MetaChat - What'cha been reading?

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21 May 2010

What'cha been reading? →[More:]Since I've got some down time between semesters, I'm trying to force myself into a fiction kick with various results. For about the past two years, the only fiction I've been reading steadily are short stories (I've got Flannery O'Connor and Jorge Luis Borges collections on my nightstand).

This past week, while traveling and hanging on the beach, I whipped through Larry Brown's novel "Joe", which I immensely enjoyed. I heard one of Brown's stories read on the "Selected Shorts" podcast and immediately started looking information up on him. I've read quite a lot of Southern Literature, but either because he's relatively modern (although, sadly, passed away) or maybe he's just a little more obscure, I'd never heard of him. It's one of the most depressing and gritty books I've read since Donald Ray Pollock's "Konckemstiff", and is certainly not for everyone, but it was right up my alley.

I dropped by a couple of bookstores today while out running errands in hopes of finding Brown's novel "Fay", which is based on one of the characters in "Joe", but had no luck. I went ahead and picked up "Father and Son", though, which I'll probably start this evening.

I also took "A Confederacy of Dunces" with me, which I'd been meaning to read for the better part of a decade and actually bought about a year and a half ago. I'm about 3/4's of the way through it, and, I don't know. I mean, I'll finish it, and there's certainly some humor in it, but I'm just not getting the genius (much less Pulitzer Prize-worthiness) aspect of it.

What about you?

post by: ufez at: 12:52 | 41 comments

I am reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. For my vacation in June I bought The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson, Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer, and a book about a Jewish kid fighting in the Civil War of which I cannot remember the name.

posted by amro 21 May | 13:08

Metachat.

posted by theora55 21 May | 13:18

I'm reading a big pile of "how to write" books of all kinds. I find these very useful, either because they're actually instructive and intelligent, or because they're so dim-witted that I end up fuming and critiquing as I read.

On the recommendation of a couple of AskMe threads (and with absolutely no other info about it, like the basic premise), I picked up The Historian, which I'll probably start tonight, after I finish rereading Good Omens. I know people are often fervent admirers of both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and I'm working my way slowly through their oeuvres. With the exception of American Gods) I keep finding myself a little lukewarm on both. I like 'em fine, but neither really seems to grab me.

posted by Elsa 21 May | 13:30

Nothing good. I need good books. And the library in town is pathetic.

posted by Specklet 21 May | 13:49

internets

posted by The Whelk 21 May | 13:52

I have not had the energy to get myself to the library lately. All I've been reading are the blogs.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 21 May | 13:53

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

posted by DarkForest 21 May | 13:56

A Dorothy L Sayers mystery, for the umpteenth time. It's my stand-by for when I'm tired and out of sorts. this probably doesn't help you... I would say, though, that her later novels are high-class relatively intellectual crime fiction.

posted by altolinguistic 21 May | 13:59

(by which I mean the Harriet Vane novels, which I devoured for the first time as a teenager who saw herself as a potential bluestocking - YMMV)

posted by altolinguistic 21 May | 14:01

The Years with Ross, by James Thurber
Oranges, by John McPhee
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, by Phyllis Rose
The Food of a Younger Land, by Mark Kurlansky
We Took to the Woods, by Louise Dickinson Rich
Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell

posted by JanetLand 21 May | 14:01

Oh, and because I'm about to go on vacation I picked up a big fat juicy biography of Michael Jackson.

posted by JanetLand 21 May | 14:02

Just finished The Company, by K.J.Parker. It's ok.

posted by gaspode 21 May | 14:04

Still grinding through long historical novel about a nice-guy Richard III "The Sunne In Splendour". Got bogged down in the middle section when it suddenly turned into a treacly romance from Anne Neville's POV, but fortunately the warfare's just restarted and he's kicking some Scottish arse.

I've loved some other books by K.J. Parker, will look out for The Company... is it worse than her other books?

posted by TheophileEscargot 21 May | 14:13

The new Walt and Skeezix collection.

posted by brujita 21 May | 14:22

Padgett Powell

And Louise Erdrich, Shadow Tag.

They were both awesome. Now I'm spoiled and want more great reads!

posted by rainbaby 21 May | 14:30

Anna Karenina! I have a crush on Konstantin Levin but the Count Vronsky/Anna Karenina plot is really grating on my nerves. Only 100 pages left.

And I saw someone upthread mentioned Murakami - I recently read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which was great.

posted by cranberrymonger 21 May | 14:44

I went to the library today and picked up a bunch:

- If I Did It (the OJ Simpson confession book; I just started it, so no review yet)

- Beyond the Miracle Worker (biography of Anne Sullivan Macy, Helen Keller's teacher)

and three books from interlibrary loan:

The Heretic Queen, Nefertiti and Cleopatra's Daughter (historical fiction by Michelle Moran)

I recently read Charles Stross' first book of his Merchant Princes series - The Family Trade. I thoroughly enjoyed it and so I've ordered the whole series (minus the most recent, it's not out in paperback yet) through Amazon.ca.

posted by deborah 21 May | 14:53

Janetland: The Food of a Younger Land, by Mark Kurlansky

I know Kurlanksy's best known as a sorta food-historian, and Salt and Cod et. al appeal to me on a number of levels (though not strongly enough for me to pick them up), but his book 1968: The Year That Rocked the World is fanfuckingtastic. I've been a big fan of non-fic written about the Vietnam era, and have read dozens of books (mostly about the social side in the Western world) and that one stands out as one of the best (but I can't make that comment without mentioning David Maraniss' They Marched Into Sunlight, which is just phenomenal on so many levels).

posted by ufez 21 May | 15:05

I also thought Confederacy of Dunces was way overrated. More like a TV movie.

posted by Obscure Reference 21 May | 15:25

I'm just finishing The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. I haven't enjoyed it as much as his first novel, but I'm curious to see how the story ends.

posted by Senyar 21 May | 15:36

I don't really need a library. I can't seem to read the books that I have already, I don't need more to not read. I've been reading the second "Old Man's War" book by Scalzi which while well written, is something that you could easily read in a couple of evenings. So far it's taken me four months to get 2/3s of the way through, pathetic.

posted by octothorpe 21 May | 16:25

I've gotten hooked on the Aimee Leduc detective series. I picked up the first one, read it, and immediately went back and got the other eight in the series. Just started the last book this morning. (Oh, though looking at the website, looks like there's now a tenth. Woo!)

posted by occhiblu 21 May | 16:25

I just read my way through everything I own by Patricia McKillip, which is quite a lot. I love her dearly.

Right now, in a complete change of pace, I'm reading China Mieville's new one, The City & The City, (link goes to Guardian review by Michael Moorcock and sort of contains spoilers) which is highly awesome and very strange and almost terrifyingly smart, all things I have come to expect from him. Also he's totally sexy - well, the book isn't, he is.

posted by mygothlaundry 21 May | 16:26

On my second rereading of The Silver Gryphon, like a kid.

posted by sperose 21 May | 16:36

Just read (and LOVED) The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. I think this might actually be my favorite Wharton.
Read a couple David Sedaris books -- Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Both hilarious.
Now working my way through a giant omnibus edition of P.G.Wodehouse's (out of copyright) works. His earlier work is patchy, some glimpses of his genius, but also random borrowing of entire chapters from earlier novels.

posted by peacheater 21 May | 17:08

Watt. Persuasion. The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith.

posted by tangerine 21 May | 17:29

My cat's mind as to nap times.

posted by Ardiril 21 May | 17:43

I've been slogging through all 3 volumes of Systematic Theology by Paul Tillich. I started it in March and I'm only halfway through volume 2. I cannot finish this. Thank God that no one who uses the New York Public Library system reads the same books I do.

And, for fun, I'm reading a dissertation from 1942 about colonial lutheranism in New York.

posted by stynxno 21 May | 22:05

TheophileEscargot: I have only read the Engineer Trilogy and I liked that better than The Company. I mean, the latter doesn't suck, it's just (to my mind) predictable. And to my mind predictability only really works (for me) in escapist fantasy and the like. You know: heroes, swords etc.

posted by gaspode 21 May | 22:37

Thanks gaspode!

posted by TheophileEscargot 22 May | 00:18

I'm almost done with Airships, by Barry Hannah. I only heard about Hannah when he died a few months ago, but he is right up my alley: surreal, a little bit messy, and very very southern. It's a short-story collection from 1978, and some of the stories are just a page or two, but none of them suck and several of them are amazing. My favorites are a couple of Civil War stories that read like something Kafka wrote, very feverish and with undead characters representing the old, dead social order.

Another favorite is a sci-fi story that seems to happen somewhere in the 1950s, where the earth suddenly goes sterile and people plan every little movement so as not to burn excess energy. Somebody gets eaten by the end of it.

I have a little bit more to read in this and then I'm going to read 100 Years Of Solitude, which I've wanted to read for something like 24 years, and finally got around to it. Or rather, I'm about to.

posted by BoringPostcards 22 May | 00:57

I finished The Second Coming of Steve Jobs on my Kindle a few weeks ago. It was an interesting look into the psychology of the man, but the biography ended in the beginning of 2001, speculating that the iMac was a flash in the pan, and that Jobs didn't get digital music.

I just started the four volume, 2000+ page Journey to the West that I picked up at Powell's sometime last year.

In terms of comics, I blew through What a Wonderful World, vol 1, and I desperately want my copy of volume 2 and Solanin I had to leave in Seattle when I moved abroad.

posted by gc 22 May | 03:48

Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. One of my employees insisted I read it.

I just recently finished http://www.amazon.com/Lush-Life-Novel-Richard-Price/dp/0374299250, by Richard Price.

posted by Gorgik 22 May | 09:33

link failure, how sad/embarassing

posted by Gorgik 22 May | 09:34

I picked up The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P at our library book sale because the dust cover sounded so WTF - Japanese girl dreams she has a penis for a big toe, wakes up with a penis for a big toe. It explores gender and sexual roles in Japan, which I thought would be very interesting, but I'm most of the way through it and it's a lot of internal analytical dialogue about How This Feels In This Situation And Why It's Different. And the main character doesn't make any decisions on her own, she just goes with whatever others want and that has made me very very angry at everyone in the book.

posted by rhapsodie 22 May | 11:53

I felt the same way about Confederacy of Dunces and ended up not finishing it and let it go back to the library a while ago.
I've only just started Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.

posted by ethylene 22 May | 13:28

Working on The Quare Fellow now, moving on to Borstal Boy next. Decided this summer I'd read the complete works of Behan.

Also halfheartedly paging through Yates' The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age for my thesis next semester.

posted by kellydamnit 22 May | 15:01

I finished The Road a few weeks ago. This is the first book I've read by Cormac McCarthy. I'm also reading two short story collections -- one by Lorrie Moore and one by Joy Williams.

posted by LoriFLA 22 May | 15:11

Total Control by David Baldacci. Yea, populist crap, but it keeps my tiny mind amused.

ethylene, Tree of Smoke is good, although hard work.

posted by dg 22 May | 18:41

eh, just reading Lies My Teacher Told Me which I should have read years ago. It's awesome, though. Working through my book backlog before I grab some new stuff.

posted by Miko 22 May | 22:45

I just joined BookMooch and am delving into cheap romance novels, mostly of the tortured-wounded-hero variety. Don't judge me! My brain deserves fluff!

Because of BookMooch (because any time you think that joining something will bring you loads of cheap fun, it always costs a bundle), I've been scouring St. Vinnies and Half Price Books for some other ones in hopes that I'll read and then have good things to send. Aside from books I've been meaning to read for a while, like Let the Great World Spin and Outlander, my new-to-me copies of Three Men in a Boat, The Spiral Staircase, Three Junes and others arrived today.

On the back of my toilet tank is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I've been chugging away at it (this time) for like three months now, but I haven't read it in a few weeks. And let me tell you, if you're looking for a book to counteract the slowness of that weighty tome, At Home in Mitford is not it.

Picked up The Beekeeper's Apprentice for bedtime reading to each other, but stopped when it became clear that the first chapter was quite a bit more than 10 minutes worth of reading out loud. But we'll keep it going; it was pretty good. I just picked up a Jean Shepherd collection, which should be a good replacement bedtime book.

It should be a good summer for reading!

posted by Madamina 24 May | 15:47

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