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

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (666 of them)

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.

dow, Saturday, 9 January 2016 22:08 (eight years ago) link

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

as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Sunday, 10 January 2016 06:27 (eight years ago) link

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.

Stevolende, Sunday, 10 January 2016 10:05 (eight years ago) link

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

an emotionally withholding exterminator (m coleman), Sunday, 10 January 2016 13:41 (eight years ago) link

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

The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 10 January 2016 13:45 (eight years ago) link

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.

xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 12 January 2016 10:12 (eight years ago) link

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

tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 12 January 2016 13:19 (eight years ago) link

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.

droit au butt (Euler), Tuesday, 12 January 2016 13:47 (eight years ago) link

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.

canoon fooder (dog latin), Tuesday, 12 January 2016 15:39 (eight years ago) link

really enjoyed your thoughts on Robinson, ledge

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

ledge, Tuesday, 12 January 2016 16:59 (eight years ago) link

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

James Morrison, Tuesday, 12 January 2016 22:46 (eight years ago) link

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

Bewlay Brothers & Sister Ray (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 13 January 2016 04:16 (eight years ago) link

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

Bewlay Brothers & Sister Ray (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 13 January 2016 04:18 (eight years ago) link

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.?

dow, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 04:58 (eight years ago) link

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

dow, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 05:00 (eight years ago) link

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

dow, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 05:01 (eight years ago) link

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

James Morrison, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 10:32 (eight years ago) link

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

Bewlay Brothers & Sister Ray (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 13 January 2016 10:39 (eight years ago) link

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.

a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, 13 January 2016 17:30 (eight years ago) link

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.

dow, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 20:43 (eight years ago) link

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

James Morrison, Friday, 15 January 2016 00:51 (eight years ago) link

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.

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 16 January 2016 22:43 (eight years ago) link

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

The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 16 January 2016 23:02 (eight years ago) link

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."

o. nate, Monday, 18 January 2016 02:04 (eight years ago) link

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

like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Monday, 18 January 2016 04:54 (eight years ago) link

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.

xyzzzz__, Monday, 18 January 2016 12:25 (eight years ago) link

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

like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 01:20 (eight years ago) link

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/

one way street, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 02:27 (eight years ago) link

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.

like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 03:37 (eight years ago) link

iow, Thomas Bernhard was not her intended audience

a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 04:36 (eight years ago) link

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?

Blecchstar Linus Must Comp (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 04:46 (eight years ago) link

indeed! oddly enough, though, the earlier parts of the Marianne Fritz book made me think of them--similar bitterness about post-war Austria, its complacency, etc

like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 05:52 (eight years ago) link

and, tbf, the book he was criticising apparently had pages looking like this
http://www.asymptotejournal.com/admin/data/NMIII.jpg

like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 05:53 (eight years ago) link

I'd have to say I also am not her intended audience.

a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 06:32 (eight years ago) link

You don't have to say it, we guessed already

Chicamaw (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 07:28 (eight years ago) link

Oh, and I'm reading and enjoying Bill Schelly's Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America - such a sad story, in many ways.

Chicamaw (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 07:30 (eight years ago) link

I'd have to say I also am not her intended audience.

I'd hasten to add that the book I read was NOT like that page at all

like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 08:44 (eight years ago) link

Yes I think that was her debut work.

I will be starting on Josef Winkler "When the time comes" shortly - also translated by Adrian West and he said somewhere her main work will never be translated but I don't see why you couldn't get at least a volume's worth across to English to get the flavour of the work - looks like a cross of Stein and Cardew's Treatise.

xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 11:40 (eight years ago) link

love this from that paris review thing:

"In general, the detractors of long, complex, unorthodox, or vexatious books have their counterpart in a small but fervent cult of readers: Joyceans, Nabokovians, those who claim to think highly of William Burroughs. In many cases, the esteem that accrues to difficult authors has little to do with their being read; a genius is born not of resolute bookworms slogging through arcane texts but of that critical mass of reviews, essays, and dissertations required to generate the clichés the reading public needs in order to sound intelligent—to make the comparison, no less inept for its ubiquity, of Knausgaard to Proust, or to apply the adjective Kafkaesque to any story about bureaucracy."

scott seward, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 14:27 (eight years ago) link

Wow.

Blecchstar Linus Must Comp (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 14:38 (eight years ago) link

He is an idiot, even if I'll always like him for bringing Josef Winkler into English.

xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 16:39 (eight years ago) link

Ugly THings #40 which is as good as the previous ones I've read and is almost book size. THis smoring I read the interview with Stu Boy king the original drummer with the Dictators tracing the history of the band at least up until they kicked him out.

Also read the thing on the Wrecking Crew which makes me want to see the new documentary thing.

Also reading Facing the Wrong Way the 4Ad biography still. Very interesting. Got as far as Dead can Dance''s Spleen and Ideal

Stevolende, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 16:50 (eight years ago) link

Wrecking Crew doc interesting but mildly disappointing as these things can be.

Blecchstar Linus Must Comp (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 17:28 (eight years ago) link

wrecking crew doc gave me some chills just because the people involved are so friggin' cool and it's kinda unbelievable that they were a part of so many amazing things, but, yeah, it's not that illuminating. more like one of those labor of love things done by someone who isn't that probing. cool just to hear those people talk though. and see them.

scott seward, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 17:47 (eight years ago) link

Yup

Blecchstar Linus Must Comp (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 17:51 (eight years ago) link

Hadnt even realised there was a 4AD book, sounds very promising

like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Tuesday, 19 January 2016 21:25 (eight years ago) link

Suhrkamp, whose director, the legendary Siegfried Unseld, hoped to market Fritz as a “female Joyce.”

A female Arno Schmidt wasn't good enough?

alimosina, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 21:28 (eight years ago) link

4AD book was in Fopp as a 2 for £5 choice. I mainly grabbed it to get the Julian Cope novel 131.
Very interesting so far. I didn't know much of the history. Just familiar with bits of the music.

Stevolende, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 21:37 (eight years ago) link

Lately I've been reading Alex Mar's Witches in America, which is breezy but facile: Mar tries to put her own personality, suspended between the longing for connection with greater forces and a reflexive skepticism, at the center of her reportage on various traditions of American paganism, but she mostly winds up seeming smug. The book is interesting enough on the merits of its subject matter, but even as Mar interviews self-identified necromancers and hangs out in swamps to undergo Crowleyan initiations, the prose never really becomes lively enough to dispel the impression that this is the kind of book about researching witchcraft a Slate contributor would write.

I've also finally gotten around to Balzac's Pere Goriot; in some ways I think I like Balzac less for his own sake than for that of the writers for whom he opens a path, but I appreciate his attention to the phantasmagoric grime of city
Iife and the way he undercuts the possible sentimentality of the plot by hinting at the perverse qualities of Goriot's consuming paternal love.

I've also been reading Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights and Seduction and Betrayal: the former is one of the most successful attempts to construct a novel by the juxtaposition of lyrical fragments that I've read lately. (I'm also just a sucker, for boring personal reasons, for writers who recollect youth in Kentucky with a cold eye from a northern remove.)

Finally, I've posted about her in the ILE obituary thread, but in the days since the writer and activist Bryn Kelly's intensely saddening death, I've been reading and rereading her essays and blogs: her story "Other Balms, Other Gileads" is still one of the most moving things I've read about the everyday experience of HIV stigma today, although it doesn't quite prepare one for the scathing humor of her pseudonymous writing on medical bureaucracy and queer relationships as the Hussy and the Party Bottom. Links to most of her writing can be found here: http://topsidepress.tumblr.com/post/137350042394/i-love-your-profound-insecurity-i-love-you-even

one way street, Wednesday, 20 January 2016 00:30 (eight years ago) link

*Witches of America, that is

one way street, Wednesday, 20 January 2016 00:47 (eight years ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.