What Are You Reading Now.

Wow, some great books here that bring back memories. I read The Beach a long time ago and really enjoyed it. I can still get the feel of that island vibe many years later. And The Stand - fantastic!

I just read Norwegian Wood by Murakami and...wow. It was hard to know how to follow that one. Amazing book which references many other amazing books and songs.

I am now reading Kafka. I somehow made it to my 40s without reading him. I'm starting with The Trial.

Now I can can finally have a real sense of the term 'kafkaesque.' (although hopefully I won't experience those situations too much, hehe)

 

Really? Well, maybe I'll take a look, but not right now, I'm not committing to anything else just now.

 

Are you more hard SciFi then? I've just started The Expanse and so far it's a good read, well written. More space opera though in this case.

 

What turned you off? I don't remember the beginning too well.

 

I got that quite recently and have read a few stories. Very pleased with it so far. But damn, it's a real massive tome, and the cover likes to fray and curl at the edges. Kinda gives it that lived-in look though, ya know?

You need to find a way to set it down while reading, in your lap or something. It weighs approximately the same as a bowling ball I think.

 

I'm feeling the same about my start of The Expanse series. I remember Jeff Vandermeer for his Southern Reach trilogy (I only read the first, so far) but I've never heard of this.

 

The Weird was edited by both Jeff and his wife Ann. I recently finished Jeff's entire Southern Reach trilogy. @Krispee , I can safely tell you, if you enjoyed Annihilation, and if your taste ventures out into the weird end of things, you'll most likely love the rest of the trilogy. Each book is very different from its predecessors. In the final book Acceptance, all rules are out the window. Jeff plays insane games with tense and person and grammar and all the rest of it. And he's good enough to pull it off, at least in my opinion.

 

Good to know, I did enjoy Annihilation so will definitely wade into the others at some point. From what I remember his writing is good. Having looked up Amazon Vandermeer does tend towards to weird in his work, most of his novels are leaning in that direction.

 

He's been dubbed the Weird Thoreau because of his fascination with wilderness and nature. He and his wife are wildlife/ecology activists, and he considers his writing a part of his activism.

 

Interesting...

 

I read The Wife by Meg Wolitzer because I watched the movie--I watched the movie because I like Glenn Close's acting, but realized just how stereotypical the script was. The movie is made ok by the acting, but the story is mostly boring and predictable. I was somewhat hooked because there is a "mystery", but when they reveal the answer to the mystery it is just overdone. So I became curious of what in the book was so appealing that made them decide to make a movie out of it.

The book is great. The writing brings you right into the world of the MC, although at times there is too much description, but that is a personal preference. It describes the condition of women, especially of writers as wives, in the lifetime of the MC, marked by her early years in the '50s and '60s, and the decisions she takes because of it. The tone of the book is bitter for a good reason, but the writing makes you want to go ahead and continue reading. Perhaps the one thing I think it is missing is a more definite description of why she spends all of her life by her husband (the great writer)'s side, although it is easy to guess why. It is not depicted so strongly as it should be, I think. What strikes me (in an absolute-positive way) about this book is how the different factors in her life (being a wife, an author, her relationships with her children and other authors' wives, etc.) intertwine together, and how they affect the way she decides to live her life, the attitude she takes, which is not that dramatic (as the movie shows). This gives a dimension of truth, as we don't view or interpret our lives dramatically, but just as decisions in response to what is going on around us.

To make a comparison between movie and book, in the movie a female author gives a lecture about her book and advises the MC not to waste her time becoming an author because of the judgmental sexism of the publishing world, and the audience has to guess what impact that had on the MC. The audience is left wondering why this character has such a big scene in the movie. In the book, we get to read about what the MC thinks and how she processes that information, and we realize how important she is for the MC, as her words resonate with her years later.

I recommend the reading.

 

After two weeks, I finally finished Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. It had some fantastically great elements in it, as well as some very near unforgivable. It is also the perfect example of what happens when the publisher prints your manuscript without sending it through the editor mill.

The novel is a Gothic romance by the mother of the genre herself, but it is difficult to get through and if you're not in the mood it can be extremely tedious. At over 180k words, it's about 80k to 120k longer than a Gothic romance really needs to be. It's so long, that it completes most of its plot about two-thirds the way through, dumps all the evil characters, then springs up with a whole host of new characters who actually take control of the third person point of view often. It's like you're reading a separate book that relates every-so-often to the first two-thirds. Then it ends like crap, and extremely predictably as all Radcliffe novels are. Radcliffe has a fear of actually using the supernatural in writing, which she only does in her last and mostly unsuccessful novel. So it goes without saying that all her little toss ins of spooky happenings are going to be explained away in due time.

Clearly, by this, you can see something like a quarter of the novel would be better off not there. "But what about the other 40k of words that can be cut" you might ask. Quite simply, it's in description. I can't tell you how many God damn times this novel describes mountains. Yes, the imagery is beautiful, and highly exemplifies how to utilize the sublime in description for contrast, but how many times do we have to see it? The lead character, Emily St. Aubert, travels a lot. So we get a travelogue novel stuck in the middle of a Gothic romance. It takes forever. Quite literally, I think almost that many descriptions could be cut down from this. It's even complained about by critics of the day, and mind you, this is Victorian era literature. If the descriptions are long for them, they crawl now.

On the opposite end though, it is quite literally a painting in words. Radcliffe's imagery is absolutely fantastic when you have the time and patience for it. If it wasn't so unGodly redundant in separate scenes, it would be exceptional. She was an avid viewer of natural art, which was quite popular at the time. A lot of her descriptions are based on these powerfully depicted scenes by artists of the day practicing realism. The sublime elements give thematic control and tone to each scene, keeping the mood right. Radcliffe is a master of rising tension as well, drawing the reader continuously on with (for the day) wild intensity. Her "horror" is not so much scary today, but getting to that point is good.

It's a bit of a shame. About half way through this novel it really peaks and I was quite excited to read, but then it just drops and mostly restarts. I wish I had liked it more, but as I said, this is a prime example of when no publisher wants to cut your work because of popularity. She was the highest paid writer of her day, so basically untouchable. The novel however, was a vast improvement in style from her previous A Sicilian Romance.

Next up is my last Radcliffe for the month. I'm reading The Italian, which is a direct reaction to Matthew Lewis' The Monk, a shocking novel for its day. Though The Mysteries of Udolpho novel was an absolute pain, I'm still a bit excited for this one. It's also only 120k on the word count, which is quite a bit more palatable.

 

I’ve just finished The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements. It was a nice read but…

Spoiler: Don't read if you plan to read the book

… I didn’t like the ending! It was so grim (everyone except the MC was dead, including her dog). Plus, she had a side story involving three old coins and I’m still a bit confused about the way she solved it.

I’ve started with Infinity Son by Adam Silvera now. I read They Both Die at the End by him and loved it. But (wow, the second but in such a short passage ) I’m afraid he is losing me right now. It’s never a good sign when you desperately wish for a glossary, and I don’t like it when I feel like a dumb reader while reading. Well, we’ll see.

 

Soviet Blitzkrieg Theory, "a book the West cannot afford to ignore." It was written in 1983. It examines the possibility of the Soviets waging a conventional war against NATO, and the Soviet doctrines and beliefs regarding such a war. It cites a lot of original Soviet military sources. It's interesting. Only 200 pages so I'll finish it quickly if I finish it at all.

 

Finished The Invention of Murder, finally. Reading Wastelands: stories of the apocalypse now, about halfway through it. The first Witcher book is next for fiction, and I've got a decent start on a book about habits for my nonfiction this month.

 

Wow, I didn't realize Wastelands was Paolo Bacigalupi's book! I've read Pump Six (loved it) and a couple of the stories he's got posted on his website, the Fluted Girl and I think the other one was People of Sand and Slag. I remember really liking Fluted Girl especially. Such a powerful imagination!

 

Orson Scott Card and Martin are also in that Wastelands you mentioned, a veritable cornucopia of great writers inside. Haven't heard of it before but I also have read Bacigalupi's work before and it is very imaginative stuff.

 

I'm enjoying it very much so far. Some are a bit obvious as far as "end of the world" stories go, but it's a solid collection with authors I don't normally gravitate toward.

 

Yes, but he tends toward the dystopian, and his apocalyptic visions do seem to have a similar thread sometimes. I like him though, Windup Girl is great.