What Are You Reading?

It's fun; I haven't read it in a while, but Peacock has an enjoyably sardonic take on so many literary trends of his day (he falls halfway between Austen and Thomas De Quincey and basically rips the shit out of both).

Trying to keep the pile steady, and focus a little more on the writing (which proceeds a little fitfully and without direction). Trying to make up my mind between Outlander, Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies, and Mir Amman's The Tale of Four Dervishes (a Bengali picaresque from 1803).

That said, I finally read Confederates in the Attic! Much better than I thought it would be, as Horwitz fully incorporates (as well as he can, I guess) the African-American experience and doesn't treat his subjects as turgid novelties (R.L. Hodge is much more rounded than I expected). Also Imre Kertesz's Dossier K. I've never read any of his novels, but it's a compelling self-interview with a lot of interesting insights on the writer's life and Kertesz's own experiences during the Holocaust (he was in Auschwitz and Buchenwald) and Communist rule in Hungary. One abortive discussion on the twentieth-century experience with a future "film director" made me wonder if the latter was Istvan Szabo.

And Herodotus is awesome. I still remember my annoyance in my grad school historiography class when my fellow students dutifully followed our (awesome) instructor's lead and tore him a new one in relation to Thucydides. I see where it comes from, but it's such a cliche!

I've been on a Kertersz kick in the past year or so but haven't read that one yet, although it's on my shelf waiting to be opened, I wanted to finish reading the three main autobiographical ones first as it seemed there were a few references to those, but now that I've read Kaddish for the Unborn Child I guess that will be the next one.
I really like his books, they can be quite hard-going at times, even though they are not necessarily written in a shocking or horrifying manner, I don't want to say too much, but if you read Fatelessness the sentence I found the most spine-chilling is in itself a fairly positive one.
I was actually remembering yesterday that there is another of his books (French title translates as Another, Chronicle of a Metamorphosis) that should be somewhere in my room, I'm jut not quite sure where.

Wild Decembers by Edna O'Brien. She and Cormac McCarthy have a lot in common, I think, from a hypervivid style to the rural backwater settings to characters damned and blasted from the start. In fact, her novel In The Forest outdoes him in terms of dread and traumatisation. Highly recommended.

Well, I started Pere Goriot. Here we go! Fun so far! Reminds me of Zola's Therese Raquin, just 'cause both go out of their way to make Paris sound awful.

I started first with stuff that's in the public domain now, since I can download them for free (those books were also easier to remember off the top of my head than some of the mid to late 20th century stuff I was supposed to read), but here's the list thus far.

Beowulf - done
Frankenstein -done
War of the Worlds -done
A Christmas Carol - done
The Scarlet Letter - in progress
Macbeth
A Tale of Two Cities
Pride & Prejudice
Walden
The Invisible Man
Romeo & Juliet
The Canterbury Tales (this we actually only read excerpts of for class, I'm going to read the entire thing)
Catcher in the Rye
The Grapes of Wrath
The Crucible
Flowers for Algernon

There have been some random Poe and Melville short stories tossed in there as well, and "The Yellow Wallpaper," (which I'm pretty sure I actually did read when it was assigned, but it's a decent story so it got a re-read).
I've also made the decision to skip poetry pretty much entirely for now, so sorry to Lord Byron, T.S. Elliot, Emily Dickinson, and all the rest.

I have this exact same problem, but I'm much worse about it. I'll start reading the first three or so chapters of a book, then get a little bored with it and jump to another, often completely forgetting about the other one! It doesn't help that I tend to impulse buy trade paperbacks from Amazon.

Regardless, I'm close to finishing Perdido Street Station. It's been fantastic so far.

Just finished: Kiss My ASBO by Alastair Frumish. Imagine a one-hit version of the brain-upgrade drug NZT from Limitless. Now imagine a mixed-race poor kid from the bad side of Northampton gets given it by his dad... and the kid's first decision once it kicks in is to dig up the bones of Princess Diana. After that, it gets a bit intense. Loved this.

Sick this weekend with the flu and not much else to do but read. Lara Vapnyar's Memoirs of a Muse, about a Russian immigrant woman who becomes the mistress of a fashionable New York writer. The latter's a little one-sidedly villainous, but so obnoxious that it's just entertaining to read, if not much more. Finally finished Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. I can see why so many flipped out over it in the first place, but I'm not sure I want to continue, despite some interesting plot strands left untied. It's an entertaining read, and some of the more retrograde cultural attitudes can be explained (if not excused) by the heroine's 40s provenance, but I understand this kind of thing becomes a lot worse as the books go on, and the sex scenes are padded with far too much (admittedly) well-written small talk.

I can see Ulysses lying nearby underneath a 50s historical novel about the Cathars. One of these days...

Finished As I Lay Dying which was absolutely amazing. Definitely very readable, all chapters are titled after the character whose point of view we're reading, so not possible to get lost, I found the style often closer to old school interior monologue than stream of consciousness and therefore remaining rather accessible.
It's a fairly simple story, but really elevated to something else by the writing (although as much as I liked the Darl chapters, I couldn't help but sometimes remember Hemingway's quips about Faulkner).

Was about to start Gombrowicz's Cosmos, and I may still get to it very shortly, but just started a re-read of Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme, it's an even more perfect example of what Ron Howard Voice was saying about Balzac where the narrator almost feels like a friend telling you a story, complete with snarky quips (as well as a few: "You see that guy? He's a jackass").

Glad to hear you liked As I Lay Dying!  Although re: Darl, yeah, he seems a bit more educated than one would expect an impoverished southerner to be, but his mother was a schoolteacher, and I never felt like his erudition got in the way of the Darl chapters being awesome (and Darl himself probably being the most tragic character in the book).

Also, Addie Bundren:  best nihilist in literature?

Hey, great! Maybe you can help me find a way to love it. I like it fine - I'm at 80% or so - but I'm finding it difficult to be truly invested in it. I described it a couple days ago as a poor man's Count of Monte Cristo crossed with a poor man's Madame Bovary, but not as interesting as that makes it sound.

Today was a good day, reading-wise. I made it through Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls and the Freshwoman just finished the first Hunger Games book. We decided this'll be our new "thing" now- just spending the weekends at home reading. Which is great for me, as I already have almost an entire bookshelf filled with partially read books. Some of them I started reading in high school and hadn't turned a page since. And, like nudeviking, I'd like to tackle all the classics I pretended to read in school.

I also discovered a way to defeat the DRM from ebooks you get from the library. I don't think I want to travel that dark road yet, though.

Dr. Dastardly I'm about halfway through so far, and have never read Dumas or more than 100 pages of Flaubert.
I am very much enjoying it so far (I barely remembered a single thing from it). Not meaning to get all snobbish, maybe the translation doesn't quite capture the style and spirit, there is something really easy-going and fun/witty about the writing.
I also really like the balance between enough plot to keep you reading and insight about the motivation of the characters to make you care (or mock). Although so far, it strikes that one of the reasons why I may not remember that one as well as The Red and the Black (which I remember liking more as well) is that the main protagonish (Fabrice) has stuff happening to him rather than is actually doing things, it does make for a slightly less enjoyable book, but at the same time, it is quite fun to see him at the centre of all these intrigues, basically causing disturbance just by walking around and being hot (he is so far still trying to fall in love).

I'm reading The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.  I'm about 80 pages in, and this book is excellent so far.