Whatcha readin?

What's on deck?

What's good?

I just finished The Geographer's Library, by Jon Fasman, last night. It was a nice diversion and I think it would appeal to people who, for example, liked The Shadow of the Wind. There's just the tiniest nod to Umberto Eco, but don't think it's as cerebral as Eco, it isn't.

Prior to that, I had re-read one of my favorite books of all time -- The Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers. It really startles me that on the fourth go-round I still find more in the book. So that made me think that I couldn't stand anything less filling, and I pulled out Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance, which I'm reading now after the diversion of The Geographer's Library. This is, I think, my fourth read of Three Farmers, as well.

Next up, I'm going to re-read The Last Samurai. It's been a year, the weather's getting colder and it reminds me of cocooning with it last year when my new mattress was delivered.

You?


~~~~~

Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart

-- WH Auden

Now my buddy gave me The Contortionist Handbook by Craig Clevenger

After that I think I'm gonna read Dermaphobia by him

possibly:
Blood Meridian- Cormac Mccartyh
Winter's Tale- I forgot the dudes name

something like that.

I really wanted to like his writing, but finding out that he was a speechwriter for the right soured me on him. :-(

I just hit a blank when I wrote that post...I've been on a search for different authors so I figure I'll give it a shot

That definetly is souring though

>Whatcha readin?

War And Peace. I'm 356 pages into it. I love it so far.

>
>What's on deck?

Lots of stuff. I got some Scott Fitzgerald here, I got some Dreiser, Zola, Wharton, Voltaire, Updike, and Hardy. . . all thanks to the new Half Price Books that opened recently in my city. And with Christmas coming. . . who knows what else.

>
>What's good?

5 random things that are good that I like:

1. Glenn Gould's 1955 album of Bach's Golberg Variations.
2. Tomatoes.
3. Paul Celan's poem "Death Fugue"
4. Jacques Brel
5. The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans album

features prominently in my favorite book of all time - The Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers.

I think if you love that music and that recording of that music, you can't help but love that book as well.


~~~~~

Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart

-- WH Auden

>features prominently in my favorite book of all time - The
>Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers.
>
>I think if you love that music and that recording of that
>music, you can't help but love that book as well.

Then I guess I better read it. I never have. I've heard about it of course. But as you know, "new" books aren't one of my specialties.

But I think I'll definitely check this one out.

I also got a copy of Roth's "The Human Stain" recently.

I'm trying to get familar with some "new" books. You know, "new" meaning written after the 1930s.

I want to read A Confederacy Of Dunces.

I know you recommended Cloud Atlas to me before. I still have that one in mind.

I feel like I should check out some Thomas Pynchon, but I'm not sure how much I'll like him.

and just shook my head.

Powers is always compared to Pynchon, but I've never been able to crack a Pynchon novel.

I think that's a great choice for Roth. That's definitely my favorite of his, and it's part of a trilogy, each book of which relates to a decade, and each of which is narrated by Zuckerman. American Pastoral is the 60s and liberal activism.... I Married A Communist is the 50s and McCarthyism. The Human Stain is the 90s and this neo-puritanism exemplified by the Clinton impeachment.

And you've probably seen me say on here that I'm one of those who doesn't love Confederacy of Dunces. I understand that it's genius, I know that people think it's hysterically funny, and I just found it vulgar and grim. But that's not to say that you shouldn't read it. You should. Everyone should at least try it, because the people who love it LOVE it. And it would be a shame not to have read it if it were to turn out that you were one of the people who love it.

>and just shook my head.
>
>Powers is always compared to Pynchon, but I've never been able
>to crack a Pynchon novel.
>

From what I read about them in reviews Pynchon's books sound an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut/William Burroughs type stuff. That's not really what I'm into these days. . . when I was in high school I read a lot of Burroughs though. I still appreciate his sense of humor (he once said of the American Flag "Soak it in heroin and I'll suck on it". . . or something like that).

>I think that's a great choice for Roth. That's definitely my
>favorite of his, and it's part of a trilogy, each book of
>which relates to a decade, and each of which is narrated by
>Zuckerman. American Pastoral is the 60s and liberal
>activism.... I Married A Communist is the 50s and McCarthyism.
> The Human Stain is the 90s and this neo-puritanism
>exemplified by the Clinton impeachment.

I was a big fan of Sabbath's Theater. That one really captured something about America in the 90s I thought.

>And you've probably seen me say on here that I'm one of those
>who doesn't love Confederacy of Dunces. I understand that
>it's genius, I know that people think it's hysterically funny,
>and I just found it vulgar and grim.

I see.

>But that's not to say
>that you shouldn't read it. You should. Everyone should at
>least try it, because the people who love it LOVE it. And it
>would be a shame not to have read it if it were to turn out
>that you were one of the people who love it.

Yeah. Who knows. . . maybe I'll like it, maybe I won't. I just feel like I ought to at least be familiar with it.

I also want to read William Kennedy's "Ironweed" and Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road". . . not that that one's especially new. But then it did come out in 1961 and not 1861.

>Whatcha readin?

The Shining. About 100 pages left. I'm pleased....it's quite different from the movie, so most of it is pretty fresh to me. And it contains more psychological content than plain "scares," which is what i was looking forward to reading. The fact that the characters are more fleshed out makes this 100x better than the movie. I've found that this story is more sad than it is scary.

>What's on deck?

Lunar Park

Easton Ellis really returns to form with this one. disturbing as hell though....


PEACE

>Whatcha readin?
and when the mood strikes:
The Sweet Forever - George Pelecanos
Fast Food Nation

>What's on deck?
Not sure, If I'm still in the mood for the writings of a crazy Irishman I may try and tackle Ulysses again.
Otherwise I may look for something good from this year, there's a few I've been meaning to try. I'll probably pick up a another David Mitchell soon, or perhaps read Cloud Atlas again.

>What's good?
eh, haven't been reading much.
I'm enjoying the third policeman quite a bit though.

>I just finished The Geographer's Library, by Jon Fasman, last
>night. It was a nice diversion and I think it would appeal to
>people who, for example, liked The Shadow of the Wind.
>There's just the tiniest nod to Umberto Eco, but don't think
>it's as cerebral as Eco, it isn't.

Sweet, I stumbled across that on Amazon one time and it caught my attention.
I'll have to look for that.

>Prior to that, I had re-read one of my favorite books of all
>time -- The Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers. It really
>startles me that on the fourth go-round I still find more in
>the book. So that made me think that I couldn't stand
>anything less filling, and I pulled out Three Farmers On Their
>Way To A Dance, which I'm reading now after the diversion of
>The Geographer's Library. This is, I think, my fourth read of
>Three Farmers, as well.

Oh shit, I never finished Time of Our Singing...okay that'll be next.
I should order a few Power's books so I have them around, the book stores around here are no help.

as soon as I finish finals.

I think I'm just going to go through Gaiman's novels now. I'm intrigued.

Stardust was just great. The imagery is fantastic and the story's fun.

I couldn't put it down, highly recommended

Shadow of the Wind for pops and Last Samurai for my mom were strokes of genius! If I haven't already I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks.

But now the pressure is on. Expectations have risen. The gift selection process has become quite difficult.

This Geographer's Library book seems like an inriguing option for my father. I have read some not so great reviews, but a fan of the work of both Dan Brown and Zafon should dig it, I suppose. I've already got him Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon, but I'm looking for something to go along with it.

As for moms, she's been devouring Murakami ever since I introduced her to David Mitchell last year. I don't know of anything in the same vein as those books that I think she'll like as much, so I think I might go in a different direction. You know anything about Colm Toibin's The Master? Do you have an opinion on Alice Munro?

The Geographer's Library would probably do your dad fine, esp. if he likes Dan Brown. I think it's not as deep or interesting or well told as Shadow of the Wind, but it may be the best you can do this year. I'll let the question percolate, though, because I might realize something else...

Does your mom like Oliver Sacks at all? Because Richard Powers's National Book Award winning novel The Echo Maker has as one of its central characters an Oliver Sacksian doctor. If she digs Mitchell and The Last Samurai, then it's likely she'll fall in love with my actual favorite writer of all time, Richard Powers. And The Echo Maker isn't a bad place to start with him.

I keep trying to read Toibin and I keep failing. I don't know why he's not holding my interest. Some Alice Munro I like, some I don't and I can't find a pattern, so I don't really follow her.

I don't remember whether your mom reads nonfiction, but one of the books that warmly resonated with me for a long time this year is Adam Gopnik's Through The Children's Gate. I like Gopnik and regularly read his articles and talk pieces in the New Yorker, but I hadn't quite realized what it would be like to read an entire collection of his essays in one gulp. Among other things, he writes about his children and their amusing foibles, the amusing foibles of Gopnik and his wife as they make decisions about their children, the illness and death of his best friend, what it means to live in Manhattan after the terrorist attacks of 2001, and his own psychoanalysis, in one of the gentlest yet most penetrating essays in the book.

This book is far more than the sum of its parts. I am probably susceptible to its charm because of my age and race, and I doubt that it would speak as clearly to much younger people or people who don't share some of the same cultural assumptions made in the book. On the other hand, although I love New York, I have never lived there. I'm not Jewish, and I have no children, so in those respects the book should not have been so touching to me. Yet it was. I think it's not for everyone, but I think that it is a wonderful addition for those to whom it speaks.

His earlier collection, Paris to the Moon, is also lovely, but it chornicles a different kind of era in the world and in his life. I read them out of sequence and it was no problem. If you think your mom & I have similar sensibilities, I would probably urge Through The Children's Gate on you.

I'll go back to percolating on dad now, lol. Oh, well, have you seen me rave about Jess Walter? Those are dadlike books, both The Zero and Citizen Vince. They're kind of highly intellectual (but not smarty pants in any way) spy/thriller or mafia/detective mystery (respectively) stories. My happiest finds of 2006 were Gopnik and Walter.


~~~~~

Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart

-- WH Auden

here's a link to a review in the New York Review of Books by that Canuck chick, Margaret Atwood.

I think we can safely say she likes it

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19712

Just finished '100 years of solitude' today--I enjoyed it immensely, but I think it really needs to be read in a compressed time frame. If you drag it out you don't get some of the references back to earlier points (and the names REALLY get confusing).

Also, read 'Planet of Slums' by Mike Davis. It is really just a collection or literature review of various accounts of the world's slums. Not too novel and filled a little too much with straight facts being thrown at the reader, but a nice read nonetheless.

I am really struggling to find my next novel, I'm thinking I might unearth some of the books in my library that were bought but never read, starting with Conrad's 'Nostromo'..

I'm starting "Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go" tonight. After that, I'll most likely move on to "Mountains Beyond Mountains."


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It's about the blanket.

kurly's Super-Duper Awesome DVD Collection:
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=kurlyswirl

Too much?

Let me say that I thought it was GREAT and I thought it was as intelligent or more intelligent, in a different way, than Pelecanos. Also Citizen Vince.

One new, one older:

Cross-X, by Joe Miller.

This is a GREAT story about inner city high school kids (Kansas City, MO) who go to a high school that has lost its accreditation and is classified as "academically deficient" but who nonetheless rank nationally in debate. How do they do it? Yeah, dedicated teacher. Yeah, personal attention. In some ways, it's a story that has been told frequently, but one of the things that makes this story stand out is that the writer, who is white, is writing as much about the process of realizing the assumptions that he has made about the kids, not even necessarily the most obviously racist ones like Inner City Black Kids Are Scary, but more like Debate Is A Meritocracy or Debate Is Color Blind or even the whole idea about how the white debate coach and the white journalist can help the kids overcome institutional and personal obstacles, and challenging the assumptions in the context of his relationship to the kids, to debate in general, to himself, to other adults in the debate world, etc. It is GREAT. The only real criticism I have is that he too frequently ends a chapter by saying, "Little did I know that just a few days later, my entire outlook on debate -- indeed, my entire outlook on life -- would change!" I mean, it's mostly true, but his entire outlook changes like five times in the book. And framing it as he does, it seems like he's going to switch opinions 180 degrees each time, when really it's more like uncovering layers.

Color Blind, by Ellis Cose

This is the first book of his that I've read, but it certainly won't be the last. He's just this really great, balanced, powerful writer who questions some assumptions about various identity politics, and even though he and I agree on most issues, he still entertains the arguments of the opposition in a way that allows the reader to see what part is and what part is not reasonable. And what logically follows and what does not, and what assumptions are made in the arguments. And in some cases to see that there is no clear answer, like the question of whether bi- or multi-racial people should have separate race classifications (such as for the US Census) and what that means in the context of, for example, the fact that in one poll the majority of people who checked "biracial" were white people who had a grandparent who was thought to be exotic (but who was not actually of a different classifiable race), or what it means in the context of the South African apartheid model of white, black and "colored," all of this juxtaposed with examples of people in inter-racial marriages, say one is Black and one is white, and the problems that arise for the kids when they are asked or expected to identify as a single race, that that means they must deny a significant part of themselves and one parent. Etc. I'm loving it. I keep putting it down and discussing the issues with the cats

You're always on point, so I welcome your recommendations:

Some of my favorite books are:

To Kill A Mockingbird

The Color Purple (Obviously)

Their Eyes Were Watching God

The Bluest Eye

Random Family

The Color Of Water

I just read "The Dirt" which was...um, well it kept my attention. I'm not a real fan of the group but it was a fast read.

Drown by Junot Diaz

The Kitchen God's Wife and The Joy Luck Club

There are many more, but you get the idea.

Okay, if you like Random Family, I think you'll also like American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare, by Jason DeParle. I also recommend David Shipler's The Working Poor. Both of these are way WAY better than Nickeled & Dimed (Ehrenreidt).

For the narrative lover in you, even though it's nonfiction, I really recommend Cross-X (which I mention above).

For a fictional narrative, someone just reminded me of Small Island by Andrea Levy. You might really like that one.

If you like Drown, you *might* like How We Are Hungry, by Dave Eggers.

Nick Hornby warned me off The Dirt, lol. I probably wouldn't have picked it up anyway, but his remarks on it sealed its fate in my world, lol.

>
>For a fictional narrative, someone just reminded me of Small
>Island by Andrea Levy. You might really like that one.
>
>If you like Drown, you *might* like How We Are Hungry, by Dave
>Eggers.

I just fell in love with To Kill... and Their Eyes... because I listened to them on cd and the sound of Sissy Spacek bringing Scout to life was pretty good.


I could've left "The Dirt" alone. How those nasty so and so's were able to get so many groupies on their jock is beyond me. For example they had Christmas in their house one year and the tree was decorated with shit, snot, and other bodily fluids and they had a party. WTF? they ran out of toilet paper and started smearing shit on the walls. Can you imagine the stench that must've permeated the walls of that house. *shudders* Anyway, I should've let that book go, but I finished it anyway. Ugh!

about What Is The What, which is Eggers's latest novel -- the true story of Valentino Achak Deng, a "Lost Boy" from Sudan, more on whom here: www.valentinoachakdeng.com

Currently I'm reading Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin which isn't bad, but certainly not great.

Next up I've got Blood Meridian by Cormac Mccarthy

He has all these books that are really hefty and look like they'd be interesting, but there's the right wing thing and then, yeah, he's just not so great...

I'm reading reviews about how great his writing and descrpitions are, but it really isn't that good.

His writing is pretty simple and his descriptions are bland.

I'm not the biggest McCarthy fan in the world, but it's more his subject matter that doesn't grab me exactly. Or something. But I don't argue with his writing.

I'm about halfway through. It deserves all of the praise it receives.

before that I read Words and Music by Paul Morley. So strange.

I was surprised by how much I liked this one, but it really kept my attention.

I was also surprised by how poorly it was edited. There were a number of grammatical errors, actually, only one repeated several times, and several typos. That just bothers me. A lot.

But the substance was well worth reading and very engaging.

called Over Tumbled Graves

This is much more of a traditional detective story than either The Zero or Citizen Vince, but still perfectly passable for the genre. I gather his detective, Caroline Mabry, appears in his other one, the only novel of his I have left to read and which I have on order now.

I had declined to read it all this time because I thought I simply don't want to read another word about al-Qaeda and them folks. It seems too much like schadenfreude. But Wright is a New Yorker staff writer and this book was nominated for the National Book Award, so I bought it and read it.

And I kind of wish I had listened to my instincts on this one. I think I'm just burned out on Osama and his movements up to and including the terrorist attacks in 2001. Tell me something new, eh?

I'm sure it's really really good for what it is.

Scapegoats of September 11th, by some lawyer professor guy, which combines legal criticism with some sociology of moral panic & scapegoating, and a short overview of hate crimes and state crimes in the last several years.

Dismantling Racism, by Joseph Brandt. This one was cited heavily in Cross-X, which I loved, and it's one I hadn't heard of before to the best of my knowledge. It's interesting in that it was written about 15 years ago "by white people for white people", identifying racism and its results as a white problem that has been courageously suffered and fought by Black people and effectively ignored by the vast majority of white people, and combatted wrongly by the rest. The writer is a minister and there's a ton of theological statements in it, like, we know two things about oppression -- that it is not right and that it is not what God intended. So that sometimes feels like the writer is really really not talking to me, but in other ways I think he's doing a great job of talking about the issues in a way that is direct but not necessarily confrontational, that demands response but has no room for justification for prior wrongs.

The Afterlife, by Donald Antrim. This is kind of a meandering memoir of his mother's life and death, and how her lifelong alcoholism and general peculiarity deeply affects him even now. It's well done, not whining or pitying but just a very straightforward account of the symptoms she manifests and their lingering stain.

about 100 pages in as of now. this one's been hard for me to put down once i start.

i need to get some shit straightened out though....so, the first chapter (the beginnings), is all true correct? But the rest of the book, even though Ellis says is all true, is a mixture of truth and fiction?

It switches genre about halfway through.

When you read Ellis, it's generally better not to even let your mind wonder what's "true" and what's not. Don't forget American Psycho. Remember how confused people were/are about whether Patrick Bateman was "really" doing all that killing or whether it was just in his mind. My answer to the question is always: First, it's a novel. No one is "really" killing anyone.

So that's a funny edge to be teetering on as you read, but and now I can't remember whether he claims Camden College in Lunar Park or not, but remember that Camden doesn't exist. Just assume that none of it is true and you'll do fine, lol.

like he claims it is...


PEACE

i really enjoyed it but i just wanted to get finished with it....


PEACE

Will be starting Cormac McCarthy's book. New Year's resolution is to read more. And by more I mean... well... to read.

Will be starting Cormac McCarthy's book. New Year's resolution is to read more. And by more I mean... well... to read.

Can't wait to read it after hearing such great things on this board!

looks like its gonna be incredible. after this i'm gonna read the first part of that MLK trilogy Parting the Waters: America in the King Years by Taylor Branch


PEACE

"Simon Morley traces the growing bond between word and image, explaining how artists have harnessed the resulting tension to form identities, challenge authority, and make sense of a world in constant change."

This book is saving my life both as a professor and as an artist who is writing a proposal to get into a PhD program.

I've been buying tons of books/DVDs by artists.

First novel. Really well written. I'm about half way through and I already know I can recommend this one. I bet a lot of people on these boards will find his experience and voice to be very real, very authentic. It's an interesting read particularly after finishing Ellis Cose's The Rage of a Privileged Class.