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

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also idly reading Arendt's "The Human Condition" which is a bit of a slog, occasionally obscure and outdated, but then intermittently insightful too.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

I haven’t but have wanted to and have seen it praised in the archives.

Alfred and I are for it: I read it as building empathy or at least sympathy and concern for an obnoxious protagonist, without excuses, just something the size and shaping of justice. Also I liked Boston Adventure, and he may like The Collected Stories, which he's mentioned reading (I've barely started, but seems fine).

You're prob right about the ending. Overall kind of reminds me of a secular Flannery O'Connor.

Def. in your face, I mean.

donald barthelme 60 stories. extremely my shit

Yes, I did like The Mountain Lion. She got the Library of America treatment, which she deserves. I haven't read her third novel and my local and uni library systems don't carry it.

Does it feature a mountain lion?

finished 'drive your plow....' liked it a lot bar the boring horoscope stuff. really funny and I particularly enjoyed Czech republic as utopia.

Flann O'Brien: The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman
The temptation to skip ahead to see the war-crime-level pun that each of these stories is reverse-engineered from is incredibly strong.

Finished The Stand and it runs out of steam towards the end but it’s still pretty great!

Now reading Oryx and Crake. Crake unnerves me and I really like her prose as usual, and if I ever find a non-linear story I dislike it’ll be a shock. Brutal details all over the place, it’s easy to read because of the prose and being intriguing but it’s not something I’d choose to read again in a hurry, if you get me.

I've read a lot of Atwood but I've never tried any of her sci-fi/speculative fiction books yet

I feel so bourgeois, but I'm diving into the nominees for last years International Booker prize. The winner, Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharti, is pretty good, a chronicle of three generations of mostly women in Oman, really good at capturing a sort of rupture in their lives (they talk about having slaves, while also discussing getting educated in London at the same time, and the next generation seems caught between worlds). Have also begun The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, which is so much my jam. A long meandering book about the writer himself delving into the murder of Colombian politician Jorge Gaitan in 1948, it's almost Sebald'ian in it's mixture of history and personal observations. Absolutely love it.

I've read a lot of Atwood but I've never tried any of her sci-fi/speculative fiction books yet

Atwood is awful. Prefer LeGuin for didactic sociopolitical sf.