I just read the ltest several Benni Harper mystery novels. Not so good – kind of dull and they’ve already sort of run together in my mind. DOn’t think I’ll carry on with that series anymore.
Next up I have a new first novel by Laura Benedict called {i]Isabella Moon*. Supposed to be all ghosty and stuff… We’ll see.
How about Chuck Palahniuk? My son has read Fight Club, Diary, & Rant and is planning to read the rest of his books. He recommended them to me, even though they don’t seem like the type of thing I’d usually pick up. He suggested I start with Rant because it’s his favorite. Anybody read it?
An interesting passage from my current read, New Grub Street by George Gissing. The speaker is Edwin Reardon, a writer with a debilitating case of writer’s block. He’s just churned out a terrible book, for money, and his wife is about to leave him.
I’ve bolded the part that I thought was interesting.
“Since the publication of his first book he had avoided as far as possible all knowledge of what the critics had to say about him; his nervous temperament could not bear the agitation of reading these remarks, which, however inept, define an author and his work to so many people incapable of judging for themselves. No man or woman could tell him anything in the way of praise or blame which he did not already know quite well; commendation was pleasant, but it so often aimed amiss, and censure was for the most part so unintelligent.”
Is he saying that readers recognize the wrong parts as good? That something that he took no pains to write is getting positive attention, while something he struggled over and thinks is really good is being ignored? That readers just don’t get it?
I thought it uncharitable of him to quibble about a compliment, but maybe Gissing wrote this to balance the thought.
I’m a fan but I sure wouldn’t start with Rant. *Chuck *has had a problem with mistaking gross and explicit with good writing in his last few books. He used to have reasonable plots. My fiction preferences, from most preferred to least:
*Lullaby
Choke
Fight Club
Survivor
Invisible Monsters
Diary
Rant * (what I’ve read of it)
Trailing way at the back of the heap, and sort of sorry I wasted the time: Haunted.
Hee. I’ve filched a number of books from you and AuntiePam and Shoshana and several others. It’s one of the things I like most about GoodReads - it’s easy to discover books that you want to read and not completely lose track of them.
I’m just barely into Freedom and Necessity (thank you Miss Purl McKnittington). Much different than what I usually read, but I like it a lot already.
If you’re on a Vietnam kick, I highly recommend **The Quiet American ** by Graham Greene, **Ho Chi Minh ** by William J. Duiker and A Bright and Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan (who I believe just died a few months ago in an auto accident in California. A shame, because he was a top-notch reporter).
I hope you love it, gardentraveler! Or at least continue to like it a lot.
I finished all the books I was reading previously, so long ago I can’t even remember what they were. I absolutely love “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” though. It was amazingly plotted. I’ve been recommending it willy-nilly to people I think will like it. I was actually sad when it ended, because I wanted to know about (Major spoiler! Don’t highlight unless you’ve read it!) the fallout from the main character being shot by his wife’s brother and father. I think the author could have done that scene justice, but I can understand why it wasn’t included.
Finished “Making Money” by T. Pratchett, too. That was really good. I cannot get enough of Moist Von Lipwig and Spike. And the golems. And Vetinari’s machinations.
Right now I’m reading “We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families,” which I fully expect to be devastating. I think the day I finish it, I’m going to read about Darfur and then watch “Hotel Rwanda.” Then I might, I dunno, go on a bender or something. But first I’ll have to find a white Ford Bronco . . .
I also have “Magic Study” by Maria V. Snyder checked out from the library, along with the first two Thursday Next novels, “The Eyre Affair” and “Lost in a Good Book.” Looking forward to those. And today at the thrift store, I grabbed “A Thousand Acres” by Jane Smiley, which my Shakespeare prof recommended to me two years ago.
“A History of the World in 10 1/2 chapters” by Julian Barnes which was garbage.
Am currently finishing “Tragically, I was an only Twin” a collection of work by Peter Cook, who is very possibly the greatest Englishman who ever lived.
It’s been crazy at work the past 2 months, but I’m finally seeing signs of it easing up. Just in time to buy a copy of Ken Follet’s World Without End. I have 5 days off in the first week of November, and I know how I’m going to spend it.
I didn’t know where else to share this and it doesn’t warrant a new thread. In New Grub Street (can you tell I’m loving this book?), blocked writer Edwin and his wife Amy have separated. She and the child are living with her mother. Edwin has taken a clerk position at 25 shillings a week. He insists on sending half to Amy, even though he needs it much more than she does.
In a letter to Edwin, Amy tells him that she considers this money a reminder that he’s “undergoing privations” and trying to hurt her, and that she’s depositing the money in an account for the child.
Edwin’s response:
“I regard it as quite natural that you should put the worst interpretation on whatever I do. As for my privations, I think very little of them; they are a trifle in comparison with the thought that I am forsaken just because my pocket is empty. And I am far indeed from thinking that you can be pained by whatever I may undergo; that would suppose some generosity in your nature.”
If Edwin were writing this today, he probably would have signed off with a .
It sounds to me that this person thinks that the critics praise the wrong parts and that their censure was not well thought out. He may include everyone (even readers) in that, but I think it’s mainly the critics. The characters sounds a bit conceited.
I have just finished An Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Rosenthal. Very good–lightly humorous but salient re modern culture and people.
I need to start on The Stuff of Thought, but really just want to read junk today. I can’t do either-I have grad school work to do.
Done with* The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. * I’m working like crazy to get out of here for a board meeting and conference so I’m really behind on my reviews and goodreads updates. I’m hoping to catch up on the plane or at lull times in the next week. I’ll probably finish Social Lives of Medicines on the treadmill tomorrow, and bring Unlikely Destinations, The Glass Castle, Water for Elephants, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for the plane, though I may have to substitute Multicultural Counseling Competencies: Individual and Organizational Development (yeah, I’m teaching with it, but I also read that stuff for fun).
Oh Happy Day! My library DOES carry Quartered Safe Out Here after all! For reasons that elude me, I failed to check the non-fiction area, as I was used to seeing all of his books on the Fiction shelves. Unfortunately, when I was in the library yesterday (Saturday), it was checked out to someone else. But I will definitely grab it soon.
Meanwhile, I’m about to start Bangkok Eight, by local author John Burdett, a Brit and ex-Hong Kong lawyer. A detective noir set in Bangkok. “Bangkok noir,” as I like to term it, has become something of a popular genre among the farang (Western) community here, but many of the books are rather on the adolescent side. This one comes highly recommended.
Hmmm. Sounds like I should not have waited so long to read him. I’m never sure which books are available in the West, but *The Big Mango * and Tea Money, both by Jake Needham, are also good Bangkok noir. *The Big Mango * may be being made into a Hollywood film. (“The Big Mango” is Bangkok’s unoffical nickname.)
I’ve decided to stay in the late 1800’s, so I started The Forsyte Saga today. I missed the PBS production, so all these people are new to me. I tried it once before but it put me to sleep. I’m enjoying it this time. Maybe because Gissing got me all acclimated (sp?).
.