Reading? Still Sexy: Books Part IV

[cobl04]

Anyone read literary fiction? My creative writing class is pretty much literary fiction... and I didn't realise I was in waaaaaay over my head when I signed up. Our last reading was a fantasy short story, and I absolutely fucking hated it, but everyone else loved it - apparently it's niche of litfic fantasy to include overlong, verbose, slabs of writing.

 

[lazarus]

Just finished Christopher Priest's The Glamour. Pretty blown away. I've yet to read The Prestige, though seeing the film is what led me to his work in the first place. I also completed his "Dream Archipelago" collection of stories (alternately titled Infinite Summer), which I also enjoyed.

Just ordered two more from an Amazon seller: The Affirmation and The Perfect Lover.

This guy is a real talent.

 

[corianderstem]

literary fiction?

What kind of stuff are you reading? I've never heard of that fiction genre. Is that a thing? Isn't the genre title kind of redundant?

 

[cobl04]

What kind of stuff are you reading? I've never heard of that fiction genre. Is that a thing? Isn't the genre title kind of redundant?

Well I thought it was redundant too, but apparently it's still a big thing. Basically it includes any piece of prose which is more based on character, rather than actual events, and is very descriptive, slow-paced and makes the reader work harder to understand what's going on, making it more "literary" I guess. Raymond Carver is an example, minimalism.

 

[corianderstem]

Huh, okay. You learn something new every day.

 

[lazarus]

Sounds like a bunch of bullshit if you ask me.

 

[martha]

I like a melody in my music and a story in my fiction myself.

But then, I don't read as much fiction as nonfiction, so what the hell do I know.

 

[Pearl]

The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel

Very good, though the ending had too many events happening at once. I'm certainly looking forward to reading the rest of the series. But first, I got to get through my many other books.

Next up, The Evolution of God

 

[beegee]

Well I thought it was redundant too, but apparently it's still a big thing. Basically it includes any piece of prose which is more based on character, rather than actual events, and is very descriptive, slow-paced and makes the reader work harder to understand what's going on, making it more "literary" I guess. Raymond Carver is an example, minimalism.

Carve Magazine is a great site for examples of this style of writing.

 

[corianderstem]

It is very good to see you in here.

Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos

There are quirky characters who work very well, and there are quirky characters who make you want to slap them. This book had from the latter category.

Old lady lives in a Seattle mansion (Capitol Hill neighborhood, represent! .... wait, I don't live there) full of valuable porcelain collectibles. She's lonely, she just learned she has a brain tumor, so she's going to start living, dagnabbit!

So she takes in a boarder, who is Wanda, the aforementioned irritating houseguest. Oy. Then other things and people happen. There's a nifty "twist" involving the collectibles, but everything that happened in the second half of the book so so predictable.

Can't say I enjoyed it, although at least the first half had me more interested than the second.

 

[anitram]

"Nothing to Envy - Ordinary Lives in North Korea" - Barbara Demick.

Just wonderful. One of the few books that I've picked up in the last year that really made it hard to put it down. It's a story of several (6?) people in North Korea, and their lives from their childhood to the point where they defected (some to China, some to South Korea). Incredible stories about a place that we know almost nothing about. And the characters are all so complex that you can't help but care for them.

 

[No spoken words]

Matterhorn - Karl Marlantes

Easily the best war novel I've ever read. Could not put it down.

Moving, evocative, funny, sad, frustrating, etc.

 

[martha]

I Could Never Be So Lucky Again: an Autobiography by Jimmy Doolittle

This was very long, and very interesting in parts. We had watched 30 Seconds Over Tokyo again, so I dug this out and read it. I like reading about aviation, especially early aviation, and WW2, so this book had it all. He goes into GREAT detail at times, especially when he's describing the war in Europe. He's a military man, and extremely intelligent and experienced, so he's got a deep insight into war and what it takes to win one and prepare for the next one. He's conservative in the old-fashioned, respectable way, not like the fuckwits nowadays. I liked it very much, although some of the final chapters were a bit much to slog through. The final chapter itself was wonderful; a book about war and airplanes ends with a loving tribute to his wife.

 

[cobl04]

Picked up both The Great Gatsby and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, neither of which I've read, for $9 each in then penguins classics series.

 

[No spoken words]

^ Nice......

 

[beegee]

It is very good to see you in here.

It's one of the good threads.



Lately, I've read "Life in Miniature" by Linda Schlossberg. It was a fairly decent story about two sisters growing up with a mother who was mentally ill.

"33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners" by Jonathan Franklin. Pretty straightforward.

"Full Dark, No Stars" by Stephen King. It was the first time I've read Stephen King. It was dark, and creepy, and excellent. I couldn't put it down (not literally, like I saw someone claim in a book review recently.)

And now I am currently reading "Say Her Name" by Francisco Goldman. Goldman is writing about his wife, who died suddenly at the age of 30. Parts of it are almost too personal at times but the writing is amazing. The interesting thing about this book is that it's a true story but it's a fiction book. The author claims to have changed just a few details, but the rest of it actually happened. Reminds me of the James Frey thing.

 

[corianderstem]

I'm curious to hear about that one; I read the review in Entertainment Weekly, and they raved about it.

 

[beegee]

It's weird, for the first couple of days I was really into it, I'm more than halfway through it, but for the past week I haven't had any desire to pick it back up and I'm not sure why.

 

[beegee]

Maybe it's because books I would enjoy more are lurking around out there.

Just finished "Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks" by Andrea Lankford. Lankford worked as a NPS ranger for twelve years in both Yosemite and Grand Canyon.

Some of the events the author covered were events I was already familiar with from reading the books, "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon" and "Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite" by Michael Ghiglieri as well as the NPS ranger reports out of Grand Canyon on a semi-regular basis. It was interesting to read about these events from the point of view of a responding ranger and how each one affected her and how she felt about the job.

 

[lazarus]

So, no other Christopher Priest fans here?

Just finished The Affirmation. Another great one. Mind-bending, haunting stuff.

Probably my current favorite writer in terms of what I've been reading over the last couple years.

I think I'm going to check out The Prestige next.

 

[corianderstem]

So Much For That by Lionel Shriver

I read her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin a couple of years ago, and it knocked me flat. Then I tried her following book The Post-Birthday World and could not get into it - I tried twice!

But I loved Kevin so much that I still wanted to try another of hers, so I picked up her latest.

So glad I did - a black comedy of family, death, money and "the system" (a lot of scathing commentary on the state of health care in the US).

And since I loved this one so much, I'm going to give The Post-Birthday World one final shot. (It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying the book, but each time I tried to read it, I had other things distracting me and just couldn't get into it.)

 

[No spoken words]

Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance

A collection of four long stories turned into novels.

Vance is a fairly influential fiction writer, though he's not nearly as well known in the broad fantasy/sci-fi community as a Tolkien or Clarke. That being said, a few authors I like have been influenced by Vance so I finally decided to check him out.

Very up and down for me. The first novel started slowly but ended well. The middle two focused on the same main character and both were great. Painted a bleak picture of EArth in its death throes.....magic and science collide, etc. The main character is borderline despicable, but you more pity than hate him, or at least I did. Anti-heroes can be a tricky thing. The last novel didn't do it for me, sadly. So, 700 pages later, I'm done and glad I decided to finally read some of his works.

Next up is another book from one of my favorite current writers, Olen Steinhauer.

 

[martha]

Desert River Crossing: Historic Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River by W. L. Rusho and C. Gregory Crampton. This is an earlier edition of a book I've already read, but it was still enjoyable. I like local Western history and I really like reading about Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. It's a nice, brief book full of the history of this area, from 1776 to the mid-60s, when this edition was published. The mid-60s was this areas heyday, it seems. All the old stuff was still just lying around, drying in the sun. I'm hoping to get back to Lee's Ferry and marble Canyon this summer on the way home from Texas and Taos. I think I can.


Memories Before and After the Sound of Music by Agathe von Trapp. This is the book NSW caught me reading at the Prince concert. I loved this book! The illustrations are sketches Agathe drew and they're charming and lovely, just like this book. She traces the history of her family from her parents' families in Austria to the Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont in the mid-80s. She keeps the focus on the family and their career as a singing group after they had to leave Austria. She makes sure to differentiate between the movie and her real life, which was much tougher, but much more loving than that depicted in the movie. She has a chapter at the end where she discusses coming to terms with the fictions of the play and the movie. It's a terrific little book.

The pertinent parts of Hawai'i: a Compass Guide by Moana Tregaskis. Since we're going to Hawaii next winter, I thought I'd better start getting a grip on the whole thing. I only read the general Hawaii parts and the chapter on the Big Island. It was informative, but Moana could gush a little less and perhaps proofread her sentences for clarity.

 

[lazarus]

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Marukami

Well, that was pretty damned fantastic.

Picked this up again and read about 450 pages in the last few days to finish it.

Wow. I could probably mull this one over for years; so much going on.

And unexpectedly moving at the end.

This guy is a rare talent. Will probably check out Norwegian Wood next.

 

[corianderstem]

Will probably check out Norwegian Wood next.

I have that on my way-too-long "to read" list as well.

 

[corianderstem]

Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson

Enjoyable, but not as good as his book about walking the Appalachian Trail.

My favorite line:

"I had with me two incredibly useless guidebooks to Italy, so useless in fact that I'm not even going to dignify them by revealing their titles here, except to say that one of them should have been called Let's Go Get Another Guidebook ..."



Edit: I just went to add this to my list of books I've read, and it's already there. For chrissakes. I knew the beginning chapter was familiar - I thought I'd started to read it before but had stopped, as none of the rest of it was familiar. Wow.

 

[beegee]

The Source of All Things by Tracy Ross, a contributing editor at Backpacker magazine.

A memoir about an abusive stepfather and the healing power of the outdoors.

 

[WildHoneyAlways]

I'm currently reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Death narrates the story of a girl living in WWII Germany. This was one of the books I ordered as a part of my Donor's Choose project. So glad I did.

 

[lazarus]

The Prestige, Christopher Priest.

Very different from the film adaptation, with a modern-day framing story and a shift in bias with audience sympathy. Still an amazing piece of work with a very unique structure, though I think I prefer what the Bros. Nolan did with their screenplay better.

You fantasy/sci-fi fans are missing out on an amazing writer. I've read 5 by this author now and they're all winners.

For the record:

1. The Glamour
2. A Dream of Wessex (a.k.a. The Perfect Lover)
3. The Prestige
4. An Infinite Summer (collected, related stories)
5. The Affirmation

He's also got two new ones coming out in the next year. Exciting.

Christopher Priest, author | Writer of The Prestige, The Separation and many more

 

[No spoken words]

You fantasy/sci-fi fans

So, like.....you mean me.

I'm currently reading the brand new China Miéville book, titled Embassytown. I've read every book by this cat and with one exception, have loved them all. This one is off to a good and intriguing start.