awesome. thanks n/a.
― Crowell, Tuesday, 20 December 2011 16:26 (twelve years ago) link
schlump -- re: what my book club thought, there were complaints that it didn't map onto any sort of victorian literature and that madeline was an undignified heroine b/c she hooked up (!). anyway, i don't know much about victorian lit but thought that was a silly complaint.
thanks all for the alice munro suggestions!
― rayuela, Tuesday, 20 December 2011 16:41 (twelve years ago) link
I've recently read
To Engineer is Human, Henry Petroski. A collection of essays that make the same point repeatedly: engineers study engineering mistakes and catastrophes because they teach them more than the successes. Got it, Hank!
Field Notes From a Catastrophe, Elizabeth Kolbert. A book about global warming. She visits scientists and encapsulates their findings in clear language even average lay people can understand, explaining why we are thoroughly screwed.
The First Salute, Barbara Tuchman. American Revolutionary War history with a lot of side excursions to Europe and the West Indies, so as to make the global situation plainer, allowing American readers to understand that we didn't win the war, so much as the British lost to the French because of the neutrality of the Dutch.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:49 (twelve years ago) link
i've tried picking up maybe 6 -- 8 books since i finished book of night women, including some supposedly great reads, but so far, they're all paling in comparison.
― Daniel, Esq., Wednesday, 21 December 2011 16:26 (twelve years ago) link
"The Magicians" by Lev Grossman, which is super fun so far
― PROVEN BY BOOZE SCIENCE, Friday, 23 December 2011 00:01 (twelve years ago) link
btw belated thx for the book club digest rayuela, i needed the vicarious inclusion, & think "what do you think of madeleine as heroine" is one of the more interesting threads to unravel re: the book (that & the ~describing depression~ one, for me)
i read a lot slower than you guys but i'm reading/still reading eileen myles' inferno & really loving it, as a bildungsroman & as something as just audible & loose as her poems, as a voice, as a memory. it is about new york in the '80s in a very textural, routine-y way, it's fun to read.
― Never translate German (schlump), Friday, 23 December 2011 00:23 (twelve years ago) link
Finished: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
Started: Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet
― tanuki, Friday, 23 December 2011 00:31 (twelve years ago) link
finished malone dies and the stephen king, now reading murakami and smth called 'blood of elves'
― thompp, Friday, 23 December 2011 01:16 (twelve years ago) link
i liked the witcher books quite a bit but i dont think i can partic defend them
― є(٥_ ٥)э, Friday, 23 December 2011 01:16 (twelve years ago) link
it made me really happy that you were reading beckett just btw
― є(٥_ ٥)э, Friday, 23 December 2011 01:17 (twelve years ago) link
no problem schlump...i did think madeline was a flatly written character, but that this had nothing to do with her sexuality. maybe this is because she was written to be so normal, and eugenidies can't write compelling, normal characters? just speculating. on the other hand, the depression parts were my favorite, though, and i thought he nicely captured the way in which people who have no experience with depression tend to view/approach depression.
alice munro has pulled ahead of gary shteyngart in the book club vote. anyone here read 'super sad true love story'?
in the middle of reading -why we write: the politics and practice of writing for social change and-dark matter: a century of speculative fiction from the african diaspora
― rayuela, Friday, 23 December 2011 01:25 (twelve years ago) link
iirc there were a # of ppl on real ilx that quite liked 'super sad' but i think its his worst novel, well-written but charmless.
― ~*~ (є(٥_ ٥)э), Friday, 23 December 2011 01:28 (twelve years ago) link
yea super sad is not v good i read it
― j crunchwrap supreme, Friday, 23 December 2011 05:06 (twelve years ago) link
I am about halfway through The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, and I'm enjoying it very much. Her use of the omniscient voice is incredibly deft and artful. It gives the impression of a particularly keen-eyed and scrupulous intelligence that understands everything and thererfore has no need of opinions.
― Aimless, Friday, 23 December 2011 19:02 (twelve years ago) link
i liked SSTLS a lot personally
muriel spark is great
― n/a, Friday, 23 December 2011 19:06 (twelve years ago) link
I endured a violent Spark addiction two Christmases ago -- I read four of her novels at one go. She's great.
― Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 23 December 2011 19:08 (twelve years ago) link
the marriage plot does not seem like a book that should have been written by a grown-ass man
― thompp, Monday, 26 December 2011 21:20 (twelve years ago) link
heh. are you reading it now?
just finished ursula k leguin's lathe of heaven. strongly reminded of PKD as I read -- thought the dispossessed & left hand of darkness were fantastic -- this one, not so much.
― rayuela, Tuesday, 27 December 2011 02:27 (twelve years ago) link
Currently reading Disturbing the Peace by Vaclav Havel.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 December 2011 23:10 (twelve years ago) link
Man, I'm disappointed that Underworld, despite three or four splendid passages, is a waste of time.
― Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 27 December 2011 23:30 (twelve years ago) link
haven't yet read it, but do have it. so i'd vote for this for a book-club!
― Daniel, Esq., Tuesday, 27 December 2011 23:32 (twelve years ago) link
It's pretty bad
― Number None, Tuesday, 27 December 2011 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
bummer. it looked kind of funny, maybe intentionally?
― Daniel, Esq., Tuesday, 27 December 2011 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
i've heard it compared to egan's a visit from the goon squad, which i liked. for those who've read both, is it an accurate comparison?
― rayuela, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 00:20 (twelve years ago) link
ehh, not sure. both def have some brilliant passages & maybe notably the best stuff was excerpted before both were published imo
― j crunchwrap supreme, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
goon squad > sstls imo, though im not the biggest goon squad fan.
im actually reading 'the keep' now. feel like its giving some of the same quibbles as good squad but ima stick w/ it
― j crunchwrap supreme, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 00:27 (twelve years ago) link
Yup, didn't really like Goon Squad either but i'd take it over SSTLS. I presume some of the comparisons are because both of them are set in the near future
― Number None, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 00:29 (twelve years ago) link
typing goon 3x there, it was a certainty id fuck 1 up
― j crunchwrap supreme, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 00:30 (twelve years ago) link
i'm reading egan's emerald city right now, and liking it much more than the keep. only 2 stories in though.
― rayuela, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 00:33 (twelve years ago) link
"In the Beginning was the Command Line"
― HOOS aka driver of steen, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 01:49 (twelve years ago) link
finished Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. more journalistic than analytic biography which translates into a quick breezy read and a handy summation of the personal computer revolution since the 70s. towards the end it does read too much like a business magazine article. Jobs is a monumental asshole, as everyone knows, though the extent and dimensions of his genius are a matter of personal perception. I won't stop buying Apple gadgets. A review in NYRB was OTM, concluding that Isaacson proved you can reveal a subject's flaws while still writing a hagiography. But the romance/glorification of Jobs isn't so obnoxious that you can't read the book. I liked it.
― higgs boson (the deli llama), Wednesday, 28 December 2011 12:20 (twelve years ago) link
when I refer to Jobs as an asshole, that means I wouldn't want to have worked for him and don't think much of the way he treated his children. totally respect & admire his accomplishments. first computer I bought was a Mac II in 1986.
― higgs boson (the deli llama), Wednesday, 28 December 2011 12:25 (twelve years ago) link
The Thelonious Monk biography by Robin D.G. Kelly is good, but for the first time in years, I'm more drawn to fiction, so I need to pick up something else to read, too. I started Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, but despite all the hype/praise, I'm having trouble into it.
Is Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games any good? Looks interesting, but it's also about 1k pages long, so could be a slog.
― Daniel, Esq., Wednesday, 28 December 2011 13:26 (twelve years ago) link
"getting" into it.
Damn this "smart" phone.
― Daniel, Esq., Wednesday, 28 December 2011 13:27 (twelve years ago) link
I'm most of the way through Hot Countries, Alec Waugh, a travel book published in 1930. Most interesting aspect of it is the fact that tourism was a well-established activity, but air travel was as yet unknown. As he mostly is visiting islands, it is all done via ships.
Second most interesting aspect is that European colonialism was the unchallenged rule throughout the world. Waugh includes several matter-of-fact discussions of the problem of white men posted to the tropics who were only able to find brown-skinned sex partners, and how this worked out for all the parties involved. There are many heavily racist remarks scattered through the book, but they are cloaked in such a thick covering of it's-all-for-their-own-good paternalism that I doubt the author ever noticed the disconnect between his liberalism and his racism.
Most irritating thing about the book: he splices in about 40 pages of an unfinished and unfocussed novella set in tahiti, on the pretext that it is enlightening to the reader, whereas the truth is he was just padding shamelessly.
― Aimless, Thursday, 29 December 2011 21:01 (twelve years ago) link
Alec Waugh, Alec Waugh... I can't remember whether he was the brother of Evelyn or the template for Waring in What's Become of Waring by Anthony Powell, or both or neither.
Some of Evelyn's travel writing is excellent as well.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 29 December 2011 22:26 (twelve years ago) link
Franny and Zooey. Superb. Ok the mysticism is so-so, ending especially is somewhat damp, but for a fond, sharp, and beautifully detailed portrait of a family it is peerless.
― ledge, Friday, 30 December 2011 10:12 (twelve years ago) link
Ok maybe not peerless. If you know of any peers toss them this way.
― ledge, Friday, 30 December 2011 10:13 (twelve years ago) link
Alec was Evelyn's older brother. The racism has become even more explicit toward the end, where he is discussing haiti. Several times now he has called blacks "stupid" and he fully buys into the idea that mulattos are smarter, because they have less "savage blood".
― Aimless, Friday, 30 December 2011 16:31 (twelve years ago) link
Disposed of Alec Waugh. I am now starting Pale Fire. It may be too clever for me, like those little wooden puzzles where a sphere is constructed out of eight or so angular pieces you must fit together, but it's too soon to say.
― Aimless, Sunday, 1 January 2012 20:46 (twelve years ago) link
just finished stone arabia, and by extension all three spiotta novels in about a month and a half.
find something that works and stick with it, right?
― cad, Monday, 2 January 2012 03:50 (twelve years ago) link