sandboox: anybody reading anything?

Crisis Economics - Roubini
Makers - Cory Doctorow
Daemon - Daniel Suarez
Commonwealth - Hardt & Negri

Jacobsanders, how are you finding iq84? It arrived at the library, but I only have two weeks to read it before I have to return it to the queue of long request. I'm thinking of just returning it early.

I'm only 50 pages in and so far it's great. The style is his usual voice, very neat and off-handly funny. If you like his humor from the Wind-Up Bird, you'll like this it. But I love almost everything I have read by Murakami and I've been waiting for this to come out for a year now.

Codex Seraphinianus.pdf

ma gawd just finished 1Q84.
not his best, exacerbated by pretty bad translation, conflated further by the worst proofing / editing ever. shocker.
constant restating /recaps like a serialised count of monte cristo for amnesiacs.
tits, tits, and tits. women don't think about their breasts as often as dirty old huki does.
clumsy superfluous similes everywhere, like lost souls in tents protesting against capitalism.
people wear clothes.
it's always :
"he had on a woolly hat and gloves", NEVER an alternate like
"he had a woolly hat & gloves on", "he was wearing a woolly hat and gloves", "he was dressed in a woolly hat and gloves".
and the use of colloquial americanisms in a book translated from japanese was freakishly stupid "a couple dozen meters away" / "turnout". while transparent in meaning, these are too specific to american usage. more universal phrases are available, like a male spider is always available to his mate, until she eats him.
*SPOILER ALERT*
tengo ghost wrote a book.
things remain unknown to them.
ffs.

Art Since 1900 by Foster - Krauss - Bois - Buchloh, best book ever

― wolves lacan sandbox ed,

<3, i think i repped for this pretty hard on big ilx in a bunch of art history threads!

I got so excited reading that I skipped from like 1920 to the nineties and now I should probably start doing it back and forth. I really can't remember where I first heard of this October gang, a thousand kudos if you were the instigator, the book makes me v happy.

I've got about 20 pages to go with the James Wolcott book. I really haven't cared for it much--he's got a great moment to write about, but the writing is very fanciful in a way that for me just distracts from the story.

Codex Seraphinianus.pdf

this is probably the single craziest book i've ever encountered. we have the 1983 american edition, probably one of our most prized possessions. also managed to snag a copy of the Pulcinellopedia, and recently the Storie Naturali.

i sort of liked 1q84 in particular the slow and patient way everything happened and the descriptions of the 'simple' meals the characters would make for themselves, which never really sounded all that simple

I am just finishing Dubliners, along with Warren Beck's Substance, Vision, Art which is an extensive unpacking of the former. Next up: Bazin at Work which is a collection of some of the major essays and reviews of Andre Bazin.

ben marcus' "the moors" was kinda short n sweet. comes over like will self now he's ditched the language games / symbology of "notable american women" & "age of wire & string"

im reading the executioner's song by norman mailer and it's good but i have like 800 more pages to go and it has to go back to the library in 2 weeks

sort of reading Chabon's 'wonder boys' but i can't really get interested in the characters or the plot, so i keep putting it down and wandering off.

i sort of liked 1q84 in particular the slow and patient way everything happened and the descriptions of the 'simple' meals the characters would make for themselves, which never really sounded all that simple

my fav thing about murakami is the way he describes making food. always makes me hungry.

I'm reading the new Gaddis biography of George Kennan.

I'm giving Updike another try: Couples.

I heard Couples was nuts.

Wonder Boys got on my nerves something fierce; it's the only Chabon I've ever read, but it drove me nuts how he seemed to confuse idiosyncratic specificities with vivid characters and fleshed-out scenes. If you get what I mean...?

Chabon is a classic example of his-first-novel-was-the-best disease.

what are you saying Alfred? I own a copy of Kavalier & Clay and plan on getting around to it eventually. Are you saying it's not worth my time?

K&C has lots of marvelous bits but it's not a great novel.

he has a weird aphasia whenever something "happens", like an action scene or a gun being fired or a major event, at which his writing suddenly, temporarily crumbles, & it's hard to get a sense of what's even meant to be unfolding.

i think those novels - the yiddish policeman thing, wonder boys & k&c - are fun & readable tho

He's also got that MFA habit of flaunting his erudition. K&C boasts an uninteresting sideplot about Allied troops in the North Pole that betrays more than a few hours spent at the library.

that's not an MFA thing

see Melville's whale stuff in Moby-Dick. he didn't have an MFA.

also it was the South Pole

structurally Moby-Dick could support its "digressions" (I would argue they aren't).

Pynchon

the glove stuff in American Pastoral

they are digressions--to think they are not is to miss the point of what Melville does in the book

Melville's whale stuff ruled. Anyways, that's apples and oranges: some of that stuff in Moby Dick is intentionally wrong, and is supposed to characterize Ishmael the narrator as a well-read layman for whom Ahab's mania is gathering universal implications. Whereas I doubt Chabon would ever risk looking stupid like that.

Anyway my point is. . .writers with and without MFA's flaunt their smarts all the time, it's a "thing" that writers do.

I am reading Malone Dies

some of that stuff in Moby Dick is intentionally wrong, and is supposed to characterize Ishmael the narrator as a well-read layman for whom Ahab's mania is gathering universal implications.

otm

flexidisc, if I step away from what Melville achieves rhetorically in the novel with those "digressions," they still work as explanations of shipping and whaling culture.

yah but my point which you are not seeing is, he (Melville, not Ahab) is flaunting his erudition with them.

oops i mean Melville not Ishmael

and you have provided 0% evidence that MFAers do this sort of thing

i'm reading the second coming of steve jobs

Just finished

Joan Didion, Where I Was From
Charles Willeford, Miami Blues
L.P. Davies, Twilight Journey

I had a big Murakami binge recently, so I need a break before starting 1Q84, but I am looking forward to it -- glad to hear there are plenty of cooking and eating scenes.

and you have provided 0% evidence that MFAers do this sort of thing

and you have provided 0% evidence for taking a remark on a message board so seriously

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

still working on 1Q84, i the part where fuka-eri says:

"the poor gilyaks!"

...paragraph...

"the wonderful gilyaks!"

was very cute

i thought the part**

also possibly the first time fuka-eri exclaimed anything?

* 1Q84 spoiler alert *
in book 3 tengo misses the way her voice goes up at the end of a sentence when she asks a question, which kinda pisses on how we think she asks a question prior to that hitting that line

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