2018 Springtime For ILB: My Huggles. What Are You Reading Now?

it badly needs a good ebook so i don't break my back lugging the thing around

^^^

Well done on finishing the Burton (if you have :))

oh, i'm a loooong way from being done with the anatomy. the copy i have is not very reader friendly so have been taking frequent breaks to read some lighter fare. currently onto a third tey which is(xposts) miss pym disposes!

always feel burton is not v linear and more of a branching, delving book anyway. frequent breaks is good.

as noted elsewhere, did two liu cixin - The Three Body Problem is just... very enjoyable, full of concepts and fun-serious *thinking* about society. thomp landed some fairly heavy blows on it in the SF thread, but i think it comes through. The Dark Forest (the sequel) is bloody heavy going and is about the logistics of preparing for a centuries-hence alien invasion, but about halfway through I started enjoying that too, even tho its main narrative force is just *waiting*, and a very amusing and ott told you so at the end.

after that picked up the knowledge we have lost in information: the history of information in modern economics by philip mirowksi and edward nik-khah, which i laid into on the academic writing is often purposeful obfuscated thread, and deservedly, I think, but I've started really getting into *this* as well ffs. The excessive, shit-academic prose, conceptually laying into rational-agent and information-hooked economic theory is suspect, fun, and a good space to be in directly after the liu cixin. the writing really is abysmal at times tho.

idk maybe my taste buds are just fucked.

Reading Robinson by Muriel Spark, her second novel, and seemingly one of her more obscure ones (or maybe I just don't see it as often as second-hand copies of Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). It's a stranded-on-a-desert-island story - curiously reminiscent of The Invention of Morel in some ways! - and so far as funny and clever as all her early books.

I read “Mothers” by Chris Power, recently published
Short stories, and it’s really bloody good. I don’t know what to tell you about it really apart from I loved it.

I finished Another Country, James Baldwin. It had its moments, but I can't say I thought it was particularly illuminating or enjoyable. The characters seemed like lost souls, but once the reader gathers this much, neither they nor the author had much to add to that. Perhaps coincidentally, the amount of booze and cigarettes consumed in this book was staggering. It was ongoing on nearly every page of this 400 page novel. Yet, the author and his characters don't seem to find this remarkable.

Onward to Stefan Zweig's Journey Into the Past!

Getting republished in November, so I know what we'll all be reading then: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZ-ikpuU0AA8A8E.jpg

I finished Night Soldiers by Alan Furst. It was a fun ready, just what I was looking for. Nominally a spy novel, but maybe more of an historical adventure story, as the main character wanders through various colorful episodes of European mid-20th century military conflagration. Furst has done his homework and you can pretty easily imagine yourself in the scenes he draws. His relish at telling a good yarn is also infectious, if some of the plots seem a bit recycled at times.

Next up is Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford.

Furst is wonderful.

As xposted to the cute octopus thread, I'm reading the very very very excellent OTHER MINDS by Peter Godfrey-Smith, about cephalopod intelligence/consciousness

Journey Into the Past was very short and a bit overwrought, even for Zweig, but he is (as ever) extremely astute about the psychology of people in stressful situations.

Last night I dipped a toe into the waters of Chateubriand's Memoirs From Beyond the Grave in the new NYRB edition. I'm not entirely sure if I will stick with it atm. I may skip sideways into something else. What will suit my mood is not easy to guess right now. Some family turmoil on the horizon, but nothing ott.

I read 1977, the second of David Peace's Red Riding quartet. It's almost laughably bleak and brutal - to the point that it stops being human at all, and becomes a horrific dreamstate. I keep returning to aspects of it, like finding bits of sick in one's teeth days after a hangover has passed.

Also re-read the first part of Richard Holmes' Coleridge biography, in preparation for a solo walk across the Quantocks. He's so clearly in love with his subject that critical distance is largely absent, but it does make for a totally immersive experience. It also led me to listen to the Burton reading of the Rime, which is just magnificent (and on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3omLIUBA47D2ISP3yGE0XN?si=G0JFkBm5St6XptWtgwZ4NA).

like finding bits of sick in one's teeth

up one's nose ime, but yes good analogy. i keep meaning to read him, but everything says that i will need cleansing salts and muscular christianity exercises ready when I do.

Yeah, i read the first one and it was so over the top i couldn't take it seriously enough to go on with book two

You can see he's taken inspiration from Elroy and - particularly - Derek Raymond, but there's no letup, none of the fallow spaces to breathe. It's clearly a strategy, but it's exhausting, and aye, occasionally laughable in its relentless extremity.

I've read some of the later stuff and there's more control, more variety in the field of vision. GB84 has the same grimness, but its scope is wider. It's a brilliant book.

reading Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson. from 1984. it has Russians. it has carbonaceous chondrites.

(i actually started to read fred pohl's first solo novel Slave Ship but i couldn't do it. i was kinda forcing myself to read it. which didn't seem like a fun thing to do at all.)

Platonov - The Return. Some of the sentences are all-time, so it was never a question enjoying one of my favourite writers again. The title is great but it can also apply to most of the stories as many are about varieties of return - and whether the loss can be overcome, whether people that are away can reconnect.

Burton reading of the Rime unavailable in US, apparently :(

I'm reading The Glass Castle and some Arthur C. Clarke short stories.

I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and it left me scientifically unfulfilled so I've moved on to The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

Rather than dive into Chateaubriand, I've made a sideways juke into Geoffroy de Villehardouin's chronicle of the Fourth Crusade, which never got around to fighting any infidel Saracens, but did briefly conquer Christian Constantinople and controlled the shrunken rump of the Byzantine Empire for a few years. It is a surprisingly factual and even-handed history for its period.

Flann O'Brien - Myles Away from Dublin*
Philip K Dick - We Can Remember it for You Wholesale

The O'Brien is another nice bunch of reprints of his newspapers columns. 100 pages in and I felt like I wasn't going to get much out of it so I left it. Nice enough.

Its been years since I read any PKD, and I never read his short stories before. I am really loving these. The title story became Total Recall. So far the compressed nature of the format means its a more dizzying experience than the novels.

Still on Howards End, but also started Pride & Prejudice because me and my gf have decided to analyse books together (I got her to read Our Man In Havana).

HAve moved on to different intelligent animals after the octopi: Esther Woolfson's 'Corvus', about living with a rook, magpie, etc. Lovely.

Also read a George RR Martin novella (never having tackled his Fire and Ice and Thrones books), and it was balls.

Will Carruthers Playing Bass With 3 Left Hands which is quite good.

Finishing up Detroit 67 by Stuart Cosgrove which I've enjoyed. Enough to make me want to read his Memphis 68.

mainlining Caro

mainlining Caro

Healthier than mainlining Karo!

James Morrison, what partic Geo RR Martin novella was balls? Only non GOT things I've read by him, long time ago, was the novel Fevre Dream, which as far as i can remember was gd pulpy fun - riverboat gambling vampires, basically - but not much more than that.

That's my memory of Fevre Dream, too. This was Nightflyers, which was over-the-top psycho-killer-in-space stuff with loads of sex described with what was obviously MEANT to be worldly off-handedness, but which came across instead as the ineptly transcribed wet dreams of a teenaged virgin.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR TV SERIES, i believe.

I've started to re-read an autobiography my mother wrote about 25 years ago. It would not interest anyone outside my immediate family, but it's pretty interesting just because she wrote well enough that I can hear her voice in the writing. And although most of the stories are not completely new to me, many of them are not ones she told repeatedly, so I'd forgotten them.

Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization
Jo Walton, Among Others

Finished Howards End. It's probably pretty trite to say it's his masterpiece? But I think correct. I love how it works both as a philosophical meditation and as a straightforward romance novel. I've been thinking a lot lately about my tendency to be judgemental (what else would attract someone to ILX amirite), and going back and forth on the Wilcoxes certainly added to that.

After Howards End, Forster took a break, and so shall I from him. Next up: James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk.

Have finished with The Odyssey, tr. Emily Wilson. A ripping yarn, and a treasure.

Was wondering about that translation

It’s blurbed on the back by no lesser a personage than the former Archbishop of Canterbury. I also really liked it. It’s bloody, funny, suitably familiar and unfamiliar at once. I saw it at the bookstore today next to another brand new translation and I thought “sorry buddy, you’re late”

Oh yeah, Rowan Williams, also a poet. I keep coming across that one he wrote called “Simone Weil at Ashford.”

"Hons and Rebels" was quite enjoyable - an amusing tongue-in-cheek inside glimpse at an eccentric (but aren't they all) English upper crust family and country manor childhood circa 1920s, then an eventful tale of youthful rebellion, first love and bohemian glamour on a shoe-string budget. The roguish and carefree Esmond steals the show in the book's second act (rather by design), and not knowing the ending in advance, I found the final pages almost unbearably poignant.

Was wondering about that translation

I have the T.E.Lawrence translation lying around waiting to be read. I enjoyed 7 Pillars of Wisdom so should give it a better shot. Just always seem to be reading something else.

Also just started reading the Coke Machine a history of Coca Cola from a not very sympathetic perspective.

"I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" by Mark Dery

Started reading "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By" by Simenon (my first by him).

Fizzles do you have more points of comparison for the Odyssey than I do? Bc I had only my vague memories of whatever I read in high school and I’d love to hear more.

I seem to have committed to reading Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman.

I'm only about a quarter of the way in. He rambles a bit, but some of his points on difficult matters of religion and psychology are exceedingly well and clearly presented, in ways that few other writers I've read are capable of. He has a knack of illustrative imagery, fresh metaphor, and drawing verbal distinctions using le mot jus. It makes up for some weaknesses of repeating himself and losing the thread at times.

I read Jon McGregor's Reservoir 13. I was quite surprised by how much I liked it and despite the oblique approach to character, its accumulative emotional impact. It reminded me of Tom Drury in its use of place as narrator and its evocation of the wheel of the years.

Read "Mothers" by Chris Power, a very fine collection of short stories. Not sure I can tease out any particularly distinguishing features but the whole affair seemed made up of very high-quality writing, and I say that as someone who loves a stupid gimmick.

Read "Pure Hollywood" by Christine Schutt, there's something very weird about how Schutt phrases things, something unsettling that I didn't manage to put my finger on (I wondered whether it was that some established syntax was messed about with* but I haven't gone back to look for examples because you don't even care. And ultimately I'm not sure I do because although I enjoyed the strange-feeling texture, none of the stories really got to me.

Read "Hotel Silence" by Audur Ava Olafsdottir, apologies for my failure to deploy the appropriate diacritics, which I enjoyed very much but did not love. A very diverting few hours though.

Now I'm reading "The Antichrist" by Joseph Roth.

*(it's not that she uses the phrase, but the slightly uncanny feeling you get if someone said "green big car" instead of "big green car" - it's not a thing a native English speaker would do, but most (myself included) couldn't tell you why; the feeling of something being off but it not being clear quite what.)

Just got 'Mothers' yesterday, it looked really good.

If you don’t keep an eye on your vicar they might cut some crucial pages from their sermon the weekend of the big handicap.

Are you guys referring to The Great Sermon Handicap?

Oh wait sorry. Didn’t read previous post closely enough

Maybe I shouldn’t go there, but I thought Salter got more of a pass than those other guys and wasn’t nearly as tarnished

Maybe just because he wasn't as widely read.

Here's a nice Jhumpa Lahiri tribute to "Light Years" that I just found: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/06/26/spellbound-2/

Maybe I shouldn’t go there, but I thought Salter got more of a pass than those other guys and wasn’t nearly as tarnished

― Uncle Redd in the Zingtime (James Redd and the Blecchs),

Maybe because Salter kept his nose to the ground, concentrating on the failings of his male character instead of using it as a metaphor.

(that's how I remember Light Years)

I'm not sure those other guys deserve all the trouble they get either.

Yeah, not as widely read and not as self-regarding.

I read Patrimony by Philip Roth a few weeks ago, my first Roth book (thanks to Alfred for putting the idea in my head that this should be the first one I checked out). Roth in autobiographical mode, with his father as subject, sounded more inviting to me than any of the novels. I found it moving and, in places, startlingly intimate. The ending made me cry of course. I've lost a parent to cancer, so a lot of it resonated with that experience. Herman Roth is so much like one of my grandfathers that I wound up thinking just as much about what it was like losing him.

xp Evelina is hysterically funny and sharp, and pretty rough. There's real violence, sexual harassment, ogling men around every corner.

Yeah, there are a couple of scenes where she's alone, and drunken men in packs are coming up at her, and the menace is really well captured. For a comic novel it is amazingly good on the feeling of being powerless.

After a week of bloody naval warfare, for my next book I chose something where the battles are more sedate: Barchester Towers, A. Trollope, wherein High Church and Low Church clerics politely vie for social supremacy, unsheathing their well-manicured claws at one another, while the reader is invited to look on in fascinated amusement.

Cesare Pavese: The Beautiful Summer -- wonderful book, lovely cover, but Penguin also fail to give the translator's name and seem to have printed the actual pages on crappy old newsprint and then charged 8 quid for it

HALT! Are you aware that a summer reading thread has begun at 2018 Summer: A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and What Are You Reading?, and if not, why not?