Is it good so far?
I’ve seen this meme around a few blogs lately, and although I mostly refuse to do memes “properly” (i.e. I tend not to tag other people to post on the same meme) this one struck me as a good one.
My style of reading these days is to have about half a dozen books on the go, stashed in various areas of the house for when & where the yen strikes me to read a chapter or three. They are usually about half speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy), one good mystery novel, one historical fact or fiction, and one popular science. At the moment, I confess, I’m not really stretching myself.
I’ve just finished re-reading a bunch of Terry Pratchett Discworld novels and Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. They were all still immensely enjoyable, full of delicious puns and cynical wit.
I’m in the middle of re-reading Asimov’s I, Robot collection. The older I get, the more pedantic I find his style of narrative exposition (oh, the dialogue, it goes on so long, and his protagonists are so obtuse), but he still has some of the greatest ideas, and his psychological insights into how humans might react to fully intelligent and self-aware robots in our society is, I suspect, spot-on.
I am, at the moment, lacking a good mystery author to keep up with. Patricia Cornwall jumped the shark long ago, I’ve read all the latest Rankins and McDiarmids, I’m a bit meh about most of the other staples of the mystery section: are there any new twisty plotters who do strong characters that I really should start reading? I rather enjoyed the Gil Mayo Mysteries on telly earlier this year, but the books by Marjorie Eccles are a little hard to get hold of here in Oz (Auntie’s marketing department has really fallen down on the job) – are they worth chasing?
My history at the moment is another reread: yet another biography of the Six Wives of Henry VIII, this time from Antonia Fraser. It’s still good – she includes a lot of the lesser-known details and weaves the narrative deftly. Recommended for anyone who wants to separate fact from fiction given the plethora of recent Tudor-period dramatisations which have taken a fair degree of license with the source material.
Lacking a mystery, I’ve got a second history on the go: Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great. It’s a tie-in to a BBC TV series, and thus a little heavy on the friendly text and coffee-table photographs while disappointingly light on the footnotes, but it’s a nicely produced overview nonetheless. The breadth of the landscapes that Alexander’s army trudged over on their way to yet another conquest is truly impressive. Of course, I only picked it up because I was looking for my copy of Tacitus, that my husband wants to borrow – have any of you seen my copy?
My science book at the moment is shamelessly chosen for its soporific qualities (I’m currently struggling with bouts of insomnia): another oldie but goodie, James Gleick’s Chaos, his 1987 introduction to and overview of chaos theory. One of the many snap! moments that led to Mr Tog and I pledging our troth lo these many years ago was that he had this on his bookshelf as well (yes, I know – I’m just a sentimental softy).
So, you lot: what are you currently reading? Is it good so far?
Tig tog, Interesting comments. I used to read lots. Good curling up with a decent book; fiction or non fiction. Do most of my reading on line, usually short attention span stuff. Following up on a book by John Wyndham I read three decades ago called the Chrysalids, reminded that the ending wasn’t pc and am rethinking it all. That and some stuff about Islam. Funny how pop fiction has become boring.
Actually thinking of getting hold of Maimonides’ “Guide to the Perplexed”. Now , that would be my first heavy duty read for years, if I followed through.
Chaos theory was really the thing in the early 90s. I remember when I met my partner (around about then) it was discussed a lot.
It wasn’t really a ’snap’ moment but we both had copies of Godel Escher Bach and we’d both failed to understand any part of it.
I am mainly reading The Discovery of France by Graham Robb, and it’s literally amazing me. Apparently nobody in France (outside Paris) actually spoke French until about 1850 – peasants all talked other weird languages.
I have made a start on The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed, and doubting whether I’ll ahve the stamina to get through the entire thing.
I’m just finishing off the Marr / Henson book; and I think I might read myself to sleep tonight with the late George Macdonald Fraser’s Flash for Freedom, which I read years and years ago, and re-purchased today for $2 at the uni market.
an anarchist cook book: recipes for disaster. No, I’m not talking about that shoddy old collection of bomb recipes, I’m talking about the new comendium from CrimethInc. Some of it’s just juvenile, but some of it is interesting and even inspiring.
Ah, memes. Spooky coincidence – I’m reading Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell. About one-third of the way through, he appears to be building an argument that religions are memes.
I’ve always felt that there’s a great need for more proselytising atheists, but the recent spate of books examining/criticising religion is a lesson in being careful what you wish for. They’re all so cranky! Dennett starts by expressing the wish that believers will read his book, and then proceeds to hector them mercilessly.
The Continental Op, by Dashiell Hammett. I had forebodings during the first story, but it’s been very good since.
I suppose I should say that before Hammett, it was Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst, and The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. All of which I enjoyed very much. I might read the follow-up to Hyperion next.
Yay, Hammett. If you like it hardboiled, you might be interested in this essay, Craig.
I’m re-reading Dracula and Going Solo.
Cool thread idea!
I’ve got three on the go (aside from academic tomes).
The first (in order of having started) is Daemonomania, the third book in John Crowley’s Aegypt cycle. There are four, and they’re being progressively released in new and corrected editions by The Overlook Press. Three so far available in Australia (I like to buy all my speculative fiction from the Brisbane indie bookshop Pulp Fiction rather than order online, so I’m happy to wait). Crowley’s books are something like one of the ways Dan Brown’s stuff could be done really well – Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum being another. There are at least three books within the book – autobiographies by William Shakespeare, Giordano Bruno and Dr Dee – supposedly written by a deceased novelist with some connections to the hero of Aegypt – Pierce Moffitt, a failed history academic. Time jumps around a lot but as you read on you realise there are ordering principles – mostly of Renaissance origin. There’s an incredible awareness of the conventions of different literatures, a lot of insight about lives and choices and trajectories and correspondences between individual and collective and broader historical narratives. And human, all too human. Beautifully written – books to savour when time allows rather than read in a rush.
Second is an sf thriller – Jaine Fenn’s Principles of Angels. It’s a first novel, and it has a promising setting and universe and some neat ideas (including democracy by assassination), and something of a pastiche of Dickens in there somewhere. Mainly character driven, but it’s sagging in the middle – I’m not sure the plot is all that well constructed. So I put it aside when I popped into Pulp Fiction and discovered there’s a new book in Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity series – Going Under. Only read two chapters before I fell asleep last night. Robson is an extremely intelligent author, and one who integrates superbly themes, character and somewhat anarchic whimsy. It’s a bit of an sf/fantasy crossover, and is maybe best summed thusly:
Thanks for the tip Robert, I’ll check that out over the weekend.
“he appears to be building an argument that religions are memes.”
I’m all for DIY but surely there’s plenty of off-the-rack arguments for that?
I’m a hair’s breadth off finishing Paul Kelly’s “The End of Certainty” which I grabbed for 50 cents at the school jumble sale a couple of months ago. Oh, a trip down memory lane it is, filled with the lovable characters from my teenage memories.
I’ve just made a solid start on “Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson which is great so far. (Although climate change is rapidly spoiling ‘the future’ for me. I read his “forty signs of rain” last year and was dreadfully frustrated at the end, but at the time I didn’t realise it was the first book of a trilogy.)
And I’m desperately searching for my copy of Gene Wolfe’s “Pandora, By Holly Hollander” which I grabbed from St Vinnie’s in Emerald, devoured half of then promptly misplaced. It’s the first Gene Wolfe I’ve ever read and it might be his most atypical novel (being an murder mystery set in 20th century New England told in first person by a teenage girl) but gee it’s a good read. Just flawless so far.
d
THat’s exactly how I reacted to Forty Signs of Rain, Darryl, to the letter.
In Viriconium, a Masterworks Fantasy collection of all M. John Harrison’s Viriconium stories. I had been re-reading Crooked Timber’s collection of essays on China Miéville’s Iron Council. Which led me to re-read Perdido Street Station, which led me to read the wikipedia node on same. Which more or less nagged me into finally reading the Viriconium stories, and Vance’s Dying Earth stories when they arrive from the UK.
Harrison feels a great deal like Moorcock, which is no surprise whatsoever. Miéville is an equation, the sum of Harrison’s afternoon cultures and spaghetti-western-esque protagonists, and Lovecraft’s spendthrift attitude towards adjectives.
And then I’ll go and get The Steel Remains.
I used to do that several books on the go deal but I can’t keep it all straight nowadays. A decade ago I read books at a faster rate than I do now. Perhaps that is related to my lost ability; too much opportunity for details to get confused.
I’m a third of the way through The Solid Mandala, and yes, it’s very good so far. It’s immediately engaging, where I’ve sometimes found White’s novels take a little work to get into. Before I started reading that, I finally finished John Banville’s Doctor Copernicus which was excellent. Banville constructs such beautiful sentences of a Nabokovian sort, and combined with his eye for detail (often botanical), he really is the closest thing to reading Nabokov that I’ve encountered, other than, well, actually reading Nabokov. Banville’s subject matter is quite different, obviously.
For work, a novel called The Savior by the violinist Eugene Drucker, who’s a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet. Opening lines: I used to play for the wounded and the dying. The Army sent me; it was supposed to help the War effort.
The narrator means the German wounded and dying, of course. They give him a hard time; he’s a classical violinist and they call him Herr Fiddler and keep asking him to play the Horst Wessel song. It’s early 1945 and he spends a lot of time trying to remember what vegetables look like.
For not-work, Robert Dessaix’s Arabesques, which is the most beautifully produced Australian book I’ve ever seen and which is more or less about André Gide, of whom Dessaix, on page 4, says this:
Yep, both good so far.
Klaus K, The Solid Mandala is the one most people don’t like, so brownie points for rugged individuality. Has Dulcie melted down in the middle of the Moonlight Sonata yet?
Some kids play war games, some kids make crazy messes in the back yard, some kids shut themselves in their rooms and sulk. My kids have been playing “Library,” setting up libraries in their rooms, making library cards and issuing books. So I now have Eragon and Maddigan’s Fantasia on my bedside table. Eragon is incredibly derivative, but the plot has pulled me along.
I have that Antonia Fraser book on my bookshelf too. I like it enormously – sufficiently rigorous to be satisfying, but still telling a racingly good yarn. It makes me want to read more of her books.
I no longer have three or four or five books on the go at once – I just don’t get enough time for reading anymore, and I have found that as I have gotten older, I read more slowly. But I always feel slightly anxious if I have only one book in reserve. Perhaps my girls will set another library up tomorrow…
“Klaus K, The Solid Mandala is the one most people don’t like, so brownie points for rugged individuality. Has Dulcie melted down in the middle of the Moonlight Sonata yet?”
I’m surprised it’s not well liked, but it may be that I’ll change my mind further through. So far I’m appreciating the patterned way it is constructed – but that may be a superficial response, a looking at but not into the pattern of the novel. I’m not sure what I’m going to find myself feeling as I sink into it further.
I’m yet to reach the Sonata meltdown, though Waldo has run away from Dulcie in Pitt Street and been hit by a car. That section was a little confusing, actually, moving quite quickly between different parts of Waldo’s life in the space of a few pages.
The Coming of the Third Reich,not a bad book on the times the shaped the NASPD
At the moment: The Brothers Karamazov.
Mark – more Crowley, Brilliant and thanks – I haven’t seen these, but they’re small press. God, the state of spec fiction in bookshops and libraries has plummeted as blockbuster by numbers fantasy series take over.
My two younger sons are devouring the better fantasy I have kept and I’m slowly setting them onto the really good stuff that crosses over into spec fiction.
The Joe Abercrombie fantasy noire series is great: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and The Argument of Kings.
Also got onto Justina Robson – left the first one on a plane and had to buy another copy to finish the story!
I’ve dug up the Joseph Campbell Mythology series but don’t know how I’ll go. The archaeology has chnaged heaps since he wrote these in the fifties.
I’ve got the Science of Murphy’s Law for some popular science – hoping to pick up some more counter-intuitive facts about risk.
Trying to get back into Carlos Ruiz Zafon The Shadow of the Wind – third attempt. It’s written as a memoir and I just can’t get into it, despite the effusive blurbs thereon and therein.
Roger, not sure where you live but if you can find an indie sf bookshop the range is so much better than at Borders, Dymocks, etc. I don’t know whether the major book chains think the market segment is too small in Australia to sustain the import of more than a token. Anyway, it’s a real pity as if you go on what you read in Locus – which I buy every month because it’s an excellent compendium of reviews – there’s a lot of really good sf being published in the States and the UK.
http://www.locusmag.com/
I’m sure some LPers will also find the interview with Neal Stephenson interesting:
http://www.locusmag.com/2008/Issue09_Stephenson.html
Going back to Justina Robson now!
She has a blog btw:
http://justinar.livejournal.com/
Mark, I’m bayside Melb and rarely get into the city, but Minotaur has a great range and there are great indies in the WMLC. It’s more case of being busy and wanting to grab stuff quickly – I don’t spend the time …
Gotcha, Roger. I’m in the CBD a lot – on my way to and from uni campuses and Pulp Fiction is very conveniently located in an arcade between my bus stop and Central train station!
I don’t have any time for non-thesis related books (I’ve read precisely three novels since Xmas, the first three Aubrey-Maturin books). At the moment I’m reading War and the Liberal Conscience by Michael Howard, a series of lectures on liberal ideas about peace and war over the last five centuries, starting with Erasmus. Interesting so far but haven’t got up to my period yet. Next up I’ll be reading Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas, by David Cortright.
The Solid Mandala was run as a book reading, not so long ago, on Aunty National. I found myself pretty hooked on the story and often sat in the car waiting for that installment to finish. When I was supposed to be doing something else.
There is always something still special about being ‘read to’ and maybe it is a good way to be lead into the ones “most people don’t like”.
I am reading Underground by Andrew McGahan and so far finding it a little bit to easy to put down. It is a library book so I will need to pull my finger out.
I’m not reading anything outside of thesis stuff, but when I finished over got about 50 books I’ll devour in the next couple of months. I’m thinking about starting with Vladimir Voinovich’s “The Life and Extraordinary Times of Private Ivan Chonkin”
Rogue Economics, by Loretta Napoleoni. I must google her and see if she’s written any comment about the current unpleasantness.
Just finished reading Terry Pratchett’s ‘Making Money’ and Juan Cole’s ‘Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East’. Pratchett was diverting but he was really just doing his schtick. Cole is very interesting about part of Napoleonic history that tends to get treated as ‘then he invaded Egypt, then he came back to Europe where the real action was’. Points out that NB had a dry run at crowning himself Emperor and doing deals with religious authorities while he was local dictator of Cairo.
I’m supposed to be reading ‘Huckleberry Finn’ for a course, but can’t get into it. The last book I read for pleasure was ‘Breath’ by Tim Winton, except that I didn’t much like it – I felt very unmoved by it.
The Republic Advisory Committee’s report. It’s pretty interesting and they make a lot of references to how popular various ideas were in the submissions they receive as well as going to the very edge of their terms of reference (stopping short of advocating something different).
The Appendices are even thicker, though, and may not be so interesting.
I’m also reading bits and pieces of Mark McKenna’s “Australian Republicanism – A Reader” and finding the way they spoke in the 19th century incredibly frustrating.
Also, transcripts from Geoffrey Robertson’s “Hypotheticals” show from the 1980s. It’s really interesting to see how various judges, lawyers, newspaper editors, activists, writers and politicians would respond to things.
I’ve been taking advantage of these recent Penguin releases of old books for $9.94. Just finished reading Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and was impressed at how beautifully and wittily written it is, really literature masking at crime fiction. Now moving on to Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World.
CraigMc, finally we have something to agree on. I love Op, I’m at the moment halfway through Red Harvest in thirty-minute intervals on the train. That’s the best way to read it; in bursts short like a clipped simile.
In the pile I’ve also got John Le Carré’s latest A Most Wanted Man which I’m ambivalent about starting. His post-1991 stuff runs hot and cold.
Those Penguin reissues are really tempting. I wish somebody would actually start selling cheap decent paperbacks at railway station newsstands again.
suz wrote:
Give it a chance suz, it picks up greatly after they spend the evening on the island. In fact, the middle third of the book is really great. The last couple of chapters aren’t very good though.
I picked up a copy of “10 days that shook the world” (John Reed) at the 2nd hand bookshop sale here at the UNE for $1. I generally get about half a page read before getting interrupted by something and don’t pick it up again for a couple of days so will probably have to start again.
Agreed Laura!!!
But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer, which I read every now and then
to steal ideas fromfor inspiration. Over the weekend I hope to start on Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels.The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Back in 1961 Jane Jacobs really got the whole urban “planning” thing down…a pity that more people didn’t listen to her back then.
Oooh, I’m excited about the Crowley, Mark, I just bought Little, Big & Aegypt at the Lifeline Bookfair in Canberra a couple of weeks ago.
Gilmae: M/ John Harrison, interesting. Did you see the Viriconium post Mark wrote earlier this year? I feel that ye olde Harrison sometimes is prepared to sacrifice his characters for – not even ideas per se, but conceits. Interesting conceits though.
Mieville I’m torn about – I always enjoy his books more in retrospect than during the actual reading! He takes the most amazing, febrile worlds and imaginings and sadly uses them to propel the mot generic plots and often characters – it’s so disappointing, especially given that he has a rocking class consciousness. That said, I read everything he writes, so… I find looking back that I tend to forget the crappy parts, and revel in the greatness of his books – Cactacae, The Brucolac and High Cromlech (forgetting that stupid possibility sword), Golems, the Runagate Rampart, so on so on.
Craig – I love Hammet, too. He and Chandler are underappreciated giants of US Lit in my opinion. Chandler, especially, shits all over Hemingway doing essentially the same thing, (macho, cynical, search for significance in a male life, ambivalent about women, spare prose) in my opinion.
Klaus – I’m glad to hear you say that, I picked up The Solid Mandala at the LL Bookfair also, and it will be introduction to White…
Myself, I’m about halfway through Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. It’s a frigging massive book, and there’s little narrative to speak of. Porter-Lowe’s translation seems a bit, hmmm, archaic – or even affected – to me at some times, but despite all this it’s largely working for me. There’s a kind of mordant humour that also I think masks a gentleness to his work, and I do thing it’s a fabulous daguerreotype of early 20th C continental bourgeois thought, or something.
It’s okay, baring one fifteen page passage I just got through which was absolutely deadening; a surmise on biology based on largely incorrect science stuff – it was the only section I’ve been tempted to skip so far.
Re-reading Pratchett too. It’s still good.
Well, there’s a new second-hand bookshop opened in Armidale in the arcade off the mall – or at least, I’ve just discoverd it. So went in there yesterday and found Alvin Redman’s The House of Hanover, a popular history of all those royals from George I to Victoria. Published 1968. (letters too foul to publish in full, etc.) Apparently George I’s grandfather and grandmother used to write each other very raunchy letters. Its fun and quite well-researched, but suspect it tends to concentrate on the sensational.
Also bought Arthur M. Schlesinger’s The Birth of A Nation. A social history of Americsa on the eve of revolution; just dipped into it, but it looks interesting.
From overseas, I got Oliver M. Dickerson’s The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution. Nowhere near as dry as it sounds and am quite enjoying it. (And taking notes.) And Michael Pearson’s Those Damned Rebels. Its the American Revolution from the British point of view. A bit disappointing as the writing is a bit turgid. Took notes up to his account of Bunker Hill then put it down for a while.
Also dipped into Hill’s 1788. Not at all impressed so far.A far too perfunctory and reductionist treatment of 18C England, where, after all, our first Europeans picked up their cultural baggage. Little differentiation between mid/late 18C England. Hogsath’s England is not the England of Pitt the Younger and Arthur Phillip, but that seems to escape Hill. As you can gather, so far, the book annoys me.
‘At the moment: The Brothers Karamazov.’
Good luck with that. The Brothers Karamazov is currently sitting on my floor with a bookmark around page 50 where I gave up reading it, soon to be on its way back to the library. I found it hard to follow and not enjoyable anough to make the effort. I hope you have more luck with it then I did.
At the moment ‘banker to the poor’ about the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, its a pretty good read so far.
Re-reading some D.L. Sayers, and John Brunner’s “The Sheep Look Up”, both in an effort to avoid reading Flannery’s latest Quarterly Essay (too depressing). Of course, the Brunner is pretty depressing as well, and surprisingly prophetic (given that it was written over 30 years ago).
Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader. Shorter, wittier and more profound than Alby Manguel and the Continentals.
Reading? That would be a nice idea.
I currently have a bookmark stuck in the 20th page of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and it’s been there for the past few days. This is either a sign that I should finish reading the book, or I shouldn’t have started it. Hmmm…
Here’s a link to my Harrison/Viriconium post Patrickg was kind enough to mention @ 37:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/04/07/distant-suns-ii-fiat-lux/
Suz, I’ve written about Breath at my neglected Australian lit blog and there are links there to my review of it for the Oz and to a longer, better review of it by the excellent critic James Ley (although the ABR links tend to behave strangely and that one may no longer be current). One, some or all of those things might speak to your uninterest, I think.
Re The Solid Mandala, tastes may well have changed, for all sorts of reasons, since the time it came out — managed to miss it on the ABC altogether but am really glad they chose it for the reading. I like almost all White’s novels so am no help here. I love what Joe2 said about ‘being read to’ — maybe an audiobook of Huck Finn, Suz? There must surely be one.
Or wrt to being “read to”, you can also try reading to your friends! Three of us spent summer 1996 meeting in various coffee shops and parks to read Alice in Wonderland aloud… And there’ve been other such adventures… It really is an immense pleasure – if you haven’t tried it then I highly recommend it!
Curiously, I had never read Malouf’s ‘Johnno’ – decided to remedy that on my recent trip to Brisbane. Read the “Ein buch, Ein Brisbane” version. What a corker! Loved the constant references to trams, which is mystery to people my age. You do get hints of the governance era to come, in references to the “Moonshine state” etc. Speaking of Bris-based fiction – has anyone got around to reading Simon Cleary’s “Comfort of Figs”? I ask, as I knew him at uni. He used to run reading groups among friends of mine – I attended once and disgraced myself by reading rude Irvine Welsh tracts. Wonder if his book is worth a look?
I bought it, Lefty E, after a recommendation on LP from Dr Cat if memory serves, and bought Matt Condon’s latest at the same time but they’re being saved up for Christmas holiday reading.
Johnno really is a great read… Unaccountably, I also hadn’t read it until relatively recently – about six years ago when someone I knew was reading it for uni.
Interesting Mark, my theory on this: Johnno had that slight sense of being a prescribed high school English text – the side effect of this being that people aren’t disposed to read it if their particular school didn’t in fact insist.
Mind you, Im surprised mine didn’t – being on Edmonstone st itself!
Any other Brisbane-oriented Malouf books worth a look? is the autobiog any good??
Let me know how Cleary’s goes when you get into it Mark.
The Comfort of Figs was not entirely my cup of tea qua novel, but it is w wonderful ‘Brisbane book’ and I wish more people would write those kinds of things about Adelaide!
Yes, Johnno is very good. As is An Imaginary Life. I’m less enthused about later novels, though I found some of Malouf’s short fiction to be very good too. Maybe this summer I’ll try to get to Malouf as well, actually. I’ve heard 12 Edmonstone Street is worth taking a look at.
<12 Edmonstone Street is fabulous, and was more fabulous in the days when that particular kind of memoir/nonfiction was, at least in Australia, rare and unfashionable and you had to be someone of Malouf’s stature to get it published at all — it’s hard to realise or imagine now quite what an original thing he was doing when he wrote it. The 1980s was a boom decade for Australian publishing but nearly all of it was fiction.
This’ll be the death of any sort of productivity for me this afternoon…
For those of you in Melbourne Justin @ Slowglass does a nice line in SF. Doesn’t have a shop anymore as his place in Swanston Street was turned into yet another espresso slop-house but you can order up via phone/web and pick up from Northcote or he will mail. Prices are usually a bit better the ordering from o’seas – and a damn sight faster as well.
I have Crowley in my ‘Going bush for December box’ as well as Lanagan’s Tender Morsels.
On the go now are some Orwell essays and Consider the Lobster by the late, lamented David Foster Wallace.
I enjoyed the Mars series, but better than them are the Dune novels.
For light reading I’ve got Maeve Binchy’s The Glass Lake open on my “read for twenty minutes and then fall asleep” bedside table.
For biography I just finished Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor after having seen the families on Oprah. (Big car crash, one of the survivors is mistaken for the daughter of another family for five weeks as she recuperated in hospital). If they had taken out the incessant American Evangelical Christian apologetics it would have been much better.
For the thesis I am reading New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life by Bruce B. Lawrence, who (I was surprised to learn) is married to miriam cooke, she of the lower-case letters.
I’ve also just finished Stephen King’s On Writing, which I downloaded to my iPhone. Very enjoyable way to spend time ‘waiting’ in queues and stuff.
Just to go briefly meta: when ya gets to my age, chillun [leans on Zimmer frame, adjusts bifocals], then the second part of ‘What book are you currently reading? Is it good so far?’ will be redundant unless the book is strictly for study or work. If it is not good so far, you will no longer be reading it. Life is short.
Darryl @ 10, stick with the Mars trilogy – it rocks, for those who like long-winded extra-narrative expositions on science and politics and their intersection! Have to respectfully disagree with you, Umm Yasmin – KSR beats Dune hands down for me. The last book of the Climate in the Capitol series was a big disappointment, though. Lets down 40 signs of rain and 50 degrees below quite badly, I thought.
I recently read China Mieville’s UnLunDun, which was decent. But it prompted me to pull out Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, on which it is heavily heavily based. Gaiman wins by a country mile – far more thoughtful treatment of the same idea.
Started Alan Bennett’s Uncommon Reader – what an amazing sense of joy and fun he has! Sheer unmitigated pleasure to read!
picked up Neal Stephenson’s Anathem in wed, but have been so busy digging the Hbomb’s sandpit that i havn’t started yet, ifear that i must put aside Northanger Abbey for a while, but Catherine is unable to say no to her new frined Isabella, which is just to frustrating. also they are too fond of Udolpho, which may be sublime for some but is sublimly unsublime to the most subiminally sublime level evah;)
Just finished Snow Crash, about four years ago i heard the first half as a talking book on a road trip, but the road trip ended too soon, a friend returned my copy after about seven years, along with my Oz dvds, so i dove into it, very satisfying.
Also flicking through my Doonsburys in no particular order, but did just stumble across the Keeting Five sequence in “Your Smoking Now Mr Butts!”. also enjoyed the Flash mobs for Dean sequence in “Talk to the Hand”.
Also “Dream Country” in teh Sandman series.
Well, I’ve just started Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, which is a lot more exciting than it sounds. A lot more.
My youngest son has just discovered books in the last couple of weeks. So far today I have read “Dinosaur Roar” four times, “Growl” three times, Humpty Dumpty and Pussy Cat, Pussycat once each and “Where is the Green Sheep?” twice.
I’m near the end of Scotsman Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, having started on him at the wrong end with his latest novel (rendering the trilogy a quartet, effectively) The One From the Other. His detective, Bernie Gunther, plies his trade in prewar and wartime Nazi Germany, and the post-war reconstruction period, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Heydrich, Himmler and Streicher. Very good writing and research, ingenious plots, great characterisation. He’s like Chandler – with Gunther a sarcastic and wise-cracking hero, both victim and perpetrator of brutality – perhaps better.
I also recommend:
The Blind Man of Seville by Robert Wilson. His other stuff is not bad, with the Javier Falcon mysteries leading the bunch. But I think this is the best.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by the late Stieg Larsson.
Detective series by Iceland’s Arnaldur Indridason (Dark, very dark) and South African Deon Meyer.
“Where is the Green Sheep” only twice? Yeesh, you’ve gotten off lightly so far! When that was discovered in my household we had it at least half a dozen times a day for weeks!
It’s naptime, Tim, and a long afternoon stretches ahead of us and the Green Sheep …
Quite a while ago a friend called me up and said, “You know, lately I’ve been re-reading Measure For Measure, and Antony and Cleopatra, and it suddenly occurred to me: why do I read anything else?”
With that thought in mind (albeit w/ modifications), I’ve been re-reading the great J.L. Borges, or at least his greatest hits. Also been going through his “Selected Non-Fictions” (essays and criticism, highly recommended). Recently re-read Kerouac’s “On the Road” (which I didn’t like the first time, eons ago) after the delightful discovery of “The Dharma Bums” and I am astonished to report (because I never thought very highly of the Beats) that Jack Kerouac is a thorough master of modern English prose, one of the greatest prose stylists I can think of in the postwar era. Considering that I find his thematic concerns to be only slightly north of trivial, that’s quite an admission to make, but there ya go.
I was poking through Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” partly because Borges reviews it, and I was touched by its naivete and also by its moving poeticism. But the opening bit, “Rocket Summer” is a lovely surreal prose poem worthy of Su Tung-p’o. But like tigtog said about Asimov, there’s something vaguely preposterous about the simplicity of his futurism. Nice existential snapshot of midcentury’s view of things, though. see Paul Pope’s lovely but meandering “THB” series for the po-mo take on Bradbury/Zen Buddhism/Hopi spirituality/capitalism on Mars.
Anybody got the lowdown on this French Nobel critter?
Mark: “Or wrt to being “read to”, you can also try reading to your friends!”
Very good suggestion, highly recommended. I have a very fond recollection of a group-reading of “The Waste Land” where people spontaneously (and almost randomly) read out different parts, or discrete lines, often simultaneously, with kooky sound effects made by group in b/g. A few other perennials for this sort of thing are “The Man With the Blue Guitar” and the “Don Juan in Hell” sequence from “Man and Superman.” There used to be, every New Year’s Eve in NYC, a night-long aloud reading of Finnegans Wake at an art gallery in Soho, always a pip to drop by around 4 AM after a night of partying, crash on the floor for an hour in your winter gear, and hallucinate about Muster Mark… eheu, fugaces labuntur anni…
get well soon, folks,
j_p_z
stuart wrote:
Please, please, please don’t give up on this book. Get to at least page 200 before you decide. It is hard work, but like a lot of hard work, the rewards are manifold. It’s not cited as one of the greatest works of literature ever for no reason. I can’t think of a more entertaining (funny, thought provoking, sad, joyful, tragic) novel reading experience.
Neal Stephenson, Anathem, yes yes yes. Loverly. About half of the way in – the weekend is spoken for. Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World – available in the new retro-orange cheap Penguins. And the latest (US) edition of Wired. Fortunately, I took out my subscription when the wxhnage rate was still favourable. Now … well, I won’t be going near Amazon any time soon …
With apologies for the cack-handed spelling
Courtesy of a crime fiction-loving friend, macondo, I’ve recently read a couple of Arnaldur Indridason’s novels. I think she actually picked them up in Iceland, the lucky thing! They’re pretty good, despite the unrelenting bleakness.
Just finished Robert Drewe’s The Rip, and now on The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga, which I’m really enjoying. Not sure what will be next. I bought my fiance the new Neal Stephenson, and I might just start it before he does…
I missed Mark’s Harrison post due to a mix – at the time – of not closely reading LP and only just finishing up a two-year hissy fit about the the signal-to-noise of fantasy.
I couldn’t comment about your comment on Harrison and characters, I haven’t read enough of the collection yet. Maybe if Mark does another Distant Suns post.
On the other hand, re Miéville; he might use generic plots but I find them nicely subverted. Sure, the protagonists (never heroes) tend to save the world/city/day but the protagonists themselves always lose. Miéville compared Tolkien and Lovecraft with something along the lines of: Tolkien consoles himself that everything will be all right while Lovecraft shrieks to himself that nothing is all right nor will it ever be. I see that last sentiment in the ending of all his Bas Lag books. Eddings/Feist/Jordan/blah he sure as hell ain’t.
Seconded Gilmae, thank god. I guess I still feel Mieville is waiting to pen his own ‘Masterwork’. In my opinion the Bas Lag books rank in order:
1. Iron Council
2. Perdido St
3. The Scar
Looking forward to the next one, that’s for sure.
Ah where is that Green Sheep? I think my fav is thte Icarus sheep.
I’m not sure there is going to be a next one. I can’t pin down in my memory why or where I might have read it, but I have the impression I read that he has no plans to write another Bas-Lag book. The closest we’ll get is an RPG in which PCs will do anything for gold and XP.
Captive State by George Monbiot, The Damned by JK Huysmans and Bad Samaratins by Ha-Joon Chang.
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The last is good but very dry (like all economics) and very probably given to amplifying facts out of context (like all economics). The second is an under-rated classic of late 19th century French decadence and the first is very very scary.
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Just finished The Limits of Power by Andrew Bacevich. Anyone want a condemnation of American foreign policy by someone who’s a conservative – this is the guy.
I’m reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. It’s an attempt to draw a context for the return of Nixon and how that campaign set the tone of Republican politics up to the present day. It’s rather polemically anti-Nixon and is written in style that looks for dramatic impact, it’s not an historians account. It is shocking to read how incredibly cruel white Americans were to their black fellow citizens during this period given that it’s within my lifetime. Would we in Australia behaved any differently though?
The only Malouf I’ve read is “The Great World”, which I thought was great. I once had an encounter with a Hollywood writer (not without success, dazzling starlet girlfriend included) who had this concept for a movie about “mates” which in his mind he’d already cast with Kevin Costner. Straight off the bat I could tell that he thought “mate” was just the Australian word for “buddy”. I wish I had sent him a copy of Great World so he could know the difference. I’m not sure what he would have made of it.
Phillip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy was a hoot, but if WWII period noir is your taste then you can do no better than Alan Furst’s genre, which positively drip with Eastern European doom. His stories are almost isolated vignettes these days, but still excellent.
Agreed on Chandler. I really enjoyed The Big Sleep and other stories. And for those Sci Fi types who haven’t read Hyperion, give it a shake. I’ve only read the first book, but it’s a cracker.
A the risk of sounding like I don’t know what, I am in a Patrick White phase. I finished Voss a month ago and can’t stop thinking about it. It haunts me. Reading The Eye of the Storm at the moment. Like rich chocolate I can only consume thirty pages or so at a time. So wonderful, the writing is beyond belief.
I also reading Henning Mankell James Lee Burke and and the Edith Wharton biog is dipped into at quiet moments. God what a wanker.
Im a bit of a Lusophile, as you may know, so Im generally reading some sort of Portuguese fiction.
Normally its the magnificent Jose Saramago (most recently read “Seeing”, about an election no one votes at, and the the hilarious and disturbing authoritarian consequences and the govt flounders in illegitimacy) – but right now its Antonia Lobo Antunes’ ‘The Natural Order of Things’.
Just started that one last night, so no thoughts yet….
Actually, thats Antonio, not Antonia.
Alan, this is a books thread so I think you are officially allowed to enthuse. Patrick White is fab. Agreed about the hauntingness of Voss. Try Riders in the Chariot at some point, too. And when you finish reading the fiction, read David Marr’s biography of White if you haven’t already.
Gilmae, – “re Miéville; he might use generic plots but I find them nicely subverted. Sure, the protagonists (never heroes) tend to save the world/city/day but the protagonists themselves always lose.”
You make Miéville sound like Frank Capra, thinking Mr Smith goes to Washington and A Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart ends up absolutly wreaked at the end of MrSmith and not too smooth at the end of Life.
Much of my recent reading was written for children – E.B. White’s ‘Charlotte’s Web’, Colin Thiele’s ‘Storm Boy’ & ‘Sun on the Stubble’. Wonderful fiction, wise & beautifully constructed, too good to be restricted to their intended audiences.
Years ago, I read Stig Dagerman’s ‘The Games of Night’ and was greatly impressed. Currently I’m reading Dagerman’s ‘A Burnt Child’. Bleak. Miserable. Should be read to Sibelius’ 4th.
Other current readings: Dava Sobel’s ‘The Planets’ – nicely presented, but disappointing after her earlier books. Also Fred Rochlin’s ‘Old Man in a Baseball Cap: A Memoir of World War II’ – obvious comparisons with Catch-22, but having more complex insights. Highly recommended as a plainly-told tale that exceeds its ostensible parameters.
‘Are You Dizzy…’ aka j_p_z: Early in my post-doctoral career, when I had difficulties with my new workplace, my (Argentinian) PhD supervisor presented me with a copy of ‘Fictions’. It’s inscribed
So I have personal reasons to treasure Borges, though I would treasure Borges without them; the premise of ‘Funes, His Memory’ – of a blind young man unable to forget any moment of experience, or the invention of ‘The Library of Babel’ – containing every conceivable manuscript and all of their possible misprints, being more than enough.
Have just re-read all of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series so I could then read his new(-ish) Michael Tolliver Lives. Then I re-read Eragon and Eldest so I could read Brisingr (yes, I know, but hey, I enjoyed them). Now I’m reading Neil Gaiman’s Stardust.
I also tend to have several books on the go during most weeks. I think it’s a mood change thing. Some eventually get abandoned but most are finished but I haven’t a clue what’s happened in any of them. Enjoyed the reading though.
Isn’t Justina Roberts good? I particularly enjoyed Natural History but Silver Screen was a disappointment – can’t remember why. I’ve ordered Mappa mundi from the library so that’s something to look forward to. Some other authors I like are Philip Kerr, Le Carre, Douglas Adams and Tom Sharpe. I find Terry Pratchett a bit smart arsed but his recommendation of The Collapse of Chaos by Cohen and Stewart was spot on. It’s more fun than James Gleick’s Chaos, which I also enjoyed very much.
Although I am not a scientific person I am fascinated by science in general and by physics and mathematics particularly. One of my very favourite books is The Emperors New Mind by Roger Penrose. My copy is old, stained and dog-eared and the cover held on with black tape. It is my “dipper” book. I have read it 3 times right through and now just about understand the page numbers. However, it is the sort of book that I can pick up, select a page at random and start happily confusing myself. I do this whenever I am bored with every other book available to me. It is the ultimate mystery story. The equations mean next to nothing to me but I keep trying and I repeat the pictograms like a mantra.
Candelabra/bracket/X/bracket = Candelabra/little “t”/bracket/X/bracket + Candelabra/little “b”/bracket/X/bracket.
Ah, the magic and mystery of hard sums.
Does anyone else have a dipper book? An old friend they keep coming back to?
I’m on my third reading of Nation by Terry Pratchett – his new “kids” book. No Discworld in this one, but I love the authors notes at the end. I’ve just kept coming back to it – the questions it raised for me about who your family is, and what makes a nation have really got my mind ticking over. I’m also back on a bit of Sayers – my comfort reading – The Nine Tailors at the moment.
Skipping back and forth between two JK Galbraith books (Economics and the public purpose, The affluent society) and “The critics of Keynesian economics” (various artists).
Tragic, I know.
Am reduced to reading Ikea comics at the moment, provoking many verbal responses from me. For extra humiliation, one of my sons who has a severe language disorder and is intellectually challenged, can whiz through these tomes and never has stuff left over, nor does he have a shortage of stuff. And the bugger can draw!
The Stone that the Builder Refused, Madison Smartt Bell’s final volume in his biographical novels of Toussaint Louverture. Terrific stuff, from an often-overlooked writer.
TimT: Try Tess of the Baskervilles, Hardy’s little known sequel co-authored with Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Tess was as beautiful as ever; her exquisite floppy ears, her affectionate wet nose…”
The Palin Diaries.
(Michael)
boynton, is there any evidence that the other Palin is literate?
Just started a book called Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/feb/03/booksonhealth.features
So far it’s intriguing and very well-written.
I must admit I don’t have Tess of the Baskervilles on my shelf, Helen, but I think I have ‘The Travels of Sir John Baskerville’ somewhere…
Has anyone read Special Topics in Calamity Physics? Like to hear opinions.
Wind_Sur – My favourite dipper is ‘A Pattern Language’ by Christopher Alexander, which probably exercises a peculiar fascination for urban-design nerds like me.
Agree with all the comments about ‘Where is the Green Sheep’. Still it could be much worse. I have drawn a line in the sand about reading any more of the mind-numbingly boring ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ books.
I cannot believe no-one has recommended Iain Banks – though there are a fair few books floating around the world these days, I guess. For those who like spec fic, he writes fascinating novels under the name Iain M Banks. For those who cannot sufficiently suspend disbelief, he writes under plain old Iain Banks a variety of novels too hard to classify, some with crime or thriller elements. Whichever one you read you will not be disappointed. I’d be reading one now if he would only write a little faster…
I’ve got a few on the go at the moment, plus the odd trashy vampire novel series, because those things are like crack, and I’ve got a friend at work who keeps dealing to me. *grin*
Current list is:
The Stone Raft by Jose Saramago (I concur with Lefty E, he is truly magnificent. First of his I read was The Gospel According to Jesus Christ which I reread every couple of years). I haven’t gone back to this one in a while, because I find I need long chunks of time to devote to Saramago, and time has been getting away from me of late.
Witchcraze by Anne L. Barstow, which is non-fic feminist-historical look at the European witch-hunts. Good so far, albeit a bit heavy.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, which I must admit I’m having trouble getting into, I dunno, Mieville’s characters always seem somewhat lacking, to me, and not in an interesting ‘this is a character point’ way. I am early in, though, and I always get to this point early in a Mieville book where I battle just abandoning it, but I generally get something out of continuing.
I’ve also recently picked up Susan Fauldi’s The Terror Dream, which is looking interesting so far.
Nice one Jennifer – The Stone Raft is before me on my desk as we speak (along with Blindness). Will get to it soon!
I have just started Flying too High by Kerry Greenwood after devouring the first of the series (Phryne Fisher Mystery books) this morning. Really enjoying it, takes up the right amount of brain space.
I tried to read the series a few years ago but didn’t find it entertaining enough. I like that my taste in books (along with a lot of other things) changes over the years.
And now ‘Where is the green sheep’ today but a few renditions of ‘Hairy Macleary from Donaldsons Dairy’.
Having finished the Sayers the other day, I’m reduced to pulling “An Introduction to Stochastic Models” out of my technical library to avoid reading Flannery’s Quarterly Essay. Gaaah!
I mean, Markov chains are all well and good, but it’s not light reading.
I found Special Topics in Calamity Physics a cracking yarn, a hugely fun read. Yes, it has intellectual pretensions, but that doesn’t make it turgid. US School stories seemed to be big when that came out – I also read Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld. The peripatetic Dad is wonderfully awful and I greatly enjoyed all the invented academic titles.
I think it owes a lot to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Eager misfit comes to a school as a new bug, gets involved with a strangely elitist and insular bunch of students, a mishap involving a death ensues… (Not a spoiler, that’s obvious from very early in the book). I think with Pessl, Sittenfeld et al, everyone’s trying to write the new Secret History.
In the fiction pile, we have Anathem, the latest 1000-page delight from the wonderfully erudite Neal Stephenson, this time a fantasy/sci-fi/geeky speculative fiction.
And in the non-fiction pile we have Energy from Heaven and Earth by Edward Teller, which, despite being a few decades old, and despite the political infamy of the author, is an extremely good book about energy, where it comes from, and how we use it, covering such issues as the need for energy conservation, the politics of oil and OPEC, the science of nuclear fusion power and future energy from fusion, and worldwide resources of oil and coal. Despite the author’s scientific expertise, it’s certainly not a book all about nuclear power, and despite being a little old, it’s an extremely good book which remains extremely relevant today.
I just bought and am over half way through Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. I think Pollan is one of the finest writers about the ecology of food & agriculture to be found, and as expected, am enjoying this immensely. Anyone wanting to really understand the nexus between our health, our diet, agriculture and the state of the planet must read Pollan.
If you haven’t read The Omnivore’s Dilemma may I also humbly recommend. While Pollan is American and writes from the American experience, he’s well aware of it, and of course in terms of what & how we eat Australia is now depressingly similar.
I also bought Barbara Ehrenreich’s (relatively) new book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, which I am hugely looking forward to because I always find B.E. an immensely illuminating and satisfying read – and it’s lovely to have a work by her on such a positive topic waiting.
In terms of fiction, I’ve got a long wait until Ursula Le Guin’s highly acclaimed Lavinia finally gets here in paperback so I can afford it, but I’m trying to be patient and not cave & order it through eh evil Amazon. It picks up the story of Aeneas’ wife from the Aeneid. Ok, I haven’t read it yet but it got rave reviews and I have yet not to enjoy anything Le Guin has written – tack me to the pavement and shine a light in my face & I’d pick her as my all-time fav. author.
I just re-read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothschild (I think?) while I had a lurgy, a satisfyingly well-written & absorbing fantasy told from the first person with a great take on how magic works, but I couldn’t class it as any sort of grand informer on all things human etc. It’s just really enjoyable.
I tend to bounce between reading all fiction, or all non-fiction, and my days of having several books on the go are largely over – I just find it too jarring now. Most reading is done in the bath, which is also good for encouraging my love of short stories, so on the bath shelf at the moment is Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years, a collection of women-authored sci fi which is pretty good.
Hmm, guess I am reading two at once technically, but the Pollan is dominating.
Delightful but horrible dilemma. Have just received three new books from Amazon on aspects of American Revolution, not even looked at yet. [cf. Lazy Sunday.] Am at the beginning of another, and on the second last chapter of another. Plus reading a pretty awful group bio of the Hanoverians because sometimes I like messing with my mind.
And I have what looks like a very interesting history of Aborigines in colonial times that I have to review by 1 November and I haven’t even started it yet. And I’m waiting on 3 more books from Amazon.
To paraphrase the sport obsessed Gordon Bray years ago, “There’s no such thing as too much reading.”
Re Green Sheep and Hairy McLary, for those with slightly older kids, my 4 1/2 year old and I just discovered a delightful story that James Joyce wrote for his grandson – the Cat and the Devil. Really lovely, light-hearted and kiddie-friendly take on the Faust story. Heartily recommend it!
Helen – Not a spoiler, that’s obvious from very early in the book
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Yeah that’s one of the things that impressed me about the book. You know the death is coming and yet it’s so eerie and stuffed with suspense when it comes. I didn’t find it intellectually pretentious at all. She uses language so well and her ‘curriculum strategy’ seem more a reflection of the kind of book someone like Blue would actually write. Considering today’s malaise of junk culture I enjoyed reading something so thoroughly highbrow.
Hooray to David – there is someone out there who reads DL Sayers, that highly intelligent and interesting detective fiction writer – have heard it said that she only wrote detective fiction to finance her real interests – theology, playwriting and Italian classics.
Now reading Berhard Knollenberg’s Origin of the American Revolution 1759-1766. If the introiduction is any indication it has some of the stuff I’m looking for about the 18 C Royal Navy in North America. Seems a wel-written well researched history. I have great hopes of it. (published 1960.)
Tigtog and All:
Been far too busy to read anything much lately [hence my comment on the I Won't Condemn , XXVII topic].
Last book I read was one recommended by Mark Bahnisch: David Blackbourn’s The Conquest Of Nature …. on the remarkable ecological and economic transformation of Germany and parts of Poland over a few centuries.
Adrien
What is it about the Skool Story that so fascinates American writers? is it because it allows them to address their taboo subject, class? (as in Upper Class, not Math Class).
Just had a clean out of books from my undergrad days, and got rid of a bundle of ‘em including my still unread An Imaginary Life. I already regret a few i let go esp. my hardcover Steinbeck, but figure they’re not about to go out of print for a while.
Apologies if someone else mentioned it ( i’m in Cairns and havent been near a comp for a week), but heard Graham Perrot on RN today talking about his book the Twelfth Fish. Anyone read it yet?
As for me, i’m kinda on holiday-ish – so i’m reading Firmin (the rat book). Its quirky and cute.
I’m not trying to one-up anyone but I’ve just finished reading ‘War and Peace’ – new translation, 2007 (Viking). I wasn’t working so I had the time to read it in one sitting, so to speak. Took me a fortnight. I’ve read it before – way back in the dim, dark distant past- but I’m very glad I’ve done it again with the new translation. It was fabulous: I cried real tears, also laughed and was deeply affected by it; rather like a love affair. Thinking about it daily. It’s so vast and touches on so many moods and ideas that it often comes to mind. I don’t remember much about my response to it when I was young except it must have radicalised me for life I think, especially the way Tolstoy completely trashes the idea of ‘the great man’ in history.
I planned to read the Booker shortlist and had the books waiting at the library but Tolstoy’s spoiled me for them now. Give me fifteen hundred pages of translated Russian written 140 years ago, but I just can’t undertake a modern doorstopper right now (sorry Steve Tolz). I may just be able to manage a re-read of one of Henning Mankell’s Wallander books, possibly ‘Faceless Killers’ coz it’s short and I like the title.
‘The Pages’ by Murray Bail is also short and quite refreshing.
Rainbowdog — if you’ve not seen it before, you would probably really enjoy the vintage TV adaptation of War and Peace from the early 1970s, starring the 34-year-old (and, then as now, mesmerising) Anthony Hopkins as Pierre. It was wonderful.
What is it about the Skool Story that so fascinates American writers? is it because it allows them to address their taboo subject, class?
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The class in American schools is often not just socio-economic but subcultural. As in Heathers it’s a sexual-physical-intellectual hierarchy reflecting the Darwinian nature of American society.
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Now that I think about it I can’t remember much by way of ’skool stories’ set in schools that aren’t elite in some way. Except the talented teacher rescues born losers sub-genre. But the earliest example I can remember of that style of story was ER Braithwaite’s To Sir With Love. In most of these tales however including Special Topics in Calamity Physics the students are always impossibly smart. This is funny because it directly contradicts the facts that says that Americans are gettin’ dumber and dumber and dumber.
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I love Heathers: The same day you win the lottery aliens land and announce they’re gonna blow the world up in two days what do you do?
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Well I’d just slide that wad over to my dad. ‘Cause he’s like the top stockbroker in Ohio.
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And of course: “Football season was over. They had nothing left to offer the school but date rapes and AIDS jokes”.
Thanks PC, I’d love to see that adaptation of W & P. How does one find something like that to look at? (Start with Google?)
Have you read ‘The Pages’? It’s got a little bit of Adelaide in it. At least one Adelaide joke.
Given these are historical if not quite yet hysterical times, I’ve been amusing myself by rereading some good histories. Especially Barbara Tuchman and Jan Morris – both of whom employ footnotes with Gibbonesque aplomb*.
* It’s always the weird and fun bits you can’t fit into a structured narrative and are left in footnotes that end up adding real character to yer work. And then when your readers twig to how much is being left between the lines, slap a semi-apposite latin tag on the end. Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est baby!
But aside from wallowing in sardonic macrohistory, I’ve also been enjoying some microhistory like:
The Havana Mob by TJ English – a beautifully researched and written account of the Lansky/Batista/Castro nexus between 1955 and 1961 with some excellent photos, including the young Fidel Castro as a dapper ruling class playboy in a superb suit.. Damn, the Tropicana in Havana in 1958 would have to have been the the most glamorous nightclub ever.
Ornamentalism by David Cannadine – a persuasively argued thesis about how the British Empire artfully employed honours, ranks and other trappings of empire to lock local tribal leaders into having a vested interest in the ongoing pageant. And with photos of George Nathaniel Curzon in full New Romantic mode.
Victorian Science edited by George Basalla, William Coleman and Robert H Kargan – “A Self-Portrait from the Presidential Addresses of the British Association for the Advancement of Science” ie: the anti-Royal Society lobby bankrolled by Victorian technocrat entrepreneurs like Brunel et al. A probably too seminal steampunk text.
A most entertaining English translation of Apollinare’s Les Onze Milles Verges. Chapeux doffed to Nina Rootes for what must have been a long, subtle and frequently exasperating job of rendering an dashed off French erotic novel by a jovial proto-surrealist into unsolemn
English.
Splash One by Ivan Rendall. A history of jet fighter combat written with the flair, research skills and eye for the telling point that Deighton brought to Fighter and Bomber. Again some great photos.
Astra and Flondrix by Seamus Cullen. Basically an seventies attempt to sex up Cabell’s jJurgen – which didn’t need it anyway ‘cos half it’s charm was in the eliding and alluding. Then along came Angela Carter who completely maxed out that particular sub-genre . Anyway Astra and Flondrix is now one book I have no particular plans to finish.
And just reread the Great Gatsby. It’s quite startling how some of its observations about what big money does to people and vice-versa still have immense currency now. And it remains one of the most beautifully written books in the English language.
Now I’m off to reread Moominland Midwinter, one of the most haunting and melancholy books ever translated into English. I can’t believe it was ever read to Scandinavian children without them leaping out the windows to be impaled on a passing reindeer or Minister for Rural Housing, Alcohol and Young Human Development.
In between my study of Sallust, I started to read Melvyn Bragg’s ‘The Adventure of English’ having enjoyed the series on TV last year. I find it’s very interesting so far. I enjoy Bragg’s BBC radio podcast of ‘In Our Time’. Speaking of radio didn’t anyone else hear this week they’re cutting Law Report, Religion Report, and Media Report from ABC Radio National and replacing them with some populist rubbish? It’s a disgrace I tells ya.
I’ve not decided what fiction I’ll read over summer – modern science fiction is generally terrible – but there is at least one unread (by me) modern J.G. Ballard in the house I might give that one a go.