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 >

2010 - What are you reading?

Page: 1(2)3 4 5

Poke it with a stick

09:44 / 19.02.10

Just started and finished China Mieville's The City and the City - a much more conventional story than some of his other works - but imbued with more Kafkaesque than fantastical elements.

With this and Banks' Transition, I'd be inclined to think sci-fi is trying to ingratiate itself into the mainstream, if it wasn't for the fact that both books substitute playing with reality rather than science.

11:59 / 19.02.10

"One", by Conrad Williams. "The Unblemished" was awesomely excellent.

10:35 / 24.02.10

I am halfway through A Storm of Swordsby George R.R. Martin. This is the fourth book in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. I zipped through the first three books (well, as much as you can zip through 3,000+ pages). I read about how disappointing the S of S is, so I was at least prepared.

SPOILERS! I THINK!

By the end of the 3rd book, a LOT of the main characters from the very beginning of the series are now dead. These characters were the backbone of most of the first three books, so by the 4th, Martin is picking out minor characters to make them major ones. And if it's something this series doesn't lack, it's characters. It's confusing, and there's a lot of switching around. S of S has little of the cliffhanger/surprising twist quality of most chapters in previous books. The chapters just end rather limply.

Maybe it'll pick up in the 2nd half. Anyway, I'm not in a rush; Martin won't be finished with the 5th book for a while now. Even longer for it to be printed in paperback (I refuse to buy hardback!). Maybe I'll just read a chapter here and there every now and then.

13:41 / 24.02.10

Just read old Lith' fave Broom of the System.

What I can't figure out iswhy I didn't read it sooner. F-W is so, so very funny. And clever. and, well. Envy would be the default emotion. It's never a 'clever, clever' book, much more like a more humane, accessible Pynchon.

I guess it has a little of 'Lot 49' in all the machiantions and odd family histories, but reaches something of a more comfortable conclusion.

I shan't tackle its older brother before a palate cleanser or two, mind...

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

18:05 / 25.02.10

GogMickGog: thanks for the review. Sounds intriguing. Esp. the Pynchon comparison.

I'm just about done The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami, and I think I'll have to move on to someone else for the next little bit. As much as I've enjoyed reading the 8 or so novels I've gone through, I'm starting to mix one up with the other.

Not sure if that's because he uses similar devices in each one, or because I've read so many of them in quick succession.

I've got a collection of Beckett's short fiction, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that big a paradigm shift.

Chuck Palahniuk posted a list of his top 10 from 2009, and some of them have me intrigued (including China Mieville's the City & the City. He's also got one scheduled for release this year...

17:25 / 07.03.10

I went to the bookstore hoping they'd have some of Richard Yates's short stories because I liked Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade, but all they had were a couple of his lesser novels, one of which, Disturbing the Peace, I am currently reading and which is, I'm afraid, not at all underrated. It is one of those midcentury American novels about psychoanalysis and psychiatry that have aged very badly. Of course, it's Yates, so it's still worth reading.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

21:39 / 12.03.10

finished the Complete Short Prose 1929-1989 by Samuel Beckett.

it was interesting to read the progression in his work from the first tale when he was about 23 years old to the last which he scribbled out just before his death.

i like the curmudgeonly tone to everything.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

22:21 / 16.03.10

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell.

Quite the laugh as a mob hitman-turned-doctor tries to get himself out of a revenge plot, while trying to set things right in his life and occasionally saving a patient if it should work out.

sadly, this is being turned into a film starring Leonardo diCaprio (or so go the rumours).

This is Blazell's first novel. He's also a physician.

03:56 / 17.03.10

He's also a physician

I can't bear people like that. Shouldn't any self-respecting doctor be unloading half the pharmacy into their veins during their time off? The multi-tasking gits.

12:31 / 21.03.10

Some books I've been reading recently:

Reading All About H. Hatterr.
The protagonist meets several "wise men" and is screwed every time. He lets a lion eat a steak off his chest to win the love of a woman, fights a fat guru who's terrified of the dark, smears mustard oil on his junk, and rambles on in a "dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose [that] is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English language".

Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others,
his collection of scifi short stories. So far, they are really fun, even though I don't like the dry science heavy scifi, similar to Lem. There is a story of a mathematician losing faith in math, the building of a babel tower, learning aliens' languages, people become hyperintelligent maniacs thanks to drugs. Fun read!

He got a lot of awards for those eight short stories, it's weird though that that is all there is so far after twenty years.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

20:46 / 22.03.10

Alex's Grandma:
He's also a physician

I can't bear people like that. Shouldn't any self-respecting doctor be unloading half the pharmacy into their veins during their time off? The multi-tasking gits.

he may just be loading his veins - you should read how messed up the story is...

Freakanomics by Levitt and someone.

I'm a bit late in reading this. Who would have thought that economic data analysis could be so interesting? Not I. It's decent, but I don't know how well the material can be projected outside of North America. Most of the material is from the US, and uses US examples (which are often true for Canada, although our cultural makeup is significantly different in many ways).

at any rate, interesting perspective. particularly the take on "conventional wisdom."

Regrettable Juvenilia

17:55 / 25.03.10

There is no data analysis to speak of in Freakonomics, and it long ago became conventional wisdom, to the point where thankfully it has been largely disregarded and the new book by those two chumps has been treated with the scorn it surely deserves.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

13:55 / 29.03.10

I guess I've been attending the wrong conventions.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

19:27 / 29.03.10

Albert Angelo by BS Johnson

One of my favourites. The edition I happen to have is missing one of the most famous characteristics of this novel: the physical holes cut into two of the pages. These were quite the big deal when it was originally published in the 60s... I'm planning on taking an exacto knife to it.

Anyway, entertaining experimental fiction about an architect who is dissatisfied with his role as substitute teacher, and life in general.

the Adventures of English: the biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg.

An interesting synopsis of the development of the English language over the centuries. A bit dry reading, but this may have more to do with myself and the subject matter than the writing style itself.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

If this novel is any indication, Gaiman's talents work better in comics. Interesting story, where gods from numerous traditions, as well as a few new ones, struggle for relevance and continued existence. It certainly has a good deal of wit to it.

21:18 / 29.03.10

I finished Whitley Strieber's The Grays yesterday.

Strieber genuinely believes he once was abducted by the grey aliens and wrote several books about that subject like Communion (1987), Transformation (1988), Breakthrough (1995), The Secret School (1996), Majestic (1989), The Communion Letters (1997) and Confirmation (1998).

The Grays is a novel and it was disappointing. I hoped him being a believer would give this book extra spice but it was conventional and had lots of parallels to Steven Spielberg's science fiction miniseries Taken. Of course Strieber didn't steal from Spielberg probably more the other way around. But it read "been there, done that".

The aliens abduct people to breed a superintelligent human that they could use as a saviour for them and mankind. There is the government conspiracy, the child with superpowers, the UFO nut, the small town with visitations, the military, the alien held in a secret facility.

So if you've seen Taken you can skip this book.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

00:11 / 06.04.10

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

A bit whimsical and escapist for my taste, but at least it was a quick read. Written well enough, I think the subject matter was more interesting than the characters.

Set in a railway circus during the great depression, a veterinarian runs away from the shambles of his life to join the life of the carnival.

I think I prefer Paul Quarrington's Home Game for circus fiction.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

20:35 / 10.04.10

Underground: the Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami

one of Murakami's pieces of non-fiction, it's more a collection of interviews he did with people directly affected by the sarin gas poisoning in the Tokyo subway in March 1995.

I lived in Japan and left about 6 months prior to this event (and the Kobe earthquake in Jan 1995), so this held particular interest for me.

Murakami wanted to give a voice to the everyday people who were affected, as the media had been giving so much attention to the Aum cult that was responsible for the attacks. He succeeds, I think. The people interviewed are varied, and although much of their accounts overlap and bear similarities (like the symptoms of sarin poisoning), there are divergences on details.

And the different personalities really view the whole event distinctly, even where they share opinions, the details are different. It's an interesting read, and Murakami's voice isn't really here, although his sympathies permeate the text nontheless.

14:16 / 15.04.10

Pretty cool, squib...I myself went to Japan for a few months of college during the event. In fact I watched on TV when they busted the leader of the cult...as I recall it happened at the same time as some famous sumo wrestler was marrying an ultra cute (and ultra tiny when compared to him) actress...? The airwaves were blitzed with both of these happenings.

17:44 / 16.04.10

i love that this has become one of the most relatively active threads in the glacial-phase of barbelith. as if the steady pace of the reading fans got in synch with the slowing down of the overall board.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

12:47 / 19.04.10

the God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I've decided to go through the Booker Prize winning books I have not yet read (which is the greater majority of them). I've been meaning to read this one for some time, and finally got to it.

A family drama set in Karela, this story weaves together different time frames, different characters, often introducing something, only to fill in its backstory, and inform the moment. Something about Roy's narrative voice is unique. I don't think I've encountered the playfulness with language in this style before.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

12:53 / 19.04.10

buttergun

it was surreal - a couple of the interviewees noted that they had been thinking how safe Japan was compared to the rest of the world, only to have the Kobe earthquake and sarin attack occur within 2 months of each other.

I was totally hooked on sumo when I was living there. I wonder who it was - Takanohana and Keiko Kono (May 1995) probably. He was the most popular sumo wrestler at the time. He made the young girls swoon.

13:58 / 19.04.10

Squib, you're right on the money -- that is exactly when I was there and both of their names ring a bell. I wonder if they are still married...or if he's still alive. Sumo wrestlers of course have a short lifespan! It was surreal...my very first day there I was in the subway and saw a few people wearing surgical masks. "Holy shit -- is it a sarin attack!" But no; I was unfamiliar with the Japanese custom of wearing a surgical mask (or something else to cover your mouth) when you have a cold -- to keep others from getting it. Pretty smart custom really, but off-putting for a newcomer who's heard nothing about nerve-gas attacks in your city...

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

23:58 / 20.04.10

I suppose I'm not going to read all the Booker winners - I'll pick and choose I suppose.

In the meanwhile, I finished Haruki Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun. Not his strongest work IMO, at least, it's not my favourite. A very short tale, following Hajime's successes, failures, regrets and doubts. Doesn't contain the surrealistic elements of some of his other works. Reminds me of Norwegian Wood in some respects, although the protagonist is an adult.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

17:58 / 26.04.10

Ugly by Constance Briscoe

a captivating tale about the author's abusive upbringing in London through the 60s and 70s. I normally don't read this sort of thing, but something about the prose kept me turning pages. Waiting for justice, poetic or otherwise, perhaps.

11:52 / 28.04.10

I am currently reading Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind (first part of a trilogy).

There is raving praise all over the book by Ursula Le Guin, Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, Tad Williams, Robin Hobb and Jo Walton. Rothfuss gets hailed as the next Tolkien. I am on page184/722 and so far I can't see the appeal.

It's about one guy and he tells his life story which is already a big problem. Over the three books I'll know he'll get out of any serious trouble. And instead of many characters it's just one. The prose is pedestrian. And then there is the hyperbole: He is an excellent bard, a master magician, an expert fighter and an intellectual genius. And that's just until page 184 of the first book!

At least it reads fluently and I hope over the next hundred pages I'll get some of what made all those famous fantasy authors write such praise.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

12:28 / 29.04.10

A Night at the Movies, or You Must Remember This by Robert Coover.

I keep coming back to this short work, and I'm still not entirely sure why. It's a collection of short stories, that are more like chapters in a single work, each of which plays on one or more cinematic conventions. The style is definitely prose (as opposed to screenplay format), but tends towards the description of an image, which evokes the silver screen.

Several pieces, particularly the introduction and the intermission, are juxtapositions of different film genres into one narrative - either sequentially or concurrently.

It is playful, never taking itself too seriously, but there is an underlying undermining of film, and the rigidity that has come to possess it.

23:54 / 03.05.10

Reading The Ebony Tower by John Fowles, well turns out there are actual several stories in the book and that's just the first one. Pretty slight but readable tale of unconsummated love and abstract versus (somewhat) representational art.
The second story in the book is a old Celtic/Breton tale called Eliduc which is included to show how the Fowles' story is informed by its sensibility.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

20:31 / 07.05.10

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

I just re-read this - the first time I read it, I knew absolutely nothing about Indian-Pakistani-Bangladeshi history, so was lost in the whole thing.

This time around, somewhat better informed (but still pretty ignorant), I discovered what a truly amazing story this is. This ranks among my favourites.

The narrator recounts the story of his life (beginning with his grandparents), as it coincides in many respects with the modern history of India, from independence through to then end of the 1970s.

huge in scope, it nevertheless keeps the reader informed as to the significance (but not everything), and covers an awful lot of territory, both personal and national.

a rich story, for certain.

on a side note: India is the 3rd largest market for english-language literature.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

18:59 / 10.05.10

Kockroach by Tyler Knox

I wouldn't have read this pulpy story in its entirety if I wasn't home with the flu and without viable options.

A cockroach awakens in the body of a human - and thus ends the Kafka-allusions. A rather cartoonish story about this cockroach and his immersion into the dirty world of 1950s Time Square.

The characters are cartoonish, the writing uneven, and the themes on the wooden side. It's a first novel, which are either breathtaking works of staggering genius, or rough around the edges.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

17:42 / 14.05.10

Hannibal by Thomas Harris

Harris has only published 4 novels over the course of 20 years or so. I've read the three that include the character of Hannibal Lecter (Red Dragon & Silence of the Lambs are the others).

This one read more like a screenplay than a novel, but nevertheless, it was still a great way to spend my commute time for the past three days. Harris is good at what he does, and he adds plenty of detail that breathes life into the fantastical criminals about whom he writes. I had seen the film, but nevertheless, the book had enough differences (and some major ones at that) to keep it gruesomely entertaining.

any character who is not psychotic is rather bland.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

15:23 / 21.05.10

the City & the City by China Mieville

just read this one recently. It is an interesting tale set in a fictional place located in Europe, somewhere. There are plenty of cultural and historical references, yet Mieville manages to keep it feeling very foreign, despite some of the familiarity.

Framed in a whodunnit, it takes the protagonist through the particular invented culture of the place. The immersion is initially disorienting to the reader (or this reader), but as the story progresses, it congeals into a more coherent narrative.

Excellent piece, although a departure from his earlier works in many respects. Still inventive, if less baroque.

Monster by Jonathan Kellerman

picked this off a friend's bookshelf at random. It's a thriller type. Cop & Psychologist try to find a serial/ritual murderer in LA. Plenty of psychological profiling, but mostly it's the revelation, dismissal and pursuit of evidence. More compelling than I expected (although not done it yet), but still pulpish at its heart.

Kellerman is a psychologist, so his material is OK, but his "newspaper" writing in the story is off. I wouldn't want to read these back to back. Fortunately, I went to the bookstore and picked up something more to my taste.

08:48 / 23.05.10

I am reading Breece D'J Pancake's stories collection. Most of the stories are very depressing. No wonder the author shot himself.

"Most of his stories are set in rural West Virginia and revolve around characters and naturalistic settings, often adapted from his own past."

One of his short stories

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

17:22 / 25.05.10

thanks for the warning... eep.

Just finished Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk.

Quite interesting social commentary on North American culture, as seen from the point of view of an exchange student from a fictitious land. Oh, and he's an undercover subversive agent. The whole narration is in a form of broken English. However, once you get into its rhythm, it's less disruptive.

I was a little disappointed in the ending though, but overall, no complaints.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

17:46 / 26.05.10

the White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

booker prize winner for 2008. Meh. Framed as a letter to the Premier of China, the narrator describes his entrepreneurial spirit in describing his life from humble beginnings in an Indian village.

Not sure what all the fuss is about. It's an OK story, but not something great. I may rethink my opinion of the booker prize if the others I read are of this level of quality.

22:13 / 26.05.10

I picked up Infinite Jest again. Already past page 200 and even okay with the annotations this time!

Page: 1(2)3 4 5