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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2004: What are you currently reading?

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10:30 / 08.07.04

what a coincidence - currently skimming Dorrit for work - I seem to spend more time skimming non-fiction for a specific purpose than reading text-only books for pleasure... Still reading loads of comics and GNs though....

unheimlich manoeuvre

23:05 / 09.07.04

recently read Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin as it was recommended by Ganesh or Xoc in another thread. excellent anthropological sci-fi like Lathe of Heaven, City of Illusion and the Dispossessed. i found the book like a spiritual kick to the head. a real eye opener in regard to the effect gender stereotypes form consensual reality. there is once again more than a romantic whiff of how harsh environments create *purer* societies. (does the worst bring out the best in people?) i could also see the influence all the imagery of ice and shadow had on Erikson's Malazan book of the Fallen.

about to start High Rise by J.G. Ballard.

20:53 / 10.07.04

Kit Kat Club:
Oh, I also read Robert Irwin's The Arabian Nightmare, lent to me by ghadis, which was ace and which I thoroughly recommend - made me want to go and read the Thousand and One Nights. I might do just that.

Dude, that is one of my favorite books, like, evar! I've read it five times. Actually, all of his books are really, really good.

Brigade du jour

21:07 / 15.07.04

Literally just started Any Old Iron by Anthony Burgess. Only other one of his I've read is (surprise, surprise) Clockwork Orange.

I've only read the first couple of pages and I love it already, it made me smile like a simpleton on the bus at least twice.

My point, though, is that a book rarely grabs my attention straight away like that, especially when the first paragraph consists of a mini-lecture on metallurgy.

15:20 / 17.07.04

I just started Mother Night by Vonnegut last night, and I'm already completely absorbed in it after only 30 pages. I promised myself that I wouldn't start another book before I finished 1984, but that book has begun to become boring (I think it's because it's been ripped off so many times - read today, it seems cliched) so I was forced to abandon it with the possibility of returning at a later date. I also promised myself that the next book I read would be something other than Vonnegut, that I needed to take a break from Vonnegut and read some Palahniuk, or Pelevin, or maybe some Ballard, or Pynchon, Welsh, or Burroughs, or perhaps even re-read some Donwood (in the book form this time, not the digital... but it's expensive and hard to come by). Last night I felt the urge to start something new, and alas, Vonnegut was there on my shelf... waiting for me. I don't regret it for a second, though.

11:34 / 19.07.04

Maggie Gyllenhaal Brigade wrote: Literally just started Any Old Iron by Anthony Burgess...I've only read the first couple of pages and I love it already, it made me smile like a simpleton on the bus at least twice.

If you get the chance, pick up his 'Enderby' books next. Some of the greatest books ever written about sad middle-aged poets.

I just finished 'A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories' by Viktor Pelevin. Some of the stories were great (like the title story, and another about a bizarre Soviet Ministry that exists solely to play 80s PC games), others were sort of mediocre.

Currently reading 'Fabian: The Story of a Moralist' by Erich Kastner. Having only read his children's books before, this is a bit of a change, but it's a great book, making the decadence of 1930s Berlin seem like such fun.

11:38 / 19.07.04

Because Don Norman's The Psychology/Design of Everyday Things sends me into rage once every five pages, I am tempering this by reading Ian Fleming's Goldfinger.

It is fucking awesome. I can't describe how much fun it is. The prose has this jackbooted, pornographic, fascistic streak to it, and I love every second of it. It's entirely of a moment that no longer exists, offensive and yet beguiling. The writing is so crisp, so sharp... it's like little else I've read and I thoroughly recommend it. Might dig out some of the other Bonds now; I've never really liked what they did with the character in film, but think I could become a fan of the books.

And whoever thought Charlie Fucking Higson should write more of them is silly. The only natural successor I can think of is Bret Easton Ellis; I swear, at times, Fleming reads so much like American Psycho it's not true.

22:20 / 19.07.04

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

It's a genuinely sick piece of work.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:57 / 20.07.04

Finished You Shall Know Our Velocity and the Aeneid, although now I am going to have to read it again in the David West translation. Currently on On the Natural History of Destruction, Sebald's work on the blank spot in the German consciousness around the mass bombing of their cities in the later stages of World War II. It's interesting, but he's glossed over a massive hole in his argument which is irritating me.

08:19 / 21.07.04

Oh dear - I feel as if this thread is a great deal of work for you... (and am sorry, btw, that I left that book with you last night - will PM you)

I finished Little Dorrit in a week and will post about it elsewhere. I'm now reading Kai Lung's Golden Hours as an act of homage to Dorothy L Sayers - it is terribly terribly English. Also number9dream by David Mitchell, which is good so far.

07:55 / 22.07.04

I'm reading Katherine Mansfield's collection of short stories, The Garden Party, and I've just finished Ivy Compton-Burnett's A God And His Gifts. The former of which is a joy - brilliantly written, just the right balance between entertaining and dark - and the latter of which was difficult to a confusing degree. One of those books where it's all going fine until someone who had hitherto not been mentioned starts speaking, and then it's necessary to read the previous five pages of conversation again, because if Ada's in the room, that changes everything...

13:41 / 23.07.04

I'm currently reading Martial Musings by Robert E. Smith who is a slightly crotchety old American martial arts expert. He wrote several ground breaking books on chinese martial arts - this is kind of his autobiographical summing up. It's a bit sad cos he's getting on, and a lot of the people he wrote about in the sixties and seventies are now gone. I suppose ageing stands out a lot more in a book about physical culture. Having said that, it's still really interesting. Lots of improbable but entertaining fighting stories, and loads of snippets about different arts. Heavy bodies flying through the air, resisting kicks with the power of Chi, that sort of thing.

I'm also speeding through The Bates Method by Peter Mansfield, an account of the Bates Method of natural vision improvement - eye improvement without glasses or sugery. Makes a lot of sense.

And I was reading Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism by Jeffery Kripal, an amazing book which combines an analysis of the author's own experiences with 5 Chapters on prominent twentith century author-mystics - Agenhananda Bharti, RC Zaehner. I've temporarily given up because the links he was making between textuality and experience began to bug me - but it's sill a brillant work if a little too wordy and jargonistic in places, I'll go back to it soon, and cherry pick the interesting bits if nothing else.

20:00 / 23.07.04

I'm currently between Great Expectations and Edie American Girl, you know about Edie Sedgwick. and actually I'm in a slump with Great Expectations for some reason and also I had no idea how funny that book is or maybe its just me...

02:51 / 24.07.04

Finsihed Mother Night... in only 6 days... that's pretty quick for me! Now I have to start my summer reading... God Damn! I don't even know what it is yet... I hope it's something readable at least.

18:49 / 27.07.04

I really do my best not to flood this thread with the details of whatever slim volume I am turning my attention to at any one time, but I have to endorse Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies in the most ringing of terms. He's the only author I know who can actually make me feel like I'm bitching about people I know, when in fact I am just reading. It's very, very funny. I was laughing, in a dreadful, embarrassing way on the train home...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:06 / 27.07.04

Currently reading Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep", having unaccountably found myself in a space opera mood the other day. It's got a really neat alien race- they're kind of like packs of dogs (as opposed to individual dogs) with a kind of King Rat sort of social system.

Still hovering over "IBM and the Holocaust"... it's been sitting there for about a year, but it's big, and it's not gonna be nice...

00:06 / 28.07.04

Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene.

You could imagine a young Ronnie Corbett as the star in the movie ( and it might have happened already, Maggie Smith as the aunt, ) but still, what fluid, stylish prose.

Charlie's Horse

18:33 / 29.07.04

"The Lucifer Principle" by Howard Bloom

I don't think I've ever read a better scientific/sociological/paleo-psychological book, and not simply on the merit that nobody's ever written a book spanning that many categories. Bloom creates a sound, sane, crisp, and rational narrative which examines the source of aggression and violence in the world, and what we can do about it. It's an incredible act of courage and honesty.

I think the best bit is when he takes a chapter, almost and aside, and disproves entropy. Just takes a lil' time out, and jumps from discussing human nature to redefining the universe itself. Maybe 'disproves' is a bit much, but he certainly shows that the second law of thermodynamics alone can't explain the jumps in order from subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to stars. Things break down, but in the history of the universe things also come together and defy dissolution.

Anyway, I really just wanted to say that I pity the fools reading Ayn Rand - I got through "Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" about two years ago, turning into a complete Randroid in the process for a few months. Luckily I managed to wrestle that part of myself into the ground and administer a coup de grace of magick and laughter. I just have to ask - why the masochism? Why bother with her silly, angry ass at all?

00:41 / 30.07.04

Somewhat Certainties;

You're just one of the masses though, aren't you ? One of those little people ? You're a second-hander, and god, I would pity you, if pity wasn't the most disgusting emotion one could POSSIBLY feel.

15:26 / 30.07.04

I feel like a bit of a lightweight compared with everyone else as I am reading "Jeeves Takes Charge", I like reading Wodehouse in the summer, especially in the park.
In a more serious vein I am attempting to read up on memetics, starting with "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins and now moving on to "The Meme Machine" by Blackmore. However despite my good intentions after 9 hours at work all I want to read is frothy fantasy and silly comedies so it is going quite slowly.

15:35 / 30.07.04

Ambient dipping into The Victorians by A.N. Wilson, which is peppered with lots of fun annecdotes.

11:34 / 01.08.04

Currently reading Bez's biography: "Freaky Dancin' - Me and the Mondays"

It would have been nice even to say we lived a hand-to-mouth existence, but at the time it was more like a rolled up note to nose affair as a constant input of amphetamines kept us rollin along an had the added benefit of keepin hunger at bay - food on the road is stupidly expensive.

It's very entertaining and the perfect holiday read.

20:46 / 01.08.04

Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd.

Well chapter one went well - will post more opinions soon.

10:11 / 20.08.04

Having rescued it from the charity bin - a decision I now regret - I am reading Margaret Drabble's The Radiant Way. It is full of sentences such as 'Alix would not, could not, learn', as though a comma is 1988 shorthand for the word 'or'. Utterly maddening, and it may well go to charity anyway if it continues in that vein.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:30 / 20.08.04

Having been distracted by a whole pile of other stuff (not all of it literary- some of it being in liquid form, and some of it involving packing to move house) I'm drawing near to the end of the Vinge... it truly is a wonderful space opera, but whoever proofread the fucker needs to be shot.

"IBM and the Holocaust" still seems somewhat daunting, so I think after the Vinge I'll go for Antony Beevor's "The Spanish Civil War". Undoubtedly also fairly depressing, but at least (I hope) there'll be moments when I can go "yay!" as well.

Just been given WG Sebald's "Vertigo" by a guy at work, too, with a hefty recommendation- maybe I can tag-team Sebald with Beevor.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:58 / 20.08.04

Oh - I just finished "On the natural history of destruction" a week or so ago... have just finished "A Bundle of Nerves" by Joan Aiken, who rocks very hard. Perfectly constructed microstories - although either she wrote for a range of ages or my mother left out the sexing when she read them to me as a babe in arms...

09:45 / 23.08.04

Just finished Tomorrow's Eve, which I was reading for my PhD (perhaps a little late as it has to be in in six weeks; never mind). It's a really, really, really weird book and I'd be interested to know if anyone here has ever read it. It's early SF (1886), starring Thomas Edison who lives in this weird kind of cyberpunky laboratory where everything is an interface. It's in that sort of period where electricity and Spiritualism were both new, half-understood 'sciences' and everyone was going on about 'animal magnetism', so it's about androids, and women, and spirits. At one point the medium/spirit guide/ spiritual force who's manipulating the whole thing, Sowana, talks about how physical currents need a physical wire or medium to move on, but the 'virtues' of things can travel through the aether, which made me think this is probably the first novel about virtual reality... Anyway, it's kind of simultaneously really, really boring to read, and full of really interesting stuff. Spectacularly misogynistic, but the misogyny is so intertwined with the philosophy and the science that you have to start thinking deconstructive thoughts about whether it's possible to think along these lines (doubling, androids, dubbing, recording and photographic technologies) without doing so through the female body.

Also just finished How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff, which has instantly catapulted into my top n books. It's absolutely stunning, and completely deserves all the hype. I can't recommend it highly enough.(From this link: I put it down with tears on my face and the absolute certainty that if, at 12, 13 or 14, a novel like this had provided my first glimpse of sex and death, I'd have grown up saner and wiser for it.) I actually think the ending is a little off-key, but it's still the best book I've read since Jaclyn Moriarty's Finding Cassie Crazy. (Though it's very different from that.)

14:34 / 23.08.04

i just finished Steve Erickson's Rubicon Beach on a plane the other day. Erickson in general has been big for me lately.

08:15 / 24.08.04

I'm reading Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millenium by the Dalai Lama, which was a gift from my mum about a year or two ago, as she knows I like that sort of thing. I'm enjoying it a lot, slightly to my surprise. It's kind of like a mass market version of the Buddhist teachings on compassion, and the thinking behind them. I get the impression that he wrote it with the idea of maybe reaching people who aren't committed or even that interested in Buddhism, in an attempt to get them thinking and hopefully practicing the values therein. I read him say elsewhere recently that all the stuff that matters is the ideas behind compassion, impermenance and the other values, not all the Tibetan ritual theatre that it's easy to get sucked into as a Westerner approaching these religons. This book kinda fits into that train of thought for me.

Also, re-reading Vikram Chandra's epic Indian novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain which is simply stunning. It's a real epic, composed of short chunks of different stories, playing back and forth over legend, myth, adventure, the narratives of colonialism, and the experiences of a young Indian travelling round the 'states in the 1980s. Absolutely GREAT.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:20 / 24.08.04

Clearly I need to read Rosoff. Just started "Hegemony or Survival". I'm not sure which way Chomsky's going to go on this one, but I'm interested to find out...

No star here laces

01:39 / 06.09.04

China Mieville - "Perdido street station" and "The Scar"
Marshall McLuhan - "Understanding media"
Harry Turtledove - "Worldwar: upsetting the balance"
Graham Greene - "The quiet american"
Richard Florida - "The rise of the creative class"
Walter Moseley - "Black Betty"

I'm loving the Mieville, personally. Turtledove is total trash, but enjoyable. Graham Greene I read cos I was in Vietnam, and it was a complete delight. Really, a perfect book. Beautifully constructed, I was quite overawed. The Richard Florida one is a bit lightweight, but utterly correct in its observations. I want to start a thread on it once its internalised enough...

unheimlich manoeuvre

17:05 / 06.09.04

alternating between Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, Clay Machine Gun by Victor Pelevin and Hegel by Charles Taylor.
the book about Hegel is thoroughly daunting and i feel i may well not be up to it. i'm still in the first chapter about the history of speculative thought, showing the origins of Hegel's ideas in general and specifically in the sturm und drang movement. interestingly Herder may have been the originator of expressionism which had (has)such an influence in art.
Perdido Street Station is beguiling, rich and gothic and much better than i could possibly have hoped for. hell, the same applies to the Clay Machine Gun too, minus the gothic bit.

10:01 / 08.09.04

Reading Francis Yates's The Rosacrucian Enlightenment which is the usual brillant tour through European intellectual/social/religous history, teasing out connections. She uses a lot of beutiful political and alchemical engravings to make her point, and these plates of these are worth the cover price alone. Her grasp of her chosen period astounds me.

Also dipping into Transforming the Mind by the Dalai Lama, which is great, and a tougher read than expected. I think because the DL is the Beastie Boy's spirtual leader, and he wrotes books which are basically about being nice to people, it's easy to forget he's a classically trained scholar in his traditon. Great stuff.

18:09 / 08.09.04

Haus - I'd be interested to know what you think of Hegemony and Survival. I almost bought it the other day as part of my three-for-two in Waterstone's but ended up buying some Japanese psychological horror (Out, by someone whose name I don't have handy). I'd like to pick the Chomsky up, though.

Currently almost finishing the new novel from Joanne Harris (of Chocolat fame)- well, it's not new, really, it's a reissue of her second novel, Sleep, Pale Sister, a melodramatic Victorian ghost story. S'okay, if a little predictable.

Next up is a preview copy of Billie Morgan, the new novel from author, street poet and New Model Army maven Joolz Denby, which is both for work and pleasure.

23:43 / 08.09.04

Just finished The Corrections and was astonished to find I quite liked it. Had gotten it somewhat jumbled in my mind with Mouthbreaking Work of Staggering Deez Nutz (thank you Courtney) which I found too calculated, too writing schoolish.

Starting in on Bernhard's Gargoyles, a collection of Duras essays, and a brand spanking new (to me) bio of Celan.

I'm going to get at least one other person to talk about or read Bernhard or Celan even if I have to develop a split personality to do it. I mean, for fuck's sake.

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