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

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.

Stamped From The Beginning Ibram X Kendi.
The Definitive History Of Racist Ideas In America.
Another book on racism by the Author and Podcaster and a good one.
It's layed out as biographies of 7 significant figures since the 16th century.But that is more to shape things into epistemology current to the figure or something to 5hat effect.
Hadn't realised that Quakers had at one point been slave owners and vehement about supporting the cause. Not sure why. I thought they were more freethinking but that doesn't necessarily translate to abolition etc.

I finished David Thomson's HOW TO TELL THE STORY at last.

Ultimately it's marvellous - better at the end than the start, building to extraordinary climax, as he goes to Brixton film school, takes his lost love to a private screening of CITIZEN KANE, then reflects at the end on what his memoir has left out. No-one else could have written this. Curious that it's so neglected or little-known in his oeuvre.

John Millington Synge, THE TINKER'S WEDDING (first produced 1909). This is the play of Synge's that I have failed to recall; it seems to be seen as an odd one out, isn't revived as much as the others. I can't really say that this two-act play is a great classic, but what's notable is its impiety. It ends with the rather proud and mercenary priest being practically tied up in a sack! Seems more explosive for the Ireland of its time than the PLAYBOY.

My reading of the biography of Synge, FOOL OF THE FAMILY, is rather non-linear - I now find myself going backwards through earlier chapters, but I suppose that shows that its interest for me has grown, the more I've read.

A remarkable fact about Synge, who died aged 37: it's not clear that he ever had a sexual encounter. Yet his plays are full of life and quite a lot of desire.

Nearly finished Circe by Madeline Miller. Never really cared too much for Greek mythology (the little I know) but this is cracking, as it's an incredibly human - and feminist - retelling. By contrast I'm working though Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes and it's much less enchanting, though it's not really fair to compare fic vs non fic.

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!

Great novel. Can recommend The Harpole Report and How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup as being similarly great reads. Love his style. Maybe the most pleasingly comforting writer I’ve ever read.

Agree with both of these, I’m sorry to report that I enjoyed Harpole & Foxberrow General Publishers far less.

MMiller's Song Of Achilles is good too, her redoing of the iliad, focussed more on Patroclus. and Hayne's One Thousand Ships is the same but pretty much skips all the male action.

(natalie's Stands Up For The Classics is what prompted me to read all these. the trojan war episode, which she's currently touring as Troy Story (arf) is here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000d7p2 )

Myth Baby podcast by a Canadian feminist classical mythology fan has been really good. I should try to catch up with it more. But I did stick with it from the beginning to a bit of the way through the pandemic and heard her take on a lot of the greats of Greek mythology.
She references both of the books mentioned above plus a few others.

Couldn't think of the full name when I was on the bus. BUt it's Let's Talk About Myths Baby in full with Liv Albert as presenter
https://open.spotify.com/show/6S9jAhlyZtr5dj2tqYXeJ6?si=3f142771d3724dcc

Been hitting a lot of middlebrow bestseller fiction a lot lately, it's the best my brain can manage while trying to take care of a toddler. Kate Atkinson's BIG SKY was exactly the sort of memorable-but-undemanding whodunnit I wanted to read, and wore its complexity lightly and with good humour. I filled in my head background cast with actors from Ted Lasso.

I was impressed enough that I picked up TRANSCRIPTION which is literally (it's acknowledged in the afterword) "What if Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald, but also spies" and is a very readable ambitious failure.

Also picked up Oliver Harris's (not middlebrow) new thriller ASCENSION, which I'm really looking forward to.

I pretty much always enjoy Kate Atkinson, with the exception of A God in Ruins which I HATED. Of her mysteries, I think I like When Will There Be Good News? best. Plus it has an awesome title.

Good to know. Was impressed enough by Big Sky that I’ll go read the Brodie books from the start

When Will There Be Good News? -- is that a quotation from something? eg a Medieval Christian text?

"middlebrow bestseller fiction"

I quite like this idea. As previously noted, I read two or three novels this year that I came to realise were readable and enjoyable in that way. Why not?

The Way Home Tales from A Life Without Technology Mark Boyle
started reading th ebegining of thsi snad got a couple of chapeters in. Seems to be written in a clear, easily read and understood way.
So far Boyle has introduced himself and talked about his project of living without money which extended from a year long project to lasting 3 years then being approached by an editor with this idea. So he's bought a place in rural Galway county but become too tempted by the power linked existing house that he's moved into so let that to some misfits who also want to get back to teh country. & has built himself a shack outof wood and straw bales and things. Had to carry the main tree which is the source of teh wood with some of these other residents.
The project this time is to live without technology. he has been saying that the definition of technology is so broad that all implements and tools may be included if not clarified. I think I haven't come across his full clarification yet but I'm pretty early in the Book.
Well have meant to read this for teh last few years. I think I was at the launch in the local bookshop where he talked and read from this.
I think I had his book on living without money out of teh library a couplk eof years ago too but didn't get very far into it before I had to return it because of another request.

Stamped From The Beginning Ibram X Kendi
Have got into the Thomas jefferson section and looked at his version of racism. This also looked at the dismissal of black intelligence despite experiments to see if Africans put through Europ[ean education showed similar results and abilities. But easy to impose ideas of exceptionalism for those who this is tried out on.
I like the author and his podcast. I need to read whatever i can get hold of by him.

An African American and LatinX History of teh United States Paul Ortiz
good parallel with his wife's work on Indigenous population. I'm enjoying this so far. May get around to teh other 3 volumes in the Penguin Revisioning series and hope it does expand to other geographical areas and marginalised populations.

if you want female take on the Iliad then The Silence of the Girls is cheap on amz or kobo today. i think the other two are perhaps better but maybe only because i read this last.

(pat barker has a sequel out in what is a strangely crowded market)

I'm a fan of Pat Barker's Regeneration so that's worth a punt, cheers!

My interests have naturally led me to somewhere I should really have gone long ago: R.F. Foster's vast biography of W.B. Yeats, on my shelves for years.

Its size looks forbidding, but it's remarkably easy to dip into. Not intellectually demanding, mostly just a lot of gossip - who WBY has fallen out or in with in a given month.

Doubtful that I'll manage a whole consecutive reading of it, though.

Yeats will likely have to wait, as my father has just lent me John le Carré's THE PIGEON TUNNEL, which I have him for his birthday. 40 pages in, and the anecdotal storytelling is inviting from the start. The comparison with Thomson's memoir will be hard to resist.

[*which I GAVE him for his birthday]

trying to see if calibre would generate me a decent list but i just got a csv dump with the books and the columns in no particular order, which needs more work

anyway, cr Sketches By Boz, the 18th of the 18(?) penguin classics Dickens that they redid the covers of in 2009(?) to be based on engravings from the originals. it's good earliest thing, and is short sketches and stories, that only a completist would care about, really. the most famous one might be his description of Seven Dials. (i think there are 3 more that didn't get new covers, his journalism)

also worth noting is that penguin classics have had a bit of a redesign and the stripe is now wider, the penguin bigger and has lost its orange border and doesn't match the old style. luckily i managed to find a copy matching the other 17 so i don't have an odd one at the end.

last month was One Thousand Ships and Amber Fury by Natalie Haynes, the first a retelling of the iliad from the perspective of all the females, and the second about a classics teacher in Edinburgh. after that it was a couple of things mentioned by said classics teacher, aclestis by Euripides and agamemnon by aeschylus, both of which are short.

Summerwater, Sarah Moss - heavily hyped in the LRB and elsewhere (here, maybe?). Middle class tourists spend a miserable time in cabins at a Scottish loch during a torrential downpour. Occasionally very funny, but perhaps a bit too invested in its mission as a State Of The Nation novel. Could also be that I'm just not quite British or middle aged enough yet to fully understand. Does that thing where every chapter is from a different perspective - third book I've read this year to do this, the others being Girl Woman Other and Jerusalem.

Paranormality Why We See What Isn't There Professor RIchard Wiseman
book sceptical of the supernatural that sees some benefits deriving from the study of the subject.
Or taht is to say why people understand what is presented to them as being paranormal or supernatural in the way that they do.
So far I've read the first chapter which is on Fortune Telling so talks about Cold Reading . Also goes into things like The Amazing Randi who wasa stage conjuror and illusionist who had a mission to expose all teh fake use of the supernatural, like fake mediums etc. I t6hink he also regularly beheaded Alice Cooper onstage.
I guess a lot of this is going to be pretty straightforward debunking of false belief in ways that I have come across before. I think I picked it up for that reason and it being a one stop shop for a lot of this. BUt does seem to be presented coherently in a semi interesting manner.

Cheyenne Autumn Mari Sandoz
back to this . May be reading too many things at teh same time. BUt am enjoying her writing. Should have been aware of it much earlier.
Historical novel from a marginalised area. I am trying to educate myself on the actuality of the Indian in America. THis book turned up mentioned in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous People's History of the United States when I hadn't expected it to be. I thought it was as whi8te saviour as the movie turned out to be. So glad i found out it isn't really. She does have some nice turns of phrase and insights into motivations etc.
Worth reading her stuff i think.

I don’t think I hyped summerwater but I read it and thought it was … ok. Probably better than her first.

I finished "Time of Gifts" by Patrick Leigh Fermor, the first half of the story of his walk across Europe as a young man in the 1930s. It's an amazing adventure in many ways. He was 19 years old, alone, on foot, with only about 4 British pounds per month to live on, being mailed ahead by a friend to consulates in the cities where he planned to stop. Its hard to imagine in this age where even in the remotest small towns there is probably an internet connection how truly on his own he was. However it was also an age of a much different standard of hospitality for travelers. Apparently there was a German custom (law?) where you would be given a coupon for free lodging for a night in just about any town or village by applying with the burgomaster upon arrival. He often relied on that. However, he also had an astonishing ability to parlay chance encounters into incredibly generous invitations, and so he ended up spending a lot of the trip staying in the castles of the minor nobility or wealthy families of British expatriates, now somewhat reduced in means in the aftermath of the Great War, but still quite willing to put up a charming, flamboyant young man with a gift for languages and a fierce curiosity about European history and culture. The thing that made the book a bit heavy going at times for me was the density of technical terms of Central European dress, art, architecture, etc. and the thicket of obscure historical allusions. Leigh Fermor is given to conveying his sense of wonder as a young man by these scintillating and extremely learned passages (artificially aided, one suspects, by the many years of study intervening between the experience and the telling), which I mostly skimmed rather than looking up the unfamiliar terms.

Good report o. nate, sounds a very interesting subject - those isolated towns and the older model of hospitality, perhaps a relic of many centuries past.

I love the bit in that one where he gets hammered in Munich and loses his notebook.

accidentally read 2 horny books in a row during summer vacation

portnoy's complaint - philip roth i just laughed and laughed all throughout this one. the part where he goes to visit his wasp gf's parents in idaho and compares them to his own family had me dying. my family on my mother's side is jewish, dad's WASP, and even though i'm like 4 generations younger than roth it was spot on. first thing i've read by him, instantly picked up sabbath's theater at a used bookshop when i got back into town. feel hooked in a fun way

darryl - jackie ess picked this up because everyone on twitter was raving about it. ime things i get recommended from twitter are often bad, but this was excellent. great pervy short comic novel. a 40-year old man living in western oregon undergoes a sexual awakening, emerging stumblingly from a (somewhat reluctant) "cuck" addicted to ghb into an idiosyncratic queer-trans-poly love triangle. even though the author is trans, and the secondary characters include lesbians, bdsmers, gangbangers and transwomen, the book takes places almost exclusively outside the 'queer scene' and darryl's characterization is utterly convincingly suburban-middlebrow. and yet it's not played for satire at all. i quickly found myself, kind of in love with darryl? in awe of evenhandedness, his gentleness, almost buddhist capacity to take things in stride. the prose reminded me of elect mr robinson for a better world by donald antrim in the way it plays with a 'naive' or simplistic character's voice narrating dark or x-rated subject material. i can't stop thinking about it, want everyone to read it

sabbath's theater is great, you will love it i think

darryl sounds good i will check it out

One of Them by Musa Okwonga, an Eton college memoir. A series of snapshots rather than a day to day chronicle it nevertheless gives an insight into being one of the few black students at Eton as well as more generally growing up black in the UK, and how Eton perpetuates privilege and inequality. Pretty good at putting the boot into members of the current government though it never names names, even BJ with his 'fact free bluster, preening confidence and amoral swagger' is just 'the current prime minister'.