New now reading

[sloopjohnc]

I usually don't read stuff like this, but I'm pretty accepting of it in my current state of mind.

[BlueMeanie]

Too early to tell, but has begun very promisingly.

[Snarfyguy]

I'm going to be on this one for a while; it's huge. Fortunately, it's really informative and well-written (oddly mostly in the present and future tenses e.g. "MacLise will go on to do blah blah, etc." but like, a lot of it's in that tense). Incredibly well-researched, I'd go so far as to call it fascinating.

[Livet]

This is a collection of short stories by Vietnamese author Nguyen Huy Thiep. On my recent trip to Vietnam, I really loved the rural places I visited, and this book captures that life and the people really well.

[Nolamike]

I really thought I was going to like it, from what I'd been led to expect, but I put it down halfway through, really just not that into it.

Same here.

[Nolamike]

I had a blast reading that one - it is rather, um, "fucked up." Good stuff.

[Penk!]

I had a blast reading that one - it is rather, um, "fucked up." Good stuff.

Cool - it's been on my reserved list at the library for ages now. They lost their old copy, the only one in the entire Stockholm library system.

I'm going to be on this one for a while; it's huge. Fortunately, it's really informative and well-written (oddly mostly in the present and future tenses e.g. "MacLise will go on to do blah blah, etc." but like, a lot of it's in that tense). Incredibly well-researched, I'd go so far as to call it fascinating.

I might have to get hold of that one then. Mind you I still haven't got round to the Bockris & Malanga one I picked up a while ago.

[Pirate Jenny]

I had a blast reading that one - it is rather, um, "fucked up." Good stuff.

Cool - it's been on my reserved list at the library for ages now. They lost their old copy, the only one in the entire Stockholm library system.

waiting for #3 son to bring this one home from University. i bought it for him for a Christmas present and can't wait to read it. it's comes highly recommended by him!

[Nolamike]

waiting for #3 son to bring this one home from University. i bought it for him for a Christmas present and can't wait to read it. it's comes highly recommended by him!

One of the fun things about it, without giving anything away, is how completely unreliable the sources/narrators are. There are a lot of obvious reasons (which you'll see when you start reading it) why much of what they are saying is not to be trusted/believed. It's very much like a literary puzzle/detective story, but without an ultimate resolution to the mystery at the end.

[Clippernolan]

Moab is my washpot by Stephen Fry.

[Snarfyguy]

I might have to get hold of that one then. Mind you I still haven't got round to the Bockris & Malanga one I picked up a while ago.

That one's good too, as a more conventional narrative history, but the amount of detail in this new one is remarkable, and what's even more remarkable is that the details are actually interesting. From the early 60s avant-garde art scene on New York's the Lower East Side to the fancy conservatories of Tanglewood and the like to the sets of European art films to scuffling around in crappy pre-Beatles rock & roll bands, the pre-history of the Velvet Underground has never been examined before, really, that I know of, and it's a lot of fun to explore.

Loads of pics I've never seen before too.

[Spec]

waiting for #3 son to bring this one home from University. i bought it for him for a Christmas present and can't wait to read it. it's comes highly recommended by him!

One of the fun things about it, without giving anything away, is how completely unreliable the sources/narrators are. There are a lot of obvious reasons (which you'll see when you start reading it) why much of what they are saying is not to be trusted/believed. It's very much like a literary puzzle/detective story, but without an ultimate resolution to the mystery at the end.

I read it so long ago. Has it retained all the strange tricks with fonts, and texts wrapping around the page etc?

[Nolamike]

I read it so long ago. Has it retained all the strange tricks with fonts, and texts wrapping around the page etc?

I also read it years ago - back in '01 or thereabouts. I think the fonts are the same, but the colors differ in each version. From wikipedia:

Throughout the entirety of House of Leaves (even including the cover and publishing information), the word house is colored blue (grey for non-color editions of the book and light grey for red editions), as in house, and is, in many places in the book, offset from the rest of the text in different directions at different times. Foreign-language equivalents of house, such as the German Haus and the French maison, are also blue. Red and full-color editions of House of Leaves have the word Minotaur and all struck passages colored red.[citation needed]

On the inside cover, where the Library of Congress information is listed, there is a note about differences in editions. In the full-color edition of House of Leaves, a struck line appears in purple in Chapter XXI.

Purple is associated throughout the novel with Pelafina, as it is the color of her long nails, and also the color of the ink Johnny is putting into needles when he has his panic attack in the supply closet.

The inside of the cover mentions a full-color "first edition" version including braille. The following editions are known and confirmed to exist:[citation needed]

* Black-and-White Edition—No colored words. Plain black text. House in grey. No Braille. Black and white appendices.
* Blue Edition—House in blue. Minotaur and struck passages in regular black text. No Braille. Black and white appendices.
* Red Edition—House in light grey. Minotaur and struck passages in red. No Braille. Black and white appendices.
* Full Color Edition—House in blue. Minotaur and struck passages in red. On the jacket, A Novel and the Pantheon logo in purple. In the book, First Edition and the struck line in Chapter XXI in purple. The word "braille" is replaced with seven Xs. Appendices are full color plates.[6]

A further edition printed on the inside of the cover, named "Incomplete", promises "no color, no Braille, (and) elements in the exhibits, appendices and index may be missing". It is unclear if any such editions exist.

Danielewski leaves much of the interpretation of the choice of colors up to the reader, but he has mentioned in interviews that the choice of the color blue is in part drawn from the bluescreen technique used in filmmaking.[7] The use of color in Danielewski's next full-length novel, Only Revolutions, is even more prevalent, with four colors other than black used throughout (also, the word house is also printed in blue in some sections of this novel).

[Django]

I was ultimately disappointed with House Of Leaves. It's an interesting set up that doesn't really go anywhere. By the time I had finished it, I felt like I had been tricked, the gimmicky type-setting unable to disguise that the narrative didn't really deliver.

Of course, there are thousands of geeks arguing on HOL messageboards about the significance of the puce apostrophe who would disagree with me.

Speaking of geekery, yesterday I revisited:



Next novel on the pile:

[Spec]

Next novel on the pile:

That was my [fiction] book of the year last year so I'll be interested to see what you think of it.

[Django]

Next novel on the pile:

That was my [fiction] book of the year last year so I'll be interested to see what you think of it.

I picked it up on your recommendation, it's just taken this long to get to the top of the pile.

[Kinkhurt]

best book I've read in ages

[Snarfyguy]

When I'm not chipping away at that Velvets book, I'm now reading this:



Straight Lfe: the Story of Art Pepper, per Hookfinger's suggestion.

[Count Machuki]

It begins anew...



I take the train now, so I have a combined 80 minutes a day to get into this. After a month: brain workout for the summer. Then, crap fantasy fiction and comic books for another month to try to dumb down again.

[Count Machuki]

When I'm not chipping away at that Velvets book, I'm now reading this:



Straight Lfe: the Story of Art Pepper, per Hookfinger's suggestion.

Heard good things about that from a friend who knew his widow, the author.