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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2003: What are you currently reading?

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:17 / 17.07.03

ooohhh... "My Loose Thread" rocks (as I think I've said before). Need much re-reading of both it and "Period" before I figure out which is better.

Both, as you say, very harsh.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

19:26 / 18.07.03

After finishing off Plum's copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I'm on to The Making of Memento by James Mottram. Like the film, he's written it in reverse order, so chapter one is about the critical reaction to the film in the US, chapter two about it's troubled opening in Europe, chapter three hawking it round looking for a distributor... It's a bit annoying but does work.

The Return Of Rothkoid

06:58 / 20.07.03

The Company by Arabella Edge. Pulpy. It's about trading, Batavia, bastardry and necromancy. Or something. I expect it to whip by.

The Keel was a bit of a sack of crap, unsurprisingly.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:17 / 22.07.03

The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro by Iain McCalman. More period bastardry. Quite good.

00:44 / 28.07.03

"An American Gulag" Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens- Alexia Parks

This is a fiction book written about WWASP. Alexia was threatend by WWASP if she published a non-fiction account of her experience with this organization. If you know the facilities she writes about you will recognize which one's are highlighted in her book. This is her account of following her niece from lock-up to lock-up. This is an eye opening book for those of you interested in learning about World Wide Association of Speciality Programs.

04:40 / 28.07.03

Camille Bacon-Smith's 'Enterprising Women', about women in fandom. The over-use of the word 'ladies' frightens me a bit, but it's interesting.

wembley can change in 28 days

10:43 / 28.07.03

his idiot younger brother, Douglas Livingston Seagull Coupland...

Hee hee!

Currently reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which I didn't expect to be nearly so good. It seems I must have been reading crap lately, or reading nothing at all, because I just don't expect that much from living novelists. Somehow the prose seems like less ego, more work than, say, Julian fucking Barnes. I think Cunningham's writing at a level that is doing his craft some justice, unlike poor Doug (as much as I adore him).

Nor did I expect to get through The Name of the Rose in three days. I'd forgotten it was about (spoiler!) the lost books of the Poetics, id est, the ones concerning comedy. Nearly did my head in, as I've actually lain awake at night dreaming of what they must say. So what if it reads like a history lesson (hi Rothko!) - I don't mind being told what's what when I have no idea what what is.

Also recently gave Shakespeare's Measure for Measure its first read, and was pleasantly surprised. Arden offers a very linguistically thorough edition, and I'm going to go over it again soon with a more fine-toothed comb.

12:39 / 30.07.03

The boy who kicked pigs by Tom Baker. A friend gave this to me for my birthday last week and it's the first book I've read for ages that had me grinning all the way through. It reminds me a lot of the Roald Dahl books I loved when I was younger because they were just so horribly well written.

In honour of recieving huge numbers of WHSmith vouchers for previously mentioned birthday I have also aquired a lovely big stack of the Iain Banks Culture novels. They sit on my shelf enticing me with their shiny new covers but so far I have resisted the urge to lock myself away for a week and rampage through them. All good things come to those who wait.

[wonders whether she can sneak one into work]

No star here laces

14:48 / 30.07.03

Waaah! Someone stole my ole name...

A weekend in san francisco and a visit to the City Lights bookstore has left me with a huge amount to read.

Have started in the past few days:

Narcocorrido by can't remember who

A history of the Narcocorrido (mexican folk songs about drug trafficking) as a musical and cultural form. Very interesting and is improving my spanish vocabulary no end. Quien es su papi?

War is a force that gives us meaning by John Hedges

Immediately after I bought this I got embroiled in conversation with a Nietzschean who told me that we needed to "conserve the earth for future generations so we can have more and better wars". If he'd given me a day more I could've rebutted him a million times over. This is a truly excellent examination of the effect of war on people's individual and cultural psychology and has inspired me to re-read Primo Levi. Anything that leads back to Primo Levi is good as he is the most beautiful human being who ever lived.

Coin Locker Babies by Ryuchi Murakami

Not so sure about this one. It's a story about two boys who were abandoned in coin lockers as babies and their subsequent lives and relationship, with spooky supernatural bits and a dollop of picturesque devastation. I'm not that far in, but it seems to be trying too hard to be urban and wacky, never a good thing. But I like some bits of it too, so who knows.

Godel, Escher, Bach

Aaargh. I think I'll be reading this for a while. In my arrogance I think I have already grasped the central concept which is that consciousness is a self-aware loop and therefore something that can be represented mathematically, but am sure that it will be explored in depth and that this is a worthwhile thing to do if the requisite attention span can be mustered. Did I mention it's fucking huge, and somewhat terse? It is...

Days of rice and salt Kim Stanley Robinson

A history of the earth if the black plague had wiped out all the europeans in the 13th century. Told through the perspective of two individuals who are reincarnated through history. It is as beautiful and thorough and fascinating as everything he writes. This man brings me such joy. His books are always an education, in this case in all sorts of islamic philosophies and in the history of china.

21:33 / 31.07.03

Oh, I want to read that Kim Stanley Robinson one - keep us updated on whether it fulfils its promise, eh? (And how an earth do you manage to read so much, Mr Laces?)

Have just finished Shadowmancer, this month's children's fantasy. A bit disappointing - it's had rave reviews, but I thought the writing could have done with a bit of polish (it was a little clunky here and there, and the book needed it to be like Ursula Le Guin's in A Wizard of Earthsea). The characterisation was poor as well, and rather than it being a rites of passage taking place in a fantasy, it was a (rather teleological) fantasy with children shoved into it. I thought it needed fleshing out. Nor was I convinced by the sudden conversions of many characters, but then that's what happens when you bring God into it, I suppose.

I now find myself at a loss as to what to read next, yet again... toss-up between Invisible Cities, Religion and the Decline of Magic (which will take me months) and First Light by Peter Ackroyd. Decisions decisions.

11:00 / 01.08.03

Have been re-reading Steve Marshall's "The Mandate of Heaven", an amazing rereading of Chinese history, through information discerned in the hexagrams of the I Ching. He puts together a compelling case, tracking both the change of dynasties and the origins of the book. Absolutely fascinating stuff.

After all this heavy stuff, am giving my brain a much needed holiday in outer space, by reading "Chasm City" by Alisater Reynolds. Has anyone else read him? It's fucking great. Huge spaceships, cyrogenics, reality warping viruses, messanic cults and diamond guns,. Really well paced and plotted, fantastic stuff.

13:52 / 01.08.03

Just finished Alice Sebold's bestseller The Lovely Bones, having been ordered to read it by Cherry Bomb. Enjoyed it hugely. Was impressed that Sebold manages to build so much suspense into it given that the first-person narration is delivered by someone who's already dead when the novel starts. Interesting, if a bit sentimental.

Now reading James Blish' A Case of Conscience. Jesuit-xenobotanist-astronaut encounters a race of evolved dinosaurs who have no God, no money, no crime. They live in an eternal Garden of Eden from which their kind has never been expelled. Great evocation of the alien species and their world but also all the fascinating (to me) detail of a devoutly religious man wrestling with his conscience as he struggles to fit this admirable, innocent race of beings into his Roman Catholic theology. Written in the late 50's and that shows a little in some of the detail of his imagined future but I'm still ripping eagerly through it.

Bought Shadowmancer and will start that next, Kit-Cat, putting my hype-wrought expectations aside.

14:24 / 01.08.03

Chasm City" by Alisater Reynolds. Has anyone else read him? It's fucking great. Huge spaceships, cyrogenics, reality warping viruses, messanic cults and diamond guns,. Really well paced and plotted, fantastic stuff. illmatic
I just finished Revelation Space by him, top space opera. Reminded me of Iain M Banks a little but with less imagination (still fun though) I think I'll check out Chasm city.

Lyra- skip work and read Iain! Culture Culture Culture!

Jefe- keep going on GEB, it's fantastic and well worth it, if only for the achilles and the tortoise dialogues. It's the only book about self-referentiality I've found, and won a pulitzer I think. Don't bother with Metamagical Themas though, nowhere near as good.

I (to my shame) am reading Wee Free Men, the new Pratchett, for candy floss entertainment. Also 'Confessions of an English Opium Eater' by De Quincy (overrated), 'Carter Beats the Devil' which rules, and 'The Art of War' Sun Tzu, because I've always meant to.
That 'Days of rice and salt' sounds fantastic, I must hunt it down, ta for the tip Jefe.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:02 / 01.08.03

I think that's a little unfair on Reynolds - though I also think Revelation Space is his best book. Chasm City's okay, and Redemption Ark is great, but doesn't give me the sense of raw discovery which Revelation Space has.

Neal Asher's good, too, though not quite as slick.

And if you enjoy the sense of archeology in Reynolds and you dare to read fantasy, try Steven Erikson's Malazan series - the folded and buried mysteries, civilisations, and intertwined plots will blow you away.

Whisky Priestess

15:15 / 01.08.03

A hu-fucking-mungous volume of JG Ballard's Collected Short Stories. I won it but would have probably had to buy it anyway if I hadn't: it's a paperback but it's printed on Bible-thin paper and it's the size of A Suitable Boy, or even (whisper it) the most recent Harry Potter. Ideal bedtime dipping material.

00:38 / 02.08.03

Oh my god, I'm reading this Mortdecai Trilogy... he's drinking ancient port and watching professional wrestling with his manservant. Rothkoid, I cover you with kisses...

00:44 / 02.08.03

Just picked up adn started reading (finally) Cosmic Trigger....immediately hip deep. This comes as I also slowly revolve thru Crowley's Magickal diaries:1923 Tunisia, Stupid White Men (gotta put that one down every so often, tends to make me want to start COBRA), and a book called power VS. force, which I will no doubt end up posting on latter. And as always, comics comics comics (just picked up Ennis' Thor title today, can't wait to see how bloody he makes that one)

17:02 / 02.08.03

The Invisibles : Invisible Kingdom . This'll complete my second reading of the series. I read it the first time back in June in one great big marathon session with appropriate breaks for work and sleep. This time I've read it a bit more leisurely and picked up stuff I missed the first time.

17:05 / 02.08.03

|I've been reading the Gormenghast Trilogy at the moment, it kind of all reminds of Charles Dickens but with a weirdness factor of ten... least to say I'm loving it. Still to read the trilogy straight through is a bit heavy going for me so I'm taking a break by reading Doris Lessing's A Briefing for A Descent into Hell which although the lost at sea passages are a bit dull (or maybe the wandering narrative style is just annoying me) looks to be an interesting concept and hope it turns out to be.

wembley can change in 28 days

07:41 / 04.08.03

Just read Yann Martel's Life of Pi in one sitting. Has anyone else even heard of it? I'd love to go into more details, but in the hour after finishing it I had what I guess you could call a religious crisis. It's been a long time since a book has provoked such a strong personal reaction. Highly recommended, especially for atheists, agnostics, and believers of any faith.

Ostensibly, has nothing to do with religion.

08:35 / 04.08.03

The Life of Pi won the Booker, was it last year? Or possibly the year before. I still haven't got round to it, but your post makes me want to...

17:31 / 04.08.03

I have also read the Life of Pi and while good it didn't provoke a crisis of faith... and am curious as to why it would provoke such a reaction in anyone... (the blurb on the back of my copy professed a similar reaction to the book) mind sharing?

Tryphena Absent

23:09 / 04.08.03

I'm flitting my way through The Kindest Use a Knife by Vanessa Jones. It's a short little book and quite silly, I don't think I'll enjoy the end- I can already tell- but otherwise it's good commute reading. A big bonus lies in the length... about 200 pages, I'm refusing long books at the moment, ultimately they only ever drag.

10:27 / 06.08.03

Life of Pi was last year's Booker. I didn't get any crisis of faith from it, but it was alright... overrated I thought.

The Return Of Rothkoid

10:53 / 06.08.03

Persephone: I thought you would like. You should try All The Tea In China - I'm reading that at the moment. One of Charlie's relatives is the narrator, and it's like the one you're reading now. Only with opium and pirates.

What I'd read of Life Of Pi didn't exactly thrill me with fantastic terrors never felt before...

wembley can change in 28 days

12:48 / 06.08.03

Current: Philip Auslander's from Acting to Performance, essays in modernism and postmodernism. Makes me wish I'd brought a dictionary with me to finland - he's quite clear but his quoted sources in the footnotes are, well. I never read Barthes in university and am well out of practice. Good material, though.

On Life of Pi, you rack of nay-sayers: I wouldn't really want to outline my train of thought after reading the book simply because I suspect it would ruin it for someone else. Suffice to say, I'm not happy with my agnostic status anymore, as fence-sitting has suddenly lost its glamour. And Rothko, you have to finish it. The prize is at the end, like a cracker-jack box.

14:11 / 06.08.03

Has anyone else read Doris Lessing's Briefing for a Descent into Hell?
I suppose it acts like a bit of a hodge podge of themes and narrative structures so there is really something for everyone. Bits of sci-fi, philosophy, fantasy, brilliant dialogue.Brilliant... wow... everyone should read it!

09:52 / 07.08.03

You're making me want to go back to Life of Pi, Wembley - I liked it but it didn't change my life particularly.

I've just started Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, on the advice of Loomis. S'okay so far. I just finished the latest Graham Swift, The light of day - nicely written as always but it didn't match up to his other work. It just wasn't very believable, as though he'd left a big chunk of explanation out somewhere.

Whisky Priestess

11:25 / 07.08.03

Fucking Kazantzakis. His impenetrable, maundering autobiography has cost me £1.80 in library fines. Over-writing bastard. LTOC and Zorba the Bastard Greek had better be improvements on that, though no doubt knowing what happens will mean I'm bored to tears by the digressions and pseudophilosophical burblings ... oh God, maybe it's a bad translation but the man just goes ON and ON and ON ... even an 18-hour coach trip to Ireland couldn't force me to finish the bloody thing ...

Whisky Priestess

11:26 / 07.08.03

PS Currently half-way through the Luzhin Defence, by a writer who can actually write.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:41 / 07.08.03

Eh, boss!

Zorba is fucking great.

00:50 / 08.08.03

Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind. It's fairly decent so far, but I've only read 50 or so pages. I dearly hope it isn't like the last two or three books in this series, as they seemed written by a fantasy author channeling Ayn Rand.

04:17 / 08.08.03

Just finished The Circus Age: American Society Under the Big Top which was fascinating as hell. Right now I'm digging through David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag which is so far an interesting but really disjointed and fragmented pirate history tome (he bounces all over the place chronologically and sometimes sidesteps right in the middle of some meaty history into fictional pirates) and a very cool book called Sideshow U.S.A. which tackles ideas about the freak aesthetic than I plan on kickstarting a Head Shop thread about when I'm done with it.

And all of the above is just fuel/ research for my comic book. *puts a napkin under his chin*

gotham island fae

04:47 / 08.08.03

Rereading Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear since my parent's divorced over ten years ago. My new step-mother had originally lent it to me. Now my sister has.

Seems just as good, if not better, in that jarring, is-it-the-author's-first-book? way. Still get dulled by the flint knapping descriptions which is where I closed it last. If I have a moment in my easy chair, next week, it will be done, soon. And then on to the good, cro-magnon sex.

In addition to novel, I sift through various net text about AOS and transgender funstuff and the Scientific American on holographic universe.

Bloody Chiclitz

17:56 / 08.08.03

Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon.

I love Pynchon, but this book has taken me six years so far, and I still haven't finished it. I enjoy each chapter, but it's not very compelling.

The Recognitions by William Gaddis is good in the same way.

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