Reading reading reading, April 2010

I just finished The Broom of the System by DFW. Hilarious! Clever! Wonderful! How the hell did he write such a novel while so young?

The day before I read Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya, which lived up to the Bolano blurb on the back of it. Disturbing little novel.

Next up is House of Mist by Maria Luisa Bombal.

I'm still reading The Demon of Sicily, The Communistic Societies of the U.S., and The Star Rover, and I'm reading A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott for an English paper I'm doing on her "thrillers."

I just read two Patrick O'Brian novels for light reading after having finished Infinite Jest. I am planning to read I think, therefore who am I? next - then someone loaned me The Celestine Prophecy which sounds sort of like a Paul Coelho type of thing (right? anyone here read it?) and should not take long.

Then I need to get back to something serious - my LT group is reading The Dwarf by Lagerkvist and I may join them if I can find it at the library.

I have the Lagerkvist: looks...interesting.

#3, I found The Celestine Prophecy to be well-nigh unreadable. I wish you better luck!
I'm finishing up Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show and looking forward to Solar, Beatrice and Virgil, Parrot and Olivier in America and lots of other great spring releases!

I think CELESTINE is too light and New Age-y for you, Anna.

Suggest you try Wilton Barnhardt's GOSPEL or James Morrow's TOWING JEHOVAH instead.

Finished Laura Warholic yesterday. Now I'm on to How It Is by Samuel Beckett. A wonderfully allusive and nearly impenetrable book. Or as I said before, "Eraserhead in print." Once that is done, some light reading with Mechanicum by Graham McNeill.

Reading Wanting by Richard Flanagan. An excellent, if sobering, read. Although with books with real people in it (this one has Charles Dickens et al), I am of course curious as to how truthful the story is. I only know Dickens through his books^ and general (very vague) knowledge, and am rather surprised at what I'm reading. Some more research may be required once I finish this book. (Although since it's for bookgroup, I'm sure someone there will know and share some Dickens' background.)

^ And the only book of his I've finished is A Christmas Carol. I've got Great Expectations on the shelves - is that one a good starter?

I hated Great Ex in 9th grade, but it might just be a bad idea to teach Great Expectations to a 9th grader.

I'm reading Broom of the System as well, and enjoying it so far. Seems like a practice run for Jest, though.

Also, after a month I'm halfway done with Executioner's Song.

The people in my 9th grade English class didn't even like reading To Kill a Mockingbird. No way we would have ever made it through Great Expectations.

8: More Tea Party Patriots should read A Christmas Carol, considering they all act like Ebenezer Scrooge's bastard children. "Health care to kids? Sooner they should die and cut down the surplus population."

9: Executioner's Song is pretty good. Very, very long though. Another Mailer doorstopper worth considering is Harlot's Ghost about the CIA.

I'm all over the place. I'm reading that ancient history text The World is Flat, skimming some Dawkins, The God Delusion, and am also back finishing Our man in Havana.

Still reading The Mist of Avalon!

Instead of reading, today I reorganized my books. I cleaned out my closet, thus creating a rather long empty shelf, so I managed to move enough books there to be able to move the rest of my books around their over-flowing bookcases. Which are no longer overflowing...for a week, anyway.

#9 & #10> Well, it's a good thing I'm well beyond year 9 (9th grade to the Americans) at school. :)

Can't remember what we studied in English that year - Catcher in the Rye, I think. Ah, Merchant of Venice is also ringing a vague bell.

I'll leave Great Expectations on the shelves for a while longer, but it's not totally discounted as a read. (It's also there to annoy my husband who loathed it when he had to read it at High School.... ;)

Wookiebender, I'd recommend Great Expectations as a decent enough place to start for someone interested in Dickens. Everyone ought to meet the iconic character that is Miss Havisham at least once. I'll always have a greater fondness in my heart for David Copperfield, but it's a bit of a doorstop and likely to scare off those on the fence about the author.

Oh, Miss Havisham! I'd forgotten she was in that book. In my local graveyard, there is buried a woman, Eliza Emily Donnithorne, who *apparently* was the role model for Miss Havisham. Which means that one is probably the one I should start with. Local history and all that. ;)

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/24/1101219615567.html has some info about Miss Eliza Emily Donnithorne

#13 , I've been reading Mists Of Avalon too . About to start the second "book" . How far into it are you ?

Just finished I think, therefore who am I? and The Wine-Dark Sea. I think I will start The Dwarf for the group read.

I'm finally reading the Kristen Lavransdatter books. My Norwegian grandmother would approve, but wonder what took me so long.

Finished How It Is by Beckett. A wonderful read. Demanding and exhilarating. I'm taking a break from tough reads and enjoying some fluff. Started reading Mechanicum by Graham McNeill. Then it'll be back to something more challenging.

With Dickens you can't go wrong with The Pickwick Papers as an introduction. You get a sense of his characters and his humor through the ironic colored goggles with which he wrote so much stuff.

While it's not my fave, Our Mutual Friend holds that honor at present, the (mis) adventures of the Pickwickians is a hoot from start to finish. Pay close attention to Sam Weller, a character Dickens obviously loved dearly.

I didn't like House of Mist by Bombal, but I read half of By Night in Chile on the plane yesterday and loved it. Nazi Literature in the Americas was good too.

Maybe DeLillo now? I'm also slowing picking through Democratic Paradox by Chantal Mouffe, which is a good introduction to a wing of political theory I had never really encountered in detail.

I enjoyed The Heart Specialist, a debut novel by Claire Holden Rothman inspired by Maude Abbott, one of Montreal's first female doctors.

Also finished Snow Crash and liked it enough that I bought Diamond Age, though I won't get to it for a while.

I struggled at the beginning, but Death in Venice was definitely worth working through. I enjoyed Mann's The Magic Mountain immensely many years ago, and it's probably time for a reread.

Currently working on an advance copy of Robert Sawyer's WWW: Watch, the sequel to WWW: Wake. Up next is Atwood's Year of the Flood.

Read some essays of Walter Benjamin and browsed through the Arcades Project For a research project. Marxist revolutionary philosophy meets Jewish mysticism. Whew! Brain-meltingly good.

#22> Thanks, geneg. I'll keep my eyes open.

Currently reading Solar by Ian McEwan.

Just started reading The Woman in White after finishing some more modern reads being Possession by A. S. Byatt and Girl With A Pearl Earing by Chevalier.

#15 I highly recommend Great Expectations - the language can be a bit of work, but if you've read A Christmas Carol you should be fine. Other than that try and avoid hearing/reading any reviews which detail major plot points - it's so much more rewarding when you, the reader, like Pip, form your own expectations of the novels outcome.

I have been working my way through the White Bird of Kinship trilogy by Richard Cowper - The Road to Corlay, A Dream of Kinship and A Tapestry of Time. Some very nice writing, altho perhaps a little too much exposition in places. Good British sf from the 1970s, anyway - the one brief time & place when good sf and good writing could be found hand in hand: the UK in the 1970s...

I finally finished The Demon of Sicily, and I've started reading Behind a Mask - so far it seems like the main character is an evil alter ego of the March sisters. Appears to be a young, quiet, kind, pretty governess, but she's really an old, scheming gold digger.

#27> Too late for the spoiler warning. I mentioned Great Expectations in passing to my husband over the Easter weekend, and he recited the entire plot to me, even though I was desperately squeaking 'SPOILER!!' at every pause he took to take breath.

I think he still has issues at having to study Great Expectations.

Luckily, I do have a dreadful memory, and in about six months time will have completely forgotten his rant. (Sometimes it's good to have a leaky memory!)

Not frightened by the language, but I do tend to get a bit fed up with Victorian morality and sentimentality.

Glad to see I'm not alone in my highschool-induced hatred of Great Ex. Seriously, no matter how great the teacher, 14-15 year olds are not exactly inclined to read Dickens, especially one of his duller books.

Nearing the end of Executioner's Song -meaning, I still have over 300 pages left...

I read Great Expectations as a teen. It was not taught, I just read it off of my parent's shelves. I skipped all the "boring descriptive passages" and that is a goodly percentage of the book. I keep meaning to re-read it now that I have enough patience to RTWT.

I finished The Communistic Societies of the U.S. and No Moon today. Not sure what I'm going to read next, though I discovered that if you leave a hardback book in a hot car for a few hours the cover will warp.
:(

Finished Solar, moved on to Breath by Tim Winton.

Planning a big binge of reading...soon. Many irresistible titles on the TBR pile, including some inter-library loaners with finite borrowing times. Just have to iron out some wrinkles with the printer, almost caught up on my paperwork...

Oh, yes, some FINE readin' in the very near future.

Currently reading the much-lauded fantasy novel The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, and am not impressed so far. It's March's book for my reading challenge, so I'll be writing it up on my blog afterward.

Finished Jim Harrison's THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER: earthy, wise, lusty, humane. Three novellas on all aspects of love. God, I love Harrison...

Really good, isn't it? I think it's his best in years.

Novella-length narratives are the perfect fit for him. Wish more authors would use that format, rather than piling on the padding and shooting for a full-length novel...

Finished Long Day's Journey Into Night a couple days ago and have now moved on to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I finished Freddy's Book and I'm working through Kipling's Science Fiction and Pride and Prejudice.

39 -- absolutely. Harrison is brilliant at the novella, but his longer novels can drag. (Though I liked The Road Home.)

And more novels should be short. I recall Thomas McGuane's jacket blurb for Bright Lights, Big City, that it has an ideal power-to-weight ratio. Many people, unfortunately, buy novels by weight: if I'm spending $25, I'd rather have 500 pages than 250, as I can read twice as long!

But the fat novel, with notable exceptions, is usually padded. People ought to heed the cereal-box warning. Most novels are sold by weight, not volume.

#36> Damn, I read the first few pages of The Blade Itself at a bookshop and thought it looked like a fun read. (But I put it back, because I've already got the Harry Dresden series & the Gentlemen Bastard series to fill that reading niche.)

Finished Tim Winton's Breath (and thought it was very, very good) and am moving on to Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

Just picked up The Cyberiad by Lem. Still working on Steinbeck's Log From the Sea of Cortez. Interesting how this work resembles Hunter Thompson's style. Wonder if Steinbeck was an influence.

working on nostromo by joseph conrad and painting below zero the autobiography of the painter james rosenquist. i am still carrying in my bag guston in time, i shall finish it some day.

Starting Point Omega.

I'm about a third of the way through Half of a Yellow Sun and really liking it.

I'm halfway through The Wood Beyond the World - Morris has an interesting writing style.

Finished Goodbye, Columbus and White Noise today. It was my first Roth, and I loved it. It was my second DeLillo (my first being Falling Man), and I am officially a fan. I have Mao II and Underworld waiting for me at home. Can't wait.

Finished POINT OMEGA this afternoon.

Paraphrasing my book journal: typical DeLillo, mystifying, lyrical, elliptical, intriguing. I think this is a more approachable and likable effort than COSMOPOLIS and maybe a good starting point for someone looking to get into DD's work but somewhat intimidated by his reputation and high literary standing. Very Ballard-ian in its detachment, allusions to cinema, stark landscapes, enigmatic characters.

Some quotes I kept for my Commonplace Book:

"Film, he thought, is solitary."

"If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself."

Interesting. If I find it at the library, I shall surely be picking it up ('cause boy, I ain't shelling out twenty-five greenbacks for 128-pages).

UNDERWORLD is magnificent--you're going to love it.

Finished The Executioner's Song. Hell of an ending. Liked it lots.

Besides NAKED AND THE DEAD, that's my favorite Mailer. It's a big book, huge really, but it grants us such in-depth portrayals of the principals that they become real people, we truly care about them or, at least, develop some understanding of what motivates them. As far as true crime books go, it's right up there with IN COLD BLOOD.

BookBindingBobby: Libra is my favorite DeLillo, White Noise second. Mao II and Underworld are both quite good.

54: Yeah, the really impressive part of the book was how, by the end, I was feeling scared and upset for Gilmore. Considering he shot and killed two family men in cold blood, that's quite a feat.

I finished Point Omega this morning. It was my first DeLillo, and I thought it was a very, very good novel. If it had been written by anyone else, I think we would be awed by it, but I imagine it's hard to judge next to the rest of his oeuvre.

I will read more soon!

#56: Absolutely, I felt that too. The Executioner's Song is the only Mailer novel I've read, but it stands as an all-time favorite.

Polished off Michael Connelly's 9 DRAGONS in about four hours. A quick read but not stupid--Detective Bosch spends part of his time in Hong Kong this time around and the change of scenery does him good. Anyone looking for some good airplane reading? Entertainment for a cold, wet afternoon? This might be the book for you.

58: Executioner's Song is good, but I really loved Ancient Evenings and Harlot's Ghost But if you're interested in Mailer and Mormon murderers, both Mailer and Gary Gilmore make an appearance in Cremaster 3 If you can't find the film, there's also a book. A gorgeous interpretation of desert mysticism, austerity, murder, and "frontier Freemasons."

Just finished Time of Terror, an Early Reviewer book. It's historical fiction about Paris during the Terror and really very well-written. I'm continuing to read Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey series and this new series is comparable (the main character is an English captain) but not as elegantly written.

Am wading through the Celestine Prophecy. It's really badly written. The philosophy isn't so much terrible as it is quite obviously simplified mysticism that has been sort of maniupulated into something that would appeal to the egos of New Agey people. I've found some of it faintly thought-provoking in spite of itself (if that makes any sense). Almost done and unsure what to take on next.

Just started The Lemur by Benjamim Black, AKA John Banville. Too early yet to know what to make if it.

I couldn't understand why The Blade Itself was so universally approved. It was better than a lot of fantasy novels I've read, but that's not saying much. Anyway, a full review will appear on my blog in the next day or tow.

I started Wittgenstein's Nephew by Bernhard last night.

I'm tempted to start Boccaccio's The Decameron.

Finished Indignation by Philip Roth. If you'll look above, you'll see I just recently finished my first Roth book, Goodbye, Columbus. As you see, I loved it.
Dare I say I loved Indignation more? I really think I did. I'm not familiar enough with Roth to know how this one stands in his canon, but I really did think it was fantastic.

Rereading The Historian. I need to have another reading binge soon.

I just finished To the Lighthouse and am whipping through Little Bee. Any book I can whip through can't be that good. In any case, I'm about to tackle 2017 thanks to the LT Early Reviewers group.

Starting into The Lusty Man by Terry Griggs.

On page 100 of The Plot Against America by, of course, Philip Roth. Can you tell that I have fallen quickly, madly in love with him?

Reading The Magus. Adolescent, but lovely to read.

You find Fowles "adolescent"? Sales, yer a true snob...

I still adore Tristram Shandy. I loved it in college, and I still love it now, especially the blank page.

Caroline Leavitt

I just grabbed Motorman by David Ohle at the library.

I'm reading Portland Noir, a collection of noir short stories set in my fair city. It's organized by neighborhood, and so far I am really enjoying it (I'm on the 4th or 5th story).

Next up is Labyrinths, a short story collection by Borges that I have been saving to savor, if that makes sense. Stories by Borges are like a really rich dessert.

(Edited to change "Ficciones" to "Labyrinths" once I realized the mistake - after seeing Cliff had found "Ficciones" which is kinda hard to find... I rejoice with you Cliff.)

Das Kapital by Karl Marx.

Years of Upheaval by Henry Kissinger.

S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas

Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin.

I sum up my literary tourism in a free-associative essay:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/critic%E2%80%99s-notebook-a-...

Have posted my review of The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie on my blog - see here.

I smiled when I saw the author himself had responded to your review. Fantasy writers: notoriously thin-skinned (as well as being untalented and derivative)...

Fantasy writer n. 1. author of fantasy novels 2. person able to call himself "author" only in fantasy.

To be fair, Joe Abercrombie's comment was clearly meant to be humorous. Don't think I've ever met him, although we do have friends in common.

As seems to be my style lately, I've started another book having not yet finished the one I'm currently working on. As I make my way through The Plot Against America, I will now be carrying along in tow Don Delillo's Mao II, because, y'know, I'm cool like that.

Finished The Magus - good, but not as good as The French Lieutenant's Woman or A Maggot.

Now reading Lady Chatterly's Lover. It's very, um, "telling-y".

Finished rereading E. M. Forster's Room with a View recently, and also read Oonagh by Mary Tilberg. Enjoyed both.

Currently, I'm reading The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee, and I've almost finished What is Stephen Harper Reading?, Yann Martel's reading suggestions for our prime minister. I'd avoided reading his blog, as the premise sounded presumptuous and arrogant, but I'm enjoying the book very much. Martel has great insight and argues persuasively about the importance of reading.

Also started In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. It's dated but still very entertaining.

This month I have embarked upon Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.
It is ripping my insides apart.

Will soon finish up Mechanicum by Graham McNeill. A fun sci fi romp. It's wonderfully over-the-top space gothic with giant mechas and such. Total trash and I make no apologies. But then I'll have to figure out what to read next.

In late June, I'll start Atlas Shrugged as part of "Atlas Summer," an epic take-down of Rand's shrill capitalist screed. I'll post the latest updates on my blog. It'll be like a pack of velociraptors taking down a brontosaurus.

I am more than halfway through with The Grand Alliance, volume 3 of the six books of the Second World War series by Winston Churchill.

I am just about finished with Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin. This is a Dover reprint of an 1890 Houghton and Mifflin edition. So we encounter the Chekhoff, Nabokoff style of transliteration. Its a very interesting book with an exiting escape from a prison hospital.

Dipped my toe into gritty alcoholic Irish crime with The Guards. And am now testing the steampunk waters with Leviathan.

Once I finish Mechanicum, I'm torn. It's either Gilead by Marilynne Robinson or The Turner Diaries by Andrew McDonald. I think it's important to read the latter, especially with the Rightwing saber-rattling these days. But the former looks like a nice short read, a masterpiece of literary economy.

I'm reading Dawn of the Dreadfuls after finishing Pride and Prejudice, and also The Queen's Mirror and It Can't Happen Here.

87:
By all means, read the Turner Diaries if you want, but I'm not really convinced that it's "important." Do you really think that many right wingers identify with the politics of that book? I've never read it, but I've heard of it and my impression is that it's waaaaay out of the mainstream.

87: Yes, why do you have to wallow in these types of books? First Mein Kampf, then Kissinger's ridiculous tree-killers, then the Turner Diaries - then you're re-reading Ayn Rand? Surely these points of view are not that hard to understand? Why do you have to read all of it?

Sick fascination? Know thy enemy?

finally getting to Brave New World. Looking forward to it.

89: Turner Diaries out of the mainstream? Have you even seen the news these days?

91: Cliff, nailed it. I have a morbid fascination with the evil side of humanity. Not that it's any surprise. As a historian, I encounter this stuff on a daily basis. History is a chronology of murder, mayhem, and madness.

While the Turner Diaries is probably crap -- Sub-Tom Clancy meets sub-Hitler with enough fetishizing of guns to make Freud blush -- one has to understand the mindset of the enemy. No Country for Old Men plumbs the same depths of violence and psychosis, albeit better written.

The Turner Dairies is bad in so many ways. Then again, I'm not reading James Patterson

***

As far as re-reading Ayn Rand: I'm reading Atlas Shrugged for the same reason that Red Letter Media guy watches "Attack of the Clones." Plus with the economy as bad as it is, people actually think Rand makes sense and has a plausible economic philosophy. (As opposed to being a pill-popping shrew who was paranoid and insane.) It's all part of a much needed epic take-down/hatchet job. That's why I'm reading it. Not everyone will agree with my reasons, but, well, explain to me why I should give a damn about what others think?

Well, OK, you obviously don't need to agree with anyone else over what to read. However, given your extreme dislike of Rand and the fact that you've already read this ponderous crap, it seems like self-punishment to read it again.

I also have a morbid fascination with the dark side of humanity. I read well-written noir stuff because it speaks to this morbid fascination. I think this is a human nature thing actually. It explains why mysteries about serial killers, true crime, etc. are so popular.

The reason I would probably never read the Turner Diaries, or the Left Behind books, or Mein Kampf or Kissinger's crap, is probably just that life is too damned short to read horribly written self-justifications by evil bastards. But I appreciate your taking one (many) for the team and reading them so I don't have to. I'll be sure to read your reviews.

(PS But Kissinger? Really? Didn't you look up at some point and think, "Wow, I am really wasting a lot of time on this"???)

Besides the Borges, I am also reading the latest Bernard Cornwall Viking series book. I have forgotten the name. I am reading it out loud to my SO whose vision has gone haywire.

Yeah, but, Anna, don't forget: at one time, Kissinger was a Czar of U.S. foreign policy, literally a potentate at the State Department (as long as he didn't steal a photo op from Tricky Dick). And (this can't be emphasized often enough), the little prick won a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE. For promoting range conflicts and proxy wars and helping bring the Khmer Rouge to power in Cambodia; for perpetuating a brutal stalemate in the Middle East and cultivating an "us and them/zero sum" mentality that STILL has the world bristling with epoch-ending weapons of mass destruction. And on and on.

Kissinger fascinates and repels. Just like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. The allure and power of the dark side of our natures. Remember, Tricky won both his Presidential elections in a landslide and Hitler's approval rating only took a big dip when the war was brought home to Germany. Tyrants know how to exploit our weaknesses and maximize their power. Their types vary--from the cruelest pharaoh to the guys at Enron who cheered when the power grid in California crashed, air conditioners failing and old people cooking to death in their homes.

We need to know how to recognize these people and call them by their correct names. It's the only way to kill demons, don't you know...

96: It's not so much that he was an evil bastard but that he wrote these long long, long books. Couldn't you get the same amount of value from reading Doonesbury's takedowns of the books? (As I remember, he did a series on Kissinger's Georgetown class reading them and called the book "White Wash Years" and it was pretty funny.)

94: Wasting my time? All I have is time. One of the few advantages of being jobless.

As far as Kissinger, here's another view:

http://coffeeforclosers.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/a-hipsters-guide-to-henry-kissi...

To be fair, White House Years was a lot more entertaining than Hard Times and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Reading Christine alongside Mao II now.

Returning to Harry Dresden in Death Masks.

Not a single bit of economics/history/politics in it. Just big dumb fun.

Since I joined this website (not that long ago) I have had an ever-growing To Be Read list. It's so exciting to always have at least 5 books you're dying to get into!

Currently I'm loving reading The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and The Shipping News (cant believe it's taken me this long!), am really liking reading An Artist of the Floating World and am quite liking reading Waste and Want. I must stop picking up new ones- the pile by my bed is toppling daily!

Finished Lady Chatterley's Lover. Surprised myself how much I enjoyed it. Lawrence has a somewhat repetitive style, and the over-use of exclamation marks gets a bit wearying, but he wrote some lovely prose about the English countryside. And I was much amused to see my birth town described as "that once-romantic, now utterly disheartening colliery town", as I can can't imagine it ever having been "romantic".

I was tempted to avoid genre fiction for a bit longer, but decided not to, so I'm now reading some sf - Majestrum by Matthew Hughes.

102: Lady Chatterley's Lover is a great book. (Pairing it with Das Kapital would make for some fascinating discussions on Industrialization and Nature.)

A few chapters into the Turner Diaries Not sure which is worse: the hateful bigoted philosophy or the terrible pedestrian prose? It reads like Moon is a Harsh Mistress meets Protocols of the Elders of Zion Pedestrian, pedantic, and toxic. Andrew McDonald is no Ezra Pound or Ferdinand Celine But I'd put it in the genre of "gun nut fanfiction." McDonald also seems averse to depicting love scenes and rarely swears. An odd but fitting Puritanism.

Ha. "gun nut fanfiction." That's the best description of Turner I have heard.

Yeah, I chuckled too.

Can't seem to find my copy of Riddley Walker, so I guess that's on hold now. Reading Pale Fire with some King (Needful Things) as light reading.

Finished Our Man in Havana and just bulled through A Brief History of Time.

Picked up Nella Larsen's Passing this morning.

Just finished reading Heller's Catch 22 - 38 years ago; old enough to have attended his live show, sweating it out, standing there before me, with me sitting on the first row! Leaky, Mead, I listened to, and to Toffler too: OH, What a Shock! to listen to him talk! If you know what I mean - if I may be so BOLD. Am re-reading Vonnegut, who as you know, wrote about people with Big Brains - who came and did go. Re-reading Raymond Carver who wrote stories of people living pointless lives - thinking they're such hot stuff, all just the same: Oh, MY what a SHAME! If I may say SO?

Did I just hear the name POL POT? WOW - Definetly my most favorite of favorite people anywhere, at any time in history - now if you want to talk crime, that happens to be a favorite subject of mine! I'm old enough to know all about Nam, because I was there! NO, you big dummy, Not There; I was somewhere else, like in college, majoring in ART, a legal draft dodger fitted out nicely with a 2S deferment and all of that, which I used to no end to escape all that meaningless debate, filled with such incredible Hate. Nam and Nixon, who when he was ViCe-President wanted to use the frickin Bomb, yes, I'm not kidding! 3 of them! Only Eisen wouldn't allow it to happen; afraid of expanding the war to a greater level of stupidity than it already had reached, knowing in his great wisdom that there sat the US, caught in the middle, with the Commies on one side and eventually with Pol Pot on the other. Yes, it is true about Nixon and his 3 Bomb idea! What would you say, now, in retrospect, what with looking at that whole big nasty picture as a whole; might you say, if I were to say that in retrospect, in Light of all that had happened: That in final anaysis, maybe, just maybe that: Nixon was Right!

110: Pol Pot was just better than Nixon in eliminating the opposition. Nixon had to contend with that little irritant that disrupts any President's plan: democracy. And don't mistake retrospection for nostalgia. As a historian, I shy away from making blanket assessments of Administrations, since most boil down to demonization or hagiography. Presidential fandom isn't too different from sci fi fandom, except that sci fi fandom is less repellent.

"Presidential fandom isn't too different from sci fi fandom, except that sci fi fandom is less repellent."

Reading Lem's Cyberiad right now, and his political and aristocratic allusions, though mostly whimsical, cut like a cleaver. I would hypothesize that sci-fi and its fandom usually serves as a reaction to presidential politics and/or political fandom.

112: There's a thin line between Anime cosplay and Tea Party loonies dressing up Founding Fathers and spouting their hellacious blather in the name of "freedom." Not sure which subculture is more justifiably contemptible?

Excellent point. Brings to mind the increasing popularity of larpers. Egads.

114: Larpers have foam swords, Teabaggers have foam ideology.

Speaking of which, Turner Diaries is the most unintentionally hilarious book I've read in a long time. Lots of eye-rolls and "Oh come on! Seriously?" It's unintentionally hilarious in the same way 300 is the most unintentionally homoerotic movie of all time. The Turner Diaries is like an Austin Powers sequel minus the plausibility. One could easily start a drinking game with the book:

*Every time the whiny White loser complains about Jewish conspiracies, take a shot.

*Every time said White loser complains about Black barbarity, take a shot.

Needless to say, the narrator is a whiny little bitch. Although the whine goes along with the cheese, aka the plot.

I'm sure that maggot William Pierce, the author, would find my assessment troubling, especially since heroes aren't supposed to be whiny bastards with persecution complexes.

Here's a picture of the hero:

http://la.indymedia.org/uploads/2006/05/crybaby.jpg

That's my uncle Louis, you bastard! I recognize him from his hairy shoulders...

116: "Where's my copy of So Dark the Night ya lazy Canuck slob!" -- Uncle Louis.

Finished the section in Das Kapital on Ireland's agricultural policy. Wow ... just wow! Marx ties it all together: surplus population, pressing down wages, the Famine, the collusion of landed English aristocracy, etc. As Hannibal from the A-Team said: "I love it when a plan comes together."

That link is cruel, Karl. But very, very funny.

Cliff, when it comes to assessing the "writing" of the Turner Diaries, sometimes cruelty is what is required. I imagine William Pierce is a rather thin-skinned livestock-raping sub-moron. (Just like any description of Rupert Murdoch should begin with "child rapist and war criminal" Rupert Murdoch. It's a fair and balanced description of that Aussie loony.)

***

Just finished the "Turner Diaries." Started Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. What totally different literary products from the same genre: Middle America, Protestant, rural. One is a story of gorgeous beauty -- even to a proudly secular rootless cosmopolitan like myself -- and the other is a thinly veiled rant scribbled by a racist coward.

Finished The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem...thoroughly profound.

Just picked up The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz. Very ethereal so far.

#119> It's a fair and balanced description of that Aussie loony.

Miss Boo asked the other day why I wasn't buying The Australian at the newsagency, but was buying The Sydney Morning Herald instead. I startled at least one person with my reply: Mummy doesn't buy Murdoch newspapers.

And I don't know if he's technically an Australian any more. I seem to remember that he wanted American citizenship, and I'm not sure if you could then hold dual citizenships. (Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.) So I think he might be an American loony now. (Yay, you can have him.)

About to finish the sublime Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear by Javier Marías. And also a reread of The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald.

Finished Riddley Walker, shot through The Magicians (which was interesting but ultimately disappointing) and am about finished with Pale Fire. Up next, The Good Thief and Beloved.

Polished off The Remains of the Day. The narrator is a prat - I seem to recall Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptation making the character more sympathetic - but still a good book. Also read Keith Douglas' Collected Poems (touchstone? you jest...). Some good stuff in there - a good find at a library sale last year.

Currently reading Illyria by Elizabeth Hand. I'm reading the PS novella, which I was given free when I subscribed to Postscripts magazine two years ago, but I note that it's just been published in the US by Viking.

Also reading Colours in the Steel, KJ Parker, for this month's fantasy challenge. Only a couple of dozen pages in but it's already shaping up to be the best fantasy novel I've read so far this year...

"Only a couple of dozen pages in but it's already shaping up to be the best fantasy novel I've read so far this year..."

Considering the state of writing in the fantasy genre, this could be interpreted as damning with faint praise...

There are some good ones out there. A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park is one. The Lens of the World by RA McAvoy is also good.

In fact, I think I did a blog post on this very subject once. Ah, here it is, from August last year.

Hmmm, not too many real recent fantasy titles there. Aren't pretty much all of them 5-10 years old (at least)?

The Park tetralogy is recent, and the latest Shepard novella has, I think, only just been shipped by Subterranean. The last Crowley, Endless Things, was only published in 2007.

Certainly more recent than I imagined. Thanks...

I started Beatrice and Virgil last night. The first 150 pages are very strange and good.

Once again...there's a vast difference between the hordes of Ork/Hobbit knockoffs and modern "literary" fantasy, which, if were written in Italian or Spanish and translated into English would be of much higher repute, i suspect.

The Park quartet is v. good; the older "merlin dreams" by Peter Dickinson is astonishing in parts. It's hard to find good SF and good fantasy but worth the effort in both genres.

I'm about to start a reread of "Souls in the Great Machine" having found a replacement copy at the last library book sale.

I just finished It Can't Happen Here; it's like 1984, only better.
Now on to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Ah, Suzie, either you're on the bus or off the bus...

My review of The Turner Diaries:

http://coffeeforclosers.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/the-turner-diaries-1978-by-andr...

In a nutshell, it's Blazing Saddles minus the jokes.

#134> I hadn't realised The Turner Diaries was an older book, I kept on thinking it was new and was wondering why I'd never heard of it before.

Finished Passing and I thought it was very good. I was wondering how different it would be if it was written today (instead of in 1929). For some reason, I keep on thinking it'd be slightly hysterical, a lot more analytical/angsty, and a lot longer. I'm not sure why, but probably because I haven't seen a 114 page novel in the bookshops in the longest while. (And they'd have to pad out the story somehow.)

Picked up The Seventh Sinner and only finished it because I wanted something silly to read over a busy weekend. Not recommended, really.

And am now onto The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt. Should be a good meaty read, and it's also 500 pages longer than Passing. I may be some time. (It's actually so big - trade paperback format - that it's hard to hold up in bed, and to keep open comfortably on the bus. Yeesh.)

STAR OF THE SEA by Joseph O'Connor. I inadvertently picked up the sequel, REDEMPTION FALLS, without realizing there was a preceding book. A good read, though not exactly pleasant subject matter (Irish famine and immigration to America in leaky, poorly ventilated craft). Literate and well-rendered historical fiction.

135: I was surprised that the Handmaid's Tale was written after The Turner Diaries The TD seem like they were written by the military theocracy of the HMT. It's disturbing how similar those books are as far as world-building and ideology.

***

Nearly done with Das Kapital Volume 1. One more chapter and an appendix section. Writing a review will be a challenge, but I'm up to it. Probably will classify it as a "Critical Appraisal," which will give me more room to analyze such a monumental work of intellect, theory, and polemic.

***

Gilead is awesome. The writing has a ferocious precision even though it appears to be written by an amateur (the minister writing letters to his son). History, morality, and family life bubble up and intermingle like the best of Proust, except this is minimal and spare (as befitting the Iowa prairie) and not maximalist like In Search of Lost Time A healing balm after the sociopathic dreck of "the Turner Diaries."

Yep, I really liked Gilead.

Finished Half of a Yellow Sun and gave it four stars.

Gilead's been on my to-read list forever. One day, I'll get around to it...

Had to put Beloved on hold because I get to write curriculum for kids to study The Book Thief! I'm excited, this is definitely one of my favorite young adult books, and it should be fun to pick apart.

139: That sounds like a great assignment. I just read The Book Thief a couple of months ago, and really enjoyed it.

I just read David Ohle's Motorman. What a demented fucked up pleasure of a book. Highly recommend!

Great blurb!

"...demented fucked up pleasure of a book"

I saw that sentiment on a book, I'd buy it.

I finally finished The Queen's Mirror today after reading it for a month, and I've started Trilby and a Spanish book from Google Books whose title translates as A Season on the Most Beautiful of the Planets. Since I've had only two semesters of Spanish, reading it is interesting.

I finished an abridged (horrors!) audio (horrors!) version of A Year in the Life of Shakespeare. It was very good, but also seemed to be enough for me.

On to Down and Out in Paris and London.

Once I've put my review of Colours in the Steel, KJ Parker, to bed (it wasn't bad), I'll be starting The Rapture by Liz Jensen, for a review for sffchronicles.net.

Currently enjoying Graham Swift's Waterland. Quite different from and yet just as good as the only other book of his I've read, his Booker winner Last Orders.

Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear by Javier Marías (trans. Margaret Jull Costa) -- 5/5

The protagonist has this power of 'reading' people. His mentor, an old man, is the same. They can know people's history and psychology and what they're capable of just by observing them and hearing them talk. Nothing happens much in this first volume of the story. What is certain is that by the end of the 3rd volume, someone will be betrayed and will pay the price for 'careless talk.' This is ultimately a spy story, but it's James Bond in the role of a psychologist.

Marías is Marías. His characters talk and talk and think and think. They can be repetitive and exasperating. Very few paragraph breaks and sentences that go on and on. Some beautiful insights into telling stories and the capacity to betray others with a single word.

J ; Seventeen: Two Novels by Ōe Kenzaburo (trans. Luk Van Haute) -- 4/5

It's my introduction to Ōe and he certainly had an interesting take on the interplay of sex/politics and private/public life. The two novels deal with sexual perverts and how they become entangled with politics of the day. They still maintain their shock value in terms of graphic descriptions. They were said to cause a sensation when they were first published in Japan in the early 60s. I'm hoping that Ōe will allow the publication of "A Political Youth Dies", the sequel to Seventeen, which he apparently suppressed because it angered extreme right-wingers and he was uncertain about the style and content of the book. He was like Murakami Haruki in the self-censorship aspect, but they have different motivation for censoring their own works. Haruki's motivation was aesthetic (he thinks his two early novels were too juvenile) while Ōe's was aesthetic and political (the rightists threw stones at his house, the leftists accuse him of betrayal). These writers are being too harsh on themselves.

EDIT: I failed to note that Haruki only suppressed the publication of his first two books, 'Hear the Wind Sing' & 'Pinball, 1973', as well as the first English translation of 'Norwegian Wood', outside Japan. Which is still puzzling since international sellers (eBay, Amazon) can always get hold of them and retail them outside, albeit sometimes at steep prices.

I'm hoping that Ōe will allow the publication of "A Political Youth Dies", the sequel to Seventeen, which he apparently suppressed because it angered extreme right-wingers and he was uncertain about the style and content of the book.

Have you read any Yukio Mishima? Mishima -- and the militarist rightwing ilk he catted around with -- seem like the ones Oe thinks he would offend.

I never knew about Oe's self-censorship. An intriguing thing to consider, especially in light of the "Mohammad in Bear Suit" flap and Theo Van Gogh murder. Does an artist sacrifice some of his or her integrity when he or she balk at intimidation from extremists (temporal or spiritual)? Then again, I love writers who are equal opportunity offenders.

Decided to knock off Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor - no, not that Elizabeth Taylor, the other one - before tackling The Rapture.

My review of Das Kapital Volume 1 by Marx.

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/capital-volume-1-a-critique-...

I'm currently chugging through the Appendix. Then on to Volume 2!

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation
Over the years I've tried and tried to get through Darwin's most important book, and failed. While there are great sentences and paragraphs to be found, the sheer volume of examples he brought to bear in support of his arguments kept weighing me down. On a whim of sorts, i picked up this marvelous graphic "extract" - each chapter of the original is excerpted and beautifully illustrated, with explanatory notes and discussion. What this summation makes obvious is just how elegant and "modern" Darwin's theses and use of supporting evidence really were.

My mother, whose thesis, "Darwin and social Darwinism", was published in Osiris the year I was born, can finally stop turning over in her grave - 30 yrs on! (well, at least spin a bit more slowly). Somewhere, i think i still have here notes for her dissertation that went unwritten after becoming a 50s mom.

151: Your mom might spin in her grave if those wingnuts publish On the Origin of Species and Zombies and Werewolves and Vampire Hunters."

I read Ray Monk's How to Read Wittgenstein and found it very illuminating, as I work through the Tractatus.

>148 kswolff:

kswolff,

I haven’t tried Mishima. I might come around to him soon as I have two books of his. I’m not sure if his followers are the same right-wingers that harassed Ōe. The reaction of these people must reflect on the “truth” of Ōe's depiction of their politics.

It would have been better if these writers allow readers to judge for themselves the value of their works, whether the claims that these novels are inferior or they promote non-progressive politics are warranted and so must really be disowned. But then we will never know.

Rise

154: Since I haven't read either Oe or Mishima, I can't really be a judge of that.

But I did find a blog entirely devoted to Mishima:

http://www.jack-donovan.com/mishima/

"Non-progressive politics" isn't really an issue with the novels I read. I've read Ferdinand Celine, an unrepentant fascist and anti-Semite, but also a talented influential Modernist writer. I've also read The Turner Diaries, again fascist and anti-Semitic, that was written in sub-Dan Brown style. Then again, as a historian and advocate for remembering the past -- even the godawful parts -- I would recommend people read both Celine and The Turner Diaries, if anything to escape the PC Liberal Hivemind on occasion and explore other belief systems.

It's why I'm reading Gilead, even though as a secular rootless cosmopolitan, I enjoy reading about the life and times of an Iowa preacher in the 1950s. Unlikely that I'd enjoy it, but True Art(TM) transcends mere political and social categories.

My opinion, in any case ...

>155 kswolff:

True Art(TM) transcends mere political and social categories.

I agree. This is the ideal case. But how readers in the immediate society of the writer (the Japanese extremists, in Ōe's case) will react to overtly political themed novels is another matter. Ōe based his story on a true story of a disturbed teenager who flirted with a right-wing group, stabbed to death a leftist leader, and later hanged himself in jail. The assassination of the leftist leader, which happened in 1960, was captured on video and so the event entered the national consciousness and has served as a reminder on how extreme the politics of the right can be--the youth was labeled a terrorist. I believe that in the first part of the story (Seventeen), Ōe has sensitively delineated the character of a troubled teenager and has given an existential edge to his inner conflicts.

Ōe will not please both sides, the right or the left, and his decision to suppress the sequel to his book is as much based on his uncertainty on his work as on his and his family's security. I think that despite the literary merit of his politically charged novel, his decision to censor it based on personal security (rightists threw stones at his house and harassed him by death threats, leftists constantly sent him letters accusing him of cowardice) may be valid. But some readers, like me, feel deprived of the continuity of the story. In that sense, even if the novels are of literary value, it failed the imagination of its "immediate" readers who saw in it a distortion of their political beliefs.

By the way, I think Gilead was a fine book.

>152 kswolff:

That's not out yet, but you can get Jane Sleyre, Little Vampire Women, Little Women and Werewolves, or Android Karenina.

Shameful is what it is.

156: Ōe will not please both sides, the right or the left

I like him already. So much of political thought -- or what passes for political thought -- these days is genuflecting to vacant idols and repeating dead slogans. The term "freedom" -- itself a slippery, loaded word -- has lost all meaning. It's just a cudgel one side uses to clobber the other. Serious political discussions have devolved into shouting matches between competing clans of self-deluded cheerleaders (and politics is definitely "clannish" -- but the Tea Party is Klannish).

157: Shameful, pathetic, and lame. The first book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was novel and looks funny. Now the trope is already played out. Thus the difference between a trend and a fad.

As a longtime reader of Mad Magazine, I don't mind the occasional parody of the Western Canon. (Jane Austen shouldn't be treated like secular Westerners drawing pictures of Mohammad for fun and amusement.) And if people only want to read these parodies and not the real thing, fine. It's their choice. I won't be held responsible for their collective brain death. On the other hand, people who see these books as the Next Big Thing(TM) are coolhunters who suck at their job. And people who say "Well, at least people are reading. What's wrong with that?" should have their library cards revoked.

Karl, are you attempting to trademark every cliche you use or is there a hidden message in all the(TM) popping up in your posts? I guess it could have to do with Transcendental Meditation(TM), somehow, but I can't see what, exactly, or inexactly, for that matter(TM).

159: That's just my humorous take on overdone cliches. I don't want to explain it too much, or else it stops becoming funny.

The best thing is that both Little Women ripoffs come out the same day. I just want to hear what one of those authors has to say. "What? Another crappy ripoff of the book I crappily ripped off is coming out on the same day?! I won't stand for this!"

Reminds me of the year those asteroid disaster movies came out -- Deep Impact and Armaggedon (OK, that one involved a comet). And both sucked.

Or the year three atomic war disaster movies came out: "The Day After", the first movie I can remember the "responsible citizens" telling us not to let our kids watch unless they could get psychiatric counseling afterwords. I don't remember the name of the second one. It was much worse than "The Day After", tho. (Or maybe it was slightly better, I can't really remember.) But the winner was a sweet, tragic, tale without nary a bomb blast or mushroom cloud in sight named "Testament". The best anti-nuclear war movie ever made. Follow Jane Alexander as she loses her family in one agonizing slow motion death at after another as she tries to move them to safety, but too late. What a tragic movie. No one watched it because they were all too traumatized by "The Day After".

Wish I could think of the third one. What a stinker. That's all I can remember. Can anyone else think of the third one?

Wasn't there one called "World War III", with David Soul and a bunch of TV actors? Part of it was set in Alaska, a strategic attack on an American pipeline. I think Brian Keith played the Soviet premier. Dreadful...

"Testament" was amazing though. Jane Alexander's children dying, one after the other. Grim, unrelenting stuff.

My memory for trivia amazes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III_%28TV_miniseries%29

But I still can't recall whether starboard is left and port right...or vice versa...

Jack left port.

Your welcome,

Robert

I always wondered who his welcome was. Now I know!

I am, I am. So should everybody be. Cliff is a jolly chap.

Robert

If this works, helps me discriminate better between the two, this lesson will have been invaluable. My father-in-law is an old Navy man, y'see, and...

#163> As a teenager in Australia, we got "The Day After" and "Threads" almost simultaneously. (Combine that with When The Wind Blows at the school library and it's no wonder I thought we were due for nuclear holocaust at any moment.)

"Threads" was a British TV mini-series (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/), and had nuclear winter and an over-the-top dramatic ending that my Mum harrumphed at, but that I've never forgotten. Although I do agree with her now. Not sure if it would stand up to viewing now, but I found it powerful stuff at the age of 15. Is that the other "stinker" you're thinking of?

There was a pseudo-documentary made in Britain called "The War Game" that was pretty controversial as I recall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game

Ah, it won an Oscar for best documentary. I didn't know that.

The soundtrack for "When the Wind Blows" (animated film) was pretty good, especially the Roger Waters stuff.

Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.