July, 2010--tell us what the smart snobs are reading this month

My To-Be-Read pile is starting to teeter. Pynchon, Mitchell, SF and literary, mystery and avant-garde.

What shall I read? Running his fingers down the spines...

I have to read Conflicts, a small press anthology of sf stories, for review in Interzone. I know about half of the contributors. So, how many of my friends can I upset in a single review...?

Hoping to see the light with Guns, Germs and Steel. I'm 3/4 of the way. But then I think I started it a year ago!

Also a reread of Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction.

I'm reading Cliffie's book, So Dark the Night. It's fun.

Oh I want Cliffie's book too! Must remember to get it on Amazon.

I am reading Carl Hiaasson's Double Whammy, which I somehow missed. I have read all of his other books.

I am planning to read Camus The Plague in the near future. Also still working on Le Clezio in French (god I am rusty) and on my Sufi book Learning how to Learn. And one other book of Sufi essays I have almost finished, When you hear hoofbeats, think of a zebra.

"Cliffie?" My fine, distinguished moniker reduced to "Cliffie"?!!!

Well, "Ian-sy" is soon to be short a few friends, once his review of CONFLICTS comes out. There won't be a Convention in the U.K. he can attend without some maladjusted git in an XXL "Dr. Who" t-shirt getting in his face.

I want to read Sebald's ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION too. Another one to add to the pile (sigh)...

I just started Child 44 and I'm loving it so far. But I'm only 30 pages in so who knows.

#6 It was meant as a term of affection, but I will be happy to discontinue use if it offends.

anna if you like Hiaason, you'll probably like Cliff, if you don't mind a little occult with your hardboiled noir.

...and James Crumley. Crumley was a BIG influence, along with Chandler. Hiasson is fun but those other guys are the Masters (to me).

Cliff, Cliffie, that eejit from Sask-atch-chew-wan., etc. Ach, call me anything you like. God knows, I've dished out a few doozies in my days on LibraryThing. All in good fun, of course (with the rare exception).

I just started The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (Peter Ackroyd) today. I'm really enjoying it - I hadn't realized how much I missed reading literary fiction (as opposed to the popcorn junk novels) after finishing my English Lit b.a. I've found myself making little notes on post-its and a list of things to check with google about, which I haven't done since the last lit class I took... It's a nice change of pace.

I actually came home Tuesday with a the biggest stack of books I've borrowed at one time from the library in a few years, with The Case for Books, Rules of '48, Rock Paper Tiger, and The Forger's Spell. I sort of just grabbed books off the New Arrivals shelf if the attached synopsis was remotely interesting, as I only had five minutes to browse. We'll see if the other four books grab me as much as the Ackroyd has.

#7> I too have just started Child 44. Found the opening chapter far too bleak and depressing, and while the bleak and depressing is continuing (until to about page 90 now), I am also invested in the story.

I've heard Gorky Park is better, hoping to read that afterwards, sooner rather than later.

ETA: I am actually finding Child 44 an excellent read once over the opening hurdle, I didn't seem to mention that above. So I am thinking "if Gorky Park is *better*, how great is it going to be"!

Finished The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (immensely captivating). He makes writing look easy; quickest 480+ pages I've ever read. So much depth to the characters, especially Fermin. Fumero is one of the more thoroughly unlikable sorts I've come across in quite some time.

Just starting The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin, which is highly contemplative and strange. I have his Omon Ra waiting as well.

#11, yes! I'm not as far in as you but I'm loving it :-)

#12 - read Shadow of the Wind earlier this year. Holy crap, what a fun story. Sadly, his next book The Angel's Game isn't quite as good. Still worth a read, though.

Making a sincere effort at Gravity's Rainbow...

I just started reading A visitation of the Plague by Daniel Defoe.

I read the novella 'EVER' by Blake Butler. Experimental, gross, awesome.

#14 The ebook pricing is bizarre for those books. The brand new one is $4 cheaper than the one first published in 2004. This price fixing scheme needs to end.

Just finished A Confession by Tolstoy Wonderfully written, but a little parsimonious on the footnotes.

I read Robert Goddard's Found Wanting, which was indeed. Not sure why I continue to read his books, to tell the truth. Now reading some big fat fantasy for June's (late) reading challenge.

Still enjoying Howard's End .

I'm about midway through Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame... I really love how this woman puts words together...very special.

I am reading History of Reading by Alberto Manguel. Very interesting.

Reading Graham Greene's The Comedians - interesting how Greene's reputation seems in decline.... and Palomar, a giant compendium of Gilbert Hernandez's Love & Rockets stories.

the magician of Hoad
Ship Breaker
the windup girl - but i've misplaced the book 3/4 of the way through.
Kraken
Paper cities

Read some portions of Shakespeare: the invention of the human by Harold Bloom and United States by Gore Vidal.

Finished Cliff's book, which was quite fun. Not sure what to read next, but I find myself leaning towards finally reading Infinte Jest. Maybe it's all the tennis I've been watching.

started never let me go. getting an idea of the plot and all of a sudden the novel became a different book. didn't see that one coming at all.

Karl's post #25 reminds me of that ridiculous old chestnut about Shakespeare not being Shakespeare. Here's the latest theory; he was a Jewish woman:

http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1584

I recently finished a very simple, readable Bill Bryson analysis about this age-old, silly, topic.

Just finished The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin. A brief but thoughtful and existential work, dealing with consciousness and time through a uniquely Russian lens.

Started Big Machine by Victor LaValle. Intriguingly bizarre.

My review of Grand New Party at the Joe Bob Briggs website:

http://www.joebobbriggs.com/index.php?/en/grand-new-party.html

Finished Child 44 and rather liked it, but not completely. The plot and ideas were definitely good/intriguing, and I was white-knuckled for the last 100 pages (and more).

But the characters seemed to flim-flam too much. One second they're all for denouncing everyone who looks at them funny, the next they're on the side of good. The characters seemed to change depending on what the plot needed, instead of being solid characters who make the plot change.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the best book I've read in the crime genre either.

I wonder if I'm being somewhat harsh on it, because I read it as part of the Booker Prize long/shortlist reading challenge I do with friends every year. One would expect better from a Booker longlisted book, I felt. If I'd been reading it just as a crime novel, I might have been more generous with my thoughts.

How shallow of me. :)

I've now moved on to Fledgling by Octavia Butler. A small feeling of "oh no, here we go again" when I realised it was about vampires, but it's definitely enjoyable and interesting so far.

I think Butler was recommended to me here (definitely in LT, not so sure about Literary Snobs, though). If so, thanks!

Fledgling is certainly not your usual vampire novel; you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Karl, regarding your review. Something struck me as interesting: the Republican mythos of the fifties. Now, as I remember the fifties the US' highest ever progressive income tax was in place during the fifties, and business was regulated out the wazoo, a bank in one state could not open a branch in another state, and crap the likes of which we have had to put up with for nigh on two year now could not have happened because the banks were well regulated, not to mention price controls. Doesn't sound like the Republican paradise they all wish it was. Of course your passport to unlimited happiness was being free, white, and twenty-one. Everyone else, tough shit. Yup, the paradise to which all those Republicans wish to return was a world of high incoime tax rates and regulation galore. Of course our position in the world as the last industrialized nation standing after WWII didn't hurt. I remember when "Made in Japan" was a joke.

33: Gene, I agree. The authors of Grand New Party at least have the intelligence to understand that the glory days of the white male Protestant are over. The game has completely changed. I don't agree with everything they say -- and why should I? Total agreement is for party flacks and the usual gang of fanatics, but it was well-written and well-argued, albeit from the deluded libertarian standpoint. Funny how the US went from the last standing industrialized nation during WW 2 (or at least one relatively unscathed from wartime deprivations and attacks) to the last industrialized nation to not have the basics everyone in Europe has (health care, etc.). The authors keep prattling on about how "a Europeanized US" (read: socialized) would be a terrible, terrible thing. I'm not buying it.

Infinite Jest is really awesome. I'm not finding it "hard" at all, perhaps because 1) I'm pretty much the same age as DFW so I catch the references pretty easily, and 2) I'm a gigantic geeky tennis fan. Oh, and I love "stream-of-consciousness."

1,000 pages? No sweat.

Just finished Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and am four or so stories into Dubliners. The good parts of both are much better than I remember, the lesser parts worse. (Funny how middle age and twenty-some years of writing myself will make such things so much clearer.)

(Funny how middle age and twenty-some years of writing myself will make such things so much clearer.)

Joyce seemed to go in the opposite direction, spending twenty-odd years writing, culminating in the dreamlike incoherence of Finnegans Wake Then again, its incoherence is entirely different from the middlebrow pop incoherence of Angels and Demons and Twilight, both of which seem immune to the well-crafted sentence.

I have started reading a very funny book by a local writer, called The River Why. It's about fishing.

#33 -
i've made that a point for years...sure, let's go back to the 50s...including the tax structure. But enough of GOPCRAP...actually let's just keep the tax structure and forget a lot of the rest of the 50s.

the river why was very good, in my memory.
I seem to have lost the windup girl for the nonce...wtf.

Been reading Kraken which is a real left turn for Mieville - much like some of Charles Stross' spy+Cthulu tales. For the first time i can recall, Mieville is being intentionally amusing.

I've actually never read The River Why, which is embarrassing when you consider that I've written for fly-fishing magazines for over ten years. I keep resolving to read it, and then failing to keep my resolution.

40: So far it is very funny. In a sort of Mark Twain-ish way.

#35 You rock, littlegeek.

I just finished those 1100 pages of Against the Day. Can't rightly say I share similar feelings of comprehension.

And to think, I am somewhat well-versed in 1) mineralogical structure 2) heavier-than-air craft 3) anarchy movements 4) early 20th century Eurasian history and 5) erections.

#32> JoseBuendia, can't say that Fledgling is knocking my socks off. Seems to be too much explaining of the culture, and not enough plot. I'm beginning to think I like plot in my books. But it is well written, and does have some nice ideas, and I've knocked it off (mere pages to go now) in record time. It's not at all *bad*, but sometimes while reading it I'm wondering when something is going to *happen*. Which is weird, because things are happening in it. Maybe the constant explanations are distancing me from enjoying it on a more emotional level.

#39> Bob, I'm looking forward to Kraken. Funnily enough, a friend just lent us a couple of Charles Stross books, I might bump them up Mt TBR a bit...

No one told me Infinite Jest was about *tennis*. I am boggled. (But still interested, although 1000 pages does make me feel a bit faint.)

There's "serious" Stross - Accelerando and then there's very funny spoof stross the Jennifer Morgue and the atrocity archives which were the books i should have explicitly referenced. Kraken also spooks/spoofs Neverwhere but quite affectionately.

#42 The last Pynchon I read was Vineland and I don't think I could handle Against the Day, but if Himself ever deigns to allow his books to be digitized, I'd probably read Inherent Vice. DFW is way more accessible than Pynchon.

#43 IJ is only partly about tennis, it's also about addiction, advertising, and lots of other stuff. There are parts that remind me of listening to Elliott Smith - a clinically depressed, drug addicted genius ripping your heart out.

I've never been able to finish Vineland. I get maybe 50 pages in, and find myself losing all interest.

#44> How brilliant, The Atrocity Archives and Jennifer Morgue were the two loaned to us! I just couldn't remember their names (got that midwinter headcold in full swing this week). Will definitely snaffle them back off my husband's Mt TBR where I deposited them the other night. :)

#45> Oh, Elliott Smith. I'd forgotten about him. What beautiful music he made. Will keep my eyes open for a copy of IJ, never fear. Too many people have recommended it too highly for me to not at least be slightly interested!!

I've read precisely one Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49. I think I liked it (at least I wasn't throwing it across the room in disgust), but it was definitely strange and I doubt I fully understood it.

@ Message # 5: New Carl Hiaasen at the end of the month; Star Island.

Also just finished a couple of v. good YA books: raven summer - short, sharp and with a very well hidden reveal. Two young orphans in England, one a refugee from the civil war in Liberia, the other an English girl who family has died, and a Liam, a lad their own age who meets them when a foundling he and a friend discover in small town Britain gets put into the same fostering family as the aforementioned orphans. Quite violent and quite vicious in parts. 3.5 stars
- In contrast to the above: Margaret Mahy's The Magician of Hoad. Classic fantasy in a deliberately paced, very well written mode. The well worn tropes - young boy w/ talents he doesn't understand is ripped from his family and placed in the obligatory service to the king/kingdom. Unwanted political marriages intended; rivalry between the sibling heirs to the throne..The possibility for a lengthy, cliched book are set up front. But Mahy is way too good a writer to let the set up frame her book. Instead she produces a coming of age story (for several of the characters) that is both true to genre and quite original. 4 stars - though i will confess to liking her relatively recent "realistic" novels even more..the catalog of the universe and Memory in particular.

48: Thanks - I will put it on hold at the library (and probably get it several months down the road)...

Another trawl through my recent readings and watchings on my blog here..

All this Pynchon talk, and I'm only 200 pages into Gravity's Rainbow. I know there are references and concepts aplenty that are shooting way over my head, but I love it. There'll be random slapstick (which is hard to get across in a book, I've noticed) right alongside some of the most beautiful passages I've read:

"You go from dream to dream inside me. You have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you've found life. I'm no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams, or ghosts are yours and which are mine. It's past sorting out. We're both being someone new now, someone incredible..."

Whew. I also just finished Gilead, which had some equally amazing lines. I had to force my way through the first half, though. Now, back to the Rainbow... I think I have the s&m/scat-sex scene coming up. ;)

#52 The scat scene is further along, I think, although there's plenty of other s/m.
One of my fav early passages is the discussion of the horribleness of English confections. As an American, I can concur.

#45
That's encouraging to hear about the accessibility of Infinite Jest. I was going to tackle Goodnight Moon next, to give myself a bit of intellectual rest. But I'm recovering rather quickly.

After much anguish, rolling of eyes, gnashing of teeth, looking heavenward, Job-like, pleading to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for salvation, tears, reflection, - I've come to realize that Against the Day is one kick-ass book.

And for those considering it, here is an excellent collection of AtD annotations:

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

>47 wookiebender: I had The Crying Lot of 49 in my hands at the library along with 5 other books. Knowing I wouldn't be able to read them all in 3 weeks a quick glance told me that it might be odd to say the least, so I ditched it for now. I got through 3 of the 5 I got out though! (The Contortionist and both of Craig Silvey's books)

#55> I did like Craig Silvey's Jasper Jones very much, and have Rhubarb on Mt TBR. Hopefully will get to that sooner rather than later.

I finished Fledgling and thought the ending was excellent, it got another 1/2 star for me for that. I would have liked it if she'd skipped most of the exposition and just gotten to the meat of the story sooner.

Have moved on to Around the World in Eighty Days, a classic which I've never read. (I was a mad fan of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea as a child, so I'm surprised I didn't read any other Verne then.) I did see the Steve Coogan/Jackie Chan adaptation a few years back, and much as I do like Steve Coogan & Jackie Chan, I'm glad the book is much, much better.

The Crying Lot of 49?!?!? WTF? Seriously, there is a touchstone for The Crying Lot of 49? People should at least have to enter the correct title of the book to get a touchstone.

We get half the Times on Saturday. And, I race down the driveway to retrieve it asap. I don't want any of the red-necked swamp Yankees on the street to see "we gotouselves a reader". It's mimickry, a public safety ploy. Think of us as Viceroy Butterflies among Monarchs. With no NYT on the driveway, passersby will think we have just as many guns as our neighbors.

I just burned through tomorrow's (Sunday, July 11) New York Tmes Book Review. I think I found my next "cool-down" read after that AtD marathon.

I've always enjoyed populist mind-candy adventures such as that supremely gossipy Into Thin Air.

I'll be looking out for No Way Down.

...Or is it, No Down Way?

Speaking of Against the Day:

http://hilobrow.com/2010/07/10/nikola-tesla/

>57 geneg: Ouch! The authenticity of my snobbery has just taken a dive.

I'm in the middle of Pynchon's collection Slow Learner. To be precise, I've just started Entropy. Low-Lands was a fantastic little story, as was The Small Rain, though I found the introduction to be the most fascinating piece of writing I've read in a while.
Also, am making my giddy was through Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, which, ironically enough, contains a reference to Pynchon's own first novel.

I love all the Pynchon and DFW everyone is reading! My favorites!

I'm halfway through Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

I, too, am currently reading Infinite Jest. I had no idea either about the tennis. Fortunately, it's not too technical yet, so it's not a problem. I'm only about 80 pages in (well, about 240 on my nook, but I checked page numbers in my paper copy) and I am enjoying it so far. Only 900 pages or so to go.

Infinite Jest is one of my by-far favorite books. It's smart, hilarious, and often pretty heartbreaking. (The Elliott Smith comparison that someone else mentioned is right on - I made the exact same connection when I was reading.) It is a little tough, but it never really lost me on any point. Not something I can say for Gravity's Rainbow... I think I just read a passage about a ghost living in the stratosphere watching Slothrop? Maybe?

Enjoying, on the lighter side, The Mysterious Benedict Society.

Still reading Atlas Shrugged Ugh, it's like a poorly written Bataan Death March of shrill philosophizing. Railroad minutia meets 9th rate Nietzscheanisms and the occasional twisted sex scene. Like listening to a presentation on time shares by someone in full-body bondage gear. Ugh. Yet people in the fifties ate it up like it was the Third Testament of God.

http://coffeeforclosers.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/atlas-shrugged-chapter-6/

Chapter 6 is basically one long indictment of such horrible things like the family and marriage. No wonder Republicans love it ;)

Remainder by Tom McCarthy.

I don't see why anyone would deliberately put themselves through Atlas Shrugged, if they knew better.

66: As a warning to others seduced by the idiocy of Objectivism. Plus reading it during the Objectivist-induced Great Recession is an added bonus. Call it a justifiable hatchet job.

Nearly done with The Last Estate by Conor Bowman A compact gorgeous literary gem. Highly recommended.

I do have to agree, I'm not at all fond of the idea of me reading Atlas Shrugged, et al. But I do like it when others read these books and give me a potted summary. No pain on my end, that way. :)

Finished Around the World in Eighty Days which was a good fun romp (don't make them like they used to).

And have just started A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym. It's terribly English. And the food descriptions are quite revolting: what is a ham mousse? and I feel sorry for anyone having to eat veal marinaded in Pernod and served with a cream & pineapple sauce. (Revolting on purpose, I hasten to add.)

#Message 65: kswolff, The libertarians in my RL book club having been trying to push Atlas Shrugged on us for a few months. So far they're making no headway. I read it while I was in high school and thought it was oh so profound. I don't need to revisit it. Your description was wonderful.

Reading Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin. Satire/absurdist jaunt involving the Soviet space program.

69: Tell those libertarian lunatics about my blog project. They are so deserving of a mean-spirited smackdown.

The Last Estate by Conor Bowman was fantastic.

Reading TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE, Deborah Curtis' memoir about her relationship with Joy Division front man Ian Curtis. A sobering and decidedly unromantic look at the man; this is no hagiography...

Finished A Few Green Leaves (wow, that was fast) and did enjoy it - I liked the Englishness of it all, her barbed wit, and while it was hardly a rambunctious plot, it was satisfying in the plot department.

And I got to giggle a lot at 70s fashions (especially food fashions).

Have now moved on to Howards End, which is one of those books that's been on Mt TBR for Far Too Long. Great start, which is good, because the last book of his I read, A Passage to India, left me dissatisfied and positively grumpy.

And to quote Meg, "I used an affected word". That phrase summed me up to a tee, that did! (Also loved Helen's comment that her younger brother "starts a new mortal disease every month".) Hey, two quotes I love already, and I'm only three chapters in!

(Edited to try and fix touchstones....)

All I have to say is this: I prefer reading Henry Kissinger to Ayn Rand Interpret that any way you want.

#73 , I recently finished Howard's End myself ! Thoroughly enjoyed it too !

Just popping in to say that I'm still loving Infinte Jest. I'm amused that Hal's playing style seems to be the same as current world #1 Rafael Nadal. Also that DFW has Ivan Lendl committing suicide in his future. (Ha! Lendl is now managing his daughters' golf careers IRL.)

#75> I'm finding it quite astounding the number of times I've thought "yes!" at various phrases in Howards End. This morning, Aunt Juley was discussing how a friend of hers can go around an art gallery and talk about how each painting affects her emotionally, while she can't. And that while she likes music, she doesn't consider herself musical.

A slightly muted "yes!" this morning though, because I don't think Aunt Juley is quite someone I want to aspire to. :)

Read The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, by DG Compton. He may write miserable novels, but he's a bloody good writer. Wasted on sf. The I read Conflicts, a new sf anthology, edited by Ian Whates (and not by Neal Asher as some fuckwit has entered on LT), which I have to review for Interzone. Unfortunately, about half the contributors are friends of mine... but might not be after my review. Am currently reading Veteran by Gavin G Smith. Gav sent me a review copy of his book, and I'm going to review it for SFF Chronicles. I wonder if he'll talk to me again afterwards...

Re-reading Tim O'Brien's TOMCAT IN LOVE. Picked it up off the shelf the other day, glanced inside, started giggling and read some more, giggled again...

Now I'm 3/4 of the way through (and still chuckling).

Had to go to York on the train and Veteran is a huge trade paperback, so I took something smaller to read during the hour-long journey: The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq. Miserable, misanthropic - Houellebecq makes Cliff look like Gandhi. Not convinced much by Houellebecq sf either. But there's something weirdly compelling about his writing...

I'm consulting my attorney. As are Gandhi's heirs.

But there is something about Houellebecq, isn't there? His stuff is strange, haywire...but it's undeniably compelling, on that we concur.

#79, I loved TOMCAT. Every now & then I see a hardcover 1st edition in used bookstores and think of getting it for the collection, just cause it was so much fun.

My review of The Last Estate by Conor Bowman:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/the-last-estate-by-conor-bow...

Another unexpected gem from Early Reviewers.

Just read the first page of ten or fifteen crappy stories from the newest Mid-American Review. Made me remember why I mostly gave up on literary reviews some years ago (despite the hypocritically ironic fact that that's where all of my fiction appears...).

Geoff: a-men re: lit mags. They might be one of the reasons so many people are put off short stories. Still bothers the hell out of me that in these rush-rush times, short stories and poems aren't GAINING in popularity. It seems like a no-brainer. Are humans, thanks to computers and video games, losing their passion for narrative?

Finished with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and Javier Cercas's Soldiers of Salamis. The latter investigates an incident in the Spanish Civil War, and though I know next to nothing about the subject, the story is quite good. Plus, it has Roberto Bolaño has a scene-stealing cameo in it.

Now, looking at the Quixote, wondering if it's worth to invest a large chunk of summer reading to it, when I could finish 3 or 4 other books in its place.

Lit mags are in their present state because they exist primarily to publish the output of MFA programs.

in re short stories -
i just rediscovered Richard Bowes - having read and not really paid attention to earlier stories - in the most recent F&SF. "Pining to be human" - which is as much autobiography as story - was v. good so i'm now going back into old issues to find more of his stories. And online.
I'm getting quite good at misplacing books i'm in the middle of reading; currently the selected works of TS Spivet and the windup girl have both gone missing.

I read a book of interviews with Roberto Bolano. Now I have a list of writers to read about 40 names long...

I'm reading The Frozen Rabbi right now, which is pretty good. I tried to read The Quickening which everyone else seems to love, and just found it dull. I think I'm turning into a very plot-oriented reader these days.

Since I have the new David Mitchell on order from the library, I figured I'd go back and page through GHOSTWRITTEN. What a first novel. Ridiculously smart. Christ, I'm jealous of Mitchell...

Review of DG Compton's The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe up on my blog here.

Some SF today. THE AFFINITY BRIDGE by George Mann. The airships on the front cover sold me--not usually a fan of steampunk but, airships, c'mon! Who can resist that?

The author's blog:

http://georgemann.wordpress.com

I've met George a couple of times. He's an editor at Solaris.

Instead of working on a French project, I've finished Dracula's Guest and Hospital Sketches since the week began.

AFFINITY BRIDGE is entertaining, diverting but that's about as far as I'll go. Nothing too ground-breaking or inventive and the writing doesn't exactly ignite the page. A decent read, reasonably well told...

going to be looking for a new, local speculative fiction magazine, Bull Spec
http://www.bullspec.com/issue/1
Figure someone who's willing to bag his job @ IBM and go with a genre startup mag is worth encouraging. Was just listening to an interview with him and John Kessell on a local public radio show.

And I finally found and finished the selected works of TS Spivet and the windup girl. Both are very good, but are likely to appeal to different audience. TS Spivet follows the cartography of the personal world of a young protagonist as he treks from Montana to the Smithsonian. A very detailed and personal view of the world.

The Windup Girl is set in a grim, post oil economy, calorie starved world. Thailand is somewhat better off the most of the rest of the world - thanks in part to a massive horde of genetic riches in a seed bank that becomes the target of multinational agribusiness. the windup girl herself is an abandoned "semi-enhanced" product of Japanese genetic tweaking trying to survive in Bangkok 200+ yrs on.

The windup girl is quite an intricate bit of world and plot construction set in Thailand in a recognizable but defn. post oil economy future.

Thailand has prospered, relatively speaking, thanks to genetic riches retained in a extensive seedbank, brutal enforcement of environmental regulations as well as a strict isolationist policy. Now agri-business corps want access to Thailand's wealth and important dept of Trade wants to open Thailand up.
The overarching themes of genmod, plant and animal, corporatism, ecological disaster are seen through a multiplicity of viewpoints - which, in a sense - forces a global vision upon the book. There are Thai protagonists - officers in the environmental enforcement branch. Chinese refugees from yet another pogrom in Malaya, one of whom is the acting manager of a plant trying to develop an enhanced "spring" system for storing energy. Anderson, his boss, providing a "corporate" vision. And Emiko, the titular Windup Girl - an abandoned product of Japanese gentech; both enhanced and crippled by design, surviving as a sex toy. All the POVs are presented fairly and, if not appealingly, at least believably as the characters themselves become increasingly real as the stories progress.

The grimmer stories of Sean McMullen - esp. his recent story "The Precedent" in the most recent SF&F are not dissimilar. But McMullen generally includes scenes that lighten the atmosphere within his novels while the windup girl is less forgiving of the reader.

I'm still reading Infinite Jest, and it's totally getting into my head. I'm seeing lots of fnords these days.

Has anyone gotten around to reading Anna Karnina by Tolstoy?
Also has anyone read Dante's inferno? (or the divine comedy) ?

99: I read AK last year. Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. I enjoyed it very much. Never read Dante.

Re: Dante--if you're looking for an English translation, try Robert Pinsky's.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/1679

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR20.2/Jacoff.html

Enjoying Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin and... well... sorta forcing my way through Gravity's Rainbow. I really am not getting into it as much as I did with Infinite Jest...

I listened to Dante's Inferno on audio book last year. It was easy to get very involved, but the more you know about Italian history, I'm sure the more involved you would be. It makes one wonder at the terror and anger people might have felt reading it in his time.

I haven't read Anna Karenina for a hundred years or so, but keep thinking I will again one day.

finishing lady chatterley's lover this weekend. meh.

began disgrace by coetzee last night. didn't know what it was about but a friend recommended it highly.

I liked Lady Chatterley's Lover. Slow to start, but it definitely picked up around the middle. I have Disgrace on the TBR.

I read Anna Karenina decades ago and enjoyed it.

I enjoyed both story lines in Anna K.

I just finished two that are neither pop mind candy, nor snobbish, nor (God forbid), YA: Night and To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm actually glad I've waited a half-century to read them, especially the latter.

I'm currently reading a natural history text called The Hidden Forest, in anticipation of a trip to Oregon. Forests with 500 tons of biomass per acre. Holy crap, I can't wait.

Inherent Vice is atop my TBR pile.

Atlas Shrugged has to be the dumbest piece of literature ever conceived.

I didn't finish Lady Chaterley's Lover, in a sort of self-Bowdlerisation of the ending. (You could see it was going to end badly, so I just stopped reading. I didn't particularly want to see it all go pear-shaped for Connie & Melliors at that time in my life. Should give it another go, one day rsn...)

I too have Disgrace on Mt TBR. Not very high, it sounds beyond bleak.

I read Anna Karenina last year (Pevear/Volokhonsky translation) and liked it. The first Russian novel I'd ever finished! (Truth be told, I'd only ever tried War and Peace before. Got bogged down at the first War bit.)

I also read Dante's Inferno many years ago. Meant to get around to the others, but never did. I particularly liked being able to show off knowing what the nine levels of Hell were. (Alas, now I'm not even sure there are nine levels. Maybe it was seven?)

Still reading Howards End. Still loving it, but am finding it needs concentration beyond what I can give it this week. Which means I'm reading a few pages at a time, instead of gobbling it up. While it's nice to go slow and think about a book, I am also hitting my "need something new to read now" threshold, since I usually change books within a week. Curse this short attention span of mine.

To Siberia by Per Petterson.

I just finished The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Surely she'll be nominated for the Orange Prize next year. What a writer. I don't know if you'd call it magical realism or science fiction, but she manages to write about very strange things in very understated and believable ways.

Matterhorn - a long, engrossing and VERY hard to put down @ night novel of the VN war following a unit of marine grunts stuck more or less pointless up near the DMZ. Very well written in a low key, laconic style; up there with the best of the VN war novels. the political decisions of individual officers - personal goals to trying to slide in with the shifting political winds of war are paramount.

Sounds so much like the stories our bass player would tell (Johnny humped a mortar through the jungle during his stint as a marine. Worse luck...the one year marines drafted...they got him.)

Aimee Bender is one of my wife's faves.

I finished The River Why. I have to say, the ending felt rushed and also a bit treacly compared to the rest. Has anyone else read it and if so what did you think of the ending? Most of it was great.

I am now starting Hopes and Prospects which I was hoping would be that perfect oxymoron, an upbeat book by Chomsky (based on the title). So far, no. I will persevere. I have read many of his books in the past (Manufacturing Consent was one of those life changing books I read as a college student) but haven't gotten recent ones because i don't like being reminded that I should be angrier.

I started Oblivion, stories by David Foster Wallace.

I'm going to intersperse my reading of Matterhorn w/ some truly hibrow material sports from hell: my search for the World's Dumbest competition.
Chess boxing, extreme sauna etc.
http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/index?id=5201712 for the Finland/Sauna chapter

>114 anna_in_pdx:, I know the feeling! I dont want to be angrier either, but know which books can help me get way quick smart. Until fairly recently I had only heard of Chomsky as a linguist, having studied it at university. He's a champion.

I actually saw some chess boxing, on one of the ESPNs once. It was funny.

Moving on to Oxygen, Annabel Lyon's first book.

Re Chomsky and Manufacturing Consent, events of the past decade, and in particular the rise of indymedia, cast doubt on good chunks of that book. Chomsky and Edwards, for ideological reasons, placed great emphasis on the role of corporate ownership in their propaganda model. They envisioned a top-down propaganda system in which the state and corporations propagandize a public that would otherwise know better. But the Internet-era media landscape clearly suggests that people are quite happy to propagandize themselves; now that we can choose our own news from any source we want, we are no better informed. Manufacturing Consent doesn't anticipate this, because its authors failed to consider that media are primarily in the business of pandering to their audience.

#119 hmmm... what about Wikileaks, tho? Doesn't that prove that there's still a bottleneck of real information? They have to work very hard and put a lot of people in serious trouble to get those stories.

That wasn't the point of Manufacturing Consent, though. Chomsky & Edwards' argument was that the press, rather than functioning as watchdogs, function as a propaganda system serving corporate & state interests.

My counter-point is that their emphasis on corporate & state interests is misplaced; the press is in the business of feeding specific audiences the specific brands of propaganda they demand.

Wikileaks actually supports, rather than refutes, the point. Their editing of the Apache/Reuters footage is manipulative; they're less in the business of digging out the truth than of digging out information that supports a certain narrative.

So the best we can do nowadays is a bunch of competing narratives. Unfortunately, most people only pay attention to one, the one they want to hear.

121: I think it's both and rather than either or. Corporate interests are still real even though it's also true that people prefer getting their news from the people who they already agree with. In fact this makes the corporate interests' job easier. That they are not the only interests that emotionalize and manipulate the news, doesn't make it any less true.

I like the fact that I can get lots of different views from the Internet, but I also recognize that I like reading stuff I already agree with. The key to me is to recognize this human flaw that makes us so easy to manipulate, and to try and go outside our normal comfort zone to get news or information.

My point is not that corporate interests do not exist and do not influence news reporting (I agree -- they do), but that the Chomsky and Edwards model overstated the importance of that influence, and has not aged well. In 20 years, we'll look back on Manufacturing Consent's propaganda model as an ideologically driven and badly flawed explanation of how the media fails to do what they pretend.

There is no corporate interest in Indymedia, but it is just as (if not more) propagandistic (?) as the mainstream, corporate media. Chomsky and Edwards' model utterly fails to explain this.

Chomsky & Edwards' argument was that the press, rather than functioning as watchdogs, function as a propaganda system serving corporate & state interests.

I'm not seeing how this isn't still true. The interests of the corporation is to maintain the 2 party system, since they control both sides. It's fine to have FOX and NPR both. You keep things polarized to give the people something to argue about. But you buy out both sides, as well as the Supreme Court so they keep feeding you rulings that increase your ability to influence politics. It's working like a charm.

The issue isn't whether the press function as a propaganda system, littlegeek; it's with Chomsky and Edwards explanation of why this is so, their "propaganda model."

And the problem isn't with the various factors they include in their propaganda model (although one, "the doctrine of anti-Communism," has obviously been obsolete for years), but with the level of importance they ascribe to certain factors over others, and with the other obvious factor -- audience interest -- which they exclude.

The problem is that the model they propose to explain their observations (which are irrefutable) no longer explains the world we live in today, unless you throw away all the data points that don't fit.

Edited to add: anyway, that's enough Chomsky chat for this thread.

Just finished Matterhorn, a terrific Vietnam war novel following a platoon of Marine grunts who have been ordered to take and retake a hilltop (aka the matterhorn) just outside the DMZ zone.

A long book, but there's nothing excessive and it was close to being compulsive reading - i'll just say that problems putting Matterhorn down for the night exacerbated my usual insomnia.

While there are a plethora of viewpoints - from battalion commander down to some of the infantry privates, the overarching POV belongs to second lieutenant Mellas, dropped in green out of the Ivy league and OTC into a patch of heatedly (if, arguably, pointlessly) contested area. Should he return intact, Yale law awaits.

Marlantes lets us see the political acting at all scales. From assaults ordered to curry favor with higher brass and for good PR back in the states to assaults of soldier on soldier generated by the entangled forest of tensions - whether black/white, officer/grunt, Marines/Army, the jungle/everyone (from leeches to malaria to tigers) and the NVA vs the US.

Marlantes' plain but lucid prose carries the stories along fluidly. Up there with the things they carried and going after Cacciato as my favorite VM war novel*; a book that could deservedly be promoted to "great."

The bassist in a bar band i played in ~ 72-74 served in the Marine infantry humping a mortar through the dense, green nowhere. John's tales - from the brutally amusing to the quietly horrific - are all retold here (Johnny had the wretched luck of being drafted into the Marines the one and only year, iirc, that one could be press ganged into the Corps.)
*the quiet American is my very favorite, and my nominee for best novel novel treating with the US/Vietnam - erm, imbroglio? disaster? failed attempt in "support of democracy and free enterprise"?

Great post, Bob. Haven't read a good war novel in awhile so I'll keep an eye out for MATTERHORN.

P.S. James Crumley has a wonderful collection of Viet Nam related war stories, ONE TO COUNT CADENCE. In case you missed that one. And there are a couple of good war tales in Thom Jones' THE PUGILIST AT REST, methinks...

Yeah, I've heard very good things about Matterhorn. That and The Passage are two books that I do plan to read, someday, after I've reduced my TBR pile by about half...

I'm 3/4 of the way through Denton Welch's MAIDEN VOYAGE. Lovely, lovely writin'...

Finished Howards End and thought it was marvellous - the clash between old and modern, bohemia and stultifying class structures, and (I feel old-fashioned for mentioning it^), men and women. But I never felt that any of the characters were type-cast into one particular mold (well, maybe Charles, the idiotic son). The writing was lovely (so many passages I wanted to re-read and underline! not that I write in books, but I *wanted* to). And, also by virtue of being written and set just prior to WW1 a heightened sense of being a portrait of its time.

Great stuff.

Have moved on to The Long Firm by Jake Arnott, which is due back at the library this weekend. (Argh, always reading books because I "must" for some reason or another!) I liked the BBC adaptation with Mark Strong that screened last year (in Australia), so was chuffed to find this on the library shelves some weeks back. So far, a lot of (gay) sex, drugs, and (the potential for) rock'n'roll. I'm completely gripped and have read more than 100 pages in only a few hours.

I've read two or three Arnotts and THE LONG FIRM is the one I still like best. I prefer my crime fiction hard-boiled as a ten minute egg. You have some fine readin' ahead...

Plucked CANDIDE off the shelf for a quick read--and ended up devouring it. I'd forgotten how funny it is--or maybe this is a better translation (by John Butt) than the one I read years ago. The humour is Python-esque, the pessimism delightful. The perfect book for a curmudgeon like me.

Over the weekend I read An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira. It was narrative fiction, but it came pretty damn close to painting, if that makes any sense.

I also read A Little Anthology of Surrealist Poems, trans. by Paul Auster. Awesome!

Hmmm...the latter definitely goes on my "wishlist".

>134 inaudible:
an episode in the life of a landscape painter is one odd little book. i liked it very much.

Got through a few classics this month: As You Like It, The Tempest and The Good Earth. Also saw As You Like It at the Canadian Stratford Shakespeare Festival and enjoyed it very much.

I just finished The White Tiger and am reading Tales from Firozsha Baag right now.

Finished The Long Firm and thought it was a great read. Not often I'm really cheering on the baddie in a crime novel, especially a nasty baddie like Harry Starks, but he was such a great character!

#137> I've just started The Good Earth which has been on Mt TBR for a bit too long, but there's been some good discussion about it over on the 1001 books list (mainly disappointment that it's not a 1001 book). Quite a change of pace from the (gay) sex, drugs (and alcohol), and rock'n'roll (and ska and Judy Garland) of The Long Firm. But a good pageturner, I'm quite immersed in the story.

just finished disgrace by j.m.coetzee. not sure how i feel about it. it won the booker prize but it is not as bad as other booker prizes i've read recently. too early to tell...

136> Yes, I can't wait to read more by him. He has something like 70 novel(la)s to his name, but only four or five of them have been translated.

Starting reading some essays by John Waters in his new book, Role Models One essay is about his book collection. He has over 8000 books. Now I don't feel so bad.

I just finished reading Remainder by Tom McCarthy and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell.

What did you think of disgrace? I'm pretty sure that I felt it was a fairly poor book. I'm now hesitant to read Waiting for the Barbarians, which has been in my queue for while.

#143, what did you not like about it?

Just finished reading the following over the last couple of weeks:
As You Like It
The Phantom of the Opera
The Scarlet Pimpernel
A Study in Scarlett
and starting Robinson Crusoe

I saw "A Study in Pink" on BBC1 the other night. A modern day take on A Study in Scarlett which didn't work. A freakish SH and cute Watson weren't the problem, or the ropey story, but a Holmes humoured by the overwielding state grated for me.

>143 abertain:
disgrace was one of those books that you can recognize their merits but the subject matter is just not very appealing.

Currently reading Smiley's People by John Le Carré, for reasons which escape at the moment, and am slightly boggled by a Conservative Cabinet being described as a bunch of left-wingers...

147: I have the same issues with The Old Testament

#146> Bother, I saw the trailer and it looked fun. Steven Moffat of Doctor Who and Coupling fame! But I suppose one can't be great all the time.

Finished The Good Earth (stayed up too late reading it again, so *YAWN*), and really enjoyed it. It was almost simple with its straightforward narrative, but the story was so great, but without sprawl.

I think they knew how to write books in 1930. :)

Now moving onto Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott for book group.

I think Atlas Shrugged is a comedy. Read over a passage where the hero protagonist was shocked -- shocked! I tell you! -- that the govt subsidizes industry and there are very few oil men with friends in Washington. Had to put the book down because I was laughing so hard. "Oh, the poor benighted oil men!" Daniel Plainview and Tony Hayward needs a hug!

God by Alexander Waugh continues to be fun. I'd like to find more of his stuff. Playful, erudite, and witty, like a non-grotesque Will Self

I have decided that when I am asked to do something by one of the Randians around here, give directions, help with some task, or whatever, I'm going to remind them that it is a sin to do something for free, and charge them for it, or not dispense the information, or whatever.

#152 But, geneg, if you did that it would be for their own good. Oh, oh sounds too altruistic to me.

Yeah, she's got ya comin' and goin', don't she. Maybe I should charge double and give them bad information, you know, for their own good.

I think Bunny Lebowski is the Ultimate Randian Hero:

http://www.motifake.com/bunny-lebowski-the-big-lebowski-the-dude-jeff-bridges-bu...

Because in Objectivism, every human relationship should be reduced to a dollar transaction.

I am defn. down with the lowbrow material at the moment following the long and intense Matterhorn:
1. curse of the werewolf girl martin millar's followup to lonely werewolf girl. Only recommended to fans of the first (not quite as good as its predecessor).
2. the adoration of Jenna Fox - v. good YA sci-fi dealing with "identity" as a teenage girl coming out of a coma pieces together who she was and who or what she is now.
moving up the browridge:
3 Just started Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh's sprawling novel taking in the British opium trade between India and China ~ 1830. The mix of languages itself is fascinating, and thankfully he includes a very idiosyncratic and discursive glossary @ the end. "Shampoo" is derived from an Hindi word reflecting massaging, kneading esp. oils etc. into hair. But it's the words one doesn't know that the glossary is really needed!

The Adoration of Jenna Fox was very effective, I think, especially with the addition of the beautiful sociopath. It should get some good conversations going among high school kids.

I don't think the adoration of Jenna Fox should be relegated to the limbo of teens and "YA." It's just a well constructed sci-fi novel treating with issues of where self begins and ends in relation to bio-ethics.

I just finished Our Tragic Universe, which I'm really not sure about. Like its predecessor, The End of Mr Y, it's a thought experiment wrapped up as genre fiction. Mr Y was basically a thriller though, which is a genre with certain... not rules so much as expectations. I'll return to that later on. Our Tragic Universe is much more metatextual than Mr Y though, with numerous discourses on the art of genre writing, as the main character teaches formulaic writing to authors who collectively ghostwrite as thriller writer Zeb Ross. Meg, our protagonist, is also sometimes Zeb Ross, but would really like to have time to work on her serious novel. Scarlett Thomas of course, started out writing genre fiction and now teaches creative writing.
I wrote a few lines ago about Mr Y being a thriller, but Tragic Universe isn't, really. A running theme is the idea of a Zen-like "story-less story," and Meg feels pressure to make her serious novel less narrative-driven and more "real-life." As a result/cause/both of this, the novel is a bit flabby, with too many characters and loose ends drifting about. Added to that there are suggestions of supernatural goings-on, but all undermined by continual allusions to The Hound of The Baskervilles, The Sittaford Mystery and The Cottingly Fairies. This leaves a strange morass of a novel, which although very enjoyable, felt too constrained by its own convoluted self-references to do anything as unfashionable or narrative-driven as to be satisfying.

finished fathers and sons. i have to say i enjoyed it more than i thought i would.

Making my way through Role Models by John Waters. Good, fun, raunchy stuff.

Put down Super Sad True Love Story for the time being to read THE DOOR (no touchstone) by Magda Szabo.

I saw an interview with John Waters for his book recently. He's quite an engaging guy. I might have to check that out.