I could write a great novel if my neighborhood weren't so upscale (book thread)

[Ashley]

It is absolutely true.

Only with more vomit.

The base of the lamppost nearby has been fertilized with vomitus during my brief visit to the pub.

Honestly, it is an entertaining book.  It's just extremely unsettling because its written by a doctor.

[Ashley]

I walk on, marveling at the wonderful vulgarity of English girls.  Is this a country, I wonder, without mirrors?  Or is it merely the eyes that young English females lack?  They have evidenly chosen their clothes with great care, for such gaudy slaternliness is not natural.  They squeeze their fat and suety figures - too much junk food consumed in front of the television - into tight iridescent outfits, which leave no contour unstated, or into extra short skirts that they pull down by half an inch when a gust of autumn wind blows and they start to shiver.  The only thing girls are those who smoke more than fifty a day or have anorexia.

[auto-da-fey]

I just got this book The Queer Community: Continuing the Struggle for Social Justice sent to me unsolicited. I generally enjoy receiving free shit in the mail, but this anthology looked pretty uninspired. I thought I'd read the intro anyway, because I was a little worried that its origin on some marginal press in San Diego rather than a "proper" university press had influenced my reaction, and I resist as best I can my assimilation into such a narrow tunnelvision of what constitutes worthwhile writing.

The second sentence explains, "Founding scholars in the the field include Judith Butler, Andre Lorde and David Halperin." I know typos happen, but noooot a good sign.

[elpollodiablo]

Still reading Fagles' Iliad, still loving virtually every word of it. Got his Odyssey and Aeneid lined up next.

"Achilles, son of Peleus, greatest of the Achaeans,
spare me your anger, please--
such heavy blows have overwhelmed the troops.
Our former champions, all laid up in the ships,
all are hit by arrows or run through by spears.
There's powerful Diomedes brought down by an archer,
Odysseus wounded, and Agamemnon too, the famous spearman,
and Eurypylus took an arrow-shot in the thigh...
Healers are working over them, using all their drugs,
trying to bind the wounds--
                                   But you are intractable, Achilles!
Pray god such anger never seizes me, such rage you nurse.
Cursed in your own courage! What good will a man,
even one in the next generation, get from you
unless you defend the Argives from disaster?
You heart of iron! He was not your father,
the horseman Peleus--Thetis was not your mother.
Never. The salt gray sunless ocean gave you birth
and the towering blank rocks--your temper's so relentless.
But still, if down deep some prophecy makes you balk,
some doom your noble mother revealed to you from Zeus,
well and good: at least send me into battle, quickly.
Let the whole Myrmidon army follow my command--
I might bring some light of victory to our Argives!
And give me your own fine armor to buckle on my back,
so the Trojans might take me for you, Achilles, yes,
hold off from attack, and Achaea's fighting sons
get second wind, exhausted as they are...
Breathing room in war is all too brief.
We're fresh, unbroken. The enemy's battle-weary--
we could roll those broken Trojans back to Troy,
clear of the ships and shelters!"
                                     So he pleaded,
lost in his own great innocence...
condemned to beg for his own death and brutal doom.
And moved now to his depths, the famous runner cried,
"No, no, my prince, Patroclus, what are you saying?
Prophecies? None that touch me. None I know of.
No doom my noble mother revealed to me from Zeus,
just this terrible pain that wounds me to the quick--
when one man attempts to plunder a man his equal,
to commandeer a prize, exulting so in his own power.
That's the pain that wounds me, suffering such humiliation.
The girl--the sons of Achaea picked her as my prize,
and I'd sacked a walled city, won her with my spear
but right from my grasp he tears her, mighty Agamemnon,
that son of Atreus! Treating me like some vagabond,
some outcast stripped of all my rights...
                                                   Enough.

I don't care what you ask me, the boy is rude.

[auto-da-fey]

I'm kind of envious; I've never even read the Aeneid, but here I am reading up on 19th-century slave law in preparation for a radical change of gears this fall. Just polished off a short monograph on the 1830 North Carolina Supreme Court case State v. Mann (which inexplicably veered into a truly turgid examination of Harriet Beecher Stowe's forgotten second novel in its final third, I did not need that), and now one of those brief-history-with-documents shindigs on Dred Scott.
I miss assigning Samuel Delany books already.

[donblood]

Today I was reading on the subway.  When the train came into 59th and Lexington this girl was waiting to get off the train and checked out the cover of my book.  When I looked up she looked at me, smiled, and nodded approvingly.  Three men behind her then gave the cover a cursory look, and I hope they went to buy it in hopes of picking up women on the subway, because the book is awesome.

Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown.  It's the third Rushdie I've read, after The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children.  The magical-realism is toned way down with this one - which is to say it's incidental, rather than the primary focus - and the strength of the characters and prose rises above his previous work (which was already super fucking hella wicked strong).  The narrative stands on its own, but is also in service of describing the Kashmir conflict from the ground level.

It's an amazing book.  Everybody read it.

[girl]

I'm starting A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin now. It's been on my "to read" list for ages now.

WOOOO!

We can talk about it! I just reread it last month!

I finished the first four books of the series. It's a pretty good story! I'm pissed that I have to wait to see how it ends!

[davy]

Most of us have been waiting for 4 years already!

[YojimboMonkey]

I need to pick that series back up, I got a few books into it but it was a little too dark for me at the time.  I think I'd be way more into it now though.

[girl]

Yeah, man, it's good. I realized how into it I was when I started getting angry at the end of every chapter because it moves on to another character, but then I would be pissed when that chapter ended, too. (Mostly I just want to know where Tyrion is!) Also, I love how you can hate someone sooo much (Jamie) and then start to really love them.

Up next, Perdido Street Station

[davy]

I'm doing a re-read of Ice & Fire right now and I was completely shocked all over again by the wedding scene in the 3rd book. I had totally forgotten it. I lost sleep over that shit.

Perdido Street Station is fantastic! And it's even better in retrospect than it was when I was reading it. There's a lot to think about. The Scar, its sequel, is on my summer reading list.

[davy]

So...W's memoir is coming out. The title? Decision Points.

Well, ok. But, I mean...Decision Points?

amazon link

[Ignatius]

Sounds like a CS textbook.

[Antero]

I'm doing a re-read of Ice & Fire right now and I was completely shocked all over again by the wedding scene in the 3rd book. I had totally forgotten it. I lost sleep over that shit.

That scene is fucked up.  Martin's all "SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKERS!" 

Hopefully he'll drop the next book sometime in this life.

[davy]

He keeps finding excuses to do other things, like write episodes for next year's HBO series. Which, you know, I'd be okay with...if I had HBO.

[Greg Nog]

Finished Edmund White's My Lives, about to read Blindness and try to overcome my irritation at reading things in translation.

Overall, White's memoirs were fairly boring, but peppered with lots of little sly observations and pretty language, so it was a fun time.  I remember reading something about how the titular novella in Chaos was basically the same story as the chapter "My Master" in My Lives, but I didn't see them as so similar as to be a repetition, and found the ways that "My Master" informed "Chaos" to be fairly interesting.  The two stories play against each other well, as a factual account and as a fictionalized version that strips out a lot of the keeing heartache from the factual story.

[donblood]

I'm reading Mason & Dixon again.  Why not?

[elpollodiablo]

Whoa man, that's intense.

[mixed cats]

I tried to convince a friend to pick it up on Saturday. Maybe the next time he's at my house I'll force it on him. I have no idea if he even reads novels. Oh well.

[auto-da-fey]

Greg, donblood, you inspire me, as I'd like to read both of those. meanwhile, I just gave Dhalgren as a gift, in the hopes that when my friend James reads it, I'll be compelled to re-read along with him (I also threw in Nova and Triton--the latter of which I've never actually gotten around to; I have this vision of a summer spent alternating between Delany and pre-20th-century legal history [something I need to bone up on], when in reality it will probably be spent alternating between booze and hangovers).

[Greg Nog]

Greg, donblood, you inspire me, as I'd like to read both of those.

I haven't read Mason & Dixon, but I feel comfortable asserting that My Lives contains way more oral sex.

[auto-da-fey]

sold.

[donblood]

Yeah, but Mason & Dixon has way more Martha Washington DP.

(my copy does, anyway)

[mixed cats]

On the other end of the smart people spectrum, I started reading a compendium of Victorian fairy tales on vacation, and then picked up the first Harry Potter book to begin the 700th series reread last night. YES I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE SHUT UP. When fairy tales are over, I'll be switching off to either natural history museums or collecting.

[Ah_Pook]

i started reading the first book of the Malazan series recently, speaking of fantasy stuff. its got some glowing blurbs by Glen Cook and Stephen Donaldson on there, among other peoples. im enjoying it so far, i dont really know whats going on though. i guess thats par for the course when youre a quarter of the way into book 1 of a 10 book long gritty fantasy series though? i dunno.