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March 28, 2024, 01:41:49 PM

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What are you reading?

Started by Talulah, really!, October 04, 2017, 10:07:22 PM

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buttgammon

Most of the way through Jeffrey Eugenides's short story collection Fresh Complaint, which has been a real mixed bag. There are some very good stories here but also some absolute crap - I was left quite confused by a bad one about two American backpackers who go to Ireland and end up staying with these two recently separated men who clearly want to have sex with them. It struck me as an attempt to do an optimistic inversion of Joycean paralysis but it was very badly executed.

Before that I read Noémi Lefebvre's interesting but ultimately frustrating Blue Self-Portrait, a very short book which begins to develop an interesting voice for its protagonist but splutters along and doesn't let it develop into anything, so it becomes annoying repetitive.

Fr.Bigley

A list of ingredients on the pantene bottle. Can't reach for my Jeffery archer as I'm having a shit you see.

Captain Crunch

I finally got round to reading the Beastie Boys Book and really enjoyed it.  I would have given it about 5 or 6 out of 10, maybe not quite encyclopaedic enough for the spods and not anecdotey enough for the casuals (me).  I looked on amazon to see if that was the case and ch-check it out!



And you know those one star reviews are all 'mine was late' or 'mine was damaged'.  I don't think I've ever seen reviews that positive for anything.   

Book highlight for me was when
Spoiler alert
one of them rode over a pot hole and broke his collarbone, would have liked more stories like that. 
[close]


the midnight watch baboon

I AM 5/8 the way through Wild Dog, by the Frenchman and author Serge Joncour.

WW1 is breaking out across France. In a quiet mountain village, a German circusmaster turns up with eight big cats: lions and tigers. He takes residence in a mysterious house atop a hill in the middle of the nowheres. The village folk are wary of this foreigner and his deadly menagerie, who roar horribly into the night.

All the men are sent to war. The wimmin are left in charge.

Laterwhile, In 2017, a childless Parisian couple go on a three week holiday to a mysterious house atop a hill in the middle of the nowheres. They find a huge cage, big enough to have once held any number of lions and tigers. Say...8? The village folk are wary of these city dwellers, especially the bloke who's really sulky about the lack of phone signal.

Hundreds of pairs of animal eyes surround the house at night. A huge wild dog is friendly and fierce, in equal dollops. The men is sent to the shops. The wimman stays, does yoga.

It's good stuff. A bit overwritten at times, could be shorter. Reminds me of The Black Spider, by Jeremiah Whatsisdoflip or someone.




amputeeporn

Robert Evans - The Kid Stays in the Picture

I love these kinds of usually writer-or-producer-penned Hollywood tell alls, with favourites being Adventures in the Screentrade and Final Cut (the book about the making, and cataclysmic fall-out of Heaven's Gate, which I found stunning).

Anyway, onto this - it's heaps of fun. I mean, the guy obviously had some kind of insane natural charisma when he wasn't in front of the camera, given that he was gifted starring roles in three A pictures by people who just saw him walking around, each with no idea that he was trying unsuccessfully to make it as an actor. He acknowledges himself that he probably never had it in him to be one of the greats but his encounters with Cagney, Errol Flynn, etc are a treat.

Not got to the part where he pivots to become the producer of films like Chinatown, Godfather and Rosemary's Baby, but I'm sure it will be entertaining.

One thing that's really making me laugh is that the foreword, written by a friend, hints at an ego-less, dedicated man, then you turn the page and literally every single chapter is about 'getting pussy'. He literally cannot resist name-dropping every star who ever looked his way. It makes him come across as a bit of a try-hard, but I must admit it's heaps of fun to read. I'd suggest that if it sounds like your kind of thing it probably will be.

Blinder Data

Just finished Zoe Heller's Everything You Know, her of Notes on a Scandal fame. It was quite fun to read but the main character was a real selfish jerk and overall it felt a bit lightweight. I also think I need to move on from serious literary novels because in so many of them the strong influence of the author's life and background means I can't truly get into the story. The main character was a British Jewish male writer who'd moved to the US a while ago. Looking up Heller's bio, she's a British Jewish woman who moved to the US a while ago. How about you write about everything you don't know, Zoe, huh?

The book also has a totally misrepresented cover. It's a story about a sex-obsessed selfish middle-aged man estranged from his family due to a tragic incident, but this makes it look like chick-lit!



Now on John Bew's Citizen Clem, a very well-reviewed biography of Attlee. However, the author became an adviser to Boris Johnson will colour my reading.

Artie Fufkin

I finished Chris Petit's Butchers Of Berlin over the weekend. It was ok. Not a great deal happened until the last quarter. There's 2 other books in the series, apparently. Doubt I'll bother with them. May as well read a Bernie Gunther novel.
I'm now reading Jason Arnopp's Ghoster, which has started really well. I loved his last book, The Last Days Of Jack Sparks.

buttgammon

Putting this in the correct thread:

Quote from: buttgammon on May 27, 2020, 03:10:45 PM
Currently reading The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell. I first read it four years ago and found it wasn't as good as Troubles or The Singapore Grip. It's a bit of a slow-burner, but I'm now in the middle, where the eponymous siege is in full swing and really enjoying it. Like most of his writing, it's a scathing satire about British imperialism; in this case, the materialism, prejudice and sheer complacency of British officials in some Indian backwater gets shot to pieces in a way that's often brutal but also really funny.

Troubles is his best novel, though - it's something I'm constantly recommending to people, not least because it's hilarious.

Apparently, they're adapting The Singapore Grip into an ITV drama, which sounds like a bad idea.

Artie Fufkin

Just started Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.
Not what I was expecting, tbh.
Good though.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

The Witcher books. I'm up to Sword of Destiny now, which is the second one. Erm, do they get any better? There's far too much waffle about politics, the nature of things and destiny (the Law of Surprise thing can fuck right off), and not enough action. Also, Geralt does a lot of pirouetting. Every few pages he's there, pirouetting. I think the games were better in certain aspects, because they cut down on a lot of the waffle that nobody gives a shit about.

phosphoresce

One of those lovely French dual language books by Dover on French literature. I opted for the collection of French short stories and poetry, in the hope that it would be a relatively painless way in. It's certainly not painless! But, still, they're lovely editions and translations. I've struggled through the Baudelaire poems and a short story by Maupassant, so far.

The Jean de La Fontaine Selected Fables is a much less painful one, assuming that you are learning in other ways alongside it. They're all just about two pages long - in simple verse - but with lots of new vocabulary and an interesting moral in each. The Charles Perrault Complete Fairy Tales in Verse and Prose is a small step up with its slightly longer tales. Similarly, my favourite of the German Dover Books was the Grimm Selected Folktales. I struggled with the ones you mentioned.

Twit 2

Teatro Grottesco by Ligotti. Top notch.

bgmnts

The Gwent Book of Villages by The Women's Institute.

samadriel

"Rise and Fall of the 80s Toon Empire" by Jason Waguespack; thanks SavageHedgehog for mentioning it in the kids TV thread. I find VHS sales figures a little dull, but apart from that segment, I've been enjoying the building up of context for all the nonsense I watched in the afternoons as a kid. I was born in '82, so things like GI Joe and Transformers ('84) seemed like they'd always been around; I feel a bit enriched by learning the order these things came out, seeing which shows influenced each other and so on.

Captain Crunch

I read Days Between Stations by Steve Erickson (1985).  One of those books where you spend the first half thinking 'this is brilliant' and the second half just willing it to end. 

phosphoresce

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on June 15, 2020, 01:12:56 AM
The Jean de La Fontaine Selected Fables is a much less painful one, assuming that you are learning in other ways alongside it. They're all just about two pages long - in simple verse - but with lots of new vocabulary and an interesting moral in each. The Charles Perrault Complete Fairy Tales in Verse and Prose is a small step up with its slightly longer tales. Similarly, my favourite of the German Dover Books was the Grimm Selected Folktales. I struggled with the ones you mentioned.

I'm having difficulty finding copies of the Fontaine collection, but I'll have a good trawl through abebooks. They sound more like the reading level I'm at. I am learning in other ways, I'm working through a textbook to grasp the fundamental grammar, tenses, pronouns, and so on. That, and plenty of the app with la chouette verte.

I'm glad I'm not alone finding the short story collection quite a battle. I'm reading through Andre Gide's retelling of the prodigal son story, which actually isn't too bad going.

poloniusmonk

Quote from: Captain Crunch on June 16, 2020, 09:49:01 PM
I read Days Between Stations by Steve Erickson (1985).  One of those books where you spend the first half thinking 'this is brilliant' and the second half just willing it to end.

I know what you mean on that particular Erickson - I think it's probably his weakest. Thoroughly recommend Tours of the Black Clock, The Sea Came in at Midnight and the most recent Shadowbahn, though.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on June 02, 2020, 01:18:30 PM
Just started Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.
Not what I was expecting, tbh.
Good though.
Finished this last night.
So good. So well written.
Left me feeling wretched.

amputeeporn

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on June 17, 2020, 09:47:09 AM
Finished this last night.
So good. So well written.
Left me feeling wretched.

Stayed away from Ish for years imagining him to be quite middle class and boring, but phwoar Remains of the Day is heart hurtingly sad and beautiful, and Artist of the Floating World, which was recommended to me by someone in the wake of Brexit, is moving and perceptive and revealing in its handling of younger generations responding to older generations' problematic views. I really enjoyed Never Let Me Go, but curiously don't remember that much about it now. Never fancied his most recent but wonder if I should fill in some of the gaps i've got in his bibliography.

amputeeporn

Quote from: Captain Crunch on June 16, 2020, 09:49:01 PM
I read Days Between Stations by Steve Erickson (1985).  One of those books where you spend the first half thinking 'this is brilliant' and the second half just willing it to end.

Literally word for word my response to his novel Zeroville. I'm a huge mark for books about the new Hollywood, and so one featuring a weirdly tattooed loner moving amongst the auteurs in 70s LA was like catnip to me. The set up was intriguing but it just vanished up its own arse and fell apart and spluttered dead. A shame.

I recall the title of DBS as I was so taken with the opening chapters of Zeroville I almost considered ordering another of his books to have ready for afterwards, but by the time I'd finished I didn't have the will.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: amputeeporn on June 23, 2020, 08:52:53 PM
Never fancied his most recent but wonder if I should fill in some of the gaps i've got in his bibliography.
I loved his The Unconsoled, his first that I read. Completely bonkers!

"Meditation XVII" from John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

QuoteNUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT, MORIERIS.

Now this bell tolling softly for another,
says to me, Thou must die.


PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him.  And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.  The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest.  If we understand aright the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.  The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.  Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises?  But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings?  But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island,  entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;  any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors.  Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.  No man hath afflicion enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.  If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels.  Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.  Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

Vahni Capildeo chose part of this meditation as one of her slow readings of poems and short texts including some readings of her own poems and this made me look up the whole meditation. There are parts of it I don't understand perfectly but I like the element of mystery. The two sayings which come from it seem to have different meanings in the meditation. We usually mean nobody is self-sufficient when saying 'no man is an island' but in the meditation the emphasis falls on a feeling of participation in other people's lives and deaths through social and spiritual relations of sympathetic responsibility. In other words, the saying is an instruction for people who have cut themselves off from others, whereas the meditation describes ethical ties to others which we can't escape. In the second case, although the meditation does refer to a death toll in its use of the phrase, it also describes responsibilities to respond to the bells tolling for the callings in life that are not marked as our own. Clod is a nice word to include as the thing breaking off the island. Ingraffed too. And intermit.

I like one of Thomas Wilson's maxims from Maxims on Christianity and Piety on the subject of backsliding: "He that intermits his duties, will either lose the faculty of doing them, or will have the pain of recovering them."

I think a lot of the time when I've said intermittent I've imagined a stress on the occasions of action rather than on the occasions of breaking off. Wordsworth makes a distinction between 'intermitting' and 'intervenient' in The Prelude.

This is also something I've been reading recently, starting with the two part Prelude with the 'spots of time' section as its focus before moving on to the longer versions. I also read a beginner's introduction to Wordsworth written by Margaret Drabble while getting to know the shorter poems alongside it, and came to them after having enjoyed Dorothy Wordsworth's diaries and seeing there the links between her descriptions of the Lake District and some of her brother's poems from that period.

One example: DW writes on Monday 16 June 1800: 'The woods about the waterfall veined with rich yellow broom'. Then on 22 August 1800 she writes: 'W. read Peter Bell. He read us the Poem of Joanna beside the Rothay by the roadside.' The poem that he read, "To Joanna", includes the following lines: ''Twas that delightful season when the broom,/Full-flowered, and visible on every steep, Along the copses runs in veins of gold.' Dorothy alludes to this on 8 June 1802: 'The Brooms were in full glory everywhere 'veins of gold''. I had been walking past broom a lot, unless it was gorse/furze along the canal around the time of reading. I think there was a later poem where William returned to the subject of Broom. I also enjoyed Dorothy Wordsworth's references to cooking things that seemed incongruent on very hot days.

Somewhere in The Prelude, Wordsworth uses the word 'thitherward' which I'm keen on as an odd family relation to the seemingly redundant uses of the phrase 'from thence' in older writing: stretching to-there into to-to-there in further distance. It stands out as one of the few times I've read 'thitherward' not attached to the word 'tend'. A lot of the other thitherward tending is in a Christian context and is to do with being dead soon but it's also in Coleridge's poem "Fears in Solitude" (With light and quickened footsteps thitherward I tend).

"We thitherward tend
We too shall ascend
And begin the enjoyment which never shall end"

(Funeral Hymns by John and Charles Wesley)

"The past is the father-land of all of us; hence we are all sprung. The sentiment of universal brotherhood is forced upon every heart that contemplates aright that boundless burial-field, where rich and poor, high and low, all conditions and all races, lie mouldering and mingled together. Thitherward tend all our gentlest and most unselfish affections"

(Lowe's Edinburgh Magazine and Protestant and Educational Journal)

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on December 05, 2019, 09:06:38 PM
The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin - Really well written crime thriller set in New Orleans in 1919 and based on a true story where a series of murders took place supposedly committed by a jazz playing serial killer who was never caught. It even manages to include a young Louis Armstrong as a major character, and though this sort of thing isn't normally my cup of tea (I'm not sure why but thrillers are something I rarely read, though I should probably rectify that) I enjoyed it a lot, and the ending satisfied as well.

Dead Man Blues by Ray Celestin - This is the sequel to the above, but it doesn't feature enough of the central characters from that book until the final third of the novel, and instead has far too much from the perspective of a fairly bland crime photographer called Jacob. In an attempt to build atmosphere it overdoes the descriptions of just how hot and humid Chicago is, and the mystery is in no way as involving as the one from the first novel either. Which is a shame as there were elements I liked (Louis Armstrong's role as a supporting character once again is enjoyable for one thing), but it was definitely a disappointment overall and I doubt I'll bother with the third in the series now.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on July 01, 2020, 05:10:14 PM
but it was definitely a disappointment overall and I doubt I'll bother with the third in the series now.
It's 99p on Amazon, digitally. I now have the 1st 3, and not read any of them yet. Wish I hadn't just read your review.....

buttgammon

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, which I'd been meaning to read for ages but only got round to it after picking up a copy when the bookshops reopened. It's bloody brilliant, and probably should've won the Booker Prize outright instead of having to share with a more populist choice.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on July 02, 2020, 12:57:08 PM
It's 99p on Amazon, digitally. I now have the 1st 3, and not read any of them yet. Wish I hadn't just read your review.....

I'd still recommend reading the first book, it works as a stand alone novel and is really enjoyable. A lot of people really like the second too, I just didn't get on with certain elements but could well be wrong.

As for reading the third, well I might do at some point, but I'll probably give it a fairly long gap of at least a year so perhaps it will feel fresher and I might find myself missing the (surviving) characters that way too.

Inspired by Pingers' thread I've been reading bits in John Leland's influential Itinerary of the counties of England and Wales containing short descriptions of the outstanding features of Hulle and Birmingham or Bremischam and nearby places in the 16th century. Leland was a poet and antiquary who travelled about. The notebooks of Leland's travels were filled in between 1538–43 but prepared for publication in several volumes in the 18th century. One volume has a glossary of the archaic words used including 'Paradice' - a little studying chamber; 'Wose' - ooze, wet mud; and 'Shrodly Pillid' - shrewdly pillaged, maliciously stripped bare. There's also a 'Commentarie or Exposition of certain proper names used in this Tale' with descriptions of the rivers: 'Humber, or rather Hull, falleth into the Sea at Ravenspur, and ariseth out of sundrie Rivers, whose confluence make a mighty water.' Ravenspurn has now been eroded. 'Water' is also in the glossary as a word that was often used for a river or brook until about the beginning of the twentieth century. 'Suoping' is among the descriptive words pertaining to water - said of a river sweeping along.

There's a supplementary letter of 1711 from Reverend Francis Brookesby 'Containing an Account of some Observations relating to the Antiquities and Natural History of ENGLAND'. This mentions a sad story of multiple births in Hull which became an object of fascination (paragraph beginning bottom of p.104 'Among other things that concern Mankind'):


Blinder Data

Daphne de Maurier's Rebecca. It's just so spooky and mysterious. Who is Rebecca? Why she die? Let's find out!!

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on July 05, 2020, 08:21:25 PM
'Water' is also in the glossary as a word that was often used for a river or brook until about the beginning of the twentieth century.

It occurs in a lot of Scottish place names, e.g. the Water of Leith (the small river that flows through Edinburgh). Not sure if this ever occurs south of the border.

I've never heard it used in this sense as a stand-alone noun, though.