sandboox: anybody reading anything?

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got this at the library yesterday:

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0670872563.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_V51818369_.jpg

volume 1 was "da bomb"

and you?

m coleman (lovebug ), Saturday, 16 December 2006 14:50 (seventeen years ago) link

i've been looking over the stuff i got at the dump. "reading in them", so to speak. everything free at the dump store, of course. i got:

Life On Man - Theodor Rosebury (all about dirt & germs!)

New World Writing - 7th Mentor Selection (Great paperback series from the 50's. This one is from 1955 and features an excerpt from the unpublished On The Road called "Jazz Of The Beat Generation" by one "Jean-Louis". Only the second published excerpt prior to publication. AND it features the first excerpt from Catch-22, when it was still called Catch 18.)

The Passion Artist - John Hawkes (i tried to read hawkes when i was a kid and i think i was too young. maybe i'm ready now.)

Three Trapped Tigers - G. Cabrera Infante

One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding - Robert Gover (great hardcover copy with dust jacket. grove press hipster lit.)

A Child's Book Of True Crime - Chloe Hooper

Mawrdew Czgowchwz - James McCourt (on the back susan sontag compares the book to firbank and nabokov, so i picked it up.)

Play Things - Peter Prince (very cool looking book. signed first edition too!)

Granta 50 & Granta 53 (Both from the 90's. Right around when Buford stepped down as editor.)

Monk Dawson - Piers Paul Read

Pel & The Bombers - Mark Hebden

Exile's Return - Malcom Cowley (which i've never read! go figure.)

Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom (which i think i've already read.)

Reeling - Pauline Kael (hardcover copy. i only have the paperback. i still need to convert a few other kaels into hardcovers.)

scott seward (121212), Saturday, 16 December 2006 15:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm almost finished with "The Power Broker ; Robert Moses and The Fall of New York." I want to start a thread on Robert Moses.

jacob sanders (Jacobs), Sunday, 17 December 2006 21:52 (seventeen years ago) link

the power broker is so good!!! MCNY has an upcoming moses exhibit.

bell labs (bell_labs), Sunday, 17 December 2006 22:00 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/future/466.html

i'm really excited for this.

bell labs (bell_labs), Sunday, 17 December 2006 22:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I've been surprized at how engaging the book is. I came to reading it through researching early hip hop. I was trying to understand how the bronx became the way it was in the early seventies.

jacob sanders (Jacobs), Sunday, 17 December 2006 22:11 (seventeen years ago) link

I wish I could go to that exhibit!

jacob sanders (Jacobs), Sunday, 17 December 2006 22:12 (seventeen years ago) link

talented mr ripley

wind-up bird chronicle

elmo albatross (allocryptic), Sunday, 17 December 2006 22:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Ball Four
Conservatives Without Conscience
Bone

I Am Curious (George) (Slight Return) (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 17 December 2006 23:06 (seventeen years ago) link

wow, Robert Moses thing looks awesome.

ian (orion), Monday, 18 December 2006 05:13 (seventeen years ago) link

just started
http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product-file/98/thea398/product.jpg

first impression: holy shit awesome why hadn't I heard of this before?

milo (milo), Monday, 18 December 2006 05:35 (seventeen years ago) link

Currently reading 'Hit Men' by Fredric Dannen. A bit heavy, but interesting.

sgh (sgh), Monday, 18 December 2006 05:43 (seventeen years ago) link

I am reading Inez by Carlos Fuentes and finished My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk a few days ago. The Pamuk was very well done. Very suspenseful and thought provoking, and I know that each time I re-read it I'll get so much more out of it.

ian (orion), Monday, 18 December 2006 05:45 (seventeen years ago) link

Weird. I'm two weeks of slow reading into the Power Broker right now.

Dan I. (w1nt3rmut3), Monday, 18 December 2006 10:21 (seventeen years ago) link

also: Mankind Evolving by Dobzhansky

Dan I. (w1nt3rmut3), Monday, 18 December 2006 10:23 (seventeen years ago) link

another thanx for the tip on the Robt Moses exhibit! I read The Power Broker yrs ago but I've been thinking of "RM" because I'll be driving on the Merritt Parkway this weekend: tree-lined highway with no trucks (or urban-bound public trans). If he would've been able to build that highway thru lower Manhattan the Village might've ended up like the south Bronx. IMHO: best book on NYC.

I'm a huge fan of Robt Caro, can't recommend his LBJ books enough. Once you settle in for the long haul, he's compulsively readable.

mark coleman (lovebug ), Monday, 18 December 2006 11:21 (seventeen years ago) link

in the miso soup by ryu murakami

nathalie (stevienixed), Monday, 18 December 2006 15:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Got the following for $1 ea, have just started on the first:

Chariots of the Gods
Gold of the Gods
Gods From Outer Space: Return To The Stars, or Evidence Of The Impossible

All by former NASA scientist turned WTF-ist Erich Von Daniken. Very WTF reading so far.

has been plagued with problems since its erection in 1978 (nklshs), Monday, 18 December 2006 15:34 (seventeen years ago) link

in the miso soup by ryu murakami

i got a review copy of this, but couldnt quite decide how i felt about it. still on the fence..it was a mostly interesting, fun story..but...i couldnt quite endorse it. (i should be more articulate, but im going without caffiene today.) all and all, i just felt that i could really see the point....i should go lookat my notes anfd flip through again...

360something into agains the days...otherwise its all just magazine and maeve brennan

bb (bbia), Monday, 18 December 2006 15:38 (seventeen years ago) link

noize board field trip to the robert moses exhibition?

from library:
Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret (but not the recent updated version)
Playback, by some nerd ;)

tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Monday, 18 December 2006 15:43 (seventeen years ago) link

finished The Painted Veil
2 giant books on Roberto Rossellini (will skip the stuff on films I haven't seen)
In the Shadow of the Senators (Homestead Grays baseball)

Dr M (Dr Morbius), Monday, 18 December 2006 15:50 (seventeen years ago) link

(nklsh, I read Chariots of the Gods when i was about 11, which is the right age)

Dr M (Dr Morbius), Monday, 18 December 2006 15:52 (seventeen years ago) link

in the miso soup by ryu murakami
i got a review copy of this, but couldnt quite decide how i felt about it.

I like it but there's sth about it that I... I don't know, I can't put my finger on it. :-(

nathalie (stevienixed), Monday, 18 December 2006 16:08 (seventeen years ago) link

i would go on a noize field trip to the moses exhibit!

bell labs (bell_labs), Monday, 18 December 2006 16:12 (seventeen years ago) link

haha yeah Morbs, the style & content are very...adolescent. Still probably the best book purchase @ Goodwill in 06 for me.

has been plagued with problems since its erection in 1978 (nklshs), Monday, 18 December 2006 16:20 (seventeen years ago) link

how long does the exhibit run? can we do a field trip in early jan? does that WORK for people?

my roomie last night gave me a great "weird fiction" anthology for my birfday.

ian (orion), Monday, 18 December 2006 18:01 (seventeen years ago) link

January might not work:

Feb 1 through May 28
Robert Moses and the Modern City:  Remaking the Metropolis

tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Monday, 18 December 2006 18:05 (seventeen years ago) link

why am i so stupid :(

ian (orion), Monday, 18 December 2006 18:08 (seventeen years ago) link

That's okay, Ian, I took my parents to the Costume Institute at the Met in November, for a show that didn't open until December. I R THICK 2.

Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 18 December 2006 18:11 (seventeen years ago) link

i have been nerdishly anticipating this exhibit for about a year now...my roomate works at MCNY and has been giving me regular updates!

bell labs (bell_labs), Monday, 18 December 2006 18:24 (seventeen years ago) link

i have been reading books on Alvar Aalto's furniture design. And Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge's poetry. and i also pulled out this weird book about volcanic eruptions that i bought for a class once but never used, and is totally fucking sweet.

the table is the table (trees), Monday, 18 December 2006 18:52 (seventeen years ago) link

The Agony of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants, 1955

milton parker (milton parker), Monday, 18 December 2006 19:14 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.taschen-america.com/media/images/190/va_butt_book.jpg

added bonus: n00dz of dr. drew daniel

elmo albatross (allocryptic), Saturday, 23 December 2006 07:43 (seventeen years ago) link

against the day, titus groan, wikipedia on hungarian vizlas.

remy bean (bean), Saturday, 23 December 2006 21:28 (seventeen years ago) link

added bonus: n00dz of dr. drew daniel

ysi

jw (ex machina), Saturday, 23 December 2006 22:15 (seventeen years ago) link

a peace to end all peace.
national waste by leif goldberg.

ian (orion), Sunday, 24 December 2006 04:02 (seventeen years ago) link

booklist for next semester was posted, so i just ordered this and this. phear the policywonkage:

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0791433307.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1056490132_.jpg

http://styluspub.com/images/covers/185383601X_cf200.jpg

we twa hae run aboot the braes (get bent), Tuesday, 26 December 2006 02:15 (seventeen years ago) link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MervynPeake_TitusGroan.jpg

remy bean (bean), Tuesday, 26 December 2006 02:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Milo, simply because I liked the cover and description on amazon, i got 'The Adventures of Maqroll' out of the library AND COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. which explains my absence from ilx for the pat few days.

the table is the table (trees), Tuesday, 26 December 2006 15:31 (seventeen years ago) link

i bought myself "a walk on the wild side" by nelson algren for xmas. so far so good.

otto midnight, that 'tofu makes you gay' ding dong (otto midnight), Tuesday, 26 December 2006 17:33 (seventeen years ago) link

Just got Norton Anthology of Children's Literature.

So far, it looks great.

John Justen is interested in eating your pet. (John Justen), Tuesday, 26 December 2006 18:16 (seventeen years ago) link

The Agony of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants, 1955

-- milton parker (milton.parke...), December 18th, 2006.

Pleasant?

xyzzzz__ (xyzzzz__), Wednesday, 27 December 2006 11:40 (seventeen years ago) link

after suffering through the too oblique prologue, i am now rather into g marcus' the shape of things to come: prophecy and the american voice...

got a copy of the neil young bio from the 'rents...another great temptation away from against the day

bb (bbia), Wednesday, 27 December 2006 15:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Shakey is pretty great. especially the interview chapters with Neil's verbatim oblique answers mixed with evasions and personal attacks.

dmr (dmr), Wednesday, 27 December 2006 15:26 (seventeen years ago) link

subconscsiously stole the word oblique from previous answer!! I hate when I do that.

dmr (dmr), Wednesday, 27 December 2006 15:31 (seventeen years ago) link

'bass culture', the reggae history. (author escapes me)

haitch (not haitch) (haitch), Wednesday, 27 December 2006 15:33 (seventeen years ago) link

I've been looting a freebie pile of crime paperbacks that people set out at work

currently James Ellroy's "Black Dahlia"

dmr (dmr), Thursday, 28 December 2006 18:47 (seventeen years ago) link

there's a weird bit near the end of that welles bio laying out circumstansial evidence & coincidences that suggest orson couldve killed the black dahlia. author exonerates him a few pages later.

m coleman (lovebug ), Thursday, 28 December 2006 19:40 (seventeen years ago) link

got a copy of the neil young bio from the 'rents...another great temptation away from against the day

don't, it's great. better than m&d; i read 400 pages yesterday in one sitting.

remy bean (bean), Thursday, 28 December 2006 19:43 (seventeen years ago) link

also literal 'screw the pooch'

remy bean (bean), Thursday, 28 December 2006 19:45 (seventeen years ago) link

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

n/a, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:10 (twelve years ago) link

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

n/a, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:12 (twelve years ago) link

^^ 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

є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:21 (twelve years ago) link

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

iagree (henrietta lacks), Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:24 (twelve years ago) link

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."

Brad C., Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:25 (twelve years ago) link

lamp you remind me of f scott fitzgerald

wil smif, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:25 (twelve years ago) link

ummmm????

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

є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:26 (twelve years ago) link

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

wil smif, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:27 (twelve years ago) link

yeah ten thousand saints did sound good, would read

Never translate German (schlump), Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:36 (twelve years ago) link

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.

Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:43 (twelve years ago) link

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

remy bean in exile, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:47 (twelve years ago) link

swamplandia! also had a story. i like stories.

n/a, Thursday, 1 December 2011 22:48 (twelve years ago) link

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

iagree (henrietta lacks), Friday, 2 December 2011 00:19 (twelve years ago) link

me too

your voice of treason, Friday, 2 December 2011 00:25 (twelve years ago) link

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

Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 2 December 2011 01:56 (twelve years ago) link

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

remy bean in exile, Friday, 2 December 2011 02:12 (twelve years ago) link

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).

calstars, Friday, 2 December 2011 02:36 (twelve years ago) link

copyright

flexidisc, Friday, 2 December 2011 02:37 (twelve years ago) link

bro

flexidisc, Friday, 2 December 2011 02:37 (twelve years ago) link

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.

Fizzles, Sunday, 4 December 2011 09:20 (twelve years ago) link

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.

calstars, Sunday, 4 December 2011 11:41 (twelve years ago) link

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

Zoroastrian Mingle, Sunday, 4 December 2011 15:54 (twelve years ago) link

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

є(٥_ ٥)э, Monday, 5 December 2011 18:22 (twelve years ago) link

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

j crunchwrap supreme, Monday, 5 December 2011 19:00 (twelve years ago) link

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.

Fizzles, Monday, 5 December 2011 21:15 (twelve years ago) link

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)

sandbox dmr, Tuesday, 6 December 2011 19:54 (twelve years ago) link

**

uhh (ok), Wednesday, 7 December 2011 15:39 (twelve years ago) link

that was an accident.

uhh (ok), Wednesday, 7 December 2011 15:39 (twelve years ago) link

**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**

uhh (ok), Wednesday, 7 December 2011 15:59 (twelve years ago) link

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.

Crowell, Wednesday, 7 December 2011 21:02 (twelve years ago) link

My Life as a Nun is super

flexidisc, Wednesday, 7 December 2011 21:03 (twelve years ago) link

**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**

blah blah blah (є(٥_ ٥)э), Wednesday, 7 December 2011 21:37 (twelve years ago) link

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

Jay To The Vee Ee Eee, Wednesday, 7 December 2011 21:57 (twelve years ago) link

three weeks pass...

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.

farah ferrigno, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 13:48 (twelve years ago) link

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

calstars, Wednesday, 28 December 2011 14:13 (twelve years ago) link

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

Heck Yep (henrietta lacks), Wednesday, 28 December 2011 18:43 (twelve years ago) link

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.

Never translate German (schlump), Wednesday, 28 December 2011 19:06 (twelve years ago) link

maybe I'm wrong; maybe that's not what I hated about it, maybe I just hated the popcultural cataloguing though that was def a big part of my adolescence as well...?

Heck Yep (henrietta lacks), Wednesday, 28 December 2011 19:44 (twelve years ago) link

Halfway through Saints and it's getting better. Going some unexpected places and keeps me turning the pages. It's a relief of sorts to kind of stop looking for some grand statement in the book, realizing it's not that kind of novel, and just enjoying the story.

calstars, Thursday, 29 December 2011 14:42 (twelve years ago) link

brain went over christmas, read a couple of extended article type books.

in search of the perfect pub, a christmas gift. It was ok. Was dreading a jokey travelogue or nostalgic localism but it's more thoughtful than that. Too bitty, though, lacks focus.

Also and then there's this: how stories live and die in viral culture by Bill Wasik, which was fine-to-good, pleasantly anecdotal & smart first-hand amble through that stuff.

Sort of read The Compleat Angler. Fabulous prose, but skimmed when it got too fishy.

Headlong Hall. I think I've finally acknowledged to myself that I don't like Peacock.

woof, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:02 (twelve years ago) link

i quite liked peacock, or at least i tried to make myself. i don't know. only read nightmare abbey.

finished the marriage plot. ending rather insipid.

been trying to make myself go back to bleak house, instead soothing a chest cold and sleep-deprivation fatigue by reading 'the complete masks of nyarlathotep: the classic call of cthulhu adventure, complete for the first time, with the lost australian chapter and four new episodes'

thompp, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:40 (twelve years ago) link

Fuck, now you mention it, it was nightmare abbey not headlong hall

I've had a longstanding notion that I should like him - he's spot-on for me in theory - but I always glaze over when reading him. (see also Firbank).

woof, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:51 (twelve years ago) link

i was thinking about reading firbank. i found an anthology at work and put it aside. and then realised i'd put aside a near-identical anthology about fifteen months before. so i've been thinking about reading firbank for a while, i suppose.

thompp, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:55 (twelve years ago) link

imo they're such short books it's worth reading 1 or 2 to find out if he's your kind of fun.

woof, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:10 (twelve years ago) link

firbank is p silly

є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, 29 December 2011 18:01 (twelve years ago) link

Always struggled with Firbank too. Well, struggled through about half of about three or four novella-length works. People who like him admire the various refinements of his humour, a sort of fin-de-siecle plus, (or minus if that equates an ironic refinement), but I always feel as if I'm handling a recalcitrant hoover when I'm reading.

Daniel Deronda and some way into Either/Or over Christmas. It was that sort of Christmas, internally anyway, the festivities were perfectly convivial.

Daniel Deronda is a very strange book, isn't it? Eliot is an extraordinary writer, such a control over the psychological motivations of her characters, and the bleakest most material ideas you can imagine all managed with great intellectual brilliance. You would fear her sympathy as being very little different in quality to her criticism. There are vast swaths of Victorian sentiment swaddling some her characters - there's so much work that goes on around some characters to indicate their goodness, and in general her sense of irony is too fine for this continual application of sentimental make-up to be at all convincing. If you attempt to clear off this sentimental mummy that surrounds some of the characters you find that there's hardly a single appealing character in the whole work. I've never read a novel where it's quite so clear that all the author is interested in is ideas. Eliot has absolutely no interest in the quotidian whatsoever - fashion is flippantly dismissed in a single short paragraph, and NO ONE EATS EVER. She mentions food once, and that dismissively (it's a pet theory I have that realist writers aren't interested in food, only genre and fantastic writers are - Eliot has given that rather wobbly idea a shot of amphetamines). Power and resistance, power and resistance, a vicious heath-robinson moral manufactory of a novel, with Deronda the most powerful of all - it takes a whole religion to take him down. And all so brilliantly done, too.

And then on top of this you've got these vast tracts of hectoring Old Testament blood and thunder + Romantic Nationalism, which cure Daniel Deronda of being a sanctimonious prick at which point he buggers off into the desert sunset.

Thoroughly enjoyable, but rather nasty as well.

Enjoying Either/Or... again, well I think again. I had a copy that had Fear and Trembling as well, but I think that must have been edited highlights, because this full version is two volumes. Especially enjoying it after the rather top-down controlling of Eliot in DD. To feel the existential struggles of a Romantic individual as, by all sorts of fragmentary means, it tries to find some sort of meaning or understanding of itself in the world is exactly what I need. Maybe I shall contract a brain fever.

Fizzles, Thursday, 29 December 2011 18:15 (twelve years ago) link

there was a point this term where everyone at my college was going around reading 'either/or'; that was kind of weird.

eliot is someone i feel like i would like to read more of; these things sound like the sort of things i would be glad to find of her.

i am back on beckett, for the evening

thompp, Thursday, 29 December 2011 20:56 (twelve years ago) link

yeah D Deronda sounds great

~connecticut~ (henrietta lacks), Thursday, 29 December 2011 21:01 (twelve years ago) link

c.j. lines' "cold mirrors" like the 666th Pan book of horror stories edited by herbert van thal except written ever so well in a slightly will selfy style ( tho less verbose ) only thing that lets it down is that in place of self's unpleasant witty denouements we get rather "garth merenghi" endings to the stories. genre bound but showing promise.
reading sherlock holmeses, now, holmes.

farah ferrigno, Friday, 30 December 2011 10:47 (twelve years ago) link


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