Forum / Whatchya Reading?

• 
  Linda Simoni-Wastila

  Aug 19, 11:39pm

  So I've been scarce for over a year, mostly absorbed by family, work, and my writing program. But now I am on sabbatical from work and good weather days Find me in the hammock with a book.

  So many great reads the past week:

  The Consequence of Skating (Steve Gillis): First time I've read Gillis, and what a devastating writer. This story about love and making the same mistakes over and over slayed me.

  The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer): Heard her read from this at AWP and it was, well, interesting. Was not as enamored of this story as I hoped. A long book which felt rushed.

  A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan): I read this every summer. I enjoy it more each time.

  The Merrill Diaries (Susan Tepper): I adore the way Susan writes, and the characters she creates always are like no one else. This was a fast, fun, and bittersweet summer read.

  So what's on your nightstand at the moment?

  And it feels good to be back. Peace...

• 
  Chris Okum

  Aug 20, 05:28pm

  David Lynch Swerves by Martha P. Nochimson, which argues that to correctly interpret his latter movies (Lost Higway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire), one has to view them through the dual prism of quantum mechanica and Vedic philosophy instead of the usual Lacanian interpretations.

  The Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen. Renowned scientist wants you to know that we are all fucked, that after 2050 our children and their children's children are going to be living inside of an environmetal horroshow, and it's all our fault, because we've done nothing to stop what's about to happen, and we could've, but we were all too selfish, and this is what our grandchildren are going to say about us to the generations that follow them, that we were a bunch of selfish pigs who turned the world into a garbage dump.

  Dictionary of Operations by Konrad Becker. Can't even begin to explain what this one is about. I'll just quote: (From the Anxiety Management): "Seeking emotional control and cognitive closure, conservatives do not tolerate jokes that fail to provide resolution of incongruent elements. In contrast to a more abandoned self-expression and thought they fail to accommodate double meanings, the timing and reversal of expectations. They tend to have a bad sense of humor. All theories of absurdity are predictably incongruent, but clearly humor can both contain and release. The Weatherman acid test to single out infiltrators proved famously inadequate, but in the higher spheres of nonsense humor some will certainly never get the joke."

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Aug 20, 06:27pm

  The Great Gatsby was the selected book last evening at the first book group I have ever attended. I welcomed the opportunity to reread the novel from my older perspective. I have yet to decide whether to see the new film version. The prose in Gatsby is great. The size is great. The precious turns that form myriad moments create larger moments. The characters are realized.

  Alan Ainsworth at 25 said Gatsby was the greatest American novel, and Alan was in my opinion one of the two best writers at the U of Houston then. I had my own informal and private ranking system. Usually serious readers I know have counted Moby Dick as the best American novel. Henry James -- if not for a specific novel -- is near the top of top readers' lists of American authors.

  This slow re-reading of Gatsby is causing me to aspire to write another novel, and this time to believe in it as art, my art. Bob Spryszak has requested to see the method in my compressed stories become the means to a novel. Reading Gatsby this time is to feel surrounded by people that interest me. It is conversation that is a book. I am reading it a few pages at a time, not to miss any imagio. Maybe imagio is not a word for image that acts.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Aug 20, 07:35pm

  I like what Chris is reading.

  A Visit from the Goon Squad is also a favorite, and I neeeeeedddd to re-read Gatsby, though Tender Is the Night is coming up on my to-read stack.

  As of now, I'm slogging my way through Thus Spoke Zarathustra (often enthralling but a bit exhausting, as well). Nietzsche, whatcha gonna do?

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Aug 20, 09:09pm

  Also just picked up a used copy of Elmore Leonard's RUM PUNCH (which was the source material for the Tarantino film JACKIE BROWN) for three bucks. Why not?

• 
  Carol Reid

  Aug 21, 02:03am

  Finished Willie smith's collection, Nothing Doing.Bizarre, exhilarating stories,with an unusual flair for language. Found a couple of books at my bed and breakfast,The New desert Reader and Resist Much, Obey Little,about Edward Abbey, both promising reads.

• 
  Carol Reid

  Aug 21, 03:04am

  Finished Willie smith's collection, Nothing Doing.Bizarre, exhilarating stories,with an unusual flair for language. Found a couple of books at my bed and breakfast,The New desert Reader and Resist Much, Obey Little,about Edward Abbey, both promising reads.

• 
  Linda Simoni-Wastila

  Aug 21, 11:15am

  Some great reads here.

  @Chris, your reads incredibly interesting and eclectic--will seek these out.

  @Matt, I need to read Nietsche. My husband is reading The Iliad and The Odyssey--I feel culturally bereft.

  @Ann, we did a close read of Gatsby last summer in our novel class. We focused on Fitz' ability to conjure place and setting. I learned so much from that particular read, as well as enjoyed the heck out of it.

  @Carol, let us know how Abbey tickles you. But at a b-and-b, I would fancy anything. Enjoy yourself!

  Peace...

• 
  Guy Yasko

  Aug 21, 02:47pm

  Mishima -- Temple of the Golden Pavilion. I hate Mishima, but i'm kind of fascinated with where his aesthetic politics ended up in the late sixties.

  Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Inc. Read it and weep.

  Keynes -- General Theory

  + Island of the Blue Dolphins with my daughter.

• 
  Gone

  Aug 21, 03:04pm

  I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman.

  Always enjoy reading about the anti-Eagle Scouts. A life long attraction to evil, or... fascination. Klosterman has a new perspective in this.

  Mishima has a wide body of work, ranging from the sensual to the extremes of martial discipline, utterly Japanese with the taint of European cultural influence, much too complex to be defined by his choreographed ending in a dance that began in his childhood.

• 
  Guy Yasko

  Aug 21, 03:39pm

  Hey, me too Gone. I'll check that Klosterman book out.

  As for Mishima, Really an interesting figure in the 1960s. I agree that he's a complex guy. I've been working off and on on a translation of "Bunka Boeiron" and there are certain resonances with TotGP, hence the reread.

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Aug 21, 04:43pm

  Thierry Lenain's Art Forgery: A History of a Modern Obsession.

• 
  Robert Vaughan

  Aug 21, 05:28pm

  Frank O'Hara's Collected Poems, Kyle Hemmings new chapbook ZIN!, Marie Calloway's what purpose did I serve in your life.

  Thanks Linda, for the post. I always love to hear what other writers are reading!

• 
  Kait Mauro

  Aug 22, 06:13am

  I've been reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown for the past two days and really, really love it so far.

• 
  Matt Potter

  Aug 22, 06:55am

  'Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth Century Britain' by Lucy Lethbridge.

  Non-fiction all the way!

• 
  David Ackley

  Aug 22, 04:46pm

  LIFE OF JOHNSON (Talk about late to the party.)

  Something by Virginia Woolf on my Kindle. I skipped by the title and haven't bothered to page back to it.Pretty good though.

  THE UNSETTLING OF AMERICA, Wendell Berry

  (RIP Marian McPartland)

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Aug 23, 03:18am

  Monolithos by Jack Gilbert

• 
  Matt Potter

  Aug 23, 07:09am

  Am on holiday in Brisbane and as always when in Brisbane, I visited the Queensland Art Gallery ... and bought the new biography on Diana Vreeland so of course, I am now reading that.

  'Servants' can wait!

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Aug 23, 05:59pm

  Finished Henry James, THE AMERICAN (New York ed.) — Now: John Gardner, NICKEL MOUNTAIN (fiction), and John Gray, THE SILENCE OF ANIMALS (non-fiction). On the night stand: Momus, THE BOOK OF JOKES, Cooper, THE MARBLED SWAN, Mailer, BARBARY SHORE.

• 
  mxi wodd

  Aug 23, 06:51pm

  Fifty Shades of Grey

  Twilight (the whole series!)

• 
  James Claffey

  Aug 23, 08:27pm

  merrill diaries
  microtones
  life cycle (poems
  we make mud
  so long, see you tomorrow

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Aug 23, 11:24pm

  Professor Borges, Lectures in English.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Aug 23, 11:26pm

  Borges' lectures on English, the history of English, including its wars, invasions, ethnic incursions, Republic, Parliament, religious history, Monarchy, and so forth. I preordered the book and it at last arrived. Gina Apostol has touched on it in a Borges review in LARB.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Aug 24, 02:00am

  Ann, I WANT THAT.

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Aug 24, 03:07am

  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Aug 24, 03:47am

  Ah, Philip K Dick, Letitia. Great choice.

  And Ann, anything Borges. Yes.

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Aug 24, 06:55am

  I'm embarrassed that I've never read it. I didn't know Bladerunner was only one thread of the story. Hmm. Now I do. And it's done. So off to find another book.

  Lxx

• 
  Barry Basden

  Aug 24, 12:55pm

  The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler

  Mentor by Tom Grimes

  They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, another fine collection of chapbooks from Rose Metal Press

  So many books, so little time...

• 
  mxi wodd

  Aug 24, 08:30pm

  The Da Vinci Code

  (they should make a movie out of this!)

• 
  Carol Reid

  Aug 24, 09:42pm

  Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James, dipped into it at 33000 feet between Dallas and Vancouver.Which strikes me funny for some reason!I have been up for too many hours, mayhaps. Good book, though.

• 
  Carol Reid

  Aug 29, 02:09pm

  The Braindead Megaphone, essays by George Saunders. How I love this book. I am so on board the Saunders train since reading Tenth of December.

• 
  Linda Simoni-Wastila

  Aug 29, 03:29pm

  Just picked up The Haunted Pool by Saunders. Hope to be joining the train--this is my first by him. Peace...

• 
  Linda Simoni-Wastila

  Aug 29, 03:34pm

  My oops! The Haunted Pool by Sand. AND the Tenth of December by Saunders (so glad to get the thumbs up from you, Carol). They are stacked on top of each other on a bookcase ten feet from where I am working.

  I need new glasses...

• 
  strannikov

  Aug 29, 05:24pm

  Dog stories by Cervantes, Akutagawa, Bulgakov.

• 
  Chris Okum

  Aug 29, 06:22pm

  Love and Information by Caryl Churchill. Over 100 disconnected dialogues (the speakers are unattributed). I have submitted two collections of the exact same thing (once in 2005 and once in 2008) and both times I was told by the owners/publishers of very small indie presses that there is no way in hell they would ever publish a collection of over 100 disconnected dialogues with unattributed speakers. I guess they are a little more adventurous in England. I want to live in England.

  Manson by Jeff Gunn. The first biography of one of the 20th Century's most reviled characters. A very informative read. Good pacing. The author makes a very interesting connection and posits the theory that Manson's story and Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land overlap. One of my co-workers saw that I was reading the book and said he was fascinated by Manson but felt guilt about it because he worried that people would think his fascination with Manson was tantamount to endorsing what he did, or that it was somehow juvenile to want to know more about Manson. I totally disagreed with him. Charles Manson's life trajectory is fascinating. Here was a man who basically spent the first 32 years of his life either in reform schools or prisons and then was let out in 1967 to a world that must have seemed like an alien planet to him. Within the space of two years he went from being a petty convict with an ignominious rap sheet to a Cult leader who had middle-class kids doing his bidding for him. Think about that: two years. Actually, less than two years. He used what he learned from reading Dale Carnegie and L. Ron Hubbard to psychologically entrap an entire battalion of lost girls and boys. Then it was over and he went back to prison for the rest of his life.

• 
  Christian Bell

  Aug 29, 07:26pm

  1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. It's a long one so I'm reading it now and I'll be reading it later.

  The Best American Travel Writing 2012. I've come to love the travel writing that appears in these anthologies. Fascinating articles.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Aug 30, 12:42am

  @Chris Okum, aside from feeling shunned for your excellent concept and design (it could be infuriating if one let it) (from a perspective of being a light year ahead of a curve) (innovation not welcomed until some ripening has taken place throughout which you are perhaps an unacknowledged part) (I agree that happens to us), is Love and Information good?

• 
  Chris Okum

  Aug 30, 01:52am

  @Ann: Yes, so far, it's on par with the rest of Churchill's work, which means that it is very, very good.

• 
  David Ackley

  Aug 30, 11:07am

  Chris,

  Now reading Hugh Trevor-Roper, THE LAST DAYS OF HITLER, evidently Manson's model as per the swastika forehead tattoo. Mad-eye resemblence in the gaze.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 30, 03:10pm

  Big difference between Hitler and Manson's madness of the eye seems to be humor. Hitler may be one of, if not the most humorless sociopath who ever walked the earth.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Aug 31, 10:00pm

  Not only did Herr H. not have a great sense of humor, but he also couldn't abide when the people poked fun at him. Acc. to "Dead Funny - Telling Jokes in Hitler's Germany", the woman who told this (excellent) joke was sentenced to death:

  <blockquote>
  Hitler and Göring are standing on top of the Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on the Berliners’ faces. Göring says, “Why don’t you jump?”
  </blockquote>

• 
  Henry Standing Bear

  Sep 17, 01:05am

  Clay Chapman's REST AREA. Fine collection by an original in any company of writers

• Frankie Saxx

  Sep 17, 07:33am

  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

• 
  David Ackley

  Sep 17, 12:33pm

  DISGRACE, J.M.Coetzee...cheery. Profs, stay away from those co-eds.

• Frankie Saxx

  Sep 17, 01:14pm

  @David

  Oh, I think I have that. I haven't read it yet though. (I have a lot of books I haven't read yet.)

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Sep 17, 05:10pm

  Neiman Marcus, Tory Burch, Nordstrom, Zappos, and Bergdorf Goodman catalogs and web sites. I realized that I would like to buy handbags for myself now that I will give to friends prior to my death as their inheritance from me. It was a poem at Fictionaut that influenced me in that direction. The poem is by Carl Santoro:

  http://fictionaut.com/stories/carl-santoro/the-yardsale-is-over-and-the-rain-is-falling-and-it-is-getting-dark

• 
  Chris Okum

  Sep 17, 09:56pm

  Non-Fic: The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse by Pascal Bruckner.

  Fic: Last and First Men by Olaf Stapeldon.

  Got my copy of Pynchon's Bleeding Edge today. Only have two weeks to read it so I better get busy. If that doesn't work out...

  Going to get back to reading Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

• Frankie Saxx

  Sep 18, 07:44am

  @Chris

  I read McCoy's They Shoot Horses a couple years ago. Been meaning to read Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye since then.

• Frankie Saxx

  Sep 18, 07:48am

  Finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was exceptionally entertaining. (It also has ninjas.)

  Started Paul Auster's Sunset Park.

  Have a bunch of stuff to load on my Nook (xTx, Frank Hinton, the Bierce that Strannikov recommended, Letitia's novels, etc.) but I keep forgetting until I curl up to read something & so I just choose from what I've already got on the device.

• 
  Chris Okum

  Sep 23, 05:26pm

  A Year From Monday by John Cage.

  A Schoolboy's Diaries by Robert Walser.

  The Cripple of Inishman by Martin McDonagh.

• Frankie Saxx

  Sep 23, 06:40pm

  Sunset Park was kind of disappointing. The end did not live up to the promise of the beginning. I often feel this way about Auster, but I keep trying.

  Now I'm reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

• 
  Christian Bell

  Sep 23, 06:57pm

  Frankie, I love Auster yet feel the same about some of his works, particularly the more recent fiction. There’s something about Auster’s writing, though, that I click with and makes me keep returning.

• 
  Chris Okum

  Sep 23, 07:23pm

  I gave up on Auster a while ago. Tired of his invalid protags who, despite their wrecked bodies, still manage to be world class lovers capable of inducing wall-shaking orgasms.

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Sep 26, 12:02pm

  robert burton: anatomy of melancholy.

• 
  David Ackley

  Sep 26, 01:07pm

  Fernand Braudel: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Centuries. A few pages each night in bed--expands the horizons and makes heavy the eyelids. Better than Ambien.

• 
  Carol Reid

  Sep 26, 04:39pm

  Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Andrea Barrett's new collection, Archangel, Cezanne's Quarry by Barbara Corrado Pope,Grand Mal by Dennis Mahagin and Dead Letters by JP Reese. Finding it difficult to write at the moment so it's great to have lots to read.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 26, 06:00pm

  "1877 - America's Year of Living Violently" by Michael A. Bellesiles." Part of my research for a novella and an excellent treatise on a period in which I'm sure there's fodder for a ton of literature. The Panic of 1873, for example, mirrors the recent bankers' and speculators' sins that recently sent the global economy into a tailspin. History truly does repeat itself. No cliche that. Nothing changes but the couture, modes of transportation, music, books, and the dialogue. I love the period for dialogue...

  The book, however, is not for those with brief attention spans. Lots of corruption, a curious dependence on private and vigilante justice, but no car chases and damn few cliffhangers. No gratuitous sex. But I'm sure that a good writer can fill in the blanks accordingly.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Sep 28, 07:40pm

  Earlier this week I read Mamet's GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS in one sitting (as most plays can be read...) and the sheer ferocity of the language in that play just blasted me into orbit.

  I'm also chipping away at Flannery O'Connor's collected stories and Lorrie Moore's BIRDS OF AMERICA. O'Connor's first two published stories, "The Geranium" and "The Barber" are absolute masterpieces, stories that can read 100's of times with something new garnered from them each time, while the next several stories until "The Heart of the Park" fall short for me. But what do I know?

  Meanwhile, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT glares at me from the end table I sit by when I read, its hulking presence calling to me when it's closed and mocking me when I open it up.

  Once I finish shoving these through my brain, both parts of ANGELS IN AMERICA await, as does John Williams' STONER and collected Katherine Ann Porter.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Sep 28, 07:44pm

  Though I'd like to mix in some good nonfiction, too. Something science-y, or philosophical, or ancient, or all of the above...

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 28, 08:15pm

  Read Crime and Punishment when I was sixteen to impress a girl. She wasn't impressed, but the novel hooked me like an unlucky carp and dragged me into the dark and never let go.

• 
  David Ackley

  Sep 28, 11:55pm

  Matt,

  I recently finished STONER and want to tell you that-incongruously, inexplicably--this novel about a small college faculty member who spends his life and career teaching English Lit. in this same place is one when started, you will not put down. At least I couldn't. Further, the stance of the telling is indirect, the language and syntax for the most part muted and plain. And yet it engages your sympathies for the protagonist at the deepest level and doesn't let go. The end is as moving as the end of Oedipus Rex.

  Read this book. You'll be grateful you did.

  d.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Sep 29, 12:28am

  David, I've heard great things about this book, and really, all of this author's novels intrigue me. Butcher's Crossing and Augustus, in particular, look like excellent novels. With Augustus, I've also got I, Claudius coming up on my fiction reading list. Wondering if I should read them back to back...

• 
  Charlotte Hamrick

  Sep 29, 02:39am

  @Frankie, !the Elegance of the Hedgehog is fantastic. I'm Currently reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain and enjoying it immensely. Not terribly cerebral, I know. ;)

• Frankie Saxx

  Sep 29, 11:47am

  @Matt: Loved Crime and Punishment. Loved.

  @Charlotte: It is. I am loving it. I'm trying to read it slow. Could be a while before I pick up something else I enjoy as much.

• 
  David Ackley

  Oct 11, 01:04pm

  DANGLING MAN, Saul Bellow.

  THE NAME OF THE WORLD (pub. 2000) Denis Johnson

  ROAD DOGS, Elmore Leonard.

  Sporadically, STONE UPON STONE, Wieslaw Mysliwski (1999 pub. Tr. from the Polish by Bill Johnston, 2010)

• 
  Christian Bell

  Oct 11, 01:20pm

  I'm still reading 1Q84 by non-Nobel Prize winner Haruki Murakami. It's a long book.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Oct 11, 02:38pm

  Found an Elmore leonard book I hadn't read before, PAGAN BABIES. I guess that'll have to do, now that Leonard's moved on.

• 
  Henry Standing Bear

  Oct 11, 05:10pm

  Nothing. I've been watching television. Big ups to those who have been watching tv, realizing there is a lot going on there!

• 
  Chris Okum

  Oct 11, 05:29pm

  Never Any End to Paris: A Novel by Enrique Vila-Matas

  Creationists: Essays by E.L. Doctorow

  The Letters of William Gaddis edited by Steven Moore

  Occasional Desire: Essays by David Lazar

• 
  David Ackley

  Oct 11, 08:39pm

  @ Christian Bell, re still reading 1Q84: Your cries have been heard. A rescue team is on the way with backpacks of comic books, DVD's, chips, beer and Jame Lloyd Davis's supply of used Elmore Leonards.

• 
  David Ackley

  Oct 11, 08:42pm

  " James " Sorry. Proof reader needed. Apply below.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Oct 11, 08:45pm

  Take my Elmore Leonards? "...from my cold, dead hands!"

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Oct 11, 11:12pm

  I'm rereading The Aeon Calling by Garth Erickson.

  One of my favourite books. A dip into madness.

  There is a review of the title here: http://elliehallstoryteller.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/aeon-calling-garth-erickson.html

  I recommend it.

  Lxx

• 
  Barry Basden

  Oct 12, 03:43pm

  Esther Stories by Peter Orner, a new author for me.

  I am uplifted and somewhat dismayed by how good he is...

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Oct 12, 03:51pm

  Barry, just checked out the reviews on this. Looks like one to read. Thanks.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/04/books/review/04LIVESET.html

• Frankie Saxx

  Oct 19, 06:45pm

  @Sheldon: I do love TV. :)

  I've started Letitia Coyne's Brittania.

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Oct 20, 04:16am

  @Frankie I'll hold my breath... :) Really.

  Good luck with it.

  Lxx

• Frankie Saxx

  Oct 20, 11:05am

  @Letitia

  It *is* pretty far outside my usual reading (I admit, the covers sold me) but last night I was up till after midnight going "Okay, just one more chapter." About halfway now.

• 
  Javed Hayat

  Oct 21, 08:12am

  The Names by Don DeLillo

• 
  Christian Bell

  Oct 22, 01:28pm

  Javed, good pick.

  David, ha ha, I'm almost finished 1Q84 but still send those rescue teams! No one with chips and beer will ever be turned away here at the compound. Don't want to cause an incident, though, with JLD's Elmore Leonards.

• 
  Chris Okum

  Oct 22, 03:56pm

  Constellation of Genius: 1922 Modernism Year One by Kevin Jackson.

  Violence in the Contemporary American Novel by James Giles

  L.A. Exile: A Guide to Los Angeles Writings 1932-1998 edited by Paul Vangelisti and Evan Calbi

  The Parts by Keith Ridgway

• 
  Javed Hayat

  Oct 23, 06:14am

  @Christian Bell: Thanks. Just finished it this morning, it was DeLillo at its finest.

  I am really curious about 1Q84 though. Would love to know your thoughts on it.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Oct 26, 04:52am

  STONER by John Williams

  (David Ackley, you were right, this is an extraordinary work of literature.)

  COMPLETE PLAYS by Sarah Kane

  Every line of her writing is a hyper-intense language bomb. She took her own life at age 28, which is how old I am. Brutal loss, but my goodness did she leave something behind...

• 
  Javed Hayat

  Oct 26, 07:26am

  Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon

• 
  Chris Okum

  Oct 26, 03:42pm

  ^ Good luck, Javed.

• 
  Javed Hayat

  Oct 26, 06:48pm

  @Chris: I so know what you mean. Lolz. Its all Mammoths and Mastodons by the look of it.

  It reminds me of Jack Beatty’s famous joke concerning James Michener books: "My best advice is don’t read it; my second best is don’t drop it on your foot."

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Nov 10, 06:37pm

  Ken Bruen's new book, Purgatory. If ye're not familiar with his Jack Taylor series, ye'll want to begin at the beginning.

  What kind of books are they? Imagine an Irish Raymond Carver with the intensity and gift for atonement ye'll find in Cormnac McCarthy. Not at all like genre fiction, but unashamedly common to the core.

• Frankie Saxx

  Nov 12, 12:38pm

  @Letitia -- Finished Brittania. Haven't read the sequels yet. Would recommend it to people I know that like historical romance. I v. much enjoyed the treatment of how good information relates to romantic choices.

  Also read Terry Prachett & Stephen Baxter's The Long Earth and The Long War. (Science fiction.) Enjoyed both; I continue to admire Pratchett's ability to integrate social commentary in his fiction.

  Currently reading Dr. Sleep (Stephen King's sequel to The Shining) and enjoying it so far. It reminds me of that discussion Marcus started a while back about using technology in a story without it overwhelming the story; it does that very well.

• 
  Nonnie Augustine

  Nov 12, 02:05pm

  I have been compulsively reading Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series. They are literate, mysterious, set in Venice, and have been giving me insight into contemporary life in Italy. For my daily meals of literary fiction while I'm gobbling these charming books, I read here and the New Yorker!

• Frankie Saxx

  Nov 12, 06:38pm

  @Nonnie I have been wanting to read those! I also like R.N. Morris's St. Petersburg series.

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Nov 13, 02:32am

  @Frankie. I'm glad you made it through. I usually start explaining or making excuses for the choices that were made in the writing of the four Roman books, but I stopped when I realized no one cares. :)

  Lxx

• 
  Nonnie Augustine

  Nov 24, 01:37pm

  I've been reading Absalom! Absalom! and I'm thrilled by it, but I gottatellya, I had to get this old to appreciate Faulkner. You may well not believe this, but I swear I've been dreaming in Faulknerian prose!

• 
  Chris Okum

  Nov 24, 06:05pm

  Escape from Evil by Ernest Becker.

  Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff.

  The Telephone Book by Avital Ronell.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Nov 28, 02:28pm

  Reading about books and excerpts of books and, as has been the pattern for me this year, rereading beloved texts and text books.

  William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"

  My reading of this poem (excerpt) this time is deeper in understanding than when I read it the year following college in Madison. Then it was about joy or delight in spring or language. Still it is yet with rigor besides to stand by delicate language for constant things.

  Andre Dubus III, reviews of Dirty Love and Townie (memoir) and excerpts and interview with Random House, recommended.

  Ry Cooder, Los Angeles Stories, City Lights Books:

  http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100553260&fa=preview

  Research subjects recently, Clarice Lispector's Cronicas (New Directions, 1995) had appeared as short stories (ND, 1989) called Soulstorm (introduced by Grace Paley), a book I already had on my shelf. It split open my world (in a welcome way) to come upon Cronicas in 2000. How did I not realize until 2013 that the two versions contain some of the same writing? I may prefer the translation of Alexis Levitin of Soulstorm but prefer knowing the context of the pieces as presented in Cronicas, Giovanni Pontiero translator.

  Anais Nin's Henry and June, edited by Rupert Pole. Spot rereading led to two impressions, first of the prose as silly palpitations, then confusion, fear, and panic: I had loved reading that edited volume of her diary: how? Then, two days later, I opened the volume again and found Nin's style as I remember it, its grain and depth and leaf. I wondered if the editor had diced the text in that spot of happenstance? The full set of her diaries we left without purchasing at the used book store in Madison, hard cover, 27 volumes? Henry and June Miller passages from her diaries of 1931-34. Film starring Uma Thurman as June, 1990, I remember as good. Film of memoir (diary) may replace or complement book in a less problematic way than film of novel.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Nov 28, 10:24pm

  THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES by Roberto Bolaño. Just getting through the first mini-novel. Stunning.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Nov 29, 01:33am

  If given the time, I would read much more of Latin American writers, like Roberto Bolaño, who are so often painted over with the term 'magical realism'. If forced to name them, I might use the term 'magical ecstatics' since, to my mind at least, their epoch seems a little closer to heaven.

  Magical ecstasy, the place I would hope all such writers will go when they die. A place where they can sing, dance and write until dawn every day forever.

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