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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2006: What are you currently reading?

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13:43 / 27.06.06

About to start Piano by Jean Echenoz, which I picked up randomly from Borders a couple of weeks ago (not so much as a review or a recommendation to go on, risky).

Just finishing Why we are Hungry (short stories) by Dave Eggers, which I've (intermittently) enjoyed a great deal.

I also recently finished David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, which I found enchanting and would recommend to anyone -- like all of Mitchell's work though, it left me just wanting to read his next book.

Kiltartan Cross

15:23 / 27.06.06

Inferno, by Niven and Pournelle. Starring Benito Mussolini as Virgil and a washed-out sf write as Dante. Popcorn, but good popcorn. Soon I shall be reading Say you want a revolution?, which I doubt needs any further plugging here.

15:47 / 27.06.06

I just finished Maximum Ride: School's Out-Forever, book two of the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. The first book was great, but School's Out was a little disappointing because I was expecting major plot developments, and they just didn't happen.

I finished Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman just the other day, and I have to say that it was sheer, unrivaled brilliance. The end of the world never looked so cool.

23:25 / 27.06.06

I just finished Philip Roth's The Breast. God, that was a weird novel. (Novella?) I'm taking a class on the guy next semester, so I figured I'd check him out. Perhaps I should have done without the inauspicious introduction.

Anyway, I'm about to start Bob Spitz's biography, The Beatles.

All Acting Regiment

02:57 / 28.06.06

Nabokov, Ada, Virgil, The Aeneid, Bulgakov, The Master & Margherita, and Shakespeare, Hamlet.

What's the Beano like these days?

17:06 / 28.06.06

Today I worked out how many pages I had left of Remembrance of Things Past, following which I (i) wished I hadn't done that and (ii) wondered if I'd be having a slightly better summer if I hadn't decided to read it this year.

I am also reading many Jennings stories, which are ace, and just like I remember them.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

18:34 / 28.06.06

Whilst visiting a friend in Leeds I dragged him into Waterstones and bought him Perdido Street Station, as it's not the sort of book he usually reads.

In return he bought me Platform by Houellebecq, which I'm currently about 2/3 the way through. Can't decide whether I'm enjoying it or not and always think that when reading a translated foreign book that you're never going to get exactly the same book you would if you read it in the original language.

There's a certain detachment in the prose and I'm wondering if it'd feel like the same book to a Frenchman or French speaker.

Anyone read it in the original French? Care to share your opinion?

02:09 / 29.06.06

Today I worked out how many pages I had left of Remembrance of Things Past, following which I (i) wished I hadn't done that and (ii) wondered if I'd be having a slightly better summer if I hadn't decided to read it this year.

Too bad you couldn't just download it like in Dan Simmons' Ilium.

Kiltartan Cross

08:28 / 29.06.06

Anyone read it in the original French? Care to share your opinion?
I've just ordered a copy, I'll post here when I've read it. In the meantime I'm content with this month's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Finished the Niven/Pournelle Inferno, which disappointed hugely at the end; such resolution and revelation as there was fell completely flat.

Kiltartan Cross

16:48 / 02.07.06

Read Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones' modern take on Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer. I like it, very much so, but then, I would, given that the subject matter lies at the nub of all my obsessions. Currently on The Castle of Llyr, which is reasonably readable but, alas! not a patch on the DWJ. Once I've finished the series I fear I shall have to attempt to read The Golden Bough again; I remember it as being terribly boring, but I've a burning need to read the chapter on kings killed at the end of a fixed term after reading F&H.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:50 / 05.07.06

Just started Robin Hardy's Cowboys For Christ. I'm guessing this is what was supposed to be the movie May Day. Hardy's definitely a better director than he is a novelist, but I've read and enjoyed far worse books, and the plot's shaping up to be pretty cool.

Janean Patience

19:55 / 05.07.06

I've never quite understood the fuss about Haruki Murakami, praised up-thread, and having just finished Norwegian Wood I understand even less. What exactly happens in this literary classic? A student sleeps with a few different girls, three of the cast have committed suicide by their mid-20s, he feels wistful about his past? Huh?

Plus I borrowed it from a Murakami-crazy friend in the original format, a little red and a little green book in a box. What was the point of that?

Thankfully I'm also reading Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, which is great and I'm tearing through. Any Zelazny recommendations?

23:08 / 05.07.06

I think 'Norweigan Wood' was one of the dullest of Murakamis books. I don't think i finished it myself.

However, 'Wind-up Bird Chronicle' and 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland' and a couple of others are pretty fantasic. I'd recommend reading those as they are damn fine books.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

02:43 / 06.07.06

Plus I borrowed it from a Murakami-crazy friend in the original format, a little red and a little green book in a box. What was the point of that?

Yeah, I bought the same set a few years ago. I finished it and was left feeling a little bewildered as to what all the fuss was about. Looks like something essential has been lost in the translation.

05:51 / 06.07.06

Thankfully I'm also reading Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, which is great and I'm tearing through. Any Zelazny recommendations?

It’s a bit obvious but if you haven’t already, pick up his Chronicles of Amber. Zelazny's work always has a welcome maturity to it, and Amber incorporates all sorts of references to a wide variety of topics that makes it feel more literate than most fantasy and science fiction as well. Add this to a sprawling, inventive political epic and it’s one of the best things ever to come out of the sci-fi/fantasy genres.

As for what I'm reading now, I was faced by a difficult decision yesterday:

"I’ve finished Pale Fire, which was fantastic. What next? I have a copy of the first two volumes of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and a copy of Borges "Ficciones". I can start with a comic about a talking plant man, or an internationally acclaimed literary masterpiece."

(Fifteen minutes later)

“And now Swamp Thing’s fighting a fear-manifesting Monkey-demon! Awesome!”

I just can’t resist a new comic before anything else, no matter how good the alternative is. I’ll get to Borges after I tear through more of Moore’s Swamp Thing. I think it’s some of Moore’s best work so far.

I also just finished the BRPD graphic novel “Black Flame” a few hours ago. Mignola’s teamed up with a fellow named John Arcudi lately, and cheerfully mentioned in the afterword that the more delicate character moments were due to Arcudi. It shows, it’s a more nuanced and character oriented comic than Mignola was putting together himself, and I think Arcudi’s help made Mignola’s storytelling much more satisfying than it was on its own. The scenes of an enormous monster breaks forth from the earth are incredibly drawn, too – there’s a sense of massive, inhuman scale that really works to sell the scene in my mind.

05:37 / 07.07.06

I finished reading Chuck Palahniuk’s “Haunted” in paperback. I’ve loved Fight Club, Survivor and Invisible Monsters; and liked most of his other stuff. But Haunted? Blech…. What a boring and difficult book to actually keep reading. I kept going with it out of a sense of hopeful duty.

The book throws ideas out, and doesn’t grow them into anything interesting. Worse, many of the ideas have been toyed with before in Palahniuk’s previous work. There are no unique characters here – all of them seem like the same person. There is no protagonist (or antagonist) for a reader to grasp onto.

The only thing the reader can grasp onto is the terribly contrived situation these character shadows find themselves in. The central idea, writers trapped so that they can produce something meaningful, is interesting, and could have been a fascinating reflection of contemporary media. But, it’s just not.

The short stories interspersing the narrative are meant to push the plot forward – but they don’t. This seems to me a collection of mostly flawed short stories barely connected by a very flimsy narrative

What makes the reading experience worse is Palahniuk’s arrogant afterword, where he sagely claims that within Haunted are “the places that can only books can go.” He gleefully details how one of his short stories made people faint. Please – a warm day can make people faint, who cares?

Fight Club was successful because when you take away Tyler and Project Mayhem – it’s a story about disconnected people, wanting to reconnect with a sense of what it means to be human. Palahniuk has lost that sense himself, and fills his empty characters with facts that are meant to dazzle us, but instead made me switch off.

11:43 / 07.07.06

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:56 / 07.07.06

This seems to me a collection of mostly flawed short stories barely connected by a very flimsy narrative

That was certainly how I read it, although I think I probably liked the stories more than you did. I don't think they were there to push the main plot forward- I think the main plot was more just used as a framing device. I seem to remember that when the book was first announced it was tagged as an anthology of short stories- I kind of get the impression that made it a little thin, and the main story was bolted on afterwards to justify pushing it as a hardback.

07:43 / 08.07.06

Stoatie - I did like some of the short stories - foot Work, Slumming and Nightmare Box. But some others didn't go to interesting places or seemed to finish prematurely.

To me, the term 'novel of short stories' implies a sense of connectivity between the stories and the novel itself. Perhaps, an insight from a short story would help us to understand a character or hir actions, but it didn't happen often enough.

08:45 / 08.07.06

Looks like something essential has been lost in the translation.

Well, as a Murakami fan I'm duty bound to disagree, and to accuse you of madness. Interestingly, as I understand it Murakami has worked with the same translator (Japanese to English) for years, and considers translation an art in and of itself, a position that I'm inclined to agree with. How the crikey any one was able to translate Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World I have no idea. Bloody genius, I reckon.

09:26 / 08.07.06

I seem to remember that most of Murakamis english translations have been done by two people. I think i've got the same short story (or it might be an extract from a novel) translated by the two of them in different books. Its really interesting how different they turn out. Once this hangover clears a bit i'll have a look for them.

00:27 / 10.07.06

I wouldn't give up on Murakami... Norweigan Wood isn't my favourites of his. I would try A Wild Sheep Chase or at least the story "Superfrog Saves Tokyo" in the short-story collection After the Quake...

02:05 / 10.07.06

i thought norwegian wood was sweet (like sugar, in a good way), but hardboiled wonderland is my favourite murakami - it's a bit more structured than some of his other stuff, so when you end up asking "what?" there are some answers. anyway, that (hardboiled) is what my partner is currently reading.

me, i'm waiting for a shipment from amazon (which will contain karl popper - the formative years; brooke-rose omnibus (after reading a review in the lrb by, argh, the shakespear guy whose name slips me for the moment [on edit - frank kermode?]); and la maison de rendezvous + djinn (trans).

so that's what i will be reading; at the moment i'm forced back onto cronicas del angel gris (since my spanish isn't good enough to read in that language if there's any alternative - i have tried quixote (some really nice editions came out on the anniversary), but it's hard (even though the structure is amazingly modern, the words aren't)). it's actually a damn good read - very funny. credit to the guy in a little booth in bbaa airport who suggested it for me.

just finished galatea 2.2. richard powers is amazing. i'm a scientist / engineer / programmer kind of guy, and it's frustrating that so much good fiction is written by people who don't have a clue how half the world works. powers does. he gives the whole picture - arts and science ("country and western"). everything i've read by him (except maybe three farmers) has been really solid.

non-fiction: best thing i've read in a long long time was hayek's challenge, but i won't say more here as i wrote a fairly long comment on amazon.

14:11 / 10.07.06

After enjoying Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch, I went ahead and borrowed Nickel and Dimed. It was, I felt, less funny and entertaining but more important a book. She describes what I feel is in a lot of ways the quintessential American experience. Certainly every American ought to read it (high school assigned reading maybe?), and I think non-Americans would get a useful look into US culture by reading it. It is a rather bleak, but not exaggerated at all, picture of the so-called unskilled American worker's life, making above minimum wage but not really enough to live. The final "Evaluation" is wonderful in its insight and compassion. She goes beyond just talking about how hard this life is and asks questions about why - not only why is the "system" set up this way, but why do the workers get stuck where they are, what kind of psychological damage does this situation do to the individual. Excellent. If I had 2 brain cells to rub together I'd start a separate thread on Ehrenreich.

11:51 / 14.07.06

Just started Iain M Banks Against a Dark Background and am not sure of it yet. I'd thoroughly recommendT he Player of Games, Excession and Consider Phlebas though as he really creates alien civilisations with a sense of humour. The idea of the socialist utopian Culture run by huge machines for machines and humans alike is a well worked one and extremely entertaining.

12:28 / 14.07.06

well I'm currently into Neuromancer which I haven't read in a long time...I finished The Space Vampires swiftly and found it to be really good, then I attempted The Mind Parasites and struggled with it. I don't know why. (maybe it was the parasites!)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:43 / 14.07.06

Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses, which I've been meaning to read for a while, and just picked up as part of a one-volume edition of the Border Trilogy (with The Crossing and Cities Of The Plain). Very, very good indeed. Partly a coming-of-age tale, partly an elegy for the American West, with two 16-year-old cowboys travelling to Mexico in the 1950s. There's a whole Old Testament vibe to it, and his prose and the general feel put me in mind of Faulkner. Excellent stuff, and once I've read the trilogy I think I may be able to get a thread out of it.

06:41 / 15.07.06

It is getting late in the Game. Reading 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl...by Pinchbeck.

Predictable yet reaffirming...not very well written but personal enough to be compelling. It grabs and fondles in all of the usual places. Like an eco-terror-porn movie for the hopefully hopeless.

It starts with,
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yeats

I couldn't resist.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

11:40 / 17.07.06

I'm reading Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach, which I am really enjoying. It ties in to a lot of the things I'm studying, and things that I spend time thinking about anyway (nerd!). I wish I'd read it earlier, but it's too big to read on loan from a uni library while uni is on.

I'm also reading Ben Mack's Poker Without Cards, but I'm not far enough into it to make any judgement calls.

I'm also also reading Jeffery Deaver's 12th card (or similar, I haven't looked at it for a week or so, due to GEB), which is nice because Rhyme is back, and I like Rhyme. It looks a bit different to the earlier books, but again I'm not far enough into it to be sure.

I'm almost certain I have something else on the boil, too, but I can't see it right now, so I'll leave it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:06 / 17.07.06

Now on The Crossing, the second of McCarthy's Border Trilogy. It's better than ...Horses. It upset me so much about a quarter of the way through I had problems reading on. But it's well worth it, so far.

17:34 / 17.07.06

Godel Escher Bach fucking rules, one of my favourite books. I remember finding it and being outraged that nobody had given it to me earlier, it crystallised all kinds of things I'd been thinking about muddily. The best book on self-referential things I've found.

I'm reading Steven Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series (now on book 5) and it's a bit rubbish, but I have to finish it now. Grr. He keeps using obscure words unnecessarily without really knowing what they mean- words like gelid, desuetude and macerated. It's like reading Will Self's evil fantasy twin. Still, it's low energy comfort reading so I shouldn't complain I suppose.

05:11 / 18.07.06

A used copy of Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of The Mabinogion with someone elses notes in it that I bought for 25 cents.
It's a good read but I hear that she left out the juicy bits...

Kiltartan Cross

08:16 / 18.07.06

Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion is good, as I recall, although it's more of a "based-on" than a translation.

I've just read Robert Reed's Marrow, an sf novel which takes place inside a large (read: considerably larger than Earth) alien spaceship from the dawn of time. It's pretty hard sf, too; with the exception of the super-strong structural hyperfibre which allows the author to play around with large constructions, very little is black-boxed. The characters are reasonably believable, although the moderately complicated interpersonal plot didn't actually hold my attention much, and got downright confusing near the end. I found the denouement (of the purpose of the ship) extremely disappointing, which was a shame because I'd found it hard to put the book down until then.

While forging ahead through Marrow I started reading The Night Watch, which starts pretty much exactly as you'd expect from the film, and I'm also looking at To Your Scattered Bodies Go to pass the time, although even though it has the thoroughly interesting Richard Burton as a central character it hasn't grabbed me.

Topher, Bicycles for Everyone

15:06 / 20.07.06

Beyond Good and Evil. Great stuff by Nietzsche.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:39 / 20.07.06

Ooh, I'm also in the middle of Marrow, except I got distracted.

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