List with brief comments, some intriguing, others not(but dammit why can't I remember to get The Art of Memory?):
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/t-magazine/entertainment/my-10-favorite-books-simon-critchley.html?WT.mc_id=D-NYT-MKTG-MOD-30555-03-29-HD&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_c=
― dow, Tuesday, 29 March 2016 22:02 (eight years ago) link
Michael Bloch - Closet QueensWill Cuppy - The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
― soref, Wednesday, 30 March 2016 02:21 (eight years ago) link
Jean Rhys - After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie. There is no heartbreak or disappointment - Rhys' amin characters get just what they expect out of people which is exactly zilch. Nada. Certainly worse. And its a world you are happy to swim in because the writing is so good. In some ways Wide Sargasso Sea might be her only bad book - although I should revisit - it made not that much of an impression. Working back from Good Morning, Midnight is really working, even if I had to start it over again I'd do so from the beginning. Looking forward to two more books of short stories and Quartet later this year.
Tanizaki - In Praise of Shadows. At first its an innocent looking short essay on Japanese aesthetics. There is a shadow of nationalism running through it, a longing for what was and can never be again.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 30 March 2016 08:50 (eight years ago) link
Rhys's Tigers are Better-looking is extraordinary, I think, and Sleep it Off, Lady is slighter but still haunting at times in the way of increasingly skeletal late writing.
― one way street, Wednesday, 30 March 2016 19:11 (eight years ago) link
Excellent.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 30 March 2016 21:11 (eight years ago) link
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.
― like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Wednesday, 30 March 2016 22:09 (eight years ago) link
Well I am looking at reading a vol of Van Gogh's letters later in the year so that might be ok.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 30 March 2016 22:47 (eight years ago) link
Ha! Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo? They're wonderful.
― like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Wednesday, 30 March 2016 22:50 (eight years ago) link
Yeah.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 30 March 2016 22:55 (eight years ago) link
Pat Barker - Life ClassGary Donaldson - Truman Defeats DeweyByron - Selected Letters
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 30 March 2016 22:58 (eight years ago) link
... but which will take it upon themselves to start the WAYR thread of the new season?
― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 30 March 2016 23:51 (eight years ago) link
Here.
― one way street, Thursday, 31 March 2016 00:02 (eight years ago) link
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.
― no lime tangier, Thursday, 31 March 2016 00:43 (eight years ago) link
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!
― a hairy, howling toad torments a man whose wife is deathly ill (James Morrison), Thursday, 31 March 2016 01:43 (eight years ago) link
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.
― inside, skeletons are always inside, that's obvious. (dowd), Tuesday, 19 April 2016 12:31 (eight years ago) link
Spring and All 2k16 / what are you reading now?
― koogs, Tuesday, 19 April 2016 12:38 (eight years ago) link