books, books, books

[Who Shot Sam?]

Picked up Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies to read on vacation.

[BlueChair]

Picked up Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies to read on vacation.

Two of my absolute favourites from over the past few years. I hope you enjoy them as much I did.

[pophead2k]

I enjoyed the latest Chabon, but it didn't come close to Kavalier and Klay in my opinion. I think my expectations were ridiculously high though.

[Otis Westinghouse]

I have Wonder Boys sitting on the shelf, and have seen the film more than once and think it's fantastic. Should I go ahead and read the book now, or follow my instinct and make my first Chabon book Kavalier and Klay? Chabon is the only known person who felt Pynchon's Against The Day wasn't quite long enough, which warms me immensely to the man.

[pophead2k]

My father had an open heart surgery last week (he is doing very well!) and between two 10 hour days of traveling and lots of hospital waiting, I read five (!) books from our infamous list: Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault, McGowan's Schooling, Kureishi's Gabriel's Gift and Roy's The God of Small Things.

I actually enjoyed the lot of them in one way or another, although Bellow's was my favorite. The protagonist, Henderson, reminded me vaguely of some of my other favorite characters such as the Good Solder Sjvek and Ignatius Reilly. The Roy and the Trevor were depressing but beautifully written. Gabriel's Gift was light and enjoyable, with a happy ending to boot! The McGowan was the most challenging and subsequent visits to criticism chat boards confirmed that people's feelings are all over the board on this one. Still, once I picked up the flow of the words and quit trying to understand every last thing, it was very rewarding.

Some may fault the list on its merits, but it has truly gotten me back into enjoying fiction after 10 or more years of biographies and histories. I think I've read 10 or 12 novels from the list I may never have picked up otherwise. Plus, I'm passing the books on to my sister at a now impossible rate, so she can catch up on things she has missed over the years.

[Who Shot Sam?]

I read Henderson in college. One of Bellow's more underrated books.

[pophead2k]

I'm interested to know the reactions of our readers on the board to Franzen's The Corrections. I know I'm waaaay late to the party on this one, but I was a little underwhelmed. The story and writing was original, and Franzen obviously knows a lot about a lot of things, but I felt like it just sort of ended abruptly, some suitably happy postscripts were tacked on, and the poor father got loads of blame tacked on him for other people's bad decisions. Any thoughts?

[Otis Westinghouse]

You're earlier than I am!

[StrictTime]

Working on Hocus Pocus by Vonnegut, who else? I was trying The Children of Hurin by Tolkien, edited by one of his sons, I believe, but right now I need something easier to read.

[pophead2k]

Just finished Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Fantastic book, and laugh out loud funny in parts. She has a real knack for dialogue, which is impressive in a book that features four or five characters of different ethnic and age backgrounds. I'm on to Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. I was a huge mystery buff in high school, but preferred the drawing room English mysteries over the hard-boiled American style, so this is a first time through. I've never seen the movie either, although I plan to once I've finished the book.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Never read the book but would love to. The film is killer.Sydney Greenstreet and Humph, what more could you ask for?

I love White Teeth when I read it. I knew someone (a fairly twisted person) who refused to read it as she was horrified by how young the author was and refused to believe she could offer the world anything of value, and yet this of course was the book's beauty. Not all the characterisations are equally good, there's a certain amount of cliche in there, but the overall effect is wonderful. haven't read her other two, but would like to read On Beauty soon.

I finished Haruki Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance, or Dansu, Dansu, Dansu, to give it its Japanese name! I enjoyed it up to a point. It's fun and his style is original, but the translation could be irritating and I didn't feel it added up to as much as I wanted it to. I'd like to read others of his. This one didn't make 'the list', I recall, but a few others did like Norwegian Wood. No fans round here?

[mood swung]

Just finished Jane Gardam's Old Filth, which was compulsively readable. Made me feel like I was 8, and reading my Nancy Drews. (This is not a bad thing). I look forward to the next one I have, Flight of the Maidens. Thanks to Goody2.

Also on the Zadie Smith bandwagon with On Beauty. Started slow for me, but I'm thinking I'm gonna like Kiki.

[miss buenos aires]

I loved White Teeth but hated On Beauty, though I wanted to love it. Very meh on the one in the middle, whose title escapes me at the moment.

I love Murakami... as long as things are happening. When things aren't happening, I lose interest.

Currently reading Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans--it's not on the list, but I found it on the street (this happens a lot in my neighborhood), and it's so good! Ishiguro's prose is so muted, yet it can be so engaging.

Recent "list" books I have read:
209. A Maggot – John Fowles
210. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
211. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
212. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
213. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
214. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith

Didn't like Seize the Day--I have an extremely low threshold of tolerance for self-pity, and Tommy Wilhelm crosses it on every single page. Book of Illusions was good, but what a downer! I'll say no more to avoid spoiler accusations. Northanger Abbey was comfortingly exactly what I expected, and The Talented Mr. Ripley was somehow satisfyingly suspenseful, even though I saw the movie. (I couldn't remember whether the ending matched or not.)

Otis, once again I marvel at your taste. I hated the movie Wonder Boys, but I haven't read the book. (I do have a pretty intense hatred of Michael Douglas, so that might explain it.) But I loved Kavalier and Klay. Read that one first!

[Otis Westinghouse]

Marvel on. It's good to leave your prejudices at the cinema door. Douglas was wonderful in the part, perfect. Whole film is so well done, top acting, direction, humour, everything works.

You've clearly developed an unhealthy obsession with the list. I abandoned my colour scheme and forgot about it, though it's interesting to check what's in and out every once in a while.

I'm salivating for Philip Roth following the recent Radio 3 interview and then the Observer's this weekend, complete with Roth on the magazine cover standing outside his lovely, big wooden boarded Connecticut house (which looks a bit like WSS's!), and inside his writing room in a summer house at the end of the garden, where the computer screen is so high above the keyboard, stood on stacks of printer paper, it appears he must write standing up. I think I have to read The Plot Against America before anything else.

I've read all of Ishiguro except Orphans and the Unconsoled, which one friend adored and another, whose judgement I trust more, hated with a passion. Some bastard borrowed and didn't return my copy of Orphans, maybe it ended up in a Brooklyn street?

Which Murakami's have you read and which did you favour most?

[migdd]

Well, I made it through my re-read of three by Bernard Malamud: The Tenant, The Natural and Dubin's Lives. All were as great as I remembered them being.

Now it's onto a tome that has intimidated me from my bookshelves for over a year: Mario Bava: All The Colors Of The Dark by Video Watchdog publisher, Tim Lucas. Twelve pounds and 1400 pages of sheer euro-horror bliss!!

I'll be back next month . . or, perhaps, next year!

[pophead2k]

I, like MBA, am still LIST obsessed. I finished Brautigan's Willard and His Bowling Trophies, which was just surreal. Pahlunaik's Choke was extremely disappointing and disturbing, and I'm not easily disappointed or disturbed. It felt like he was going for a lot of shock without much substance to justify it. Boring. And for something completely different, I'm now onto Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello.

I've said before, but I'll reiterate, that the list has really helped expand my reading lists. I was really stuck in a rut and the list has gotten me thinking (and reading) in an entirely different way. Since I began working from the list, my sum of books has gone from a shameful and paltry 30 to 52 in a little over 3 months. That means I'm reading at a far greater rate than I had for the past couple of years. Yay for the list!!

[Otis Westinghouse]

22 books in 3 months and a bit! Christ on a bike! Wish I could do that. Well done. Yes, I love a good list too and salute its power. I enjoyed Coetzee's 'Youth', also on the list, I believe. Bleakly funny.

Well, I'm making a start on Roth's 'Plot Against America', almost certainly in the list! An alternative 1940 and beyond where anti-semite Lindbergh defeats FDR in the election and allies the US with Nazi Germany. Lindbergh wrote: “We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence… Whenever the Jewish percentage of total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country.” The first word of the book is 'Fear' and within one page we're learning about the narrator's Jewish family in the neighbourhood of Weequahic (I love that word!), Newark. I love this stuff.

Roth does indeed write standing up, due to his back. Read about that and many things besides here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/se ... th.fiction

[pophead2k]

The Plot Against America is probably my favorite of the 3 or 4 Roth books I read this summer. Glad you're enjoying it. I'm very excited about his new one as well. I'll probably wait for the paperback version though. And its not like I don't have anything to read!

BTW Otis, I'm a school teacher, so was able to take advantage of 2 and a half summer months of lots and lots of reading. That cascade will slow to a trickle now that school's in session!

[BlueChair]

Glad you're enjoying Plot, Otis. Still haven't read much Roth (just that one and Sabbath's Theater), but look forward to American Pastoral (which Red is currently working on) soon.

Currently working on Slaughterhouse-Five very slowly. Have had a lot going on that has made it hard to just sit down and read (I end one job today and start a new one a week from Monday). I like it so far, but don't love it. Next up is Paul Auster's new one, Man In The Dark.

[pophead2k]

I've started a new book blog (link below). I mostly created it as an online reading diary, but anyone who wants to stop by is most certainly welcome to leave their own thoughts on the books I'm listing my reactions to. I am definitely NOT a critic and the entries are not intended as literary criticism, just my own responses to things I've read. I'd love to hear yours as well. Otis, you bring the wine and cheese.

http://www.28books.blogspot.com

[Otis Westinghouse]

Nice. That will be my pleasure. Will comment on Plot once read, and the only other of those listed thus far that I've read is the Ishiguro, so I'll find some time one day and post. Why 28 books? have I missed something?

One comment: you link to the list under the Ishiguro notes, but not in the bit about the list, just the cover image. Would be god to link from the relevant section on list.

Well done, you readaholic chalk miner, you!

[pophead2k]

Thanks a million for the link advice, I'll go handle that now. The 28 books title comes from the fact that in order to finish the list, I'll have to read 28 a year until I die (if I live the average lifespan for a western male). Yikes!

[alexv]

Nice list/work, Pophead. Roth Rules the EC Forum reading community!! His name keeps popping up (no pun intended) more than any other. Deservedly. The old coot is one-of-a-kind.

I've neglected listing my recent reads. Here are the recommendations:

Gore Vidal's USA. I don't always agree with Gore, but he is a great stylist with a unique voice and wit. The best American essayist. Of particular interest to the book folks is his thrashing of John Updike (DFW, in the book of essays I discuss below, also thrashes JU, basically starting from the same fundamental premise: self-absorption).

Paul Theroux's most recent travel book, "Journey on the Ghost Train" or something like that were he retraces his trip from the late 70s. I love Theroux's travel stuff. He's a prickly character, but fun to travel with, I would imagine.

Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace. After DFW's death, my friend Chris lent him this last volume of essays/reviews. Every page is gem-filled and footnote-stocked (a DFW staple). In honor of his passing allow me to quote liberally from one of the essays.

There is an extended essay on English usage. It's all about usage wars, and the peculiar obsession with language that leads people to all kinds of name-calling over things like misplaced prepositions. But there's stuff in this essay that resonates in other ways, having nothing to do with usage battles. I'm quoting this tidbit on what he calls the Democratic Spirit, hoping that it reins in those of us on the Board who spend Annex time fighting it out over politics:

[dfw believes that we should address political issues in the Democratic Spirit. He explains:]


"A democratic spirit is one that combines rigor and humility, I.e., passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the conviction of others. As any American knows, this is a difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a Democractic Spirit's criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity--you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and at your motives for believing what you believe and to do it more or less continually...A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that the other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them" [alexv aside: this happens a lot in the Annex political discussions].

DFW then applies the Democratic Spirti (in one of his priceless "interpolations") to the abortion issue:

"In this reviewer's opinion the only really coherent position on the abortion issue is both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice.

Argument: As of 4 March 1999, the question of defining human life in utero is hopelessly vexed. That is, given our best present medical and philosophical understanding of what makes something not just a living organism but a person, there is no way to establish at just what point during gestation a fertilized ovum becomes a human being. This connundrum, together with the basically inarguable soundness of the principle: "When in irresolvable doubt about whether something is human or not, it is better not to kill it," appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Life. At the same time, however, the principle: "When in irresolvable doubt about something, I have neither the legal nor the moral right to tell another person what to do about it, especially if that person feels that he or she is not in doubt" is an unassailable part of the Democratic pact we Americans all make with one another, a pact in which each adult citizen gets to be an autonomous moral agent, and this principle appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Choice.

This reviewer is thus, as a private citizen...both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice...Every time someone I know decides to terminate a pregnancy, I am required to believe simultaneously that she is doing the wrong thing and she has every right to do it. Plus of course I have to believe that a Pro-Life and a Pro-Choice stance is the only really coherent one and to restrain myself from trying to force that position on other people whose ideological or religious convictions seem (to me) to override reason and yield a (in my opinion) wacko dogmatic position. This restraint has to be maintained even when somebody's (to me) wacko dogmatic position appears (to me) to reject the very Democratic tolerance that is keeping me from trying to force my position on him/her; it requires me not to press or argue or retaliate even when somebody calls me Satan's Minion or Just Another Shithead Male, which forbearance represents the really outer and tooth-grinding limits of my own personal Democratic Spirit".

Hooray for DFW, and may his name and ideas, and his Democratic Spirit, live on forever!!

[Otis Westinghouse]

That's sophistry, but it's rather wonderful. At the same time, the defence of having the right to do the wrong thing means he isn't fence-sitting, but he sums up the dilemma nicely. Reminds me a bit of The Smiths' remarkable 'This Night Has Opened My Eyes' about a mother's infanticide:

In a river the colour of lead
Immerse the baby’s head
Wrap her up in the news of the world
Dump her on a doorstep, girl
This night has opened my eyes
And I will never sleep again

You kicked and cried like a bullied child
A grown man of twenty-five
Oh, he said he’d cure your ills
But he didn’t and he never will
Oh, save your life
Because you’ve only got one

The dream has gone
But the baby is real
Oh, you did a good thing
She could have been a poet
Or, she could have been a fool
Oh, you did a bad thing
And I’m not happy
And I’m not sad

A shoeless child on a swing
Reminds you of your own again
She took away your troubles
Oh, but then again
She left pain
So, please save your life
Because you’ve only got one

The dream has gone
But the baby is real
Oh, you did a good thing
She could have been a poet
Or, she could have been a fool
Oh, you did a bad thing
And I’m not happy
And I’m not sad

[StrictTime]

Glad you're enjoying Plot, Otis. Still haven't read much Roth (just that one and Sabbath's Theater), but look forward to American Pastoral (which Red is currently working on) soon.

Currently working on Slaughterhouse-Five very slowly. Have had a lot going on that has made it hard to just sit down and read (I end one job today and start a new one a week from Monday). I like it so far, but don't love it. Next up is Paul Auster's new one, Man In The Dark.

Slaughterhouse isn't my favorite Vonnegut, but it's enjoyable. I think I need to revisit it though, since I read it early in my fandom and would probably appreciate a lot more of the humour now. It's one of his best known, but not his best, I think. Let me know how you like it when you're done; I'm sure everyone knows what a fangirl I am by now and I'm interested in your opinion of this one.