Trying to get through Salvador Dali's Hidden Faces. It's tough as it's minutely detailed and he loves long, long, did I mention long? sentences. But I do loved Dali and I wanted to see if he'd write surreal.
While I'm still reading Snow Crash, in the car I have the audio book, The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi. Clearly YA but well written and interesting so far. Reading the reviews on GoodReads I'm curious to see how I like it the further I get into it. I wonder if the politics of the story is affecting the ratings because so far I wouldn't give it a poor review. Or it could be that the key relationship involves a white girl and a black boy.
That was a good poem! I was surprised to find Tyger Tyger in the songs of Experience, too. With it's mirror image poem of the lamb in Innocence, though, it raises many questions for me.
"The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla" by Lauren Willig, the penultimate novel in my beloved Pink Carnation series...I don't want it to end.
Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing by Richard Poirer. This is a book of Robert Frost criticism, really delving into the first two Robert Frost collections in extremely intricate detail and breaking them down. First Frost's aims as a poet, and then the individual poems - and exploring the sex, gender and power relations in Frost's poems. It's so far been very interesting, a pretty good source, but I find myself weirded out by it's structure. It doesn't have a brief introduction giving it's own mission statement, but it is a book from the 1970s, when academic writing was apparently much more relaxed about the way it presented its own findings, so I can't exactly be hard on it for that. It also seems to rely on Freud for sections of pure autobiography, which I would rather it didn't to be honest. All things considered, Freud just seems sort of dated to me - I just don't understand why English departments still teach him when psychology departments haven't for years. Maybe decades. It's comparing Frost to other modernists is also particularly interesting. However, saying that, I honestly find this book hard to follow because of the very loose way it presents itself, and it is a personal address to the reader too, which is basically the author admitting he might be making assumptions and being very subjective at points. In reading this for my dissertation I think this book will be very good as a resource, it's still useful, but I question if it would be considered still totally relevant and contemporary. I just don't think it would be, partly because of the construction of the argument, partly because of the potential subjectivity, partly because of some of the sexual theory behind it I guess; but mostly because other and more recent close readings are obviously going to be unconsidered here.
Well my supposed to be sci-fi, The Doubt Factory, is turning into a run of the mill kidnapping by terrorists in a children's book. What I mean by that is teens do the kidnapping and there are no guns. The bombs are akin to paint guns. I don't mind that so much, I don't enjoy reading violence unless it's done just right. But the story has become cliché. It's awful when the character does stupid things and gets captured by the bad guys. It ruins the tension. The reviews were right but the critics also said Paolo Bacigalupi's other books were better so I'm going to try a different one.
Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl was delicious. Get thee to thine grains and potatoes, oh calorie man. When I read it rambutan just happened to be in season in Puerto Rico (called by their Thai name ngaw in the book). I ate them by the pound and pretended to be a bystander in the story. ETA: Give this book a try, @GingerCoffee. It's not YA and it's quite satisfying.
Moved on to Thomas Pynchon now - Inherent Vice. It's out as a movie so there are more copes in bookstores. Rather interesting. I've never read Pynchon before. I can now see how Bret Easton Ellis might have inherited his narrative style and plot/character inspiration from Pynchon. So far - quite enjoyable.
Pynchon is fantastic. I've not seen the film yet though. Inherent Vice is an interesting one, because it's part of an easier, similar period in Pynchon's career. You might get whiplash if you go from that straight to something like Gravity's Rainbow or Mason and Dixon. You have been warned.
I'm getting into the last bit of William Brandon's "The Rise and Fall of the North American Indians." Great book, and if you have any interest at all in the subject matter I highly recommend it.
They get a special revised edition about how red savages tried to stop Europeans from realizing their god-given right of conquest and expansion.
Started a book list of 50 sci fi novels I apparently need to read. Looked like an interesting enough selection. Beginning with Embassytown by China Mieville. It's interesting so far if you're into linguistics at all.
I picked this up from the library just today. I'm further into The Doubt Factory and I like it again. Yeah there were some tropes so far and it's definitely not sci-fi. But the protagonist is pining for her lost opportunity to be part of something bigger and the author has made me feel that emotion. I want to turn the page.
Either V. or Mason and Dixon. Gravity's Rainbow is fantastic, it's a lot of fun, but it's really hard in places too and I'm not sure I understand it, not even sure I know what happened at points. Also, I guess I just like Mason and Dixon's use of language more - it's written to imitate seventeenth and eighteenth century writing styles. V. was my first Pynchon too.
I'm currently reading Hang Wire by Adam Christopher. It's good so far. I love the different POV's in the book, they come along so nicely. Thrilling book so far.
