May, 2010--Get your reading here, your fine, snobby reading...

Switch over to a new month...and start a new book (keep writers in pork and beans for another 30 days).

My to-be-read pile is teetering, threatening to crush me.

What are my fellow snobs up to?

I'm working my way through The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. Still. It's a big read, I'll still be going next week when my bookgroup starts discussion... (But a good read. I've not read a huge amount of Byatt's work, but I've enjoyed all that I have read.)

I've started Burmese Days.

#2, I'm glad you're enjoying The Children's Book. It was a favorite of mine last year.

I'm reading Parrot and Olivier in America and liking it so far.

Notes from Underground for a group read. Just bought it, have not started it.

Still plugging away on Das Kapital Volume 1. I'm reading the "Resultate" in the Appendix. A kind of intellectual bridge between Volumes 1 and 2.

Still reading Years of Upheaval by Kissinger.

About halfway through Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Subtle majestic stuff.

The Reverberator by Henry James, The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, volume 6: From Dickens to Hardy. Plan to start Notes from Underground with Anna if I can find my copy. I may have to break down and buy another one.

Which translation of NOTES will you be using? Is there an acknowledged favorite?

David Magershack was a name being kicked around rather liberally in the group that's reading it. I don't know if this was the recommended translation or the one owned by most of the folks who were planning on joining the read. Any other info, Anna?

I'm glad to hear good things about The Children's Book. It's been slow going on that one, but that probably has more to do with my life than the book. It is also my first by Byatt, so I'm trying to withhold judgment for a while.

I have also started Solar by Ian McEwan. I'm not sure what to think of this one yet.

I'm so very meh this week, aren't I?

Oh, I am definitely enjoying The Children's Book. It's not as breathtaking as Possession, but it's an easier read than The Virgin in the Garden. I like the amount of information she always manages to convey, and do have to confess to being a bit of a sucker for the Arts & Crafts movement.

Had yesterday off work, so managed to make some serious inroads into it. Will probably still be late for bookgroup, but by not as much now. :)

I found Solar rather puzzling. I liked it in the end, but found a lot of the humour was just grotesqueness disguised as humour. Still, he's got a way with words.

the children's book isn't what I'd call action packed- it's more like an extended, slow moving character driven love story. very atmospheric. but i loved it in the end.

as for solar, that's a satire that seems to have people divided. I enjoyed it- I didn't love it, but I admired it, as I do a lot of McEwan's stuff. I hope you like it. :-)

i read Solar a few weeks back...and found it lucidly forgettable. A skillful writer takes a plot and set characters and connects the dots. Awfully predictable. I think i liked it more while i was reading it than after the fact.

Regarding Notes from the Underground tomcatMurr has a slight preference for Pevear and Volokhonsky.

Robert

"lucidly forgettable"

Very nice, Bob.

Pevear and Volokhonsky seem to the the taste of the month as far as Russian translators go. But I know they also have their detractors...

I gave up midway through The Children's Book. Perhaps I'll finish it some day, but I wasn't really inspired. I've read most of Byatt's books and loved them, but couldn't sustain interest in that one.

Hell, I knew after the first 50 pages of Children's Book that I wouldn't like it. When you have anarchists at a party and you pay more attention to how they dress than to what they think, you've already lost me.

Picked up Bel Canto and am starting that... halfway through Book Thief and loving it again... almost done with The Good Thief (a pretty decent orphan adventure yarn that takes place in early America) and still plugging away at Needful Things.

I may have ADD.

15: So Solar is the equivalent of The Lost Symbol or Under the Dome? (At least in terms of stylistic complacency.)

8 and 14: I ended up getting the Pevear/Volokhonsky version just because it was readily available. I was looking for Magershack but it was not at Powell's. I like to compare different translations (I actually have a linguistics undergrad degree) and am glad the group has different translations to share as we go through it.

Adam Roberts has good review of Solar on one of jis blogs here.

Roberts's reviews of Jordan's Wheel of Time are also definitely worth reading: here's the last one he did...

Simply wondering, how many fantasy/sci-fi knockoffs of classic novels are there? I've heard, so far, of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its sequel Dawn of the Dreadfuls, Android Karenina, Little Vampire Women, Little Women and Werewolves, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim, and The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts, and Zombies.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Jane Sleyre.

I'm surprised at the Wells one. I didn't think the Wells estate allowed stuff like that.

The Voyage of the Beagle - he writes very good prose, Darwin, quite apart from the historical interest.

21: But War of the Worlds already has effin' aliens? I think they're gilding the lily on that one. It's one thing to make a parody of a Jane Austen novel, it's quite another to parody a sci fi novel. If I wanted to read that sort of intellectual laziness, I'd pick up Under the Dome

I've just found The Undead Wizard of Oz, Emma and Werewolves, Anna Karnivora, and Hound: The Curse of the Baskervilles as well.

>24 kswolff:: Boo. Under the Dome was awesome.

26: The only King I've read was The Stand Impressive beginning, but the ending seemed anticlimactic. I have a morbid curiosity to read The Dark Tower series, since the world-building looks impressive, Lord of the Rings meets steampunk Western. (I got a "Dark Tower" graphic novel for Xmas and enjoyed it thoroughly.)

I am reading 2017 from Early Reviewers batch. It's a dense and complex book. Quite good; not perfect.

Am working my way through some modern classics- if that's what they're called. An Artist of the Floating World and The Shipping News. I've been reading these for AGES as dont have hours at a time to get right into them (toddler!)- and have found Alain DeBotton's essay style books good for "snippet" reading in the meantime.

>26 chamberk: I haven't read any Stephen King since I was a teenager and cant even remember which ones I read, so you can tell I'm not a fan. The covers do my head in- some cheesy picture and garishly designed (for mass consumption). I'm wary of any book where the authors name takes up half the cover, and especially so if it's in a metallic finish!. Loved the movie version of Misery though!

Started a women's fic called School of Essential Ingredients .

>27 kswolff:: The Dark Tower has its ups and downs... I can't really recommend it. The first four are solid, but the last three... yikes. You might be better off with those graphic novels.

Read Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor. Not bad, although definitely upper middle class and more dated than its 1976 publication siggested. It felt more like a sketch of a novel than a fully-painted portrait.

Currently reading The Rapture, Liz Jensen, for review for sffchronicles.net. It's a bit bloody grim...

Just got On Tremendous Trifles by GK Chesterton from Early Reviewers - nice Hesperus Press Edition.

I'm waiting for On Love by Stendahl from Early Reviewers. Never read Stendahl before, so I'm excited.

Finished Gilead -- pretty awesome, highly recommended. Turns Iowa into a "bastion of radicalism," at least prior to the Civil War.

Started Fantazius Mallare by Ben Hecht. Hecht wrote the screenplays for Some Like It Hot, His Girl Friday and tons of other well-known Hollywood classics. FM was his first novel and was written before he went to Hollywood. Written in 1922, Hecht and his illustrator were fined for breaking an obscenity law. All good reasons to read it. Reminds me of William S. Burroghs and Edgar Allan Poe, brooding and misanthropic and ferociously attacking hypocrisy.

#34, I'm getting On Love too. I can't wait.

I was on the verge of finishing Brave New World, when I stopped to read Dead In The Family, haha :x

Finishing Brave New World this weekend without fail though!

I have a short vacation coming up, haven't chose what to read on the plane/by the pool yet.

Beyond that my reading will be on hiatus for a bit because I suddenly have about 3 weeks to move over 900 miles away!

Good luck with that move.

And then...back to reading!

36: Read some Ulysses on the plane.

Read DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND by Dennis Lehane. I like his Kenzie/Gennero series, although this one failed to suspend my disbelief on a couple of occasions.

Got Jesus of Nazareth by Paul Verhoeven today. I'll start reading it immediately. An interesting convergence, considering I just finished reading Gilead

>39 CliffBurns:: I'm planning to read his The Given Day soon. I can't say I've read anything by him, but most of those movie adaptations weren't too bad. Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River...

Lehane is usually a good, dependable read.

OMG, I finally finished Kristen Lavransdatter! I did enjoy it, but I don't think I'll attempt to read a whole trilogy in succession again. I usually break things up.

I need a palate cleanser. The new Laurie R. King, The God of the Hive, should do it.

Jesus of Nazareth is quite good. Only just started it, but it's written in a down to earth style that's easy to digest.

I just read the NYRB edition of 'One-Straw Revolution' by Masanobu Fukuoka, and it was pretty amazing. I can't say I have ever read about rice farming before, but I'm glad I did.

>43 littlegeek: I know what you mean about back to back trilogy reading, I'm sure a short "palate cleanser" (love that phrase) between can make make the returning reads more pleasant.

I finished Burmese Days and Trilby, started The Wonder.

I just finished Down and Out in Paris and London and liked it even more than Burmese Days. Ol' George can write.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Animal Farm are my favorite books by Orwell; 1984 is at the bottom after Burmese Days, which didn't get me interested until about page 100.

My review of Gilead:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/gilead-by-marilynne-robinson...

I've started Before Adam.

Finished The Rapture, Liz Jensen. Will post a link here when the review goes up on sffchronicles.co.uk.

Currently reading The Hunt for Zero Point, Nick Cook, which is complete tosh, and The Damned United, David Peace.

Started The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand--whose essays I read regularly in The New Yorker--after finishing American Studies. He's a terrific critic of American literature and culture, though of course some essays interest me more than others--mainly those whose subjects and personalities I know something about. But it's already clear in The Metaphysical Club that Menand is a lucid historian as well.

I've finished Before the Count and started Lord of the Flies.

Just finished THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS by Robert Wilson.

So-so espionage novel; three pages of glowing blurbs, comparisons to Le Carre...but I don't see what the big fuss is about. Diverting, that's about it...

55: Can you expand on what sets Le Carré apart? I'd be really interested.

Though I do think Le Carré's novels are diverting too, I don't quite think of him as terrific a writer as many of his fans (including my SO). I think they're just spy novels. As spy novels, they're fine. (I have not read so very many of them as it's not really a genre I read that much. I read Absolute Friends recently and it was a fine read. I read The Little Drummer Girl a long time ago and didn't like it that much. I can't remember the others I have read but think there were a couple.)

I guess I tend to agree with his politics up to a point (probably because I worked for the US government for several years so I can identify with some of his concerns particularly about the last rogue administration), but that is not enough to make me think he's qualitatively that different from other spy novelists. So could you enlighten me? :)

Le Carre's characters, their moral compromises, the soul-searching that spycraft inspires, is what fascinates me. When are you a traitor? When you betray your country...or someone you love? The first casualty of espionage is the truth--lies sustain, even preserve life. What does that do to your sensibilities, your morality?

To me, the most memorable Le Carre offerings are the TINKER TAILOR/Smiley trilogy and, especially, A PERFECT SPY, which I think is his finest novel. SINGLE AND SINGLE is the best of the more recent crop and I also thought highly of A MOST WANTED MAN, which managed to be fiercely humane, political...and yet avoided being preachy. The ending is tragic and perfectly in line with the rest of the book...

I think I will add A Most Wanted Man to my TBR. Thanks Cliff!

Hope you like it, Anna. When one of my recommendations goes astray/misses the mark, it's always a bit depressing...

I recently finished Single & Single and found it less culturally and sociologically interesting than A Most Wanted Man--and a bit sloppy, as when he sloughs off the distinction between his protagonist's implied point of view and his own viewpoint.

Finished Jesus of Nazareth by Paul Verhoeven

Done with Bel Canto. A pretty book.

Starting The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Angel's Game, and Beloved.

Reading The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. Not very snobby but a nice pleasant read.

Finished The Hunt for Zero Point, Nick Cook. I don't believe a word of it. Also finished The Damned Utd, David Peace. I can't stand football, but I enjoyed this book. About to start The Electric Crocodile, DG Compton.

Just finished Junky, William Burroughs. I thought it would be a more cohesive read than Naked Lunch seemed like it might be, of course I'll have to read that to find out. Wasn't sold on Junky though, found the "story line" boring and the "characters" self absorbed. Would have been a shock to readers back in the day I'm sure (gets points for that).

My review of Liz Jensen's The Rapture has gone up on sffchronicles.co.uk - see here.

I started working through Tiqqun's Introduction to Civil War, and I am not impressed.

I liked a most wanted man a great deal.

Just finished Blonde Faith the latest Easy Rawlins novel by Walter Mosley, both thoughtful and exciting.

Also read an excellent YA SF/dystopic adventure, the hunger games kindof a cross of the handmaid's tale and a satire of reality tv.

Finished, but wasn't taken with, the Lotus Eaters - a woman war photographer's story during the Vietnam. It should have worked, lots of good material and characters, but mehh. Really want to get the Matterhorn.

In between rereading a new/used copy of the .. pre-steampunk/post apocolpyse Aussie SF novel, Souls in the Great Machine..where the great machine is a computer comprised of human components under the dictatorial gun of the head librarian. Knowledge as power in a setting where even steampower is banned. A very well worked out conceit. I wasn't so taken with the followup novels, iirc.

And just reread the city and the city the noir detective story set between a pair of doppleganger conjoined Eastern European city/states. Mieville's most thoughtful novel, by a long ways. I imagine i'll read it again in a few more months and get still more out of it.

Well, The City and the City has won the BSFA Award and the Arthur C Clarke Award and is shortlisted for the Hugo.

I got The City and the City out at the library the other day. After the above comments, it will definitely jump up Mt TBR now...

Finished The Children's Book and thought it was quite marvellous. Then as a "palate cleanser" picked up Soulless. Had its moments, but I wouldn't have picked it up if I'd known it was going to be paranormal romance. (I was hoping for something just a bit more adventurey, and less quivering bosomy.)

Now onto Norwegian Wood. It's been a while since I've read Murakami, I'm looking forward to returning to his bizarre world.

I finished The City and the City recently and thought it was terrific. It is definitely a book to reread at a later time.

Also finished Atwood's Year of the Flood and am currently listening to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying on audiobook. I started Shane Peacock's latest in his Boy Sherlock Holmes series, The Secret Fiend. My 11-year-old daughter and I love this YA author. She couldn't put this book down and finished it in one day.

I just picked up a copy of Guy Gavriel Kay's newest, Under Heaven, and I plan to attend his upcoming reading in town.

I've tried reading Mieville a couple of times but he seems over-written and too precious to me. Lots of rich imagery, descriptions of wondrous things that just don't add up to me. I find that with a lot of the "New Weird" or whatever the fuck it is. It's a sub-genre that's long on visual imagery and wacky world-building but short on character depth. All style but little of any substance. In desperate need of editing. I picked up the THE CITY AND THE CITY book, read the first page or two and was utterly turned off. It just isn't my thing. I didn't even like the first LINE; it "sounded" wrong to me...

the city and the city is NOTHING like any of Mieville's. I liked his first series, but they were defn. over the top and overwritten. Setting, style, genre in some sense put "the city" at odds with all his prior books - except to some extent, maybe his kid's book Un Lun Dun.

Finished Fantazius Mallare by Ben Hecht. A nice little anarcho-symbolist rant against the hypocrisies of modern civilization.

Started Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West. Holy crap! It's good stuff. Comedy from the abysmal depths of the soul.

"And on most days, he received more than thirty letters, all of them alike, stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie knife."

"It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes from the exhausted dirt."

West writes like some crazy amalgam of Samuel Beckett and Dashiell Hammett.

"Miss Lonelyhearts" also reminds me of Laura Warholic by Alexander Theroux. Sensitive writer hacking it out a periodical bedeviled by crass idiot editor.

Finished Notes from Underground and read a new Tess Gerritson that I got through the ER program. Going back to Ficciones.

ETA: Not Ficciones! Labyrinths! Geez, I have made this mistake five times so far on these threads. What's with me? I need to go read Ficciones post haste and get it the heck out of my system.

My wife has read several Tess Gerritson books. My wife is a real mystery/adventure reader. Her adventures run to horror adventure though. She read a lot of Stephen King and her reading continues to reflect that taste. Although, she really prefers mystery. She's read a lot of Nevada Barr, Preston/Child (we both read those), Jeffrey Deaver and such. She's not much on the things I read.

Started Indians of the Oaks and Mephisto, finished Lord of the Flies.

Just finished The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation which turned out not to be what I thought it was. I thought I was getting an analysis of the textual basis (such as it is) for the theology of the "rapture" - what I got was a little of that and a lot of an alternative interpretation of the book of Revelation. My fault for accepting a recommendation and not taking enough notice of the second half of the title.

Reading Disgrace at this very moment. Wow!

My review of Jesus of Nazareth by Paul Verhoeven:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/jesus-of-nazareth-by-paul-ve...

I'm attempting Thus Spoke Zarathustra for the second time.

76: I have read all the Nevada Barr books. I love that kind of thing. I especially like that there is a park ranger named Anna who is such a terrific, interesting character! As well as middle-aged. :)

Tess Gerritson is one of the new mystery sub-genre of forensics. There are several, starting with Patricia Cornwell, who I sort of liked until her rightwing politics started being spouted by all her characters. Then came Kathy Reichs, whose character is now in a TV series my son watches, and there's now Tess Gerritson, and apparently (from the cover of my ARC of her latest) they're making a TV series out of her books as well.

Which leads to the obvious question: Does the world really need three series about female forensic doctors? And do I really need to be reading all these as well? To be honest, I should move on...

Oh, I forgot the Robin Cook series, which has a female Medical Examiner (as well as a male one, they're a couple, and it's quite well-written and scary) as well. Hope they don't make them into a TV series, because I think there is far too much of that out there already - but yes, I have read several of those as well.

I started Bolaño's Antwerp this morning. It is a weird early work, but I'm into it. More an extended prose poem than a novel.

Just watched The Talented Mr. Ripley and like it well enough read the book. Has anyone else read it? Your thoughts?

I haven't seen the movie but I quite liked the book (been some years since I read it). Nice, icy sense of the macabre to it. If you're looking for something roughly the same age and equally riveting, check out the first third of Ira Levin's A KISS BEFORE DYING. The rest of the book can't quite live up the the initial 80-100 pages but it's gut-clenching suspense until then...

Finished "Miss Lonelyhearts" by Nathanael West. It's parallels to Laura Warholic are startling. Will start "Day of the Locust" today.

Nearly done with On Love by Stendahl. A good look at how far one can push the boundaries of the non-fiction essay.

Reading Thomas Pynchon by Tony Tanner -- His name sounds like a character from a Pynchon novel. A nice short primer of Pynchon criticism from 1982. With the release of Inherent Vice, someone should write another book giving an overview of his work thus far.

When I'm done with Nathanael West, I'll start The Sticks, a pulpy werewolf novel set in Virginia. Then I'll post my review on the Joe Bob Briggs website.

Finished On Love by Stendahl today. Started reading Ride of our Lives by Mike Leonard.

Finished The Angel's Game, and also made my way through The Westing Game - a classic kids' book that was almost as good as I remember it being when I read it in 4th grade. I'm getting to read quite a few young adult books for my job - up next is The Phantom Tollbooth.

I'm reading Against the Day for May. And June, and July...

I started Let the Great World Spin today.

Re Mieville, I agree with Cliff. I found Perdido Street Station really disappointing, despite some nice imagery, and didn't even finish Un Lun Dun. I think the older I get, the more I just want well-drawn characters doing believable things, even in an invented world.

Thanks for that: sometimes I feel like a complete Neanderthal re: my dislike of Mieville's work (and most of the so-called "New Weird"; awful term, what dingbat came up with that one?)...

Day of the Locust is good stuff. Especially since Nathanael West has one of his characters named Homer Simpson

Twenty pages into Confederacy of Dunces, and I already understand the hype.

Interesting discussion on Mieville and the "New Weird". Mieville is often a bit dense with description at the expense of the story. I prefer Jeff VanderMeer who is similar but makes his world-building a bit more measured.

My review of On Love by Stendahl:

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/on-love-1822-by-stendahl/

#93, I just got Confederacy and can't wait start it.

I actually liked The City and The City but I agree that plot wasn't its strong suit.

Regarding Mieville's Un Lun Dun, I do have to say it got off to a shaky start, and I was tempted to stop reading it before the halfway mark. But somewhere it found its feet and was quite an excellent read.

Currently reading another YA: The Knife of Never Letting Go. I'm enjoying it immensely, and dying to know *what the eff is happening* (only I don't say "eff" either).

Getting into Ride of our Lives by Mike Leonard. The challenge will be finding what tack to take in the review, since it's been compared to Tuesdays with Morrie and other pop nostalgic trash. Possibly from the angle of memory vs. history, the value of oral history, and how different generations use the past and pop culture to cope with Modern Life(TM). Mike's Dad, the eternal optimist, keeps singing snippets of once-popular songs (What is "pop culture" after it has lost its popularity?) and one of his sons references The Usual Suspects and Puff Daddy. The clashes of personality and generational friction produce conflicts that keep the momentum, interspersed with Mike's reminisces. His mother is an eternal font of pessimism and cynicism. One character that prevents this from turning into a Greatest Generation Love-fest (now with 30% more Brokaw!) or Mitch Albom-tastic emotional pornography.

Mike Leonard's other job, when not an author, is reporter for NBC's Today Show. Inevitably, I have to confront the gaping Hellmouth of the American Middlebrow Mainstream in all its rampant ordinariness. What is it with the Middle Class and its fetishizing "the Normal" and "the Ordinary"? I understand, post-Great Depression, post-World War 2 for the desire to have Stability, but the desire to be like everyone else (aside from materialist concerns) seems ironically totalitarian in its perspective. Funny how we become the things we fight against. It's the same way with the Christian Right, rentboys and lesbian bondage nightclub acts aside, edges closer and closer to becoming totally indistinguishable from the Islamic extremists who send death threats to South Park and people who draw the face of Mohammad

Sorry, went a little off-topic in the last bit.

Last week's reading..
the girl who kicked the hornet's nest. last in the Larrson trilogy
the hunger gamesYA -see below.

unwindYA. Pro life v pro choice leads to the 2nd civil war. The compromise? no abortions...but when a kid becomes 13, his parents can choose to have him or her "unwound" - sold for body parts. Once they get to 18, they're free, again. Follows 3 kids scheduled for unwinding who get away.

speakYA a young girl, on the cusp of HS gets raped by an upper classman at a pre-school starting party. After she runs and the cops show up, the rest of the student's assumed she called the cops for kids/pot -> ostracism.

black mirrorYA things aren't what they seem in an elite clique at an expensive private HS who've set up and run a foodbank.

back to the library for the sequel to the Hunger Games which they're holding for me.

All the above were good to excellent...with collins' the hunger games and Larssons' final Lisabeth/Kalle novel/thriller both first rate. Another LTer more or less insisted i read the hunger games as i'm well and truly outed as a major fan of good YA fiction - and it worked on many, many levels: as a social critique; as a dystopia; as a thriller; as a coming of age. 1984 meets the Handmaid's Tale meets the anti-Holden Caulfields; meets Sally Lockhart (from Pullman's YA detective series written long before His Dark Materials. Very well drawn characterizations of the 2 main protagonists. oh yeah...reality TV, of course.

The YA books are listed in my preference order, fwiw.

My son Liam really liked HUNGER GAMES (it was one of his Christmas books). What's the sequel called, so I can keep my eye out for it?

Catching Fire is the 2nd.
She has a longer series - more urban fantasy than SF and aimed at younger kids, grade and junior high, Gregor the Overlander and its many sequels. Not as well written though done well w/ awards and the like.

Thanks, Bob. That title is duly noted.

P.S. The third book is out in August--it concludes the series:

http://www.amazon.com/Mockingjay-Final-Book-Hunger-Games/dp/0439023513/ref=sr_1_...

Finished Cannery Row and am now well into Buddenbrooks. I love Buddenbrooks. It's a page turner even though there's no discernible plot devices. Wonderful writing!

I read Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by Salinger the other day. It was awesome! I hated Catcher in the Rye, but these were excellent.

Finished Haruki Murakami's WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING. A kind of memoir of his affection/obsession with long distance running; he draws a parallel between marathons and writing a novel and after spending 3+ years on my last book, I can see his point...

I started Joshua Cohen's A Heaven of Others. Holy shit!

104: I'm a big fan of Murakami. Just finished rereading his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I love his writing, but some of the dream logic escapes me. It's a big, impressive book... occasionally meandering, occasionally gripping.

103: I loved half that book - "Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters" - but "Seymour: An Introduction" felt too indulgent to me.

Finished The Knife of Never Letting Go and went straight back to the library for the second in the series, The Ask and the Answer. Which I then read in a six hour marathon reading session (yay for a day off work and the kids in school!).

Am now slightly traumatised since the library hasn't got book #3 in yet (although it is available in the bookshops). *wibble*

Then read On the Art of Making Up One's Mind by Jerome K. Jerome, an ER book. Rather fun, but less light-silly-amusing than Three Men in a Boat, and tended towards poking fun at women a bit too much at times for my tastes.

Now reading Josephine Tey's A Shilling for Candles. Frightfully English, jolly good stuff.

I finished A Heaven of Others. What an disturbing and incredible book.

106> I am happy to indulge good writing and interesting ideas any day of the week!

I just started Under Heaven. Went to Guy Gavriel Kay's reading on Wednesday. He's an excellent speaker and I appreciated his words of support for independent bookstores. The event was sold out -- over 150 people, by the looks of it. In this geeky town I live in, Kay is a rock star.

Another fine Canadian boy makes good...

Finished Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust -- 2 really fine compact little satires, scathing and apocalyptic. I can see how Nathanael West influenced Pynchon, since both focus their works on the losers and the forgotten.

Started The Sticks by Andy Deane A fun little pulp horror book. The book opens with the protagonist trashing a Lord of the Rings fanatic. The book has a vulgar poetry to it. Good stuff.

Breezed through The Phantom Tollbooth (still a brilliant little book) and am about to start a reread of Jane Eyre - the only Bronte novel I've ever really enjoyed. Finishing up Beloved (now that was a chore) and enjoying The Satanic Verses. I really like Rushdie's prose, but I haven't really heard anything about his books beyond the big two (Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children) so I'm not sure where to go next with him. Oh well, plenty of other books to take up my time...

Finished Let the Great World Spin. Pretty decent, nothing life shattering. Life shattering it will be for me when I finish the next book: Blue at the Mizzen, the last complete book in the Aubrey/Maturin series. It's the end of an era, but I'm sure I'll be starting again at Master and Commander when I'm through. There aren't enough superlatives for these wonderful books.

113 : I am almost done with the Aubrey/Maturin series too. It is a rollicking good time, isn't it?

#114 Indeed! I give you joy of it!

I´m reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. I´ve been reading it for a long while now, since it´s 1350 pages. I ´ve read several other books while reading it, since it has some rather tedious looong passages about Indian law and politics.

But, it is absolutely terrific and highly recommended. I dread the day when I finish it, since I will miss the story.

Finished The Ride of Our Lives by Mike Leonard. A decent nostalgic road trip book. Good when looking at the lives of his parents; sucked when Leonard would go into these self-deprecatory jags. Once in a while, fine, but I really got sick of it. After a while, his self-depreciation -- I'm not so smart, not so attractive, etc. -- just came across as a sort of demented vanity.

Started Grand New Party by Ross Douthat Should be amusing, especially when it comes to one of the two entrenched political parties trying to reinvent itself like Madonna for a new tour. NB: This also was assigned to me for review. I don't usually read current affairs books on politics; memoirs aside. As a belligerent independent who like socialized health care, topfreedom, and pot legalization, it should be a fascinating read ... even though I would jettison both parties (GOP and Dems) in a heartbeat.

Reading about the Middle East negotiations in Years of Upheaval Oy! What a labyrinthine infuriating mess. That entire region needs less religion, not more of it. Secularism and democracy would do it a ton of good. Too bad our oil addiction has made any revolutionary foreign policy initiative stillborn.

Reading the last portions of Das Kapital, Volume 1. Mainly "isolated fragments" that were later included in the finished work. An interesting look at the writing process for Marx.

Finished THE LEISURE SEEKER by Michael Zadoorian. Sweet (but not overly sweet) novel about a couple in their 80's taking their last road trip together. Anyone with aging parents will like this one. Simple, unadorned writing style, perfectly in keeping with the narrator's voice and background. Highly recommended. Blurbed by Elmore Leonard.

Grand New Party by Ross Douthat is whimsically infuriating. Then again, it's explicitly written for the conservative political commissar. In the end, all political writers come across like bookies. If you go with X demographic, you'll get Y votes. If you bet on X horse, you'll get Y pay-out. A slightly eccentric analysis papers over a thin premise. "Hey, working class people, the Democrats have done this, this, and this wrong, therefor vote Republican. Because we're like new and junk." It's like another persona change on Madonna. After a while it just gets tedious and tiresome.