A Model TrILBY; or, What Are You Reading Now, Winter 2016/17

Intrigued by that, is this it?

yep. i listened in the bath one evening, it was like a bedtime story for adults, his voice is soporific and comforting, even discussing death and the power of the mundane.

Aye, that's the one Bateau. It's properly hypnotic (and really gets to the heart of what Naipaul was trying to do with parts of Engima. I think).

Thanks guys, definitely saving that one for tonight!

Eileen

Come on, Tracer.

:D

Thanks Tim, at first I was like 'Bill Bragg' must be a pseudonym, but apparently not, he has his own website and everything (must admit, the cover you posted looks to be amongst his most appealing work)

Pleasure! Havign looked at his site, I'd say I quite like his work in general but (like you) really enjoy this particular cover.

Eileen was a disappointing book

her new collection of shorts sounds interesting.

Yeah, I think I might get that from the library--she's obv. a talented writer, it's just that Eileen was not strong enough a novel to justify itself at its length. Would have been a better story or novella.

Now I'm reading "The Evenings" by Gerard Reve, (just) post-war Amsterdam business in a handsome new Pushkin Press edition whose cover is a clear nod to my beloved Amsterdam School architecture:

http://www.pushkinpress.com/wp-content/uploads/Evenings-.jpg

― Tim, Tuesday, 17 January 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Love that cover. Almost never buy books on Hardback but certainly considering it.

Let us know your thoughts - saw Lydia Davis saying v nice things about it, and it seems totally up my alley.

Eileen is a little repetitive - it loses the forward propulsion that it needs, and falls prey to the same "literary thriller" problem Richard Ford had with Canada, i.e. it keeps hinting at some earth-shattering thing that is going to happen but then it keeps not happening and you're like wtf I'm 2/3 of the way through this book now man. But I like the style of it, and living in this person's mind.

Robert Scholes, STRUCTURAL FABULATION: AN ESSAY ON FICTION OF THE FUTURE

Been reading some pieces from a collection of D.H. Lawrence's travel writing on Italy. I like the one about the trip he took from Sicily to Sardinia. Sardinia in the 1920s sounds remarkably un-modern. His account of the "inn" they stayed at there is guaranteed to raise shivers from even the most seasoned traveler.

I struggle with Lawrence as a novelist, but love his poetry and travel writing. I think Sea and Sardinia is my favourite of his travel books. I've been, but didn't make it up into the mountains. Next time I'll go see the mamuthones: https://mysardinianlife.com/2013/11/05/mystical-mamuthones-from-mamoiada/

Finished the Derek Raymond and oh god the sadness of it all. It made me go back to Sinclair (there's a Cook/Raymomd segment in Lights Out...) and I picked up Rodinsky's Room again, which has hooked me straight in.

Started Kazantzakis' Last Temptation of Christ last night.

Kazantzakis is an author with very idiosyncratic obsessions. In the west, we're more used to authors who struggle with and against the doctrines and traditions of the Catholic church, rather than the Greek Orthodox. This makes him feel exotic.

Go Set a Watchman left a sour taste. A long slow build of childhood reminiscence and you can never step into the same river twice, all with a particularly southern flavour, none of which lit up the page; some well intended but questionable politics, and finally a confrontation between scout and atticus in which he is painted as wrong and reasonable, she as right and unreasonable and literally in need of a good slap.

A Month in the Country, just finished, thank you whoever was talking about it last year. And thanks again for the P-Fitzgerald recommendation, too. I am genuinely excited there are so many more books of hers to read.

"
A Month in the Country, just finished, thank you whoever was talking about it last year. And thanks again for the P-Fitzgerald recommendation, too. I am genuinely excited there are so many more books of hers to read.

― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, January 21, 2017 10:57 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

I just finished it as well, really enjoyed it. You're in for a treat with the Penelope Fitzgeralds as well.

Has anyone read any more J.L. Carr?

Read part of PF's group biography of father and uncles, The Knox Brothers, which was dense and rich and fluid enough, telling me stuff I'd never ever got about early 20th Century British culture, despite all my long-time, on-going reading about all that...Hermione Lee's tenacious bio of Fitzgerald turns up the other side of emotionally reserved family brilliance, according to James Wood; Lee gets him re-reading and re-thinking out loud about Fitzgerald's novels too: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/late-bloom

Still hoping the shorthand initials PKF ( for Penelope Knox Fitzgerald) will catch on.

Ive read all of Carr, and enjoyed it immensely, but A Month is probably the best of his books.

Two others i remember with great fondness:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harpole_Report
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpole_%26_Foxberrow_General_Publishers

Good to hear the other Carrs are worth investigating.

I'm planning on re-reading all of Fitzgerald's novels soon before reading that biography, I flew threw the eight of them first time round, looking forward to taking my time with them this time and really trying to figure out what it was I loved about them. I'll also be reading the Golden Child for the first time, which I'm sure will be a bit of fun even if its not as good as the others.

Kazantzakis is an author with very idiosyncratic obsessions. In the west, we're more used to authors who struggle with and against the doctrines and traditions of the Catholic church, rather than the Greek Orthodox. This makes him feel exotic.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

Can you point out some of the ways he shows this in his work? I don't think I know enough about the differences between Greek Orthodoxy and 'regular' Roman Catholicism to be able to spot this.
Although I suspect The Last Temptation might not be the best book for examples since it's probably more about Judaism vs Christianity.

recs upthread for the Buss unabridged translation of The Count of Monte Cristo very much otm

finished crime&punishment last night + started Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers. next fiction i have lined up is Zola's The Beast Within; I tried reading the first volume of the Rougans series a few years ago but found it dull. i think this one will make nice symmetry w/ c&p.

That Zola is very good

Ive read all of Carr, and enjoyed it immensely, but A Month is probably the best of his books.

― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Saturday, January 21, 2017 8:34 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pvmic ;)

Reading "Mathilda". Kinda lol how Dahl spends the first few pages shouting about how parents think too much of their children, complete with fantasies of insulting the children in school reports, only to then go "what's even worse is when they DON'T value their children", presumably what the whole book is about.

Not sure if these pvmic posts are friendly or not...

just started Martin Felipe Castagnet: Bodies of Summer -- Argentinean SF about minds being uploaded to the cloud and then doenloaded into new bodies, where the poor are stuck with unhealthy host bodies and culture shock from the long periods of time that pass before they are reincorporated

Lee Child, Night School

Compared to the last few entries in the Jack Reacher series, this is an improvement, effectively suspenseful for much of its length, not too badly derailed by a few especially gratuitous fights and sex scenes. As usual, the plot starts to sputter near the end, but not too many pages from the end; it's twistier than I expected.

I think Child exhausted his interest in flyover country several books back, so setting this one in Germany helps, as does turning the clock back to 1997 when Reacher is still in the Army and can get into trouble under orders rather than as a wandering hobo do-gooder.

Tried a Lee Child once, my family raves about him. Liked the oddly congenial tone, but so much padding and repetition!

still reading Bruce Springsteen. He has finished THE RIVER.

I'm not a big fan of audiobooks, but I noticed that Springsteen does the narration of his own autobiography. Not sure if it also has music, but it might be worth checking out.

In love with these times Roger Shepherd's Flying Nun memoir.
. I need to pick up some of this label's material that I stilk don't have.
Probably more as I go through the book.
Got it as a 2 for £5 in Fopp over Xmas. Nice surprise since it's pretty recent.

I have a few friends who like Lee Child, but I can't get past the wish-fulfilment writing style - I never lose the image of Child, sitting at a desk, thinking "Well, what's my tough guy getting up to today?". It all seems writery and fails the disbelief-suspension test. Compared to Michael Connolly, who's no great stylist either, but seems comfortably invisible.

Child is all about forward movement punctuated with moments of nastiness, comedy, or badassery. I imagine him at his desk trying to see how fast he can get to the next punchline or plot twist. In at least one interview he's implied that his first draft is what goes to the publisher. When he's rolling well, his style makes for a fun ride, after which the reader may notice that the story made no sense at all. The way Child hypes and sells his absurdities is part of the fun, except when his energy flags and the action becomes rote and mechanical. Not surprisingly this has happened more often as he's added book after book to the series.

Connelly is under-rated, I think, maybe because his style is so direct and workmanlike, but his plots are usually much better constructed and more plausible than anything Child comes up with. His background in journalism comes through in the realism of the places and situations he presents and his evenness of tone. He too has weak books in his catalog, but his overall standard is higher than Child's.

Yeah, I like Connolly a lot, and did a mini-Bosch tour of downtown LA once.

I used to read them every year, till he put out a few bum books in a row (Reversal, Gods of Guilt and Black Box, I think).

Is there a Lee Child that's like a "read this and you won't need to read the rest" or (I suppose) "read this and you'll *want* to read the rest"?

speaking of thrillers who likes Harlan Coben? i started reading "Fool Me Twice" and it was OK - but i lost it and haven't bothered replacing it to see how it ends

I'd say the first Lee Child, The Killing Floor, is the best entry point and also a good representation of the whole series. It's a little uncharacteristic in that it's narrated in the first person -- almost all the later books are in third person -- but its strengths and weaknesses are the same. There are some later entries that have creepier, more interesting villains, but I can't remember which ones. The continuity from book to book is minimal so there's not much need to read them in order.

the one i read was 1st person, too: about a suicide bomber on a train, and the CIA training bin laden

Think it's time to read Harry Matthews: Cigarettes

It is, it always is. RIP Harry.

I love "The Evenings", it's right up my street (no plot to speak of, unsettled and somewhat unsympathetic main character in a constricted world) despite the consistent and IMO unnecessary baldy-shaming. I don't really know enough about the historical context but I guess there's a chunk of raging against the post-war Netherlands. Written in the late '40s but the war is barely mentioned, Amsterdam is just carrying on complacent.

Now I'm reading "Thousand Cranes" by Yasunari Kawabata, I loved "Snow Country" and this one's shaping up to be similarly brief, lovely and heartbreaking.

the reacher books get weaker later on. i think those guys get a little burnt out on writing them. the last one i really liked had all the stuff about his mom and being a little kid overseas. can't remember the title. i've really enjoyed the sandford books i've read but it's the same with him. the last davenport book and the last virgil flowers book were his weakest. this is when people start getting a co-author.

but i would say the first, uh, dozen reacher books are fun! (i can't even remember how many i've read.)

it's their own fault though. they don't have to write so many...

i'm reading Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker. from 1944. WWII actually starts in the middle of the book, so, she was timely. i'm enjoying it. you'll probably never read it. montana wheat country in the 40's not a very sexy sell these days. i could see it being read in a women's studies class though. it has a great struggling young heroine.

Started Middlemarch, see you in either three months next week when I decide to read Goldfinger instead