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What are you currently reading?

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09:17 / 21.05.02

I've just re-read the Ender saga by Orson Scott Card and 'Are You Experienced?' by William Sutcliffe. Still love the Ender books...fantastic... the Sutcliffe, however, is far less good, less funny, less appealing, than I recall.

Right now I'm half way through 'All She Wanted', the Brandon Teena story, by Aphrodite Jones, 'true crime' writer. It's appallingly written and appallingly proof-read. Jones states in the introduction that she has changed some details, for reasons of flow and artistic license. However, for verisimilitude, she includes exceptionally repetitive details of mental health and police reports for various people. I really can't stress how bad it is, on and on and on and fucking on with the same information. It's a shite book, worse than I would've expected. Steer clear - if you're interested in the Brandon Teena case, you're better off watching 'Boys Don't Cry', believe me.

09:20 / 21.05.02

Ulysses. Still. I've got through the easy bit, from what I'm told, and am now in chapter 10. If and when I can focus I enjoy it, even if I'm not entirely following what's going on, but if I try to just read little bits on the train my head starts to spin around on my shoulders.

Tryphena Absent

10:36 / 21.05.02

I've just been through my Banana Yoshimoto faze. Now onto Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills. I also read Sputnik Sweetheart by none other than the lovely Murakami. Next will be something else by yet another writer of Japanese origin. Although, it being exam time, I'm kind of hooked on the schoolgirl books which Enid Blyton wrote and the Chalet School series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer (which I was disgusted to find is out of print).

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:19 / 21.05.02

Ulysses, still. Though I've been toying with the idea of other stuff, too - it's starting to drag.

Ephemerat: sounds like you feel the same about the Barnes as I do. Certainly nowhere near as good as FP: certainly not good enough for him to revisit, recently, upon realisation that he has no more ideas to whip out...

Janina: whatever you do, don't ever feel tempted to read The Unconsoled. It's shit on sticks. Boring shit on sticks.

04:59 / 22.05.02

carole maso, anyone? I'm reading Ava. so far so good.

going to start the red tent. Has anyone here read that? Any reactions?

also GK Chesterton, Father Brown stories.

(Oh--I finally finished White Noise. Wonderful. Wonderful. Oh wonderful.)

Am thinking about Blue Angel by Francine Prose, recommended by a friend, but I don't really like Francine Prose, who seems to be acerbic for the sake of acerbicity, a moi.

08:07 / 22.05.02

Rothkoid: Absolutely. I may have been a little bit too belligerant about this book, but really, Barnes has so much capability and intelligence and talent and yet he's either burnt-out or (perhaps more likely) so inflated with pomposity that he can no longer gain a perspective on his work. And the fundamental premise was utterly repugnant.

Another book (and Tezcatlipoca recommendation) completed:

A Child Called 'It' by Dave Pelzer is a ridiculously fast read (just over an hour) with a remarkably brutal impact. An autobiographical description of the horrifying abuse he suffered as a child delivered in measured and laconic tones it gets a little 'God and America and Oprah' at the end but, fuck me, it was nasty. And compelling. And moving. Like watching Romper Stomper or a multiple car pile-up.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:48 / 22.05.02

"Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville (plus Ulysses... though have to admit distraction at this point- though that's Mieville's fault, not mine)...

13:29 / 24.05.02

PKD re-issue, The Simulacra, it's making me want to read his other books.
(How the heck do you italicize?)

18:33 / 24.05.02

Turn To Windward , Iain M. Banks
Reflections In A Golden Eye , Carson McCullers
Thought And Language , Lev Vygotsky
and
Dispatches From The Tenth Circle a collection of articles from The Onion

And at some point I'll get back to my research. No, really I will.

00:20 / 25.05.02

Just finished "Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me" by Martin Millar. Loved it. The book is centred around the author going to see Led Zeppelin in Glasgow when he was 15 in 1972.

Ooooh, must get my hands on this book! I'm a big sucker for RAWK! books - and I know that Zep feeling. This past summer after I read Zep's tour manager's account of his life on the road with the band, I listened to every single album of theirs in succession.

A little obsessive, but hey.

And I have been on a 3 year search for "I'm With the Band: Confessions of A Rock N'Roll Groupie" by Pamela DesBarres. If anyone knows where I can get a cheap copy, let me know.

05:37 / 25.05.02

t - 6 and counting...

Now that school is out for another summer I've had a chance to get to some good stuff:

Recently read Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. It was really good and reminded me of the interplay between Rozencrantz and Guilderstern. Damn, I'm still waiting...

Also, Phil Dick's The Unteleported Man. Really weird. Starts out like his older stuff, ya' know, racey sci-fi, but then gets real heavy later on.

Also, Robert Kroetsch's Seed Catalogue. A good Canadian boy out there!

A long poem about how to grow a poet (and other such matters). I' ve been reading his The Lovely Treachery of Words: Essays Selected and New. Really, really cool stuff that I can sink my diZzying mind into: unity through disunity, no name is my name, etc.

In the middle of Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley. Really, really good fictional account of the myth of the Noah's Arc. Sacrilicious and I am surprised that he hasn't received much flak for its content. Noah is a bastard and Lucifer is along for the ride. One of the main characters is a cat named Mottyl and she rocks!

I've also been re-reading a book on Catastrophe Theory, but I can't remember the name of the author(s).

Last but certainly not least, I recently read Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. Calvino kicks my ass every time I read him, and I think I learn more from him in a couple of his pages than I learn from a whole semester of Logic class!

Peace to all you readers out there!

m3

17:24 / 25.05.02

Golem 100 by Alfred Bester. Sex, housewives conjuring up the Devil, and scifi, all from the chap who gave us the Green Lantern oath.
Batman: Captured by the Engines by Joe R Lansdale. Interesting take on the Dark Knight. Indian shapeshifer lore and a '58 Thunderbird.

16:21 / 27.05.02

Ooooh, must get my hands on this book! I'm a big sucker for RAWK! books - and I know that Zep feeling. This past summer after I read Zep's tour manager's account of his life on the road with the band, I listened to every single album of theirs in succession.

Hey! AND one of the main character's name in the book is Cherry!

06:23 / 28.05.02

Just finished The Final Programme, Moorcock's earliest (but not first) Jerry Cornelius novel. Currently working on The Queen's Conjurer, by Benjamin Wolley, a biography of Dr. John Dee.

The Return Of Rothkoid

14:39 / 28.05.02

Having knocked Ulysses on the head, I'm back with Rafi Zabor's The Bear Comes Home. It's about a bear. That talks. And plays the saxophone. It's fucking superb: I think Zabor's a jazz writer, so there's a lot of - whisper it - love in the passages describing music. Not far in, but it's already quite touching. And it's about a bear. It couldn't possibly become any cooler unless he turns out to be a pirate, you know.

12:11 / 30.05.02

Janina - I cannot BELIEVE that there is someone else on this board who is interested in the Chalet School.

Depending on which ones you are after, I might be able to lend them to you (paperbacks only though, I fear, and all very thoroughly *read*). Or you could try Ebay, which always has a wide selection of paperbacks and the odd hardback for sale - some of the pbs go for silly prices (copy of Chalet School Reunion went for fifty quid the other week) so watch out... and finally, Girls Gone By Press, a small publisher, is reissuing the whole series starting this spring with Bride Leads the Chalet School - full text, facsimile cover pbs at about a tenner each IIRC.

You could also try the Girls' Own mailing list for more info, quite a few of the members flog books on the list (it is pretty high traffic though, be warned...)

06:44 / 01.06.02

Finished The Queen's Conjuror, (thumbs up, for the most part), now working on Destroying the World to Save It, Robert Jay Lifton's study of Aum Shinrikyo and other apocalyptic cults.

The katakana at the bottom there are how you write "Harumageddon", for you Invisibles fans...

07:50 / 02.06.02

kit cat and janina - an ex flatmate of mine was obsessed with the chalet school. in between getting arrested for queer activism, she liked nothing better than reading her chalet school books. i even had a list of em to look out for when i went to markets.

i am currently halfway through phil hine's 'condensed chaos'. an awful lot of it is reiterating stuff i've thought for years, it's already been of immense help and is written in a very un po-faced style. demysticises the whole magick thing....

am still struggling with sybille bedford's biog of aldous huxley. i think a lot of my problem is simple jealousy/class issues - a writer who spends half his life tootling around various parts of europe! but i do want to get through it, so i shall persevere.

23:27 / 02.06.02

Oh, in the midst of all this serious, apocalyptic stuff, I got turned on to a totally hilarious comic: The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius... This is amazing funny stuff, I was laughing out loud.

Barry is the smartest person on the planet, and he's only 10. He was conscious in the womb, and estimates his IQ at 350 and rising. "According to my calculations, at the rate that my intelligence is increasing, I should be clinically insane by the time I'm 21." In the course of the first three issues, he manages to open a rift in the time-space continuum in his basement, turn his best friend into a dinosaur, and foil a gang of art thieves. If you're into comics, check out Barry.

"Why do you persist in doubting me? I built an atom-smasher that fits under my bed, you didn't think I knew how to drive?"

"Show of hands--who else build a wallet sized hydrogen bomb yesterday and bouyed the Eastern European economy by covertly disrupting a secret trade embargo? Right! Just me!!"

23:43 / 02.06.02

Barry Ween is great. It's really too bad I could only find one issue of it.

I'm still stuck reading Ulysses. Now I could stop reading at any time, but I've already read over half the book, so why stop now?

10:23 / 05.06.02

Currently, reading "The Anubis Gate" by Tim Powers. Egyptian Sorcerers and Clowns rampaging through early 1800's London plotting the demise of the Monarchy and the Empire and generally hanging out with Romnatic Poets. Great stuff.

Also about to start reading "The Black Cauldron" by Lloyd Alexander and after that "Tripods" by John Christopher - re-visiting my childhood with those two, but a nice light read will do me some good.

11:40 / 05.06.02

Gould's book of fish, by Richard Flanagan. A convict paints fish and tells a very peculiar tale, writing with whatever comes to hand - his own blood, squid ink, laudanum, shit.... the print is coloured to reflect this and it's just lovely.

14:05 / 05.06.02

Snowcrash. I know, I'm a trashy cheezy cyberpunk head. Still, I think Stephenson is a decent writer. Cryptonomican was fantastic.

14:28 / 05.06.02

Recently finished yet another Philip K. Dick - "We Can Build You". It doesn't seem to often make the list of his best books, but I thought it was bloody brilliant. Only PKD could successfully turn a fairly standard 'can machines be conscious?' concept-SF tale into a lengthy schizophrenic love story combined with a discourse on obsession, clarity Vs. emotion and mental illness.. and a sub-plot involving robots reinacting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in a Seattle nightclub. Once more I am righteously reminded what a genius Philip K Dick was..

Have started on Slow Chocolate Autopsy. Absolutely love it so far - beautifully written, hazing between narrative and prose poetry .. enjoying it lots..

19:00 / 05.06.02

Solitaire Rose - because history is a Good Thing, obviously.

I have just gone through a couple of pop hist books, after Fast Food Nation, as follows:

Mrs Jordan's Profession by Claire Tomalin, biog of famous late Georgian actress Dora Jordan, who had ten illegitimate children with the Duke of Clarence (later William IV); not bad as a light read, and certainly made me very sympathetic towards the subject. Marred by a couple of gratuitous errors which should never have been made and which could have been picked up easily at almost any stage of editing.

Ladies of the Grand Tour by Brian someone or other, study of female travellers in again the late Georgian period, which is much better than I expected - rather more hist than pop. It does suffer rather from minor repetitions (of background information and quotations - I have a feeling some of the research was rather cursory and based on secondary materials), but in general is fascinating on some of the blue-stockings and the more riotous Devonshire circle.

Ariadne always reads the latest books... grrr, jealousy...

The Return Of Rothkoid

19:05 / 05.06.02

SFD: Be interested in seeing what you think of the chaos book when you finish. I've not read it, and I've its companion sitting on the shelf, too - maybe now's the time?

Currently, I'm halfway through Glen David Gould's Carter Beats The Devil, which is fucking BRILLIANT. In a very Kavalier and Clay way - magic and technology and love and... everything. It's not really heavy going, but it's enjoying and satisfying. And features lions and demons, so I'm happy.

18:17 / 06.06.02

You can get a 3-issue collected "Barry Ween 2.0" at Borders on Oxford St. There's only one copy, but I read it today. Brilliant it was.

Boy in a Suitcase

06:48 / 08.06.02

Currently reading:
"Swann's Way" -Proust
Stories of Brion Gysin
"Sons & Lovers" -D.H. Lawrence
"On Becoming a Novelist" -John Gardner

And constantly referencing 777, Modern Magick, Magick Without Tears and Mastering the Tarot as I memorized ceremonial magick attributions

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:28 / 08.06.02

(without having yet finished Mieville's "Perdido Street Station" but having been pushed for time)-
Neil Oram's "The Storm's Howling Through Tiflis"- picked up all three of the "Warp" series (which, so far, seem like a more loved-up Illuminatus- in fact, it was the Fantasy Centre's reference's to RAW that made me buy them- to be specific, the £10 price label for all three books reading "at least as good as Illuminatus"- funny thing being, I first saw volume 2 "Lemmings on the Edge" in the same junk shop I found "The Eye in the Pyramid" in about 17 years ago... went for the Wilson, as it was the beginning, rather than the middle) So far (90 pages or so) it's just as fucked... seems a little insular, though. Although having read the blurbs for pts 2 & 3, I think that may not last long.

12:17 / 09.06.02

Just finished 'King Rat' by China Mieville, doesn't rock as hard as Perdido Street Station but its still a lot of fun. You can definately see the improvement in his writing between the two, King Rat's covers similar territory as Roofworld and Neverwhere. All that hidden London stuff, but with a sugar coating of Jungle music. Can be quite earnest with all the prose about the kicking jungalist choons but I still like it. And has some wonderful writing about London and the...spirit of the city I suppose. Definately going to splash out on 'The Scar' now.

Also reading Mirrorshades, the cyberpunk anthology about 10 years after everyone else. Good so far, now I don't have to put up with all the hype about the cyberpunk movement

.

17:45 / 09.06.02

Re-reading David Gerrolds 'War Against The Chtorr" series. I love those books.

23:38 / 09.06.02

Right now I'm reading Winter's Tale by David Helprin. I'm about halfway through, and it's giving me the necessary hope to face down my future winters in Albany.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

18:03 / 16.06.02

I just started The 6 Messiahs by Mark Frost (who co-created and did most fo the writing on Twin Peaks), a fictional story about Arthur Conan Doyle. The first one of these books was a great read, filled with tons of weirdness and a nice mix of historical fact and just plain oddness.

I tried to jump back into Zelazny's Amber books, but I just have too much going on around me to keep track of all the different realities.

07:24 / 17.06.02

Finishing up The Tipping Point, which is great for the bathroom. I'm starting Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution by Steven Poole with reservations 'cause so far it sucks writing-wise, the July issues of PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, and Computer Games, and with borrowed Lexis access, various articles about games and gaming.

00:52 / 18.06.02

Halfway through The Selfish Gene ...to which may be imputed my stalking around the board like an undead for a while.

::zombie noises::

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