What Are You Reading Now? - July 2010

Time for a new thread.

I just started three books

1. I'm mainly reading The Quickening, an Early Reviewer and a first novel by Michelle Hoover. Michelle is on LT.
2. I'm also reading Field Work, a 1979 poetry collection by Seamus Heaney which so far focuses on the violence in Northern Ireland - powerful stuff. I'm doing this mostly as a poem-a-day.
3. Finally, I'm "sampling" The History of Korea by Woo-Keun Han, from 1970. Not sure I'll finish this, but so far it soothes a strange need for mindless, chronological, leave a lot to the imagination, history.

I plan to get back to Proust later this month after a family vacation. Next is volume 2: Within a Budding Grove.

I've finished and reviewed more Bonnie Jo Campbell, the author of the wonderful American Salvage, which Lois/avaland recommended to me: her novel, Q Road, and an earlier story collection, Women and Other Animals.

I will soon be starting one of projects for the summer, reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but I may read a few shorter, lighter books first. I'm also looking forward to reading Hans Fallada's Wolf among Wolves, but it may be too grim to read them together.

I finished Superstrings and Other Things last night. I hope to write a short review of it to warn off the innocent, but it will be general because I don't want to go back to it to document my complaints.

I don't know what I will read next although on another thread I was told to take up To Kill a Mockingbird immediately, and I am inclined to listen to that advice. We'll see.

Robert

I'm starting Helen Dunmore's The Siege for Orange July and Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom for an upcoming issue of Belletrista. I'm also moving, so all of my books are boxed. :(

I'm currently reading Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. Strange book, but well-written and interesting.

I'm reading two novels at the moment, The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis and Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor, and I'll start The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner this weekend or early next week.

I'm reading Skeleton Crew by Stephen King for my horror fix and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which drips with the typical dectective noir. It's a bit strange to read what was considered social normal for folks in 1939.

I decided to start The Kreutzer Sonata, not the Tolstoy on but the modern one by my very favorite Dutchwoman Margriet de Moor. So far, the translator is making me think this is a very beautifully written book.

Sadly, my TBR list is now empty. I am waiting for some books that I have ordered to arrive via USPS. Unfortunately, they might not be here for a few days because of the holiday. I would get a book at the library, but they are also closed until Tuesday.

>10 fuzzy_patters: I am verging on a panic attack at the very *idea* of an empty TBR! Of course, it won't happen to me unless I live to be 223yrs old and stop buying books today and never enter another library.

I'm over halfway in my Oates' tome, but I've also started The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (Must search and see what else he has written). I heard him on NPR (oh, must find the link) and judging from the first few chapters, his interview was an oversimplification of his treatise (wait! I must google this word to see if it is fitting). I think you get the idea...

I opened up The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio this morning.

I finished The Quickening yesterday. I peaked at the reviews, and they very positive, which puts me in the minority.

>12 avaland:, Lois, I will be interested to hear what you think of Nicholas Carr's book. I believe it was previously excerpted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", which was an interesting article, but I am curious to see if it holds up as a book-length work.

I'm about to start Property by Valerie Martin for Orange July.

Have been on a François Mauriac kick of late. Just finished his Viper's Tangle and am reading his Thérèse interlarded with generous slices of Q and Lucia and Mapp (the last being a reread of so many times I have lost count).

>10 fuzzy_patters:,
I second >11 richardderus:'s sentiments. Pardon me while I go medicate myself.

>12 avaland:: I'll also be interested to hear what you might have to say about The Shallows. I added that book to my wishlist after reading what was probably the same article that fannyprice saw, but I'm not at all certain whether I'm likely to find it irritating or fascinating or both.

Oh, and I am currently reading The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby, who seems likely to agree that Google is making us stupid, and who may also be both irritating and interesting.

>10 fuzzy_patters: An empty TBR shelf? That's so hard to imagine, and a horrible thought. My niece and I counted my TBR books last week (paper and Kindle): 143. I've added a few more BookMooch arrivals since then. Heaven.

>14 fannyprice:, 17 I heard him in interview on NPR—or at least a portion of it—and thinking back on it now, it seemed a bit oversimplified. The book is no long, but there seems to be more to it. The argument or thesis, if you will, is that the internet, as with every other major technology, is rewiring our brains (actually, our brains are adapting), and that adaptation comes with a price. The Atlantic title is, of course, intentionally meant to be provocative (just like their recent "The End of Men" title); "stupid" is not a word I've seen anywhere in the book yet.

I've been appalled lately at how many books I have that I haven't yet read. Thanks for reminding me that there are worse fates. Stuck without a book in the house!

I've finished and reviewed a satisfying novella of alternate history, David Moles's Seven Cities of Gold.

As a Buddhist Japanese aid worker is deployed into war-torn Antilia, up the mighty Acuamagna, she confronts bitter sectarian warfare between the savage Christians and the Muslim Caliphate of Andalusia. The nuclear bomb that finished destroying Espirito Santo, previously hit by a typhoon of unprecedented scale, seriously impedes her search for a lasting peace among the barbaric religious wars flaring all over Antilia.

Antilia = America; Acuamagna = Mississippi; Espirito Santo = New Orleans. One turn to the left instead of the right, in this case an exodus of Christian bishops from Oporto, Portugal, into the unknown instead of up into France, and the horrific Congolese wars happen on the banks of the Mississippi.

Good stuff! I'd recommend trying it out. http://www.store.pspublishing.co.uk/acatalog/current_catalog.html/ will take you there. A worthwhile investment.

The Caine Prize...called "the African Booker"...was announced, and the winner was Olufemi Terry for the story "Stickfighting Days", which is posted on the Caine Prize site (see link). It's only ten pages and is well worth reading!

Richard, thanks for posting.

I've got three on the go. The Changing Experience of Women has been hanging around for ages, I'm about to finish Stranger in the House: Women's Stories of Men Returning from the Second World War and I'm reading a story or two each day from The Collected Short Stories of Jean Rhys.

Need to start La isla bajo el mar by Isabel Allende so that I can review it for Belletrista's next issue. But trying to do that while figuring out where I'll be at the end of the month when I no longer have an apartment is proving difficult.

Still reading Of Mice and Men with my ESL student.
And still reading La confusion des sentiments on the patio at work during lunch although it's been raining so I haven't been able to do that.

Kraken - a defn. change of pace of Mieville, which I am enjoying. Very much in the mode (so far) of Charles Stross' humorous Chthulu + spy SF series. If Mieville hadn't written his very fine children's book, Un lon dun I'd have been even more surprised, as Mieville has taken many turns..but none have included intentional humor. I doubt it will reward multiple rereadings as does the city and the city but he and his readers can benefit from something light and amusing.

As it was an ARC passed on to me, i'll be happy to pass it on to someone else when i'm done.

>26 bobmcconnaughey:: Do you recommend that series of Stross'? I've been vaguely tempted by it, just because the basic concept sounds like so much fun. But the two of Stross' books that I've read -- Accelerando and Singularity Sky -- despite seeming like exactly the sort of thing I should enjoy, left me cold. I'd pretty much decided he just wasn't for me, but I'm wondering whether that series might be different enough to be worth a shot.

And I've finished with Susan Jacoby, and am now on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, which I somehow managed to live this long without reading.

I wasn't wild about either Singularity Sky or Accelerando - on the other hand both the atrocity archives and the jennifer morgue were great fun. I might help to know a little bit about computer OS systems but hardly necessary.

Kraken is very much a neatly done take off on Neil Gaiman (whom i like a great deal), esp. Neverwhere.

Thanks. Maybe I'll give it a try, then.

I am definitely interested in reading Kraken, but I need to catch up with the Miéville novels still sitting unread on my shelves first.

i tried to get family and friends to read the first couple of Mielville's books - King Rat, Perdido Street Station, and while i had liked them everyone else found the emphasis on the grotesque a bit excessive. While set in the same general world as Perdido, the Iron Council was not nearly as "weirdly fantastic" as the prior two. And then with Un Lun Don, the city and the city and Kraken he seems to have deliberately and very successfully, left the literary corner he seemed in danger of writing himself into.

Also just finished a couple of v. good YA books: raven summer - short, sharp and with a very well hidden reveal. Two young orphans in England, one a refugee from the civil war in Liberia, the other an English girl who family has died, and a Liam, a lad their own age who becomes meets them when a foundling he and a friend discover in small town Britain gets put into the same fostering family as the aforementioned orphans. Quite violent and quite vicious in parts. 3.5 stars
- In contrast to the above: Margaret Mahy's The Magician of Hoad. Classic fantasy in a deliberately paced, very well written mode. The well worn tropes - young boy w/ talents he doesn't understand is ripped from his family and placed in the obligatory service to the king/kingdom. Unwanted political marriages intended; rivalry between the sibling heirs to the throne..The possibility for a lengthy, cliched book are set up front. But Mahy is way too good a writer to let the set up frame her book. Instead she produces a coming of age story (for several of the characters) that is both true to genre and quite original. 4 stars - though i will confess to liking her relatively recent "realistic" novels even more..the catalog of the universe and Memory in particular.

I finished and reviewed a sentimental favorite comedy that held up really well: Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis, in my thread...post #54.

It's fifty-five years old this year, and doesn't look a day over...a day! Of course, now it's an historical novel. I think that would make the late Mr. Dennis feel suicidal, but it's still a barrel of laughs.

I've started The Rehearsal, which has a very mannered, unrealistic use of dialogue. It's sucking me into its odd world.

>32 richardderus:,

Your review of Auntie Mame brought on a fit of nostalgia. I have not read this book since I was a wee tot - around twelve I think. I dropped all my other reading, borrowed a copy from the wicked but seductive Baron von Kindle and commenced to read. Auntie Mame has lost none of its charm.

>33 RidgewayGirl: I loved The Rehearsal -- particularly the play within a play form.

In July, I seem to be struggling to read what other people have recommended. I have a perverse reaction to 'you must read this' that generally comes out as 'oh yeah, says who?' only more polite. But I did already read The Queen's Head, an indifferently written Elizabethan mystery the value of which is the detailed view of the theater in Tudor times. Also Hungry Hearts, a very well-written novel of the Yiddish theater in New York, complete with dybbuk.

Now I need to tackle The Help, which has been so highly recommended by various friends that I can't ignore it any longer.

And then there are the perennial 'currently reading' books that linger, because I'm reading them with others or rereading them constantly or just can't push myself through the last bits.

Having nothing on the TBR is never a problem around here. Fitting the furniture in between the bookshelves - now that's a problem!

I seem to be wandering aimlessly from book to book. I am reading several books that are good, but can focus on none. I need something spectacular. Several books loom on the horizon, but they have not yet been released for publication. The earliest comes in August. Ack, ack.

Mary - I'm loving The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio...not that you want a recommendation, and I probably should actually finish it before I recommend it anyway, but just an idea. The Baron can't help you, unfortunately.

I look forward to your review of The Prospector, Dan. I hope to get to it and Désert later this year.

I just finished reading my first book for Orange July, The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini, the winner of this year's Orange Award for New Fiction, which was excellent. I'm getting ready to start The Vagrants by Yiyun Li, and I'm also reading Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America by Lisa Gray-Garcia.

>37 dchaikin:,

Damn. I have four of Le Clézio's books, two of which I have read, but not The Prospector.

I'm reading The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison. I'm about 130 pages in. So far it's an enjoyable read as the plot has been carefully thought out and the flashbacks in time have been seamless. However the story on the whole is lacking warmth and so it isn't making me race to the end.

>Urania - which books are you waiting tyo be released? I'm curious :)

In a burst of reading during a recent holiday with my Dad, I finished four books I'd had on the go for a while - see recent posts on my thread for details - and this has cleared the decks for me to read:

* The Word Book by Kanai Meiko, which I'm reviewing for Belletrista.
* The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which I've decided to re-read as my 'tome' for the winter.
* The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker - she's an author who's been recommended to me several times, and this looks a lighter-reading counterpoint to the above.
* The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe, which my book group is reading for our next meeting.

All that won't leave me a great deal of time for poetry, but nevertheless: I've read some fine recent NZ poetry collections of late, but I feel the need to dip back into the rest of the world, and into some truly great 20th-century poetry, so I'm planning another perilous descent into the work of the incomparable Paul Celan.

Finished the classic dective noir novel The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which for the most was a good read just got caught up in to many twists and turns to be plausible.

Only a hunder or so pages from finishing the fantastically disturbing short stories of Stephen King's Skeleton Crew.

Decided to start a non-fiction book for a change of pace and picked up this afternoon Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach, I'm already half way through it. Roach does a great job relying the information in fun, humorous yet informative manner. I'm going to have to read other works Stiff and Spook

>42 stretch:: I strongly recommend Stiff. I originally wasn't at all sure whether to read it, for fear of being too squicked out by the subject matter, but I'm really glad I did. Spook was pretty good, too. And I'm really looking forward to her new book, Packing for Mars, which should be showing up on my doorstep any day now, courtesy of early reviewers, a thought that makes me very happy.

(As for myself, I am now reading The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sara Lyall, a book about which I am having definite mixed feelings.)

I am still listlessly meandering through several books in search of the book. In the meantime, I fell into the sloughish swamp of despair otherwise known as YA fiction and finished a rather interesting book on biomedical ethics: The Adoration of Jenna Fox. I highly recommend it to those who dare brave the upturned noses of those who read real literature.

Semi-confined to easy chair and couch after knee replacement surgery two weeks ago, I've read My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstoy, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns and Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen -- a rather odd assortment -- comments on most on my thread. I've started A Dog with No Tail by Hamdi Abu Golayyel, an LTER, and am trying to decide between The Blue Manuscript by Sahiha Khemir and The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver as the next serious read.

>46 janeajones:, I was going to say 'lucky for you being able to spend so much time reading' but then I realised that might sound like I'm jealous of your knee replacement surgery, which wasn't quite what I meant!

I've just started The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende and am really enjoying it. I have to say that LT recommendations and being asked to review South American books for Belletrista is showing the short-sightedness of my previous avoidance of books with even the slightest touch of magical realism.

Currently reading Charles Baudelaire Les fleurs du mal, Petits poemes en prose, Les paradis artificiels translated by Arthur Symons.
Also finishing Red-Dirt Marijuana by Terry Southern.

Have been at a convention for the last four days, so lots of author smoozing, little reading. Author Judith Berman and I effused together over A Bloodsmoor Romance, which I am still reading. I also still reading The Shallows, and at the convention I started a small collection of short fiction called "Bedtime Stories", which was apparently given out free at the NH hotel chain. It contains five translated stories by Spanish authors or, I should say, author who write in Spanish as one is Mexican. What a cool idea that a hotel would do such a thing!

Decided to start Le Rouge et le Noir since I've been eyeing it as a book to read over the summer for a year now and I really want to read something with no obligations attached.

I will still be reading my other reads though, of course.

Well, I couldn't resist...I read Around the World with Auntie Mame because, well, why the hell not. It's a delight even 52 years later. I've reviewed it in my thread...post #62.

We just got back from a couple days in New York, tough with a 3-yr-old. My daughter, 5, was fine (we're actually still out of town, outside Philadelphia for the night). Last night I finished The Prospector, which I loved the whole way through. It just kind of took me away with it. I couldn't reach any of the interesting book stores in NYC, but, for the train ride to Philly I picked up a copy of Let the Great World Spin by Column McCann - it seemed appropriate.

catching up
#38 kidzdoc - eventually I'll post a something like a review, but I have several other books I also need to post about. Anyway, recommended.
#39 Mary - This was my first by Le Clézio. I'll have to find more. Good luck on the search.

#52: I'm glad to hear that you liked The Prospector. I have nearly all of Le Clézio's books that have been translated into English, but I've only read two so far, Onitsha and The Round and Cold Hard Facts, which were both very good. I really need to get to some of these books, but I doubt I'll have time to read any before fall.

Will you get a chance to visit Philadelphia? There are a couple of good museums for kids in Center City, and the Philadelphia Zoo is fantastic (and I think it's the oldest zoo in the United States). I'll be there next week, as I'll visit my parents in a suburb north of the city.

I read The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini (2010 Orange Award for New Fiction) and The Vagrants by Yiyun Li over the weekend; both were very good. Today I'll start The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

Desperate in Tennessee

I am still having this problem. I meander through books. All of them are good, but none is absolutely engrossing me.

Help me Club Read. You are my only hope.

It's that cursed Kindle. Pick up a paperback copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and read or reread it with Kidzdoc.

Robert

#54 kd - we actually started in Philly, where I have family, but didn't make it into town this time (we did make Valley Green, one of my favorite places here). Today we're just passing through to catch a flight tomorrow. I haven't been to the zoo there yet, I'll keep that in mind for the future. We come here about once a year.

>56 Mr.Durick:

But Mr.Durick, please sir, I have read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter more times than I can count. I love it. I weep when I read it. I have read everything Carson McCullers ever wrote. I have read biographies about Carson McCullers. I have read scholarly articles about CM. I have taught The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I have a paperback copy in my library. But . . . I'm not in the mood for that tonight. I want the perfect book that I haven't read yet.

Have you written a scholarly article about The Heart is a Lonely Hunter?

Robert

Alas, Mr. Durick. I am one of those scholars of little output. I opted for a teaching college rather than a research institution. I adore teaching and reading both primary and secondary documents, but the idea of writing for anyone other than small groups of friends or internet acquaintances bores me to tears. Or put another way, perhaps the preceding sentences are merely a grandiose way of saying I am lazy.

Vis à vis The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I have not done a recent review of the scholarly literature, but I doubt if I have anything new or original to say . . . so I won't say it :-)

Sincerely yours,
The Lapsed Academic

In the meantime, I really really need a good book to read.

>60 urania1: The Imperfectionists is a really really good book. Have you read it?

>61 richardderus:,

No I have not read The Imperfectionists. It's one of those books that I cannot decide whether to read or not. Perhaps I should just take the plunge. Do you think it's on Kindle?

Have you finished The Millenium Trilogy? The latter two books of that were the last books that really sucked me in, despite how much I liked other books since.

Lisbeth Salander is a super cool heroine, too.

Robert

urania dear -- it's dreadfully difficult to think of anything to suggest to someone as widely-read as you are -- I get at least half of my suggestions of new things to read from YOU. But in the risk of going out on a limb....

How about Matthiessen's Shadow Country, or in a totally different vein, Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red?

I read a Matthiessen novel some time ago. I forget which one. Having read it, I considered my duty to Matthiessen was done. Besides jane, have you seen the cover blurb: gripping, shocking, tour de force? Those words are usually highbrow substitutes for mediocrity. If you can persuade me otherwise, I may reconsider. I did order the Anne Carson book. But . . . it will probably arrive while I am visiting me sainted Dad, sweltering in his house because he is allergic to air conditioning, and thinking the sorts of undaughterly shocking thoughts that loving but soggy and hot daughters think.

P.S. I will need several cooling sorts of books to get me through my airconditionless state next week. If you do not hear from me after next Wednesday, assume the worst and hold an LT memorial service for me.

Yes, The Imperfectionists is a Kindle title. I'd say it's worth your time. I found a lot of it movingly amusing, and that's a hard thing to pull off with any success.

Urania, I noticed you added The Green Face by Meyrink. If you've already read it, the complete Meyrink is required reading for any literati, including The Opal.

>66 urania1: OOO hey, I think I have a solution re: cooling books: The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys. It's a series of vignettes about the times the mighty Thames has frozen throughout recorded history. Makes it a good vacation read...esay-to-finish pieces always make better vacation reading for me, anyway.

Plus...it's illustrated!

>69 richardderus:,

I have read it and deaccessioned it.

>68 tros: I started The Green Face last night, but got scared at location 37-42 when "a gigantic Zulu with a dark curly beard, dressed only in a check raincoat and a red ring around his neck," entered the shop. I think I would have felt more comforted had he been wearing a Czech raincoat, but he was not. So I dove under the sofa and slept off my terror. Beloved and the Welsh terrorists, who are made of sterner stuff, remained abovefloor. The goats were in the barn so noticed nothing untoward. Elderberry the cat was practicing invisibility at the time, so he had nothing about which to worry.

My all-time favorite cold book is Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale -- guaranteed to give a chill to any swelter. My favorite cold fairytale -- "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen.

re: Matthiessen -- I must admit I've only read his Watson trilogy of which Shadow Country is the revised compilation. It's obsessive and flawed, but probably one of the three best novels about Florida (the others being, of course, Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Yearling). As much as it's about the fragility of the environment of the Thousand Islands and the Everglades, it's also about the American character as embodied in Edgar Watson. He's a creature formed by his ancestral Scots-Irish tribalism, by Southern pride and racism, by American individualism and capitalist ambition, and by a desperate need for love and respect -- or perhaps, more significantly, for respect and love.

As to gripping -- I had to start Killing Mister Watson three times before I got into it -- then I couldn't put it down. Shocking? -- only for those who have their heads buried in the sand. Maybe a tour de force -- I found it one.

But it ain't a novel to cool you off in a sweltering environment. It's full of heat and mosquitoes and humidity and hurricanes.

urania1 - I'm still willing to nudge you towards The Prospector. pm me your address and I'll send you my copy (which came from Andrew - Polutropos).

fine print - I accept no blame for any underwhelmingness it may have towards your situation. :)

Well, I think Andrew - Polutropos would agree (right, Andy?) The Engineer of Human Souls and The Miracle Game are also required reading. Skvorecky is a genius.
Or, if we're off into the Czechs, Ivan Klima,
Love and Garbage, etc.

>71 janeajones:,

"The Snow Queen" is one of my favorite fairy tales. Do you know if anyone has done a good, novel-length reworking of the story?

I wish Robin McKinley would take a shot at this story, but she seems to have moved away from fairy tales of late.

>74 urania1:: It's been a while since I read it, but I seem to remember thinking that Joan Vinge's science fiction version (titled, imaginatively enough, The Snow Queen) was pretty good.

>75 bragan: bragan,

I read Vinge's book years ago. It plays a bit on the theme of The Snow Queen . . . but Vinge had to spoil it by turning it into a series. If she had reshaped the book as a complete work instead of spinning it off into a series, I think it would have been better. I read a few chapters of the second book, skipped to the end, and decided it wasn't worth the time. IMO, series are the bane of many a good book. YA, sci-fi, and fantasy writers should get off this series kick.

I admit, I never did get around to reading the second book. I'm sorry to hear it's that disappointing.

I don't have anything against series in principle, myself, but it certainly is the case that a lot of good ideas get stretched out much, much too far. And I do think there is a little too much pressure to turn everything into a series. Some ideas work well as the basis for a series, and some really aren't suited to it.

>77 bragan:

Thanks bragan,

You expressed my sentiments better than I did myself. For that matter, all those Victorian tomes were written in installments and then collected into one book - not one as long as these tomes would be if put into one book, but the idea is similar.

The search for the really good book continues. I have finished two merely for the pleasure of giving them the really low marks they deserve. I am distraught.

79> Your ratings don't seem to be showing up on your profile page. Are you hiding them somewhere?? What books should we avoid, dear urania?

I've finished Bonk, which I thought was pretty darn good.

Now I've started The Historian, which happily clocks in over 600 pages. I think this qualifies as a tome does it not?

Hope to finsih the last two/three stories of Skeleton Crew tomorrow so I can devote my fullest ADD attention to the The Historian.

First, a hearty thank you to those of you who raved about The Rehearsal. It's odd use of language, which was so perfect in the end, was off-putting at the beginning. I loved it.

I was at the beach last week and read suitable books for that location. Nothing with raised gold lettering on the cover, but close, reading Dogtown, about a well-run animal sanctuary, Lost at Sea, about the dangerous world of commercial fishing in the Bering Sea, Daddy-Long-Legs, the classic children's book and Still Midnight, the latest Tartan Noir by Denise Mina.

Currently, I'm finishing up Teatime for the Traditionally Built and will then be ready for more challenging fare. Or maybe not yet--I've just received my copy of Tana French's newest.

#79, I have been reading about your desperate search and want to suggest a couple of books that I've enjoyed:

The Wake by Margo Glantz - no touchstones apparently but this is my review on Belletrista http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue5/anth_12.php (ETA - I don't think this will have been Kindle-ized)

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

I hope you find what you're looking for!

I'm just about to start Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. I hope it lives up to the high expectations I now have of her writing.

I finished The Very Thought of you and published a review.

I actually read most of this book last Sunday night after my boyfriend had a motorcycle accident and I was waiting for news trying not to panic!

He's fine and after a few days in hospital has come home in a cast and on crutches.

I'm now finishing up According to Queeney. I will be reading more by Beryl Bainbridge in the future!

Next up will be American Rust by Philipp Meyer.

I am reading my book that must not be named for avaland's August adventure. Thus far it is sheer misery. I am still looking for the really good book that will suit my current contrary mood.

Thanks for the recommendation charbutton. I have read the Lively and the Wharton books. I am looking for immediate gratification right now, so Kindle/PG mobi/any other online book site is required.

managing to misplace books in the midst of reading them. Almost done with the windup girl - once i find it, it'll be a matter of a half hour to finish. I did, at least, find the Selected works of TS Spivet which might be too precious for many, but being a geographer, if not a cartographer, is very appealing to me. The protagonist maps anything and everything. And I very much wanted, decades ago, to create two "atlases:" 1. a set of maps detailing the cartography of soap operas (could geography make me rich????)*; 2. geographies of paradises. So TS's cartography of his life is very appealing to me.

*my lack of tv viewing was to prove fatal to my get rich quick plan.

So what happened to the Atlas of Paradises?

Robert

I've returned to Property for Orange July. After a wretchedly grim beginning, the story becomes readable.

edited because grammar matters.

>86 bobmcconnaughey: bob,

If you have not read the short Borges piece on cartography, I will reprint it in its entirety below:

"Of Exactitude in Science"

...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.

From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda

I have finished my tome read and, while I will eventually put some comments on my read, I have to say that JCO's A Bloodsmoor Romance is a spectacular bit of fun. I read the last 200 pages in one sitting and stayed up late to do so.

I'm still reading The Shallows from time to time and also reading Margarita Karapanou's Rien Ne Va Plus which I'm finding oddly interesting.

>86 bobmcconnaughey: bob, does your lack of tv viewing extend back into childhood? These aren't maps, but (similar to your get-rich idea) Mark Bennett's TV Sets has blueprints of the homes in TV series from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Fun to browse.

I'm toward the ends of two good reads: The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell (fiction; an aging Pole deals with the fall of Eastern-bloc communism; the WWII aspects focus on Stalin rather than Hitler); and The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (nonfiction; entertaining info about the history of elements/the periodic table and how they've affected human history).

>Still suffering from the book blahs. Wallowing in self pity, science fiction, YA fiction, and a blind (and miserable) adventure read. I also have read the first thirty pages of The Road. I am willing to give it thirty pages more. If the second thirty pages are like the first thirty pages, I will not inflict this book on some other, poor unsuspecting reading. I will burn it. Bahaha.

I'm reading The Day the Falls Stood Still, which is set in Niagara Falls in 1915. I picked it up because I had a copy and because the author is over on author chats this week. I wasn't expecting much, but I am riveted. It's a melodrama with whiskey-soaked ruin, desperate suicide and a romance across class boundaries. Just the book for a day with the thermometer hitting 96.

#93 Mary - I'm entertained by your response to The Road. If you quit, still consider reading my favorite little section out of context, which I posted 2 years ago: http://www.librarything.com/topic/41119&work=1222607#794795

Deep medicine is Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Years With Pogo by Walt Kelly. If you don't have it, the search could also help. You must, however, read it in paper.

Robert

#91 - we DID get a tv ~ 1961/62 - just in time for me to be terrified by the Cuban missile crisis.
We weren't a big tv family though, unlike Patty's. TV shows from kidhood
1. Batman
2. Get smart
3. Laugh in
4. That was the week that was
5. The wild wild west.
Swimming, tennis, Olympics
Julia Child as background noise.

When my folks were out i'd look for pop/rock groups on Ed Sullivan etc. I remember catching the Stones doing Paint it Black one evening. The TV (and stereo) were in the largest room in our house - the kitchen, dining room, rec room.

I did watch a good bit more when i was at friends' houses.

93 - I'm reading The Road right now and can guarantee you that the next 30 pages (in fact the next 200) are just like the first 30. My sister brought it on her bus ride up here a couple weeks ago and thrust it upon me because she could not bear to keep it in her possession. I've been slogging through it just so I can join her in her disregard.

Let's see, I've been through several other things on vacation - The Sound and the Fury, The Stranger, The Mists of Avalon. Currently I'm also reading an ER book Peaceful Places: New York City and The Portable Greek Historians.

I'm interested in your take on The Sound and the Fury, Jane. I started reading it on the plane yesterday, but I'm putting it aside for the moment, as I was very confused (I did enjoy the characters and the narrative, though).

found and finished two very different books - the aforementioned selected works of ts spivet and the windup girl. The windup girl is quite an intricate bit of world and plot construction set in Thailand in a recognizable but defn. post oil economy future.

Thailand has prospered, relatively speaking, thanks to genetic riches retained in a extensive seedbank, brutal enforcement of environmental regulations as well as a strict isolationist policy. Now agri-business corps want access to Thailand's wealth and important dept of Trade wants to open Thailand up.
The overarching themes of genmod, plant and animal, corporatism, ecological disaster are seen through a multiplicity of viewpoints - which, in a sense - forces a global vision upon the book. There are Thai protagonists - officers in the environmental enforcement branch. Chinese refugees from yet another pogrom in Malaya, one of whom is the acting manager of a plant trying to develop an enhanced "spring" system for storing energy. Anderson, his boss, providing a "corporate" vision. And Emiko, the titular Windup Girl - an abandoned product of Japanese gentech; both enhanced and crippled by design, surviving as a sex toy. All the POVs are presented fairly and, if not appealingly, at least believably as the characters themselves become increasingly real as the stories progress.

The grimmer stories of Sean McMullen - esp. his recent story "The Precedent" in the most recent SF&F are not dissimilar. But McMullen generally includes scenes that lighten the atmosphere within his novels while the windup girl is less forgiving of the reader.

I'm deep into The Shallows and it's making me a bit depressed. I'm starting to think that I'm in some strange SF story where my brain is being rewired by my internet use and screen time... at what price! at what price!

>102 avaland: Lois, are you becoming Paul Muad'dib of Dune Messiah? "Oh the price! The terrible price!" as he contemplated becoming the God-Emperor. I can't remember when I've laughed so hard at an SF classic.

The Shallows strikes me as yet more generational angst. He's my age, so sees the world through an adult adopter's eyes. Internet usage isn't making people any less able to think...it's making them more able to fake it. Not like that's new. Look at Vice President Biden's ancient plagiarism scandal. Or Teddy Kennedy's even older one.

The sky stubbornly refuses to fall.

I see to my surprise I haven't posted here in a while. Since I last did, I've read and reviewed Wolf among Wolves by Hans Fallada, and I am now reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and, as my subway read, Crisis Economics by Nouriel Roubini. I'm going to plug away at these depressing books at least over the weekend, and then am going to find something more entertaining for a break.

>103 richardderus: Is that the 3rd book, Richard? If so, I never got through it - that's where Dune ended for me.

>103 richardderus: re: The Shallows: Well, actually, he's not really trying to say the sky is falling; there's a certain amount of fatalism behind his text - in that our world is becoming digitized, like it or not. And yes, some of it is generational because we (I think I'm a few years older than the author) are the generation who straddles both eras; we remember a slower, deeper time. The digitized now is not necessarily better or worse, but different. I have been thinking about all this stuff a lot and what it means to me personally—even prior to this book's appearance.

>105 avaland: No, that was the second Dune novel...I never finished it, it was so awful.

I think the digitized now is pretty neato-keeno, myownself, and I know my own parents were bemoaning my inability to concentrate because of the hour of TV they let me watch every night in 1965. THEIR parents said radio made them into jazz junkies interested in dancin' the night away instead of the Bible or whatever. It was always bright and sunshiney once upon a time.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least if someone, ten years after Gutenberg printed the first Bible, bewailed the end of good, old-fashioned manuscript Bibles.

I have rejected The Road.

>96 dchaikin:,

I checked your link. Read out of context, the quotation was hilarious. The Eureka Light went off above my head. McCarthy is writing bad Hemingway prose. Even on his best day, old Ernest was not my idea of an author about whom to write home. As an undergraduate, I had to read The Sun Also Rises for so many different classes that I practically had the book memorized. I will admit, however, that the closing line in The Sun Also Rises is one of my favorite last lines. And . . . oddly enough, among the Dead Authors' Libraries on LT, Hemingway's is closest to mine. And . . . when one takes into account all the books I've read back when I was a wee undergraduate tot, I've read practically everything in his library. I find this deeply disturbing and scary.

Meanwhile I just finished Connie Willis's Passage. Not A-list literature, but a walloping good read (however, not the book for which I am still desperately searching). Passage has all the usual Willis trademarks. Characters running around manically trying to solve "the problem" and avoid certain other troublesome characters who are perpetual thorns in the side. And of course it has the precocious child. Highly recommended for beach reading.

I continue to read my stultifying August Blind Adventure book. Check for titillating hints on the Adventure thread.

Matterhorn - a long, engrossing and VERY hard to put down @ night novel of the VN war following a unit of marine grunts stuck more or less pointless up near the DMZ. Very well written in a low key, laconic style; up there with the best of the VN war novels. the political decisions of individual officers - personal goals to trying to slide in with the shifting political winds of war are paramount.

Sounds so much like the stories our bass player would tell (Johnny humped a mortar through the jungle during his stint as a marine. Worse luck...the one year marines drafted...they got him.)

>107 urania1: I was not fond of The Road; It felt contrived (his style was of course described as fable-like, even Biblical) and I felt overtly manipulated as a reader. I like your comparison to Hemingway. I did a paper on it for a Popular Culture class and picked out his uses of American iconography like the gun, the Coke can and the shopping cart; and described it as a neo-Western, using various tropes from classic Westerns... I think I liked Jim Crace's The Pesthouse better.

I enjoyed Passage back when it first came out. Not much has come out from Willis since. I had an arc of her latest but passed it off when I learned that the rather large book was half of a whole.

I didn't enjoy The Road either. I agree with you, Lois: I felt it was wildly manipulative and contrived, too, and it irked me the way the mother was so peripheral (to put it mildly).

>109 avaland: avaland,

Feeling the need for comfort and tea after being involved in a four-car pile up on Tuesday, I visited my local purveyor of books. I picked up a book from the new release table that looked interesting. However, I immediately put it down when I discovered that it was the first of a purposed two-volume set. This is the third time in the past several months, I have encountered this phenomenon outside of sci/fantasy or young adult fiction - excepting a work like À la recherche du temps perdu, which is good enough to justify its length. None of these books appeared good enough to justify two volumes. If this is a new trend in adult fiction, I will boycott.

>111 urania1: Yikes! (about the pileup, not the books)

>111 urania1: don't you just hate that! (obviously we are in the minority or they wouldn't be doing that).

>110 rebeccanyc: I'm with you re the wife/mother. As a woman, I found the suicide scenario unlikely.

Now about a third of the way through Matterhorn a terrificly intense Vietnam War novel following a platoon of Marine grunts attempting to implement strategies dreamed up by commanders out of the field and out of touch just at the SW corner of the DMZ zone. Very well written and (unfortunately) very hard to put down.

'm going to intersperse my reading of Matterhorn w/ some truly hibrow material sports from hell: my search for the World's Dumbest competition.
Chess boxing, extreme sauna etc.
http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/index?id=5201712 for the Finland/Sauna chapter

I finished The Road and agree you made the right decision abandoning it. The Hemingway comparison is exactly what I was thinking the entire time.

finished Matterhorn and even discussed it a little on my reading record slouching here in Club Read. A book that would be great.

I've returned to The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. I've been picking it up and putting it down fifty or a hundred pages later for a few months now. It's so dense and distant that I need breaks, but so fascinating that I keep returning. There's a sizable cast of characters, but they're so vivid that there's no trouble remembering who's who when I return to it.

I'm also reading The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge, my ER book. It's an interesting mystery, but hampered by the author's Britishness. The book is set in France and has French, Swiss and German characters, yet stereotypical British opinions keep popping out and the habit of having the lower class characters speak like they just finished a guest spot on Eastenders doesn't help.

I've finished American Rust which I've really enjoyed. I will have to write a review for my thread later this week. Today I am going to start Montana 1948 by Larry Watson.

100 - I'll have thoughts on The Sound and the Fury eventually, but I'm pretty behind on my thread so it probably won't be for another couple weeks.

I am defn. down with the lowbrow material at the moment following the long and intense Matterhorn:
1. curse of the werewolf girl martin millar's followup to lonely werewolf girl. Only recommended to fans of the first (not quite as good as its predecessor - takes half the book to really get going nicely).
2. the adoration of Jenna Fox - v. good YA sci-fi dealing with "identity" as a teenage girl coming out of a coma pieces together who she was and who or what she is now.

moving up the browridge:
3 Just started Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh's sprawling novel taking in the British opium trade between India and China ~ 1830. The mix of languages itself is fascinating, and thankfully he includes a very idiosyncratic and discursive glossary @ the end. "Shampoo" is derived from an Hindi word reflecting massaging, kneading esp. oils etc. into hair. But it's the words one doesn't know for which the glossary is really needed!

I'm reading J. G. Farrell's Troubles, which I should finish today. Up next is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which I am reading because it is one of the books I need to teach this fall.

Bob - I'll be very interested to see your take on Sea of Poppies.

So far I've found Sea of Poppies totally engrossing. In large part (still in the first 100 pages) it's due to Ghosh's intertwined uses of a host of jargons, languages, slangs, pidgins enmeshed in the sea trade circa 1830. But as the characters develop, i'm slowly growing into them as well. I'll be curious to see if the plot really matters at all, or if this is really a tour de force of language and cast. In truth i don't think i'll mind if the plot remains in the background and site, situation, setting and cast are what "Sea of Poppies" is really about.

But I've been a long time fan of Ghosh - ever since I read and then bought and gave away a half dozen, at least, remaindered copies of the Calcutta chromosome which dumped the Andromeda strain into the dustbin of plague thriller histories.

Also i've been slowly reading Terrance Hayes rather terrific recent collection of poetry, Lighthead. The personal, political, historical, musical, familial and a host of stylistic nods to a variety of poetric forms all intertwine gracefully and, in an odd way, self-effacingly (sic).

....
"The rain might scat were it not for the sunlight.
The light might solo if it were not for the rain.
And everything in that kind of compromise could be absolute."

Finished and reviewed Amy Bloom's early collection of stories, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You-- good, but not up to her later work.

I just finished Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade which was not at all what I expected from a John Hawkes book. Slow going in the first part, but worth the persevering. I'll attempt a review after my book club tonight.

Today I finished The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, the winner of this year's Orange Prize for Fiction, which was excellent (4-1/2 stars), and The Literary Conference, a confusing novella by César Aira, which was horrible (1 star).

Later today or tomorrow I'll start Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey, which was selected for the 2010 Booker Prize longlist. I'm also reading Bilingual: Life and Reality by François Grosjean; Wild Grass, a novella by Lu Xun; and Bellocq's Ophelia, a collection of poetry by Natasha Trethewey.