Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2005: What are you currently reading?

Page: 1 2 3(4)5 6 7 8 9

The Return Of Rothkoid

03:16 / 03.05.05

Currently labouring through A Glastonbury Romance, which is interesting, but incredibly, horribly overlong. It's got a spiritual overtone that's quite profound, but seems rather artificial at times.

Certainly, it's not as cool as Lords Of Chaos, which I read before it.

00:26 / 04.05.05

On ghadis's reccomendation in another thread, I started The Club Dumas today... I wish I knew years ago that The Ninth Gate was based on a book. Reading about people who get really excited about old books is quite satisfying.

Tryphena Absent

19:25 / 05.05.05

Have just finished In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami (ultra violent, Japanese novel, enjoyed it but written for a very specific audience), Madame by Antoni Libera (set in Soviet Poland, I absolutely loved it in spite of the Simone de Beauvoir slating, which I resented so it must have been pretty good) and Conrad's Fate by DWJ (

). Feel very cheerful.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:11 / 06.05.05

Just finished Witch Baby, by Francesca Lia Block. Deva first interested me in these books by expressing her ambivalence as to whether they were any cop whatsoever. Two books in, I'm still not sure. What I do know is that if I ever find myself on some fictionautic mission wherein I encounter Weetzie Bat, hero of the first book and mother of the eponymous child, I am going to slap her.

Before that, A Sudden Wild Magic, by Diana Wynne Jones. There remains something a bit queasy about DWJ writing adult fiction. You just don't want her talking about sex, damn it. There's something faintly disquieting about her impeccably bourgy witches and wizards, as well. It's all yoga and tofu and working in computers... there are lots of nice DWJ touches, but I was expecting a sequel to Deep Secret, for some reason, and this wasn't it. And enough with the foreskins already.

16:35 / 08.05.05

Just finished a couple...
Jennifer government by Max Barry: Decent enough. Pretty fun, kinda funny, very easy to read, not to distant future thing where corporations have privatised government, and franchised it all over the world. An Airmiles type company has basically taken over.

Guide by Dennis Cooper. Honestly, the most gruesome thing I've ever read. Made me shiver, but flew through it. Not much of a plot, from what I can gather, an autobiographically inspired Dennis charachter, becomes increasingly obsessed with killing boys. The violence exceeds American Psycho, but it doesn't have any of the humour of that book. Not sure if I'd recommend it.

Next, either Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, or maybe the His Dark Materials trilogy, which I finally got cheap copies of (I have an wicked bargain section in my local bookstore, Mcnally Robinson, which all of these books came from). The first page of Cloud Atlas kinda intimidates me though...

09:28 / 09.05.05

Haus - always thought of A Sudden Wild Magic as an earlier and less successful stab at Deep Secret, FWIW - I think DWJ herself came to the conclusion that doing 'adult' writing with sex and so on in it didn't really work for her - as you know there's not really any suggestion of the stuff in her other 'adult' books (certainly no more than in the YA ones).

11:18 / 09.05.05

Mycroft, there is nothing intimidating about Cloud Atlas - it's a very accessible book, and a fun read.
Don't expect brain-ache, and, really, really don't expect to struggle with the language.

Trust me.

Not in the Face

15:04 / 09.05.05

Currently reading White Gold by Giles Milton. Its an account of slave trade of north europeans by Moroccans in the 17th and 18th centuries. Fascinating look at a part of history that never really gets covered in the 'Age of Enlightenment', although Milton's own attitudes are somewhat mixed - occasional references to how awful slavery is mixed with lots of emphasising 'white slaves' and 'black slave masters' just to show how bad it was for Europeans to be enslaved. Still very interesting for those into history.

21:00 / 09.05.05

Just finished a Scanner Darkly (PKD) in anticipation of the movie. It kind of made me wish I hadn't put all those holes in my brain, for a moment.
Reading The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester (again) which I reminded myself of when recommending it in the non-fiction thread earlier this year.

09:38 / 10.05.05

I've about 100 and a bit pages left to Mother London by Michael Moorcock, and it's great in its depictions of the city. Makes me want to go back and see every corner of it... Next I think is Underground by Murakami, which is his non-fiction book about the Tokyo Subway Gas Attacks...

10:23 / 10.05.05

Currently reading Norwegian Wood, but having read Kafka on the Shore, South of the Border, West of the Sun and Wild Sheep Chase on the trot I fear I'm suffering from Murakami fatigue. Oh, and I read t'other Murakami's In The Miso Soup just before that. Norwegian Wood not really doing it for me, which I think is due to the distinct lack of weirdness.

Also got Jake Arnott's truecrime lined up, but don't really fancy it at the moment. Also planning to re-read Kerouac's Doctor Sax, and I've also got a hankering for a summer run-through of To Kill A Mockingbird.

02:16 / 11.05.05

just finished chang-rae lee's 'aloft', which was recommended as being a bit like franzen's 'the corrections'... not as rich and beautiful as franzen, but certainly well crafted and pleasant enough to read.

now am onto a local canberra writer who is surprisingly wonderful; john clanchy's 'lessons from the heart'.

his 'the hard word' won the book prize here a year or two back and was a wonderfully written book from within a family (there seems to be a theme here!), each chapter being written from each member's perspective so you build up the picture of the story and characters as you go along. immigrant mother, husband not children's father, dementia, loss, love and communication are the themes. he has a great voice.

this next book takes the adolescent daughter character, laura, on a school excursion to uluru (ayer's rock in old speak) in australia's red centre where relationships and truth are themes dominant... about half through and a great book.

am doing a novel writing workshop over the next year, start next month, with john clanchy, so i am glad i love his books! thoroughly recommend him!

12:04 / 11.05.05

Just finished reading "Drama City" by George Pelecanos, his latest and one of his more sophisticated novels. His writing has really improved with his past few books which have managed to go beyond simple crime writing but without losing any of it's bite.
I'm now reading "An intimate History of Killing" by Joanna Bourke, which examines various wars in the 20th Century and how soldiers deals with breaking the moral code of "thou shalt not kill" and how the miltary trains them to do so. It's very good and I recommend it

wembley can change in 28 days

06:39 / 12.05.05

Still reading Infinite Jest, and I will finish it. Just got past the game of Eschaton.

Also recently: Ayckbourne's House and Garden, a bunch of Shakespeares again (Macbeth, 12th Night, Richard II), and Delillo's The Body Artist (nice prose, not so compelling as a story). But Infinite Jest is just about killin' me with its excellence.

01:25 / 15.05.05

But Infinite Jest is just about killin' me with its excellence.

That phrasing struck me as somewhere between Holden Caulfield and Ted Theodore Logan but very true about IJ

Still reading The Surgeon of Crowthorne (as I've said really very interesting with an easy informative brevity to it) probably on to the J.D Salinger biography next as it I've been feeling guilty about not reading a well thought out present for years.

02:59 / 15.05.05

Infinite Jest is just about killin' me with it's excellence

'Excellence' probably isn't the first word I'd have gone for, and I'm not sure about 'just about,', but apart from that, I dare say you're right.*

* Reference to underground film made in '82 about Saimese twins, in which everyone was ill on their trousers. Boring men in rehab, self-righteousness, and so on. All concerned shot themselves. It was really weird.

21:04 / 15.05.05

Of course I meant strictly in a good way...

14:04 / 16.05.05

just finished pynchon's vineland on the plane back home yesterday. great book, but (like everything else i've read of his) the journey's better than the destination.

14:11 / 16.05.05

oh, and david markson's wittgenstein's mistress is the funniest, smartest, bestest book i've read for several years (i think i read it earlier this year, though it could have been at the end of last).

19:39 / 16.05.05

I'm reading Dog Training books like a fiend, for obvious reasons, but trying to balance it a bit with fiction to keep the doggie obsession under control. So I've picked up AS Byatt, who's my go-to comfort read. A Whispering Woman is something of a continuation of Babel Tower, which I liked when I read it a few years ago.

04:37 / 17.05.05

I've really been getting back into reading on this trip, which is a great feeling. Other than the Barbe-classic Hinterland, I've also read Faulkner's Light in August, which I loved, a Joyce Carol Oates book whose names now escapes me, and I'm two-thirds through a new (I think) book by Mary Doria Russell, who wrote The Sparrow. It's called A Thread of Grace and it's set in occupied Italy during WW2. Which would have put me off, disliking historical/ war/ running from the Nazis stuff generally, but I just had to try it, as I really like her style. And it's lovely - she has a very distinctive voice, which I find mesmerising.

Tryphena Absent

02:11 / 22.05.05

I've just finished Christie Malry's Own Double Entry by B.S. Johnson. My first by him, I really enjoyed it, I'm beginning to see why so many people think he's vastly underated/a well kept secret etc.

I have a few options but I think I'm going to read Brass by Helen Walsh next as I (kind of) picked it up today.

02:42 / 22.05.05

The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie.

It's a bit subject to Bollywood kitsch to begin with, in much that same way that Martin Amis goes on about pubs on the Portobello road ( where I've been ! I've been there ! ) but about a third of the way in, or later perhaps, depending on taste, it turns into this fascinating, awful, kind of entirely unreasonable, but nevertheless excellent oedipal psychedelic revengers tragedy. He was really at the top of his game, SR, when he wrote this.

I tend to go through a hell of a lot in the way of novels, so I'm not saying this lightly - Best thing I've read for a couple of years, I'd buy this book a pint. Which I'm not necessarily saying I'd do for Midnight's Chilkdren.

03:02 / 22.05.05

ibis, how does it compare? i'm now reading babel tower, and loving it.

14:56 / 22.05.05

I'm not really far in enough to say (have been too busy to read much). A lot of the same characters, but with different ones getting more "air time" - more Elvet Gander, Luk Lysgaard (?), not as much Frederica so far.

13:48 / 24.05.05

Hi All, just finished Straw Dogs by John Gray which is wonderful. Really set me to thinking about our place on the planet, etc and how our supposedly consciousness driven lives are very much like those of animals. Also finished Ian Kershaw's two volume biography of Hitler which leaves you in no doubt of how the scandalous seizure of power in 1933 was aided by the division of the Left, the strong arm tactics of the Western Allies and above all the machinations of the German conservatives who had no real idea of what they were about to unleash.

Half way through John Ralston Saul's Voltaire's Bastards which is a well researched critique of Western thought and the rise of the technocrat. Very well written and amusing/worrying too.

Think that I had better read some fiction again soon! Any recommendations?

23:18 / 24.05.05

I just finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy for the first time...wow...is all I can say. That was really unexpected and amazing. I've been trying all day to figure out what my daemon would be.

Am now reading A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem, which is a collection of reviews of fictional books. So far it's hilarious...and makes me want to re-read all the similar Borges reviews.

11:18 / 25.05.05

I only buy books second hand so tend not to read anything published in the last five years - although have just got a job in publishing so that is rather forcing a change. As yet, have found little I'd rather buy new than the stuff I can pick up for a quid. So far this year we have been particularly enjoying:

Peter Ackroyd: The House of Doctor Dee is excellent, about to start Hawksmoor.

Richard Allen: Found original NEL copies of Skinhead and Suedehead - the cult starts (again) here. Who's with me?

John Preston: Am still hunting for more by this guy, one of the godfathers of Queer (m) porn. So far stumbled upon his writings in High Risk, The Flesh And The Word and Hustling: The Gentleman's Guide to Homosexual Prostiturion.

A.E. Van Vogt: Am still trying to locate a second hand copy of the Null-A books, but have been devouring short stories.

Whoops - one generally impressive newie: Frederic Beigbeder's Windows on the World - incredibly for such a knowingly glossed-up book, it had me close to tears. And that is very, very rare.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:44 / 25.05.05

Allen, hmm? Must did out my copy of Boot Boys... haven't read any Allen since I got into Stewart Home, but have been meaning to...

Currently I'm failing to keep to one book at a time. I've just started Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver- I read the first hundred or so pages back when it came out, then lost my copy, which I've just found again. I'm halfway through Peter F Hamilton's Pandora's Star which is quite fun- biiig space opera, lots of fun. Also dipping in and out of Koji Suzuki's Dark Water- a very good collection of horror stories, including the one the movie was based on. And my really low-class self is reading Richard Laymon's Funland- utterly trashy, fairly objectionable but immensely readable horror, as was RL's thing.

23:10 / 25.05.05

Just finished The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay, which was nearly brilliant, but a bit let down by how swiftly it wrapped up I thought.

About 100 pages into Pandora's Star - big fun dumb space opera by Peter F Hamilton (as guy above has mentioned). He may not have much new to come up with, and his character's are very familiar by now, but it's still very entertaining.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:25 / 26.05.05

Oh, I'm also in the middle of Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress Of Solitude, which I'm enjoying immensely. Obviously not quite so immensely that I'd actually remember I was reading it, but I think that's more a reflection on my attention span than the quality of Mr Lethem's prose.

09:08 / 26.05.05

I'm reading "Don't Think of an Elephant", by George Lakoff, and "Maat Magick", by Nema. One's about reframing in progressive politics. The other is about...errr...Maat Magick.

09:15 / 26.05.05

I too enjoyed The Fortress of Solitude - I thought the first half especially was really good, very evocative (of a place I have never visited!). I didn't think the second half worked so well though - be interested to hear your opinion of this, Stoatie.

13:46 / 26.05.05

Just finished part 4 of the 'tales of the city' saga. Mouse has changed beyond all recognition.

15:31 / 28.05.05

Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trial by Hunter S Thompson, which seems to be back in print again, having been hard to find for a couple of years. I'm about half way through it, and thinking is this possibly his best writing - for obvious reasons ( he's covering the '72 US elections from, if not the inside exactly, then fairly close to it, )it's not as druggy as 'Las Vegas' but it could well be funnier. In particular, the scene with the Boohoo is pretty much classic.

Page: 1 2 3(4)5 6 7 8 9