NYRB Publishing

'an ermine in czernopol' is just really, really good

anyone read Hav, the Jan Morris travel fiction thing that they have forthcoming. Usually enjoy morris, am tempted.

― you don't exist in the database (woof), Wednesday, August 24, 2011 11:00 AM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just read this, really enjoyed it. its actually two books in one -- one set in 1985 and one in 2005 -- the first is better but the second works fine as a companion piece

Oh yeah, I gotta have Hav. The travel non-fiction I've read was rich, dense but very clear, very careful, with no hesitation.Comes from climbing all those mountains, incl the ones w streets. Also liked Conundrum, re the sex change. Haven't read the pre-op, Desmond era adventures, but I better.

Lethem praises Patrick Hamilton's NYRB editions in current Rolling Stone, mentions that Hamilton provided the basis of Hitchcock's Gaslight and Rope (the latter with a little help from Leopold and Loeb, or so I assumed)

reading the sheckley story collection right now, very fun

Patrick Hamilton is so much one of my favourite writers

from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/bookexpo-america.html

I also discovered that, starting this fall, N.Y.R.B. is launching a new e-book-only imprint, made up of literary novels and books in translation singled out by the writer Sue Halpern. “Our logic is very simple,” Halpern writes. “Since, as the argument goes, it is too risky and expensive to bring out these sorts of books, we will take advantage of digital’s lower costs to expand the reading universe.” The first three offerings will be Lindsay Clarke’s “The Water Theatre” (September); Zena el Khalil’s “Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir” (October), and Yoram Kaniuk’s “1948” (November). The project is one answer to the lament about print’s demise; think of what’s now possible in the cheaper e-book form.

Patrick Hamilton is so much one of my favourite writers

Me too, and I think I first heard of him on ILB.

That ebook thing sounds excellent.

Anybody get Ride a Cockhorse? The original novel was published in '91.

I've ordered it, but it hasn't come in yet--looks good, though

struggling with the wedgwood

I keep reading sentences but they're not going in; she has an imperceptibly queer style. lots of sentences seem straightforward but don't seem to make a lot of sense. maybe I'm just in the wrong headspace rn

finished reading 'the mountain lion' which i liked a lot and thought felt kinda sui generis like it wasnt really a story about childhood or coming-of-age but it also wasnt a fable, really, although it has strong elements of both?

i think of Molly as a character that defies any attempt at readerly sentimental identification, but i don't know if she's a villain, exactly. she's terrifying.

she is terrifying! i didnt hate her and they way stafford slopes in and out of her pov, mixing her and her brother up makes it hard to get a real sense of her somehow? idk i almost felt like despite everything she was still a mystery to me, nothing she did would surprise but everything seemed uncertain and unpredictable too.

i've been going to the park on my lunch breaks and reading renata adler's 'speedboat' over and over because parts of it stick in my mind w/o really holding shape or meaning so i keep reading it and bits pieces and puzzling over it and i think i'm somewhat obsessed with it in a shameful sort of way, i want to start to talking and writing the way she does but not really having the knack for it, the ear for it i guess and no one i know has read it or wants to talk about it at all and every mention of her on ilx is either in relation to pauline kael (christ) or feminism (jeez) and i mean

Or about the ponytail.

Reading/enjoying Elizabeth David's A Book of Mediterranean Food. Written as a kind of food/luxury porn in 1940s food-rationed Britain, full of then-obscure ingredients like cilantro. Recipes in prose form. Fun.

If my shopping trip today is anything to go by cilantro is still obscure in Britain. wtffffff

I recently finished Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant. It was enjoyable but a lot of the stories are the sort that I think I'd get more out of if I had ppl to discuss them with. I have The Tenants of Moonbloom waiting to be read now, which I'm looking forward to.

speedboat was on sale at my favourite local bookstore i`ll see what i can do

Salsa - not sure where you are in the UK but cilantro is generally un-obscure here. We do call it coriander, mind.

so annoyed to have been beaten to that

(Psst. Don't tell salsa shark about the rocket/arugula thing just yet)

Speedboat was great. I read it around a month ago.

Haha! Okay this is dumb but I had no idea that cilantro = coriander. For some reason it never even occurred to me that they might be the same thing (yes, obv idiotic since they look exactly the same, I just thought it was a coincidence). Well, thanks for that. :$

Reading/enjoying Elizabeth David's /A Book of Mediterranean Food/. Written as a kind of food/luxury porn in 1940s food-rationed Britain, full of then-obscure ingredients like cilantro. Recipes in prose form. Fun.

cooked suleiman's pilaf just last night - one of my all time favourite dishes.

summer sale: http://www.nybooks.com/books/summersale/

what should i get?

stoner!

Stoner shook me quite a bit last summer.

Try Apartment in Athens too.

alfred you've read most of those amis ones, right?

apart from lucky jim, which would you recommend?

the two from "gritty american novels" i've read (nightmare alley and on the yard) are both pretty incredible

thought about ordering the picture book collection for my daughter's bday but i think she's still a little young for them

also: all those K. Amis titles (I haven't read The Alteration)

The Green Man is good. So is The Old Devils but it's ponderous in spots.

The Alteration is great. So are the Esther Averill children's books.

does nyrb have a bookshop in manhattan or am i imagining that? the google maps result for it looks like offices.

Don't know about Manhattan but I believe there are places with a lot of their books in some of the other boroughs

ha thx. i think i had probably confused nyrb and lrb.

is stoner really good

I liked it up until the end which kind of ruined it for me.

i am 20pp in so who knows, but it comes recommended by tom hanks and time magazine, and i have seen about five people reading it on the columbia campus in three weeks.

the international rise in the prominence of stoner is fascinating/weird.

you forgot morris dickstein. (xp)

I liked Stoner enough to read his novel on Augustus lol

I still need to read warlock and 30 years war

i read stoner a year or two ago and honestly have very little memory of it. read warlock instead (or first, at least).

You guys have sold me on Warlock but but never got around to reading the library copy I had. Still gotta finish The Long Ships.

oh god i didnt realize stoner was by the guy who wrote augustus! i liked augustus, actually

the best nyrb book I've read is The Fountain Overflows, you should all read it.

oh god i didnt realize stoner was by the guy who wrote augustus! i liked augustus, actually

I did too but I had to overcome my addition to Vidal's approach to history (specifically in Julian).

Argh, I tried to read Augustus and hated it so fucking much. I hope Stoner is better.

i didnt like 'stoner' at all, probably because its deeply stupid

'speedboat' was the best of the recentish stuff i've read from them. i'd also recommend 'the murderess'