Current Reading - Books best thread

[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.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Finished 2 this week- Philip Kerr's Prussian Blue and Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure.

The former is one of the later Bernie Gunther novels, set in 1956 with flashbacks to 39. You either know them and like them or you don't. I liked the French and Saarland settings for the 56 action, sent me down a rabbit hole on the history of the period, the referendum etc

The latter had some really funny bits and I like his style. I may get hold of the dvd of the accompanying tour, since we've stopped going out to Comedy gigs.

[jefe]

Currently reading and greatly enjoying Different Times; A History of British Comedy by a member of this parish.

[Sam]

Finished The City and The City earlier. Very good stuff indeed. I did find myself laughing at times at the seeming silliness of everyone in the cities pretending to everyone, including themselves, that they can't see each other, but of course that is part of the real-world point Miéville is making with it. I also found the coda very touching once I read (almost right after putting the book down) that he'd written the novel as a parting gift to his terminally ill mum. I'll be reading more of his stuff, I think.

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.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Yes, just read the Wikipedia entry for it and it was written/commissioned for a "new left review" of the time and that makes sense. The tone seems very much aimed at the bourgeoisie of the time, there's a strong element of visiting the zoo, especially when he's travelling by train and making judgements about whole communities based on the view from his window. He seems to write off the whole of Sheffield in this fashion.

[Gangster Octopus]

You're right about the patronising though.

[steveeeeeeeee]

. I imagine he wrote Wigan Pier before Down and Out, because the writer seems superior to the subject, which I never got from Down and Out.

Just checked this and I'm completely wrong.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Decided to read "The Road to Wigan Pier", for some reason I was expecting a book similar to "Down and Out in Paris and London", which i read and enjoyed a secondary school. But it was nothing like it, just a bunch of expose style long-form journalistic articles stating that northerners are poor, dirty, malnourished and live grim lives. The description of work in a coal mine was excellent, the rest felt s bit voyeuristic and at times patronising, but i image it hasn't dated well, especially part 2 of the book.

Despite that, I'd forgotten how great a journalist Orwell was, he focussed on the aspects he knows he can describe, like finger prints on white bread, walking to the coal face bent double, the smell of a closed, split house. I imagine he wrote Wigan Pier before Down and Out, because the writer seems superior to the subject, which I never got from Down and Out.

[Patrick Thistle]

I've finished my first book in 2024. 'Eyes of the Void' by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's the second in a trilogy of deep future science fiction. I enjoyed it. Like a lot of these sort of books he's got attached to his core characters and it's fairly obvious he's not going to kill any of them off.

[RobW]

Finished reading Babel today, which was very easy to follow, educational and gripping. Now to start Phil Ball's history of Spanish football, which I think my brother presumably ordered from the WSC Shop many years ago.

[Sam]

It's also rare – or at least somewhat less common – in my reading of the last few years in that it's written by someone who, in spite of their name, is a white British bloke (and a very posh one, at that). Got quite a surprise the first time I saw a photo of the author I'd always lazily assumed from his name was a (perhaps French-speaking) West African woman!

[Sam]

Yes, I've seen the previous mentions of it! Being aware of how highly people here thought of it was a significant part of why I granted it the privilege of suitcase space on the return leg (suitcase space for high-density items like books being at a premium due to my ridiculous decision to buy two pool cues to bring back).

[ad hoc]

Ah! A book that I, and I think many others on here, love.

Yes, me too

[San Bernardhinault]

Ah! A book that I, and I think many others on here, love.

[Sam]

And tonight I'll be starting a physical book that I brought back from England with me (bought at the wonderful Mr B.'s Emporium in Bath): The City & The City by China Miéville.

[Sam]

This afternoon I finished Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, which is a novella (hence my polishing it off in a couple of days) about Ireland's Magdalene laundries, which I'd never heard of before. It's a very good novella indeed, as reflected by its winning the Orwell Prize and being shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio and Booker prizes in 2022, and has taught me something I sort of wish I'd remained ignorant of.

[Sam]

No, but it was quarter to!

[Sporting]

Off to bed now

But it's not yet 5am where you are!

[Sam]

Catching up, because the last time I posted was before I went to the UK. The trip seriously slowed down my reading, but I've reeled off We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker, which is a murder mystery that was quite good while I was reading it but I can't remember much of now, Churchill's Secret War by Madhusree Mukerjee, which is a shocking history of how the British government basically let the Bengal famine happen during the Second World War, and highly recommended, Unmasking Autism by Devon Price and (finished this last night) We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan, which I very much enjoyed.

Off to bed now, so time to decide what's next.