As those folks who are my friends on Facebook are no doubt aware, I successfully defended my PhD thesis at my final seminar on Thursday in the Humanities Program at QUT. That’s a milestone I’m really happy to have reached, and in a post-thesis universe, one thing I can do is make some more time for reading fiction! I was just thinking that it’s been ages since I wrote a science fiction post, and that in itself speaks volumes about the sorts of volumes that have been the staple of my reading diet over the semester just gone! I’ve been storing up some promising science fiction to read and have been finding Locus and blogs and online sf zines fabulous resources for both purchasing books and building up a sense of anticipation and excitement about them!
Anyway, all this prompted me to think that it’s about time that we had another thread about what we’re all reading, or indeed what we’re intending to read over the holidays. I’d also be interested in hearing from others how they pick new titles – recommendations, reviews, online, offline? Discussion doesn’t have to be limited to science fiction and/or speculative fiction, of course, but that’s what my piles of books to be read currently consist of!
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/science-fiction-001.jpg"
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Srill reading for my thesis! Internet Inquiry (eds Markham and Baym) and Changing Practices of Doctoral Education (eds Boud and Lee). Congratulations, Mark. I need stories of success.
While the vast majority of my reading has been thesis related this year, I am in the middle of writing a review of ‘Miss Pettigrew lives for a day’ for my blog. I read it earlier in the year and it is such a fun little book. It was a gem and the perfect distraction from the academic reading I’d become bogged down with. It is an easy little read, beautifully written and the version I had contains quaint illustrations sprinkled through out.
I was reminded of how much I had enjoyed the book when I watched the movie version last night. The movie was pretty good and although it sparkled I felt that a lot of the best interchanges of the book hadn’t made it into the movie. But that always happens doesn’t it?
Just congratulations! Now put it on the shelf, and don’t read it for at least 6 months.
Me? Michael Connelly’s sleek prose in ‘The Brass Verdict.’
Congratulations!! Very well done.
Peter F. Hamilton “The Temporal Void”, Richard Morgan is (usually) good and I love Aistair Reynolds.
Congratulations Mark! Can we now call you Dr. B., or is there another hurdle to clear?
Pergratum est mihi quod tam diligenter libros scientiae fabulosae lectitas!
I’m reading Philip Mead’s new book on Australian poetry, Networked Language, at the moment. I’ve also been reading Patrick White’s Riders In The Chariot (about a quarter of the way through now). I’ve got John Forbes’ collected poems beside my bed, and Kenneth Slessor’s on my desk (part of Mead’s book is about him, and I want to have the poems to hand), and I’ve been enjoying both.
In the sci-fi genre, I recommend “The Knife of Never Letting Go” by Patrick Ness – part one of a trilogy. Has a Philip Pullman flavour. (And I got it from a review in the Guardian).
ONYA DR Mark!!! A real Doctor!
I had my fingers, toes etc crossed for you on Defence Day.
Welcome to “Getting my life back” territory.
I have about half a dozen books on the go at the moment.They include:
-”The Messiah Myth” by Thomas Thompson, a writer I like, one of the so called ‘minimalist’ archaeologists. His basic theme is that Jesus and David were 2 of several personifications of ‘messiah’ types that can be found in a wealth of pre -existing literature from Egypt, Greece and the Near East.
-Today I bought “Robin Lane Fox’s book, “The Unorthorized Version- Truth and Fiction in the Bible”. Fox is the prof of history who consulted on the script of one of the recent Alexander movies. Might be interesting although I don’t hold out too much hope.
-”"Tackling Domestic Violence” which looks at how dv issues are perceived, its by Lynne Harne who signed this copy [we thought we had lost it when it failed to turn up after having been posted in London some months ago, but it finally arrived a few days ago].
-Jared Diamond’s “Collapse’, I quickly read it before when I borrowed it from a mate, but I recently got a second hand copy for $5 and want to delve into it a bit more. I like Diamond but his chapter 13 in this book, which is all about Australia, causes me some concerns.
-I also found [ for 50 cents!] an early Le Carre book which introduces the George Smiley character. Its of ‘historic’ iterest mainly.
-I nearly bought a biography of Murdoch, written by someone in 1990 but decided not to. I may change my mind on that if I feel in a masochistic mood, its sure to be in the same place and only cost a dollar, which may be overpriced.
Other than that I have several official publications on the environmental issues relating to the Murray, a couple of them fell off the back of a passing truck, doubtless they will be boring and depresssing.
That lot will keep me busy for a while.
Congratulations! I had a stack of books waiting the end of my thesis. When I got to them, though, it was a case of ho hum! I couldn’t get into any of them,
I have just read Geraldine Brooks People of the Book which I really did enjoy.
At the moment, I am re-reading Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children which I recently bought. It seemed silly not to own a copy of my favourite book.
Congratulations Mark! Life beyond thesis now begins.
I’m nearly finished reading Robin Lane Fox’s ‘The Classical World’, and Rebecca Huntley’s book on food ‘Eating between the lines’. I also just finished Edmund Wilson’s ‘To the Finland Station’.
Congratulations and well done! That’s a hard road.
Aside from a mass of archival material for (you guessed it…), general relaxation reading over the summer is:
The Flight of the Earls, John McCavitt
1690: The Battle of the Boyne, Padraig Lenihan
In Praise of Empires: Globalisation and Order, Deepak Lal (an annual pleasure)
Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag: The Aquariums of Pyongyang, Kang Chol-Hwan
Korea’s Place in the Sun, Bruce Cumings
A History of the Peninsular War vols VI and VII, Sir Charles Oman
The German Offensives of 1918, Martin Kitchen
The War Years and After, Datuk J.J. Raj (Sri Sentosa Setia Diraja & etc)
The Eye Over the Golden Sands: The Memoirs of a Penang Family (Vol II), Lim Kean Siew
Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered, Paolo Matthiae
MarkL
Canberra
Just finished Beyond Nab End by William Woodruff. I picked it for a dollar at the markets only to find that it’s a sequel. Also re-reading Seville Communion by Arturo Perez Reverte to remind myself that he can write after trying one of the Alatriste novels.
Oh, and working my way back through the Aubrey novels by Patrick O’Brien. Perfect train fodder.
Just finished the new Birmo airport novel, “Without Warning”. Its pretty crap. Moved on to Mark Davis (The Land of Plenty). And econometrics texts, in preparation for an upcoming exam. My last fiction book was a macroeconomics text
Congratulations!
I’m reading stuff for my Uni exams, mostly philosophy stuff…
Fiction:
The Best Australian Stories 2008, ed Delia Falconer (terrific)
The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell (forgettable)
The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber. (Brilliant so far. I’m only a handful of pages in — it’s a new volume in the Myths series of modern re-tallings, here a purported fifth Gospel, an the opening scene takes place in a looted Iraq museum full of Aramaic scrolls and gigantic broken Abyssinian and Mesapotamian lions and tyrants, between an impatient Canadian academic and a hand-wringing Iraqi curator who is almost immediately blown up.)
Non-fiction:
Opera, or the Undoing of Women, by Catherine Clément, French/Jewish writer, editor, philosopher and French cultural ambassador. ‘Opera is a Mass endlessly consecrated to the victory of the powerful over the eternal rebellions of the repressed.’
House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann by Evelyn Juers. Haven’t started this yet but it looks wonderful. ‘They had just met … Nelly sat on his knee. She wore nothing but a blue silk slip. It was the summer of 1929.’
Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner. Superbly written and very witty history of the spice trade ‘through history, myth, archaeology and literature’.
Thanks, folks!
j_p_z @ 5, the hurdles are numerous for this process! I now have til January to incorporate suggestions and feedback from the panel and the seminar, and then external examiners get to procrastinate for ages before writing reports, and then I make “corrections” recommended by examiners and then my principal supervisor signs a certificate saying I’ve done that, and then I can call myself Doctor!
And buy a tudor bonnet!
But the final seminar is – in part – a sort of ritual to signify the successful end of the candidature and it’s customary to regard what remains as tidying up…
At present I’m up to Book VIII of The Brothers Karamazov, about half-way through Love in a Cold Climate, have finished Volume 2 of the manga Hanzo no Mon, and have just started Confessions of a Beachcomber.
But, as I’m going for my locomotive driver’s ticket in a couple of weeks’ time, this book-reading lark is about to recede into the distant background for the duration…
Alas no fiction for you Mark (I too have a pile of sf stored in a cupboard for post-thesis times). However, partly because it’s tangential to my thesis, I’ve just read Lauri Lebo’s The Devil in Dover, about the attempt to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum in one state a few years ago. It’s so good I wrote a review, which is pretty rare for me. I’m a terribly slothful reviewer – why I could never do PC’s job.
Fantastic!
One of the nicer things about the university where I wrote my thesis (ANU) is that there are no oral defences. You just submit the thesis, and wait for the examiners to do their thing, and you only do an oral defence if your thesis is marginal. This was a very good thing from my point of view – I was 28 weeks pregnant with twins when I submitted, and I had five weeks lecturing to do, while crossing my legs very, very firmly. My girls arrived at 38 weeks, and my thesis result two weeks later.
As for my current reading: an old favourite, which I picked up to beguile the hours away while flying to Canberra – Middlemarch. And various other books, piled high and waiting for me, but Middlemarch is very absorbing.
Mark, Ballard’s Crystal World is a great work. Have you read Hello America?
Also — there are three new(ish) Australian novels that look fantastic and are being saved up in case I get a week off over Christmas:
The Zookeeper’s War by Stephen Conte
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
Tyro Rex @ 22 – I don’t think I’ve ever read any Ballard except some short pieces in ancient numbers of New Worlds. I read a number of reviews of his recent memoir around the place, and saw the re-issue of The Crystal World at Pulp Fiction – I had a loyalty points voucher for $25 so I snapped it up and I’m looking forward to discovering his work!
Deborah @ 21 – Although your circumstances at the time sound like it wouldn’t have been a welcome addition to the process, I don’t mind the final seminar thing at QUT at all. (Though perhaps the degree of anxiety it generates is considerable!) It’s good to have a chance to let a wider circle of people into what is always a somewhat solipsistic process, and very good to have 3 additional pairs of eyes doing a thorough reading of it in addition to your supervisor before it goes to external examiners, and I found the comments and questions in the seminar really helpful. It’s also a nice ritual – of validation, I think, and I like rituals – and so you get to feel the love twice – graduation being the other one!
Barry Lopez, “Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape”
You may never think of the word ‘Tornaarssuq’ the same way ever again. The book that finally explains once and for all what is meant by the phrase “the eight-legged bear.”
L. David Mech, “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species”. Excellent primer on the subject. I gave my other wolf textbook to a little kid on the bus who seemed very fascinated by the topic; can’t remember that title now, so this one will have to do.
In a more fantasy vein, if not strictly sf…
Tanith Lee, “White As Snow”. As Sonic Youth once memorably said, “Feel around in the dark until you get the idea.”
James Merrill, “The Changing Light at Sandover” Don’t ask questions.
“House of Leaves”. Seriously, don’t ask questions. And go to sleep with the light on.
Paul Pope, “THB” Fascinating account of a future colonized Mars; it runs out of steam after a while (it’s a comic), but it’s compelling for a while. And the author’s self-regard can be a little hard to take at times, but overall it’s worth it.
Jeff Smith, “Bone”. Accept no substitutes. Stupid, stupid rat creatures!
Carl Sandburg, “Rootabaga Stories”. Read the story “Sand Flat Shadows”. Then read it again.
Mark, what was the thesis about- what motivated it and what are you trying to say?
What am I reading?
Ah yes. An old Faye Kellerman detective yarn, Maureen Dowd on Palin and and stuff on the internet about Marx, Greek philosophers, hermeneutics and reason.
All in between a compulsion-inducing computer game that is as addictive as a poker machine.
The final part in the Clarke/Baxter Time Odyssey series, Firstborn.
Prior to that, Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.
paul, broadly speaking the thesis is about what conditions exist for the motivation of social action in the political field without positing a universal ideology/discourse. It’s called Phenomenology of Utopia. My own motivations in it are fairly personal, and fairly complex! It’s not really the sort of thing I want to summarise in a blog comment at this point but thanks for asking!
Quog, is Anathem worth the investment of time to take in 900 + pages?
Mark, is it accessible to the public?
Eventually – after it’s been examined, as with all QUT theses, it will be available electronically. QUT’s been at the forefront of ensuring that all research at the university by staff and students is in the public domain without access restrictions.
Thanks, congrats.
Btw
Just reading an op ed article by Melissa Fyffe in”Age” ab’t Rob Hulls and social reform.
On the specifics, fertility treatment. One of those things I’ve regarded as superfluous; a bit precious in a world of starving and genuinely sick people. A bit like botox and certain male treatments: also, plenty of third world kids there to be adopted if they wanted to do some good and give someone a life. Sorry, that’s just me.
But the article is so Devinely snotty she
(Fyffe) has done what a thousand rads could’t acheive and actually invoked sympathy in me for certain partakers of fertility treatment.
Is Fyffe’s article the first hard evidence of the Age, post Jaspan?
Five or six years ago the Age was compulsory reading. Soon it may be something to be habitually avoided, in that case.
Congratulations!!!. It is a good moment to enjoy, and I hope this means you’ll write a lot more here. I really like your blog!
The Age is getting worse, Paul.
I understand that some issues seem trivial when compared to things that go on in other places. However, there are issues that transcend boundaries, even if they are manifested in different ways.
On that note, I’m reading Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery:
http://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Recovery-Aftermath-Violence-Political/dp/0465087302
Congratulations, Mark. One must say that people get less time for murder. Writing a thesis is a long hard road.
Oh well as well as ‘Hello America’ (worth it just for the Las Vegas scene alone!) at that point I have to recommend his two ‘best-known’ works i.e. ‘Crash’ and ‘High Rise’, and ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ if you can stand experimental fiction (it contains a condensation of his obsessions with a sort-of cold war psychology, the Kennedy assassination, and medical terminology and is complete with chapters titled lke ‘Why I want to fuck Ronald Reagan’). Also his latter novels (not science fiction) like ‘Super Cannes’ and ‘Millenium People’ are much acclaimed.
He writes ‘cinematically’ is usually the term applied but his characters tend to be little more than ciphers (his lead characters are nearly always doctors, psychiatrists often, or advertising men).
‘Terminal Beach’ and ‘Vermillion Sands’ are particularly good short story collections.
The best Ballard web site is Simon Sellar’s – http://www.ballardian.com/
David Talbot, Brothers. The Hidden history of the Kennedy Years.
The book asks and answers the questions: “What did Robert Kennedy think about events surrounding his brother’s assassination and subsequent investigations into that topic? And what did he do about it?
Eye-opening.
Not reading anything yet except magazines but hoping to get into a few books over Christmas. Don’t know what yet, I’ll wait for my book-shop owner friend to say “here read this you’ll really like it” becuase she’s always right. She knows I only like to read stuff with mostly nouns and verbs but not much in the way of adjectives, a narrative and not requiring knowledge of the classics. And it can’t be written by people now dead. Not that I’m specific in my tastes or anything
Congratulations, Mark. You must be relieved the years of stress and madness are finally finished.
Currently reading Peter Martin’s Samuel Johnson, A Biography.Nearly finished it. Fascinating, but it hasn’t changed my opinion of Johnson as a rude, ill-mannered, slovenly, egotistical poseur with a much exaggerated position in the English canon, mainly due to Boswell’s biography. Without Boswell Johnson would be an obscure footnote somewhere to 18th century literature.
Also reading John Shy’s collection of articles, A People Numerous and Armed. Quite enjoyable, as well as useful.
Have on the bookshelf to read John Gascoigne’s new biography of James Cook.
Coming in the mail in the next week or so is Peter Oliver’s history of the American rebellion – a Tory tirade of abuse, but I’m looking forward to it.
Have also been spending time making a list of the books I need and will be able to get once I get Rudd’s stimulus package, mostly on the American Revolution but some on 18C England and Australia.Will be able to tell you about them in December, I hope.
Thanks, Darlene.
Nice to meet a kindred spirit also mourning the passing of an old friend.
Harlan Ellison, “The Deathbird”, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1973 – one of my faves – Stack, Snake and “Use the needle”.
Strange, even by Ellison’s standards, much of it set as exam questions; starting:
“This is a test. Take notes. This will count as 3/4 of your final grade.”
and containing, among other similar exercises, 10 discussion topics on Genesis, Ch II:
“8. God grew angry when he found out he had been defied. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, didn’t he know? Why couldn’t he find Adm and Eve when they hid?”
Still incredible modern.
Would you believe that 1973 FSF zines cost $1.10 each? Paperbacks (inc SciFi) were still under $1 in 1975.
There is pleasure in rediscovering books. I am trying to get my head around Michael Nagler’s, The Search for a Nonviolent Future, which well might require a paradigm shift. The next on the list is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The White Swan, which has had a few other readers around the internet community.
Now I suppose the decision is in the hands of the panel of judges, Mark. I hope you win your case.
Mark: Anathem takes some reading to be sure. He has invented a complex and alien society that takes some getting into, plus his use of made up words gets annoying. It takes a couple of hundred pages to get started.
But yes, on the whole, I think it’s worth the investment of time. I really enjoyed it, and being a bit of geek, enjoyed the fact that it was the geeks who saved the day in the end.
Thanks, Quog. I thought it sounded interesting from some of the reviews, but I was fearing that Stephensen might have been taking the same path as some authors do when they become famous – substituting quantity for quality!
i am reading student essays
Pavlotti @23. I ‘ve just purchased SLAP. Because of reviews. And he was soooo nice on Romona et al. Such a nice boy. Haven’t dipped in yet.
I tried A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz but I gave it away at about halfway. It’s not bad book by any means. In fact it may be even a great book. But not just now for me. I’ll be happy enough to have another go later.
I’ve just finished Krugman’s columns – v short essays. Great. A whole bunch of Nazi books – I doubt there is anything on the Nazis left to read for me. I went on a binge after reading Goldhagen or whatever his name is.
Still dipping into On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee http://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Just started Obama’s Dreams from My Father.
About to start: The Irish story: telling tales and making it up in Ireland, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972,
Just finished Yesterday’s tomorrow : Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change from 1970 by R. F. Foster , A confrontation with the work of Mr Leonard Cohen, The accidental theorist : and other dispatches from the dismal science, Better : a surgeon’s notes on performance, W.B. Yeats : a life, Vanished : the truth about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Year of the Horse [dvd] : Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Sunbury Rock Festival [dvd], Teach yourself visually weight training, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds [dvd] : the videos, and other assorted stuff….
Currently reading:
“The People’s Champion”, Ross Fiztgerald’s biography of CPA Qld MP Fred Paterson
“Scorcher” – Clive Hamilton
Waiting list:
“Beyond Capital” by Istvan Meszaros
“Climate Code Red”
“Das Kapital” Vol III (again – it’s a perennial favourite for some reason)
Chris Harman’s “The Lost Revolution” (about the German revolution) and
the Forward With Fairness legislation (the gap between the rhetoric and the reality being likely to qualify it as SciFi).
Oh, and also planning to read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, which my mother gave to me about a year ago. I figure I should read it before Chrissy, as she really liked it and will want to talk about it at great length.
I also have a number of books to write reviews about, which I don’t count as “reading”, necessarily…
I’m cheating. This afternoon I started Nicci French’s Until it’s Over. I have a week off work because I’m moving, and I intend to fit some fiction reading among the packing on the basis that I can’t think and pack at the same time.
And Deborah, I think that the oral defence of the thesis, while it wouldn’t have been convenient for you, is a great tradition, especially when it’s offered the way Mark’s was – as a public discussion of the work before submission and examination. It can be a lonely journey, and this is one way of relating the work to a community of ideas and knowledge. I’m sorry that very few Aus Unis offer it to their PhD students.
Congratulations, Mark!
I finally got round to reading A Thousand Splendid Suns which had me sobbing by the end and The Unknown Terrorist which disappointed. I hope to read The Lost Dog (with cover design by Ampersand Duck) over the holidays.
Congratulations on completing your thesis Dr Mark. I am presently reading Robert Axelrod The Complexity of Cooperation and recently read Thomas Schelling The Strategy of Conflict. When I was reading Schelling I was watching a whole lot of Blake’s 7 episodes (the best science fiction series ever). It was very fun and interesting to observe the game theoretic plots and game theory themes in the Blake’s 7 episodes.
Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man
Alan Moore, Watchmen
Ann Curthoys, et al., Rights and Redemption: history, law, and Indigenous people
Peter Corris, The Other Side of Sorrow
DVD: Underbelly
Thanks folks!
Peter – that’s interesting about Blakes Seven – which I agree is a superior series. Speaking as an Avon and Servalan fan from way back!
Before I went overseas in mid-September I had to set aside unfinished Christopher Clark’s excellent tome Iron Kingdom: the Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947. Now I’m trying to finish it. Today I read about:
That’s kind of why I’m here, though I think my mob came just a bit later, certainly not the first wave. Any way it’s clear that Prussia was always a Brandenburg/Hohenzollern imperial project that kept changing composition. So I’m going to stress my Silesian heritage in future.
Then I think I’ll tackle the latest iteration of the introduction to Mark’s thesis, which, I confidently predict, will be a “must read” for anyone trying to think seriously about the nature of the political.
On the trip I read Alanna Mitchell’s Seasick, a truly depressing book about which I hope to blog.
Also some of Gunter Grass’s Peeling the Onion and Clive Hamilton’s The Freedom Paradox. The latter so far is a book I wouldn’t mind having written myself, though I can’t imagine being as sure I’d found the Truth.
All that was a bit heavy for reading on planes, especially as I can’t sleep much, so I ended up seeing 12 and a half movies.
Here’s the current list:
- Blind Watchmaker (Dawkins), bit basic but it covers evolution quoite nicely for beginners.
- Cult of the Presidency (?), spends too much time aguing against particular academics of the US hard right, there are many ways to analyse the issue but this doesn’t seem to me to be the right way to go about it (IMHO).
- Latest William Gibson, can never remember his titles for some bizarre reason, good story so far.
- 1st year Chemistry textbook, ’cause I don’t know enough about the subject and it’s annoying me.
- New Scientist (catching up on 6 issues!).
Have now started John gascoigne’s James Cook: Voyages between Worlds. A fascinating interpretation. He gets the biographical details plus suome early North Riding social history out of the way in chapter one, and then embarks, it appears at this early stage, on a comparative European/Indigenous social history.
Ecxellent, but I wouldn’t expect otherwise.
really enjoyed the Johnson biography. The last chapter, especially, is terrifying.
Congratulations Mark.
Reading books is fine, If I can find the time. For most of my reading now is done, reading De Seuss with the Little One. Anthropomorphic creatures in our house do lurk especially when I get home after work. But you genuinely cherish such time spent together as you can read no matter what the weather.
In adult world, I did read John Birmingham’s “Without Warning” recently. Great premise ruined by invoking too many cliché wingnut revenge fantasies.
Now starting to go back and read vintage hardboiled detective stories (Chandler, Hammett et al).
Mark,
congratulations!!
Is ‘Defender of the Thesis’ akin to ‘Defender of the Faith’?
The most apt summary I’ve heard was from a friend who said, “Doing a PhD must be applying the blow-torch of self-doubt to one’s own belly!” He had watched his brother go through the ordeal.
Reading: just started “Denial” by Tony Taylor, about denial of historical events etc. http://www.readings.com.au/product/9780522854824/denial-history-betrayed
Hands up everyone who’s read “Watchmen”.
I’m struggling with “The Master and Margarita” by Michail Bulgakov. I’ve always enjoyed modern Russian writing, but I never manage to finish the books. I think the character names do me in.
Knocked over Spiegelman’s “Maus”, Abadzis’ “Laika” and Pedrosa’s “Three Shadows” in the last few days. Also, Marvel’s “Ulimates” 1 & 2. The first is good fun, the second less so.
d
Paulw, Darlene
Agree about the decline of “The Age”. The online version nosedived and the print version seems to have been struggling to follow it’s little sister downward…..
WE WERE WRONG
“The Age” once pompously described itself as ‘One of the World’s Great Newspapers’. It has been drawn to our attention that if that conceited self-praise had any basis at the time, it most certainly doesn’t now. The mistake was made by the Editor.
Finally! Congratulations.
Re-reading a couple of old favourites: “Everything and More” (Wallace), “Goedel, Escher, Bach”(Hoffstaedter) and a Kinky Friedmann for when I want something light.
The Pixar Touch by David Price – a non-fiction look at the Pixar company, from its origins in Hippy-dom to its international success with computer animated movies like Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Wall-E.
Have always loved their movies, haven’t needed the excuse of a child to go and see one (though now with a 13 month old there will be ample opportunity in the future I’m sure!) and the book is a great read about how Pixar almost fell 100 times before reaching success with Toy Story.
Mark says: I successfully defended my PhD thesis at my final seminar on Thursday
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Really why was it being attacked? Who was attacking it? Martians?
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Come on I saw that Ballard book there – you know what I’m talking about.
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Must feel good to get that out of the way. Now you can stop reading that Derrida crap and read something you actually want to.
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Me? A Season in Hell again first time in years:
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Donc tu te dégagé
Mons humain suffrages
Des communs élans
Tu voles elon…
I never finished The Master and Margharita either.
Yes, congratulations on getting it finished, Mark. Well done! (Any abstracts available?)
I read Watchmen on Saturday afternoon giving in after years of my entire sub-culture passively judge me and find me wanting. I look forward to doing the same to the sub-sub-culture I left now that I know how to pronounce ‘no, the *other* intergalactic cephalopod’.
I have Godel, Escher & Bach leering at me each morning, daring me to pick it up for the commute to and from work. I know I should start it because if I don’t soon I never will. I also know my brain is at its fuzziest on the train. I am finding that the train rides are best reserved for having someone read the book to me. Librivox has been most accommodating in that regard; I’ll take one of everything, please.
Avon is a rational egoist and Servelan always defects in the end…
Ballard’s “War Stories” collection of shorts is good fun. I like his ‘trick’ stories (“The Index”, “Notes Towards a Nervous Breakdown” and “Answers to a Questionnaire” paticularly). TR, you’ve reminded me I’ve an unread copy of “Hello America” somewhere on the shelves here, which I will find and read once I’m done with the current tome.
Just Gilmae, Will and I for “Watchmen”? Surely not!
d
I just read for pleasure, and have spent the afternoon swimming and reading at the beach – it was Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, which was much nicer than her wretched Poisonwood Bible. Good sense of place, engaging characters, but a bit obviously a ‘novel of ideas’ – a bit like Mary McCarthy in that way.
Had planned to read Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy around Remembrance Day just to make myself even more maudlin, but didn’t, so might start on that now. Have lined up on my shelves for Xmas Marilynne Robinson’s new book “Home” – her previous book Gilead was a simply beautiful thing to read. And Robert Dessaix’s new book Arabesques.
For non-fiction I will probably buy something by Giles Milton because I just read his Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 which was a very readable, popular history account of the slaughter of oh, about 2 million Greeks and Turks. Good holiday reading.
Congatulations on your successful defence. The oral is supposedly in pipeline at Utas where I’ve just submitted a thesis.
Currently I’m enjoying Mark Davis’ Land of Plenty and whipped through Amanda Lohrey’s novella Vertigo last weekend — like most Lohrey novels I’m looking foward to reading it again.
Angry White Pajamas – Robert Twigger (A bloke who won Britain’s top poetry prize, broke in Tokyo while trying to stay unbroken studying martial arts with the Japanese Riot Police.)
Boats of The Air – David Wragg (An evocative and erudite history of flying boats. With great pictures! Seriously great pictures of Pan Am Clippers and British Empire Airways C-class flying boats! Fucking great pictures!)
The Bear Comes Home – Rafir Zabor (Again. I love this book. I just picked up four copies at the Strand (12th and Broadway) and distributed them all along the right coast of the US – it’s all about a large brown bear who plays sax like Lester Bowie and cracks wise like a young Lenny Bruce.)
Ask The Pilot – Patrick Smith (A professional pilot answers all your questions in a style that blends together Martha Stewart, Antoine Saint-Exupery and George Carlin. Apparently a cult book amongst those that fly for a living. Virgin America cabin crew spotted the cover across many rows and swooped on my copy to show me their favourite paras.)
I Was Dora Suarez – Derek Raymond (The English James Ellroy – except he’s a better writer than Ellroy.Or at least more abjectivey)
Living, Loving, Party-Going – the Henry Green novel trilogy (excellent long haul airborne reading. He was the Captain Beefheart to Evelyn Waugh’s Zappa. And he was the dude who originally came up with the often misattributed line about buttered toast and cunty fingers)
The Black Death – Philip Zeigler (a very suave and well-researched biography of a civilisation-shattering bacillus. Almost as good a read as “Rats, Lice, and History”
“I like his ‘trick’ stories (”The Index”, “Notes Towards a Nervous Breakdown” and “Answers to a Questionnaire” paticularly). ”
Those aren’t stories, they’re customs and immigration forms for the 21st Century. Invisible literature.
One of the most subtle and slyly entertainingly foxtrots around now is how Jim Ballard is deftly avoiding a K. Like John Cleese, Peter Ackroyd, John Le Carre and Rikki Gervais. Putting ‘Sir” in front of their first name will just won’t work with their work. Which is why Keef knocked his K back.
Now I’m about to hunt down online a nice box set of J P Martin’s “Uncle” books – with the Quentin Crisp illustrations – ostensibly as a birthday present for my godson.
One final bitch – The Plot Against America – Philip Roth (I’ve never been a big fan of Roth and reading this on the 133 from Penn Station to Union DC does nothing to unconfirm my opinion. The central conceit been done with far more energy, style and thought by Philip K Dick, Sinclair Lewis, etc. And Lindbergh is just not an appropriate protagonist for any story but his own.
Nabakov cast “abjectivey” before us.
Does this denote the abject use of adjectives? neologism?
Congratulations Mark, a major achievement!
Currently reading Stranger in the Forest by Eric Hansen, about his treck across Borneo through the rainforests and highlands in the 80s. A truly wonderful book, full of new information and insights, fascinating insights into rapidly vanishing if not vanished cultures (name me one other culture where the men pierce their penises and insert various objects to enhance female pleasure?!) and intelligent observation of the environment.
I loved The Poisonwood Bible, it should have received much more attention and awards than it did.
“Those aren’t stories, they’re customs and immigration forms for the 21st Century. Invisible literature.”
I’m right now going to put on “The Yellow Shark” and listen to “Welcome to America” :^)
d
Thanks again folks!
Rob @ 66 – there was an abstract for the emailed flyer of notification, but I dashed it together really quickly. With these sort of things, I’m reluctant to let it have its time in the public domain until the work is complete – and while obviously I hope that there aren’t too many corrections to be made as a result of examiners’ feedback, it won’t be in a form I’d be completely happy to disseminate until that’s done.
gilmae, you shouldn’t let “Goedel Escher Bach” terrorise you. It’s not as difficult a read as it looks (although I agree the size is somewhat intimidating), and Hofstadter’s writing style lends itself to reading bits on the bus. You don’t even really need to read it strictly sequentially.
Abjectivey: the diminutive of abjective. So showing signs of being miserable and wretched and pathetic (to use -y in the Whedony sense).
However if Raymond is a better writer than Ellroy because he is more abjectivey, shouldn’t this suggest that Nabakov should adore Roth?