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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2006: What are you currently reading?

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09:18 / 23.01.06

I am currently at various points among these titles;

Temple and Contemplation by Henry Corbin - almost halfway through this wonderful collection of lectures by Corbin whose books never cease to fascinate me even though there is the occasional dry spell due to his academic approach. Regardless of his conventions, he manages to breathe inspired life into the most esoteric aspects of Islamic mysticism.

50 Secrets to Magic Craftsmanship by Salvador Dali - Hilarious and quite magical. This is indeed a Grimoire worthy of any occultist's library. I especially like the bit about araneariums. I picked this up to distract myself from writing an essay on magical objects - I just needed a break from it and tried to console myself by reasoning that this title had some affinity with my project and so qualified as research material. It was a pleasant surprise.

Meanwhile a more pertinent book for my essay; Amulets: Sacred Charms of Power and Protection by Sheila Paine has been quite a worthwhile read in itself. The author is an expert in textiles and traveled to over 60 countries documenting different cultural trends and folk art and began collecting data on amulets as well. Fully illustrated, and more of a picture book than an academic text, it manages to provide many interesting details regarding the use of talismans and amulets - even including an encounter with a witch doctor who makes her an amulet to protect her on her travels.

Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art by Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl This book is an amazing collection of material regarding the topics mentioned in the title. I had read Panofsky's Survival of the Pagan Gods and expected valuable information from the present book - although I am not quite done with it, I have not been disappointed.

Just finished doing the typesetting for a new edition of The Turba Philosophorum and I have enjoyed the strange and archaic turns of phrase and hermetic lore one encounters there.

14:54 / 23.01.06

>My plan this year is to re-read Gravity's Rainbow to see if I can wrap more of my brain around it.<

Have fun, Hermes. Third time was the charm for me, and I finally read GR from first page to last within a month and a half, earlier this year. I loved it. I could tell while reading that it's the type of book that rewards multiple readings. There were a few spots were Pynchon made knowing comments about things that hadn't even happened yet, no doubt there for the second-time reader who could wink knowingly along with him.

19:58 / 23.01.06

Just finished up Nabokov's 'Invitation to a Beheading', which I wish I hadn't looked at the back-cover text, midway through, because it literally spells out the entire set of events, from opening to closing sentences, with all the reveals revealed (that is, utterly spoiled) and an inane comparison to Kafka that seems to simultaneously insult both authors and the book.
More than the obvious statements on authors, readers, and literary worlds, the bit about set-pieces and background paintings really worked sweetly for me. Hard to get deliberately stagey qualities, that ethereal plasticity, to work, to carry forward and retain some concern or interest, but this manages quite well.
The author's intro insists it was hardly rewritten and quite literal and precise, but some of the puns had to have shifted, to avoid weird transliteration, yes? Ah, Nabokov lies.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:13 / 23.01.06

I finished Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys today, after taking a pause earlier in the month to read Arthur and George for our library's reading group. It's pretty much everything you'd expect from a Gaiman book, whether you're a lover or a hater. The first hundred or so pages are fairly dire, straight out of 'The Fisher Price Book of Setting the Scene', amiable loser Fat Charlie, can't do anything right in life, two left feet, always finds every opportunity in a day to embaress himself, yet strangely has a fairly hot girlfriend who he's engaged to, and a job that doesn't start getting crap until after the book opens. After attending his father's funeral he discovers a brother he never knew he had, who moves into his life and wouldn't you know it, does everything better than him.

However, after the cliches the book does have the decency to pick up somewhat. There's some genuine pathos and drama amid the comedy, Gaiman does his usual thing about gods and stories, there's few surprises and it all wraps up predictably and neatly at the end.

Anyway, now that's out of the way I'm on to A.N. Wilson's biography of C.S. Lewis.

00:50 / 25.01.06

08:04 / 25.01.06

Ah, Fell ... remember that guy who said a picture is worth a thousand words? We kicked him out of the books forum.

I'm reading two excellent books at the moment. On the bus it's Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, a "blistering, impassioned novel of black lives in 1940s America," according to the blurb. Published in 1952 and still fresh now, thanks to the brilliant writing that sparkles effortlessly.

At home I'm reading A. N. Wilson's tome The Victorians, as I'm on a bit of a Victorians kick thanks to Adam Hart-Davis's and Fred Dibnah's tv programmes. Very informative and quite easy to read, though he lost it for a bit when he got caught up too much in parliamentary politics. Gladstone did this, then Disraeli did this, blah blah. At his best when discussing social attitudes and how they changed. Fascinating stuf.

15:34 / 25.01.06

Just finished a mild binge on the last three Adrian Mole books (The Wilderness Years, The Cappuccino years and The Weapons Of Mass Destruction,) which I have to say, though not without a certain amount of dirty ashamedness, that I enjoyed a lot. Then again, I have read the Harry Potter books, all of them, so I'm not sure what I'm worried about.

Anyway, the most enjoyable of these was the latest, The Weapons of Mass Destruction - it seems as if after years of (famously) having a love/hate relationship with her best-known character, Sue T's now a lot more relaxed about the whole business (specifically, I suspect, with picking up the money,) a fact which comes across in the writing, which seems more expansive somehow, though the pages still fly by.

Definitely recommended (as are the othes,) if anyone's got a long flight or train journey ahead of them, any time soon.

21:40 / 25.01.06

Sorry, Loomis. The Thousandfold Thought is the third and final volume in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing Series. Amazing fantasy from a Canadian author with a background in language and history. I highly suggest it if anyone is a fan of Stephen Eriksen or Tolkien. A warning, though, that this is more historical fiction than candy-fantasy, where "rape and pillage" means just that. No elves or dwarves here. The philosophies and sociology as represented by each faction is what makes this series shine.

Foucault's Pendulum is a classic, and I've already seen the other threads on Barbelith on the text. Just moved, and rediscovered my copy in a box so I can start reading it again.

Black Bird has been called Michel Basilières's entry into the realm of the likes of One Hundred Years of Solitude — following a Montréal family during Québec's October Crisis.

Everything else I read focuses on either design theory or occultism.

Whisky Priestess

15:17 / 26.01.06

A mini-resolution this year was to keep track of all the books I read so that I can monitor/improve my habits (less schlock sci-fi, more lit-crit being desirable.)

So, so far I've read: (some also from Dec)
Chickenhawk (memoirs of a Vietnam pilot)
Jarhead (book that inspired the film)
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, which led inevitably to Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years, and Adrian Mole: the Cappuccino Years, all excellent)
Woken Furies (or Woken Furries as certain people refer to it) by Richard Morgan - sci-fi noir space opera
The Aspern Papers*
The Kiss by Angela Carter*
The Unabridged Pocket Book of Lightning by JS Foer
Memoirs of a No Name Actor by Marco Perella

more authors, books and crits when I can remember them and ain't at work (I will edit and add links if I can)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:41 / 26.01.06

Ooh, Chickenhawk was great. Robert Mason's the guy's name, isn't it? Don't, however, be tempted to read his military sci-fi novel "Weapon". I can't remember now WHY it was bad, but it certainly was.

Spyder Todd 2008

16:33 / 26.01.06

I'm (finally) reading The Man in the High Castle, which probably puts me a decade or three behind a lot of people. Also, I just ordered Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer, which I've heard is all about the crazy science-fun. You know, like The Learning Channel used to be.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:14 / 26.01.06

I'm kind of torn between starting Tim Powers' "Last Call", which is apparently ace, and re-reading David Peace's Red Riding Quartet- "Nineteen Seventy Four", "Nineteen Seventy Seven", "Nineteen Eighty" and "Nineteen Eighty Three", which are also calling to me, and which I already know are fucking brilliant, and some of the best crime fiction to be published in the UK in YEARS.

However, tomorrow is payday, so I may give in to temptation and buy the new Ken MacLeod, "Learning The Earth".

10:11 / 30.01.06

"MAUS" again. kinda depressing to read on the way to work at 6 am, but stil so, so good.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:04 / 31.01.06

I've just finished A.N. Wilson's biography of C.S. Lewis which I found to be disappointing, no fault of Wilson's as the most interesting parts of Lewis' life are those for which very little information exists, after returning from the First World War he then entered into a long relationship with the mother of one of his dead comrades which lasted several decades until her death. The exact nature of this relationship was never made clear.

Anyway, I'm on to Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I'm 30 pages in and enjoying it immensely. The emotionally detached narrator is both funny and sad in equal measure, both in what he sees and doesn't.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:18 / 31.01.06

Just started Ken MacLeod's "Learning The World", which he describes (in an Interzone interview) thusly:

"Learning The World began with 'Wouldn't it be interesting if the Victorian positivist historians were right, and peolple became more rational and more liberal as they acquired more knowledge? And wouldn't it be cool to write something as if coming straight from the positivist-influenced British SF or scientific romance tradition of Wells, Stapledon and Clarke, as if the New Wave and cyberpunk had never happened?' That was the abstract idea. The concrete image was of a big vulnerable peaceful colony ship of rational liberal far-future humans slamming into a solar system of aliens who have just entered their version of the twentieth century, and are therefore tooling up for a rumble with somebody".

MacLeod's great, and I think I'll be enjoying this immensely. (If you want to see what he can do with cyberpunk, as well as with Socialism, then read "The Star Fraction". You really won't regret it).

20:21 / 02.02.06

Loomis, I recently went to see a Jeff Wall photography exhibition and there was a photo there based on The Invisible Man -link here if you're interested, the photo made me want to read the book.

I've just finished The Apple In The Dark, by Clarice Lispector, and I am so very glad it is over. I got the book on the recommendation of a friend, who had said the short stories were good and who made an 'eurgh' face when I said I'd got hold of a novel. It was the kind of book where 30 pages could be given over to a character thinking about how their love is like a frog, a green frog, and then they realise they are awake, and then they realise they are alive, and then they realise they are awake and alive and their love is like a green frog and they run outdoors to dance wildly in the inky blackness and bang into a tree that has been in front of the house since their girlhood. The latter sort of activity is presumably what the cover endorsement refers to as 'irony and wild humour'.

Now I am reading The Bostonians, which has so far impressed me by having characters and action. I didn't enjoy the last Henry James I read, so I'm interested to see how this one turns out.

02:28 / 03.02.06

Action in The Bostonians? Don't hold your breath. I read that last summer, because I fell head over heels with Portrait..., and I enjoyed both of them.... The psychology of the characters is amazingly detailed.

07:44 / 03.02.06

Wow. That pic is fucking amazing. I want a living room like that! Worth noting though if you plan to read the book on the basis of that photo, that though the novel begins with him in that room, almost the entirety of the novel is him describing the events that led up to it, so the whole "invisible man" stuff is somewhat tacked on to a story that is brilliant in its own right.

22:31 / 04.02.06

I am currently reading Dhalgren after Stoatie's reccomendations.
(FInished book/chapeter I last night, peeked at last page after reading first sentence fragment and went, "oooo. Circular narrative. Neat." Then resisted urge to open book to random page in middle and start there.)

I just finished Tim Powers' Strange Itineraries - short story collection. Oddly has a story from 1986 that features things called The Scissor Men. Which I think I saw in A Doom Patrol issue somewhere or other.

Also reading Budget Travel through Space and Time, Albert Goldbarth's new book of poetry. I'll just quote the back cover here:
Albert Goldbarth’s trusty travel guide, Budget Travel through Space and Time, is a steal. For only $14.00, you can:

• Observe the nation of Tuvalu sinking into the Pacific!
• Discover Goldbarth’s Law of Physics (“At the moment when the past becomes two futures, / it becomes two pasts.”)!
• Earn 27,000 frequent-flyer miles* by accompanying the Arctic tern in its annual migratory patterns!
• Witness William Herschel, in the late 1770s, construct his famed telescope from horse manure!
• Journey into the Paleolithic and beyond to observe “The Most Ancient Light in Existence”!
• Observe why Goldbarth is “a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart” (Joyce Carol Oates), and ponder how “Goldbarth finds startling and intricate connections where no one else has thought to look” (National Book Critics Circle citation, 2002)!

*Budget restrictions apply.

Stoatie, I cannot urge you to read Last Call strongly enough. Not only is it totally terrifyingly awesome, it's part of a series (?)... it's a shared world inhabited by two other books. Expiration Date (open with boy who just huffed the ghost of Thomas Edison) and Earthquake Weather (Escapees from a Mental institute - features characters from both of the prior 2). Last Call is just the coolest, most grimy and sinister and eerie modern fantasy I've ever read. Plus, there's this special poker game they play in the book which features largely in the plot. Anyway - I've tried it and it turns out even the poker game he made up for a plot device in the book is great.

23:49 / 04.02.06

I just finished Tim Powers' Strange Itineraries - short story collection. Oddly has a story from 1986 that features things called The Scissor Men.

Well, to be fair, Grant Morrison borrowed the Scissorman motif from Heinrich Hoffman's gruesome little book of cautionary tales, Struwwelpeter. In case you were wondering who was stealing from who.

01:09 / 05.02.06

Finished A Maggot. Delightful. See comments here.

Working through dhalgren. Loving it. See comments here.

Started The Ebony Tower by John Fowles. I'm slowly working my way through his entire oeuvre (or at least, what's in print and/or feasible). It's a collection of somehow subtly connected short stories. One of them is a metaphyisal whodunnit. Not sure which story though

03:57 / 05.02.06

I've just finished (re)reading 'The Books Of Magic' by Neil Gaiman - it reminds me of something, but I can't put my finger on exactly what.

Help!

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:56 / 05.02.06

The days when he did good comics?

I've finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and really wasn't prepared for how bleak it would be at the end.

Re-read the latest Rick Veitch Swamp Thing collection over the weekend, just about to start on Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:25 / 05.02.06

Stuck into "Learning The World" now. It's ace. Proper olde-stylee sensawunda SF with a modern socialist conscience. WONDERFUL.

But I just splashed out nineteen quid on Peter F Hamilton's Judas Unchained, and I'm really trying not to let the eagerness to hit that, and find out what happens after Pandora's Star, spoil the MacLeod. Because while Hamilton's lots of fun, MacLeod is a MUCH better writer. And his heart's in a MUCH better place.

10:15 / 06.02.06

I just had a litle retail binge durning my lunch break and boutght 3 books (for the price of 2):

1. "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
2. "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kastove
3. "Beyond Black" by Hilary Mantel

I hope at leats 2 of them will be good...

12:26 / 06.02.06

Well, it's not going to be The Historian. See here, and here.

13:11 / 06.02.06

I am reading from my pile of books that I should have read, rather than buying more, and am currently hugely enjoying A Room with a View, which I had for no real reason been dreading. Those Edwardians clearly scare me. Strangely, I had no idea what it was about (except Florence and eccentric vicars-- I am shocked to have found no croquet), and have avoided reading the blurb, and this leaves it all fresh and fun, although the Florence of 100 years ago is, I suspect, despite the complaints about tourism and Cook and Baedeker, not quite the city and industry that it is today...

16:24 / 06.02.06

Mono, I vote for Kafka on the Shore. So you're 1 and 1.

14:47 / 07.02.06

I KNOW that i'm gonna enjoy that one, as i simply adore h. murakami.

so I decided to start with 'Beyond Black' and it's enjoyable. So far it's mostly about the realtionship between a psychic, her assistant and the psychic's disgusting spirit guide. We'll see how it goes...

15:36 / 07.02.06

right now i have:

1. magical thinking, by augusten burroughs.
2. the curious incident...
3. middlesex by eugenides

i've started the first and the second already. finding both enjoyable. i'm a little disappointed by burroughs' writing, and i sense i may stop reading it straight thru and just pick it up from time to time.

13:04 / 08.02.06

Ooh, in the same vein as Invisible Man I'd recommend Native Son - a verily excellent thing.

I just read The Satanic Verses, which was surprisingly funny in places but otherwise left me a bit cold. I felt as though I was too stupid to understand its profundity and wisdom. Which was annoying.

19:28 / 08.02.06

Thanks to my local Oxfam Books I am working my way through a bunch of old Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout. They're enjoyable little reads, just long enough for me to polish off one in an evening, and through the characters of Wolfe and Archie manage to combine the classic golden age mysteries with the hard-boiled school.

Whisky Priestess

13:42 / 09.02.06

Just finished The Dog Catcher by Alexei Sayle (short stories). Neither he nor his editor appear to know much about punctuation, but it was very good nonetheless. He is a strange man.

Also - Thomas Mann, Collected Stories (for college). Most are great, some (notably the fifty-pager about his bloody dog) belief-beggaringly shit.

Not in the Face

17:36 / 09.02.06

Dickens by Peter Ackroyd. A vast tome of a book that densly interweaves incidents in Dickens' life with counterparts in his novels. Difficult to read because of the constantly shifting ground but has become more interesting since Ackroy's first chapter placing Dickens into a bizarre alter world where several of his characters co-exist together.

17:56 / 15.02.06

I have so many books to read, and so little time.

Right now, I'm mostly reading Psychotic Reactions And The Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs - a compilation of his articles and reviews. Partly for fun, and partly to get inspiration/steal ideas for a music-related article I'm supposed to write.

I've also started on Gangsters by Klas Östergren, despite not having read Gentlemen. I was told it wouldn't matter, so I trust that. It's pretty good so far.

Recently finished Idoru, by William Gibson. Not quite as brilliant as his earlier works such as Neuromancer, but still very very enjoyable. It's interesting to read it in 2006, considering it's written in 1997. Many of the ideas - or memes - Gibson used are becoming reality or influencing society on ways similar to how he predicted. Have to get all my MMORPG-junkie friends to read it.

I should also mention Jimmy Corrigan - The Smartest Kid On Earth, because of Chris Ware's insistence on it being more of a novel than a comic (or at least I percieve it that way). Fantastic, both in form and content. I still feel a little depressed/melancholic from reading it, the feeling lingers.

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