New now reading

[Positive Passion]

A Handful of Dust is also very moving and one heck of a story.

Sounds a bit dry for my literary taste.

[Jimbo]

First it was the same author's all-books-in-one series about WWII submarines and now it is tanks. Can't wait to go on a long listening hike. That's when I do my best listening - out for long walks. What a kick!

[Jimbo]

A note not about reading but listening to books. I started a new listen, Armor, a couple of nights ago and what I did was set up the ipod with a small wireless speaker and listen myself to sleep. Frankly I didn't get much of the plot or too many of the details. It's understandable since my goal is to turn off my mind and sleep so I didn't feel like I was rereading when I re-listened to the same part the next night. But then today I took my audiobook to the gym and listened to the same part and beyond while I walked on the treadmill and heard every word and enjoyed the experience very much. I also have more enjoyable listens when I take long walks. So clear was my understanding of the text today I am wondering if I walking and listening couldn't be a study technique. Remember Disney's The Shaggy Dog story about "sleep learning?" Think maybe "walk learning" might be a thing? I might get a language lesson and take it out for a walk. See if that won't finally pound some Japanese into my head.

[echolalia]

Better known as one of The Wire's music critics (and author of the excellent "England's Hidden Reverse" on Coil, Current 93 and NWW), this is his second novel, set in Belfast during The Troubles. Pretty bloody good so far, something of a less puerile Irvine Welsh about it, perhaps even a hint of Roddy Doyle.

I’m reading Keenan’s This Is Memorial Device just now and enjoying it a lot - I'm never going to Airdrie though - so I will get to England’s Hidden Reverse soon I hope.

Next up is



I know nothing about it but am anticipating a feast!

[Minnie the Minx]

I started, and abandoned Midnight's Children. I could see that the language was beautiful, but nothing about any of the characters interested me so I stopped.

I just finished Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio which was a fabulous short read. A pretty earthy book I thought that touched the senses.

On the same day a couple of weeks ago I bought The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans and Laurie Lisle's Portrait of an Artist- A Biography of Georgia O' Keeffe. I started reading Laurie's book first, which suffers a bit from the author's adoration of her subject matter. Every page contains references to the "schoolmarmish appearance hiding an explosive bohemian" and how amazing it was that Georgia could "paint the white snow pink - ah, the courage!" You get the picture. Much more of that and I'm off to the Third Reich!

[Six String]

Last October we visited Marfa, TX on our Southwest road trip and enjoyed our roughly 24hr visit so much we discovered we had failed to take photos. One of the things we discovered was that the movie Giant from 1956 had been filmed there. Many of the actors stayed at the Paisano Hotel where we also stayed so there were lots of poster size b&w photos on the walls of the hotel. I knew very little about the movie but it made me curious. Last week I saw a doc titled The Children Of Giant about the making of the movie and some of the local people who were involved which reminded me I wanted to see the movie but then I decided to read the book first.

Tldr
Giant by Edna Ferber.

[Snarfyguy]

Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies

Still funny.

At some point I want to re-read all those funny Waugh books. Still haven’t read Brideshead, which I gather is a different deal.

Yeah (unpopular opinion), I didn't like that one, or any of the others after the first half-dozen. Not to my taste, I guess.

Hope you guys and your extended peeps are doing well. I haven't checked in more than once or twice since this whole thing started. Here, things are vexing, but not dire.

ETA: And I might as well say I'm now reading Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, which on a re-read is kind of amiably ridiculous or laughably quaint at best in a particularly mid-Century way. It would never be published now, and perhaps rightfully so. I read the lot in adolescence and this is the first time I've revisited any of it.

[Flower]

I finished James Lee Burke's most recent novel around six weeks ago.



I had ordered it from the library and since I read all the "Dave" books, I didn't read any reviews. As I started to read the book, I realized that Dave was in a "time warp" of sorts between the time that his second wife died and he married third wife. I guess that it's easier for fifty somethings Dave and Clete to go around beating people up and getting beaten up than for seventy somethings to do the same.

Dave, as always, knows the entire population of Louisiana and all their secrets.

Without giving anything away, the book is sort of the bastard child of James Lee Burke and Stephen King. It was an okay read and not one of my favorite James Lee Burke books.

P.S. Dave only ate one ham and onion sandwich in the entire book.

[Minnie the Minx]

Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies

[Minnie the Minx]

"All The Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy. No words, font or facial expressions can describe how great this book is. The sort of book you finish and then bow to. Fucking HELL. There's my author for the rest of the year!

[Tom Waits For No One]

[mission]

Minnie, it takes a while to get the rhythm of McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," but one you do - holy fuck - what a book.

Complete the Border trilogy, but I urge to keep your McCarthy kick going until you reckon with Blood Meridian

[toomanyhatz]

A bit disappointing to be honest, though Burgess is always at least entertaining. Cartoonish homophobia has not dated well. As a pessimistic view of the future (cannibalism is only the beginning) it's creepy in both good and bad ways. But it's no "Clockwork Orange" (released around the same time).

[`]

Sorry yet another DP! Bit like the (goodish) old days of the internet when everyone was trying to get their post count up so they could publicise they'd reached 100 or 1000 posts.

[`]

A bit disappointing to be honest, though Burgess is always at least entertaining. Cartoonish homophobia has not dated well. As a pessimistic view of the future (cannibalism is only the beginning) it's creepy in both good and bad ways. But it's no "Clockwork Orange" (released around the same time).

Remember reading one of Burgess' autobiogs (Your Time is Up, iirc) where he recalled a time in the early 60s when he'd been diagnosed with some sort of inoperable brain tumour and had to start banging books out to ensure his family was financially secure after his death. Could be this is one of the books from around that time. Fortunately, AB went on to live for another 20-odd years and write the wonderful (if equally dated) Earthly Powers, the opening sentence of which is one of the most guffaw-inducing in 20th century fiction.

[kath]

"All The Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy. No words, font or facial expressions can describe how great this book is. The sort of book you finish and then bow to. Fucking HELL. There's my author for the rest of the year!

yes indeed.

my ma was the one who turned me onto cormac, with that very book. she handed it to me and said it made her feel like she felt when she was young and she read faulkner for the first time. yep.

mission's right, too.

[Minnie the Minx]

Minnie, it takes a while to get the rhythm of McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," but one you do - holy fuck - what a book.

Complete the Border trilogy, but I urge to keep your McCarthy kick going until you reckon with Blood Meridian

Thanks for the heads up, mission! I shall. I just read ‘The Road’ which I found a major letdown after the Pretty Horses. Very well written but just so bleak and exhausting.

Good to see you posting, too!

[Dr. Baron]

I finished Charlotte Bronte's Villette the other day, and man was that a strange book! It's a very dense, interior, psychological book told from the perspective of a young English woman teaching in a fictional city that's a stand in for Brussels. Almost entirely focused on her limited relationships and insular world, there are about three suddenly phantasmagorical or hallucinogenic interludes that go as suddenly as they appear. One was particularly arresting when I read it, and when I went back to re-read it, it appeared to be far more commonplace than it appeared. I can see why it's not as famous as other Bronte books, and I'm glad to be done with it, but I'm glad I read it.

Before moving back to the world of British Literature of 1853, I'm reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's book of essays, and am currently on the famous case for reparations essay. I have no illusions about American history and have a reasonably strong grasp of it, but I'm having some new thoughts for sure.

[Minnie the Minx]

I finished Richard Ford’s ‘Canada’ which was an absolute joy - a gripping, gentle story about the consequences of choice and human frailty. Really great. Recommended.

[harvey k-tel]

Minnie, if I may make a recommendation based on what you've been enjoying, you should check out Jim Harrison. I've only read a couple of his novels, and 'True North' is the real standout for me. Just beautiful writing.