What Are You Reading Now? - May 2010

I am half-way through my excursion through the frozen north, having finished the interesting-but-frustrating The Ice Museum - review here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/80528#1946251

I'm going back to the source next, with The Norse Atlantic Saga by Gwyn Jones.

Meanwhile, I've just finished re-reading The Chanur Saga by C J Cherryh - rather confusingly, this is Volumes 1-3 of this 5 book series, and I have the final two books to hand. Excellent space opera, with the humans as blundering intruders into a complex political/economic dynamic among spacefaring alien races. I am enjoying these books as much as I did when I first read them, 20 or so years ago, and that's definitely not the case with much other SF from that time.

Whoops - I posted before I'd finished.

Meanwhile meanwhile, my April "living poet" challenge book, Alternate Means of Transport by Cynthia Macdonald, was something of a damp squib, but I am very much looking forward to reading Leaving The Tableland, the first collection of poetry by my friend & fellow poet Kerry Popplewell. Not just because she's a friend, but because she's a very fine poet from whom a collection is long overdue.

I'm also reading Cherryh, coincidentally enough -- Hammerfall, which, sadly, is really not her best work. I should finish that today, and then next up is Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates, mostly just because I can't get the title out of my brain.

>3 bragan:, bragan: That's a great title, but it would be even better had it been "Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates in the Rain". Then it could have been a Bruce Springsteen song.

I'm reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell for the third time... just couldn't help myself! It's Jane Austen + Charles Dickens + fantasy and magic. What could be better?

I find that when I'm actively recommending a book to someone else, I often become possessed of a strong desire to reread it. Does anyone else have this problem?

#5 No, instead I find myself instantly doubting my recommendation, worried I suggested the wrong book for that person...sigh

I've finished Infinite Jest, but instead of voraciously grabbing the next book, I'm stumbling along picking up various things without any commitment to continue. Just yesterday I read through Notes from the Underground, Grace Paley : The Collected Stories (I read the first story, which was brilliant), a poetry collection called The Skin of Light by Larry D. Thomas, a poetry journal called "San Pedro River Review" (The Spring 2010 issue is themed "Bars, Diners & Dives") and a juvenile DK Eyewitness book on India (India (Eyewitness Books)). (Part of this was I was home with a sick needy three-year-old who had also kept me awake the entire night before.)

I've just finished The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I'm annoyed that the main characters didn't get the final disappointment they deserved!

Next up: The Changing Experience of Women, an 1982 collection of essays that were an Open University set book for women's studies.

And The Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. 'Over the course of 2,000 million years it describes the evolutionary rise and fall of eighteen distinct races of men'. Written in 1930 I think it will be an interesting read.

#5 your post just boosted Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to the top of the TBR pile.

My first read for May was Going Bovine by Libba Bray. I would recommend it to people that have read American Gods and like reading the odd YA book now and again. I thought it was really good.

My current read is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

I'm reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I was lucky enough to get through the Early Reviewer program, and The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan.

Before starting on Tanizaki for the Author Theme Reads group, I decided to read another Japanese book. Currently reading La fille que j'ai abandonnee (Watashi ga suteta onna/The Girl I Abandoned) by Shuusaku Endo. This is the first I've read from this author. It tells of a boy who manipulates a girl (Mitsu) into sleeping with him and decides to just drop and leave her. Years later though he can't get her out of his mind and decides to find her only to come upon a desperate story. Being a Japanese Catholic, Endo's works come with much criticism so it'll be interesting to see how his works differ from other Japanese authors.

I'm also rereading Fires on the Plain with my ESL student which is by a Japanese author (Shohei Ooka) but takes place in the Philippines at the end of the Japanese occupation. Just as amazing the second time around.

Having blissed out on Middlemarch I am now struggling to adjust to my new read, The French Lieutenant's Woman.

And... guess what... yep, still reading The Rest is Noise. Whoever it was last thread who said they'd been 'still reading' so long that it had dropped off the radar, well I may yet fall into that category. I've got up to Aaron Copland now, and do want to get to John Cage at least before I abandon it altogether. It's an interesting read whenever I actually get around to it.

Recently finished: A Land Beyond Ravens by Kathleen Cunningham Guler, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. Recently picked up: Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen and my April ER book True North: A Journey into Unexplored Wilderness by Elliott Merrick.

Finished Notes from the Underground and then opened Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard.

I'll repeat this one here...just because it's such an elegant synopsis of one of the most important books of any century: Michael Keller's Charles Darwin's Origin of Species: a graphic adaptation. By paring Darwin's prose down to his numerous arguments and by being sparing with the examples, Keller makes it obvious just how sophisticated and modern the Origin of Species was and remains. And the illustrations are gorgeous. Even in the synopsized version, Darwin's many arguments are dense enough that i'm rereading.

Even less likely - a graphic biography of Bertrand Russell and a history of the fierce controversies over the foundations of mathematics around the turn of the 20th century, Logicomix was clear and most informative. Doxiadis' previous "straight" novel was the excellent Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture.

Since our library doesn't seem to be accessioning Matterhorn anytime soon, i'm gonna order it tomorrow. Since VNam was the war I evaded (lottery # ~ 229) - while every other member of my band in tidewater Va back ~ 1973-4 were vets, i've been fascinated by the wealth of excellent novels the conflict engendered. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato and the things they carried have remained my favorites to date.

I have just finished Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, courtesy of the aforementioned bob. At present, I am reading two Dostoyevsky novels concurrently, which is confusing the heck out me. At the end of April, I went through an Angus Wilson kick and read three of his short story collections and enjoyed all immensely. I am also working my way through Skylark and Agaat an entrancing novel by South African writer Marlene van Niekerk. Kudos to her translator.

>13 dchaikin:, dchaikin: That's an interesting pair of books! I'll be interested to hear how you find the transition between them.

Tim - A great pair of books (so far). They are quite different, but I didn't really have a transition between them. Infinite Jest leaves a long shadow.

Notes is intense, but also quick, a novella. Empire of the Sun goes at a slower, more comfortable pace...actually it's been a nice place to be for a couple days (despite the endless historically real corpses and almost-corpses that have been present in practically every scene).

I just finished and reviewed the chilling Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields by Charles Bowden and have also recently read and reviewed 2017 by Olga Slavnikova, The Secret life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch, and Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi.

Touchstones seem to have stopped working while I was typing this!

I'm still reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell and have begun Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich.

Just finished Jenniemae and James: A Memoir in Black and White by Brooke Newman -- about the civil rights-era friendship between her father, mathematician James Newman, and their housekeeper, Jenniemae Harrington. It's not well written, but has interesting bits about science-politics plus a The Help-like domestic sweetness. Review forthcoming.

Now I'm reading Light Boxes, an experimental little dystopian novella about February deciding not to vacate for spring.

Started Howards End by E.M Forster. I hate not putting an apostrophe in there!

Let's see: I'm reading a debut collection of short fiction called "Broken Things" (no touchstone) by Padrika Tarrant, and The Last Summer of Reason by Algerian author Tahar Djaout.

I finally got around to my review - long-winded that it is - of Enlightened Sexism but have the reviews of The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain(I'm right with you there, rebecca!) and Gardens of the Sun yet to write...

>20 detailmuse: Light Boxes sounds intriguing!

I'm reading Shadow Tag, Louise Erdrich's difficult book about the end of a marriage, when one partner is already emotionally out the door and the other is just hoping things return to normal. I'm having to break it up with the more cheerful topic of a double murder set in a brutal, deprived world in A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre.

Just finished Shusaku Endo's La fille que j'ai abandonnee (The girl I abandoned/Watashi ga suteta onna). Touchstones is having trouble picking this up and (granted I haven't looked that deeply into this) the book doesn't seem to be available in English that I can tell.

Anyway, this book was quite... touching doesn't seem to be the right word but it pulled at a few strings. Made me go out and learn a lot about the state of leprosy in Japan. Interesting stuff.

Will soon be reading Demasiados Heroes by Laura Restrepo.

#24: Lilisin, the book's title in English is The Girl I Left Behind (Watashi ga suteta onna), and it is available in English from Amazon.

I finished two books yesterday: the novel Season of Ash by the Mexican author Jorge Volpi, and The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with Edward Said by David Barsamian. Today I'll resume reading The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes, and Five Modern Japanese Novelists by Donald Keene.

I am reading the fascinating The Eitingons by Mary-Kay Wilmers, a memoir about her family which included a Soviet spy/assasin, a close colleague of Freud's, and a major fur importer in New York, as will as Memories of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson, a collection of short stories and one long novella/short novel about which I have very mixed feelings. Once They Moved Like the Wind is about one-third read and on the back burner.

Just finished reading the short story collection Nocturnes by John Connolly. I really liked this collecction of horror stories and will be adding Connolly to my watch list.

Now I'm starting an Joyce Carol Oates collection of short stories The Mueseum of Dr. Moses. This is the first time reading her and I'm already hooked.

I've reviewed the two books I finished yesterday, Season of Ash by Jorge Volpi, and The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with Edward Said by David Barsamian. Today I'll start The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes and Out of Place: A Memoir by Edward W. Said, and I'll continue reading Five Modern Japanese Novelists by Donald Keene.

Thanks kidzdoc for doing the looking for me! :) Have you read this Endo?

And is this the first Fuentes you have read? I have Cambio de Piel (Change of Skin) but have not read it yet.

I haven't read anything by Endo; your description of it piqued my interest, and it didn't take me long to find a title with an almost identical description on Amazon, which I confirmed by looking at Endo's Wikipedia page.

I've read two books by Fuentes: Inez and The Eagle's Throne, but I own several other books by him, including Happy Families, Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone, and A New Time for Mexico. This month's Reading Globally monthly challenge is a good vehicle for me to get one or two of his books.

I recently finished Brodeck by Phillipe Claudel and Blackhearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness by Jim Frederick, both of which I highly recommend. Currently reading Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah, which I am enjoying. (And continuing the year-long read of Proust, I am nearing the end of Vol. III, The Guermantes Way).

#29 and 30 Endo is one of my favorite Japanese authors. The book by him I most recently read was The Sea and Poison. I haven't read The Girl I Left Behind, but I'll look for it.

31 -
Fantastic! The Girl I Left Behind is very well put together I'd say. I'm putting my thoughts together for it now to place in my thread. The Sea and Poison sounds really interesting. I have his Silence on my TBR pile but will probably read something else in between.

Finished Empire of the Sun and started Small Island by Andrea Levy. Small Island was the 2004 Orange Prize winner. My copy is an Early Reviewer from a release coinciding the PBS "Masterpiece Classic" movie, based on the book, that aired in April (It's available online through the PBS website).

#31 - There's a group read of In Search of Lost Time starting in June in the "Le Salon Litteraire du Peuple pour le Peuple" group (http://www.librarything.com/groups/thequestforthelastpa ). Stop by.

As soon as I'm finished with my truly dreadful ER book, Based Upon Availability, I have Suite Francaise lined up.

Have finished The Last Summer of Reason and am reading many odds & ends (many publisher catalogs, as it happens) and the Tarrant collection.

Currently reading Fall Out: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to The Prisoner by Alan Stevens & Fiona Moore, a very interesting analytical guide to the classic TV series. (And, boy, if any TV show ever needed one of those...!) Next up is The Dogs of Rome by Conor Fitzgerald. This is the book I was initially sent by mistake instead of Cro-Magnon for the ER program. Since I did get it for free, however accidentally, I figured it would be nice to read and review it, although I'm not at all sure whether it'll be my sort of thing. And after that, I'm planning on reading an actual ER book, On Deception by Harry Houdini. I'm really looking forward to that one.

#34--Dan--I will. I'm reading with a group on a non-LT site (the Cork-lined room), with a leader who provides us with lots of supplemental references and sources. It's quite an experience.

I'm reading Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham and am enjoying it tremendously. It's about Hannibal, in case you haven't guessed from the title. I just finished Vol. III of Christian Jacq's four volume series, The Stone of Light. Am about to begin the fourth, and last, of them: The Place of Truth. Also The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford which I'm finding slow going - I usually find non-fiction slow going, by the way. I just have a trivial mind probably.
Next will be something very light: Charlotte Carter's, Rhode Island Red. Since I live in Providence, I just couldn't resist that one.

Query: How does one get the titles to be blue?

I've finally put aside The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes after three days of futile effort. I've started Tranquility by the Hungarian writer Attila Bartis, which was published by Archipelago Books in 2008; it's a much more readable and interesting book so far.

#40: You put them inside of square brackets. For authors, enclose them in two square brackets. For example, {The Death of Artemio Cruz} by Carlos {{Fuentes}} (but substitute the square brackets).

>39 Disie35: Disie35, David Anthony Durham will be at Readercon in Burlington, MA in July, if you're interested. http://www.readercon.org/index.htm (check under the "guests" tab)

Besides the Tarrant collection, I've started So I am Glad by A. L. Kennedy.

>22 avaland: avaland
yes intriguing and imaginative -- Light Boxes was pretty good.

Now I'm reading the Early Reviewer Girl in Translation, a coming-of-age novel about mother/daughter Chinese immigrants in 1990s (?) Brooklyn. It reads so much like a memoir -- I think because it's a chronology of amazing small truths and details instead of a big storyline.

And in honor of Nancy Drew's 80th anniversary this year, I'm dipping into Girl Sleuth, about the publishers and writers who created the stories over the years.

I have now finished all three books in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and have posted my initial thoughts here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/80528#1970491

I've also knocked off The Norse Atlantic Sagas (not in the original!), which was extremely interesting, and poetry collection Leaving The Tableland, by Kerry Popplewell. Kerry is a friend of mine who has been writing and publishing poetry of a high standard for many years, and I'm delighted that her work has finally been collected - impressively so!

I'm now on Book 4 of C J Cherryh's five-volume Chanur series, and also need to make room for Ephraim's Eyes, my book for the May short story collection challenge, and Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks, for my book group.

After that, it might be time for some literary/"mainstream" fiction. Last year, I read very little SF - this year, I've read very little literary fiction. A balance must be maintained!

I have begun China Miéville's new novel, Kraken. Unlike his other novels, this one seems to be set in present day London (seems is the key word here).

Currently reading Demasiados Heroes by Laura Restrepo.

I have just finished two NYRB books: Wish Her Safe at Home and Stoner. Both are excellent. I spent last night in an Econolodge three hours outside Chicago, riveted to bed and book - The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton.

I've read and reviewed (on my thread and on the book page) Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund White (a disappointment) and The Eitingons: A Twentieth-Century Story by Mary-Kay Wilmers (wonderful). Now I've started the highly recommended Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar (thanks, urania and others) and am hoping to read the massive Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes, although there is no way I'll finish it by the end of the month for the Reading Globally Mexico theme read.

I have had a run of excellent reading. I just finished The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton - compelling narrative and stylistically interesting prose. I have just begun reading Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone. I had a hard time putting it down to post on LT.

Every Man Dies Alone was one of my favorite books of last year.

the girl who kicked the hornet's nest
the hunger gamesYA
unwindYA
speakYA
black mirrorYA
go back to the library
All the above were good to excellent...with collins' the hunger games and Larssons' final Lisabeth/Kalle novel/thriller both first rate. Urania 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.

ok, i finished "hornet's nest" the 1st week out...we have 3 wks loan w/ no renewal on books w/ holds. A v. good (local) friend who's way way back in line in the Orange cnty library would like to read it before i return it. Mike has many, many virtues - but timeliness in returning books isn't his strongest suit. return or lend to Mike? I'll probably lend it and have him swear some sort of library return oath on the grave oh his librarian uncle.

I just finished The Informers by the Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez, which was very good (reviewed on my thread). I'm currently reading Selected Cronicas by Clarice Lispector, a collection of the Saturday chronicles she wrote for Jornal do Brasil, Rio's leading newspaper, from 1967 to 1973, and The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell, the 1973 Booker Prize winner and the second novel in his Empire Trilogy.

I was gifted Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder earlier this month, so I've been reading it as of late. Still reading The Museum of Dr. Moses by Joyce Carol Oates. I'm finding that some of the stories are great and others just drawn out and boring. I've only got three or four more stories to go so I hope to finish this next week.

stretch - Not sure what your philosophy background is, but I read Sophie's World knowing nothing and loved it - I took notes.

Daniel - My philosophy background is almost nil, except for a intro to philosophy way back in my freshman year in college and an intro in the philosophy of science. I have already learned so much from this book. I know I'm going to have to reread it just to pick up what I've missed.

I am having a very enjoyable holiday and racing through my books, most recently the excellent Family Money - my first book by Nina Bawden but certainly not my last, and currently the enjoyably campy The Winter Queen.

Like urania, I just finished The Rehearsal. It goes on my list of memorable reads for the year, and I will be on the lookout for Catton's future work.

Having finished my brief E.M Forster excursion for the nonce, I'm now already halfway through Cloud Atlas and hanging out for the chance to get back to it.

I'm now reading The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. I'm not very far in, but it's showing signs of being a pretty effective thriller. And very cinematic, somehow. Reading it makes me feel like I'm sitting in a cool, darkened movie theater watching the story unfold on a big screen. No doubt this is del Toro's doing.

It's not actually June yet, so I'll post here. This weekend I finished Small Island by Andrea Levy and The Skin of Light by Larry D. Thomas. Then I started The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer (which I'm mixed on so far) and I'm trying Book of My Nights : Poems by Li-Young Lee in a like poem-a-night thing (and I'm only just noticing how that matches the title.)

But the main event will be Swann's Way by Proust, which I'll start tonight.

At long last, I finished the absolutely, gut-wrenchingly, horrible translation of Turgenev's Home of the Gentry. Richard Freeman, the translator, should be whipped and ridden out of town on a rail. I only bothered to finish this translation out of a masochistic desire to see to what final wretched end Freeman could reduce this text. DO NOT READ THIS TRANSLATION. On the bright side, I recently finished E.T.A. Hoffman's The King's Bride, as delightful a tale with the graceful Hoffmannesque acrobatics which one expects from such an excellent writer. I am currently reading Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, which may count as a tome since it has 12074 Kindle locations (a number usually indicating a tomish work). So may tomes, only one tomb where tome and tomb do never meet and the sweet soul of reading is parted from physical meat.