Poetry uncovered, Fiction you never saw, All new writing delivered, Courtesy WINTER: 2019/2020 reading thread

Reading it at the beginning of the Trump Administration may have helped.

I think of going back to Elizabeth Bishop. All over again? Well, quite apart from the poetry, there's so much prose to read, that I've never touched.

Elijah Wald Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

book on Dyaln up to Newport '65 and the other folk artists around at the time. Running through Dylan's stylistic evolution of the early 60s so far.
Want to read a few more of Wald's books did really enjoy his book on the delta blues, Escaping The Delta when I read it a while back.
Very interesting.

Phineas Finn, which like all long Trollope feels rather peristaltic: sometimes nothing happens for a little while, and then the plot lurches into motion for a dozen pages, and then everything relaxes for another fifty. Not sure I am on board for another four books of this.

PF was my first Trollope too! Not the best intro. I next read The Way We Live Now, after which I was hooked.

Have finished Rachel Cusk's Kudos and now I want to read the trilogy again (and her other works for the first time) - just spellbinding. This one maybe slightly less compelling than the first two, but only slightly, it leans harder into the literary circuit critique and seems almost dreamlike in places - a journalist interviews the narrator, speaks non stop for four pages without the narrator saying a word, then finishes the interview saying "well I think I've got enough!"

Also Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, somewhat more blackly comic than the title suggests, I love the narrator's theory of "testosterone autism" where old men's capacity for social intelligence declines, they develop an interest in "various tools and machinery" and "the second world war and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains". Full of great lines like "It's strange how the Night erases all colours, as if it didn't give a damn about such worldly extravagance."

I am now reading a narrowly focused history called Money Mountain: The Story of Cripple Creek Gold, Marshall Sprague. It details the more lurid parts of the history of the Cripple Creek, Colorado mining district from the earliest cattle ranching homestead in the area, up through the boom years in the early 1890s and on into the 1930s. Like any confined place that generates masses of wealth, a lot happened, more than enough to fill 300 pages.

I'm considering reading Trollope's The Way We Live Now as an apt follow-on to this one.

Yeah, go for it. Don't let its size intimidate you. What Trollope lacks in Eliot and James' psychologizing he compensates with momentum and portraiture.

The Trollope I've read so far has been centered on ecclesiastic politics, which against all probability, he managed to make entertaining, so I expect he'll do just fine with much juicier material.

I finished the two books I was reading: The Odyssey (tr. Fagles) and Life is Meals by James and Kay Salter. LIM was a unique mish mash of anecdotes, food-related facts, historical trivia and the odd recipe, all united by the themes of cookery and entertaining. It's a bit breezy, but it makes a cumulative case for a particular theory of the good life (and gains some emotional punch from coming near the end of what was by all appearances a long and happy relationship). In that sense, it could almost be read as a companion to Salter's All That Is. I'm guessing everyone's read The Odyssey. I found it quite enjoyable. More fun and less grim than The Iliad, but in its own way just as bloodthirsty. The gory climax should appeal to anyone who's ever had house guests overstay their welcome.

Odyssey is a deep fave. Has all the cool high fantasy stuff you want in a good mythological epic + yes gore climax

Iliad always felt more normcore. Still cool and all but needs moar giants & lotuseaters

hi dow, alfred

PF was my first Trollope too

no this is my ... tenth? trollope; i'm just wondering if it's time to get off the bus. i don't know, once the shape of it (victorian fuckboy discovers personal integrity in Parliament, of all things) revealed itself to me i was more on board. to mix transit metaphors.

i will read the way we live now if i ever get to the end of the pallisers. i did see both the eustace diamonds and phineas redux in an oxfam store yesterday but i couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger.

i gave phineas finn to my sister-in-law; she'd said her father described it as 'something you absolutely MUST' read. and, i mean, really? okay, i guess. if that's your thing.

"notes from a coma" was excellent, the ultimate celtic tiger novel in many ways. so more mike mccormack its is, im onto his latest one "solar bones" right now

Nanni Balestrini - The Unseen
Agatha Christie - The Secret Adversary

This pair were lent to me by two ilb-ers, and I liked reading them side-by-side. In their different ways you see the fear of the red wave (one written from a v pro-, one from a v anti-). The Balestrini is almost a carbon-copy of the style in which Joyce set the last chapter of Ulysses in an attempt to capture the energy of anarcho-libertarian politics and its moment in Italian society (Autonomy). The other is just a very bog-standard potboiler that centers on the hunt for the man who is behind The 'Bolshovits', and its like we need to go back to the Balestrini again to even begin to scare the shit out -- if not kill -- the people in the 2nd book. Mad world.

Oh yeah now I remember the good Solar Lottey talk on a prev WAYR! Notes From a Coma v appealing title, will also check. Ditto The Unseen (not because of the title but description).

Think intro to edition of The Way mentioned that some of Trollope's old fans found this one way dark, which it is, though with pre-Wodehouse sense of ridic x also implicit (pre-Dawn Powell?) humor (some juxtaposed descriptions of non-twit characters, for inst), and those who start silly but become deeper and/or more sympathetic, also sillys and sympathetics becoming darker or at least more volatile, problematic, in plausible ways.

just about done with Muir's "My First Summer in the Sierra" (and other selected writings)
current bus reading is Kelly Link's latest "Get in Trouble", which is on par with her earlier work. Embarrassed to be reading something with a Neil Gaiman blurb on the cover, esp when it seems to me like she does everything Gaiman wishes he was doing, except with actual depth and inventiveness.

also idly reading Arendt's "The Human Condition" which is a bit of a slog, occasionally obscure and outdated, but then intermittently insightful too.

yeah it's her most tedious book

bit of a letdown after Eichmann in Jerusalem re-piqued my interest about her last year

read On Revolution, still her sharpest

had that on my list too, but the Human Condition was the one that arrived first :(

I have begun The Way We Live Now. After 50 pages Trollope is still sorting out introducing the characters to the reader, including the all-important disclosures of their titles, property in land, incomes, debts, and general liquidity. This far outweighs in importance their occupations, since these are the gentry; if, by great misfortune, they must earn money, they must do their best to disguise it as a hobby rather than a necessity.

I finished Kathleen Jamie's Surfacing. It was good, if not up to the standard of Findings and Sightlines. She's always had a spareness to her style but here it's almost as if she's scared to touch the page in places; it means a tentativeness which is engaging enough but left me gasping a bit by the end of it.

Also read William Styron's Darkness Visible this morning. It's definitely 'gone home' as it were; I can see I'll be revisiting it a lot over the next few days and beyond.

Currently reading Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Mara Leveritt

Nearing the end of NW. Largely excellent.

Romanticism: A German Affair, Rudiger Safranski. Highlights so far: Kant complaining Herder's too difficult to read (take a look in the mirror sometime, Immanuel), the craze of literature reaching Germany as 20% of the population becomes literate (amazing excerpt from some noblewoman talking about a visit to some other aristo where they spent the entire day reading, either alone or to each other - it's described like a coke binge or something); Goethe being staunchly anti-revolutionary but still getting his son a toy guillotine and the genre of conspiracy stories taking off, which includes the depressingly accurate statement "then as today, conspiracy theories are the current of philosophy of history that most easily penetrates the masses".

Raymond Williams - Orwell
PG Wodehouse - The Code of the Woosters

Jeeves' 'sir' oddly reminded me of Thomas Bernhard's habit of inventing a repetitive word to punctuate his tirades and in the same way a subordinate who solves the day (and in this case also beats the fascist), is smarter but does not think to use it to get out of his situation...well I should read a few more than talk like this. Then moved on to further ruminations on England and class via Williams' short study of Orwell. I would quite like to read Homage to Catalonia sometime; Williams absolutely captures what is so abhorent about the late novel. A sympathetic reading, though, and so nice to read something like that when everything seems like a part of a culture war (even if we have always had culture wars really -- as Williams alludes to in the way Orwell became a fucking symbol -- his pleas at the end falling on deaf ears are so much of where a lot of this country is at.

Jeeves likes being a valet and is also the celibate life partner of Wooster

Had not thought of it that way, or at all, but of course you're right.
I've read most of Orwell, and have to say Homage is one of the essentials; he's at his peak.

Maybe too bad he didn't just show up in more combat zones now and then, like Graham Greene.

Zadie Smith's NW: contains some terrific writing; interestingly, deliberately structured; internally diverse; thoughtful and sensitive in rendering consciousness, attitudes, city life.

The mystery is just how far it refuses to cohere at the end. Maybe it's a very deliberate experiment in not tying up strands, and leaving the reader with so much unresolved. If only because novels usually do tie things up, you implicitly assume that these things will properly come together - and they don't.

Gave up on Arendt's "Human Condition", the kind of academic text that is just a seemingly endless definition of terms with lots of historical and textual references that are just like.... why, why is this book being written? How is this sort of semantic hair-splitting valuable or useful or even interesting? A bummer.

as a replacement, got M. John Harrison's latest short fiction collection "You Should Come With Me Now" out of the library. much better.

25 or so pages from finishing "A Fraction of the Whole", Steve Toltz, a 2008 Man Booker Prize shortlist book. Cover blurb comparison to "A Confederacy of Dunces" is apt, as the writing in both is enjoyable, but the characters are all fairly detestable. Reading perked up once Jasper's mother's character was introduced, as she reminded me of an ex.

Just finished Two Serious Ladies. I assume it's well-read by people on this board, but it's pretty much a perfect book and I highly recommend it if you haven't. It's right at the intersection of "completely original" and "blisteringly easy to read".

Speaking of M John Harrison, I was planning to have a second (or third) stab at Light next.

I love Light and Nova Swing (Empty Space a little less so)

Yeah, me too. I never got around to finishing the third one for some reason.

Gregg Hurwitz - Into the Fire. latest in the orphan x series. formulaic as hell but I enjoy them

Ann Napolitano - Dear Edward. fine.

Sam Lloyd - The Memory Wood. kidnapped child thriller. didn't really work for me.


Brent Weeks - The Black Prism. liked enough to start the second in the series.

currently reading Brent Weeks 'The Blinding Knife' and Olga Tokarczuk ' Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead'

Much as I'd like to enjoy The Way We Live Now, it's glacial pace is killing my interest. The characters gather in various combinations and talk or worry or are gratified or hopeful or scornful or thoughtless, about the exact same things as 150 pages ago.

No character has yet altered in any way; they all maintain the same static approach to their situations. This is somewhat realistic. Adults change character very little and change slowly. But with such static characters one must turn to the plot for movement and change, as events overtake the characters. This may happen in future chapters, but after 200 pages the plot is moving at the pace of a sleeping snail.

This book has quite literally put me to sleep many times now. It is time to cut my losses and put it aside. Sorry, Alfred, but even in the face of your much-trusted reassurances about this book's excellence, the idea of another 550 pages of this oppresses me.

I've gone back to SERIAL ENCOUNTERS, the book on Ulysses & the Little Review --

but also having another crack at William Empson, SOME VERSIONS OF PASTORAL. I'm afraid this isn't quite as fun or accessible as I'd have hoped. It moves along at times (ch1) in a baffling conversational way - often one sentence is almost unrelated to the previous one. Ch1 is a bizarre alternative to an Introduction, which doesn't introduce the theme at all. I really still don't know what Pastoral is, for Empson! Nor what the Sonnets or Henry IV have to do with it. Also, some of the book is about stuff that's just too obscure to me - 'Milton and Bentley', but I don't know who Bentley is.

I think I'll read properly the chapter on 'Marvell's Garden', The Beggar's Opera and Alice, and leave it at that.

But one remarkable passage in Ch1, on images of workers as 'myths' - literally anticipates Roland Barthes by over 20 years.

This book has quite literally put me to sleep many times now. It is time to cut my losses and put it aside. Sorry, Alfred, but even in the face of your much-trusted reassurances about this book's excellence, the idea of another 550 pages of this oppresses me.

Hm. Pace is one of the things for which I admire Trollope.

I have been reading a very enjoyable short story collection by Chavisa Woods, Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country; as well as a not-totally-unrelated work of nonfiction by Phil Neel, Hinterland: America's New Landscape of Class and Conflict.

bounced hard off of drive your plow over the bones of the dead (too-quirky narrator) and this is memorial device (trainspotting with post punk name drops, i'm good), rereading wolf hall in prep for new tome, super psyched. hilary mantel can really fuckin write

Last night I switched over to The Luck of the Bodkins, P. G. Wodehouse. In violent contrast to the Trollope, events overtake the characters and abolish their plans at the clip of about once each three pages. Verily, it gallops along!

I finished Devil's Knot, which contains a lot of solid reporting about the still-unsolved '90s West Memphis triple murder case, and particularly about the investigation and trial. It seems unbelievable that three convictions could have been obtained on the basis of evidence presented at trial. I guess juries are often inclined to give police and prosecutors the benefit of the doubt. Now I'm reading Normal People by Sally Rooney.

Andrei Makine: The Archipelago of Another Life -- Russian conscript soldiers doing atomic war prep in the 1950s, written in a slightly odd but not unpleasant C19th style

Finished climate-anxiety interior monologue Weather by Jenny Offill. Unlike some other stuff I’ve got going on bookwise it was both short and quick so I’m both satisfied to have finished a book and grumpy to have finished a new hardback so promptly but I guess that’s life.

Really liked that book while having it underline waaaaaaay to many of my own anxieties.

W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants: I liked the first two stories a lot. Short and mysterious. The third was a bit flabby. The fourth was too much, dealing the most directly with the Holocaust and being the most generic because of it.

Mike Reiss's Springfield Confidential: It's clear that he wasn't one of the geniuses behind the series. So many stabs at humor fail in this book.

John Bellairs's The House with a Clock in its Walls: OK children's lit. I liked the odd details that aren't followed up on -- the best being the Fusebox Dwarf who says Dreeb! who is only in a single paragraph.

Currently on Rafael Bob-Waksberg's short story collection, which the onion avclub put on their list of 2019's best books. The first story, comparing dating to a snake in a can prank, is perfect. The next few aren't as good.

Empson was proving so frustrating that I went back to ... Michael Wood on Empson. Bedtime / comfort reading.

I just finished reading Jean Stafford's 'The Mountain Lion.' I'd never read anything by her before. In fact, I don't think I knew she existed until last week. It's both highly judgmental and critical of judgment. Unsure how I feel overall – there's a lot going against it: exaggerated racism, deeply-ingrained sexism, uncritical (?) mid-century classism, exaltation in self-harm, a cynical narrator. However, it's totally unlike anything else I've read. It's about a sickly, strange, and ugly brother and sister from Covina, California, who spend summers at an uncle's ranch in Colorado. The sickliness, strangeness and ugliness of the children is integral of the book, and the brother's burgeoning masculinity begins to subsume it, while it becomes a critical flaw in the sister's development of a feminine self. It's told over the course of fiveish years in odd intervals - a summer here, an evening there, a few years in a sentence - and it ends in a stagey act of violence.

Has anybody else read it?