What Are You Reading?

[ValerieB]

just started reading "playing by ear," the new biography on Bruce Lundvall by Dan Ouellette.

[Jazzooo]

I'm reading a sample of 'tune in' by Mark Lewisohn, trying to figure out if I feel like going deep into the Beatles at this moment.

[Monte Smith]

Locke and Key: Alpha and Omega, the last six issues of this rather ingenious comics series. Hill's writing is wonderful, better than the one novel of his that I've read. Rodriguez's art is flat-out awesome. Both the author and illustrator are steeped in comic tradition and the love and excitement of the genre are here. Good story, too. Highly recommended to graphic narrative fans.

[jwaggs]

Bully Pulpit.

[sozamora]

This is what I've read recently. I recommend all of them

Ryszard Kapuscinski - The Soccer War

Very good, but I'll probably read something more focused on a single subject next. Very interesting observations from a humane and empathetic reporter, even if it does veer towards orientalism once in a while.

John Edward Williams - Stoner

In its own quiet, stoic way, it blew my socks off. Stoner is a fascinating characters, and Williams is an amazing writer. Why isn't this better known?

Jeff Vandermeer - Annihilation

The first in a planned trilogy. It's a bit less wild and baroque than Vandermeer's earlier work, but it's a great science fiction book in its own way. It reminded me of the Strugotsky brothers' Roadside Picnic, but also Herzog's film 'Aguirre: The Wrath of God' in its description of the lush and dominating natural landscape. The rest of the trilogy will be released later this year rather than one a year or so, which is apparently a new publishing model intended to appeal to so-called 'binge readers'.

Paul Bowles - The Spider's House

I might like this one more than The Sheltering Sky

Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet

I haven't finished it. I'm reading a few 'chapters' at a time in between other books. It's very different from anything I've read before even if the format is simple diary entries. Wonderful.

[Monte Smith]

Every so often I like to pick up a James Bond novel. I read the Fleming books in a binge when I was in high school and I loved them, so I guess I'm always trying to rekindle the old flame. It's usually a mistake. Last year I read one by Kingsley Amis, Colonel Sun, and that was alright. Better than most of the knockoffs. Better than Sebastian Faulk's Devil May Care, which I read two years ago or more. This:



This one sucked. Solo by William Boyd. It was new last year. Terrible, boring stuff. Boyd is a well-regarded serious novelist, usually writing about Africa (this .007 takes place in Africa and DC in 1968). The one interesting bit, which would only be interesting to someone who knows DC and Northern Virginia, is how wrong the author gets the locale. He has Bond tearing thru suburbs that were built in the 90s.

[sozamora]

Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet

Finally finished this and it was amazing. Lately, I finished

Theodore Sturgeon - More than Human. This was one of the best golden age sci fi novels I've read.

William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland. Kind of weirdly put together. Almost like two different stories. It worked though. Historically, it's significant because it's WHH's first published novel and is considered the demarcation line between earlier 19th c. gothic horror and 20th c. weird fiction.

Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim. Lots of fun! Interesting to compare this with the other university life novel I read recently, Edward Williams' 'Stoner'. Completely different in almost every way. I found 'Stoner' to be the superior work, but I really dug 'Lucky Jim' regardless.

[Monte Smith]

Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim. Lots of fun! Interesting to compare this with the other university life novel I read recently, Edward Williams' 'Stoner'. Completely different in almost every way. I found 'Stoner' to be the superior work, but I really dug 'Lucky Jim' regardless.

The more natural comparison for LUCKY JIM are the British "redbrick university" novels by Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge and the like. Bradbury's EATING PEOPLE IS WRONG and THE HISTORY MAN are great. He wrote a campus novel every decade to satirize changing university fads.

[Jazzooo]

Time and Again, by Jack Finney. Supposedly a time travel classic, but I'm getting a little restless and I'm only halfway through.

[walto]

Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim. Lots of fun! Interesting to compare this with the other university life novel I read recently, Edward Williams' 'Stoner'. Completely different in almost every way. I found 'Stoner' to be the superior work, but I really dug 'Lucky Jim' regardless.

The more natural comparison for LUCKY JIM are the British "redbrick university" novels by Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge and the like. Bradbury's EATING PEOPLE IS WRONG and THE HISTORY MAN are great. He wrote a campus novel every decade to satirize changing university fads.

Thanks for those recs, Monte. I don't know Bradbury or Lodge, and I remember really enjoying LUCKY JIM.

[Monte Smith]

No prob, walto. I'm reading Lodge's GINGER, YOU'RE BARMY right now. It's not quite a university novel, but it sort of is, too. A middle class Angry Young Man-type describes the post-graduate interlude of compulsory national service in 1950s Britain. I like the period and its authors; Amis, Bradbury, Lodge, Wain, Braine, Larkin, Storey, Sillitoe. Cinematically this is the period of Albert Finney and Alan Bates.

[Chazro]

So, thanks to yr recs, I read Stephen King's The Stand, the new unedited version. It was good, I think I'm done with King for awhile now. On impulse I picked Up James Clavell's Shogun. I 've read this a few times over the years but I enjoyed it more than ever this time, what an outstanding book! Reading Shogun put me in a Clavell frame of mind so after I finished Shogun I read Tai-pan, another one that I've read a few times already, another tremendous read! Currently, I'm in the middle of his Noble House and enjoying it immensely, taking place in the same time period, it feels like a Mad Men adventure, except quite a bit better! 'sfunny, as I mentioned, I've read Clavell's books a number of times through the years, the books are old friends. I actually feel a little sad in that I'm realizing this will probably be the last time we spend time together!

[Douglas]

Quite enjoyed this, though thought it a little overwrought when it went for the big messages

[jwaggs]

I almost made it to the halfway point in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

I haven't yet made it to the halfway point in Bully Pulpit.

But I, nevertheless, started another book, All God's Dangers, after recently reading what Dwight Garner had to say about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/books ... .html?_r=0