Summer 2020: What Are You Reading as the Sun Bakes the Arctic Ocean?

I've kind of accepted that I'm in a reading slump. It's doubly painful because the summer holidays are when I normally catch up. There's shit going on at home and obviously shit going on out [there. Kind of hoping that returning to the madness of school will kick things off but not holding out much hope.

Ugh, tell me about it

I near the end of Thomson's book. I admire the energy he keeps finding to kickstart it.

Just finished a re-read of Dambudzo Marechera's 'House of Hunger.' I can see why it's the more lauded of his novels, notwithstanding the rarity of 'Black Sunlight,' but I personally believe it is the lesser of the two-- less deranged, more explicitly political and thus more obvious, and I'd venture to say the writing is a bit more juvenile, which makes sense as he wrote it when he was younger. Still highly recommended, love him and all his work tbh!

Reading: Jeff Vandermeer - Annihilation. Pleasantly easy to read but also extremely well written. I saw the Netflix film a while back and was slightly underwhelmed, but the text really shows what a difficult and good job they made of it.

Listening: Just started John Crowley's AEgypt. I struggle with Crowley. I've started both Little, Big and Engine Summer. The first was impenetrable, the second maybe a little easier on the brain. He has a strange rhythm to his writing which I find exhausting; and listening to AEgypt on Audible is no less of a task to follow. His paragraphs are rooms with many doors and no matter how much I rewind, I still have trouble following the free associative subject matter - one minute he's describing angels in a scrying glass, the next a clergy-boy, then a bus journey through a mythical America, an internal monologue about wish-fulfilment, a meeting with a shepherd - and that's just the first hour of this massive great book. I admire Crowley's imagination, but he certainly isn't spoon-feeding me here.

I've only read shorter things, in collections now out of print, but Novelties and Souvenirs is all the shorties (and some not so short), as of 2004, anyway. Amazon's Look Inside for print edition will even let you access some whole stories via titles in table of contents, and the Kindle version provides a bunch of previews. I don't remember ever having much problem with the ones I read, but could be we're in similar strata of spacey density.
I recently came across "The Reason For The Visit" for the first time, in Interfaces, a 1980 anthology edited by Virginia Kidd and Ursula K. Le Guin: somehow he indicates right off that his guest is Virginia Woolf, although he never drops the name (eventually says, "I can't remember if I ever got to the lighthouse," which isn't a euphemism: he's just strung out on her letters, diaries, essays, and I've been there). Her English manners just get more lovely, and he feels her disappointment in him. Oh, this has happened before, in attempted demonstrations of social changes to time travelers Dr. Johnson and "to Max Beerbohm I'd insisted that I would be considered well-dressed---even something of a dandy---wearing an old, yellowing tropical suit and a vulgarian's Hawaiian shirt. But those visitors were figments, really. This visit was hers, and she asked the questions, and I was shy."

Oh yeah, there's also a 2019 round-up of stories, And Go Like This, and Reading Backwards: Essays and Reviews, 2008-2018, which might or might not provide illuminating gateways to his brain, hmmm.

(Title might be a warning.)

After finishing Reaganland and The Power Broker, I needed, uh, lighter fare. I'm reading David Thomson's Sleeping With Strangers (hi, pinefox!) and the LOA edition of Sherwood Anderson's short stories; he's an unacknowledged influence on Lydia Davis, I've realized.

Finished Emma Warren's Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centre on audiobook. Was initially skeptical of a book about such a young scene (TRC was one of the main hubs of the London jazz scene), but it also doubles as manifesto in favour of youth clubs, social clubs, etc. in an era where those kinds of institutions are close to extinction. Lots of food for thought, and a melancholy listen while walking around a London that currently can afford no nightlife at all.

Warren and some of her subjects are quoted from the book, along with other TRC backstories, in Andy Thomas's 32-page booklet for Kaleidoscope, a really good Soul Jazz Records 2CD set that came out after everything shut down---it's a fine consolation prize. I'll have to find her book.

I finished David Thomson, THE BIG SCREEN.

I've mentioned before that its structure is odd and sends it a little off-kilter. You could try to find a few other weaknesses in it: not enough on the very beginnings of cinema, or much of the silent era (no appearance at all for England's Cecil Hepworth). Perhaps less than it could do on the development of genre as a system. And little curiosity about international, non-Anglophone cinema after, say, 1980 - even though it's richly well-informed on many national cinemas (especially France and Italy) before that point. This last point, I think, also potentially undermines DT's characteristic pessimism about film - who says it's become worse in Japan, Iran or Brazil?

But it's a book no one else could have written; a narrative history enjoyable on every page; a pile of facts from which I've learned much; a prompt to watch more and more films; a personal vision, critique and elegy as usual. By the end, as he rises to new heights, it feels like a masterpiece, like one of the great books written about the arts. It feels like a last testament, a valediction - from someone who wasn't actually ready to sign off yet at all, and quickly wrote about six more books that I haven't begun to read yet.

i reread children of men prompted by gyac upthread and, while i don't agree with the criticism that theo is a cipher for pd james's own opinions about pop culture, the film is indeed better in every possible way. a hugely improved plot! interested to see that cuaron refused to read the book while he was revising the screenplay.

i also read on immunity by eula biss, which was beautiful and sensitive and funny and all that good stuff. it's not science writing, but it's better writing about science than i've read for a long time.

i am now reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39971023-white-kids which is pretty light going as a sociology text and in terms of jargon about spaces and problematizing and interrogation etc., which is good, but it's an intense read because we're reading it because it's decision time for my family and schools and honestly what a hugely fucked up situation. i'll probably post more about this and other books on the privilege thread i guess.

i have read 60 books so far this year. i read 33 books all of last year.

By way of contrast, my reading life was badly bogged down all spring. I have read 31 books so far this year, putting me on pace for a rather mediocre mid-40s number of books read by year's end.

The narrator is a man born in the late 20th Century who just happens to have the waspish prejudices of someone in their 70s in 1992. Those confounded noisy Beatles and their new-fangled rock music!

It's 24 years since I read Children of Men but even as a teenager this annoyed me about the narrator. Also I vividly remember a scene in which they lapse into a reverie brought about by an episode of Neighbours appearing on TV, including moaning about the theme tune. IIRC that didn't make the Cuaron adaptation.

The only lassitude I feel concerns my film watching. I've read about 35 books since March.

no childcare and no subway commute has robbed me of almost all my reading time. sometimes i can beat the toddler up and get 40 minutes in, and sometimes naptime and a lull in working-from-home coincide. i've finished fewer than 10 books since all this began. i don't know how you do it caek.

thank u to this thread for hipping me to olivia laing's crudo.

Audiobooks and a newborn.

And (v important): wireless earbuds.

I've read 20, which already beats my pathetic count from last year. My rate is increasing now that half my reading is trashy fantasy. I could get through fifteen fantasy books in the time it took to read War and Peace.

I’ve had a good reading year - I reckon I’m at about 50 books though I am v bad at judging this - with the exception of April and May, when I was locked down and thought I would read a shitload but in a weird version of “time enough at last” found myself unable to do anything except watch trash and shitpost on certain messaging apps. I started reading loads again as soon as I had no time to do it lol (also for some reason I now struggle to make myself watch anything after work - I just want to listen to music and do a bit of reading)

xps: crudo (and laing’s new one) are in my queue. I remember ilb was decidedly cool on the lonely city and I was determined to be into it; I did end up liking it but did feel it didn’t quite add up somehow

The Biss was the second consecutive book I read that cited the silent spring as a key reference point (the preceding book being the three body problem) and then it was added to my library’s ebook collection so I guess I have to read it soon

Wait, what new one?

it's an essay collection called funny weather. it has an attractive design.

I loved crudo. I didn’t love the lonely city as much. the personal bits were better than the art history and criticism. funny weather is in my queue.

Just added Eula biss’s new one “having and being had” (about capitalism apparently) to my queue too.

Goodreads is an unbelievably badly done website but it’s where I keep my list. Please add me I’m so lonely.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/80167070-mike

I'm https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/55905-james

haha, not an Emily Brontë fan, caek?

Ha I think I posted about that here. Really lost my rag with that one.

I've followed you both!

I've given up on anything heavy and have picked up Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. It's grim, and everyone involved is an arsehole of one kind or another, but it's kinda compelling.

Deleted my goodreads some months ago in a "fuck Bezos" fit and now I've got fomo :(

I have a gr account but I never use it and have never really got anything out of it, and I could def stand to have less bezos in my life so it seems a good place to start. I got a really basic bookshelf app to note what I’ve been reading (with a ui as bad as gr) and I’ve been occasionally posting pictures of books on Instagram (tho I am still needing an equivalent of ilxor neechy’s turntable Dennis the menace) which along with lurking & sometimes posting here is probably all the readerly social network I need

I used to keep a 'reading diary' that just listed a date and where I was when I read the book - I've got details going back to 1999. I use GoodReads for this now. It's a pretty ordinary site but it does a job.

goodreads is terrible site-wise, yes. navigating back from a page, on app or web, appears to do the entire previous (slow) request again. some of the alternate apps are better but i think the server-side code is a limiting factor.

it honestly looks like no one has touched the code for 15 years. but it's quick to add things to my list, and i like getting a little alert when someone i follow starts a new book.

I am: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/27469265-jer-fairall

Rarely updated these days, as I'm mostly re-reading and reading articles/individual chapters of academic books as I write my dissertation. But I'll follow anyone who posts their links here.

the only good social network is inaturalist, but goodreads is one of the less bad ones.

Now reading a bit of Wodehouse insanity, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, with a plot so convoluted it could not be summarized in fewer than 20 closely-spaced pages.

Lurev it, rec'd it a couple times on prev WAYRs: Uncle Fred is truly to the manor born, but/and truly means to help---something like a funhouse Jeeves...

Lurv it, that is.

I publish my list at the end of every year. Here's my 2019: https://tedreeswords.com/2020/01/01/books-read-2019/

But keep in mind that I was on a light teaching load and never went out.

There's also an ILB thread for year-end reading lists every year. Here's last year's: What did you read in 2019?

Thanks Aimless! Tbh I only started looking at this board upon my most recent return to ILX.

It's a fine little corner of ILX. Very soothing compared to the other boards. Opinions abound here but any controversies are served unheated.

Agreed.

I've really struggled with picking up something that sticks with me recently. Had a failed run at Murnane's The Plains, which felt like one big joke that went on too long, with not a lot grounding it in actual humanity. Was initially thrilled with, but quickly bored by, Gombrowicz' Diaries. Saw Drifts by Kate Zambreno getting discussed a bit, and thought it sounded interesting. Was definitely a nice balm, very readable, and has helped me get out of the rut I was in. I enjoy most of the stuff marketed as autofiction, and I think this one nicely captures a sense of the distractedness of modern life, of the struggle to pay attention and get something done, but still finding moments of joy within it all: from art, relationships, animals (Especially animals. She really loves her dog to a degree that is alien to me as a non-pet lover). Contains meditations on some of my own favourite writers like Walser, Sebald, Kafka, but she is mainly preoccupied by the life of Rilke, a writer I've always found it hard to connect with. Introduced me to the work of Durer. Takes digs at Knausgaard and Lerner for the way they approach their work, but is trying to do basically the same thing as they do. Is she as successful as them? For me, less than Knausgaard, about the same as Lerner.

I reread John Gross's JAMES JOYCE (1970), the first book on Joyce I ever read and, I realise, probably a crucial book in setting my literary interests for life - even though the book is no hagiography.

A brief skim of life and work, it's superbly readable - a model of how to 'introduce' something in prose so smooth that the reader hardly notices it's there. The life is narrated with terrific succinctness, and accuracy. Many of the judgments are fair, and I found literally no errors of fact that I can recall.

It does make more of Ulysses being a maze of allusions and myths than I would, or many might do now - this seems to me rather a false problem. Most of what's in Ulysses can be deciphered quite straightforwardly, when 'decipher' is even the word. It's also unusually harsh on the character of Molly Bloom. (There were 18 of these Modern Masters volumes at the time, all about male figures, and all by male authors.)

The oddest thing about the book is that it almost never quotes Joyce's actual work at all. I wonder if this was for copyright reasons, or Gross just thought he could paraphrase it all more briskly. He does it very well, but with this of all authors it might be relevant to see the actual words on the page.

Triggercut, I'd try the plains again when or if yr ever in the mood for a book about what it means to be an artist. In the end, it is a book that is one long, weird allegory, that has some really interesting bits in it...

But then again, we could just have differing taste, as I find Zambreno totally unreadable! Lol

I want to like Murnane so badly because a) I find him a really interesting figure, and b) as an Australian I have massive cultural cringe when it comes to literature. He's one of the few prominent Australian writers who seems to owe a lot to Modernism, and feels totally seperate from the bland Winton-core peddled by most Australian writers. So I appreciate him for that, but have found it difficult to connect with his work.

I got a fair way through his Collected Stories about a year or so ago, and liked it okay, but I didn't feel much, besides being a little alienated. For The Plains, I found the bits about the rival artistic movements amusing, and enjoyed the idea the scenes involving the artists clamouring for patronage from the completely pissed landowners. I got up to the part where the filmmaker gets to the landowner's estate and that's where it lost me. I get that it's allegorical, but I couldn't really feel much, or connect the world or people he was talking about to any reality. But that's on me, I guess. This has been a weird year, so I notice that I'm frustrated by the stuff that actually challenges me, and am enjoying the stuff that soothes me. I'm sure I'll give it another go eventually.