Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' Thread - March 2016 Edition

Cafe Society
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I’ve got a bunch of books on tap. Having finished Mothership, I’ve moved on to Dan Kimmel’s Shh! It’s a Secret!, another humorous science fiction novel (Kimmel’s first). Kimmel is a local movie reviewer and science fiction fan, so his protagonist being a movie publicity flack isn’t surprising. He;'s named every chapter after a science fiction movie.

I’m also reading James Branch Cabbell’s Domnei that I picked up at Boskone. I’ve read Cabbell’s Jurgen ages ago, and The Cream of the Jest a few months ago. He’s an odd and acquired taste. His fantasies aren’t like anyone else’s.

I’m also reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf. I saw a single copy of this at an Andover bookstore a few months ago, but hadn’t heard a word about it, which is surprising when you consider how popular Tolkien still is, his famous defense of Beowulf back in the 1930s in Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics, and in the way he strip-mined the epic for details he used in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. You’d think there would have been more notice of this book, if not in the popular press, than from the scholars. But I don’t recall a peep, and never saw a copy of this in any Barnes and Noble. His previous recent outings in Northern myth – * Sigurd and Gudrun* and The Death of King Arthur got more play, and I saw copies on display in the bookstores. This one seems to have sunk practically without a trace. I’d been intending to buy a copy, but I stumbled across a pile of FIVE of these in a used/overstock bookstore, virtually pristine (save for a magic marker dot on the side of the pages)

It’s interesting for the details of Old English poetry. It’s a prose translation, made for the purposes of study, and not the magnificent alliterative poetic version people expected of out modern Bard, which might explain its quiet reception. Most of the other translations I have, like Seamus Heaney’s, are better literary reads than this.

On audio, I’ve been listening to The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which I recently picked up. I have them in book form, of course, but I’ve never listened to them in Feynman’s own voice.

I’m sure that I’ve heard Feynman’s voice before, but I didn’t recall how much he sounds like Bernie Sanders! They were both born and raised in the Long Island boroughs of NYC – Feynman in Queens, Sanders in Brooklyn, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but in this campaign season, the first blast from Feynman was jarring. It’s like listening to a Democratic candidate lecture you on how he’d make physics work if he gets elected.

82

Finished Blood’s a Rover, by James Ellroy, the third installment in his Underworld USA trilogy. The title is taken from a line in the AE Housman poem “Reveille.” Most of the action takes place from 1968-72 but centers on an armored-car heist in Los Angeles in early 1964. Set mostly in LA but Haitian voodoo and the Dominican Republic figure large. I read the first two installments out of order but didn’t think it mattered much except it would have given me some insights on some of the characters if I’d read them in the proper order. Same with this third book. Early on with the other novels, it took a little getting used to Ellroy’s shorthand-noir style, but I quickly became comfortable with it. Recommended, the whole series.

Now I’ve begun perusing parts of the latest Lonely Planet – Hawaii guidebook to refamiliarize myself with the Aloha State ahead of our planned move back there in a few months. It’s been 22 years since we lived there and 11 years since our last visit.

83

I’m reading A Radiant Life, The Selected Journalism of Nuala O’Faolain. I’m finding it wonderful. Her writing is excellent and her positions well thought out. I feel lucky that this book jumped off the shelf and into my arms.

84

Just finished ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’. Best one yet, I reckon. It’s got a great story, and we get to learn a lot more about how the wizard community reacted to Voldemort’s downfall, which I found very interesting. It’s noticeably darker than the first three in the series, and has a few scenes, particularly at the very beginning and the very end, that are impressively suspenseful. We get to see Voldemort properly in action for the first time and he doesn’t disappoint! There’s also a cracking twist at the end. I loved it from start to finish and I’ve already ordered the next one.

That won’t be delivered for a few days so in the meantime I’m going to read Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton, a book which, on more than one occasion, I’ve heard referred to as “The best 20th century British novel you’ve never heard of”, which certainly sounds promising!

85

Just finished the audiobook of Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear. Some good, common-sense advice on crime avoidance and personal safety, interspersed with some interesting stories.

I’m only a little way into Ken Follett’s World War II spy thriller The Key to Rebecca, but it’s pretty good.

Also just starting Bill Watterson’s Exploring Calvin and Hobbes, the richly-illustrated catalog to his 2014 exhibition at Ohio State University. It includes a lengthy interview with Watterson by the curator. Catnip, er, tigernip to any C&H fan!

Good to know - thanks. I hadn’t heard about it, either. As it happens, I saw a live one-man performance of Beowulf in the original Old English not long ago. Very cool.

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Do you have to order because you live somewhere remote? I would think you could easily find the entire series in many bookshops.

87

i am about two thirds through Connie Willis’** Lincoln’s Dreams.** She is an amazing writer.

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I live quite near a bookshop, but unfortunately my job requires me to work rather odd hours. As it turned out, the only time this week I’d have been able to get to the bookshop is this afternoon, and I’m already busy with something else. I couldn’t very well wait til next weekend. This is Harry Potter we’re talking about :slight_smile:

Incidentally, it arrived today, along with two others I’ve ordered; The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins, and Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer.

I’ve finished Patrick Hamilton’s ‘Hangover Square’. I thought it was excellent, and it fully lives up to its reputation. It’s a difficult book to review because 90% of the “action” takes place inside the main character’s head, but the MC is so interesting, and the other characters are all so repulsively vivid, and Hamilton’s narration is so readable, that the lack of a strong plot doesn’t hinder one’s enjoyment at all. I’d give it the full 5 stars. It’s definitely one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years.

89

I just started The Girl on the Train. I’m only about 50 pages in and I find myself …vaguely annoyed.

90

To Lose a Battle: France 1940, by Alistair Horne. Slow going, but I hope to be able to win the battle, 2016.

91

Almost done with another audiobook, Storm Front, the first book in the Dresden Files series. Heard a lot about the series, but never got around to it, so I picked it up from the library. I like it. Going to see if the second book is in or if I have to put a hold on it.

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I “read” the first two Dresden Files books on audio, and liked them. I later read one from the middle of the series, and frequently got lost. There’s something to be said for taking them in order, which I’ll get around to one of these days.

I encountered part of his Codex Valera series on Sirius audio a while back when I rented a car. It sounded interesting, but I was totally lost. In fact, I had no idea what I was listening to, and it wasn’t until I did an internet search using names I recalled that I was able to track down just what I had listened to.

93

Just finished ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ by George V. Higgins. I’m…not sure what to make of it, to be honest. It’s a rather remarkable book, really, because it’s about 98% dialogue. That is in no way an exaggeration. A typical chapter goes like this: one or two short paragraphs of scene setting; five or six pages of solid, uninterrupted dialogue between two or three characters; characters exit stage left. Nearly every chapter is like that.

Now, that style doesn’t really do all that much for me. By necessity, it doesn’t flow, because realistic conversations don’t flow. They jump about, meander, go back on themselves. And nearly every single conversation in the book is like this, because, for better or worse, the dialogue is extremely realistic. Higgins has an exceptionally good ear for how people actually talk, and most people don’t talk in a particularly readable way. This goes double for the kind of inarticulate thugs which populate the novel.

So this style, I think, makes for somewhat awkward reading. Also, since this is a hard-bitten crime novel where the characters either hate each other, don’t know each other, or are planning to stab each other in the back, this style makes it very, very hard to actually get to know the characters. Since there is almost no narration whatsoever all we know about Eddie Coyle, for instance, is (a) what he says about himself (superficial, since he’s either talking to cops or to other gangsters he’s trying to screw over) and (b) what other characters say about him (biased, cynical, and not very insightful because…well, they’re a bunch of stupid thugs). You never really get to know much about any of the characters and that makes it harder to become invested in anything they do.

That said, it’s hard not to admire the technical skill involved in telling an entire story (and a fairly complicated one, at that) almost exclusively through dialogue and having it make sense. And the exposition is almost completely unnoticeable. There’s none of those “As you know, Bob…” type conversations, where characters talk about stuff purely for the benefit of the reader. You’re always having to play catch-up, which is both challenging and fun.

If I was to describe ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ in one sentence, I’d say it was like an episode of The Wire, if The Wire were about Boston Irish gangsters in the '70s. Imagine reading the script for an episode of a show like that, and you’ve got kind of an idea of what ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ is like. Personally, I wouldn’t really enjoy that, and I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. It’s just not my sort of thing. I’d give it two an a half stars. That said, Norman Mailer, Scott Turow, and Dennis Lehane have all cited it as a classic, and Elmore Leonard said it was “The best crime novel ever written”, so it might very well be yours.

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Another Philippa Gregory book: The White Princess. I do tend to binge-read when I find an author I like.

95

Finished The Evening Spider by Emily Arsenault. I guess I can’t say it was bad, since I finished the whole thing. But it did seem like hard work for little payoff. There were several different storylines that never connected in a satisfying manner. I didn’t like the main character, and didn’t need to know so much about her very ordinary baby. I’m still not sure who was haunting the house. I don’t even know why it was called The Evening Spider. There was a spider in one scene, probably in the evening, but it was important in no way. Ugh, I’m glad to be done.

Next up, Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer as recommended by DZedNConfused. This should cleanse my palate!

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EEK! The pressure is on! i really liked it, so here’s hoping you will too!

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I finished The Best of the Feynman Lectures on Physics on audio. I can’t say I’d recommend them to anyone who doesn’t already know the material. In the first place, he tells you the equations he’s writing, but you can’t see them, or the diagrams he’s putting up on the Board to explain things. Not seeing these things will utterly alienate anyone not familiar with the subject beforehand.

And that’s not the only problem. Even if you could perfectly visualize the equations from his description, he constantly backs up and changes things, saying he miswrote something or got something wrong. Your mental picture would be filled with scratchouts.

I disagree with those who say that the Feynman lectures (in printed form) are overrated, or are really intended for grad students. I read these in my first undergraduate years, and thought they explained things very well. And the printed lectures are derived from these very same taped lectures. The thing is that all the irrelevancies and missteps have been removed for the text version, and you have good, clear illustrations to go by.
It is, I think, like Alexander Calder’s Circus pieces. Tom Wolfe described one of Calder’s performances in one of his books. In person, there were numerous miscues, gaffes, and delays in setting things up and getting them to work correctly. But if you go to the Whitney Museum in new York you can see the originals, and watch a film of a performance*, and be entranced. But the film edits out the errors and the delays.

Listening to Feynman’s lectures uncut is like watching Calder’s Circus without the editor.

http://whitney.org/Collection/AlexanderCalder/8336195

*You can see the film on the internet, too – Alexander Calder performs his "Circus" | Whitney Museum of American Art - YouTube

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Ahhhh, Henry James. I got to read his stuff in grad school. I think of his writing style as emotionally constipated: he knows what he wants to do, but he takes FOREVER to get it out. Pardon the crass analogy, but I find it apt. That said, I positively enjoyed The Turn of the Screw versus, say, The Portrait of a Lady.

Currently got a few things on the boil, including Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. I like the Wit, the bond that Fitz can form with animals, as well as the naming conventions for royalty and the world in which this is set.

My nonfiction read is Five Nights in Paris: After Dark in the City of Light by John Baxter. Mr. Baxter organizes his book into five ‘nights’ in Paris categorized by sense: hearing, taste, smell, etc. He confides the best places to experience Paris at night - both past and present Paris - with such evocative words that you half-feel you’re already there. He combines personal anecdotes with history and advice in such a way that it seems you’re hearing everything from a friend. I’m taking one of the Babybrarians to Paris next year for our mom-daughter trip, and now I can hardly wait to get on the plane.

On audio, I’m listening to Slade House by David Mitchell. I’ve rather put the cart before the horse on this one since I haven’t read The Bone Clocks yet. I gather Slade is set in the Clocks universe? In any case, this stands fine on its own thus far. It’s most wonderfully creepy in that, “Did I just see something in the corner of my eye” kind of way for most of the individually linked stories. And by the time you realize you HAVE seen something: it’s got you. :wink: I’m not done yet, but so far I’d recommend it to any ‘low-key horror’ fan.

My favorite read of the last few weeks is **Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body**by Neil Shubin. This is everything science writing should be: informative, well-written, and funny. If you’ve got any interest at all into how animals and humans evolved as they did, you’ll love this compulsively readable explanation of similarities, differences, and genetics between species. Not dry, I promise!

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Ooo! I need to add this too my list… err lists?

100

Finished perusing the latest Lonely Planet – Hawaii guidebook. Some stuff’s the same, some new changes. Looks like they’re building a rapid-rail system between Honolulu and Kapolei close to the Waianae Coast. That will be handy but seems controversial. The beloved Anna Bananas is now an Irish pub called Anna O’Brian’s. Huh? That’ll take some getting used to. They sure are proud of their favorite son, President Barack Obama (and justifiably so). Quite a bit of “President Obama eats here when he’s in town” and “President Obama used to surf here” and “President Obama plays golf here.” Nice.

Next up: The Bangkok Asset, by local British writer John Burdett, the sixth and latest installment in his Bangkok 8 series featuring half-breed Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. (“Half-breed” is not a pejorative in Thai.)