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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2003: What are you currently reading?

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16:45 / 03.01.03

Over Christmas I read Jane Eyre, so now I am set up to read all the mad woman in the attic stuff that I keep hearing about. Also read Atonement by Ian McEwan. Dull for the first hundred pages or so then it starts getting good.

Am reading the autobiography of John Major at the moment which is very easy going.

The Return Of Rothkoid

02:35 / 04.01.03

As well as everything else, I'm starting to buy all the Invisibles TPBs - read all except the latest, but haven't had my own. So I'm buying one per pay cycle.

So yeah. Say You Want A Revolution is being read, and I'm marvelling at some of the really bad art in some parts. But y'know...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:45 / 04.01.03

Still reading "The Savage God"- wonderfully readable, but SO not an all-in-one-sitting job.

Currently also reading (though comic it may be) Joe Sacco's "Palestine"- very good indeed.

Although the new Jeff Noon seems to be calling me...

14:46 / 04.01.03

I have just finsihed reading Lila (By Robert M Pirsig) which is the sequel to 'Zen and The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance'. Fantastic book really had me staying up late thinking about it; Pirsig's metaphysical theory of quality is used to explain pretty much everything from morality (it's all about evolution) to anthropology and philosophy and pyschology (all trapped by subject-object metaphysics).

At the moment I don't know whether to start The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand which looks interesting or just dive into The Critique of Pure Reason which looks very big and intimidating.

Also just finshed 'The Matrix and Philosophy' and 'The Simpsons and Philosophy', of the two books the Simpsons is far better, deeper, funnier (Essays include whether Bart is a Nieztchean Superman or Whether Homer conforms to Aristotles concept of Virtue), while the book on The Matrix just manages to accidentally highlight just how superficial and shallow the film is.

For university I've been reading:

David Hume, Enquiry into Human Understanding. Much easier to understand than I remember.
Leibniz, Monadology. Much harder than I could have imagined.

wembley can change in 28 days

18:05 / 04.01.03

Leibniz' Monadology simply hurt my brain. When I proclaimed to my roommate that I finally understood it, she flat-out refused to believe me and that's where we've been on the subject ever since.

Currently: Graham Greene's The Human Factor. So far I have little to say about Graham Greene that isn't good.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:06 / 04.01.03

The Messenger by Markus Zusak. It's about a loser.

10:27 / 05.01.03

The Budda of Suburbia, about a teenage half indian bisexual (i think- it hasnt made it v clear so far)guy in the 70s. Its slightly bizzare, yet somewhat compelling. I want to read faster which a pain in the ass coz i cant and if i do, i get to the bottom of the page and think, 'what the feck have i just read?'

12:11 / 05.01.03

Reading William Gibson's Count Zero. Does exacly what it says on the tin I suppose.. not that that's a bad thing..

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:18 / 06.01.03

The Messenger turned out to be great, disposable lit, about a guy who gets delivered cards with messages on them, and has to carry out tasks for the people contained on there. It's pretty nifty, and features a dog called The Doorman. Which I like.

Currently reading Timothy Findley's Headhunter which is superb. I like his stuff anyway, but when you have evocations, death and Kurtz escaping from Heart Of Darkness within the first fifteen pages, that's some good reading. And it takes place around the Annex in Toronto, where I've stayed a couple of times, so it's kinda familiar to me - all good. Recommended, on the strength of the little I've read so far.

Math is for suckers!

01:47 / 07.01.03

"Kingdom of Fear" by Hunter S. Thompson. Can he write a bad book? I think not.

wembley can change in 28 days

07:58 / 07.01.03

Buddha of Suburbia is one of the next ones on my list - after reading a thwack of plays by Hanif Kureishi I was vastly impressed. I'm still on Graham Greene, but I'm zipping through it a lot faster than anticipated - this book is fantastically well-done so far. It's all spies and secrets and... ooo-er.

The Natural Way

08:35 / 07.01.03

From David Boring to The Magus. I'm in love with Daniel Clowes....my taste in comix is really changing..... As for Mr. Fowles - I just have to start the year off with a BIG book. It's winter, and winter is the time of hibernation and cosy little burrows in nice author's heads. I'll wrap myself up in this'n and maybe afterwards, if it's still dark and gloomy out, I'll get around to War and Peace. Everyone tells me it's great....

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:34 / 07.01.03

Just finished Hollywood Vampire and Slayer! (unofficial guides to Angel and Buffy), and now have an absurd oiule of books I have started and now intend to finish, after my gadfly tendencies of the festive season.

Uppermost on the pile:

The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw by Paul McGuigan and Paolo Hewitt (story of Robin Friday, maverick lower-league genius)

Sputnik sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (to see what all the fguss is about, really)

Smart Things to KLnow About Branding by John Mariotti (Not unfortunately about the smell of searing flesh)

The Silver Kiss (teen vampire fiction. Obviously. Mainly because I guessed the entire plot from one sentence when I was being told about it, and am quite curious to see how much it is like my model)

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (Christmas present - curious to see what a decade has done to her style)

Catamania: The Dissonance of Female Pleasure and Dissent - Adele Olivia Gladwell (Christmas Present, from the same genius who gave me the Dawson's Creek companion).

Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece - Vernant and Vidal-Nacquet I've been looking for Vidal-Nacquet's article on hunting and sacrifice metaphors in the Agamemenon for ages, so I could hardly resist)

The Greek Anthology - Various authors (I've let my Ancient Greek slip v. badly)

I'm dipping into Wrong by Denis Cooper also - am interested to see which of these falls by the wayside.

10:45 / 07.01.03

Buddha of Suburbia is ace. Have always planned to read more Kureishi after that, but haven't so far managed it.

Recently read So I Am Glad by A.L Kennedy, which was quite odd but rather compelling in its way. Have just bought a couple more of hers so will see what she has to say for herself in those.

Also The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway. Excellent stuff, tracing the mental breakdown of a woman after the death of her lover. The tone was rigidly maintained throughout the whole work which impressed this reveiwer muchly. Also have more of hers to read.

Now almost finished A Disaffection by James Kelman who is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. This book is so good it hurts my eyes to read it.

The Natural Way

11:30 / 07.01.03

I must confess I haven't even looked at Slayer since I read its review of 'Ted' - an episode the author had issues with because, y'know, robots don't work like that. Or something. Whatever, it was horrible. The author is horrible. He's got something wrong w/ him.

13:18 / 07.01.03

Just finished reading Regeneration, a fictional account of Siegfried Sassoon's stay at Craiglockhart War Hospital. A good book, but I feel a bit weird reading fictional stories about real events. It's why I don't like reading Real People Slash, or why I felt awkward watching A Beautiful Mind. Wrrhhh. Next up: taking another crack at Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality.

No star here laces

13:29 / 07.01.03

Just completed:

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen - as good as everyone said it was... Do we have a thread on this?
True History of the Kelly Gang - Okay-ish
Atonement - McEwan - lightweight, but pretty gripping (at least on the train)

Still reading:

The map that changed the world
The Biographical Dictionary of Film - fuckin great. He hates all the people my generation love.
Ways of Seeing - John Berger
True Tales of American Life edited by Paul Auster - this is utterly incredible, stay-up-all-night stuff. I love real stories. Apparently they were looking for "truth that sounded like fiction" which is a top idea...
The Risk Society - Ulrich Beck I think I will be reading this for ever. It has no end, only teutonic tedium.

14:36 / 07.01.03

I've just read the Berger Ways of Seeing too. Not quite sure what to make of it, but most interesting - it was compulsory for a paper on "Literature and Visual Culture" that I'm doing this term... might be worth a thread on its own for discussion? Or maybe not?

Tryphena Absent

14:41 / 07.01.03

I really enjoyed Ways of Seeing but it's been a year since I read it so I doubt I'd have much to comment on. Maybe you people can enlighten me...

I'm reading Adorno's Negative Dialectics. Yuk.

15:08 / 07.01.03

Reading Gilligan's Wake by Tom Carson. Very po-mo, kind of pop culture/literary slash. Starts off with Gilligan in a mental institution because he believes he's the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs (from Dobie Gillis). He has this whole mental life, which he's told doesn't exist, in which he's friends with all the beat writers. Holden Caulfiend is in the same hospital.

Each of the castaways gets a section (Thurston Howell's looks to be much tied in with The Great Gatsby). The part I'm in now is "The Skipper's Tale," in which the Skipper is talking about his time as a Navy skipper in the South Pacific during WWII with his fellow PT commanders McHale and Kennnedy.

17:34 / 07.01.03

Rothkoid: Headhunter is pretty good. I've never read any other Findley (Bad Canadian, Barry! No treat for you!), but I love the whole basis of Kurtz running around Toronto...

The Buddha of Suburbia is great, as is other Kureshi. I reccomend Love in a Blue Time by him. I saw a movie (Intimacy) that's based off a number of his stories in that book; quite good as well.

Reading Gulliver's Travels, which I should have read a long time ago. Travel, bigendians, etc. etc. Marvellous.
I've read most of Hesse's Journey to the East this morninng, and I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever read. Wow. This book has really picked me up. I feel very very good now and am ready to start myself.

18:01 / 07.01.03

- Karel Capek’s ‘War w/ the Newts’ – very good, in the way that all books about enslaving a race of upright-walking and talking salamanders is good.
- Currently reading ‘Ulysses’ and Stuart Gilbert’s study of it. You know how that goes.

Coming up: Eco’s ‘Baudolino’ and a collection of Philip K Dick short stories edited by Jonathan Lethem

18:15 / 07.01.03

Just finished Mircea Eliade's Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy and Moore's Stupid White Men. Starting The Structure of Magic Part One by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. But right now all I can handle is an article about Batman 5 on Ain't It Cool. My brain is fried.

02:39 / 08.01.03

i just finished the satanic verses. has there been a rushdie discussion here before? i liked it and everything - from a member of the cast of bridget jones's diary, you know - but one or two things bothered me a little. next i'm starting butterfly stories - i've never read any william t vollman before so i picked this one up kind of at random.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:02 / 08.01.03

Vollmann rocks, but I haven't read that one.

I'm reading a book picked up on a whim- Christopher Wallace's "The Pirate". It's kind of a thriller- keeps alternating between a "The Beach"-style narrative about cocaine smuggling, and a 17th-century swashbuckling yarn. I couldn't resist it, really.

09:05 / 08.01.03

Currently re-reading a collection of Wodehouse's stories, and - like expressionless - Moore's Stupid White Men (although I have to say that the more I read of Moore, the less impressed I become).

09:48 / 08.01.03

I intended to start reading Bause-Moi by Virginie Despentes, but the copy I was sent is in French. Bah!

10:06 / 08.01.03

Damnable foreign books. I've been desperate to read Suzuki Koji's Ring trilogy for years, but it seems to have been irritatingly translated into every major European language except English. Tez is not a happy Aztec god.

10:45 / 08.01.03

Just finished Frank Herbert's "Whipping Star" - very odd SF book. I've always thought that the whole idea of alien intelligence is never explored enough in SF, the aliens are always too human (see Star Trek). This gets over a little bit of that weirdness, the main dynamic is about trying to communcate with a sentient star whose being whipped to death. Pretty entertaining!

Have just begun Dion Fortune's "The Sea Preistess" and still have George Monbiot's "Captive State" to finish - it makes me too angry.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:05 / 08.01.03

Okay, I have been quite bad lately but things have picked up in the New Year as they always do (January being the month of poverty and snow).

(Spoilers for the following below, albeit minor.)

Michael Chabon - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: this, his first novel and very much a young man's first novel (although good), has taken me far longer than it should, but I'm putting off finishing it because I know the ending will upset me. Basically it seems to me to be about how you can idolise certain people you're friends with, and has made me go "yes! you wrote that for *me*!" more than any book in a while - but eek, it's all going to get torn down... (Funnily enough, in style and subject matter it reminds me of The Secret History - replace ritualistic murder with organised crime - see below.) Chabon also does sexuality very well, I think, without ever using the word 'bi'.

Donna Tartt - The Little Friend: the book everyone in North London got for Christmas? Anyway, 50 pages in I was unsure - it's very rich, very Southern (USA), very anecdotal - but 100 pages in I'm hooked. I think it was the penguins/Houdini dream sequence that clinched it. Which is funny, because the last book I read in which Houdini is a big influence on the protagonist was Michael Chabon's impossibly wonderful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. See above.) Have to say, I'm already steeling myself for possible trauma and pain as a result of this book, too. By starting with the death of a 9 year-old Robin, Tartt lets us know that this is a world in which terrible things happen to children - and then fills it with likeable child protagonists. Harriet is a heroine cut from the same cloth as Lyra Silvertongue or Lisa Simpson, but it's characters like Hely, with his unrequited love for Harriet, or sleep teenager Allison, or poor Lasharum Odum (spelling? it's a great name though) who I really feel and fear for. I mean, Hely's desire to make Harriet notice him is pretty tragic already, but if anything *bad* were to happen to him... Eek. Don't do it, Tartt. Put the kid down and step away from the typewriter...

Both these books may deserve threads of their own once finished, I think, if anyone else is interested.

14:52 / 08.01.03

I had to close my eyes and la-la-la at your post, Flyboy, because I read about 50 pages of Tartt and abandoned it, I'm afraid to say. I keep meaning to get back into it but at the moment I'm reading Kate (Behind The Scenes At The Museum) Atkinson's volume of short stories, Not The End Of The World, which are nice in a kind of almost Bradbury-esque sense, actually.

And that'd be Ray, not Malcolm.

14:53 / 08.01.03

PS, if you're on a Houdini synchronicity trip, try Carter Beats The Devil by Glenn David Gold, if you haven't already. Which you probably have.

16:22 / 08.01.03

Mysteries of Pittsburgh is one of my favorite books. Have you read Wonder Boys, Flyboy? That's very good too, and not just because the Koreans and the Jews who apparently got lost en route to the movie...

23:58 / 08.01.03

Finished "Stupid White Men" by Mike Moore, which was good, but I can see why people dislike his mix of fact and humour. It's a lot more jarring in a book than it is in either his TV shows or his movies.

Started reading "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt and only three chapters in, I can definitely see what all the fuss is about. I'm only ten years too late, no problem.

11:44 / 09.01.03

Finished Cryptonomicon right before I had to go back to school. It was a good book up until the last 200 pages or so and then it seemed to fall apart. Everything was wrapped up way too easily and the ending sucked.

I'm just about to start Crossroads of Twiligh by Robert Jordan. I really don't know why I bother reading this series anymore. Jordan will probably die before he finishes the damned thing.

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