The new thread about books we're reading...

[KimJuno]

...since I can't seem to find the old one.

Reading: Let's Put the Future Behind Us.  My SO is the best person in the entire goddamn world, and purchased a copy for me, god bless her little heart.

Pollo: this novel rocks.  Yeah, Elvissey drove me nuts and I threw it against the wall in mild disdain, but this book is completely teh roxxorz.  Probably because it's written IN ACTUAL FUCKING PROPER GRAMMAR!  Hoorah!  I was so in the mood for a book like this.

Also: I've started using capital letters again.  I'm not entirely certain why just yet.

[heather marie]

i'm reading skin: talking about sex, class and literature by dorothy allison. so far, it's pretty excellent. i haven't finished bastard out of carolina so i feel like i am lost but oh well.

[elpollodiablo]

Kim, do me a favor and at least seek out Random Acts of Senseless Violence. It'll ease you into the Bizspeak thing and give you an idea of just how incredible Womack is.

That goes for all of the rest of you: if you're gonna take my advice on one thing, please make it this novel. Just one novel: you will not regret it.


I am seriously considering writing my honors thesis on violence as cathartic vehicle in contemporary American lit, starting with O'Connor and going up through McCarthy, Ellis and Womack. Having Vollman's Rising Up and Rising Down on hand ain't gonna hurt, either.

[KimJuno]

Kim, do me a favor and at least seek out Random Acts of Senseless Violence. It'll ease you into the Bizspeak thing and give you an idea of just how incredible Womack is.

That goes for all of the rest of you: if you're gonna take my advice on one thing, please make it this novel. Just one novel: you will not regret it.


I am seriously considering writing my honors thesis on violence as cathartic vehicle in contemporary American lit, starting with O'Connor and going up through McCarthy, Ellis and Womack. Having Vollman's Rising Up and Rising Down on hand ain't gonna hurt, either.

Yeah, she purchased that one for me too.  She told me she went ahead and ordered it because the title made her laugh.  Or so she tells me.  I don't think she either posts or lurks 'round these parts, but I could be wrong.  She could just be incredibly attuned to... um... I guess you.  Which is just slightly creepy.

I'll get cracking on Random after Let's.  Your recommendations aside, I really, really wanted to read a "post-Soviet" novel first.

[old kentucky shark]

i got davis grubb's "night of the hunter" out the library. made into the robert mitchum movie. gonna read it, aw yeah

[auto-da-fey]

i'm reading skin: talking about sex, class and literature by dorothy allison. so far, it's pretty excellent. i haven't finished bastard out of carolina so i feel like i am lost but oh well.

I was just re-reading "A Personal History of Lesbian Porn," so rock on, HM! I'd pontificate further, but I think I might be having sex in the next five minutes.

[auto-da-fey]

I probably just jinxed myself, in which case I'll be masturbating in ten minutes. Either way, my thoughts on Dorothy Allison will have to wait.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i'm finally down to the last 50 or so pages of "jonathan strange and mr. norrell", only 3 and a half weeks after beginning it. granted, i got overwhelmed and had to put it down a few times, in favor of a back issue of ugly things--which was an undertaking in itself. i have 3 more back issues of ugly things to read, in fact, before i will be caught up with the issues i bought. AND i just bought the new issue of big takeover. so, lots of magazine reading to come in the near future.

also, last night i read "love is a mix tape", all in one sitting. my friend jeff asked to borrow "twinkie, deconstructed" (which i actually still haven't read, but i loaned to him anyway) and told me he'd just GIVE me a book of his in return, since he's apparently trying to get rid of a great deal of his book collection (god knows why he'd do that, but anyway). so he showed up at the show we were supposed to trade books at, and had randomly picked out "love is a mix tape" to give to me--which was perfect, because i really wanted to read that book anyway. and god... it was incredibly good, but OH SO SAD. and 90% of it took place in places that i spent a significant amount of my high school years hanging around all the time, so it only hit me harder. i'm not going to say that rob sheffield is brilliant or anything, but with that book, he had a story to tell, and he told it well. there were also a few rock-crit style side trips that took up a chapter here and there, and i really liked those too. he and i don't have the exact same taste in music, but his opinions aren't nearly as forceful as those of someone like chuck klosterman, so i never found myself violently disagreeing with any of them. and dude was on point a good deal more often than he was off base. so that was cool too.

i don't know that i'll read this book again anytime soon, if ever, but i'm glad i read it and i'm glad i have it.

[nonotyet]

i haven't finished bastard out of carolina so i feel like i am lost but oh well.

Oh jesus Heather Marie, finish it.

[Marie]

about a year ago i engaged on a mission to read as much science fiction written in the 70s by women authors that i could get my grubby little paws on.  today, my campaign still exists, and holy shit if ANYONE wants to talk to me about this, even with a passing interest, i would crap myself for a chance to email about ANY of these books.

but that isn't what this post is about.  i made an exception last week, and read "The Nonexistent Knight/The Cloven Viscount" by Italo Calvino.  He was an Italian dude, born in Cuba, he was involved with the Communist party and seemingly had a fairly interesting life, which didn't leak into his writing in the slightest.  Both novellas (which are packaged in one book) are sweet fairy tales, existentialism with training wheels.  I swear to god those Monty Python dorks appropriated 38% of the Nonexistent Knight when they wrote the Holy Grail movie, and if Baron von Munchausen hadn't been based on a series of books I would accuse Terry Gilliam of cribbing freely from the Cloven Viscount.

The Nonexistent Knight is about a knight in Charlemagne's army who exists, in such that people can talk to him, he has a self which he is aware of, he takes up space, but inside hit suit of armor there ain't nothing but moonbeams and dandelion fluff.  He has to go on a journey because the veracity of the events that led to his knighthood, and consequently who/what he is now, are called in to question.  Lovely.

In The Cloven Viscount, Mr Viscount himself, (who I think is from Spain?) is fresh, green and new, to the war against the Turks.  In his first battle he is blowed up, split in two, and the field doctors can only find half of him to sew up and save.  They reconstruct half his skull, half his chest, one arm, one leg.  He goes home.  He is his evil half.  He wreaks terror and destruction on his county, he is sinister, macabre, he is the headless horseman.  Eventually his other half pieces itself together and wanders home.  His good half.  No one can STAND the good half.  It's so fucking PURE.  It drives everyone crazy, maybe even more than the devilish half.

They're both delightful novellas.  Someone should read them so they and I can chat about it.  LPTJ book club?

[Mesmerize]

I read this book The Road that my mom bought because Oprah told her to and hey! it was pretty damned good, if a little... lacking-in-context.

[jebreject]

I read this book The Road that my mom bought because Oprah told her to and hey! it was pretty damned good, if a little... lacking-in-context.

best way to be introduced to the road?  quite possibly.

[Greg Nog]

Oh, wow!  Yeah, agreed.  Bleak echatological crisis by way of popular talk-show host is fun beyond measure!

Finished No Country For Old Men today, started The Year Of Magical Thinking.  Death 'n' despair up in this piece, HOLLERRRRRR

[girl]

High five, Greg!  I'm about to be reading The Year of Magical Thinking as well.  I started it when I bought it a week or so ago, and I cried on like every page, so I haven't picked it up again, but soon.  The way she writes kills me, though.  It's so concise.  What other authors would take pages to say, she can say in one perfect sentence.  I love reading her.

[Wally]

i'm reading skin: talking about sex, class and literature by dorothy allison. so far, it's pretty excellent. i haven't finished bastard out of carolina so i feel like i am lost but oh well.

I've just ordered both these books, been meaning to get something by allison for a while, and this thread has poked me into it. But for now I'm reading Race Matters by Cornel West.

[auto-da-fey]

I just finished Nan Alamilla Boyd's Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. The book had some potential pitfalls facing it--namely, the fact that the story of the early Mattachine/Daughters of Bilitis homophile movement has been told so often before--but I was impressed by the way she managed to avoid giving a repetitive vibe. The book's main contribution, from a scholarly perspective, is Boyd's argument for the interdependence of queer bar culture and political organizing in the pre-Stonewall era, two things that have traditionally been seen as not just separate, but opposed.

Anyway, I now turn my gaze 500 miles south of old San Fran to read Daniel Hurewitz's Bohemian Los Angeles, which basically promises to do for L.A. what Boyd did for SF.

[hannah]

I am still working on the collection of short stories by Deborah Eisenberg I bought a few weeks ago.

Here is a quotation from an interview with her that was published a few months ago:

Q: I sometimes think about writers who are alive who are not going to be alive forever. I walk around (this is how weird I am) thinking, "Thank god Joan Didion is still alive."

A: Yeah -- no! You know, many of the people who made the world that I came into -- the artistic world, the cultural world -- have died. It is just so grief-striking to me. My sweetie and I used to say, "Well, why don't we cry because Beethoven died?" [Laughs] It's sort of a funny thought. But there's a very good reason why you would cry if Joan Didion died and not because Beethoven did because she's made your world. And when those people disappear, you're in a strange land.

This is awesome because I'm pretty sure when she says "my sweetie" she means Wallace Shawn.

Anyway, after I finish this collection -- in, like, a week or so -- I'll probably read Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

[JamesSchneider]

The new Haruki Murakami is shaping up to be pretty terrific. It's not like a bold new world or anything for him, but it's solid all over.

[jess]

about a year ago i engaged on a mission to read as much science fiction written in the 70s by women authors that i could get my grubby little paws on.  today, my campaign still exists, and holy shit if ANYONE wants to talk to me about this, even with a passing interest, i would crap myself for a chance to email about ANY of these books.

but that isn't what this post is about.  i made an exception last week, and read "The Nonexistent Knight/The Cloven Viscount" by Italo Calvino.  He was an Italian dude, born in Cuba, he was involved with the Communist party and seemingly had a fairly interesting life, which didn't leak into his writing in the slightest.  Both novellas (which are packaged in one book) are sweet fairy tales, existentialism with training wheels.  I swear to god those Monty Python dorks appropriated 38% of the Nonexistent Knight when they wrote the Holy Grail movie, and if Baron von Munchausen hadn't been based on a series of books I would accuse Terry Gilliam of cribbing freely from the Cloven Viscount.

The Nonexistent Knight is about a knight in Charlemagne's army who exists, in such that people can talk to him, he has a self which he is aware of, he takes up space, but inside hit suit of armor there ain't nothing but moonbeams and dandelion fluff.  He has to go on a journey because the veracity of the events that led to his knighthood, and consequently who/what he is now, are called in to question.  Lovely.

In The Cloven Viscount, Mr Viscount himself, (who I think is from Spain?) is fresh, green and new, to the war against the Turks.  In his first battle he is blowed up, split in two, and the field doctors can only find half of him to sew up and save.  They reconstruct half his skull, half his chest, one arm, one leg.  He goes home.  He is his evil half.  He wreaks terror and destruction on his county, he is sinister, macabre, he is the headless horseman.  Eventually his other half pieces itself together and wanders home.  His good half.  No one can STAND the good half.  It's so fucking PURE.  It drives everyone crazy, maybe even more than the devilish half.

They're both delightful novellas.  Someone should read them so they and I can chat about it.  LPTJ book club?

I love Calvino, he's one of my very favorite authors, but I haven't gotten around to reading that one yet (it and t zero are next on my list). Maybe I'll pick it up; I need something new anyway. In the meantime, since you liked that, I highly recommend his other works, especially Invisible Cities, in which Marco Polo is telling Kublai Khan about all of the cities in his empire, and each short description of the place and the inhabitants and the culture beautifully illustrates abstactions (cities of death, flat cities, light cities, etc.) and as the book goes on, you can see how they more and more approximate modern society. It's brilliant and very different from anything else I've read. Mr Palomar is my other favorite of his, but all of his books I've read so far, I've liked.

[Lucy]

Invisible Cities IS awesome...some cities particularly stood out, and I keep meaning to return to it and make note of those stories. I'm traveling around with Cosmicomics right now, and while not all the way through it, "The Distance of the Moon" was just beautiful. I don't love every short story in these collections, but there are moments of absolute illumination, where the language is so much more than the sum of its part, where it really transcends the page and becomes feeling, becomes motion, becomes a moment that lingers and maybe transforms. I read them like a friend.

Anyhow, I've been meaning to get to The Nonexistant Knight/Cloven Viscount and Mr Palomar. Looking forward to it...

[maggiego]

If you all are into Calvino, and especially if you don't mind denser reading, I would highly recommend his planned lectures, Six Memos for the Next Millennium. It is frustratingly slippery, perverse, sprawling discourse, and I very much dig it. I need to read the novellas above. I loved Cities, Winter's Night, but I stopped there.

[joseph scott]

In The Cloven Viscount, Mr Viscount himself, (who I think is from Spain?) is fresh, green and new, to the war against the Turks.  In his first battle he is blowed up, split in two, and the field doctors can only find half of him to sew up and save.  They reconstruct half his skull, half his chest, one arm, one leg.  He goes home.  He is his evil half.  He wreaks terror and destruction on his county, he is sinister, macabre, he is the headless horseman.  Eventually his other half pieces itself together and wanders home.  His good half.  No one can STAND the good half.  It's so fucking PURE.  It drives everyone crazy, maybe even more than the devilish half.

I've read this one, though it's been years... actually, I was in a band named after this book. Yeah, I know, pretentious.

Meanwhile I'm reading Graham Greene, Journey without Maps, which is his first work of nonfiction. Since February I've been reading every book by Greene in chronological order and this is #5. I'm glad it came along - it's a nice change of pace.

[maggiego]

Dude, I clicked yr link, and...I too made a record with Mister Hissong. Cuh-razy! I bet we know lots of the same people, though I am from Tucson and not Phx. Well, not recently.

Y'all, Mike Hissong, by the way, is a pretty awesome engineer who lives in AZ when he's not out with The Locust. Boy can ProTools!

[Andrew_TSKS]

man... i remember back when i knew who everyone in the locust was. these days, i feel smart if i know the names of anyone besides justin pearson.

and i just realized--right now, i don't.

EDIT: according to wikipedia, bobby, joey, and gabe are all still in the locust too. i guess i DO know who the other members of the band are.

does this dude mike do sound for them, or something?

[maggiego]

Yeah, Andrew, he is their sound dude. I have never gone to see them, though I mean to.