Are You There, God? What Are You Reading In The Summer Of 2021?

I have Book of the New Sun, which I might start, but I've never read any of the Elric books and thought I might grab a couple of those.

I got a library card and started reading The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell, a sweeping magical-realist epic of colonialism & its afterlives on the Zambezi River.

i recently finished Dawn by Octavia Butler too. I don't know much else about her stuff beyond a graphic novelisaiton of Kindred, but I did really enjoy it. There are some genuinely icky bits to it.

xxp In the Gilead novels, black swan to black sheep to prodigal Jack goes from disruptive child-and-teenhood to disrupted adulthood of a kind, coming to take the specter of predestination into/the seed ov his late-blooming sense of self-regulation and self-torture. Kinda sucks for him, better for society, at least most of the time, as he gets older. So. whatever Robinson may say elsewhere, as an artist, she leaves us to our own thoughts re Calvinism, tracking Jack and those he affects.
I went straight from the whole New Sun tetraology to Elric, which seemed pretty dry by comparison, but it was probably too soon. Was very impressed by the former, but forgot virtually all of it long ago. Still want to read The Old Drift.

70 pages to go of TUESDAY NIGHTS IN 1980.

Though it's still not actually well written, I must admit that it has become more interesting as the plot has become more outlandish. A painter cutting off his hand, his gf suddenly having an affair with another major character, an unknown nephew turning up from another continent - the daft story is managing to hold the attention.

I finish it at last. It's been an effort.

There are some good ideas or signs of promise in this novel. The way that the text breaks off into titled sections that describe a scene or character, for instance, shows some inventiveness with form. The theme of synaesthesia remains the most original in it. But the writing at the end is often as poor as ever, and dangerously sentimental.

The Acknowledgements are very effusive, calling one person after another the most amazing and inspiring that the author has known. It's like what an English person's parody of an effusive American used to be like; like an Oscars speech. It makes me think: I wish one or two of these people could have helped to make this novel slightly better.

I went camping last week, taking two books to read.

One of them was a collection of "occasional pieces" by William Golding called The Hot Gates. I read about four of these pieces and gave up on it. It has all the marks of a book that was rushed out to capitalize on his Nobel Prize in 1983 (which was an ill-advised choice by the Nobel committee imo). A dud.

The other book was a sci-fi novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, Rocannon's World. Judged beside her best books, this one is rather pedestrian, with adventures falling thick and fast, but the characters are barely there and the connective tissue that binds it all together is rather weak. It does benefit from her disciplined imagination, which weaves together elements stolen borrowed from other cultures and times and transposes them onto other worlds with an overlay of super-advanced technology.

I'm now pretty far into reading A Death In The Family, which goes from the "Chambray"-like preface---not turning over in bed, but a nocturnal overview and slow track of Daddies with hoses on the front lawn, Mamas finishing up in the kitchen and sitting down on the front porches, kiddies screaming triumphantly out back and along the side yards, sidewalks, as the time traveler tunes back
waay back in to the locusts ov "Knoxville, Summer 1915" (set to music by Samuel Barber)---and then, somewhat like the later development of Swann's Way, proceeding through plausibly recollected interactions of the autobiographically-based child, Rufus (Agee's middle and family name) with other family members, and then to interpolated thoughts and deeds of the adults, alone and together, building to a long 24 hours, anticipating the possible, not unexpected death of one member, then the much less likely, but eventually confirmed death of another--the living room gradually filling up with news and adults and dynamics as the children sleep upstairs: this chapter isn't all that long, but I had to set the book aside for a couple of days, and catch my breath. The shifts of viewpoint reminded me a little of "As I Lay Dying" and some Delmore Schwartz stories, but I say that to talk myself down a little, find the banister as I go back in.

"Combray," sorry

I am reading The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes and it's great but it is STRESSING ME OUT; I've realized I'm really bad at reading stressful things these days.

I return to David Thomson: TRY TO TELL THE STORY. Increasingly I feel it's Thomson ... at his best? Well, maybe not quite his best, but on characteristic form: wry, droll, speculative confiding.

re-reading 'little, big' after nearly 30 years

not a lot actually happens, but it not-happens very pleasantly, perhaps even . . . eligiacally

is the holy roman empire reborn? difficult to say. at least we know that people with one eyebrow have special powers

people with one eyebrow have special powers

Ant Davis confirms this

I have The Expendable Man waiting for me at the library - you've not sold it to me, Lily Dale!

I'm midway through Altai by Wu Ming, a sequel of sorts to Q by Luther Blisset. The latter I remember as being a wild mix of historical fiction, political allegory, action and adventure, and conspiracy tinged spy thriller. This has the politics and history but so far none of the fun.

Thanks for persuading me to give the Agee a go, dow. I worried it would have clotted prose.

200 pages into Jerusalem. Every chapter is from a different perspective, I hope he circles back to known characters at some point - damn thing is a thousand pages, and Girl Woman Other pulled the trick of a character a chapter so well that this suffers a bit in comparison. I'm not signed up to the "only write about the experiences of ppl in yr own socio-cultural category" line of thinking, the act of writing fiction is after all about inhabiting someone else (main reason I never felt capable of it) but I can't deny that the chapters coming from the perspectives of working class white bohemian boomers feel very real and lived in and the chapters from the perspective of, say, a mixed race sex worker or a black man in the 19th century...less so.

i read sam riviere - dead souls, and oli hazzard - lorem ipsum

the riviere was great, felt like a big joke, and reminiscent of something i couldn't put my finger on (not really thomas bernhard whom several reviews have mentioned); the hazzard not so much, there were things to like in it, but i think 'never mention brexit in a novel' was correctly on elmore leonard's ten rules for writing

i also picked up blake butler's alice knott again, which i got to about halfway through some months ago, very beautiful book, one of those that you want to read slowly

Hi Alfred, there are a few clots and knots, bum notes, from time to time, but he doesn't try to justify them, as jazz musicians are sometimes encouraged to do (supposedly); he goes on to something else, incl, straight through and past the thing of overloading childhood's POV w an a adult adept's articulation---while tapping into inchoate early impressions and emotions, usually a justifiable effort here---one dream-to-nightmare bit I could live without--but he just keeps going: like I thought the night of adults dealing with the news of death would be followed with telling the children, but instead we go back to his being gaslighted by older boys, who have gotten bored and obscurely guilty, but have come up with "a new formula," to be revealed--meanwhile, Rufus has just met his mountain grandfather's grandmother (? started having 'em young, I reckon---premise is worth going with)

Thanks!

Started reading Lovecraft Country and got a few chapters in.

Aklso started into Beloved by Toni Morrison

& the Peter Principle the original book that the phenomenon of people getting promoted to the point if their incompetence got its name from .

Coming to the end of Sara Ahmed's living A Feminist Life

& started Paul Ortiz's African American & LatinX People's HIstory Of the US

& its hot so I'm not reading as much as I was

Just finished reading "Remains of the Day" by Ishiguro. It's a very clever book. The way Ishiguro has the narration proceed simultaneously on two levels (the narrator himself who is seemingly oblivious to or at least deeply alienated from his own feelings, and the subtext of what is really going on, which is artfully revealed to the reader) is done so naturally and seamlessly that any attempt to describe it fails to do it justice. The effectiveness of this literary parlor trick depends on the seeming artlessness of the narration. So the style is allowed to be rather starchy, which is fine, but can grow tiresome at novel length. Perhaps it would've been more effective as a novella.

Git through th e big story in LOecraft Country and now the one about Letitia's house. Interesting to see what they've changed for the tv series. Not sure what the Ruby story is as yet seemed to be more fleshed out in the tv series and I don't remember teh brother Marvin being in the show.
I think they integrated teh big story more into having things happening before and around it didn't they?

Anyway good read and i must get around to reading some of the actual black Lovecraft influenced writing.

Want to add a little to what I said a week ago: xxp In the Gilead novels, black swan to black sheep to prodigal Jack goes from disruptive child-and-teenhood to disrupted adulthood of a kind, coming to take the specter of predestination into/the seed ov his late-blooming sense of self-regulation and self-torture. Kinda sucks for him, better for society, at least most of the time, as he gets older. So. whatever Robinson may say elsewhere, as an artist, she leaves us to our own thoughts re Calvinism, tracking Jack and those he affects.I Calvinism may be considered to keep a lid on Jack (who is still a walking caution sign to all), but the pressure of said lid keeps the ontology bubbling, sometimes rising---he can't really live in submission or comformity to snything but his own nature, but in response to the world, now that he's tuned into some of it, no longer just kicking it away, having made his selection of stolen settlement; that's no longer good enough.

O.Nate: I like THE REMAINS OF THE DAY and I don't feel that it's too long. KI's later novel THE UNCONSOLED really is long - about 500pp - and I did feel that about it! But I have read REMAINS several times and I never felt it outstayed its welcome.

I read THE LOST LETTERS OF FLANN O'BRIEN, a book containing many letters to FO'B from famous people.

Then on to Declan Kiberd's first book SYNGE & THE IRISH LANGUAGE (1979 but second edition 1993). What's certain about this book is that it's the most scholarly, solid research that this celebrated critic has ever done. Nothing else I've seen by him compares.

It's not that the book is so long, just that the meticulous, occasionally stilted prose style had a tendency to make me groggy. I guess a calming, soporific effect is part of what a butler's speech should strive for, but it became difficult for me to read very much in one sitting. I was thinking perhaps a bit more shorter work would have less of that issue, but it might just be my own idiosyncratic response. Lots of people seem to find the style of the book hypnotic and beautiful in its way.

remains of the day is perfect imo.

i found the unconsoled very heavy going at the time (as documented in this parish), but it's difficult to think of a book i've thought more about in the past year+ since i've read it.

At last I've started reading a book I've wanted to read for years: W.J. McCormack's FOOL OF THE FAMILY, a life of John Millington Synge.

I like to read books properly and cover to cover, but I'm afraid that won't be the case here. More strategic reading and dipping. But I enjoy it.

The young Synge in Paris was interested in anarchist groups. I'm interested to find out more about how his socialism developed.

Otter Country: In Search of the Wild Otter by Miriam Darlington. I guess it's a pretty good but not mind blowing nature book but the romantic naive foolish part of me wanted to give it to those who want to build more coal fired power stations and nuclear weapons and say 'here's what you're missing'. Could've done with slightly better editing, a couple of repeated sentences and a few too many references to steaming cups of tea.

The only KI I've read is the novellas of Nocturnes, which, despite the classy title, is fairly scruffy, and with a good variety of voices and settings---no Unreliable Narrators that I recall, and I think at least most of the stories are third-person, refreshingly enough (*maybe* one first-person, but he seemed okay: unobtrusive, duh)

Oh meant to say the title comes from the stories being about how music finds its way into-through lives and vice versa

Or anyway each novella has something to do with music.

I read Through A Scanner Darkly, which was oddly beautiful but christ, bleak as all hell. Dick's afterword is pretty shattering.

Now reading more genre fiction: Richard Stark's The Hunter.

Finished Lovecraft Country lkast night and enjoyed i. May need to rewatch the tv series again now that I've read teh source. But am aware of teh differences or at least mos o fthem. Would be interested i further adventures in both.

Started Beloved by Toni Morrison this morning and read the first chapter. Quite delicious prose.

finished Sara Ahmed's Living A Feminist life and started reading Paul ortiz's An African American and LatinX People's History of the United States. I hope this is as good as his wife's book from the series. Wound up at a book club discussion of that indigenous olume last Sunday which was interesting.

Stepanova, In Memory of Memory, from New Directions. Just absolutely outstanding stuff.

I'm enjoying the biography of Synge more than I've enjoyed a book in a long time.

Stopped at my favorite bookstore twice in my recent travels, so will be mostly going through that big pile plus my NYRB flash sale purchases.

I think since I last checked in, I've read the following:
Carlos Lara THE GREEN RECORD
Saidiya Hartman, WAYWARD LIVES, BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS
Cody-Rose Clevidence, FRIEND...
Barbara Guest, QUILL, SOLITARY APPARITION
George Albon, BRIEF CAPITAL OF DISTURBANCES
Liz Waldner, ETYM(BI)OLOGY

The latter three were all read from that big bookstore pile. The Guest and Albon were interesting and worth reading, the Waldner not her finest effort. The first three are all astonishing in their own ways.

I've been reading "Time of Gifts" by Patrick Leigh Fermor, a much after-the-fact account of the ultimate backpacking trip across Europe, in lieu of actually doing any travel this summer. My eyes tend to glaze over at the long passages of what I'll call poetical descriptions of architecture, but I guess that's part of what European travel is about. Some good stories, stylishly told.

A slack time for me. On a recent camping trip I managed several Wodehouse short stories (Jeeves/Wooster) and a Maigret novel by Simenon, Maigret in Montmartre. Both sturdy MOR work by their respective authors.

Tom Scharpling, It Never Ends
Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal and Nev

I've read a few Maigrets and they all seem relatively MOR. Are there standouts, or is the MOR-ness the point?

Was wondering about that myself

i feel bad about what i said about b.r. yeager earlier (maybe the last thread?), i picked up 'negative space' again and it's gotten into its stride, still not totally my thing but better than i gave it credit for

i also punished myself by reading a couple of kingsley amis novels, 'girl, 20' and the one about the librarian... horrendous

also just read 'the coiled serpent' by camilla grudova, a new one on sam riviere's press, v enigmatic and nasty short story, v good

afaics, the Maigret novels all rely on familiar recurring tropes that Simenon developed early on in the series to create a world that was reliably comfortable for his readers. The best Maigret that I've read so far is Maigret in Society where Simenon stepped further away from the familiar and deliberately placed events in a mileau that made his hero uneasy and the motives and actions of the characters were very strange and unsettling for him.

David Thomson on RED RIVER in TRY TO TELL THE STORY. 'Take 'em to Missouri, Matt'.

McCormack on the PLAYBOY riots in the Synge biography. Hard, in a way, to believe that people rioted over such a play.

What definition of MOR are we going with here? Maigret ain't noir or anything, but I find him less mor than, say, Agatha Christie.

Read JL Carr's 'A Month in the Country' and was really impressed, looking forward to getting my hands on some of his other books. Interesting character, too!

I'm operating at low wattage rn, so I'm reading a pop history about European presence in North America/Carribean prior to 1620 called A Voyage Long and Strange, Tony Horwitz. It alternates between describing that history, mostly Spanish or French explorations, and the author's minimally amusing adventures in ~2006-7, going to various sites where those explorations took place and meeting locals of varying degrees of eccentricity. It's OK.