Words! Words! Words!: Autumn 2012 'What do you read, my lord?' thread

forster didn't write ten but if you include his short fiction...

Just bought a copy of A Glass of Blessings last month, will get to reading it soon I hope. My first Pym.

Other 20th Century Brits w/ a 'good run' - A. Huxley, E. Waugh, K. Amis, J.G. Ballard (and other Brit SF authors - B. Aldiss v consistent, for example), Murdoch (who, according to A N Wilson, v much disliked M Spark), B.S. Johnson, E. Taylor, and yeah, def H. Green.

As for A. Powell, I find Simon Raven's 'Alms for Oblivion' sequence funnier, snobbier, nastier, and altogether much more good gossipy fun.

Yeah, I'd probably read more Raven before reading more Powell, he seemed good fun from the one I read… Places Where They Sing I think.

Waugh's probably my favourite c20th British novelist, but I don't think he's especially consistent - I think there's high contrast even in the 30s novels, like yes there's good stuff in Black Mischief, but it's far weaker than A Handful of Dust. But Ballard! Yes!

Alms for Oblivion sounds good! 'Nastier' is something I look for.

Do need to read more Brit writing...so down on the current lot and I shouldn't use that as an excuse.

Powell's Dance nicely points up the distinction between what I enjoy and what I think is in some sort of quasi-objective sense "good". I love reading his stuff, but almost on the guilty pleasure level. I'd have no interest in trying to make a case for him as a great or even very good writer and I'm always mildly surprised when I come across evidence that people whose opinions I respect think of him as one.

Biggest surprise for me was finding out that Donald Westlake was a massive Powell fan - he even includes a reference to DTTMOT in one of his hardboiled novels, Plunder Squad:

"Sternberg stripped to his boxer shorts, turned down the bed, settled himself comfortably with the pillows behind his back, and opened the Anthony Powell novel he’d started on the plane. It was Magnus Donners he wanted to identify with, but he kept finding his sympathies going to Widmerpool."

Found it funny that Tariq Ali is a huge fan (but it sort of makes sense, again, as with Hitchens, it's that counter- or mirror-establishment, radical dissent via Presidency of the Oxford Union)

I'm surprised to find myself in the opposite camp to many of you - I tend to think ADTTMOT is utterly magnificent - though not flawless - and I'm always amazed when I find people whose opinions I respect (like you lot obv) who think otherwise.

as far as current BritLit goes i feel like i need to read those edward st. aubyn books since everybody and their mother keeps raving about them. i want to see what the hubbub is about.

i think i must have a problem with great wars cuz i never finished parade's end, the powell books, or the sword of honour trilogy. i'd like to give the powell series another go someday. i don't think i actually owned all 12 books and for some psychological reason i didn't feel like i had an obligation to keep going. i'm also curious about his 30's novels. i'll bet i'd like some of those.

just finished High Wind in Jamaica—charming, hilarious, big-hearted & mordantly ironic all at once. a keeper, for sure.

should I bother with the movie?

High Wind was my big discovery this summer.

xp hmm iirc a bit too much in the way of thinly veiled child abuse & general savagery for me to agree with at least the first three of your descriptives there.

yeah that book was just ok i thought

xpost he kind of fell over himself with the whole 'describe unpleasantness from the children's uncomprehending perspective' thing (I think this was what I meant by "mordantly ironic" but who knows) but I loved it all the same... I think I fell in love with the carefully-observed zaniness of the children tbrr—took me back to teenage summers as a camp counselor

*fell all over himself—as in, he used that device a lot,

zaniness! one died and the rest showed no concern, one of them killed someone, and one went mad! nah but i get what you mean, it started off with a good sense of rambunctiousness, it just went a bit o_O after that for me.

there was—for me anyway—a weird plausibility to the children's reactions/emotions... undeniable savagery but it's not exactly Lord of the Flies

also, the animals! I think I want a pig now

"there were some good descriptions of cool stuff and it delivered a strong emotional charge via a beautiful myth about (loss of) childhood innocence. A+ novel, would read again."

I finished the first term of the Jefferson administration. I took a break and re-read Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis and am now halfway through Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, which is a workmanlike effort for a debut, but nothing great. Very reflective of the 1950s though.

how you liking Adams?

His analysis of the politics is quite crisp and persuasive. His writing is generally clear and easy to follow. These are formidable virtues in narrative history. He does not have the force or the wit of Gibbon, but who does?

robertson davies!

High Wind is swell. In Hazard is spectacular as well.

AS FOR ME:

The Dog Of The South by Charles Portis - Ha.
The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout - 'Bout 60 pages in. Haven't decided what I think but I know I'm reading on, so implicit approval.

Having found my unread Derek Robinsons in moving boxed stuff around the house, I'm reading 'Piece of Cake'. Very blackly comic novel of WW2 pilots. All the Alan Furst fans on ILB need to try Derek Robinson.

noted

Finished Ubik last night: sheer awesomeness. Now onto Galactic Pot Healer, which already seems way different than the previous two.

gph is my favourite philip k dick novel and in some moods my favourite novel period, but i'm not sure if it's any good

alan furst - mission to paris

nothing "new" but i think this is my favorite by furst so far, the romantic/sex scenes are better ahem executed if nothing else

michael connelly - the drop

can't defend him as a great or even good writer in the literary sense but his LA crime novels are involving pulp, redolent of post-noir cali

leanne shapton - swimming studies

memoir by illustrator/graphic designer about her days as competitive swimmer and musing on time spent in water. meanders and then some but the good bits are really special, totally sent me back to my chlorine-infused days as a swimmer, intense sense memories and emotional insights into an adolescence spent staring at the black lines on the bottom of a pool and being super-competitive. this book got great reviews but frankly i can't imagine non-atheletes digging it though it is nicely written if self-regarding. fwiw her art, interspersed throughout, isn't very good.

pete townshend - who i am

the who were another teenage passion of mine so i saw this in the library and thought why not? liked it better than keith richards though its way different, just as soul-searching and somewhat self-serious as you'd expect also as compelling and impassioned as you'd expect. he's a true 60s guy, into spiritual questing and the guru trip. the navel-gazing was a little boring but the lack of gossip and gross-out stories was refreshing.

plus, he was in the who! how cool is that? i prefer oral history/interview type things over autobios by musicans for the most part (dylan's book being a big big exception cuz it was so amazing) but i would read pete on pete. i never read the keef book either. would buy used someday though. i just can't believe that he remembers anything. or remembers anything accurately anyway. keef not pete.

Finished The History of Love yesterday - it's...alright. Some lovely passages in there but Alma Singer and her brother are a bit too zany-indie-movie for me, but the Leo Gursky chapters are great. The main thing I took away from it though was the need to stop writing endless list sections in my own prose because the ones in this book really weighed it down in parts (a bittersweet feeling as I loved writing listy bits before but have now been shown their capacity to irritate and detract from the story. Ah well).

Onto Jesamyn Ward's Salvage the Bones now.

Maria Dermout's The Ten Thousand Things is a nice quiet thing - Dutch reverie on life on an Indonesian island, kinda magic-realism, esp. in the coda, which pulls all the parts together.

Now onto Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

In Hazard is spectacular as well.

Good to know! I found this a few months ago but haven't had the chance to start it yet.

Currently almost finished with What Maisie Knew by Henry James (pretty great) and Charleston and Other Stories by Jose Donoso (worth checking out but I prefer his longer works).

for some reason i was thinking about one of the final scenes from "this side of paradise" the other day and and i saw mr. ferrenby and his friend in the car as big lebowski and phillip seymoun hoffman. now i can't un-think this!

Coetzee - waiting for the barbarians

Reading a bit of 'Ulysses' for class

Ulysses has lots of that

Coetzee - waiting for the barbarians

that's quite rough, even for coetzee

yeah, but it's good and tight though somewhat schematic and doesn't bring something new to the table

Late Coetzee >> Early Coetzee imo

gonna read Summertime soon, we'll see

I finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union, really enjoyed it. Sure, it kind of dissipated in the very end, but the setting, prose, and classic noir beats were pretty dope.

Might stay on the Jewish tip and read The Instructions on a friend's recommendation (he was the first one to actually read the copy that's been getting passed around here).

I'm closing in on the finish of YPU right now, funnily enough. I initially eyerolled my way through the hamfisted tropes - That's right, tough guy, your ex-wife is now your boss! - but eventually I realized that's really all a part of the fun. It is very entertaining.

The Instructions is good

I'm inserting another book between the first and second Jefferson administrations, Assembling California, John MacPhee.

It's a re-read, but the subject matter is timely for me, because my wife and I are fairly deep into figuring out how to prepare for a 9.0 or greater earthquake that is certain to hit the PNW eventually. The perodicity for these big quakes averages about 300 years and the last one was 312 years ago, in 1700 AD; this has been verified through Japanese records of tsunamis, coupled with local evidence on the Oregon and Washington coasts. We figure it makes sense to have a plan for this, even if there's a perfectly good chance it won't happen for another 100 years.

Anyway, the book is great, although MacPhee has a fondness for the more abstruse geologoical jargon, and the book could use a few more diagrams. It is something of a grand summation of where plate tectonics theory and evidence stood, circa 1990. If you can stand some techno-jargon, it is a good book indeed for understanding this stuff.

aimless: are you planning to go on to adams's madison books after TJ?

I own a copy of the Madison admin histories; eventually I expect to read them, too.

man I really enjoyed Galactic Pot Healer.

The complete short stories of JG Ballard volume 2