Zen, etc. has been an interesting book to read at different times in my life. I started out thinking, "Huh?" at 17 or 18, advanced to "Wow!" by 30, and when I attempted to read it a few months ago at 66, found myself thinking, "Get over yourself, bro." Finished a book about storm chasers, moved onto a novel called The Children's Blizzard, and am working though a book of short mystery stories with a canon in the Anglican Church doubling as an amateur detective. Feeling distinctly un-intellectual this week. It's about time for my annual reading of The Secret Garden; in addition to the pleasure it brings me, it should also act as a palate cleanser.
Got some new interesting choices to pick through. My paternal grandmother (who died in like 1985) had a thing for the Franklin Library and spent most of her last years ordering shit from magazines and off of TV. Anyway, she bought like 25 leather bound, autographed first edition books when that sort of thing was fashionable. They've got that old timey look with no cover art, golden paper edges, velvet bookmarks, etc. And they're all signed, which is kind of cool until you remember that these were mass produced Franklin Library (like the Mint) volumes sold on TV... which if you didn't live through the 80s, was the bane of American housewives and grandmothers everywhere. Long story longer, my folks dropped all of them off at my house last weekend. Picking through them, there's some Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Robert Penn Warren, Joseph Heller, Vonnegut (Galapagos, which might be the only one I haven't read), Ray Bradbury... classic, classic American White Dude Shit. Maybe I'll hit the Norman Mailer first. If you haven't read him before, he writes very dirty things that would probably be rejected by modern publishers, despite his two Pulitzers.
Ta-Nehisi Coates' run on Captain America. My wife got this for me randomly from the library, not sure why as I've never had any interest in comics. I like TNC's journalism and essays well enough, but his only fiction I can remember was his run on Black Panther which I think got pretty mixed reviews.
Started on True Grit by Charles Portis. Done 1st person past tense, all in character voice. I wouldn't call it Close, is there a distant 1st person? I guess there is, I'm reading it now. It uses something like free indirect discourse, though as I understand it that's (usually?) a 3rd person thing. It's where thoughts and feelings are stated, not directly, but as if the narrator is telling you what they thought and felt at the time. Like 'I couldn't abide by such barbaric behavior as my upbringing was strictly Lutheran'. And like Oil!, it all seems to be done in telling mode. It reminds me a lot of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I see why Portis is often compared to Mark Twain. The narrator/character voice is decidedly southern and lower class, but using a lot of fancy Victorian vocabulary. It fascinates me that the education of the time was Victorian, those who got a full education were more expressive and eloquent than any of us are today, but most in a Western town didn't get beyond 3rd grade if that far. So they used a lot of 10-dollar words and phrases, but strung together inelegantly and sometimes ignorantly. Mattie Ross, the narrator/MC, does not use contractions, instead she faithfully renders out each word in full form. This gives it all a very formal quality fitting to the way some people dressed then (also Victorian-influenced, hoop skirts and corsets, top hats and spats etc). Strolling among the muddy locals you'd see gentlemen and ladies fresh off the boat from Europe or England, attired in full finery and trying to avoid stepping in puddles. And the more well-to-do yokels would try to imitate them, without benefit of living in such a society or understanding it's niceties. Sometimes charming, sometimes laughable. That contrast is visible in the characters of Mattie Ross, well educated and well dressed, and Rooster Cogburn, scruffy grizzled old ignorant yokel. Fun stuff! Interestingly, in Oil!, which is set in the 20's, there are still remnants of this Victorianism in the language and the dress. It's only since then we've fully thrown it off (I'm sure we still cling to some of it).
I just started Huckleberry Finn last night because I couldn't find the mystery I was reading. Found the latter this morning under my computer desk on top of the trashcan. Don't ask, because I don't know. It's called Grantchester by James Runcie. I'm also reading a beautifully illustrated book on the Dark Ages. Not exactly an in-depth study but I like colored pictures.
Nothing since Royal Mail lost my package and Hermes Courier is taking ages. Two week wait to read a single book. Admittedly I did want a break from reading, but this is ridiculous. If the used book shop didn't send me another one for free I'd just have to accept the loss.
I just finished reading Barozzi by Catherine Smith. A standard Gothic romance of the early nineteenth century in Britain, which means its a ridiculous affair. It's one of those stories where it's almost so bad that it is good. Chalk full of death reversal, framed narrative digressions, fainting, explained supernatural; the whole standard business basically. Smith was an actress on stage during her writing period as well, so there's a whole lot of Shakespearean nods and completely over-dramatized speech. Even huge soliloquys that she even outright mentions as soliloquys. It's really bad, but also entertaining in it's silliness. Tons of memorable scenes, not for being brilliant, but just because they had you scratching your head or calling it a bunch of rubbish nonsense. It's playful, terrible, soap-opera-esque, and not endearing in the slightest. But it was a good time still. Pleasantly short and good window into pop culture hack novels of the day. I don't regret it even though it's kind of ass.
Doh! Facepalm. It's actually Upton Sinclair, not Sinclair Lewis. Interestingly (or not) there's a major oil company named Sinclair Oil.
Twilight Grey by Horace Annesley Vachell...a book of his musings about so much of the upper classes...I often feel like stroking my whippet and dothing my cap when I put the book down and think....it's order that keeps us in our place...
Old Man's War by Scalzi. So far it's underwhelmed me, but I'm only a quarter of the way through it. I've also started The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, and it gripped me from page one.
I'm reading Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford. But I was at my uncle's place a few days ago and I borrowed 2 books from him. Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion so I'm kind of reading those too. I'm reading some science books as well; Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution and Conceptual Mathematics. I should probably avoid reading this many books at the same time but I can't help it. I keep doing it.
currently reading an advance uncorrected proof of a novella for the purpose of saying nice things about it for promotional purposes.
Dead Wake by Eric Larson. Some of his prose gets a little purple, but he generally tells a good story.
I need to finish up The Castle by Franz Kafka and Concrete by Thomas Bernhard before the semester ends (May 10).
While I was unimpressed (and still am) with the first half of Old Man's War, the story eventually offered me something to invest in. And it did a nice job with it, and delivered a strong, emotional ending to boot. So I'm glad I read it. That said, I don't feel compelled to read any more of the series.
Halfway into Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit, and vaguely understanding about 70%, which I gather is pretty normal.
Both. Both are phenomenal authors, though Henry James is likely the more intelligently written of the two. Eliot was a bit of a sell-out, which causes a loss of character continuity at times for the sake of not pissing off her critics, but still a fantastic author. Henry James also gets a bit goofy and over-the-top as well. But I believe their strengths far exceed their faults.
I did a few shorter works this week. Both Charles Dickens and both worth the time. The Signalman is an interesting little tale that I'm still trying to figure out. It's a ghost story, kind of, with a lot of layers. Probably not a real ghost story, and yet it is covered in premonitions and a sense of altruism that doesn't result in success. Kind of bizarre honestly, and it really shows how different classes viewed each other in a sort of piteous light. Hunted Down was, however, fantastic. It's an early form of the detective novel, dealing with a murderous con artist being hunted be insurance agency owners for fraud. There's some cool perspective play here related to the plot, and a deep sense of foreboding as the reader comes to trust the antagonist less and less before they even reveal his nature. Dickens did a good job here depicting the desperate struggle of the working class to get out of the mud of poverty, no matter who or what was in your way. It's a satisfying little hour read. Next week I'm going through a bit of the Mysteries of London, which is another periodical collection of detective/sensationalist fiction. Only doing part of it, as I have a monster of a book scheduled for the week after, but I'm excited for it nonetheless.
I made a promise to myself at the start of this year/end of last, a promise to read, at minimum, two whole-ass books per month. That hasn't quite turned out to be the case, but I am reading more. I devoured Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. There's a reason this one's a classic. Welsh does very well at writing lowlife characters and infusing them with realness. I swear I've known people exactly like these, if not quite as vile and wretched (on average). He's also just a really good writer, and reading something in Scots (or heavily scottified English, anyway; it kind of straddles the spectrum) is a breath of fresh air. Very funny, very disturbing at times. Will definitely carry on with this series. I also finished Thief of Time, part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld saga. I liked it a lot. The Death/Susan subseries is turning into a favorite of mine. The Auditors are a hoot, and it's nice to see them get some extended scene time. I've procured The Shadow of the Gods, written by John Gwynne, an author whom I haven't read but is apparently some sort of Wizard. I have high hopes for this one after skimming a good few handfuls of rave reviews. It's a strategy that has served me poorly in the past, but maybe this one will actually honor my expectations. Anyways, this is a heavily Norse-influenced Fantasy novel, which if actually done right should be just the thing. Oh, and I got Breach of Peace by Daniel Greene, who is a 'BookTuber', which I suppose is a word now. It's a short novella, so I'll probably squeeze it in somewhere between the above and whatever comes next.
