Current Reading - Books best thread
FH, did you read my Lathe of Heaven post on the old board? I'd be interested to get your thoughts.
FH, did you read my Lathe of Heaven post on the old board? I'd be interested to get your thoughts.
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Has anybody else here read The Sportswriter then? (I'm sure I recall Ford's name being mentioned here when it meant a lot less to me.) The more I get into it, and I'm about halfway, the more I'm beginning to think it is a seriously good book.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I just have, GY. I'd not given much thought to the lack of character development of Orr. Compared with main characters in other Le Guin stories we certainly know little about him, though his thought processes are spelt out fairly clearly, so we sympathise with him from the off. I didn't see this as any particular literary tactic other than to cut the book down; perhaps Le Guin experimenting with a more direct form of writing (this fits in with her saying that she wanted to write a book like Dick). The character of Orr is not important, just as the ideology (communist/fascist) of a utopian movement is not important- any attempt at designing a static utopia is doomed to failure.
I've started reading one of those Jasper Fforde books you see all over the place but after 57 pages it's starting to grate. 1 in 4 supposedly funny bits are funny but the other 3 are painful. I didn't like The Hitch-Hiker's Guide as a novel much, so I guess I'm unlikely to like a second-rate Hitch-Hiker's. I'd probably like it as a radio serial, though...
I really can't decide what to start next but I think Fowles' The Collector might just win the day.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Frequent Flyer finished well but was a tough slog for a while, it was a bit too much of a mystery for the first 3/4 of the book.
Onto Gold by Dan Rhodes, which has started very nicely, reads really well. I read his book of "2 paragraph" short stories Anthology years and years ago, it was aces.
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Current Reading - Books best thread
The Freud was excellent, far better for getting a handle on what he thinks and why it makes sense than any of his "theoretical" writings. I was reading Our Man In Havana and loving it, until I lost it on the tube two pages from the end. Ironically, I'd been out at a Salsa night with an old friend and her Cuban fiancé, wearing a Vuelta Ciclistica A Cuba Socialista t-shirt. I suppose something had to give.
I'll finish it in a bookshop.
I'm reading Ezra Pound's Selected Prose right now - thoroughly deranged, but utterly brilliant. This morning I finished Andrew Sullivan's Virtually Normal; a superb and courageous work, extremely rigorous, yet never remotely detached from the incredibly personal nature of its message and reflections. Not quite right in every argument, but certainly one of the best books about homosexuality - and about politics generally - that I've ever read.
It took me a while to realise why I was getting the eye from so many blokes on the tube while reading it. Duh.
I'm just about to start Saul Bellow's Herzog now, meandering through the introductory essay, which I do hope doesn't Pale Fire it all to hell...Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Speaking of which. I have finally decided to start Pale Fire. I did not read the introductory essay.
It's interesting so far but I can't help wondering if I'm missing something. Or will it all fall into place later on? I mean, I think I get what's going on but I thought I ought to be more overwhelmed by it. Maybe it's because following a commentary is too much like work. The kind of bitchiness about the critical process is pretty funny, and the stuff about variant readings I like a lot, and all the kind of metanarrative flights of fancy are really nice.
also I think I might have to call one of my chapters 'the innocent author' although I will no doubt be the 8,957th person to do so.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
From the programme I'm watching at the minute:
Toro's proving them wrong by the looks of it. I wish I had the space in my head to read stuff like that.Nobody's really familiar with Pound.
They just fake it.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Have just finished JG Ballard's "Kingdom Come" - it was absolutely awful. It's not particularly long but it was a real struggle to finish - in fact, I'm not sure why I bothered.
The start is moderately promising but, for the most part it's just plain silly and I can't think of any other book I've read where I've finished up knowing virtually nothing about the central characters (and caring even less).
Even the proofreader did a crap job - one of the main characters, Tom Carradine, is twice described as David Carradine.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Ly - the prose is actually pretty straightforward and accessible. Deranged, and very erudite, but he's explaining what he means as he goes along, rather than assuming you can read greek letters, chinese ideograms, egyptian hieroglyphs, and are intimately familiar with all the same books of history, economics, and provencal troubador poetry that he is, as he does in the Cantos.
I mean, it would be hard to stress enough how necessary a commentary is for that book. The prose is extremely clear, though.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I don't claim to know what he means, but he sounds totally far outComment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Ah, brilliant!
I love that poem.
"Damn it all! All this our South stinks peace!"Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
He writes pretty much as he sounds, actually...Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Yeah, I should probably give him a go (though I prefer to listen rather than read poetry on the whole— but we've already done that). He's one of those genuinely mad/brilliant artists who wandered Edwardian London and I love that period. It was like the early days of Rock 'n' Roll.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Nineteen Minutes ( Jodi Picoult ). I'm at the trial stage - some 500 pages in, another 100ish to go. Longest I've ever stuck a book for.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Finished the Pound Selected Prose about five minutes ago, and coming towards the end of Herzog - I've liked it a lot, but not been ever really dazzled.
Coming up; A Time To Fight by Jim "Not the VP nominee" Webb, and Nabaokov's The Luzhin Defense.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
A Time To Fight by Jim "Not the VP nominee" Webb,
The one who wrote MacArthur Park is it then?
Before kickstarting Proust, I'm juggling The Case for Literature by Gao Xingjian and The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. The latter seems to have whittled his prose down to a succession of eight word paragraphs — I wonder what Henry James would think. Gao is a course book. he has much to say concerning the role of the artist in the 21st century, we'll be playing footsie with him in seminars I'm sure.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
'Homeland' by Sam Lipsyte. Really strange. I like it a lot, although I am just about halfway through, and it is becoming more difficult. So far, its about a man who is updating his High School/College yearbook, and isnt the star that everyone else seems to be, but is a writer, and from what I can tell the word BITTER oozes from his keyboard. Seriously good (so far).
'Addition' by Toni Jordan. I didnt realise that this was touted by Richard & Judy, and normally I would have run a mile (dont know why), but it is absolutely riveting. Its about a youngish lady with serious OCD, and how meeting someone, changes her life. Again, I am about 100 pages in and its captivated me. (although the fact that I am 100 pages in and havent finished it, is perhaps means it is not so riveting)Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Gold reads very nicely, but not a whole lot happens, and it ends very strangely.
Onto The Hard Way by Lee Child, which is one of those you want to read all the time and stop doing anything else.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I'm still reading the Tale of Genji.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Just finished "Hallucinating Foucault" by Patricia Duncker. Winner of "the Dillons First Fiction Award 1997"!!!!. Nearly threw it away after the first page as it starts with "a dream sequence" and thats my pet hate in fiction. It got better but only just.
Ive now read two books with Foucault in the title, (Foucaults Pendulem by Umberto Eco) and Ive still got no inclination to google him. He sounds bloody hard work to be honest. Lifes too short.
Hmmm "Bobby Fischer Goes To War" (Chess) or "Bringing Down The House" (Las Vegas Scam) or "Touching The Void" (Mountaineering) or "Night Train" (Sonny Liston)next?Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Holiday reading from the honeymoon:
Eighth Air Force, Donald Miller - chunky & visceral history of American bombers in Europe. Standard modern day World War II history fare.
The End of Mr Y, Scarlett Thomas - good holiday reading - not the most likeable characters (a bit perfect-for-being-imperfect) but a decent page-turner plot (very similar in some ways to The Raw Shark Texts).
The Last Godfathers, John Follain - I'd read his earlier history of the Corleonesi (A Dishonoured Society), this turned out just to be an update with the last ten years' activity. Decent mix of fact and sensationalism.
Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend, Leo McKinstry - worryingly over-enthusiastic, anally detailed history, endorsed bizarrely by both Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Clarkson. Not a keeper.
Yes Minister - always a good read.
Nemesis, Max Hastings - okay. Not a bad potted history of the close of World War II against Japan, some interesting coverage of the war in China, but a bit skimpy and disconnected.
And the picks of the last two weeks:
Un Lun Dun, China Mieville - fantastic children's novel just as good for adults. Unsurprisingly not particularly in-depth but fantastically rich - Neverwhere meets Jumanji meets Harry Potter, sort of.
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman - had been putting this off for ages, not as good as American Gods but still a nicely imaginative read. Something about his occasional jokes and the typeface used in every Gaiman book does annoy me, strangely.
Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, G W Dahlquist - still reading this one, nicely overblown Victoriana - Sherlock Holmes with more sex and violence. Like a slightly more serious version of Mark Gatiss' Lucifer Box novels.
And the overall winner:
Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman - a real tribute to every superhero and supervillain cliche, action-packed, thoughtful, with added pathos and a real sense of sympathy and comic timing ("why does nobody fear my blaster?"). Doctor Impossible is one of my favourite characters in recent reads.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
You did that much reading on your honeymoon? I hope Mrs Crusoe had a good time.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Heh. We waved at each other occasionally - her sunbathing, me at the pool bar.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
The Luzhin Defense was excellent. Not (nearly) as polished as his more mature stuff, but one of the most engaging things I've read of his. Probably would have been a bit better had I understood more about chess, although it pulled off very well the trick of making me fell as though I did.
I'm getting through the Webb, which is very clear-minded and committed, if a tad self-important. And I'm just about to start into Sebastian Barker's The Erotics of God. I really (, really) liked his long Nietzsche poem, so it'll be interesting to see how that cast of mind fits into a smaller format.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Not long finished 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer - slightly strange, but engaging and moving nonetheless.
Now juggling 'McCarthys Bar' (light summer reading) with 'Gulag' by Anne Applebaum. If the latter is as good as the quotes liberally plastered all over the cover suggest, then it should be a worthwhile few weeks (I don't get as much time to read as I would like!).
Oh, and I should probably say hello.Comment
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