oh hey can we just make this the all-purpose sandbox book thread

i started reading “the toughest show on earth” at the bar last night and it is really poorly written (even with a ghost writer/helper dude).

um ital not quotes lol

that is great, ruby, oh! you married well.

the sandbox needed a book thread

except i haven’t really been reading lately

except these two verrrrry slowwwwwly

first one i started a loooooong time ago and i should be done soon, i just have to bring it back and check it out again because i ran out of renewals

second one is ok though author is a journalist and i can get tired of her style sometimes. i just like books about neo-nazis and stuff.

i am reading ‘after leaving mr. mackenzie’ by jean rhys.

and ‘friend of my youth’ by alice munro.

this is not a “book” so much but the lorrie moore story in this weeks nyer was really nice outside of some sort of iffy dialogue and almost made me cry on the subway today, although im feverish

i am taking a break from gravitys rainbow which is beginning to drag for me a little bit and i just finished bolanos nazi literature which was interesting and beautifully written but im not really sure how i felt about it (tho the last story was a++++) and am currently in the first half of aleksander hemons the lazarus project which is really great so far kind of a sebald + nabokov steez which is like catnip to me

i’m about 600 (out of 800) pages into yoshihiro tatsumi’s A Drifting Life. i’m not gonna finish it now though cuz i don’t want to take it on the train today. too heavy. it’s a graphic novel, autobiographical, about this dude’s life making manga. i’m surprised how much i like it, since it meanders so much. “...and then i edited shadow number 11...then i switched publishers...then i remembered how much i missed making full-length manga.” beautifully drawn though.

i juat finished jamaica kincaid’s A Small Place, her personal history of growing up in Antigua and hating the british. lotsa spite for such a thin book.

i wish lxy would post on this thread but i bet she won’t. she has phases where she reads a trashy mystery a day

oh lol i was just getting ready to post but maybe i shouldn’t now so you’re not proven wrong?

i should try lorrie moore again—i read ‘birds of america’ awhile ago, but it was right after i’d read alice munro’s ‘open secrets’ so i think it just couldn’t live up to that.

(estela that carver book is limited to a 1000 copies! also, it has really cool prints)

i’m on a a.m. homes kick right now and about to start ‘the safety of objects’, and also joan didion’s ‘democracy’.

ytth tries every 2nd day to get me to read a graphic novel but so far i’ve resisted.

i want to know what lxy is reading

this thread probably!

i never tried these books by people like lorrie moore. maybe i should but not right now. still stuck in the 19th c. as far as fiction goes :o

intrigued by trashy mysteries though, because i like to watch trashy crime shows on the tv

;)

estela how do feel about janet frame

saw ‘owls do cry’ in the bookstore and felt nostalgic so i bought it

cmon lx

yeahh lxy it’s ok to post about trashy novels

i willingly admit i have read and ENJOYED

the da vinci code and other d.brown books

TWILIGHT—not just one but the WHOLE trilogy!

altho ‘enjoy’ isn’t really the right word for twilight.... that shit is on some other level. i was totally conscious the whole time i was reading all 3 books that the writing was terrible, the storyline predictable, the characters boring and one-dimensional, yet i was totally compelled to read them

oh, in no way am i embarrassed about my reading choices.

i had a funny moment with a book an hour ago.  i must have read about it on ILB’s best of the 00’s and then read the back and it sounded good. Andre Aciman’s ‘Call me by Your Name.’. i started in on this summer love story in 1st person and it all seemed fine until the third page. that’s when i had my “wait, this is a dude talking about another dude” moment. whoops. no indication on the back cover, whatever i’d read about it hadn’t mentioned man-on-man love. ha, i guess i’ll give it to kyle. not that he finishes books, but he’ll get further than i will.

started SWAY: the irresistible pull of irrational behavior. it’s y’know nonfiction 

are you saying you dumped a book when you realized it was about gays

about gays FUCKING

new info about jergins life: started book about dudes doing it, couldnt finish

oh god that’s awful! xp

that must have been the irresistible pull of irrational behavior

^_^

kyle might finish that one. xp.

xp also: is it about the musical artist SWAY?

cuz i would be surprised if you read a book about that guy.

okay people, here it is:

Illicit, Moisés Naím

Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear << there’s your trashy mystery

Leaving Tangier, Tahar Ben Jelloun

The Day of the Owl, Leonard Sciascia

that’s the last 4 books i read.

it took me months to read illicit because i suck at reading non-fiction. so instead of reading, i was doing crossword puzzles.

the winspear i read in about 6 minutes, that’s how trashy it is. i chose it to remind myself that i can actually read more than 10 pages in a day. it’s true, i do <3 trashy mysteries. mainly british ones.

jergins gave me leaving tangier. he bought it but then didn’t read it, i guess on account of it is about the gay. (it’s also about a lot of other stuff, btw.)

the sciascia is reportedly the first fictional account of the sicilian mafia. written in 1961. even though it’s a murder mystery, it doesn’t count as trashy because of its historical significance.

that enough for now?

the day of the owl looks like i would like it as long as no gays are fucking

does mary higgins clark count as trashy mysteries? i used to be into her after a bunch of her books were at this beach condo we rented, but it’s been years.

no gays fucking, nor straights fucking either. at least not yet. only 12 pages left, so i doubt it’ll come this late in the game. xp.

dunno, t, i’ve never read her. i always had the idea that they were sort of supernatural phenomena based? maybe not correct?

the only one i remember well was about a girl with multiple personalities that i think was murdering people and also did a lot of weird sex things maybe?

haha and ai yi yi! i think i have been wise to avoid mary higgins clark!

oooh for good and not-that-trashy mysteries you should try maeve binchy

i read one by her a long time ago but i don’t remember it as a mystery, more like a romance?

oh no way, defintely psychological thriller styles

ok u are right i just checked wiki

i must be confusing here with someone else??

hmm, wonder who you’re thinking of

the writer i’m thinking had a lot of her thrillers turned into mini series and she’s british. goddamnit i can’t remember any of the titles!!

was ordered to come to this thread. I just finished Alice In Wonderland and am like 5 pages into Through the Looking Glass. I’ve been boring lately and have also been re-reading my favorite bits of Calvino’s Cosmicomics instead of seeking out trashy summer thrillers like I should be doing.

i started reading that janet frame book today but couldn’t get into so instead i’m gonna read another a.m. homes

oh lxy you might like muriel sparks??

xp: thank you, unr. i’m sorry i didn’t say please, i meant to but then i had to go make a drink.

thanks for the rec., ruby!

something about reading unreg’s post made me choke and then i spit wine everywhere which was not so classy but kinda trashy so maybe it fits.

anyway, i was gonna say i should read those this summer, unreg. why bc <3 them.

you’re drinking spitz!

hey estela guess what

chickenbutt

xpost

hahaha. er, sorry, I guess. is there a special type of wine you’re supposed to drink while posting on ilx? (need this for my records)

I <3 them as well but feel a little cheated for not having read Alice as a kid — like I’m missing a lot of its magic by reading it with an adult’s mind, stopping to figure out how x passage has made its way into pop culture, and not getting totally immersed in it the way I expected. but a giant, hookah-smoking caterpillar is AWESOME no matter how or when you read the book, so no great loss there. Cosmicomics is highly recommended etc.

The Tourist, Olen Steinhauser

is what i’m reading now. it’s about SPIES!

recently read

Roseanna, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

this is the first in the acclaimed Martin Beck series, which is apparently the measuring stick for all second half of the 20th century detective-genre fiction.

i had to make a book cover for it because there is a yucky picture on the front. but the story was good.

now reading

Inspector Imanishi Investigates, Seichō Matsumoto

Sjöwall and Wahlöö are referenced in the accolades. I love the description of the protagonist on the cover:

“Inspector Imanishi... Haiku poet, gardener, and the most dogged homicide detective on the Tokyo police force.”

i just started i was amelia earhart, which my friend left for me because she said it was quick and fun. it is quick but so far not fun and more ehhhhhh. i am not having good book luck!

i started the janet frame but didn’t like it so i put it down

i started some book by ishiguro but i didn’t like that either so i put it down too

i then started ‘democracy’ by joan didion but that wasn’t working out for me either

then i got halfway through steve erikson’s ‘our ecstatic days’ but it was weird and not that well written and i was only keeping on reading it because i felt bad about giving up on the last 3 books

now i’m REALLY reading ‘another you’ by ann beattie which is okay and also ‘los angeles’ by a.m. homes (who is currently my favourite writer) which is really good

I started the newest China Miéville The City & The City on the bus ride home tonight. Just the right tinge of strangeness and something-not-quite-rightness so far. The imaginative leaps in Perdido Street Station will be hard to top.

lxy i LOVE the beck novels. what do u think of the wallander books?

max i haven’t read any but, like the beck series, wallander has been on my list for a long time. i will go to the book store at lunch. my supply is running low and today is pay day!

you might want to consider the imanishi mentioned above. his detective work is rather more naive than beck’s, but there is a similarity of disposition, i guess, between the two.

i will! i got into beck & wallander last year while ari was studying sweden & we took a trip to stockholm.

i highly recommend the bbcs wallander series w/ kenneth branagh too.

and obviously the matthau laughing policeman movie even tho its set in SF not sweden

true confession: it turns out i have read a wallander. jergins reminded me. i never remember that detective’s name, just the author.

i liked how grimy it is, and i like the detective a lot. i found it to be a bit more gruesome than i normally like, though, so i haven’t read any more.

it was One Step Behind that i read.

i need to hook up my printer so i can take the paper to the library that will get me a library card but i’m using the printer box as a bedside table right now. choices.

max i am unrecommending that imanishi book. it’s annoying me.

Man in the Dark, Paul Auster

i am a HUGE fan of auster’s wife, siri hustvedt—just went through a phase of reading all her stuff

i loved the new york trilogy tho i havent read it in five or six years but i havent been able to get into anything else by dude

turns out i only read comic books anymore... the last wordsy book i read was “artists in trouble” by aram saroyan. it was pretty good—well written, but not too engrossing.

The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Muriel Spark (thanks, ruby!!)

AND

Lonely Planet, Australia !!!

XD

the ballad of peckham rye is one of my favourite books, i <3 muriel spark, she is so evil and funny.

AND

:) !!!

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett

a favorite

“I don’t like crooks, and even if I did, I wouldn’t like crooks that are stool-pigeons, and if i liked crooks that are stool-pigeons, I still wouldn’t like you.”

t.c. boyle’s ‘road to wellville’ (about kellogg and his sanitarium). this is the 3rd novel of his i’ve read—not totally loving his stuff, but they’re easy to digest. his short stories are waaaaaay better—really weird and unpredictable.

i really liked World’s End waaaay back when i read it—20 years ago? but i heard him read one of his short stories on npr after that which sounded horrible, and the reviews of his other novels made me think maybe he just had one good book in him

‘tooth and claw’ is amazing—it’s the first collection of his i read. there’s a story about a down-on-his-luck guy who ends up agreeing to buy this mountain lion (i think? or some other big cat) from some old guy at a bar, and what happens when he gets it home is just bizarre.

ytth told me he teaches/taught at USC and is apparently a really arrogant asshole.

yeah i saw him read at a bookstore in LA and hes a real pompous jackass

i saw dave eggers at a reading on saturday—for all the ilx hatred of him, he’s actually a very affable guy, not smug or anything. is it just some kind of weird jealousy thing that ppl hate him?

the reading was full of annoying old ppl who asked stupid questions at the end.

i think people mostly hate him due to the whole narcissism of small differences thing

Berlin, Pierre Frei

I’m at the chapter where gay guys inherit their shallow, passive, childlike nature from their oppressed housewife mothers. I’m half-convinced that Betty wasn’t a homophobe at all — she just really, really hated Tennessee Williams.

(er, great book in almost all other respects...)

that’s interesting, unreg! i always meant to read that but never got around to it. i’m curious about it.

i think i am secretly interested in outdated pseudopsychology too

the early history of dream interpretation fascinates me, probably because I did a project on it in lolinto to psych. like there was this 19th century French psychologist/philosopher who believed dreams were our way of expelling (peeing & pooping, in technical terms) wasteful images from the brain. and he thought people who didn’t dream went loony because their brains were overstuffed with useless memories that had no outlet for escape. I’d pay good money for a bathroom reader full of batshit psych theories, & I’m sure such a thing exists somewhere...

“lolintro to psych,” even

intro to the interpretation of dreams has some good overviews of previous dream theories.

i should get back on that book... i read it in bits and pieces.

yeah, I read the entire intro & some excerpts assigned by the class, but I’ve been meaning for a long time to get through the whole book on my own time. eh, summer probably isn’t the best time to read Important Books that Changed the Way We Live. I feel like I should be using this time to catch up on all the Matt Christopher books I didn’t get to read in elementary school.

i also read the entire intro and some excerpts and now i have the book and i didn’t read it. i also have the mass psychology of fascism by wilhelm reich and i have not read that either, but i know i would like it. i don’t read books when i own them! but i like that stuff. i don’t like science fiction but i like crazy theories.

somebody gave me sexual personae a few years ago and i haven’t read it bc i am scared but i tried to ask about it once on ile and it resulted in a huge clusterfuck.

thats because its a stupid ridiculous book written by a challops robot

yeah i’m not curious about that one at all

i’m trying to weed some books out of my collection including a bunch my mom got me for xmas that i never read so i’m reading a book about a lady who got divorced and built a cabin for herself in the adirondacks and just lived there and carried a gun and stuff. i don’t know why i never read it before but now i am thinking maybe i should do the same thing..............

the first step is finding a husband to ditch.

don’t remind me, estela

any old no good will do.

the death of a beekeeper by lars gustafsson

i’ve had it for like 6–7 years. so so swedish. good though.

now i am reading “as far as my feet will carry me.” it’s very riveting. it has everything i like including mining and long treks.

the extraordinary true story of one man’s escape from a siberian labor camp, btw