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 >

Recently Read

Page: 1 2(3)4

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:43 / 01.08.01

...no, not so definite. I'm a bit vague on the plot details at the moment - it's been a couple of years since I read it - but I distinctly recall that incest narrative aside (!) the book seemed quite... distressing. Everything was a bit skew-whiff. Which was, in a way, more memorable than the tale...

12:22 / 01.08.01

It's a while since I read it, too, and I think I must have lent my copy to someone. But as I remember, many of the 'eucalypt' tales told to the daughter (lawdy, what was her name?) by the stranger about love and male-female relationships are sad or have a tragic or ironic twist. Then, after the incremental eroticism of their own relationship, there's her wasting illness when her father decrees that she must marry Mr. Cave, while the stranger, who has also (unbeknown to us) effectively named all the eucalypts, appears to have abandoned her. It's the interpolated tales and heavy but haunting fairytale quality of the whole which are unsettling, I think.

ynh

17:28 / 01.08.01

quote:Originally posted by gentleman loser:
3. "All Tommorow's Parties" by William Gibson

This was a huge disappointment. Like all of Gibson's work, it has interesting prose and flows along nicely. The down side is that he is still using the same stock characters, settings and situations that he's been using since Count Zero. Hey Bill, it's time to come up with something a little less formulaic. I also hate how Gibson seems to be leading you along to an interesting climax, but then he whiffs the ending like coitus interruptus. I think I'll skip his next book.

Rats. We've lost one of the faithful. I'll admit it was a good while ago when I read this, and that I'm a drooling Gibson gearhead. His prose appeared to have reached the Mondo2k dream of slick and shiny. He revisited the same characters because it was the 3rd book in a trilogy, but that's not really what you're talking about. I suppose I thought the watches bit was cool 'cause he divulged in an interview his eBay addiction and watch collection. The end seemed to flow from the book, to sit there with some inevitability and kind of make you think about identity and humanness... Oh well.

09:23 / 04.08.01

quote:Originally posted by Simon Friedberg:
Also picked up Theodore Sturgeon's 'The Joyous Invasions' in a second-hand shop - wow!

I picked up some second-hand Sturgeon a while back, & I loved it.

Just read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee By Dee Brown - an Indian History of the American West (as it says on the cover). Really stunning book.

[ 04-08-2001: Message edited by: guyz ]

19:44 / 05.08.01

Bwah. No shit. I was just about to say "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". A bit depressing, but very very informative and well written.

The other book I just finished was "Foucalt's Pendulum", by Umberto Ecco, and all I have to say about that one is:

Moo hoo ha ha ha ha.

Highly reccomended to anyone who's into the occult or secret societies or any of that shit brought up in the Invisibles, as sort of the mirror image perspective. Also a lot to say about the boundaries between fiction and reality.

09:04 / 06.08.01

Ra, Foucault's Pendulum. Storming book.

Have just read The Dumas Club, which was adapted by some fool into The Ninth Gate, which was a truly apalling movie. The book's really good tho.

Am still half-way thu Primo Levi's The Search for Roots, an anthology of literature that influenced him, and The Origins of Satan, which is fairly self-explanatory. Kind of re-reading V. as well.

Disco is My Class War

09:04 / 06.08.01

Anybody ever get into Thomas Pynchon? Vineland, perhaps? i'm in the middle of it and am kind of obsessed by it and although this is to a large extent the result of having been suggested it by someone with the spunkiest feral mullet you ever did see (and a very astute little theorybitch mind as well), I think it's a worth a chat.

14:06 / 06.08.01

I'm big into Pynchon but I haven't read Vineland yet because I've heard mixed things about it. It took me about six weeks to read Gravity's Rainbow... and it was astounding.

Anyone interested should read The Crying of Lot 49 as a good introduction to him...

20:36 / 06.08.01

Trilobite! by Richard Fortey - I was revisiting my early enthusiasm for all things palaeontological. This book made me want to buy geological maps and walk around the Rhineland with them (though it contains far more information about trilobites than you'll ever need, unless your local pub quizmaster is a real git).

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon - I'd like to second Rothkoid's nomination as this is a real thumping good read - though I felt it petered out rather, and would have liked to have seen more delving into the Sammy character.

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess - harder going than Chabon but well worth the trouble, and very funny to boot.

Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones - not quite up to the standard of The Dark Lord of Derkholm - I thought it rather episodic - but I can forgive DWJ a great deal...

Invisible Forms by Kevin Jackson - highly entertaining book on paratexts.

The Return Of Rothkoid

06:39 / 07.08.01

This morning, I finally finished slogging through Frances Yates' The Art Of Memory, which is an illuminating study of memory systems from Simonides to Leibniz - but is, as expected, quite scholarly and dry in places. Lots of references to sigillorum and the role of memory systems in various aspects of life, including some pretty interesting stuff on the role people like John Dee and Giordano Bruno conceiveably had on the design and development on Shakespeare and the Globe. Good reading, but sometimes a little like eating sawdust.

So, for a change of pace, I'm reading Mo Yan's The Republic of Wine. Alcoholism and babyeating. As you do.

12:32 / 07.08.01

I personally love Francis Yates. She (was?) a reader a the Warburg Institute, which pretty much means that she got paid to wander around Europe and look up stuff she's interested in some of the best libraries in the world. It's scholarly work, and designed as such. 'The Art of Memory' is probably her best. Beware of her work on Bruno and Llull, though. It's a good way to get started on those topics, but definitely do not stop there. I think she missed the boat there. Still, great, if scholarly work.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:46 / 07.08.01

Yates is indeed deceased. There's a bio of her here.

12:56 / 07.08.01

I recently finished The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology by Marcel Detienne. It was informative in terms of how the certain herbs & spices (Myrrh, lettuce mint, fennel) related to the cult of Adonis, but the author's blatant refusal to discuss the theologies of the Near Eastern countries surrounding Greece, and limiting his discourse strictly to how Adonis was worshipped in Athens, was extremely dissappointing. There was also a deep strain of misogyny running through the text wihich made for difficult reading.

Also finished W.B. Yeats: Twentieth Century Magus by Susan Johnston Graf. It was a quick, fascinating read that looks at Yeats' work from a spiritual perspective, analyzing the key symbols and recurring imagery in his work and showing how his writing was a vital part of his magickal practice.

Two works were discussed at length in Graf's book: Rosa Alchemica and Per Amica Silentia Lunae, both of which I found this weekend in an anthology of Yeats' mythological works.

So I'll be starting on those this week.

14:04 / 09.08.01

Just finishing the last of Roger Zelazny's 'Amber' series (for the umpteenth time!), which was preceeded by the new Jon Courtney-Grimwood novel 'Arabesk' - which, to be honest, I didn't find as good as RedRobe or Remixe...less 'cyberpunky' this time....

Ellis

19:50 / 09.08.01

I just finished "A Happy Death" by Camus which is a story about whether or not you can die a happy death.

The main character is called Mersault (similar to The Outsider) and he kills a cripple for his money and then uses it to explore two kinds of life, the aesthetic and the communal.

The book is clumsy and boring, the characters aren't passionate or interesting, the narrative is dull despite being filled with so many descriptions it reads at times like a travel journal. I found it a struggle to get to the end of.

Plus it has lots of notes and varients at the end, which I hate. That and the fact that the book was published after the authors death which means he probably had no intention of releasing it himself (or else he would have) so... i dunno, it seems a little like theft to me.

deletia

00:11 / 10.08.01

I think A Happy Death was the prototypical novel which mutated into L'Etranger. I'm pretty sure he never intended to publish it. I found it interesting as a WIP but poor as a novel.

Whisky Priestess

10:34 / 10.08.01

The Reluctant Vampire by Eric Morecambe. Haven't started it yet but the cover's great and it's aimed at 8-12 year-olds so it shouldn't bog me down in too much theory.

Tragically I probably won't get the leisure to read another book this side of September thanks to spending all hours on The Play. But recommendations are gratefully received

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:26 / 13.08.01

Just finished Mo Yan's The Republic of Wine. Weird, weird book that lapses into Ulysses-stylee narration, but is aware of it. There's a number of stories interweaved, involving baby-eating, getting horrendously drunk, political power-struggles, history, donkey cock and writing. Confusing, but really, really appealing- it's worth a look. Provided you're not put off by tales of people selling their kids into gastronomy, that is.

21:36 / 13.08.01

quote:Originally posted by Whisky Priestess:
The Reluctant Vampire by Eric Morecambe. Haven't started it yet but the cover's great and it's aimed at 8-12 year-olds so it shouldn't bog me down in too much theory.

I think I've got the sequel to that somewhere... haven't read the first one though.....

10:50 / 21.08.01

Stet by Diana Athill
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd
Turtle Diaryby Russell Hoban
The Footnote by Anthony Grafton
The Pig: a British History by Julian Wiseman.
There may have been something else, but I can't remember...

I have a weblog for this sort of thing, but the fucking thing won't publish.

[ 21-08-2001: Message edited by: Macavity ]

The Return Of Rothkoid

10:56 / 21.08.01

You might want to check. It just has.

I finished Peter Ackroyd's The House Of Doctor Dee, which was rather enjoyable. More fucked-up than Hawksmoor, with a bigger leaning towards the spookiness of places. Well worth perusing. Currently (shall be finished in a few days, I think), I'm reading Peter Biskind's Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, which is naught but Hollywood bitchery.

And it's fabulous.

13:15 / 21.08.01

quote:Originally posted by Macavity:

Turtle Diaryby Russell Hoban
How is that?
I just finished Riddley Walker last night and was really thrilled with it.
post-apocalyptic Iron Age puppet show religion. Nice.

Goodness Gracious Meme

14:01 / 21.08.01

wacky, read Turtle diary last week, what did you think, Mac?

went to the library seeking fluff and sweetness, but couldn't find any of the stuff i was looking for, so am partway through this lot instead:

Dennis Cooper - Guide First one of his i've read and don't know very much about him, though people have telling me to read him for a while. can see why now
George Bataille - Blue of Noon
Stephen Bayley - Labour Camp, which thus far is entertainly bitchy without saying anything new
Michel Houllebeq (?) - Whatever
Ray Davies - X ray
Eve Kososfsky Sedgwick - epistemology of the closet, read a few years ago but can barely remember a word of it, attempting a refresher

*looks at list* cheery bugger, ain't I?

[ 22-08-2001: Message edited by: Lick my plums, bitch. ]

21:53 / 21.08.01

Oh, I love Russell Hoban anyway... especially The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (or is it the other way round?). I liked Turtle Diary a lot - though the connexions between William and Naeara in terms of the writing of their diaries (that's not clear - I mean the bits where they both talk about the Yonghy Bonghy Bo, &c) are made a little too obvious. But I really like the style - quite tight and dry and formal but not arid - and I like the way the characters relate to the turtle project, and the way that not everything is sorted out at the end... All the stuff about being caged and set free is lightly handled, where it could have been really over-egged. What did you think, Plums?

...not expressing myself very well today (I went to a recruitment consultants this morning and was told that they think I should work in PR, yikes), but you know what I mean...

21:53 / 31.08.01

Just finished Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey as previously mentioned by Rothkoid and co. What can I say except urgh and agh and wow! Quite simply one of the the most moving and exquisitely written novels I have had the pleasure to read. Complex and perfectly realised characters interact with a deft lightness of touch that is left a little breathless with awe - Peter Carey is one talented mo-fo. Thanks to all who recommended it.

13:30 / 01.09.01

This summer I discovered John Dunning, reading first his 2 novels about a rare book collector. The 2nd in the series was terrific. The titles? Well, I know one was Bookman's Wake, but darned if I can remember the title of the other.

Then, in a different vein by the same author, I read Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime, a mystery novel about the world of radio in 1942 in the U.S. It amazed me w/ its evocation of the U.S. at the beginning of its participation in WWII. The mystery is great, too.

Not recently read, but worth reading, Carole O'Connell's The Judas Child--indescribable--& Stone Angel. The latter is one of the Mallory books, but can stand alone as a great novel. However, it's more understandable if you've read the Mallory detective series.

[ 01-09-2001: Message edited by: Busigoth ]

14:59 / 01.09.01

Well I've just picked up the Amber Spyglass by Phillp Pullman in paperback and wow..
What a wonderful book, packed full of ideas and one that doesn't put kids in a box and actually credits them with some intelligence.
The two main characters are much more..well real than mr potter and friends.
And that to a lovely orginal fantasy world its set in, based in part on Paradise Lost.
A great series of books this lot.

08:56 / 03.09.01

Just finished: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls which was very good, quite seductively written - though the constant style of at the end of each paragraph jumping _elsewhere_, and then cutting back to a character mentioned earlier, a bit irritating - whilst it's trying to point out that all this stuff was going on at the same time, it got very formulaic. But that was my only criticism. Very good.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - also very good. Possibly a bit indulgent, but at least it's an interesting, well written story Eggars tells - and it's far better than much fiction I've read. I liked it, anyhow, though YMMV. I don't do self-indulgent americans, but this was quite good. So that's saying something.

Now reading General Knowledge by Stephen Bayley - a book on design. It's excellent: lots of articles he's written over the years on Design and Test, all sorts of different angles for different mags... and all written by someone who really cares about it. Strongly recommended - I found it for a fiver in a remainder shop. Hugely worth it.

I think I'd better start Tom Jones now.

08:56 / 03.09.01

This is the Never Ending thread, isn't it?

I've just had a highly Invisible month, having read;

Robert Anton Wilson - Masks of The Illuminati
His best novel by a long way, methinks. Absolutely essential for anyone planning to delve into the worlds of magick/ symbolism/ ancient wisdom. Full of fun facts and clever tricks, though the Scooby-Doo on acid ending is slightly lame.

Philip K. Dick - Radio Free Albemuth
Again, possibly his best novel, and in this case that's really saying something. If I was to start a religious cult based on a book, I think I'd choose this one. Read and Learn.

Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception
Fascinating stuff, as you're probably aware.
Presents a very nice way of looking at the universe, and one in which reality is the be-all and end-all and the reward in itself, which makes a nice contrast to the two aforementioned books in which reality is alternately hated and denied altogehter.
Taught me a thing or two about the subtleties of classical art, too.

17:17 / 06.09.01

The last three books I read were Terry Pratchett's two newest, Thief of Time and Truth (Well, they're the newest ones over here - you lucky British bastards have probably got five more by now), and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

All three highly recommended. Pratchett seems to get even better with every successive book, and American Gods is fantastic, especially if you're into mythology at all.

[ 06-09-2001: Message edited by: RiffRaff ]

The Return Of Rothkoid

08:08 / 10.09.01

I just fininished The Illuminatus! Trilogy. I should've read it about ten years ago; maybe then I wouldn't have had the urge to throw the fucker out the window. Not quite worthy of the praise heaped upon it, I feel. But maybe that's the point.

Paleface: notice Pauline Kael died last week?

10:39 / 10.09.01

Pauline Kael died?

How the fuck did I miss that?

Better trawl through the obituaries...

10:40 / 10.09.01

Of the books I've read recently, there are two that I would highly recommend -

'Chocolate Lizards' - Cole Thompson
which is an extremely funny book, with masterful characterizations and dialogue, set in the world of Texan oil-rigging...a potential film, I think...

'The Collector Collector' - Tibor Fischer
about an ancient self-morphing ceramic item with a soul...and a lot of stories to tell.

Read 'em, now.

12:46 / 10.09.01

Um, I haven't read that much lately becasue I've been reading for research rather than plain pleasure (though reading for research does have its own pleasures).

Hawksmoor by Kerry Downes - this is the World of Art one and is a good outline, though less than earth-shatteringly exciting.
Lud Heat by Iain Sinclair - which I think would be more impressive on a second reading (though I was sufficiently impressed to drop my copy in the bath).
Consuming Passions by Philippa Pullar - this is a history of food and appetite which concentrates largely on England and is really quite readable and contains lots of interesting snippets with which I shall be boring people in the future (fill your diaries now).

No star here laces

13:15 / 10.09.01

The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens. I really enjoyed this - Henry Kissinger is this shadowy figure who I never really knew much about (a bit before my time really) and this was a fascinating insight into just how much good old fashioned politicians fuck things up for people. What a cunt he was (is). It's an entertaining bit of history and a damning indictment of American foreign policy rolled into one. Recommended.

A history maker by Alasdair Gray.
I re-read this a couple of weeks back. Gray is one of my favourite authors and this is his least typical but most optimistic work. It's just a beautifully crafted little novel with Gray's trademark illustrations throughout, quite easy to follow and with some interesting and witty societal observations woven into the story. I'd definitely recommend this book as a good way to get into Gray, who is up there with Pynchon (better, in my opinion, and a scotsman to boot). Get this first, then tackle 'Lanark'.

Patrick O'Brien books
Kind of a laugh actually. Especially all the stuff about Captain Aubrey being worried about his bosun's pederastical tendencies.

The Sopranos - Alan Warner.
Very good, despite being written by Irvine Welsh's mate. 'S about a choir of catholic schoolgirls going down to Edinburgh for a choral competition and going mental on the town. I really enjoyed it for the sharp dialogue and good observation of how teenagers really act up until the tackily moralistic last few chapters which make cheap use of emergent homosexuality and terminal diseases. One to take on holiday.

Page: 1 2(3)4