Now Is The Winter Of Our Dusty-dusty 2015/2016, What Are You Reading Now?

i read 'reality and dreams' last year; i think it was the only novel of hers i read that year, which was unusual, for me; either i've read around five or none. an ex sent me a copy -- they were posting a lot of books to people they thought would like them rather than just give them to a thrift store or try and sell them, despite the much greater inconvenience and cost. something about this speaks to how i feel about late spark, somehow.

I haven't read the autobiography. Yeah, A&A is about the Lucan case. Her manipulation of word of mouth accounts and experimenting with chronology are impressive for such a short book.

I think I own Aiding and Abetting, so maybe that's another for this year! This is the first Spark I've read and I'm really enjoying how dialogue-heavy it is. It reminds me a lot of Waugh at his most acerbic. Word count for 'prime' so far is about 200.

Finished Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. It's unabashedly genre fiction but enlivened by what feels like a genuine insider feel for the details of a subculture which doesn't often feature in books of the genre: wealthy Singaporean Chinese society. It seems like there are some pacing issues: the first 400 pages could have moved a bit faster, and then everything happens in a rush at the end. Also it's obviously setting things up for a sequel so lots of threads are left hanging. Not sure I'll ever read the sequel but I enjoyed it.

Now I'm reading The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann, occasionally interleaved with Poems of Nazim Hikmet (tr. Blasing and Konuk).

I read most of Hugh Kenner's critical study, Ulysses, but decided that unless I was going to reread Joyce, my interest in the last 50pp was growing unsteady.

So, now I am reading Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Giles Milton, a narrative history of Europe's trade with the spice islands during the age of discovery, centering around various English voyages and the early East India Company. It sets a tone considerably breezier than a scholarly history would be, while remaining sober enough to avoid excessive burbling and the stylistic atrocities that show up in so much popularized narrative history.

Just finished Antal Szerb's Journey By Moonlight, it's an absolute delight. Probably going to recommend this to everyone I know.

Need to get further in Juan Filloy's Caterva but got distracted by King Leopold's Ghost.

Yes, gave my copy of the Szerb away - need to get another.

Just finished Iain Sinclair, LONDON OVERGROUND.

Despite being lazy ('Again I remembered interviewing Allen Ginsberg in 1967') and self-referential ('as I said in Downriver ...'), going on about the usual suspects ('Bill Griffiths is the true prophet of place', 'Angela Carter takes mythic ownership of Brixton') and paying far too little attention to the reality and extent of the Overground (which he doesn't realize goes to Crystal Palace) -- this book does have something. There were passages where I really felt I was reading great work, flashes of blazingly good, poignantly apt prose that only Sinclair's talent could produce.

Aimless, I think Kenner's book Ulysses is one of the very best critical books I have ever read.

It might be the single best book specifically on Ulysses.

I agree. I bought the Kenner on your recommendation, albeit a recommendation you made in an ILB thread many years ago. Kenner seems extremely sharp on Joyce, Pound, Eliot, et. al.

currently zipping through lawrence wright's "the looming tower," which is really great. beautifully written and enthralling. also just started rachel carson's "silent spring," which i picked up on a whim a few months back. surprised to find that the drawings were done by louis darling (with his wife lois), who illustrated beverly cleary's early books.

currently reading "the big short", which i got as a xmas gift years ago but never read. thought i would read it before seeing the film adaptation so i can "actually," everyone i talk to about it

Marilynne Robinson's Lila, which I enjoyed and admired but didn't love, not like Gilead. Great writing as usual, I liked the character, didn't mind that the whole book was just the sustained note of her thoughts. Maybe I just got a bit fed up with Ames saying he'd been thinking about why God allows good people to suffer for the best part of his seventy-plus years, but give him a few more days and he might just crack it. I do wonder how much my conception of her books differs from her own, she does an incomparable job of humanising religious thought - I never would have imagined enjoying the ramblings of an old preacher half as much as I do - but for her there will still be the greater truth behind it.

I've been reading Chekhov short stories from the Penguin classics volume titled Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories.

Yesterday I also started to read a self-published memoir I found at the local charity shop. It has an ISBN, but even if I noted it here, I doubt anyone would ever run across a copy anywhere for any reason. It takes place in NE Oregon, where the author grew up on a ranch a couple of dozen miles north of the Wallowa mountains - a place where I love to hike for weeks every summer.

It is all very quotidian, the sorts of stories rural families accumulate, about the time Uncle Dan rode at the front of the July 4th parade and his horse bucked him off, or when the salamander plugged up the drain pipe and the kitchen flooded. (NB: neither of these stories are in the book.) Still I like reading such things from time to time. They are generally very soothing.

What a strange coincidence. Just glanced at an electronic copy of that memoir this morning, which was open on my laptop, but didn't have a chance to really plow through. Got to wondering about the origin of the word Wallowa, whether it was related to Walla Walla, then got to up to look for a book on Chief Joseph which come to think of if I didn't actually get.

Bruce Bawer - Prophets & Professors: Essas on the lives and Works of Modern Poets
* Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night
Joseph Roth - The Emperor's Tomb
J. Hoberman - The Dream Life

Found it

wondering about the origin of the word Wallowa

I can answer that. There is a book called Oregon Geographical Names, by Lewis MacArthur that records the origin. It comes from a Nez Perce word describing a kind of weir they built of osier willow to trap fish. A large fish trap was built at the outlet of Wallowa Lake (a huge 5 mile long glacial lake), which gave the lake and the river their name. Decades later, it was also given to the mountain range behind the lake and to Wallowa County.

reading The Recollection by Gareth L. Powell. never heard of him. Paul Cornell says that Gareth Powell is going to be a major voice in SF. never heard of Paul Cornell either. Colin Harvey and Warren Ellis are also big fans of this book. never heard of them either. they could have all been in Supergrass as far as i know.

anyway, it IS a page-turner. two stories at once with alternating chapters. and nice and simple to follow for a simpleton like me.

Scoop: Boot's just now gotten his two passports to Ishmaelia. Everybody's ridic, but so far, spacey white sons of Empire are left behind by enterprising Negroes and Women, especially the networking beauty in the tiny black car(s), who knows no bounds, it seems. Not so much zings as short, sharp, storytime jabs, tirelessly delivered by Johnny Ramone.

Paolo Sorrentino, Youth: novel written simultaneously with the making of the same story as a movie, and unforunately this is very obviously the script given the minutest amount of effort needed to turn it into prose, and not very good prose either. Hope the film is better

Shūsaku Endō, White Man: told as the memoirs of a cross-eyed sadist Nazi collaborator in Lyon, just before the Nazis flee the oncoming Allies. Like a minimalist version of Tournier's Erl-King/Ogre

Helle Helle, This Should Be Written i the Present Tense: intertia-struck Danish woman lets her life go to bits, pretends to go to uni, cheats on boyfriend, etc. Actually very good! Apparently she is Denmark's most popular novelist, despite/because of having identical first and last names

2Stoned Andrew Loog Oldham's 2nd volume of memoir. Here he starts pretty loosely chronologically then goes back to touring the US with the Stones in 65 or 6. Think it's forward from there so Immediate etc coming.

Got Inside the Dream Palace on the Chelsea Hotel as my bog book at the moment. Only got as far as plans to build it in the 19th century so far. Need to get a bookmark for it so I don't waste time lonking for my page.
Also need to finish Ford Maddox Ford which I was about 2/3 through before Xmas.

& I have the 4AD bio Facing The Wrong Way as my travel etc book for buses etc. Got as far as Prayers on Fire or possibly a little after. Interesting so far anyway.

with Scandinavia in the rearview mirror for now here's my latest library haul:

Christopher Hitchens - And Yet
Brian Moore - The Mangan Inheritance
Stacy Schiff - The Witches: Salem 1692
Mary Gatskill - Veronica

I read the Gaitskill in November and got the Hitchens as an Xmas present to myself.

Finished Moby Dick - really incredible: such a weird book, so audacious with its content and language. Just made what was pretty much a perfect xmas period even better.

Ernesto Sabato - The Tunnel. Read this in a single, long-ish commute. Starts off with the plot of The Outsider, demystifies and amplifies it into his own achievement.

really enjoyed your thoughts on Robinson, ledge - her thinking seems so worth reflecting on, worth the time to draw out. I haven't done Lila yet bought bought it in hardback as soon as it came out because Gilead, that's just one of those books that sticks with you.

I'm reading Blindness, having just finished Cain, I love Saramago to pieces and may do The Gospel According to Jesus Christ next

I've recently enjoyed a few addiction memoirs (White Out by Michael Clune), Blackout by Sarah Hepola) & looking for another heroin one I read Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson which I think I heard of in the 90s & wow that was not really my thing at all.

I got a heap of books for Christmas, so it's been my new year's resolution to read more. Right now I'm reading Marlon James' 'A History of Seven Killings', which of course is on everyone's radar but is definitely really really good. Also tucking into Steven Pinker's 'Sense of Style' which is one of the best books on the English language and writing I've ever come across.

really enjoyed your thoughts on Robinson, ledge

Thanks! Let me know what you think when you get round to it.

Eve Babitz - Eve's Hollywood: a NYRB reissue. Pretty artless but very entertaining

I saw that and its rave reviews, but I didn't like the little bit I read.

But now your description sort of makes me want to read it.

Oh man, the NYRB holiday sale catalog had a bunch of blurbs casting her as the Anti-Didion, or the younger, fun Didion: she still tattled on the tails of Tinsel Town, but she was young and fun you bet. However, I also read a bunch of excerpts meant to sell this same point (in Paris Review, I think), and I never say this but omg LOL what a self-satisfied self-indulgent klutzy sisassypants she seems to be. So cute how she never bothered to look up correct spellings of common words contained in her semi-zingers, all her friends seemly agree. Was she some kind of ironic fave, like William Hung etc.?

But you know NYRB and Paris Review, so maybe I should give her more of a chance.

er "sassypants," "seemingly" (blush, but bet she typed too fast too!)

All of that is kind of true, and yet and yet and yet... Partly it is just that her anecdotes are actually very interesting, no matter how they're told

I was really put off by the lackluster style as well but if Mr. Morrison recommends...

I have a hunch that the translator David Magarshak bears much responsibility for this, but I am not finding the Chekhov short stories very impressive. I expect I'll soldier on, but I wouldn't recommend this version.

Haven't read those, but enjoyed his versions of The Idiot and Bros K. Will give Babitz a decent chance if ever come across one of her books.

OK, I must admit the Babitz became significantly less charming as it went along and she got older and more up herself.

Now reading Hermione Eyre: Viper Wine -- sort-of historical novel about real-life 17th Century society beauty obsessed with staying young and her doting explorer husband, recast in this book as something of an alchemist and sort-of time-traveller, leading to all sorts of cheerful and funny anachronisms. Really good so far

Simenon - Tropic Moon. probably the only Simenon I'll ever need. As noted its a tad similar to the African passages in Celine's Journey... but its handling of a kind of mood -- that of corruption and degradation is so intense. It would be a lot more known about if Maigret hadn't overwhelmed the shelves, took NYRB to curate it and in that sense its one of the finer things they've bought out.

Vasily Grossman - Armenian Sketch. Read this in a sitting - always in this conversational mode, but its so much more than that. Doubt travelogues are as good as this - its so digressive. And it doesn't exactly gets you to go to Armenia (although sign me up) because you almost certainly wouldn't get what Grossman is able to get out of it (or Mandelstam, probably goes double for him). The descriptions of people, food, architecture, culminating with the humanist speeches at the wedding (and Soviet politics are also never far away) - its a performance of a writer fully able to transmit what he sees, hears and feels to his pen.

Christopher Isherwood - Mr Norris Changes Trains
Jacob Weisberg - Ronald Reagan
Louise Bogan - The Blue Estuaries: Poems

I finished The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann. I've been meaning to read more fiction this year, so I went through the NY Times notable books lists from a couple of years ago to find some things that sounded interesting and are in paperback. This is one of those. It was kind of an odd combination of a dysfunctional family drama and a murder story (not a mystery, it uses the horrific elements for suspense and tragic effect and as a springboard to other themes, somewhat in the vein of The Shack or The Lovely Bones). It's definitely not a feel-good story. The characters are kind of selfish and self-absorbed and pretty much completely fail to rise to the occasion, but they remain somewhat sympathetic nonetheless. Not sure why the author thought this particular combination of themes was compelling, but I guess, yeah, sometimes awful things happen and they just make things worse for people who already have problems of their own.

Now I'm reading Guantanamo Diary. It seems like this will be 300 pages of me thinking "Wow, that's really fucked up."

Ullman is directors Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman's daughter, so some pedigree for grim dysfuntional family dramas there, i guess

Vasily Grossman - The Road. Short stories and articles. So far the stories are sorta ok and develop the theme of the novels (short stories are boring me more and more these days tbh) but this only really gets going in the account of the Nazi concentration camp in "The Hell of Treblinka". Grossman's writing is full of moral force, and a coolness in the face of inhumanity, but also managing to be conversational and tender. I can't see any of the various journo-historians w/an agenda (LOL Anne Applebaum) and number-of-dead counters getting anywhere near this.

Marianne Fritz: The Weight of Things -- odd, intense, elliptical little Austrian novel about women betraying one another, motherhood, madness, step-parents, all that fun stuff

Fritz seems fascinating, especially for her later novels, which sound radically resistant to translation: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/10/01/the-nonessential-on-marianne-fritz/

Thomas Bernhard was not a fan... http://www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feature/adrian-west-on-marianne-fritz/

A contrasting view was held by Thomas Bernhard, who addressed his esteemed publisher, Siegfried Unseld, with characteristic charm in 1986:

Before my departure I have had another glance at your recent publishing catastrophe: the 3,000 pages you have had printed and allowed to appear are the greatest embarrassment I have been acquainted with to this day. To print and bind over 3,000 pages of mindless proletarian trash with all the bombast of a centenary event belongs, quite frankly, in the record books: as a world record of stupidity. I am not speaking so much of the begetter of this idiocy, rather of the fact that the publisher has handicapped himself by releasing this fatuous vulgarity.

iow, Thomas Bernhard was not her intended audience

I for one would consider it an honor to be on the wrong side of Thomas Bernhard. I mean, he's a noted curmudgeon, no?

Excellent.

When you've exhausted Rhys's own books, it's quite interesting to read her one (that I know of) translation, Francis Carco's 'Perversity': it's nowhere near as good as her own stuff, but you can see why it appealed to her.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/95/1f/30/951f30e03eb93fa82ec8e35cf93428dc.jpg

Rhys's collected letters, edited by Diana Athill, are worth looking at, but maybe not read in full, since they basically boil down to "O poor me, I canot cope, I need money, i can't do anything for myself, o alack alas" and that wears you out after a couple of hundred pages. Athill writes movingly and entertainingly about Rhys in 'Stet'--she was her editor and frequent helper for quite some time.

Well I am looking at reading a vol of Van Gogh's letters later in the year so that might be ok.

Ha! Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo? They're wonderful.

Yeah.

Pat Barker - Life Class
Gary Donaldson - Truman Defeats Dewey
Byron - Selected Letters

... but which will take it upon themselves to start the WAYR thread of the new season?

Here.

think there's a katherine mansfield story based on her stay in war-torn paris and her relationship with carco... i need to reread her stories, it's been a long time.

It's 'An Indiscreet Journey': https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mansfield/katherine/something/chapter14.html -- Didn't know that it was based on her and Carco!

Really enjoyed Mieville's new novella while I sat in the rare sun at the pub today. Don't know hat folks opinions are of him, but it was some of his best writing.

Spring and All 2k16 / what are you reading now?