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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2005: What are you currently reading?

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unheimlich manoeuvre

16:31 / 08.03.05

well... i've still not finished Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis (verso). it is a simply nauseating look at the El Nino induced famines of the late nineteenth century and the opportunism of the European colonial powers and the USA. So far the book has mainly commented on India and China and the mismanagement of the Qing and British colonial administrations. This book has successful doused (sp?) the last spark of nationalism in my heart.

A Dirty War by Anna Politkovskaya (harvill) is a collection of articles about the Chechen wars, she wrote for Novaya gazeta. Superb investigative journalism. I can see now why the Russian secret service poisoned her on the way to the Beslan hostage crisis.

...

Money $hot - thanks for the link. do you know what the relationship between J. Krishnamurti and U. G. Krishnamurti is? i always get the two confused.

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20:53 / 08.03.05

None at all, in terms of genes or law - its a title only.

The two knew each other, U G being raised in an environment of Theosophy etc. and many other 'spiritual' practices, and were friends once upon a time. U G now calls J Krishnamurti a fraud and a charlatan...claimg he has 'seen the fruit' but never 'tasted it or swallowed it' or some such thing.

I find enormous parallels between the utterances of U G and the Chuang Tzu, but of course U G would pour scourn on such a comparison. Still, interesting to read the two with a view to compare and contrast...I highly recommend the Thomas Merton collection 'The Way of Chunag Tzu' as an introduction to that text if you are not familiar with it...Merton was a Trappist Monk who managed some really poetic and easily digested translations of some of the best anecdotes from the entirety of the Chuang Tzu...its a lovely little hardcover edition as well, with a velvet page marker...lovely.
Still, the whole text is really essential if you are into that kind of thing.

Also interesting to compare U G's 'calamity' with the descriptions of awakened Kundalini from the various sources...thinking particularly of the Gopi Krishna book the title of which eludes me at the moment. Fascinating stuff though.

16:49 / 10.03.05

I'm halfway into "Will in the World" a biography of Shakespeare by your friend and mine (j/k), Norton Anthology editor Stephen Greenblatt. So far it's more speculation than new scholarship but even so G backs up his ideas with historic evidence from contemporaries in similar situations. For example Shakes's father was in the illegal glove trade and while we don't know about his experiences directly, we do know about others of that time in that trade and what happened to them.

There is an interesting bit where G shows how Shakes could have been involved in a secret Catholic conspiracy.. well I say conspiracy but it was just the Catholics going underground to keep their religion alive in the face of the C of E. And how, if he was involved, these things could account for the fascination with secrets and intrigue within his plays.

So it's that sort of thing. There is quite a bit about his unhappy marriage and life in London. The book is well written and I'm enjoying it.

.

Our Lady Won't Do That Again
(prev. Our Lady in Her Haus)

16:24 / 12.03.05

I'm now on dear Bertrand's Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. I must say that I'm not impressed so far, as a number of Bertrand's arguments seem to boil down to 'Christians are weird aren't they' and a few straw men.

21:27 / 12.03.05

I just finished Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan and I think it was his best yet. Kovacs is back home at Harlan's World and relives old scars. Morgans socialism shines through even more iin this book, without becoming preachy like in Market Forces.
HOT

10:18 / 16.03.05

Just finishing Hari Krunzu's 'The Impressionist', which I foolishly avoided for ages, mainly because people kept telling me I had to read it.
Finally got round to it, and whadda ya know - its brilliant. A pretty damn funny satire of notions of cultural identity and Britain’s unsavoury colonial past, with some fantastic descriptions of 1920's India to boot.
Also, crawling slowly through 'Down and Dirty Pictures' by Peter Biskind, which is basically a gossipy hatchet job on Miramax/Robert Redford, by way of chronicling the American independent film boom of the late 80's early 90's. For some reason it just isn't grabbing me like 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' did, maybe because Biskind seems more interested in character assassination than, y'know, actual films or filmmakers.

12:12 / 16.03.05

I've been reading a lot the last couple of weeks as I am unemployed, I've just read "Brainwave" by Poul Anderson, which is an interesting book where the Earth has just left a cosmic "inhibitor field" that has slowed neural speeds for the last few million years. The average human IQ jumps six fold and the book deals with the implications of such a situation. Nice thoguht provoking short novel. I also read "Nine Lives" an autobiography by Bill Mason who was allegedly one the greatest cat burglar/jewel-thief in the US. Very interesting, though I have no idea how accurate it is. I'm currently reading "Heart of Darkness", but I'm finding it quite a dense book, and will probably go back and re-read it to allow myself to properly analyse it.

02:57 / 17.03.05

I recently picked up Don Quixote, one of my favorite books ever, and am currently in the process of rereading it. The crude humor in the high style of literature is quite a lovely read.

Every night I read quite a few poems out of a selection of W.B. Yeats' Selected Poems. They're good to not have to read deep into, although that's entirely possible. I just enjoy the fantastical storytelling nature.

03:00 / 17.03.05

*found the old thread in a search and accidently posted this in that one. d'oh!*

I've got about 200 pages left in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami. Absolutely loving it so far.

Vincennes: Bringing Sassy Back

13:35 / 17.03.05

I'm reading Murakami too, but the short stories in The Elephant Vanishes. With every one I read, I like the book more -just finished The Dancing Dwarf, which is so far probably my favourite. I was thinking of going onto The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle soon, as it's based on the first of the stories.

At home, it's still The System Of The World, which is clearly building up to something big (at least, I hope it is) meaning that all the time I'm reading it I feel the need to yell "Tell us the ending!" It's fun, though...

Papers regarding Tlön & Uqbar
(prev. Papers Loves Patsy Walker)

02:32 / 18.03.05

Not very far into _Orlando_, by Virginia Woolf. Wildest description of Queen Elizabeth I've seen...

14:21 / 19.03.05

I just re-read The Outsider by Camus. I had decided years ago that it was my favourite book and now I'm just as certain as I ever was. The end is a tremendous roar that seems to me as much about uncompromising freedom as anything can ever hope to be.

Kinda funny, too, as I'm living really close to the home town of his descendents in Japan.

Before that I was reading Transmission by Hari Kunzru. A great book, he leapfrogs back and forth between the mindsets of different characters. Really different characters...all terribly tragic and touching.

Lotsa fun.

02:13 / 20.03.05

Hardboiled wonderland, Murakami. I love it, the style is quite unique, and the story is intruiging to say the least.. AND, people tell me this isnt even close to some of his really good stuff.. man..

12:04 / 20.03.05

Just started The Earth Will Shake, by Robert Anton Wilson. It's not fantastic, part of the fun is seeing character names pop up from his other books - but it's leading somewhere finally, so we shall see.

00:18 / 23.03.05

Now about 1/3 of the way through Michael Houellebecq's 'Atomised' and disliking it so intensely that I'm considering just stopping and pretending I never started in the first place.
It seems to be a dull, nihilistic rant with a rather unpleasant line in misogyny, and with occasional pseudo-scientific ramblings thrown in for good measure.
I'm hoping for a miracle in the next 20 pages, otherwise I'm going to throw it under the settee and let the mice eat it.

Fly Beezy (War Minister)
(prev. Y SO ALT?)

01:55 / 23.03.05

Bin it, Houllebecq is trash and his other books are even worse. If there was any justice he'd have been dragged down the Champs Alysee behind a chariot by now.

05:01 / 23.03.05

I just finished The Earth Will Shake last week. You're right it's a lot of fun to try and find connections to his other stuff.
Overall, I thought it was pretty good, so I'll definitely read the others when my economy has recovered from my latest book-buying frenzy.

19:23 / 25.03.05

Just finished Mindscan by Robert Sawyer. Great premise about a man who copies his mind into a synthetic body to avoid an inoperable brain defect killing him. Sawyer is easily one of the great Sci-Fi writers of this generation and I think anyone on Barbelith would enjoy his ideas. Hard sc-fi, but not too hard.

I'm also partway through Lamb: The Gospel According to Christ's Childhood Pal, Biff by Christopher Moore. Not as laugh out loud hilarious as the other Moore books I've read, but very well done. He makes sure not to step on any easily offended toes, while still making the adolescent JC seem like a real human being/son of a higher power. Moore also is high on my recommendations list.

Vincennes: Bringing Sassy Back

14:06 / 04.04.05

I've finished The System Of The World, which was great -I wondered how well it would be finished, just because there was so much before it that it could have all ended quite weakly, but in fact the last 100 pages were probably my favourite of the whole trilogy. Next, I will probably be reading James Gleik's biography of Newton, so I can pretend that I'm still reading the Baroque Cycle...

On the train, it's If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things -it's getting better (more than halfway through) but the dialogue is still grating on me quite intensely. Mainly because dialogue in this vein -
I say, do you want to go out for lunch, I mean I don't.
He says, I didn't know, I.
I say, Oh oh it doesn't matter, but.
He says, smiling, well it is isn't it.
- gets a little wearing after a while. (None of this is a direct quotation, but it may as well be). I quite like some of the ideas in the book, and the way it's structured works, but it reads a bit like a creative writing exercise.

19:17 / 04.04.05

I'm reading The Pickwick Papers - I'm fond of a bit of old Chas and have just finished Our Mutual Friend - I'm slowly working my way through them all... Pickwick, being an outright comic novel, is harder to get really involved with at the beginning (I am a mere 120 pages in) but I am told that it improves.

I must read the Baroque trilogy. Flyboy will never forgive me if I don't.

Our Lady Won't Do That Again
(prev. Our Lady in Her Haus)

19:24 / 04.04.05

I'm currently reading The Time-Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I've only just started it but it seems to be the story of a marriage, only husband Henry has 'Chrono-Displacement Disorder' which basically means he travels involuntarily through time, and therefore his wife Clare has met him dozens of times as she grows up before he has ever met her.

There's been a lot of interest in this in the library recently, I don't know if it's up for an award or something, I'll probably start a thread on it once I've read more, the first chapter is very awkward, as it has to try and fit exposition into first-person narrative, but I'm several chapters in and now it's flowing nicely. It seems to be one of those books like Jonathan Strange and Doctor Norrell, it IS sci-fi or fantasy but has somehow escaped the skiffy/fantasy ghetto so people that would normally sneer at such books are desperately trying to invent other genres or excuses for why they are reading it...

21:25 / 04.04.05

I'm a little ways into Ada, or Ardor by that lovable old perv Nabokov. It's incredibly dense in terms of word-play alone, not to mention lit references and humor and this fantastical setting of a Russian-USA hybrid where English footmen and French maids ride in caleches, cars, and flying carpets... I almost feel like I'm doing it a disservice in reading at my normal rate when perhaps I should be spending a month on each page. Certainly I'm missing out in not knowing any French (*sad face*), a little Russian would be handy too....

09:40 / 05.04.05

There's been a lot of interest in this in the library recently, I don't know if it's up for an award or something

It's on the Richard and Judy book club list, which is why it's shifting zillions of units at the mo.

Old dear. Gin. Problems

22:07 / 06.04.05

I've ( temporarily I hope ) lost the ability to read properly

Yeah, me too ( though I hope it's passed by now KKC. )

Just finished re-reading Women by Charles Bukowski, which seems like the literary equivalent of having a decent burger and fries as opposed to the, I don't know, swan's neck stuffed with Black Forest truffles, salvia divonorum and caviar you know you ought to be going for, but apart from that, I've read nothing except magazines, comics and papers since the Easter weekend.

On the bedside table at the moment, gathering dust and this ominous, accusatory power, are Quicksilver, still, The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie and Modern Magick ( Eleven Lessons In The High Magickal Arts ) by Donald Michael Kraig, none of which, in all honesty, I'm likely to finish any time soon, unless I get the flu or something.

So I may have to try out that dreadful man Barnett's novel instead...

01:53 / 07.04.05

Timelady - I've recently finished The Time Traveller's Wife and I loved it. It's on my top ten, easily.

10:06 / 07.04.05

So I may have to try out that dreadful man Barnett's novel instead...

You'd make an old man very happy.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

18:21 / 07.04.05

I'm about halfway through The Book of Lieh Tzu, which is a nice companion to The Chuang Tzu, actually replicating a few of the tales from the latter volume...It's far less scathing and mocking of Confucius, which I miss a bit, but very interesting nonetheless.

I've just got hold of The Key of it All, along with Book II, which look really heavy going and should keep me occupied for a few months...The recommended reading list in the first Volume alone is about a years worth of hunting down and reading, whether I will or not remains to be seen.

For a bit of much needed relief I'm reading Terry Pratchett's Science of The Discworld Volume II, which picks up where Volume I left off (actually it goes back a few million years previous to the conclusion of Volume 1, but never mind). If you like Pratchett, it's what he does best.

14:33 / 13.04.05

Well, I've rebooted the reading bit of my brain. I've just finished David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas which was pretty seismicly brilliant. If there's not a thread, there will be soon. Loved it to bits - and am now seeking out Ghostwritten. I'd previously read Number9dream and was sorely disappointed.

Am now half way through Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers which I'm enjoying with a manic grin on my face. You kind of have to find entire chapters defending corporal punishment as the only solution to crime hilarious; if you don't, the book has you, and you lose the game. Fascistically funny, then.

19:06 / 14.04.05

right now i'm reading with frequent pauses two of hst's books, a volume of the gonzo papers and also hey rube, which, as it draws closer to the end, makes me increasingly sad about so many things.

i'm also trudging through mailer's "a spooky art," which is often a good read if taken as more a coffee table book. i'm a fan of mailer's, and it's interesting to get into his head. he writes so precisely. but it can be a little thick.

next time i go to the bookstore i'm either going to spend time shredding foer's new novel or pick up maybe middlesex, which i hear is good. both seem equally valuable tasks.

18:19 / 17.04.05

Slowly starting to finish Azar Nafisi´s "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Slowly, because I love it, and feel sad because it ends. Nafisi tells her story, she was teaching English literature in the university of Tehran before the Islamic revolution, and even some years after that. She formed a secret reading group for some of her brightest female students. They went through forbidden writers, including Jane Austen, Henry James and Nabokov. This book made me to start reading older prose again, especially Fitzgerald, in original languages. Something is always lost in translation. Literature might not save the world, but it definately makes it a better place to live in.
I have several other nearly-red books, but now I feel that my fresh copy of Bulgakov´s "Master and Margarita" will be next in line.
I wish that I was in a book group. I have always hoped to be able to have real, old-fashioned "salongs."

00:04 / 18.04.05

About 200 pages into Bleak House, and got Man in a High Castle on the stand by. Been loving the library this week, having booked Valis and Confussion in for later dates, and found that I can reserve and search from home.

17:52 / 18.04.05

I'm reading System of the World, which I am finding just terrific so far. I'm happy to hear most people say it pays off at the end. Thank you, Stephenson.

I also have John Fowles' The Magus, which is boring me. I loved The French Lieutenant's Woman by the same author, but this Magus book is simply boring.

Also, the final Otherland book by Tad Williams called Sea Of Silver Light and I'm bored with it as well. I want to scream out loud every page "Just get on with it!"

Finally, I'm working on The Beach by Alex Garland. I am really impressed with it, I might add. I have not seen the movie, so I have a nice unbiased view of the book. I really enjoy its bleakness. It reads like Bret Easton Ellis with less irony.

20:51 / 18.04.05

Thanks to a hostel library, I just read I, Robot by Issac Asimov. I've not read any of his books before, and it was really great. I had lovely dreams of robots all last night...

Vincennes: Bringing Sassy Back

14:09 / 29.04.05

I'm currently reading A Wild Sheep Chase, which keeps getting good as soon as I start wondering how reading about a guy living on his own in a house up a deserted mountain can possibly be interesting. After which it's going to be Lucky Jim, because I've not read it in a while.

At home I'm reading a shortish popular history of economics, which I bought as an earnest young thing. I thought it would be useful for my university course, as indeed it would have been if I had read it in the four years between buying it and finishing uni. Anyway, it's now been sitting on my shelf for long enough that I've felt compelled to read it.

Before that, I read Who Moved My Blackberry™?, which looked like it was going to be an entertaining book about being in an office, along the lines of Slab Rat and e, both of which I enjoyed a great deal. This was not the case. I don't know, I was reading a review copy which they always say you shouldn't quote, so maybe the funny will be restored in the final print, but... it was so full of situations which were obviously deeply entertaining when the author thought them, but which weren't written about in the right way. Also, the characters used the phrase 'going forward' a great deal, a phrase which even when used satirically makes me feel like I've been jabbed in the eye with a sharp stick.

A Haus of Minions

16:54 / 29.04.05

"The Rise of the Greeks" by Michael Grant. Grant's not messing around with any poncy living history here. He's just taking each portion of the Greek world in tunr and describing what happened in each of its city-states between 1000BC and the Battle of Lade in 495BC. Very dry. Positively crunchy, in fact. He throws in some stuff about famous poets who were operating in the area at the time, but you can tell he resents it a bit. Also, he is a bit unsound on the battle of the Lelantine Plain. I still say it didn't happen.

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