It's June. Almost halfway through the year,
I love June.
I was born in June and usually it (finally) stops raining here.
So what are we all reading?
Myself, I recently finished up Clown Girl by Monica Drake (cheers again Chester!) and I heartily recommend it. Funny, touching, and also just a little bit weird. A very cool book.
Now I am reading something a little older. The Sirens Of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. The only other book of his I have read is Slaughterhouse 5 and I really enjoyed it so I have been looking forward to giving him another go.
By time I am done with this my copy of The Thin Man (via a Hammett ombinus edition) will have been delivered.
I just wrapped up "A Farewell to Arms" by Hemingway and am re-reading "The Old Man and the Sea" and "Slaughterhouse Five".
By the time I'm finished with those I should have received my copies of "Rum Punch" (signed by Elmore Leonard, very happy about this) and "If you Liked School, You'll Love Work" by Irvine Welsh. So those will be next.
I also picked up a few books on Tibetan Buddhism that I'll be reading in between the above novels to research for a story idea.
If You Liked School,... is pretty good. The first story just about made me wet myself laughing.
Sirens of Titan is my favorite, along with Slapstick.
Clown Girl was awesome. how that woman made Baloneytown a feasible real, layered place is beyond me and beyond amazing.
i'm reading Drive because i missed everything in the movie except ryan gosling in henley shirts and a scorpion jacket. maybe if i get the story firmly in my mind i can try the movie again and it won't be porn. or maybe it's just an excuse to watch the movie again....
also ordered Serpent Box by Vincent Louis Carrella. VERY much looking forward to this.
I'm reading Matthew Woodring Stover's Caine's Law. It's a wonderful book, but part of what somehow became a complicated series. You'd have to not just jump in.
I'm going through Full Dark, No Stars by King right now.
I have no idea what I'm going to read next. I'll be checking this thread for inspiration.
I always like God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Welcome to the Monkey House.
yes! i love Elliot. so i guess Breakfast of Champions has to be added to the favorites, too.
Just finished The Financial Lives of Poets. Plan to read Angle of Repose next.
Love Vonnegut, and for some reason, Galapagos always sticks out in my mind as a very under-rated read!
Island by Huxley
The Terminal Man by Crichton
Amulet by Bolano(~)
I'm reading Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. It's okay so far. I've been meaning to read it forerver.
Next I'm going to plunge into Atlas Shrugged. I've been putting that one off for a long time. I don't expect to enjoy it, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
After that I'll probably read the shortest novella I can find on my shelf. Or a Shakespearean play. Something short.
This thread always seems superfluous to me, but I guess there is the back-and-forth discussion that it brings to the table. I am just getting into (look at my header).
Cheers back Martin. I am glad you enjoyed it. I really wonder what The Stud Book is going to be like. Monica spends years on her books and it shows in the prose. And the quirkiness.
Vonnegut is related, I think in that satirical way. I really like Vonny.
A Farewell to Arms is so devastating everytime I read it. I don't know why I subject myself to that pain repeatedly.
"I'm reading Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. It's okay so far. I've been meaning to read it forerver."
My favorite book. If you end up hating it, don't tell me.
The canon of Caleb J Ross and Andrez Bergen.
Vincent Louis Carrella
I would like to hear about that.
I've been meaning to read that for a while. From what I've read, it's a little American Gothic, surreal prose. Not sure if I'll love it so haven't gotten to it yet.
I'm thinking on the next book to read. Want something with very stripped down prose. In the meantime I'm just skimming through random PKD, mostly DR BLOODMONEY and pondering on trying McCarthy's THE ROAD, maybe I will like it and read the whole thing this time.
I've made my way through a lot of War and Peace, but the War and Peace bookclub tht started this whole thing has kind of fizzled out. I want to finish it, but I need to read other things in between. Short stories are perfect for this, and I'm reading any collection I get my hands on. I also just finished a debut novel that is coming out called Age of Miracles. It's coming-of-age story at a time in the near future when teh earth's rotation is slowing, so you get long days and long nights. It's fast paced and a good switch from War and Peace.
I'm reading House of Leaves, and audiobooking The Book of Lost Things.
Audiobooking, good term.
Oh I"ve got House of Leaves on my nightstand. How are you liking it?
I devoured Leonard Cohen's Book of Longing (love that guy), and am now knee-deep in a Bukowski compilation, Pleasures of the Damned. He doesn't do a whole lot for me. I dig the topics he writes about, often the mundane banalities of life (the Harvey Pekar of the poetry world — heh), and I enjoy some of his phrasing, but my oft-annoyance with his structure ruins it for me. I hate when poets break lines in awkward spots just for the sake of it. I'm not talking about a variety of short versus long lines for impact. And I understand if you've got some established rhythm, a little enjambment here and there can work in service to the piece. But Buk does it in free verse, constantly, and it drives me up the frigging wall, especially because most of his are one-word "orphans" as we call them in the design world. Most of the time, it doesn't exhance the rhythm, and eats up space needlessly, these premature carriage returns. Was probably paid by the line. . .
Anyway, yeah, Serpent Box, fell into that one a few years ago and found myself pushing it on anyone who would listen. Such an incredible debut. Very slow and deliberate, but beautiful. If you like Wiliam Gay or Cormac, give Vincent a read.
Gordon - I read not too long ago that the Black Sparrow editor, John Martin, actually reformatted (hacked up) a lot of Bukowski's poetry and put his own line breaks in without even showing them to him before printing. John Martin didn't stop there, as he has chopped, added and deleted all over Hank's posthumous stuff as well.
As for what I am reading, I am about to finish You Shall Know Us By Our Velocity! be Eggers. It's had its moments, but the random rambling doesn't take off for me the way sections of A Heartbreaking Work did.
Anyone read Delillo's The Names? It's been a couple of years since I read Delillo and it's been sitting on the shelf for a long time.
Finally had a pile of reading time! Vacation! So I got through Still Life With Woodpecker (Tom Robbins) and I'm pretty sure it's the most important ever written about a pack of cigarettes. Love it so much I kind of just want to read it again immediately. But instead I read Popular Hits of the Showa Era (Ryu Murakami) which was just nihilistic enough for reading in East Van. Then I finally started the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I've been meaning to read forever and it is all I was hoping for. Don't ruin the rest of it for me, I've only finished the first one.
@Rennie: If you are looking for fresh, spare prose, I highly recommend Willy Vlautin's Lean on Pete, which won the Oregon Book Award last year. Minimalism with a compelling story to back it.
I'm reading Thomas Bernhard's Gathering Evidence, which has the best opening pages of any book I've read.
i LOVE Still Life with Woodpecker. adore it. not sure where thecopy is now that i read, it was on a hand to hand trip across the U.S. when i had it. best thing of all: no record of its travel, so it was a total mystery with just a few confirmed reports of states it had visited and been loved.
I am finishing up the Wool series right now. I am just about to start Wool 5. I haven't decided what I am reading after that.
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Wasted by Marya Hornbacher
Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl
Rereading Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch....
Love that Roald Dahl.
First paycheck this Friday (from new job) not sure which book to pick up yet thinking of ordering Growing Up Dead In Texas by Stephen Graham Jones.
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac Mcarthy.
Covewriter: I love House of Leaves. Virgin Suicides is still my favorite book, but House of Leaves is by far the most intriguing book I ever read. Caitlín R. Kiernan said it and The Road are the two best books of the last 12 years. I ordered Whalestoe Letters. I didn't love his piece in the latest Black Clock, however. It was also very intriguing, but it didn't grab me. I will be getting The Fifty Year Sword when it comes out in October, though, and am very curious about The Familar.
Whoa whoa Fifty Year Sword is getting a second print run?
For the fourth time, I'm rereading Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and for the fourth time I am mesmerized, freaked out and humiliated by its gorgeous clumsiness.
Is it possible that even after spending five months working on a rock album based on this novel, I'm still able to feel like I'm only "getting it" now? It's SO damned incredible.
The first superlong sentence alone is a perfect warning sign to impatient readers: TURN BACK NOW:
From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that – a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that sight and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.
You can pre-order The Fifty Year Sword at Amazon. It will be released on October 16, 2012.
When I can remember to charge my Nook, I'm still reading A Canticle for Liebowitz.
Otherwise, my dead tree versions are The Things They Carried and The Town/Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan.
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
The Teachings of Don Juan - Carlos Castaneda
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon
And numerous books on reptile care.
I haven't read much Faulkner, but this gave me a chuckle:
“INTERVIEWER
Some people say they can't understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?
FAULKNER
Read it four times.”
the whole thing
@JY
Faulkner's difficulty lessened in his later years. So did the quality of his novels, at least that's the critical consensus. I've focused my reading on the first half of his career, when he was taking the really big risks.
Good link, thanks.
@ Howard: this Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon sounds interesting! I watched an hour-long PBS program on his life five or six years ago, and I still recall some of the details. Funny how Van Gogh's life is considered so blackguard - compared to Caravaggio, not so much...
Finished When October Falls and really enjoyed it. I've been picking some pretty good ones lately.
Started Flashover by Gordon Highland for the Book Club. Can tell already I'm gonna love it.
The Faulkner quote is awesome.
I'm reading...too many at once. I am getting through the Girl Who Played With Fire, reading Transubstatiate, and idly reading The Story of O. I'm just hoping I don't start meshing the story lines together...it would be a lot of rough sex and dystopia.
Hmm...actually...that could be good.
Put everything else down and give Transubstantiate all of your time, damnit!
What Pete said.
I've definitely been giving it more time than the other two.
@Howard Caravaggio: A Life Sacred -- how is it?
After reading the first few pages of novels, and being disappointed in them, I found a book at Powell's City of Books. It's called Love Is Not Constantly Wondering If You Are Making The Biggest Mistake of Your Life. The author is unknown, but the illustrations are by Sarah Miller. It's like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" format, but not really. I think I may have found a new favorite book. Have always been thrilled with the Choose Your Own Adventure series since childhood. I found it when I very much needed a good book to read. It doesn't have to be long, it just has to be memorable.
Of all places, it was published in Portland, Oregon. 3rd Printing May 2012. How lucky can I be? Very fortunate. Will report back soon!
The Beach.
Game of Thrones. I'll probably be reading that in July and August too.
Now on my Nook!
