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What are you currently reading?

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Goodness Gracious Meme

21:35 / 13.11.02

Park and Ride - Miranda Sawyer. A surprisingly interesting journey through British Suburbia. I hate her. She describes the most cringey parts of my adolescence so vividly, they seem like yesterday. There's a quote about going out to local nightclubs around the age of 17, 'dressed like your mums, in backless numbers and 'sophisticated' make-up' (I think, drunk and guessing) which reminded me immediately my 18th birthday party at crap suburban nightclub, where for the sake of the 'smart casual' dress code, I wore a full-length formal dress with a vast split, and heels. As I said, I hate her.

It's similarly acute about all sorts of aspects of suburban life and ambition, and as regards the changing face/status of suburbia, and it's relationship to urban centres. A deceptively easy read.

09:48 / 14.11.02

My God, BiP, you're steaming through them at the moment...

Have finished Bleak House. Thank goodness. I'm sure it was good for me (and actually I quite enjoyed it...).

21:32 / 14.11.02

I am trying, once again, to chew my way through a volume of Lovecraft, and it's all Barbelith's fault.

23:22 / 14.11.02

The Pillars of Creation by Terry Goodkind. It doesn't really have anything to do with the main characters of the Sword of Truth series, but it's shaping up to be fairly interesting. I only hope Mr. Goodkind doesn't drag his little rape fetish into this book as he's done in the past couple.

The Age of Chivalry: Part Two by Liliane and Fred Funcken. The second book in a trilogy about the arms and armour of the middle ages and the Renaissance. This particular book discusses castles, siege engines, and the like.

Foust is SO authentic

02:42 / 15.11.02

bengali - You said this book appealed to you as an agnst-ridden teen? Yeah, I don't exactly fall into that catagory. I found it kind of boring.

The growth of the elder children's sexuality was interesting, with a climax (*cough*) I didn't expect. I'm trying to think of anything else I liked, but nothing's coming.

I take it you've read the sequels? Where do they take the story? Do they move to Arkansas to live out their forbiddan love?

17:29 / 15.11.02

Anne Patchett's Bel Canto, half way through and shaping up well.

Would like to recommend it heartily. Ostensibly a story about an inept terrorist kidnap but, given the multilingual group of hostages who are nearly all strangers in a strange land, it speaks more about the power of language, whether more or less a familiar tongue, body language, other visible signals, even musical to unite, divide, clarify and confuse.

Having said that, the proof reader of the edition I'm reading was obviously skipping pages here and there.

19:34 / 15.11.02

Will Self's Dorian. I've just started and it's pretty irritating so far, but I think (hope) it's meant to be. We'll see.

Tryphena Absent

00:42 / 16.11.02

It's a reader... Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality.

Fascinating stuff. Actually I'm reading Kaplan's article (inside the book) 'Is the Gaze Male?' for my dissertation and I'm enjoying it. I'm sure I can bend it to my will. Plus in the intro the editors wrote 'Sex is everywhere. Why add to the tawdry glut?' Heheheheheheh.

05:24 / 16.11.02

Well, I'm about to get on a plane and I need two books - and Dorian's just not going to be one. Partly because I read half of it yesterday and I need something that'll last a bit longer - but mostly because it's just not very good. I can't make out whether Self is trying to exorcise his druggie past or celebrate it - there's a definite tone of nostalgia there. And it's boring.

I'll try to finish it when I get back, though. I'm taking Life of Pi, Yann Martel, and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:10 / 17.11.02

Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Dame Frances Yates. Densely-packed look at how dodgy history dating influenced religion, science and philosophy in the 16th century. Fascinating stuff. Can feel my Brain Power(tm) increasing as I read...

22:44 / 17.11.02

Started Moby Dick. I'm coming to it relatively fresh, knowing only the outline of the basic plot and none of the intricacies of the story or subtext. That said, I have read The Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex (also Wreck of the...), the true story on which Melville based his novel. I'm probably missing the point to an extreme degree, but so far it reads like a paean to tolerance and acceptance. I like.

18:10 / 18.11.02

The Ishmael/Queequeg relationship would be primo slash material, but for the fact that Melville already appears to have set it out as such...

03:52 / 19.11.02

Completed All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson a while ago and was sorely disappointed. Most of the book was up to his usual highly polished standard - stepping into his slick prose-style was as invigorating as ever - but the ending was just awful. Ludicrous technological advances, bad plot fixes, completely unconvincing survival techniques and stuff that is just plain wrong. Gibson isn't known for his tech-savvy but this book doesn't even maintain some sense of internal consistency. Oh Bill, what happened? Did you run out of ideas? Could you simply not be bothered? Were you replaced by a pod-person? Ach, it wounds me...

Iain Banks, on the other hand, is an author who continues to surprise, stimulate and internally pleasure me (mmmm...) - Look to Windward is another cracking Culture novel. Any predictability is more than outweighed by the sense of inevitability that comes with a book that is essentially a meditation on loss. I found it thought-provoking, philosophical and ultimately deeply moving. Yay.

Last up, I just finished Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd - believe the hype. For a goodely Part tis Writ as an Eighteenth Century Accounte of that Wretch Nicholas Dyer and the Blacke Worke of his severn Churches in London, built to Occulte Designe, they thus exhibit the seven Demons - Beydelus, Metucgayn, Adulec, Demeymes, Gadix, Uquizuz and Sol - an everlasting Order which he may run laughing throu. The rest cuts back to modern London where a series of macabre murders are taking place on the grounds of certain (can you guess which?) churches... The characterisation and insight into Dyer, Wren and the rest of the 18th C. cast is bloody superb and the whole thing is dark, brooding, chilling and informative. Loved it.

13:26 / 19.11.02

Re-reading Vurt by Jeff Noon. Suprised by the bare fast style when I remembered it as more prosaic. Still in my top ten books ever. (A good thread suggestion if it isn't kicking around somewhere else.)

A New Kind Of Science by Stephan Wolfram for non-fiction brain exercise. Big and beautiful book, illustrating the power and all encompassing nature of cellular automata. Not for the mathematically disinclined.

14:20 / 19.11.02

Rat: I loved VL. But then again maybe I'm too much of a Gibson fanboy to be critical.. .thought it was nice he was trying to move away from cyberspace to "meatspace". The social background seemed a lot more realistic to me - the first trilogy is really transparent in this regard. Nice to see him engaging with social concerns - the Bridge, the LA Deathstar etc.

I - unsurprisingly - loved the rest of the trilogy as well esp. the nameless Taoist assassin.

And Rothkoid _ I'm a Francis Yates fan as well - see above. have to swap notes at some stage. Nerd snippet #1: the mental space that Hanibal Lecter lives in in the sequel to Silence of the Lambs (can't recall its name) was nicked by Thomas Harris from Yates' the Theatre of Memory.

17:58 / 19.11.02

Errr... "The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq", "Nauigations into Turkie", AND "Mr. Harrie Cavendish, his journey to and from Constantinople, 1589, by Fox, his servant."

...only 2 more weeks and I can read fiction again!!!

23:25 / 19.11.02

Finished Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood." It's Japanese, so it's about death. It's by a writer heavily influenced by American writers, particulalry F. Scott Fitzgerald, so it's also about life and the color green. Great!
Slight detour to re-read some of Thomas Ligotti's creepy stories, then on to Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita." Burlesque novel from the 1920s, about the Devil and his entourage (a giant black cat, among others) turning up in Moscow and ruining the lives of Soviet writers and theater people.

08:48 / 20.11.02

Gearing up to sink my teeth into The Philip K. Dick Reader. Has 24 stories, some of which were made into movies, some which I haven't read before, and many which are from amongst his best. A nice colleciton.

10:54 / 20.11.02

Mr Illmatic: I hope the tone of my post conveyed my (long maintained) enjoyment of Gibson's work: I love the stylistic elements, the social and cultural commentary, the pathos, the immersiveness, the fluidity of language, the street-cred, the insight and the way you almost feel the layer of grime and wear on each piece of ubiquitous technology. I've accepted that he's no good at (or unwilling to learn) either science, mathematics or even plotting but I felt the ending of ATP didn't even work by his own standards. I had been enjoying it, but it seems as if Gibson couldn't be bothered or couldn't even care sufficiently to finish the book with at least something like the care that he'd lavished on the first 80%. It bothers, bewilders and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why would he fuck his own book so badly? Was he running out of steam (it took him a long time to finish this novel)? Did he have contractual obligations? Could he simply no longer bear the sight of it?

It's just such a waste.

Brigade du jour

21:19 / 20.11.02

Paulo Coelho's 'Veronika Decides To Die' - for once (and in spite of the connotations of the title) the guff on the back is true. This is proper uplifting stuff. I'm reading it on the way to work and I'm still managing to be happy and everything.

11:32 / 21.11.02

Mary Gentle's Orthe, a collection of her Carrick V novels. Extremely good on politics and the idea of humans visiting a post holocaust world is fascinating.

Michael Burleigh's The Third Reich, he is interested in the idea of a state founded on an explicit racial mythology and uses it as his theme. Extremely well written. Ex supervisor as well so I had better say that!

And Bill Cole's wonderful biography of John Coltrane. Well worth reading for the impressions of a man who was growing up while going to Trane's gigs in the late 50s and 60s. Extremely strong on the African root of his music.

Old brown-eye is back

15:38 / 21.11.02

Lullaby by Big Chuck P. These noise-oholics. These peace-ophobics.....

09:51 / 22.11.02

Rat: Cheers, I'll bear your comments in mind next time i re-read the triology. From what I remember I liked the ending but then as I said, fanboy...

Currently reading: The Sword of Wisom by Ithell Colquhon, a biography of Golden Dawn co-founder Macgregor Mathers. It's fantastic so far, she's a bit mad but was obviously passionately in love with the whole romantic idea of the GD, and she manages to transmit this really well. A exercise in pre-war magickal nostalgia, with shades of theosophy, the Secret Chiefs and all that stuff.

10:32 / 22.11.02

Naomi Klein, Fences and Windows - her journalism, basically. It's a little repetitive at times, as most collections like this are, but it's still worth reading, I think. Made me very angry again - grrr. Grrr!

Horrible font though.

22:17 / 24.11.02

Counter-Clock World - Philip K. Dick

This was just reissued in the US (along with The Zap Gun and The Man Who Japed, I believe) and it's fantastic so far! It's an unexpected pleasure to find PKD stuff I haven't read; I read the short story ('Your Appointment is Yesterday' or something like that) that's incorporated into this novel and wasn't much impressed, but this novel is well-paced and up there with my favorites.

I haven't read the other two either, so those'll probably be next.

14:58 / 26.11.02

The No Plays of Japan compiled by a bloke named Arthur Waley.
The Films in My Life by Francois Truffaut.

I'm spinning in the washing machine of semester's end and only have the time to read shorts or essays. Truffaut's intelligent yet generous words keep this film student from succumbing to mild retardation. I just happened upon the volume of Japanese drama in the bookstore, and am now adapting Atsumori into a short film.

Highly suggest both books, though I suppose some interest inthe subject matter is prerequisite.

wembley can change in 28 days

05:34 / 28.11.02

bjacques: The Master and Margarita is one of my all-time faves. A cat that plays chess and drinks vodka? Bring it on! I had a particularly nice translation (Diana Burgin and Katherine O'Connor), because they translated all the Russian idioms literally, and then had historical/etymological notes at the back of the book, so it read with a russian voice, but you weren't in the dark.

I just finished Utz by Bruce Chatwin, and am beginning to understand why my best friend has a crush on him. Currently into Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, for the very first time no less. I'm reading them in Finnish, and I'm surprised to find that I'm understanding quite a bit without the dictionary.

The Return Of Rothkoid

06:58 / 01.12.02

After seeing the film, I'm kinda breaking my Yates reading up a little by reading Ira Levin's The Boys From Brazil. About cloned kids, Nazis, diamonds... it's all good, albeit in that "hi! I'm a '70s thriller!" style.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:25 / 01.12.02

Bruce Campbell's "If Chins Could Kill- Confessions of a B-Movie Actor", a lovely signed copy of which was given me as a birthday present by my flatmate, Barry Auckland and Helmschmied, and which is one of the funniest and yet somehow most wholesome books I've ever read.

Naomi Klein's "Fences & Windows"- KCC's right, the font sucks.

And Ramesy Campbell's "The Doll Who Ate His Mother"- I just can't stay away from that cheesy horror shit, and Campbell is one of the few who actually writes it well.

Ephemerat- I loved the last Gibson trilogy, especially "...Parties"- I think it was cos I got the impression he'd stopped reading so much Robert Stone and got seriously into Iain Sinclair (an impression later confirmed by an interview).

And I just bought Antony Beevor's book on the Spanish civil war, which is SO next on my list.

18:13 / 01.12.02

Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang - it's a bit knowing so far, am hoping it will improve. I've just finished Idoru as well - slightly frustrating that some of the ideas weren't really explained properly, especially Rez and Rei's nanotech island thingy, but perhaps that's my fault for skimming (though Gibson's style does make it quite easy to do that). Zona Rosa reminded me of Lord Fanny though.

02:15 / 02.12.02

A Nomad of the Time Streams - Michael Moorcock

After the confusion that was The Cornelius Quartet I was reluctant to buy another Moorcock book (the library has none), but this one looked interesting so, after looking at it in the shop every time I decided to take a chance and am relieved to find it interesting and fun.

03:06 / 02.12.02

KKC: William Gibson always seems to skip explanations of his technology stuff. I remember reading all his early books, and after 3 or 4 you get to realise how everything works...

Gergsnickle: Nomad of the Time Streams rocks!

10:50 / 02.12.02

Finished Lanark and was rather disappointed on the whole. The Glasgow bits were good, but the Unthank bits were weakly imagined, and, well, tedious. Will prob. give Gray another chance at some point though.

How the Dead Live by Will Self was quite irritating, though an easy enough read. He's clearly intelligent and capable with words, but I just don't like that cheeky-chappy-here's-another-pun style one bit. But that's prob. more a taste thing.

Much more to my taste was the excellent How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman, read on the advice of Ariadne, and which I thoroughly loved. It sinks the reader into the consciousness of the protagonist, repetitive and hypnotic. The story itself should be depressing, but it made me laugh so many times with its dark humour inseparable from the hapless adventures of Sammy. And reading it in Glasgow made it even better, though I now think Glaswegian, which may or may not be a good thing, I couldnay be sure. I couldnay. Ye cunt.

Now reading Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley, which Rothkoid brought to my attention years ago, and I finally got around to picking up. Its protagonist is Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, the fictional character about whom Ezra Pound (my fave poet) wrote a poetic sequence in 1920, and there are a lot of parallels with Pound's life, principally his role as an apologist for the Fascists. Good stuff.

13:57 / 02.12.02

Currently reading Gertrude by Hermann Hesse. I love his takes on creative people, and he writes so cleanly.

The Apple-Picker

15:19 / 02.12.02

Robert Frost: Poetry and Prose, which is super because it has essays and letters and interviews. Now I *own* the essay on the figure a poem makes. Excellent. But the childhood letters are great, too:

love / Dont show this.
Dear Sabe; I enjoyed reading your letter very much. You need not excuse yourself about writing for mine is as bad. Those nuts I gave you were not as good as I expected but I am glad you liked them. As usual I cant think of much to write. I wish you were at the supper last night but we did not have much fun because there were not enough there. I suppose Eva hasnt gotten back yet. Are you going to the Hall to-morrow night. I must stop now and remember and write soon.

From your loving Rob

Awesome.

I'm also reading Prodigal Summer and Daniel Deronda and To Read a Poem.

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