It's Fall, and the Autumn of the year, and the store of fruit supplants the rose - so what windfall words have you been reading?

O Nate - is it still worth reading? I picked up Among the Believers recently but haven't got around to it yet (that and a thousand other books). Rage aside, is he a perceptive chap?

I think it's still worth reading. I have a lot of respect for his skills as a craftsman of sentences. He has a deft way sometimes of summoning a depth of feeling with a few quick lines. He sometimes has a surprising way of phrasing something - it sounds like maybe some old-fashioned idiom that you've never heard before. Maybe he read it somewhere in some old 19th century British writer, but it seems perfectly apt to the context of how he uses it. I should probably dig for an example to make this clearer. Anyway, I would say read it, but if you find yourself getting bored in one country, don't be afraid to skip ahead to the next section. It's a little longer than it really needs to be, I think. I haven't read Among the Believers.

Among The Believers blew my mind when I read it (right after 9/11). I think it's the best of his non-fiction, a blend of travel/history/journalism and far less angry & aggrieved than say his writing on India. Written in 1979-80 it's chillingly prescient yet also subtle, nuanced. One thing about VSN is his (deserved) reputation as a curmudgeon overshadows his very real empathetic gifts. Coincidentally I just finished Half A Life and am now halfway through Magic Seeds, his final (he says) novels. Overall I'd say he's a better fiction than non-fiction writer but every one of the dozen or so of his I've read has been worthwhile in the extreme. His unflashy stripped-down prose is so transportive, cinematic. There isn't anyone else remotely like him.

"Just as no man can truly wish to be someone else, since no man can imagine himself without the heart and mind he has been granted, so no man of a later time can really know what it was like to live on the land in those days."

That's a good example of his style. Unflashy is right. Almost bland except for a couple of little details that show his workmanship. In that example, I'd say the special touches are "granted" and "on the land". Both seem a little old-fashioned but not in a cliched way, and they are just enough to make the sentence unfamiliar enough to pop, despite the familiar sentiment it conveys.

Could the 'old-fashioned' just come from his being from the Caribbean? I find it interesting how the English language is developing slightly differently depending on when the seed was laid down. You don't notice it so much with American or Australian because you hear them so much (even though some of the vocabulary is old-fashioned), but e.g. South Africans speaking casually can sound a little bit archaic. Maybe the Caribbean has preserved certain phrasings similarly?

I guess that could be at least part of it - regional variations in English. Also, it wouldn't be unusual for a bookish fellow who probably spends a lot of time with his nose between the pages of a bygone century to sometimes break out the archaic diction.

Kim Wozencraft, Rush
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son

Going for a month-long trip. Think I took longer in thinking about and selecting than on such things as clothes.

Anyway I think I'll re-read parts of Flann O'Brien, Borges, Musil, Broch. Took some Morante and Cortazar.

Then

Dave Hickey - Air Guitar and Joanna Russ - The Female Man for the longish plane journey.

Above all Proust (last couple of vols)

Typing this up I'm thinking its too much. otoh there will be no internet, and I have the space.

It will be the winter thread when I get back. Best to all.

Have a good break xyzzzz__!

I'm actually rather enjoying Uncle Silas now, his topographical writing in particular is good and an air of uncertain menace and supernatural retribution hangs about the whole tale without ever being made explicit.

reading p.k. dick anthology of short stories.

man, someone just brought in that bolano 2666 along with a great stack of books to trade and i don't think i can do it. color me daunted. so cool looking though. ( i think i might read the alasdair gray collection this guy brought in though. never read him, i don't think.)

which collection? unlikely stories mostly?

it's the eye of the sibyl. volume five in the citadel complete pkd story series. the little black box, the war with the fnools, and lots more.

Other author I think!

oh sorry hahaha! yes that's the one! unlikely stories, mostly. it looks crazy. is it really good?

Just finished Dorian Gray, half way through Jekyll & Hyde. Looking to start Wilkie Collins' "Woman In White".

"Unlikely Stories, Mostly" is my favourite book of all time.

this guy brings me good books. i love when he comes by the store. lotsa brit stuff. terry jones's war on the war on terror. villain's paradise - a history of britain's underworld. the english civil war by diane purkiss. a space opera anthology edited by brian aldiss.

and he brought me liebling's book on earl long. nobody brings me liebling!

(plus another book i'm taking home. a book of sci-fi stories by william tenn. never read him before.)

"Unlikely Stories, Mostly" is my favourite book of all time."

wow! well, okay, its going home with me too.

Scott, read it now... The only thing I haven't managed to enjoy in that book is the wilfully impenetrable "Logopandacy", but I think there's a reason for that. On the other hand, "Five Letters From An Eastern Empire" is all kinds of amazing. Do you have it in hardback? If so take the dust jacket off - the gold lettering was insisted upon the publishers (Canongate?) by Mr Gray (who had spent a good deal of his life sleeping on hardwood floors), and nearly ruined them.

And while I'm at it - why can I never find Gray books in shops? He's regarded by many as one of the greatest living Scottish authors and yet I never come across them save for chance finds in s/h bookshops.

xpost - It is good. He's got a very distinctive voice; precise, careful, compassionate, rather a didactic tone, not garrulous, which he'll use to describe everything from political theory to whimsical imaginative fancies.

I must admit I don't tend to pick him up now, partly I think because I've tired slightly of that voice. But I always used to admire his capacity for mixing the mundane with the weird (and often the sexually mundane with the sexually weird) and the slightly Stevensonian desire to describe many different subjects without varying the mental approach - democratising them, bringing them to the same level, so that the political is informed by the imaginative and sexual (and the other ways round).

WORK AS IF YOU LIVE IN THE EARLY DAYS OF A BETTER NATION

was his inscription to The Book of Prefaces and there's no doubt that for him writing is a political activity - a political activity which is designed to include the outlandish, rather than exclude it. Civic writing, if you like.

Perhaps because of this he can feel a bit pious and restrictive at times, but hey, that's criticising him for something he's not. Definitely worth a go (fwiw, I really liked Lanark and Janine 1982 of his novels).

Love the mixture of artwork and writing. Agree that it's odd you can't find him, dog latin - I haven't looked for him in bookshops for a while, but he should definitely be more easily available.

granted I live in scotland but our bookshops are always pretty well stocked w/alasdair gray

is 'logopandacy' the one about thomas urquhart?

i should reread gray. i read the three i really love (the two novels mentioned plus unlikely stories, mostly) in sixth form, though, and i'm worried that if i read them now i'll see flaws in them the same way i have with everything i've read since

currently finishing wise blood & reading some Father Brown short stories

There are at least two editions of Unlikely Stories, Mostly. The newer one has a few extra stories. I know only the older one. One of my favorite books.

Gray is very direct. There is no understatement or evasion. I assume it is a Scottish trait to avoid those things. But that doesn't account for the ebullient footnotes and rhyming page titles in Lanark.

Besides those I have read Ten Tales Tall and True, and skimmed through Poor Things, Kelvin Walker and A History Maker which I didn't like as much.

Civic writing, if you like.

He wrote a polemical work called Why Scots Should Rule Scotland. Can't get more civic than that.

I also like the self-deprecating jacket descriptions he writes for his books. Unlikely Stories has great fake reviews on the back.

"Five Letters From An Eastern Empire" is all kinds of amazing.

Yes indeedy!

Recently finished The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder. I guess that most of Wilder's ouevre now dwells in the shadow cast by Our Town, which has entered the American pantheon of frequent Broadway revivals and compulsory high-school reading. Rey seems mostly forgotten, though somehow a movie adaptation starring De Niro came and went this decade, without garnering much attention. Instead of being about early 20th-century small-town America, San Luis Rey is set in the 18th-century colonial capital of Peru, so perhaps the subject-matter is less accessible, and the writing is also a bit more writerly, and the characters less plain-spoken. Like Our Town though, Rey covers a lot of ground in a small amount of pages and doesn't shy away from asking (and answering) the Big Questions - the ones about the meaning of life and such. The narrative voice will be familiar - it shares a certain gentle, avuncular, but slightly clinical tone with the Stage Manager of Our Town.

I read Wilder's 'The Ides of March' a little while ago--it was actually very good, too--political novel about Julius Caesar's downfall.

Own recent reading...

Nevil Shute: Pastoral -- not bad, but no classic

Lore Segal: Lucinella -- had high hopes, was a bit disappointed

Leo Perutz: Little Apple -- now this is the stuff: proud Austrian whose been a POW with the Russians during WW1 is released because of the Russian Revolution, and then spends the next umpteen years in a mad, obsessive quest to find a Russian officer who mildly humiliated him in order to take his revenge--ends up fighting on BOTH sides of the Russian revolution, plus all sorts of other oddness.

Alan Furst: Shadow Trade -- one of his earlier books, which he now keeps out of print -- actually really good, but it was odd reading a Furst book set in the modern world, with TVs and so forth

Jerry Stahl, Permanent Midnight
Richard Peck, Don't Look and It Won't Hurt
Richard Naughton, My Brother Stealing Second

starting:

Simon Reynolds, Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock

What was the Stahl like?

Interesting. It's a memoir of his struggle to kick his heroin habit. Tends to sensationalize the sleaze & assumes (probably correctly) that most of his audience has no firsthand knowledge of drug/street culture, but I liked it.

Sounds promising--I've got his novel about the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, but haven't read it yet: wasn't sure if it would be sleazy trash or good stuff, but maybe it will be both.

'now reading' would be a better Thread title, imo.
That Stahl was filmed; pretty funny, esp where they're looking fo the stolen stash. ' ow, if I was percodan, where would I be?'

Slowly enjoyed 'Against The Day' ( there's no other way, really) and, if the trade paperback ever comes out in the US, will buy 'Inherent Vice.'
'Bardo Thodol', mostly for its contribution to INLAND EMPIRE.

just finished effi briest (surprisingly boring), started closely watched trains

working on 'blood's a rover', the new ellroy. picks up the threads from 'the cold six thousand', a swift read, contemptible characters as per usual, leavened with a little more humor this time imo, and there's a mystery running through this one: who pulled off the brilliant and astonishingly violent armored-car heist that opens the novel and seems to have, at this point, no connection to the proceedings?

Reading that 'tibetan book of the dead'put me in mind of 'The Sea Of Fertility'
quartet by Yukio Mishima. I loved it as a kid, though that was before I realized that translations were so hopelessly useless.
A great bardo work, anyway, although the author probably was reincarnated as a Korean or an American, if not an axolotl or carp.
On topic:no luck on the paperback of 'Inherent Vice', so I bought a $10, beautifully printed and bound Charles Phillips,'Aztec and Maya: The Complete Illustrated History.' Excellent and far-ranging visually, not matched by the careless writing. Actually a work on Mesoamerican in general. Wonderful illustrations, mind. Well worth the sawbuck.

In case anyone hasn't seen it, I'm running a ILX Book of the 00s Poll on the main board. We've got about 250 nominations so far but always room for a few more, and would be good to have the regulars here participating.

i have read approximately 1 book written after 2000 so i'm no help :)

Just read:
Paul Bowles: Up Above the World -- Bowles does a crime thriller, sort of. Rather good, and the ending, though vaguely ridiculous, is an improvement on the way his other novels tend to have endings that are completely ridiculous

Now reading:
Natsume Soseki: Sanshiro -- fabulous. Published 1908 originally. Young man from the country goes to Tokyo university, makes friends, goes girl-watching, gets out of his depth... Beautiful.

I thought the ending to 'The Sheltering Sky' was very effective. Novel, not the movie.
'Up Above The world' as a whole struck me as pretty minor-league. No doubt hash was much cheaper then and there.
Now Reading: 'Leif's Voyage According To Flayeyjarbok' from 'An Introduction to Old Norse'by E.V. Gordon ( which has the most pithy and annoying grammar of a language which I have ever encountered.)

Reading done coming to, in and coming back from Japan:

After The Quake, Haruki Murakami
Books Vs Cigarettes, George Orwell
The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse (probably my fave Wodehouse so far)
The Edogawa Rampo Reader (great, so much more than just a japanese Poe)
The Baron In The Trees, Italo Calvino (rather overtly corny and precious at times - guess I was expecting Calvino to be closer to Eco and Borges)
The Old Capital, Yasunari Kawabata (great)
The Invisible Hand, Adam Smith (extracts from The Wealth Of Nations, just the thing to read at Frankfurt airport with two hours of sleep)

alleged current reading:

margaret atwood, the blind assassin
lorrie moore, birds of america
eric ambler, a passage of arms
george r.r. martin, a storm of swords
christopher priest (ed.), expectations
donald allen and robert creeley (eds.), the new american story
niall ferguson, empire

i think i've started like six books since last i finished one. which was another eric ambler.

I thought the ending to 'The Sheltering Sky' was very effective. Novel, not the movie.
'Up Above The world' as a whole struck me as pretty minor-league. No doubt hash was much cheaper then and there.

Sheltering Sky is definitely a better book--it just seemed to me to lose it in the last 1/10, as did Let it Come Down, which I also loved. Having read that Up Above.. was Bowles doing a crime novel, I probably had lowered expectations, which were pleasantly exceeded.

I checked out a library copy of Ghost Train the the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux and I am about half through it. It is his second whack at the train journey he took in Great Railway Bazaar.

PT's voice as a travel writer is pretty recognizable by now, and he does a workmanlike job with the writing, but he doesn't bring much freshness or energy to this book. I rank it low in his list of travel books, but still readable.

I had no idea the man had written so many books!
The only two I've read( and both of which I liked) are 'Mosquito Coast' ( faithful enough film adaptation)and 'O-Zone.'
OD: Adolfo Bioy Casares, 'The Invention of Morel'
This would be part of my 'Lost' reading list.
I had totally forgotten, btw, that Aldous Huxley 'Island' starts much as the tv series does.

finished recently:
too much happiness - alice munro
in country - bobbie ann mason
netherland - joseph o'neill
good faith - jane smiley
iron and silk - mark salzman

started:
shiloh and other stories - bobbie ann mason

netherland's style and language rang v v familiar of something else i've read recently, but i couldn't put my finger on it. still not sure how i feel about the story itself yet, but such a beautiful, rolling use of english. you could just melt right into the story.

the munro is good, but it's not open secrets. i guess it's hard to top a collection that amazing.

How is the new Munro collection overall? The last couple of things she's published in The NY have been just ok.

hmmm i think most of the collection is probably 'just ok', compared to her other work... but still so much better than a lot of other writers. in other words: worth a look, for sure.

That's the one from NRBQNYRB, is it?

I think that's Mavis Gallant