins. It's more of an introductory text to the subject than I'd expected, though.

just finished this weekend:
1. the haunting of Alaizabel Cray a very good steampunk/gothic/horror novel set in London after the fall - but w/ Brititsh social stratification left intact, even if many neighborhoods are not. The equivalent of the Nazi blitz has left London in rather a mess - in the worst sections weird creatures - some from faerie, others new - come a hunting. And then there are the human hunters of these beasts who stumble upon a conspiracy of the wealthy damned to make things EVER so much worse!

2.Logicomix - something different in a graphic 'novel.' Really a primer on the history of the development of logic theory and the philosophy of mathematics. Excellent if it's the kind of oddity one likes and the subject appeals..Doxiadis' previous novel was Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture - a more straightforward novel, while this is really an incredibly lucid text - Bertrand Russell/Whitehead and their success/failure w/ Principia Mathematica features prominently. And the counter attack by Wittgenstein and Godel. Obvious Godel Escher Bach influence in mode of presentation (the constant self-reflection of the authors' standins).

3. American Born Chinese - terrific graphic novel, autobiography(?),Chinese mythology story of adaptation, acculturation, and cultural preservation. Very funny and poignant.
Three interwoven stories: 1. an Ch-Am kid moves to a new high school where he's the ONLY Chinese American and fitting in is hard to do - esp. w/ the parental expectations; 2. the story of the Monkey King who keeps being rejected by the rest of the heavenly pantheon; 3 a very hip Chinese-All American HS kid (on bball team, just generally cool, is plagued by annual visits by his off the boat cousin each year. Maybe having your parents take you into HS by the hand MIGHT be worse, but Danny feels compelled to transfer each year to try to start anew.

Reminded me of the T-Shirt the Asian kids at the NCarolina school of Science and Math had made up when Adam went there: "you know you're Asian-American if: you've taken violin lessons from the age of 3; aren't allowed to date, etc...." (the original was funnier but my memory only deals w/ generalities at this point)

Picked up a bunch of shorter Bolano stuff. Started Amulet last night, and the style is unmistakable, even though the translator is different from the person who translated 2666. That's probably a credit to both translators, but also to Bolano.

The Chris Andrews translations seem to be very good. I just finished Last Evenings on Earth the other day. It's interesting to see his evolution as a writer, culminating in his major novels.

Antwerp has Wimmer translating again.

I really enjoyed Canticle, but got frustrated because of the relative brevity of the sections - it felt like a trilogy crammed into one book.
Finally finished The Twyborn Affair which I admired greatly, but didn't grip me, somehow and I consequently slowed right down. Started on Away and The Player of Games now and am going great guns with both - being unemployed has some advantages after all.
Re: Bolano - I've had 2666 sitting on my shelf for a while now. Soon, I keep saying, soon...

127> Soon means now! Do it!

I'm busting my butt on a project & during these periods I tend to scale back drastically on fiction--not sure why. Not wanting to take a chance some of that author's "style" might sneak into my work? Possibly...

Anyway, when it gets like that, I find I can read lots of non-fic--this week, it's a fat history book called THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE (1781-1997) by Piers Brendon. Enjoying it very much. And it'll give me ample fodder for when Sales starts making grandiose claims about anything relating to "perfidious Albion"...

Cliff, at least we had an empire...

Perfidious Limey...

130: Explains the popularity of the Warhammer 40K books. After the decades of decolonization, the reading public ate up tales of Imperial Space Marines fighting demons and heretics.

To be fair, losing Vietnam also helped the popularity of the Star Wars films become cultural blockbusters. The new Star Wars films? Well, we Americans like nostalgia, shiny things (Ooo, CGI!), and have no goddamn taste.

I have just started Slumberland by Paul Beatty and I'm really grooving with it. I keep wishing I had a playlist on my ipod to go with it. I've never read this author before - anyone know much about him?

#133 I loved The White Boy Shuffle.

finished a scanner darkly. the only logical choice was to start washington square by henry james. obviously.

remembering philip guston is still waiting on deck.

Finally got to grips with my wildly promiscuous reading habits - I was reading about 10 books at once, which is just ridiculous - so I've cut back drastically to:

The Book of Disquiet for the living room

Darwin: A Very Short Introduction for bedtime reading

And I've just bought The Complete Poems of Ben Jonson, so I can't resist dipping into that.

I read that Ben Jonson killed someone in a duel--now that's when writers had backbone. You didn't mess with Chris Marlowe either...

Somebody did! Killed him.

Yeah, critics were tough back then too...

Nearly done with White House Years by Kissinger. "Peace is at hand." Which means the Vietnam War won't end for another 3 years.

I'm enjoying Laura Warholic by Theroux. Once I plow through that maximalist farce, I'm planning to read How It Is by Beckett -- minimal, spare, skeletal, and primal. Like Finnegans Wake, "How It Is" represents what I would call "a terminal novel," where the novel form is stretched and manipulated to the very breaking point.

Das Kapital by Marx is fascinating. Reading about the factory system and how industrialization cheapens commodities, and, in turn, cheapens labor. (Insert snide comment about James Patterson and how he has industrialized novel-writing.)

I finally finished Metamorphoses and learned that being turned into a laurel tree, cow, toaster oven, etc., probably isn't the best strategy for rape prevention.

Speaking of twisted people and deities, I'm now reading Idiot America. It's holding my interest, like a train-wreck.

#137: yep, nobody messed with Ben. Even if he didn't come after you physically, you didn't walk away unscathed from one of his verbal attacks:

On Something, that Walks Somewhere.

At Court I met it, in Clothes brave enough,
To be a Courtier; and looks grave enough,
To seem a Statesman: as I near it came,
It made me a great Face, I ask'd the Name.
A Lord, it cried, buried in Flesh and Blood,
And such from whom let no Man hope least good,
For I will do none: and as little ill,
For I will dare none. Good Lord, walk Dead still.

I'm somewhere in the middle of Ubik. Very '60s, very misogynistic (yuck), badly written, yet definitely compelling. I see now how much scifi in general owes to PKD.

>139 CliffBurns:: Rimshot!

I stalled out on Midnight's Children for the moment, so I'm zipping through A Tale of Two Cities and working on Murakami's Underground. I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying the Dickens... it seems like most of his other stuff doesn't have quite as much dramatic heft, being mostly about orphans...

busy couple of days:

YAY - our P'boro library came through nicely yesterday. The Mao Case gave me a new mystery/police procedural setting - contemporary Shanghai and Beijing and a new and finely drawn Chief Inspector Chen - detecting between the delicate lines of a CCP still trying to protect Mao's image and a country (at least in the urban areas) doing its best to promote robber baron style capitalism. Inspector Chen (both a poet and translator of poetry - his first love and the basis of his first love affair) finds himself with a nebulous charge from CCP "political integrity" honchos to investigate the granddaughter of one of Mao's many "dancing partners" -like Mm Moa herownself a film actress - on the off chance that her sudden, unexplained elevation in life style reflects her possessing and selling off unspecified personal material from her grandmother that could be damaging to the last Emperor's posthumous image.

Qui Xiaolong dedicates the book to those who suffered under Mao - and much of the "mystery" is taken up w/ reconstructing Mao's treatment of his wives and lovers. But there's also fascinating analyses of Mao as a poet; descriptions of a resurgent "cult of the past" celebrating the lifestyles of the rich and famous in Shanghai circa the 1930s; the obligatory (but nicely done) fractious love story between Chen and his on/off long time gfriend turned CEO, in part by virtue of her coming from a family important in the Central Political Committee.
All in all, very satisfying and edifying. With critiques of Tang and modern Chinese poetry throughout. The mystery is not the thing here (whatever the author's intent) - rather the setting, people, history and background are what engages.

4.5 stars for background, characters, and atmosphere - 3 stars (generously) for quality of the mystery itself

AND though i'm 7 on the list for the girl who played with fire - I managed to get to 3 on the wait list for the girl who kicked the hornets' nest as some worthy patron ordered an Amazon UK copy, read it and donated it. I gave up and ordered the girl who played w/ fire so i won't be in the position of reading the 3rd before the 2nd.

Also - for those YA fans here - a couple of very good books and one clunker by Chris Wooding. Poison and the haunting of Alaizabel cray are both v. good. "The Haunting is" Steampunkish/gothic noirish post-apocalyptic fables set in a London half taken over by supernatural grotesques created/emerged after an alternative history German blitz. 3.5

Poison is the better of the two..a bleakish fairy tale in a world where the divisiveness amongst humanity has led them to live, essentially, outside the pale in a world where competing Fae "kingdoms" seek to constantly one up each other whilst keeping humans in their place at the bottom of the social/economic/geographical heap. "Poison" the name the a-social heroine chose on her naming day to spite her step-mom - is one of the few who seeks a world outside the constrained, rustic, agrarian poverty of her home village. While certainly a classic "hero(ine)'s journey" Wooding does a fine job of avoiding the obvious. Love interest? zilch; self-reliant? - umm, not totally - Poison gradually learns to accept, respect and then, finally, love the elderly trader who takes her away from the known and reluctantly steps in on occasion to help her journey into Fae(lands). Within the genre of fairy/horror, this is an exellent book. 4.5 stars. A lovely homage to various literary predecessors of infinitely recursive libraries and authors as creators

After Poison and Haunting, Wooding wrote Malice in an attempt to blend novel and comic together - but in alternating portions. Not a success. Readers of "Malice" get sucked into the alternative, brutal "comic" world - but the premise and plotline and most of the characters are clunky. 2 stars.

a few more chapters on into the idea of justice and The Fourth Part of the World.

Good, well-considered critiques, Robert!

I'm actually reading Bleak House. Never cared much for Dickens, but decided to give him another go. Enjoying it so far.

Closed out the month with a cold that gave me time to read Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich. An excellent book. I'd love to hear a women's book club discuss it.

Finished another ER book, The Postmistress, and reviewed it. I am on Book 10 of Paradise Lost. Eve just caved and ate the apple. Oh sorry. Did anyone need a "spoiler alert"?
I am also reading a book by a friend, called "The Things that Always Were" and am about halfway done. It's very good, but unpublished so no touchstone or anything.

I am supposed to start reading Infinite Jest for March but have not started yet.

Right now I'm working through Remarque's Arch of Triumph. I really like his writing style.

His ALL QUIET is still one of my Top Ten war books...

Oh, I read All Quiet on the Western Front just last month, and thought it was marvellous stuff. I don't know if I could put it in a Top Ten of war books though, it's probably only about the second or third "war" book I've read. :)

I should amend that to Top Ten ANTI-war books...

152 and 153 -
Have you read Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain? You should try that one if you haven't already.

So, I need some advice. I'm going on an 18 hour (36 hours there and back) plane ride soon and I need some GOOD suggestions!

lilisin, I've never even *heard* of Black Rain! But consider it added to the wishlist. (Looks like it's a bit tricky to get in Australia, but I'll either ask the local good independent bookshop to order it in, or I'll break down and go shopping on The Book Depository. You LibraryThingers are forever recommending good books that cannot be easily bought here!)

Fantastic. Glad I could "help". ;)

Black Rain does sound like a necessary read. More thanks for suggesting!

"All Quiet" is an all-time top ten for me, not just war book top ten.

Unfortunately I haven't ever been able to find any other Remarque books... maybe I can scrape some change together for an Amazon giftcard...

I, too, just added Black Rain to my wish list. I am very glad to hear you all say good things about All Quiet on the Western Front as I am about to start teaching it after spring break. I think it is very powerful, but my students don't always agree. It could be worse - the alternative is A Separate Peace.

How exciting. I'm glad to have inspired so many to read Black Rain. Oh the power of LT!

And 161, yes, please spare your students A Separate Peace. I couldn't stand that book when I was in high school.

There's a time and a place for badly-written populist mind-candy

To each his/her own. Tastes differ. No one has to exclusively read literary fiction. But where is the line dividing literary fiction from populist fiction? I don't think there is one. There seems to be a full spectrum in fiction. I don't like it when someone tells me that, for instance, "Ulysses" is thrash. One man's junk is another man's treasure.

Right, tell me you didn't like a certain book but don't write it off because of your dislike. We can discuss why you don't like it and I do.

#163: Yes, indeed, that is the point of this group. To discuss good books in a forum with smart, articulate people. Tastes may vary, of course, but I can't find much real "trash" on my shelves; good books, entertaining books, but nothing badly written or insulting to my aesthetic judgment. That would go against everything I stand for, as a reader AND a writer...