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MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

12 October 2005

I am reading a fascinating book: René Leys, by Victor Segalen. First published in 1922 and still regarded as a masterpiece in France, this exoticized story of conspiracy and intrigue in 1911 Pei-king grows curiouser by the page: is René, our liaison with the Forbidden City, making it all up?

What are you reading?
post by: Hugh Janus at: 09:24 | 64 comments
Oh, it's on my list, and I want to get to it soon. I have a nice edition from Quartet Encounters that I've had for years.

I'm still reading Proust (Vol 2) and Dos Passos. But soon I want to start in on my blog of all the NYRB classics. That should be a blast.
posted by omiewise 12 October | 09:27
The Rebel Sell; Why the culture can't be jammed - by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.
posted by dreamsign 12 October | 09:28
What am I reading? MetaChat, of course. Stupid question.
posted by dg 12 October | 09:30
Ouch.
posted by Hugh Janus 12 October | 09:32
Right now I'm learning lines for "Matt & Ben" - so I can't read anything else and it's killing me. Worst part about learning lines.

I'm going to look for:

Jennifer Egan "Look at Me"
Kim Addonizio poems (thanks seanyboy)
Mary Gaitskill "Veronica"
James Frey "A Million Little Pieces."

posted by rainbaby 12 October | 09:36
How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker. It's interesting, but so far I haven't really seen anything that I haven't already read in a bunch of other popular-audience books about evolution and cognitive issues.
posted by matildaben 12 October | 09:46
currently, de lillo's "the names". too early to tell.

recently i've finished: power's "the gold bug variations", which i'd recommend to anyone who likes both science and literature; mitchell's "number9dream", which is a pretty damn sweet (and modern) coming of age story ; and murakami's "hardboiled wonderland", which is the best i've read from him by miles.

so i'm on a bit of a roll. i hope "the names" turns out as good as those. oh, and favourite read in the last 12 months remains "wittgenstein's mistress" (i've just started reading again, after quite a few years not, and am ploughing through missed classics).
posted by andrew cooke 12 October | 09:58
I'm reading "I know why the caged bird sings."
posted by seanyboy 12 October | 09:59
The menu.
posted by ColdChef 12 October | 10:03
b.t.w number9dream is a brilliant book.
Heartily reccomended.
posted by seanyboy 12 October | 10:04
Currently reading Japanese Inn, by Oliver Statler. Which was recommended in Everyday Life in Traditional Japan, which was a recommend I got from AskMefi.
posted by selfnoise 12 October | 10:07
I'm re-reading Brothers Karamazov. Just read Middlesex (Eugenides), finally. About to read House of Sand and Fog, which frankly does not look like a good time.
posted by gaspode 12 October | 10:08
House of Sand and Fog was not a good time for me, gaspode.
posted by rainbaby 12 October | 10:10
Hey, selfnoise, that's a fantastic book! I realize I'm inordinately psyched you're reading it, but it's fairly obscure and I was a Japanese Studies major.

It's a little ethnographically dense (and entire sections are filled with sociological mumbo-jumbo), but the closed and tangled society of Tokyo's largest fish market has never been better illuminated for the outside eye than in Theodore Bestor's Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World. I give it a guarded recommendation -- it's a very academic work on a deep and fascinating subject.
posted by Hugh Janus 12 October | 10:18
I loved Middlesex. Loved, loved, loved it.

Unfortunately, I'm in one of my short attention span phases where all I can manage to read are magazines. Sometimes it gets so bad that I can only skim magazines. Beyond that, I just flip through catalogs.

Sometimes my brain needs a rest.

posted by jrossi4r 12 October | 10:24
I started a fantasy series when I was 9, back in 1990. Volume 11 was just released, and though I no longer care that much about the story, I've invested 15 years of my life with it, so I'm gonna finish it, goddammit. It is called Knife of Dreams and is written by Robert Jordan. Who [now that I've developed a modicum of taste] couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag.
posted by sciurus 12 October | 10:27
Don't worry, sciurus, I read that shit too. Have been since about the same time, and it's impossible to stop. It's the literary equivalent of crystal meth (if you consider finer writing to be coke or champagne, and pulp sci-fi, crack).
posted by Hugh Janus 12 October | 10:33
Thanks, Hugh, I'll take a look at that. I bought Japanese Inn at a used bookstore, along with Yoshiwara: City of the Senses, which I haven't dipped into yet.

This whole Tokugawa period Japanese history kick got started when I was reading Lone Wolf and Cub.
posted by selfnoise 12 October | 10:41
I just finished Anansi Boys. I'm diving back into Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson for the umpteenth time now.
posted by zerokey 12 October | 11:19
Sean McMullen, Souls in the Great Machine. I read the second one (Eyes of the Calculor) in the series first, about a year ago, and now I'm reading the first one, which is making it all a bit confusing. Robert Jordan is really bad and just as soon as I find a used copy of the second book in the goddamned series I don't even want to read but somehow via Goodwill I ended up with all the rest of them and read it I'll be done with him forever! Ha!
posted by mygothlaundry 12 October | 11:23
Sir Charles Grandison, by Samuel Richardson.
posted by JanetLand 12 October | 11:29
You know that Robert Jordan is going to get hit by a bus before it's finished, right? Right?

Stephen King went and did that before finishing the Dark Tower. Good thing he lived.
posted by zerokey 12 October | 11:31
Inspired by HBO's Rome, I am reading Colleen McCullough's Roman Series.

I bought all the books when they first came out because I was such a fan of the Claudius books by Robert Graves and I had read that McCullough had spent over 7 years researching the era and teaching herself Latin. But after reading the first two, I got distracted and never read the others.

The first book (The First Man in Rome, dealing with the rise of Gaius Marius) was tough going because I had to spend a great deal of time with the glossary. McCullough doesn't baby the reader so you have to familiarize yourself with terms such as quaestor, publicani, curule aedile, and imperium.

But the hard work does pay off. Her books really submerse you in the world of ancient Roma. If you enjoy politics, war, and scandalous gossip you will enjoy this series
posted by Secret Life of Gravy 12 October | 11:32
I think Robert Jordan will be atomized when his literary meth lab explodes, zerokey. Before the series is done, of course.
posted by Hugh Janus 12 October | 11:37
Oooo that sounded a little too much like a book report. Let me just quickly note the negatives. Her maps are often unreadable, you can't sort out the made-up anecdotes from the historical, and the battle descriptions go on too long for my tastes.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy 12 October | 11:39
Apparently Jordan has only got one book to go and is already deep into it, but I've heard that about a grillion times. I'm slowly working my way through Samuel R. Delany's Silent Interviews as well.
posted by sciurus 12 October | 11:46
just finished The Fool's Progress, Edward Abbey's quasi-autobiography...now Foucault's Pendelum...
posted by Schyler523 12 October | 11:47
The Dollmaker, Harriette Arnow. I didn't really read any of the books in my Southern Lit. class as an undegraduate.... It's one of my greatest regrets, because the professor, Lewis Lawson, was a genius. I understand now that the readings on the syllabus are great, and I want to read them all. So, I'm starting with Arnow.

And I'm glad that I at least took good notes in that class... I keep coming across things like "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," and it's been fun deciphering exactly how that fits in with Faulkner, for example.
posted by kortez 12 October | 11:54
The Fool's Progress, Edward Abbey's quasi-autobiography

Blammo, good one.

I am reading one book which is a secret (because I want to post about it) and I am reading Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail and I am reading Oryx and Crake and I have the last few pages of Manifold: Space to read. I read a bunch of shit at a time and while I am sorta proud of my 4 to 5 books a week habit(it helps to have no internet and no cable at home), it costs a bunch even with libraries and used books. Oh I just finished Another Bullshit Night in Suck City which is mostly pretty fucking awesome and good and has a title so good it makes me want to do Elvis karate.
posted by Divine_Wino 12 October | 11:55
As I posted a few days ago, I am reading L. Neil Smith's Pallas to see just how unintentionally hilarious a hack-science-fiction-novel-cum-libertarian-screed can be. Very, so far. Makes Atlas Shrugged look like a thoughtful character study. Not sure what's next, maybe Kyril bonfiglioi's Something Nasty in the Woodshed.
posted by PinkStainlessTail 12 October | 12:33
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Almost done. Excellent.
posted by amro 12 October | 12:59
The Historian. Meh, but I needed some easy reading.
posted by puddinghead 12 October | 13:10
amro, that's on my list, too. She was 23 when she finished writing that novel...impressive.
posted by kortez 12 October | 13:12
I am in the middle of a crazy reading orgy where I really wish I could read many books at exactly the same time. Since I cannot, I am rotating through:

She Came to Stay, Simone de Beauvoir
Road to Wigan Pier, Geroge Orwell
The Drowning Pool, Ross MacDonald
Whose Body, Dorothy L. Sayers

The latter two are for my detective fiction essay. The Road to Wigan Pier I read in school and found for $2 at the Book Barn (recommended by Miko and one of the greatest used bookstores in the world). I really prefer Orwell's nonfiction. This one is about coal miners and socialism. The first is the first novel Simone de Beauvoir published, a fictionalized account of a love triangle between her, Sartre, and a young girl who had been her student.
posted by dame 12 October | 13:17
dame, I'm in the middle of a Ross Macdonald orgy. (That doesn't sound right.) I finished The Instant Enemy, Find a Victim, and The Moving Target, and I'm about to start on The Ivory Grin.
posted by goatdog 12 October | 13:23
The Dollmaker, Harriette Arnow

The TV movie adaptation of that book had me attempting to perform emergency tracheotomies on my little sisters every time one would cough.
posted by jrossi4r 12 October | 13:25
Crowned in a Far Country. It's a bit "lite" on the history side but I'm enjoying it.
posted by deborah 12 October | 13:29
Did you like The Moving Target, goatdog? It's not one of my faves. The Galton Case and The Zebra Striped Hearse are good and The Underground Man may be my favorite. (I've actually read every Ross MacDonald thanks to a year-long bout of semi-employment and a library card.)
posted by dame 12 October | 13:38
I was just introduced to him (by a MeFi thread), so these are my first. I though The Moving Target was ok, but so far, The Instant Enemy is my fave. My local used bookstores are too snooty to carry his stuff, so I don't come across him much.
posted by goatdog 12 October | 13:46
Dame

Where is the Book Barn?
posted by Divine_Wino 12 October | 13:47
I'm reading Blood Test by Jonathan Kellerman. (I've been on a Kellerman kick lately) I'm also reading American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush by Kevin Phillips.
posted by sisterhavana 12 October | 13:47
The TV movie adaptation of that book had me attempting to perform emergency tracheotomies on my little sisters every time one would cough.

Yikes! Did you whittle the tracheotomy tube out of a stick?

Hope your sisters made it through that experience without lasting physical/emotional scars.
posted by kortez 12 October | 13:49
jrossi, I really enjoyed Middlesex as well. Helps that I used to study sexual differentiation of the brain, so the medical aspects were extremely relevant for me!

Oh, and count me in as one of those 11 year olds who got sucked into Robert Jordan and cannot give him up. I hate myself. And I hate his fucking writing. What's that website that summarizes books in one or two lines? The robert Jordan ones are really funny.
posted by gaspode 12 October | 13:52
The Book Barn in in Niantic, Connecticut, about twenty minutes closer to New York than New London (I guess that's west). Everytime I go, I end up spending like seventy dollars. But I get like twenty books, so it's fair. They have goats and kitties. I think we should take a New York MeCha field trip there.

Also, if you're ever driving to Boston (91 to the Mass Pike), there is a place called the Traveler's Book Restaurant in Union, Connecticut, right before the Mass border. The food is passable, but you get free books and there is a nice used bookstore in the basement.

Goatdog: Amazon is your friend! Or I bet your library has loads.
posted by dame 12 October | 14:05
Oryx and Crake here.
posted by mudpuppie 12 October | 14:15
Also, if you're ever driving to Boston (91 to the Mass Pike), there is a place called the Traveler's Book Restaurant in Union, Connecticut, right before the Mass border.

I always see that and next time I am totally making everyone drink just enough water to mandate a pee break right there.
posted by Divine_Wino 12 October | 14:17
But can we take a field trip to Niantic? Please, Daddy_Wino?
posted by dame 12 October | 14:26
I wanna go and my mommy already signed my permission slip; can I go too, can I, can I?
posted by Hugh Janus 12 October | 14:43
Mozart's Women
posted by matteo 12 October | 14:43
Shit yeah, just stay on your side of the seat and no we are not listening to Z100 even though Pon De Replay is a good song, because I might here behind these hazel eyes and then I have to kill us all.*





*This is a quote from real life.
posted by Divine_Wino 12 October | 14:43
You might what?*
posted by Hugh Janus 12 October | 14:51
eh?*
posted by Divine_Wino 12 October | 14:56
Yay!!!! Super book field trip with Hugh & the Wino. It will be the best Satuday of my whole life.

On the way home, when we're all tired & booked out, will you hold my hand as we fall asleep with our heads against the window, Hugh?
posted by dame 12 October | 15:09
you're so fickle
posted by matteo 12 October | 15:11
You can sleep with your head against the window, dame. I plan to rest mine on your shoulder.

Of course we can hold hands.
posted by Hugh Janus 12 October | 15:15
I am not. I can love many boys at once. When I go to Italy, I'll hold your hand my darling, as we nap after a grueling swim.
posted by dame 12 October | 15:16
Right now, I'm in rereading mode for various reasons. In rotation are:

Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber
an anthology called The Armless Maiden
Pablo Neruda's The Yellow Heart
David Brin's Earth
posted by Frisbee Girl 12 October | 15:28
kortez, I was super impressed by Carson McCullers' age when she wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as well.

I can tell, even with a few pages left to go, that it has made it onto my list of favorites.
posted by amro 12 October | 16:11
I'm still struggling my way through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. The closer I get to the end, the longer it seems to get.
posted by muddgirl 12 October | 17:28
I finished Anansi Boys last night. It's not Gaiman's best work, but it was entertaining nonetheless. I've since moved on to Mary Roach's Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. So far it's a bit more jumbled than the "prequel," but I expect it'll get better.
posted by eyeballkid 12 October | 18:07
I'm a really voracious reader. Right now I'm in the middle of:

I, Fatty, Jerry Stahl
The Criminalist, Eugene Izzi
The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, Jonathan Kozol
Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggas, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America, Bakari Kitwana
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Interactive Portfolio, Margo Stipe
What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, John Markoff
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy
posted by box 12 October | 18:30
Damn you all, I just spent $31 on Amazon.
posted by amro 12 October | 18:42
I'm in the middle of a book of novellas by Nina Berberova--Tattered Cloak--great sad stories about Russian expats in Paris.
posted by amberglow 12 October | 18:43
more on it here
posted by amberglow 12 October | 18:43
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