sandboox: anybody reading anything?

Just finished

Joan Didion, Where I Was From

how was this? i always put it back on the shelf sorta (i know, terrible) thinking OLD TIMES, BORRRRRING, but my friend was enthusing about it recently. it's essays, right? family essays. i finally got around to ordering political fictions, so that's next, but could use further endorsement of WIWF

there are lots of sloppy things abt the way tengo 'reports' her reactions, like what it means to not answer a qn.

1Q84 was the first Murakami book I was able to get halfway through. Finished it within a week or two and really enjoyed it.

yeah im not really a big fan of his but i found this one super readable too, even if it was p repetitive and conceptually sloppy i just wanted to spend time w/ the characters, gather more hints. i sorta wish he hadnt squished any kind of suspense or mystery or drama w/ all the explanation and heavy foreshadowing tho

xp

I liked WIWF. It's sort of disguised as a family memoir, and there is plenty about old times in it, but it's mainly about California, and the Californian state of mind, crashing and burning.

her piece on californian water pressure in the white album is one of my favs, & probably bodes well in terms of suggesting i'll be interested even if the premise doesn't sound gripping. TY

fwiw: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/10-best-books-of-2011.html?_r=1&hpw

i've been reading this albert einstein biography and i just realized it's by the same guy who wrote the big steve jobs bio with all the crazy quotes

nytimes, what a stoopit list. but swamplandia is p. neat. I think it's a dark, funny, beautifully written book that is also... forceably odd? not always very good? but super entertaining, too.

http://www.readersread.com/pics/swamplandia_cover.jpg

^^^ may be an HBO miniseries?

of the ones i read, swamplandia! was pretty great, art of fielding was pretty terrible, and 11/22/63 was solid but doesn't deserve to be in a best of 2011 list

if you're going to read a large, numerically-titled sci fi-tinged novel about alternate worlds by an acclaimed novelist who's past his prime, i'd definitely go with 11/22/63 over 1Q84.

feel to logey/dim to really organize my thoughts but swamplandia! was just too precious/considered/crafts-y for me

it is a p funny list non-fiction wise but im looking fwd to the new stephen king

'art of fielding' was just actual garbage tho

1Q84 gets worse and worse in my mind as more time passes since i read it, it's approaching "freedom" levels of disgust now

swamplandia! had some "modern literary fiction" problems but at least had an interesting setting and unusual characters and an unpredictable plot, unlike art of fielding, with its precocious students and troubled headmaster at a small new england college

http://literarytransgressions.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fitzparadise.jpg

^^ i think thats my fave of his

the idea that ppl dont read 'the art of fielding' filled with disgust for everyone involved makes me so angry

Anybody read Ten Thousand Saints? That sounded amazing...

xxxxps

Parts of Where I Was From put the water management systems described in that White Album essay into a broader historical context.

Warning, it is a depressing book. Didion summarizes the history of the state in the words of Virginia Reed, survivor of the Donner party: "Never take no cut-offs and hurry along as fast as you can."

lamp you remind me of f scott fitzgerald

ummmm????

yeah, i posted abt it on real ilx i think, i liked it a fair bit (xxp)

its true you have a very similar writing style! & content even

yeah ten thousand saints did sound good, would read

I finished Blue Nights before Thanksgiving -- not as affecting as its predecessor, almost thin in places. When she does her trick of repeating images like motifs it's quite moving: serving fried chicken on nice china, Quintana's rather eerie childhood self-possession, ordering room service when on assignment.

swamplandia! had some "modern literary fiction" problems but at least had an interesting setting and unusual characters and an unpredictable plot, unlike art of fielding, with its precocious students and troubled headmaster at a small new england college

yes, this is exactly how i felt. but i was never ... bored? strangely, i seem to have read the same three (art of fielding, 11/22/63, and swamplandia!) as the rest of you. i wanted to read the tea ohbret book, but it was NPRed to death and I lost interest. maybe over the holidays. best nf book i read this year was 'warmth of other suns' but i guess that came out in 2010

swamplandia! also had a story. i like stories.

Lamp idk if ur interested at all in that kind thing but I'd love to read a list of yr top books of the year

me too

Are we including history and biographies too? I'd be down for ILXers doing it.

Yah, I'm in for a best books of 2011 balloting. (Mine might be YA heavy, but then's the breaks).

a number of us seem to have the same reading list...and I did see that nytimes 10 best list as well.

I enjoyed art of fielding, but couldn't get through more than 20 pages of swamplandia. I have ten thousand saints on reserve at the library (it's actually 'e-reserve' -- apparently they only have 7 e-copies of it -- which seems absurd in the e-era).

copyright

bro

A new biography of acclaimed American author Kurt Vonnegut, beloved by fans worldwide for his work's warm humour and homespun Midwestern wisdom, has shocked many with a portrayal of a bitter, angry man prone to depression and fits of temper.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/03/kurt-vonnegut-biography?cat=books&type=article

Have these many who have been shocked ever read any Vonnegut.

started Stephenson's Reamde and enjoying it more than I expected to. If you are a gamer or every have been, you will be amused.

just finished Reamde - totally will make a great Hollywood movie, which was annoying in the final pages (to an NS fan) but afterwards I realize is an excellent development.

haven't read yet stack:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7149/6452963715_597be5981a.jpg

haha reamde is in the pile of stuff i want to get to eventually... it just seemed so daunting atm

Lamp idk if ur interested at all in that kind thing but I'd love to read a list of yr top books of the year

id have to think abt but i love making lists of things

started pictures @ a revolution yesterday which i think i recall lord soto & maybe others recommending -- it is really great@!

This History of Histories by John Burrow really is excellent. His summing-up of the main features of classical history, at the end of having dealt with the main classical historians in turn, is superb.

He really starts enjoying himself with the dark ages/early medieval chroniclers, becomes quite relaxed in fact, too relaxed even? But no, it's discursive, but not too discursive, and fun to read. Sometimes it feels more descriptive of what's in the histories than the introduction led me to think, but I don't particular mind this - as well as being historiography, it's a very handy prism with which to view specific case studies in history as well.

just finished A Visit From the Goon Squad (loved) and started on Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave. before that Murakami's Kafka on the Shore (didn't like it much)

**

that was an accident.

**1Q84 SPOILER ALERT**
i found the scene where aomame meets The Leader in the hotel room to be supremely crepey. when he said "You could stick a needle in me and I wouldn't even feel it", i got freaked out and my heart started beating faster. probably one of the more visceral reactions i've had to literature
**1Q84 SPOILER ALERT**

since there's no rolling new yorker magazine thread i'll post here that i just read Cesar Aira's fiction in last weeks issue and really liked it. if anyone who's familiar with him could recommend some of his stuff i'd appreciate it.

My Life as a Nun is super

**1Q84 SPOILER ALERT**
i found the scene where aomame meets The Leader in the hotel room to be supremely crepey. when he said "You could stick a needle in me and I wouldn't even feel it", i got freaked out and my heart started beating faster. probably one of the more visceral reactions i've had to literature

i thought a lot of the stuff w/ the little people was suspensful and kinda scary, like when they appear out of the girl's mouth for the first time.
**1Q84 SPOILER ALERT**

Raoul Vaneigem "The Revolution Of Everyday Life" - fascinating Situationist call to action (or not).

reread PKD's androids/dream - excellently well written in comparison to that steaming pile of excrement that was the last murakami (& dick was pretty hacky) - it's all about mercer & isodore, couldn't give a monkey's about the robots, albeit that mercer's star turn is a ghost of Xmas past / obi wan cheesefest. also "martian time slip" which came over as a marital infidelity drama set in 1950's Australia.
currently halfway through stanley crawford's "log of the s.s the mrs unguentine" which is flipin marvelous.

enjoying ten thousand saints but it feels very familiar so far. waiting for the story to go somewhere new. seems very concerned with trying to evoke the east village through landmarks and music references, zzz

that was one of my big problems with The Fortress of Solitude :/

seems very concerned with trying to evoke the east village through landmarks and music references, zzz

tending to the graveyard of unloved books (those I'm not optimistic enough about concentrating on to justify moving out) at my folks' place, I dipped into KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS by Luc Sante, which came out a few years ago. enjoying his period New Yorkisms.

I'd like to read Ten Thousand Saints, I read Hate: a Romance when it came out maybe looking for that kinda thing.