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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2005: What are you currently reading?

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10:29 / 31.05.05

The Cider House Rules, which I enjoyed for the first four hundred pages but which has dropped off significantly since. This is possibly because I have, for some reason I can't quite fathom, a marked aversion to dear sweet good girls called Candy.

I'm also reading the letters of F Scott Fitzgerald -which mostly consist of his having little angst to his publisher about which quotations should go on the cover of Gatsby and misspelling the word 'enthusiasm', but he's still an excellent writer so I'm enjoying them. Also re-read This Side Of Paradise because I've recomended it to lots of people recently and wanted to check I hadn't remembered it as better than it was. Which I hadn't.

12:21 / 31.05.05

'God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy, which is quite fun, in a glib, semi-bitter sort of way. The fact it's got a Booker Prize seems decimated by my inability to get T. Pratchett's similarly titled novel out of my immediate associations. Nice rhythm, lots of repetition, but also these shoals of information that peek out from the echoed narrative and don't necessarily go anywhere. If it was eight hundred pages, I'd probably tire of it, but it's short, so as long as it keeps up the textual playfulness through the end, I'll be satisfied.

16:31 / 31.05.05

I'm currently re-reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books for the first time since I was relatively small - I certainly haven't read them since I was fourteen - with a disconcertingly huge amount of happiness, glee and squeeing, and wondering why: some of it is the hugely comforting, cosy, tone-of-voice of the narrator; some of it is the familiarity and the sense of being reconnected to my younger self (I know I haven't read them since I was fourteen because that's when we moved to the Middle East and all my books went into the attic, so there's something about compensating for discontinuity there); some of it is love of the detailed descriptions, together with a sort of anthropological fascination and appreciation of the skill with which LIW gives you a world to inhabit, so that you feel comfortable there, whilst simultaneously giving a sense of its profound weirdness (forty miles from the nearest town, three miles into "Indian Territory", two miles from their nearest neighbour, and Laura has to remember to wear a sunbonnet which restricts her vision while she plays on the prairie so as to keep her skin white)... I don't know. Is Laura Ingalls Wilder the Kipling of the US? Does anyone have any information on debates about the books (particularly post-colonial ones), or should I just go and read the book whose review I linked to?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:59 / 01.06.05

Just finished Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin, slow moving but interesting, especially to Barbeloids that are interested in language and how it chains/frees people.

Now I'm about a hundred pages into The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky. I expected to hate this from page one, what with it supposedly being Shrubya's favourite book and all but so far the only really objectionable thing is a rather simple black/white dichotomy between what makes a 'free society' and what makes a 'fear society', the USA being the former and the USSR having been the latter. So far Sharansky SEEMS to be arguing that being tortured in a free society is better than living untortured in a fear society. He's an advocate of the war on terror but as yet hasn't addressed issues such as what happens when members of the free society torture and kill people from the society they are supposing to be helping in a jail. Hopefully the rest of the book will make some acknowledgement that there are shades of grey in this world.

13:05 / 01.06.05

I picked up a copy of The Dumas Club from a recommendation in this thread and found it a great rip-roaring spring read. I enjoyed it much more than the film based upon it (The Ninth Gate), but I think I need to re-read The Three Musketeers and then re-read Dumas because the cross-references were fairly lost on me, despite the exposition.

Next up is James Ellroy's L.A. Noir: The Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy, which my mother recommended. Unfortunately, the first scene involves a fairly graphic beating and rape of a schoolboy (by other schoolboys), so I don't know whether I'll be able to pick it back up for a few days.

I'm also desperately trying to finish Chris Penczak's stale City Magick, just to say I perservered through a condescending statement of the obvious. It's a load of bollocks.

Oh, and I'm still working through Hunter Stockton Thompson's first volume of letters. I'm a massive HST fan, and I'm treasuring the development of gonzo style through his early letters. His prose is always stunning and inspirational.

09:42 / 02.06.05

I just finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, and it has to have been the saddest book I've ever read. Good... but really, really, sad.

Now I'm flying through Oh Play that Thing! by Roddy Doyle on my way to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash...

(...can you tell I'm commuting 4 hours a day? I'm up to 3 books a week now!)

05:35 / 03.06.05

recently finished coetzee's 'life and times of michael k'... wonderful; writing, intriguing story inventively told and a thorough investigation into the inner life of a character. fabulous!

am just embarking on macewan's latest, 'saturday' read about the first twenty pages so far, so not much to tell... but it seems less fluid than his earlier books and too 'clever' by half. must say, a few years back i rated him very highly but rather think he has plateau'd, even drooped a little, in my estimation. what do others thionk of 'saturday' and the last two or three macewans?

17:20 / 05.06.05

Sunstorm, second book of the proposed Time's Odyssey by the marvellous Stephen Baxter and the venerable Arthur C Clarke. Wonder how much of it was actually written by a nonagenarian Clarke or is that a very ageist thought? Anyway, I loved Time's Eye, the first one, and am now thrilling to this one. Classic school of SF, biting your nails to see if the world will end.

Book one had Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Rudyard Kipling but this one is all 22nd century.

And I also devoured The Time Traveller's Wife while on holiday. Ripped though it and, apart from a couple of very obvious inconsistencies, loved it. Enjoyed it hugely. That Richard Madeley's a cunt but his book club throws up some fun recommendations.

17:24 / 05.06.05

And Saturday is a great read too. Some splendid descriptive stuff, of events, of political dilemmas, of a complacent emotional life challenged by circumstance. I like his ruse of choosing a neurologist with few aesthetics to describe the unfolding of events to us.

17:27 / 05.06.05

i'm reading "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Schriver. it's about a woman whose son commits a high school killing spree. it's beautifully written, very moving. i doubt very many people think about the points of view of relatives in such situations.

also began Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco) recently but it's been sidetracked by my exams.

09:21 / 05.07.05

Tried to read Palahniuk's Haunted, gave up when I felt my IQ points where being knocked off. Page 20. I have no idea what was going on there. Apart from the whole thing with Byron and Shelley sitting around in an old house by a lake swapping ghost stories. Which reminded me of a book I once read by Tom Holland, I think it's called Vampyre - a biorgraphy of Lord Byron as said creature. Surprisingly good. As far as I can remember.

Also, Sidney A Defence of Poetry, which was wonderful to read, just because of the way it's written. Um, it's very, very, very English. And Dave Eggers, 'You Shall Know Our Velocity', which I picked up because of the great title and the front cover. I'm shallow like that. It's alright though, rears it's head every once in awhile and says something interesting. 'bout a guy, comes into some money, goes around the World with his friend givin' it away. There are some other circumtances and some other things that happen, A plot, stuff like that. Characterisation.

But the best thing I've read in awhile was Fanon's 'Wretched...' which is beautiful. 'Concerning violence' is just utterly perfect. I wish I read that when I was 15, would've of saved me alot of time.

10:22 / 05.07.05

Finally finished Bleak House, which was good, but I find multiple characters with similar sounding names hard to keep track of at the best of times. Have since finished Man In The High Castle, which was excellent, ended very ebrubtly and I could have happily read more about the characters and the set up, I'm now just over half way through Sax's own Hinterland, which is okay, it has some great moments, some okayish stuff, but is enjoyable and easy to read. Not sure what's next, either 2nd part of the Baroque cycle or Valis or Dirk Gentley or a book about editing film.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

14:50 / 05.07.05

Currently reading 'Black Gold of The Sun' by Ekow Eshun (got a signed copy to review for a mates website). It's alright so far, part travelogue, part cultural history, part secret diary.

Also got a copy of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, by Rick Strassman, which looks v.interesting, especially in light of my would-be blog over in the Temple. Will be back with more complete reviews once I've digested them both.

paranoidwriter waves hello

15:09 / 05.07.05

Non fiction: 'An Experiment with Time" J.W.Dunne (for the second time). Interesting stuff about prophetic dreaming.

Bus journeys: 'Fictions" Jorges Luis Borges. I seem to have been re-reading and re-reading this for at least the past two years. It just gives and gives as I grow and grow.

Just started: 'God Bless You, Mr Rosewater' Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

22:06 / 05.07.05

well, i thought 'saturday' was well over-written. would have thought a writer of macewan's stature would use research much better than he did. pages of describing neurosurgery did nothing to the book, the plot, the characters - only to the reader; to wit, to bore me. the story per se was ok, but he has lost something, methinks.

recently read elkhonon goldberg's 'the wisdom paradox' - goldberg is a neurobiologist of some stature and his book is a thesis on what wisdom is, how it is played out neurologically and what we can do to amplify it, yet an engrossing read even and not too technical, even though it is on an esoteric science and has much to say on the nature of our consciousness and unconsciousness. (also reading 'the executive brain', his previous book)

chang-rae lee's 'aloft' was a nice way to spend a few hours. another of those accounts of a middle age crisis family history middle america books - something akin to franzen's 'the corrections', maybe. nice story, engaging characters: i enjoyed it.

and now i am three quarters of the way through one of my favourite favourite books 'the master and margarita' by the russian bulgakov. a fabulous romp and poetic imaginative account of the deveil visiting moscow. a parallel story of pilate and jesus and why o why hasn't someone made this into a film. it would be fantastic!! (would like to know if anyone has read his other books?)

21:03 / 10.07.05

Reading 'Q', it's not bad for a ex footballer...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:31 / 10.07.05

I'm on kind of a RAWK!!! bio tip at the moment- to this end, I'm currently reading "Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell And Jane's Addiction" by Brendan Mullen. Lotsa fun.

Keith, like a scientist

03:12 / 11.07.05

currently reading "Olympos," the "Ilium" follow up book by Dan Simmons. Oddly enough, he seems to have unwisely switched from a first person point of view with the Hockenberry character to a...shit, forget my English class...third person omnipresent point of view. Kind of disconcerting so far, but I was so thoroughly blown away by "Ilium" that this is a must read...

counting the days to Harry Potter, though.

21:15 / 11.07.05

I'm also very much looking forward to (shares in Bloomsbury publishing) the new book by (may well be a license to print money by about September) JK Rowling - I can't wait (Brazil's really nice around Christmas apparently) to see what happens (I ***** ******* ** ******* ** **** ** my arm, you understand,) next to Harry and his friends!!!

10:30 / 12.07.05

I just read Sonny Barger's autobiography. He was a big wheel in the Hell's Angels from its inception right through to the 90s. It's very interesting, though very very self-serving. No questions raised about the racism, violence and so on the the Angel's have been associated with. It was still quite interesting though.
I've also been on a pulp crime binge having raided a few second hand books stores, lots of John D. McDonald, Ross McDonald, A. A. Fair (a penname of Erle Stanley Gardner) and some Peter Cheyney - including my personal favourite title ever - "Dames Don't Care".

Nietzsch E. Coyote

11:40 / 12.07.05

Currently Reading: Leviathan the third book in the Illuminatus! Trilogy. Poker Without Cards. PWC is slow going right now because I don't have it in book form, should have that within the month. And A bunch of Buckminster Fuller books that can be found on the internet. Obviously the Fuller is inspired by the other two books. Working my way through Everything I know.

13:35 / 12.07.05

I was awed by Epileptic by David B. It's a memoir about his older brother who suffers from epilepsy, their family's attempts to cure him, and how it affects them. All the conflicts and mixed-up emotions this causes year upon year are portrayed with B's beautiful expressionistic art. This is what I was talking about in that comics vs. books thread a while back, something up there with Maus, From Hell, etc. A huge achievement. Recommended.

Next: Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett.

18:48 / 12.07.05

N. E. Coyote - I love the illuminatus books. Just finished reading the second book of the Historical Illuminatus books (The Widow's Son - only Robert Anton Wilson) and it was fantastic - so much better than the first (The Earth Will Shake) which took a while to find it's feet, this one just flew by with fantastic characters and really interesting footnotes. If you like Illuminatus, you should check them out. Just bought Confusion Neal Stephenson, as the Library kept asking for the loan copy back which got on my nerves.

17:02 / 13.07.05

Just finished Lunar Park and The Lucifer Principle.

I like Lunar Park, which you could subtitle Portrait of The Decadent as an Old Man. In it, "Brett Easton Ellis" tries to settle down with a supermodel wife and finally have a real life. Ellis satirizes his own perceived decadence, suburban life, and in a Dark Half-like turn, it seems Patrick Bateman now exists as a real person. I don't particularly like Ellis's earlier stuff -- just kinda, meh -- but ths feels like a more mature work.

Lucifer Principle -- fascinating, and remarkably prescient given Bloom's focus on the rise of Islamic terrorism in 1997.

Just started Kiling Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman. I like some of what he has to say, but the inability to stop For. One. Second. referencing pop culture artifacts grates a little. He also does this intensely self-aware "just two people talking here" voice, complete with "ANYWAY..." segues. But it reads quick.

11:57 / 15.07.05

Just finished Mark Gatiss' The Vesuvius Club. It's alright; a very fun, short summer book. Daft little Edwardian romp about a dandy and secret agent who, much against his better judgment, is in the unfortunate position of always having to save the world whilst chasing girls. When he gets bored, or is too single, he's partial to sodomy. It's quite fun, but fairly daft. Still, recommended, if only for how joycore bits of it are.

12:56 / 15.07.05

Just blazed a trail like lightning through Alistair Reynolds Redemption Space books. Always nice to have grand space opera where the physics of interstellar travel are relatively (no pun intended) realistic. Plus, cosmic sentience hating robots! Always fun.

Just started reading HG Wells' book The Shape of Things to come. But haven't got far enough into it to form an opinion.

19:28 / 19.07.05

Nice to hear someone else was reading 'God Bless You, Mr Rosewater'. I'm in it just now and just finished 'Slapstick or Lonesome No More'. I'm so glad Vonnegut's there.

Anyway, 'Lipstick Traces' - on suggestion from some Barbelings - is my long-term read and is fascinating if a little demanding cf 'the nineties: when surface was depth' by Michael Bracewell. Cultural Studies (if thats whatyacallit?) can be.. well, confusing and sometimes unconvincing. With this though, I love the idea that Punk was just the latest expression of a timeless aspect of human culture, and I completely believe it intuitively without the requirement for any evidence. So, there we go, I ought to enjoy a couple of hundred pages confirming my prejudices and reinforcing my own opinions, no?

Also, a big shout for Sam Adam's 'War of Numbers', an intel man's inside view of the statistical mendacity that went on during Nam throughout the military and its dealings with the public. Implicitly, it somehow completely confirms any suspicions that similar shenanigans are occurring in the Oil Wars as I write this...

Lined up: 'Guns, Germs & Steel' and 'Baudolino'.

Anyone got thoughts on Rebel Sell? I like the sound of a post-NoLogo rant...

08:57 / 28.07.05

'One afternoon -
in a certain European village,
in the middle of a civil war -
one man digs
while another watches over him.

Gradually, they begin to talk.'

Which was the only reason I picked up 'Schopenhauer's Telescope' (Gerard Donovan). And of course, it was disappointing.

Also, just began 'The Cloister and the Hearth' by Charles Reade, which by the looks of it, is going to take a long time.

10:56 / 28.07.05

'The Crimes of Love' by De Sade.

10:57 / 01.08.05

I've just finished rereading Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm, and what a wonderful book it is. A person could do a lot worse than forming a life philosophy from Cold Comfort Farm. Also, a whole new supply of silly words to use! "I mun cletter the dishes, Robert Poste's child!".

Before that, it was Patrick McGrath's Asylum, which made me feel really quite unhappy, but was excellent -the descent into depression was one of the best drawn I've ever read. Currently reading Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, so I think I'm still trying to tip the balance of my reading to 'cheerful' following the McGrath.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:50 / 01.08.05

Oh, McGrath is one of my favourite writers, having discovered him by accident via a copy of Dr Haggard's Disease which someone had left behind in a flat I was moving into a few years ago. All his novels are absolute genius- his short stories are pretty damn good too, but personally I think he's a better novelist than a short story writer- there's a "feel" to his stuff which takes longer to really develop properly.

I'm currently reading the new Harry Potter (having had to wait for payday rather than publication day), but I just bought a shedload of James Ellroy (of whose work I've only ever read Killer On The Road, but whose other stuff people are forever telling me I'd love) in one of those "3 for 2" offers.

Also The Surgeon Of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester- a dual biography of Dr James Murray, the most famous editor of the OED, and Dr W.C. Minor, one of the Dictionary's most favoured contributors, who was a homicidal lunatic locked up in Broadmoor. (Strangely, I bought it in a charity shop the other day largely because John Banville's review on the back cover described it as having "all the ingredients of one of Patrick McGrath's icily stylish novels: madness, violence, arcane obsessions, weird learning, ghastly comedy". So far this seems accurate!)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:52 / 01.08.05

Oh, and I haven't read Cold Comfort Farm, but I saw the Orchard Theatre Company (from Somerset... sadly I don't think they exist anymore but they were absolutely fucking ace and put on some of the best plays I've ever seen) doing a stage version of it about twenty years ago and it was excellent- I've been meaning to read it ever since, but never have.

20:31 / 01.08.05

On the way to and from work I'm reading One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night by Christopher Brookmyre; for drifting of to sleep to I'm reading Richard Morgan's latest techno-fetishist sci-fi-crime novel Woken Furies; and when I've got actual time to devote to reading it's 1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray. They are all doing pretty much what they say on the tin.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:15 / 02.08.05

Something called Hinterland by some dodgy chancer called David Barnett...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:44 / 02.08.05

Don't tell me... you read about it in The Sun, right?

(Actually, my copy should be here in the next couple of days, my last attempt to order it having been hampered by my credit card being rejected).

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