MetaChat - Another book post.

I'm reading three books at once because I am neurotic. Meeting Across The River, the anthology of short stories inspired by the Springsteen song; James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, which I kept getting halfway through and the getting interrupted by some other cultural event; and I'm rereading Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon on the train.

posted by jonmc 16 August | 11:12

I just finished The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper, which I enjoyed enormously. If you've ever been the odd kid out, the geeky nerd at school (I know, it's hard to believe anyone on MeCha could ever have been a geeky nerd, but use your imagination), then you'll probably enjoy this book.

I just took delivery of his two other books, Plan B and Everything Changes, one of which I'll be taking to Vegas.

posted by essexjan 16 August | 11:21

I am reading The Queen of Subtleties by Suzannah Dunn. It's about Anne Boleyn, and frankly it's pretty terrible. But still mildly entertaining. I also got A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer out of the library yesterday, so they're next up to read.

posted by amro 16 August | 11:23

I continually re-read Young Goodman Brown by Hawthorne.

posted by getoffmylawn 16 August | 11:24

I'm reading The Devil in the White City, The Know It All, and Wicked.

I heartily recommend them all.

posted by cmonkey 16 August | 11:25

Riven Rock by TC Boyle, Drown by Juniot Diaz, Joe by Larry Brown and I'm in the middle of the new Tim Powers novel Three Days to Never. I also heartily recommend them all.

posted by Divine_Wino 16 August | 11:28

Books I am rotating through (the big ol' bookpile by my bed):

Walt & Skeezix (the first collection) by Walt King
Rutabaga Stories by Carl Sanburg
The Argot of the Underworld by David Maurer
Moby Dick by Melville
and a collection of Dickens ghost stories

posted by Mrs.Pants 16 August | 11:28

After an intriguing comment by Mudpuppie, I read The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I'm really glad I did.

I read Devil in the White City last year and loved it, so I picked up Isaac's Storm, also by Eric Larson, about the Galveston Hurricane. It was also good, but I found the writing style a little chatty.

posted by pieisexactlythree 16 August | 11:29

≡ Click to see image ≡
w00t!

posted by pieisexactlythree 16 August | 11:31

Hey Wino, I remember you saying how much you liked TC Boyle, in particular Drop City (is this right?) Because I've been trying with him. But there's something about his work that I just don't like. I don't know what it is. Well, I do. I think I have a fundamental lack of empathy for any of his characters, so I just can't be bothered reading about them.

BUT I want to keep trying, because so many people whose tastes either coincide with mine, or whose tastes I respect really like his stuff and they keep telling me I should read him and that I will love his work. What am I missing with him? What's wrong with me? Hope me, DW!

posted by gaspode 16 August | 11:33

When I get home this afternoon, Dzur will be sitting on my doorstep. Steven Brust is my favorite author, by far, and I've read the Vladiad (of which Dzur is the 10th book) three times through, most recently this spring and summer to prepare for this release.

I'm beside myself with excitment, and probably won't sleep tonight.

posted by mike9322 16 August | 11:34

I'm reading Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward at the moment. Or I was until late yesterday, when I left it on Galiano Island. I know, I know, a Russian writing about cancer patients--could it possibly get more depressing? But it really is a most enjoyable book, partly for its insight into Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR. Now I am sad that I have to wait to finish it. I'm also slowly working through Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins. Don't know why it's taking me so long, as it's a good read too, but there you have it. I'm feeling the need for some trash to counterbalance this, though. Some Ian Rankin or Elmore Leonard or Jim Thomson or something. A good spy novel would be just the thing. Maybe I'll go to the library today.

posted by elizard 16 August | 11:38

The only thing I would speculate is that many of his characters are not really meant to be totally sympathetic, they're fairly human in that regard. Did you try drop city? There are some characters it's fairly easy to care about in that. Dude just carries good stories and uses words well for me, although his book about Kinsey fucking bored me to death. Also, frankly sometimes you just don't like something (I know you know this) that others do, I think that's actually an important function of the brain, not liking...

posted by Divine_Wino 16 August | 11:38

I'm reading The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World.

posted by smich 16 August | 11:40

I'm reading The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker and enjoying it wildly. I wish the library would get the rest of her Company books in, but they haven't & they won't, sigh. I just finished Sybille Bedford's memoir, Quicksand, and that was pretty cool, if a bit annoyingly written. And I read Pack of Two, which Rainbaby recommended & I'm sorry to admit that I didn't much like. I really really really want Tim Powers new book!

posted by mygothlaundry 16 August | 11:46

God's Politics.
The Poe Shadow.
Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory (just finished volume two).

posted by grabbingsand 16 August | 11:47

Yeah, I mean I know he's not writing the characters to be too sympathetic, and I appreciate their humanity and all that crap. But my wanting to slap them silly kind of takes away from the story. I did read Drop City. The only characters I wanted to read more about were Sess and Pamela. I liked them.

*sigh* I think I will give up on him. I just can't shake the feeling that it's me not getting something when people keep recommending his books to me. Oh well. Lots more out there.

posted by gaspode 16 August | 11:49

oh & gaspode: I don't much like TC Boyle either in general, but there are specific books of his that I really quite liked: Drop City, World's End (like this one a LOT) and Budding Prospects. I hated Tortilla Curtain and couldn't even finish The Road to Wellville, so what I guess I'm saying is, basically: one Boyle novel /= another Boyle novel; they're all totally different.

posted by mygothlaundry 16 August | 11:49

I just started Grief by Andrew Holleran - I loved Dancer from the Dance, but wasn't able to get into his other books. I haven't had time to read a lot of fiction lately, other than the comfort-food variety. So it's pretty enjoyable to spend some time on a good novel.

posted by expialidocious 16 August | 11:54

Budding Prospects is very good and Sess and Pamela are the characters you are supposed to like in Drop City, they're the actual counter-culturalists, not the selfish hedonistic manipulative hippies.

posted by Divine_Wino 16 August | 11:55

I'm almost done with Seven Types of Ambiguity, which was recommended to me by dno and which I recommended to everyone else in a thread a few days ago. I really really like it.

I actually finally read The Line of Beauty a few weeks ago, after a few false starts on it last year. Now I can't figure out why I couldn't get into it before; it was really engaging this time.

posted by occhiblu 16 August | 12:02

I'm (re)reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
And i recently discovered James Rollins, and he's like Clive Cussler meets James Bond...I highly recommend all 8 of his books! I just finished reading Sandstorm.

posted by ramix 16 August | 12:24

Currently I'm reading the two books I assigned my AP students for the summer (teacher, teach thyself!): Christina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban and James McBride's The Color of Water. I heartily recommend them both, though I'm experiencing a bit of the old "assigned reading" resistance myself (ironic, I know, since I did the assigning).

Next up on my virtual night table are Berlin Childhood (around 1900), by Walter Benjamin, which I found recently while browsing at St. Marks (my niece, her husband, and four children recently moved back to Berlin from Amsterdam, where her husband's from (he runs a yeshiva there); Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, which I've never read and feel somehow drawn to; Apathy and Other Small Victories, by Paul Neilan, which jon recommended and I like very much so far (delightfully bleak); Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, which I started and keep meaning to get back to (said to be his best); and Charles Bukowski's Women, which is a reread for me (what can I say, I like the kinky stuff).

I also highly recommend Breece D'J Pancake's short story collection, Trilobites, for the best subtle prose mastery I've ever seen (it is, alas, his one and only, since he very prematurely ended his life with a shotgun blast to the head, which I'm still angry at him for, though I never met him). I also recommend Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, for the wild ride that it is (a postmodern companion to Richard Price's Ladies' Man, if I ever saw one... you'll never look at anal beads the same way again); and E. Annie Proulx's Shipping News, for its experimental prose and highly sympathetic protagonist (much better than the movie, though I liked the movie, to a point)... one of those books that makes you think happiness is possible, if you like that kind of thing.

(thanks gaspode, for another book thread... makes my day : )

posted by Pips 16 August | 12:26

I've been trying to reread Gravity's Rainbow all summer, but I kind of got annoyed and stalled. I just finished Cold Comfort Farm which is funnier as a book than the movie version, but still just pretty mild.

I'm rereading Ring World right now. I'd been thinking about it (I read it several times as a kid, but not in 20 years), and wondering if I should read it again, and there it was at a thrift store. Which is weird, since it's probably been at least 15 years since I've even seen a copy. Did anyone read the sequels?

On Preview: Pips, that Benjamin books is great, and if you like it I would really recommend Gershom Scholem's The Story of a Friendship, which was out of print for a long time (although heroically kept in print for a while by Jewish Publications Society), but has recently been reissued by New York Review of Books. It's just what the title suggests, the story of Scholem's friendship with Benjamin, first in Berlin and then via letter after Scholem made aliyaah.

posted by omiewise 16 August | 12:32

I just finished rereading The Duke's Children, by my beloved Trollope, if you'll pardon the expression. I am so intrigued by the sound of smich's book that I have just requested it on interlibrary loan.

posted by JanetLand 16 August | 12:33

I also like Carl Hiaasen, Jill Connor Brown, Tom Robbins and Nelson DeMille, but I will always prefer to read the classics like Hawthorne and Wm. Blake (fabulous artist as well) over anything else.

I still love the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew books and L. Frank Baum. I read stuff like that on my computer at work because it is light, easy, entertaining and makes me feel like a kid again.

posted by getoffmylawn 16 August | 12:33

I also like Carl Hiaasen

If you like Hiaasen, you'll love Tim Dorsey. Razor-sharp, violent, and laugh-ou-loud funny.

posted by jonmc 16 August | 12:43

Thanks, omiewise... I'll look forward to both reads.

I know what you mean about Gravity's Rainbow. In grad school, I had to read the guide book summaries before I read each subsequent chapter, just to orient myself; I'd like to reread it now, now that I know what's going on a little better (sort of). It is brilliant.

I have similar ambitions/frustrations with Joyce's Ulysses, which I want so badly to read and enjoy (I keep stalling out early on); I'm considering getting the unabridged audio version... I thought it might help to hear it (it's about eighty bucks, though, so I might wait... even with my teacher's discount). Ditto for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; more readable, certainly, and funny as hell in parts, but somehow I keep stalling there, too... great, great masterpiece (I also want to share in what jon has described as his "bible").

(on preview: goml, best children's book ever.)

posted by Pips 16 August | 12:47

I'm reading The House that Trane Built, jazz historian Ashley Kahn's history of Impulse Records, and Erik Davis' Techgnosis, about mysticism and spirituality and whatnot in the digital age (there was a Mefi post about Davis the other day), Body Piercing Saved My Life, about Christian music, and a Donald Westlake book whose name escapes me--one of the Dortmunder ones, though. A couple professional-development books, too--some books about library programming, and the Bluford YA books.

My stack of books to start reading soon includes the second volume of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, Chris Anderson's Long Tail book, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Ed Halter's From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games.

Just finished, and recommended: Don Winslow's Power of the Dog, a sprawling novel about drugs, and Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, much of which originally appeared in Slate.

posted by box 16 August | 12:49

I have read a better portion of Piers Anthony's Xanth collection too.

Pips: best children's book ever.

posted by getoffmylawn 16 August | 12:56

I'm rereading Demonstration Experiments in Physics, Machine Shop Work and anthrax reports.

Yeah, I know. Not much overlap with other's reading habits. Puts me to sleep, though.

The last real book I read was e e cummings The Enormous Room. I've been pecking away at Hermit of Peking but not making much progress because the weather's been so nice.

posted by warbaby 16 August | 12:59

Just finished Pattern Recognition by Gibson (liked it a lot). Just about to start Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Also currently working my way through Gotham, the NYC history, and In Search of Ancient Oregon, by Ellen Morris Bishop, which is a fascinating read, with good photos, of the eon-by eon assembly of my beloved state, with illustrations of current landscapes and how they started out (i. e. a mountaintop fire lookout built on a coral reef in the Wallowas).

The latter two books need to be read a small bite at a time, I have found.

posted by danf 16 August | 13:01

Awwww... that's too cute, goml.

Cuddlemop... I think I found a new petname for jon. : )

(though I think he fancies himself more a grumblebunny)

posted by Pips 16 August | 13:06

You know it's funny, in all the time I've known Jon, in all the many conversations I've had with him we've never discussed the fact that both of us seem to have read Infinite Jest many many times. My copy is so jacked up it looks like I've mostly been reading it underwater while butchering a pig.

posted by Divine_Wino 16 August | 13:08

Oooh, danf, I love Middlesex. I seriously think it's one of the most perfect novels ever written.

posted by occhiblu 16 August | 13:12

DW: When we went to a Wallace signing some years back at a B & N here in the city, I told him how I kept stubbing my toe in the middle of the night on jon's hardcover copy next to the bed... Wallace signed my paperback copy, "With Best Podiatric Wishes." He signed jon's infamous jacket, too.

posted by Pips 16 August | 13:15

Sorry, I am already known as thegrumblebunny, and I have a lock down on that email address almost everywhere.

I wish I had used my nickname as my screen name here!!!

posted by getoffmylawn 16 August | 13:22

I read Already Dead by Denis Johnson last month and it was great.

Right now:
The Eyre Affair
The Star Fox
Female Masculinity
Mathematical Modelling Techniques

Speaking of Ulysses, I still haven't finished Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The book is dense.

posted by halonine 16 August | 13:23

Currently reading:
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
Justine, Lawrence Durrell
Shahnameh, by Abolqasem Ferdowsi
1491, Charles C. Mann
Biblical Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

Recently finished:
Mahabharata
A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
The Poets' Book of Psalms, ed. Laurence Weider
Ladies' Man, Richard Price
All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald
The Balcony, Jean Genet
The Voice at 3:00 AM, Charles Simic
Warlock, Oakley Hall
Musashi, Eiji Yoshikawa
Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
Das Boot, Lothar-Günther Buchheim
English, August, Upamanyu Chatterjee
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

There are certainly others that I can't remember or didn't like all that much. The Bester is the only one I've read before, and there was some other Sci-Fi I started but didn't really like (a book of China Mieville novellas and short stories read like dredging a septic tank); I just cracked the spine on Grant's letters, which looks like a real long-haul read.

I recommend every book I listed.

posted by Hugh Janus 16 August | 13:26

Already Dead is one of my favorite books as well (as is Resuscitation of a Hanged Man). I wish Johnson would write something like that again.

posted by Divine_Wino 16 August | 13:27

I love Carl Hiaasen too, and, Pips, I adored The Shipping News.

posted by essexjan 16 August | 13:28

The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre

posted by getoffmylawn 16 August | 13:40

I'm reading The Historian, and I'm loving it. Yep, it's a Dracula story, but I'm really enjoying it from the viewpoint of a lush, meandering historical mystery / travelogue. :) And I love fat bookish books about bookybooky things like libraries and historians and parchments and esoteric collections. The London Times likes it, too, so I'll link to their review. And here's an excerpt at NPR.

Before that, I read The Electric Michelangelo, which I also liked, as dank and melancholy as it was. The ultrapassive, even oddly bloodless (get it? it's IRONY! woo!) character of the protagonist in juxtaposition to his exotic profession and bizarre settings was curiously nice. However, I must say this one really could have benefited from some determined herding of the prose.

(And, on preview, I'm agreeing on "Middlesex" and "The Shipping News" - two books I love love.)

posted by taz 16 August | 13:45

That Old Ace in the Hole is another great Proulx novel if anyone hasn't read it.

posted by Divine_Wino 16 August | 13:50

Oh I read That Old Ace in the Hole a couple months ago. I just wanted to climb into the book. Really enjoyed it.

posted by gaspode 16 August | 13:52

A High Wind in Jamaica is just great! and of course, Tristram is incomparable.

posted by omiewise 16 August | 14:23

Yeah, I've been laughing ever since I cracked it (Tristram).

posted by Hugh Janus 16 August | 14:26

Oh, I just remembered to recommend the Michael Winterbottom film of the book which came out two years ago or so. It isn't perfect, but it does a good job with teh adaptation and is very funny in parts.

posted by omiewise 16 August | 14:45

A couple weeks ago a friend sent me Leash by Jane DeLynn, and I just finished it last week. That book is eighteen kinds of crazy, but beautifully written. The kinky parts made me paranoid that people were reading over my shoulder on the subway.

My new subway/lunchtime/bedtime book is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. So far, it's really good. Next up is Cloud Atlas, which I've heard about too much to ignore further. Luckily my roommate has the most amazing book collection. Unfortunately, she's moving out in a month (but I get her room, which is a million times better, and only $5 more a month :) ).

posted by SassHat 16 August | 14:52

Justine, Lawrence Durrell

I read the Quartet as I was segueing into adulthood. . .it's influenced me in ways I am aware of and ways that I am sure I am not.

Those 4 books are dear to my heart.

posted by danf 16 August | 15:21

I just finished reading:
Mind Wide Open: Neuroscience of Everyday Life by Steven Johnson
and
The Brain: A Very Brief Introduction (thanks, moonbird!)

Currently reading:
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (for book club; wouldn't have read it on my own but I like it very much)
Rats by Robert Sullivan
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (a little bit at a time)

posted by matildaben 16 August | 16:09

Hugh, how do you like 1491? It's on my wish list.

posted by matildaben 16 August | 16:20

Oh 'pode! I'm reading Allegra Goodman's Intuition, and I've been thinking of you! I'ts set in a science lab.

posted by rainbaby 16 August | 17:53

Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Her Way by Paula Kamen
The City that Care Forgot (compilation of zines from New Orleans before Katrina hit)

posted by Cinnamon 16 August | 17:54

CINNAMON!!!
Handmaid's Tale - How did I leave that one out? One of my favorite stories, both as a book and as a movie!

posted by getoffmylawn 16 August | 18:05

Intuition, huh? *adds to growing list of books to check out*

posted by gaspode 16 August | 18:37

Yay Cinnamon and GOML - that's my favorite book! Margaret Atwood and I have the same birth day and birth place - isn't that crazy? I've never seen the movie, though.

posted by SassHat 16 August | 18:38

gaspode, it's about lab politics and a possible cancer treatment breakthrough, and Goodman is a very lyrical writer. Seriously, I thought about emailing you about it. But strangely, the only thing that I'm not able to metachat bond over is reading choices. It's enough that there are so many other readers out there, but I'm not science fictiony at all. . .I know others aren't too, but I never see books in the book threads that make me go WOOT! ME TOO! fwiw.

posted by rainbaby 16 August | 18:47

Sasshat, If that's your favorite book, do not watch the movie.

posted by getoffmylawn 16 August | 21:35

Mindy Lewis' Life Inside--she was on a panel at AWP about women who were hospitalized. Bitchfest, and Picnic at Hanging Rock.

posted by brujita 16 August | 23:57

I am reading Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite by Marjorie Hope Nicholson, while also dipping into the essays in Opus Magnum a book about ‘Sacred Geometry, Alchemy, Magic, Astrology, Kabbala and Secret Societies’ in the Czech Republic.

posted by misteraitch 17 August | 01:49

Matildaben, I heartily recommend 1491. It will change your understanding of precolumbian America. I can't recommend it enough, actually. I started reading it while researching a play I'm working on, and now I don't know how I thought I'd write a play about conquistadors without it. Seriously, it may be flawed (as groundbreaking histories often are -- so much to stand on its head, so little time) but there's so much good new information and traceable conclusions in it that any questionable assumptions Mann makes are forgivable, sometimes interesting.

I think the Gulf wars and the political situation in the Middle East have, over the last fifteen or twenty years, resulted in a boom in precolumbian archaeological research. As sites in contested or unfriendly areas of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq have become more dangerous (and world cultural heritage laws have made research more difficult), archaeologists have turned away from the great cultures of antiquity and towards the safer, more convenient sites of the Americas; once enough world-class archaeologists turned their eyes to the Americas, the discoveries just started flowing in; our understanding of populations, their impact on the environment, daily life, political and economic structures, and mass movements, has changed drastically with the renewed scrutiny. This currency makes 1491 one of the most exciting histories I've read.

posted by Hugh Janus 17 August | 07:45

damn! I wrote a whole big comment about Margaret Atwood and blahblah, asking for recommendations from her body of work that I haven't read.... and evidently I never hit "post". Sucky.

posted by taz 17 August | 15:12

16 August 2006