Current Reading - Books best thread

[Jobi1]

Wondering if there's any mileage in a poetry thread? There have been a couple in the past that have been on a specific topic (sharing a favourite poem of the day, National Poetry Day, own work, etc.) but they've quickly fizzled out and there doesn't seem to have ever just been a general discussion thread.

I ask because I've just read Seán Hewitt's latest collection, Rapture's Road, and it's absolutely stunning.

[Gangster Octopus]

Hmm, those two European tours that you describing (supporting The Ramones and headlining over Dire Straits) included the Doncaster Outlook, which I can imagine being about the same size as a US college refectory. Admittedly with a bar...

[Exiled off Main Street]

Finally getting around to 'Remain in Love'; by Chris Frantz, one of 15 unread music books piled in my office...

I was desperate to get to the chapter that would hopefully talk about their gig in Liverpool with Dire Straits in January 1978. He did. He simply says they played there. No mention of the young teenager standing at the edge of the 6 inch stage staring at his wife (stood barely 18 inches away from the teenager), for the entire gig.

A few years ago when Facebook was a thing, I had a brief DM back and forth with Chris Frantz about some gigs the Tom Tom Club were playing in Connecticut and of course about a Heads reunion. He kindly reiterated that 3 members of the band were standing by their phones waiting for a phone call from the other guy. Which was never going to happen.

The book lays out without any subtlety how David Byrne was a prick and dissed on the other 3 throughout the Heads lifetime. Eno doesn't come out smelling of roses, neither does Joey Ramone (but then his shitty attitude to people and life is well documented elsewhere).

I could have done without the first few chapters about his childhood, and quite a lot about RISD as well - up to when he meets Tina and David Byrne.- although I realize this is a story of Chris and Tina not just the Talking Heads. The writing itself is OK - but there is way too much of 'the greatest day of my life'; 'we rocked the house'; 'Tina looked lovely'; 'We left them wanting more'. It's all about golly gosh.

David Byrne is a weirdo prick.

I like the fact that he's open about his drug use, he doesn't glamourize it, he doesn't talk about it as a stupid thing he did when he was young but he is matter of fact in that he clearly enjoyed doing drugs. He seemed so clean cut....(sic)

I wanted more on the Heads recording sessions. Clearly Byrne took all the credit for Heads material when it clearly wasn't the case, they must have had arguments about it and what did Byrne say when confronted? Needed more about the shit that went on touring with various bands. It's amazing to think they sold out a European tours with the Ramones and then themselves in consecutive years and came back to the States to play high school gyms and College refectories. He doesn't give any inclination about how this would seem to be a weird situation? There was enough in the book to satisfy my initial questions but I really wanted more in depth stuff about the band and what made them rather than stories about his grandma and there old Kentucky homes..

[imp]

For Xmas I got Rafik Schami's "Wenn du erzählst, erblüht die Wüste" (When you tell stories, the desert blooms). It's essentially an anthology, by theme, of 100 ancient short stories from the Middle East, transcribed from a nineteenth century book rescued from Schami's father's book collection in Syria. A beautiful paean to the art of story-telling. Don't think it's been translated into English yet.

[Sam]

Yeah, that was what I thought too. He's never going to win the Booker or another Big Important Literary Award* (and nor is he trying to!) but his novels (in my experience) are perfectly enjoyable for something quick to read, and might help you feel more optimistic about being a person than you did before, and that's got great value in itself. I can't remember much of it now but I do distinctly remember having to put my Kindle down for five minutes because I was laughing so hard at the opening chapter of The Humans, as well.

*For the record, as I hope my history on this thread will demonstrate, I don't say this as a judgement of quality at all, merely of style.

[jameswba]

That is Matt Haig's whole thing, in fairness. I very much enjoyed the two novels I've read by him (this one and The Humans) but I think it helps to be aware that that's the angle he's coming from before you start, otherwise I can see how it would get a bit much.

I suppose the premise of the novel hints strongly enough that that's his angle. I only found out after reading it that he has suffered from breakdowns and anxiety himself.

It would be an easy novel to rip apart if one were so minded, but I liked it overall. And if even one of our students feels a bit happier with life for having read it, then it's definitely a good enough novel for me.

[Sam]

a frequent tendency to lapse into self-help speak

That is Matt Haig's whole thing, in fairness. I very much enjoyed the two novels I've read by him (this one and The Humans) but I think it helps to be aware that that's the angle he's coming from before you start, otherwise I can see how it would get a bit much.

[jameswba]

I finished Matt Haig's The Midnight Library last night.

This was a bit of an attempt at trying to keep up with the kids, as a few students at our school either have read or are about to read this book. It's about a woman called Nora who's in her mid-30s and feels she's failed at life. None of her ambitions have come to anything, nor have any of her relationships. She's just lost her job, dead-end though it was, and her cat has died out on the road. She decides to take an overdose and end it all. However, in the seconds between life and death, she is transported to a vast library, run by a woman she recognises as the librarian at her secondary school. Nora has never forgotten this woman's kindness to her, and is ready to listen to what she has to say. She learns that the library contains all the books of the possible lives she could have led. She can try out as many of these as she likes and eventually choose to live one of them, to return to her 'root life', or to die.

The novel owes at least two debts to other works. One is an unacknowledged debt, to Jorge Luis Borges' story The Library of Babel. The other is to Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken, which, by contrast, is mentioned numerous times, especially by the librarian. It also has very obvious faults which become irritating at times, notably a frequent tendency to lapse into self-help speak ('success isn't something you measure and life isn't a race ypu can win'). Haig also uses chess as a motif, yet it's fairly clear that he has no real grasp of the game ; the librarian talks at one point of how the pawn is the most significant piece on the board, able to overcome the combined might of an opponent's queen and rooks if only the player is determined to keep going.

There was enough in it to keep me interested though. There are a few humourous moments, and I found myself caring about Nora's fate, even when she herself seems to have lost all interest.

[imp]

I've just read Melancholy I-II by Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse. I almost gave up 40 pages in due to the repetition, much as I did with David Peace's Shankly book. But then I started to get into the literary rhythm, like it was an on-page version of a minimalist symphony. It's either genius, or he's a complete fraud. But the book has left a massive impression on me and I can't stop thinking about it, so I'm leaning towards genius. On the other hand, I'm not in any hurry to read anything else by him.

[Jon]

Finally, sybil marshall has written both memoirs and semi-biographical fiction set in the Cambridgeshire fens.

[Jon]

And best of all of the lord Peter wimsey books, the nine tailors, by Dorothy l sayers, is set in the Lincolnshire fens. I'm fairly sure that how steeple sinderby wanders won the fa cup is also set around there too.

[Jon]

The first part of great expectations is set in the coastal marshes of Kent.

[jameswba]

Any other good marsh or estuary books? I have River by Kinsky in my to read pile. The first few pages seem extremely Sebald-ian.

PD James' Death of an Expert Witness is set in the Fens. Her politics can make Anne Widdecombe seem progressive, but it's an atmospheric story.

Not a novel, but Lisa St Aubin's Off the Rails : Memoirs of a Train Addict has a chapter on trains from London up to Ely.

[Jobi1]

Any other good marsh or estuary books? I have River by Kinsky in my to read pile. The first few pages seem extremely Sebald-ian.

The first two that sprang to mind were Waterland by Graham Swift and, from much more recent times, The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom, both set in and around the Norfolk wetlands. Both featuring varying levels of depravity and violence, if you like your marshland tales nice and bleak.

[Levin]

Being in Whitstable and staring out at the estuary had me wanting to re-read Rings of Saturn, but the current Vintage edition has ridiculous margins. I don't want to ebook it as it has images.

Any other good marsh or estuary books? I have River by Kinsky in my to read pile. The first few pages seem extremely Sebald-ian.

On books I have read

City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I've heard good things about Tchaikovsky. I remain to be convinced. I get that everyone has influences. But this read like someone who loves Pratchett and Miéville showing off his RPG setting.

Really cynical and knowing as well, not just the characters but also narrator.

And then, it turns out it's not a stand alone novel.

I intend to read the last couple of Dream Archipelago books I've not read. I've been reminded by Priest's death. I've just been worried that they won't be as good as the ones I've read.

[Jobi1]

Just finished Alice Winn's In Memoriam, a same-sex love story set mostly around the trenches of the First World War. Absolutely no punches pulled in the descriptions of the horror, and the complexity of the relationships in light of the trauma everyone experiences.

Sounds like the film rights have been sold, so I'll look forward to destroying my own emotional state again when that gets made.

Think I need to go read a few comics or something now...

[RobW]

I'm about 300 pages (still less than half way) into A Little Life. Some of it is very hard to read, and it pisses me off that every one of the four main characters seem to be masters of their craft etc, but I haven't given it up yet, so I must be enjoying it. I do want to know what happens to them all, if only it wasn't so bloody long. I have tonnes of other stuff to read.

[WOM]

Well, curiosity got the better of me and I finally read The Pillars of The Earth by Ken Follett. Wow…what a tale beautifully told. Also, by a wide margin, the longest book of fiction I’ve ever read. Nearly a thousand pages in this edition. I couldn’t put it down and flew through it.

[jameswba]

Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These was mentioned by Sam upthread. This and two of Keegan's other books have been given to me by a colleague for recent birthdays / Christmases. She's very quickly become a great favourite of mine. (Keegan that is, though the colleague is great too.)

As Sam says, Small Things Like These is largely about the sinister institution on the hill that is the Magdalen Laundry. The main character is a local coal-merchant who delivers his wares there and gains an awareness of what really goes on behind its walls. It's a stark, yet big-hearted novel ; I was going to use the word 'spare', but there's little sparing of the nuns and priests. I think the 2002 movie The Magdalen Sisters was what first made me aware of the laundries. It was a fine film, which recalled Orwell's truism that tyrants never look more vulnerable than when they're being laughed at. Keegan's approach is very different and, to me, even more effective.

This Christmas, I received Foster, an earlier novella. Both it and Small Things... are about 85 pages long. Foster is about a young girl whose father takes her into another part of rural Ireland to stay with distant relatives, as her mother is expecting another child. In this temporary home, the girl seems braced for harshness ; there's a lovely moment early on, when she wakes in the morning to find her sheets soaking wet. She expects punishment, and is bemused when her new guardian starts blaming herself for putting the wrong mattresses down. The girl comes to love her new surroundings, yet is aware that something is casting a shadow. It is only an encounter with a gossipy neighbour that points to what this might be.

Between these two works, I also read Keegan's short story collection Antarctica. The title is appropriate, though the fifteen stories don't leave the northern hemisphere, being set in Ireland, England or the USA (mainly more southern states). The title story is about a 'happily married' woman going away for a weekend alone and 'determined to sleep with another man'. She achieves this, and Keegan manages to make the encounter both deeply erotic and icy-cold. Antarctica (the continent) is on the woman's mind for part of it, which should warn you of might be coming, but doesn't. This is the opening story in my edition. The last, Passport Soup, is set in an unnamed but clearly rural part of the US. It is told from the point of view of a man whose young daughter has disappeared from one of his fields while he was out there with her. He is traumatised, and his marriage has become dysfunctional, he and his wife barely managing to co-exist. The ending is again shocking, though oddly redemptive. It works beautifully as the end of the whole collection, though I gather some editions have different sequences. The collection features plenty of destruction, whether in relationships between partners or siblings, or via things like house fires or swarms of insects. In the only out-and-out real-world reference, the discovery of Fred West's crimes is part of one crucial twist.

Overall, I'd say there's more cynicism than heart in Antarctica, while the novellas are the other way round. Magnificent writer anyway ; I'm determined to read more of her.

[jameswba]

Before Christmas, I read WG Sebald's Austerlitz for the third time. Sebald would be my pick as best European writer of the last 50 years, and Austerlitz, published in 2001 and the last of his four 'novels', is arguably his greatest achievement. It is also his most novelistic work. Like the three before it, it combines travel-writing, memoir and reflection, as well as being illustrated by unsettling black and white photos - of people, structures or everyday objects like restaurant receipts or bus-tickets. It does however get closest to something resembling a consistent fictional narrative.

Austerlitz was the site of a key battle in the Napoleonic Wars. It also turns out to be the surname of the book's main character. Austerlitz first meets the Sebaldian narrator in Antwerp. Later they meet in a variety of other locations, and Austerlitz gradually reveals his story, though not in the chronology that follows. He arrived at Liverpool Street Station on 'kinder-transport' from Prague during WWII. He was adopted by an austere Welsh couple, a minister and his wife, who attempted to erase all trace of his former identity. He only learned his real name from his private-school headmaster when he was 18. Another key figure to his identity is his history teacher, an expert on the Battle of Austerlitz who single-handedly enacts scenes from the fighting to his class. It turns out that Austerlitz's infancy was lived not far west of the Moravian battle-site, in Prague, where he was born to Jewish parents. Austerlitz later returned to the Czech capital to discover more of his origins, what happened to his parents and retrace the route he'd taken to London all those years before.

Clearly, the above is a grossly inadequate summary of a great work, a deeply sad novel about terrible trauma. It isn't the easiest to read, and remains somehow elusive even after three goes. A lot of the difficulty comes from Sebald's / the narrator's technique of distancing himself and the reader from events. Most of it is him telling us what Austerlitz has told him, and Austerlitz very often has his information from yet another source. Thus we get a lot of structures like this : 'Vera told me later, said Austerlitz, that in the spring of 1942.... .' The point of this is that memory is filtered through every relating, and that multiple threads need to be untangled before we get to the heart of a tragedy like the Holocaust - if we ever can get there.

[danielmak]

I was in Los Angeles a few weeks back. My daughter and I went to a community garden space in Pasadena and there was a little library box. I pulled out John Fante's Ask the Dust. I've read one of his other novels and a collection that includes two novellas. Perhaps he is best known among readers in their 40s and 50s because he was championed by Charles Bukowski and he has been considered a writer who captured the spirit of Los Angeles during a time when the city was growing (esp. growing as a multi-ethnic urban hub). The novel was a bit hit and miss for me. The central character (one of Fante's Bandini stories) is mostly unlikable for the first half of the novel. But that energy shifts in interesting ways and Fante avoids a sappy ending, which seemed to be predicted. This edition includes an intro by Bukowski and some interesting letters Fante wrote/reviews of his books from the time.

[Incandenza]

Got Garth Margenghi's Terrortome and Michael Mann/Meg Gardiner's Heat 2 for christmas. Finished the former, which is as funny as you'd imagine if you know who Garth Marenghi is. Started reading Heat 2 and loving it so far. It's both a sequel and a prequel to the film (which I watched again last night).

I finished Heat 2 last night. Was a bit skeptical at first, but it really grabbed me as it went on. Takes the characters in some very interesting new directions and the past events change things for some of the characters from the movie.

I re-watched the movie a few weeks ago and still loved it as much as I did when I first watched it. I wasn't disappointed with the book at all and didn't think it dimishes the movie at all, which I was a bit afraid of. I would say that it's maybe not as great a book as the film is a film (if that makes sense), but still highly entertaining and a page-turner.

[Sam]

Tonight I'm going to start Extinction (translated by David McLintock), which a quick online search tells me is Thomas Bernhard's final novel. I can't remember when or why I bought this for my Kindle, and I've not read anything by him before, but a very quick skim of the Wiki pages for Bernhard and the book itself suggests it won't be a cheerful read.

This is very fucking hard going. The narrator is a complete bore, and the amount of repetition is astonishing (to paraphrase: 'My parents were ignorant. It's amazing how ignorant my parents were. They were ignorant about these things. They knew nothing about those other things. About these things and those other things, they were truly ignorant. And when it came to this third group of things ...'). It's obviously done as a literary device, and I'm reading in the expectation that at some point it's going to become apparent why the author is having the narrator talk like this much of a tosser all the time, but I'd expected something rather more economical from a writer who makes no secret of debts to Kafka and Borges (among others).

[Felicity, I guess so]

So I bought a few paperbacks and am whizzing through Thomas Perry Dance for the Dead, one in his Jane Whitefield series

[Felicity, I guess so]

Current buying rather than reading- try to get crime novels only I will read on kindle rather than further cluttering. Notable price hikes going on, especially for OOP 80s/90s novels.

I have occasionally spent 9.99 on French novels on kindle, knowing that French publishers are not keen and French PBs can be pricey.

But I'm not paying that for a US novel that can be had for £3 on ebay.