Current Reading - Books best thread

[ale]

Will Sergeant Bunnyman memoir is well recommended-seem to recall a review to that effect when still doing reviews.

Also Colin Walsh Kala

And have splashed out on Harald Jahner Aftermath: Life In The Fallout of Third Reich

[RobW]

Recently finished Bob Mortimer's memoir and his novel 'The Satsuma Complex' which were both very amusing. Currently reading The Roads to Sata: A 2000 Mile Walk Through Japan by Alan Booth

[ursus arctos]

I very much enjoyed the Booth book, which is a classic of the genre

[Satchmo Distel]

Biography of Frederick Douglass by David Blight (Yale historian). Well-written and uses a lot of sources from a private archive never before seen by historians. Blight speaks here of his contemporary relevance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zwJWaMCaFA

[Amor de Cosmos]

A couple of my current reads, one non-fiction, the other historical fiction.

Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America by Jesse Jarnow is a detailed history of the 1960s-70s California drug culture and it's influence. The book pivots around the Grateful Dead. But, despite the fact that Jarnow is a music writer, this is in no sense a band bio. He's more interested in who, and what, happened in the Dead's orbit. So it includes more on personalities such as Owsley Stanley III, Stewart Brand, and others than on Garcia and Weir. It's also more about science and culture than music

I'm about a quarter way through. So far it's strong on detail. Particularly as it relates to psychedelics and the early work on AI at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) Many in the hundred-person lab were Dead freaks. It's "the most bzz-bzz-busy scene I've been around since the Merry Prankster Acid Tests" declared Brand. And, though drug use wasn't permitted inside the lab, outside it was a different story as weed was even grown around the septic tank's overflow. Sadly the local deer ate it, prompting a complaint to the program's director "I'm sorry, I don't think I can do much about that," was his response.

If I've a criticism it's that at times Jarnow's writing becomes somewhat dull. Everything in the his book (so far) is from secondary sources. It would have been enhanced with some first person interviews, given that the cast of characters are anything but boring.

Anthony Marra's Mercury Pictures Presents is set in Hollywood of the 1940s and Southern Italy in the mid 30s. The latter portrays family upheavals in the wake of facism. The former how recent immigrants adjust to their new roles within LA's star-making machinery. Given the subject it could be a dour read, but Marra's light touch and intelligent sense of humour sames it. In Mercury's commissary, he writes, people tend to sit in tables according salary and/or job. Except the refugees/immigrants, they all sit together at the table nearest the exit. The book is also informative, at least for me. I didn't know, for example, that rather than camps or prison, political undesirables were sent to remote villages they couldn't leave to do menial work. Recommended.

[Satchmo Distel]

I've just bought Dennis McNally's book on the Grateful Dead as I thought his interviews in the documentary of a few years ago were insightful.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yeah. I agree (about the interviews.) The Dead do seem to be unique, in a cultural sense, in that they're probably at least as significant now as they were fifty or more, years ago. In spirit The Dead just refuse to die!

[Amor de Cosmos]

Bugger me with a fishfork, but I'd forgotten what a brilliant storyteller Angela Carter was! It's such a tragedy she died so young and we didn't get more stuff like Nights at the Circus. I'm reading it for the first time and it just makes want to back and read, or reread, all her stuff. It's one of those books you want to tell everyone you know about. I especially want to give a copy to my 13 year-old step-grand-daughter it's right up her alley I'm sure, or will be. (I think I'll wait two or three years — I'm not sure her mother would approve!)

[Jobi1]

I studied Carter's Wise Children on my uni course, less than a decade after it was published, and remember really enjoying it. Must seek out some more of her stuff.

Just finished Nadine Gordimer's The House Gun, which had been sitting on a shelf at the mothership for many years and I just grabbed to bring away on hols. Can't say I enjoyed this one so much, unfortunately. Gordimer's writing style is really interesting and extremely clever, but at times becomes almost impenetrable. This novel tells the tale of a son awaiting trial for murder, and focuses mainly on how his parents are dealing with the situation. Set (and written) in recently post-Apartheid South Africa, it occasionally meanders off into a bit of a history lesson/commentary on the country at that time, and also repeats endlessly the details of and potential motivations for the alleged crime. The way the perspective shifts between characters and even occasionally in and out of first person also made it a little tricky to follow in places. Thought-provoking, interesting, sometimes quite tense, but a bit of a tough read.

[Etienne]

Angela Carter is brilliant. Really enjoyed Wise Children, especially how much fun it felt like Carter was having writing it.
Mrs Etienne is reading her Book of Fairy Tales at the moment, which I was looking forward to reading as I thought it was going to be an extended version of The Bloody Chamber but which I now see she is the editor rather than writer, so I've dialled down the anticipation.

[imp]

Gordimer's writing style is really interesting and extremely clever, but at times becomes almost impenetrable.

I also found Gordimer hard going, though my bent-backed paperbacks suggest that I persevered. The three novels of hers that I had were part of my collection dumped this past week ahead of moving, a ruthless purge that's seen me reduce my book collection by about 40%. That hard question, over over and over again, "Am I really going to read this battered paperback ever again? Given that my 'to-read' pile is almost 100 books high?" Off to the public book cupboard it is, then.

The one closest to us is a weird place. You open the glass door and start arranging books on the shelf, and almost immediately there's someone at your shoulder, peering in and almost pushing you out of the way. I've been stuffing it with obscure football books, for example, and by the next day they're all gone.

[Jobi1]

I feel I may be something of an outlier in that I've always been quite happy to discard books after reading, unless they're particularly special. I've often just given books to friends who I think may enjoy them, and made it clear I'm not expecting them back. Or things like a woman next to me on a flight once asking if the novel I was reading was good because she'd been thinking about giving it a go, and as I finished it during the flight I just gave her that copy. Similarly, that Gordimer will be going on the pile of books in this guesthouse before we leave.

I'm now zooming through a much lighter, more holiday-friendly read, Stanley Tucci's food-based memoir Taste. It's every bit as laconically fun as you'd expect.

[Etienne]

I justify my book hoarding on the grounds that I don't know what books my children would like to read, and I benefitted hugely as a teen from being able to pick and choose myself from my parents quite eclectic tastes. I feel if I only keep books that I personally would re-read then it becomes a bit more prescriptive for them. But I like re-reading too.

[imp]

I've turned from an Etienne to a Jobi, passing stuff on for space reasons and only keeping things that are really precious and which I know I'll re-read or re-reference, like Orwell's four volumes of Essays or the Primo Levi complete works. When my girls were at school, I was still an Etienne and could almost always supply their reading lists in German or English from our own shelves. The new flat is going to be significantly smaller than this one, which in turn was a downsize from a US suburban house with a massive basement that encouraged me to think I could buy what the hell I wanted and I'd still never fill it. If we were still there today the place would be a fire hazard.

[Jobi1]

Yeah, similarly, there are certain types of book I almost never get rid of – typically things broken into smaller segments like collections of poetry, essays or short stories, which I am likely to dip into again.

Having now finished it, I can also confirm I will not be ditching the Stanley Tucci memoir as it has quite a few recipes in it that I'd like to try.

[scratchmonkey]

Just finished Pharmako/poeia, the first volume of Pendell's series that combines historical ethnobotany, poetry, and natural philosophy. An average page might have some history on the usage of a particular plant product, a list of aspects of that plant product (what would be the associated Tarot card, etc.), a breakdown of the chemical composition of said product and how it interacts with human biology, and a bongos-and-snapped-fingers snippet of poetry about it. I'm sure that description has just made multiple people physically recoil from their keyboard, so obviously not something for everybody. I liked it quite a bit, admittedly Pendell's sociological analysis runs very close to mine, so there's a bit of preaching to the choir going on here.

I haven't decided whether I'm going to go straight into the second volume, or take a detour into the other books on my current stack. One of which is Ulysses, and for those with less of an aspect of cinder-block-to-the-head, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, a couple of Ligotti volumes that my friend convinced me to give a try, Darnielle's 33 1/3 book on Master of Reality, and The Sunked Land Begins to Rise Again by M John Harrison.

[Patrick Thistle]

I've started reading Homage to Catalonia because its been on my "I'd like to read that one day" list for ages and I found a nice copy a few quid below RRP in TK Maxx. (Which seems to have a lot of classics in at the moment.)

It's made me realise I know practically nowt about the Spanish Civil War really.

[Jobi1]

Just finished A Dutiful Boy, the incredibly powerful memoir of Mohsin Zaidi. It mostly tells the story of Zaidi's youth growing up gay in a very religious household – his family follow a particularly strict form of shia Islam that includes some practices, described early in the book, that are certainly not for the faint-hearted. He of course has the added pressure of his racial minority status – being a young Muslim man in Britain at the time of 9/11 doesn't sound any more fun that being queer within a Muslim family. Certainly thows into relief my experiences of growing up gay in a very white, very liberal and very secular family.

For some lighter relief, I've started (on Sporting's recommendation a few pages back) A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes. Only just started last night so I'm still in the Ark, but it seems a lot of fun so far.

[Etienne]

History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters has had plenty of recommendations on OTF but I'm happy to add mine too.

I've just finished Mike Parker's All The Wide Border which I enjoyed hugely. I'm not sure I'd recommend it if you haven't or don't live near the Welsh/English border, but if you do then it's fascinating.

[scratchmonkey]

I did wind up reading Master of Reality in about 70 minutes after the above post. Darnielle seems like a good sort and it's odd that I really like what he has to say as a writer (here and on Twitter) and am not really interested in his music. I do think that he flattens out the autobiographical main character a bit and he's also got a fair bit of Darnielle in him to an extent that stretches the suspension of disbelief. That said, it seems somewhat churlish to nitpick for this kind of project and overall it's a good read, especially if you are a fan of Sabbath as well.

[RobW]

I started reading Brett Anderson's 'Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn' last weekend before Suede and the Manics announced a joint UK tour. I'm enjoying it, he is a very good writer, but there are moments where I wish he'd go into greater detail. I suspect that he probably can't remember some stuff due to substance abuse, and perhaps if I read David Barnett's Suede bio that would satisfy me (though I understand Bernard Butler doesn't contribute to that).

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Started Christopher Hitchens' Arguably (collection of essays) yesterday, now about 11 essays (=75 pages = one tenth of the book) in so far and enjoying it. (I vaguely recall there may have been a thread about CH on here before, possibly an obituary one, but I'm hopeless at searching this site.)

[Satchmo Distel]

A rather disturbing but compelling memoir by Harriet Dyer called Bipolar Comedian.

Hitchens: https://www.onetouchfootball.com/for...e-pearly-gates

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Thanks Satchmo for digging that link out. (Edit - a thread with many interesting contributions, including a link to a powerful piece by Greenwald in Salon, holding the late C Hitchens to account for his appalling attitudes to the Iraq war.}

[Patrick Thistle]

I finished reading Homage to Catalonia. It's not really a book to enjoy but I got through it quickly and kept wanting to read the next bit. As it was contemporary writing, the war hadn't concluded and there was still some hope that Franco would be defeated, which was sobering.