What are we Reading?

 

"I'm Writing a Novel" - Father John Misty

Another great song by the good father with amusing lyrics and a reference to a drug, Ayahuasca, with which I was not familiar.

So I have been trying to hit the old fashioned books for a bit lately in the hopes of improving my mind and attention span.  Plus, I've spent a fair amount of times on airplanes lately and it really is the only way to make flying seem less than hellish.  Here is what I've been reading -- love to hear what everyone else has found compelling lately.

- Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel - The sequel to Wolf Hall is another great book.  The first deals with, among other things, the ascent of Ann Boleyn, as seen through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, the brilliant, tough and wise commoner who rises from nothing to being the right hand man of Henry VIII.  In the second book, Cromwell is instrumental in Boleyn's downfall, taking with him along the way a number of courtiers who had crossed his mentor Cardinal Wolsey.  Mantel's Cromwell is a great literary character and the world he inhabits a fascinating one.  What struck me as most surprising in the book was the depiction of a Europe that was a very cosmopolitan place, with the English world shaped by its interactions with German theologians, Italian bankers, French and Spanish monarchs, and, of course, the Pope.  Entertaining, intelligent, and beautifully written.  

- The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq - The latest novel by the controversial Frenchman is an impressive effort, filled with kind of gracefully written misanthropy that is his hallmark.  Its central character is a solitary but successful French artist -- who enlists Houellebecq, who appears as a character in the book, to write a narrative accompaniment to one of his exhibitions.  Houellebecq, the book character, is later the victim of a grisly but artistic murder, a conceit that works surprisingly well in the book.  Houellebecq is probably not for everyone.  He has a bleak world view, particularly with regard to human relationships and sexuality, a consistent aspect of his earlier works, Whatever, The Elementary Particles (also sometimes translated as Atomized, which I prefer), and Platform.  Houellebecq has a style that is reminiscent of Camus in The Stranger, although one stripped of all of Camus' morality and humanity.  Many will find him to be a somewhat unattractive voice, but I find him a unique and interesting one.

- The Third Reich by Roberto Bolano -- Bolano is a Chilean by birth, who largely came to attention in the literary world for works published after his death, particularly 2666, a mammoth virtuoso work, and The Savage Detectives, a book that I found to be harder to get through.  Bolano is starting to remind me of Jimi Hendrix -- a guy who seems to have greater output after his death than he had in life.  The Third Reich was written in 1989, but only recently published.  The book's title in this case refers to a board game played by Udo Berger, a young German gamer on holiday in Spain.  Berger's world back in Germany revolves around playing these kind of war games, a subculture in which he is a big man.  In Spain, he is vacationing at a hotel he used to come to with his parents, a decade or so ago.  He and his girlfriend mingle with other Germans and some of the locals in a beach town on the Costa Brava, sunbathing, drinking, dining, and dancing, although Udo often retreats to his room to play Third Reich and work on an article for a gamer magazine.  Udo is an unreliable narrator, who has the social acuity one might expect from a twenty-something man obsessed with war games.  Nevertheless, the book has a gripping, somewhat Kafkaesque quality.  It is an easier and shorter read than either 2666 or The Savage Detectives.  It is a fairly good introduction to Bolano if you don't want to commit to the 900 plus pages of 2666.

- America's Great Debate by Fergus Bordewich deals with the Compromise of 1850 and the efforts of first Henry Clay and later Stephen Douglas to defuse the fierce debate over the possible expansion of slavery in the wake of the Mexican-American War.  It's an extremely well done book, a carefully researched and skillfully written account of an often overlooked time.  In the end, if Bordewich's claim to the sigificance of the "great compromise" can be questioned given that within a decade the country would be embroiled in an astonishingly bloody civil war.  Bordewich tries to make the case -- and I was persuaded -- that the compromise enabled the development of a far more coherent unionist position, one in which the Republican Party, under the leadership of Lincoln, proved able to withstand subsequent insurrection and the savage warfare that went with it.  (Try to imagine Millard Fillmore holding the union together.)  

- The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War by Donald Stoker  - Civil War books seem like they are a dime a dozen, but this one, which focuses on the concept of strategy as applied to both sides in the war is not the conventional great man biography or battlefield narrative.  It is written from the point of view of assessing the actions of various political and military actors in the war and how they contributed to victory or defeat.  Lincoln comes across as a far superior strategist to Jefferson Davis, despite the fact that Davis went to West Point, fought in the Mexican American War and served as Secretary of War in the Buchanan administration, while Lincoln had scant military experience.  The only southern general who appears to have any sense of strategy is Robert E. Lee, although his use of offensive tactics in the war is subject to serious question.  Several Union generals had a better grasp of an overall strategic concept of the war, from Winfield Scott and his Anaconda Plan to George McClellan (who unfortunately had George McClellan for a field general) to Ulysses Grant.  Ultimately, the general with the best sense of strategy on either side of the struggle was William Tecumseh Sherman, who grasped the nature of the southern rebellion and what needed to be done to crush it -- bring maximum violence to bear on southern troops and maximum hardship on the civilian supporters of the rebellion.  It was not a pretty vision -- Sherman was contemptuous of the idea of glory on the battlefield and found romantic notions of a great, decisive, Napoleonic battle in the war to be fatuous.  This is the sort of book that will liked by those of us who like this sort of thing.  And I did.

Alright, enough about me, what about you.  What are you reading these days?

Comments

[Linkmeister]

Oh dear. I'm embarrassed to say I've been reading light science fiction. However, one series in that genre that I've read recently oddly complements your first selection: Eric Flint's 1632 and its sequels also have to do with Europe and its surprisingly cosmopolitan nature, in this case during the Thirty Years War. The history is well researched and the stories are well told.

I do now have Krugman's latest from the library: End This Depression Now

And all three of Tana French's Ireland crime novels, also from the library.

[Sir Charles]

Linkmeister,

No need for embarrassment. Reading should be, first and foremost, a pleasure. I have stopped reading any number of books that just didn't move me or that I couldn't get into, including books that I felt I was supposed to read. LG&M has a recent post about the most difficult books to read and it includes a couple that I abandoned -- The Tunnel by William Gass and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow leap to mind.

I will have to take a look at "1632." One of the things that I find continually humbling is how much I don't know about. And that would be a subject I really don't have any knowledge of.

[Mandos]

Why be embarassed that you're reading light science fiction? Frankly, I think that not nearly enough of it is read. Not surprisingly, it's most of what I read for pleasure. Well, depending on what you mean by "light".

Most recently, I've read David Brin's Existence, his new (and long) novel about an answer to Fermi's Paradox, the question of why, when the universe is so large, we've never seen any definitive sign of alien intelligences. It's set in the relatively near future, and it covers a lot of issues that are actually surprisingly relevant to our current predicament, including post global-warming consequences, the logical result of crowdsourcing, and so on.

David Brin (if you've ever read any of his essays or attended any of his talks) is definitely a TED-style liberal techno-optimist, but I thought he did a good job of nodding at the potential risks and consequences. He does get self-indulgent at times, but it's forgivable simply because of the density of the ideas.

[kathy a.]

sir charles, reading your list makes me feel tired and unaccomplished. right now, by the end of the day i can't manage anything but lighter reading, mostly mysteries. i re-read some calvin trillin and david sedaris recently. wish i had more light reading sitting around, because having a book handy is my master plan for dealing with insomnia, but i've been too busy to find more books.

yeah. pathetic.

[oddjob]

I have stopped reading any number of books that just didn't move me or that I couldn't get into, including books that I felt I was supposed to read.

This is why I've never read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I just can't get beyond the first two pages. For whatever reason it simply doesn't hold my interest at all.

[paula]

Currently reading A Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos, the riveting memoir of an awful childhood that led to an adolescence focused on getting ahead in the world by way of the drug business. Gantos was caught and incarcerated, but later built a career as an award-winning author of children's literature(!), including the Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza series.

Some other good books I’ve read this year:
Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation – an eye opener by Ted C. Fishman

Taft -- an early novel by my favorite contemporary author, Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, State of Wonder). This little gem about fatherhood and intimacy involves an African American barkeep in Memphis who loses ties to his own family but gets involved with one far more dysfunctional.

The Imperfectionists -- a prodigious first novel by reporter/editor Tom Rachman, involving the staff of a family-owned newspaper and set just as the industry self-implodes.

I read a lot of mysteries and would recommend these to people who don't usually choose them:
Cut Short, Road Closed and Dead End -- three British police procedurals by Leigh Russell, for fans of Prime Suspect and its clones.

Go With Me and All That I Have -- two short narrative mysteries by Castle Freeman Jr., that capture contemporary rural New England in tone and tale.

Open Season – I’ve started rereading Archer Mayor’s Det. Joe Gunther series, which begins with this really fast read set in Brattleboro VT.

The Hero -- an engaging historical mystery/romance/war story written by retired Newsday labor reporter Kenneth C. Crowe

[Sir Charles]

kathy,

I definitely do not want to inspire that reaction. As I say, I read for pleasure and if I don't like something I put it down. I also have huge holes in what I have read -- it's unavoidable. Life is short and books are long.

oddjob,

I have to confess to never having read Huck Finn either.

Paula,

That's quite a list. I have never read Ann Patchett, but remember a lot of good reviews for her work.

[paula]

Like you, Sir C, I give a book 50 pages. If I'm not enthralled by then, too bad. In the last year or so, I've switched over to using a Kindle, where I categorize my list as reading, to read, read and ditched.

You might like Bel Canto. Also, her novel Run takes place in Cambridge and is full of Boston Irish Massachusettsiana. I would have loved it even without all that. Yeah, I think you'd like Run.

[paula]

Just saw on Twitter:
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read" ~ Groucho Marx

[Eric Wilde]

Beyond blogs and news sites, I'm primarily reading technical manuals. I'm on a push to get out an iPhone/Android phone application (for personal reasons, not business) and so I'm boning up on HTML5/JavaScript/GAE/jQM.

Oh, and children's books for nighttime stories. One of my girls is just starting to get hooked on Laura Ingells Wilder.

[kathy a.]

oh, eric. the little house books are very good. and it is great to have a kid hooked on a series.

[oddjob]

I remember when we were growing up how much my little sister loved Little House on the Prairie.

[Jeff]

Sir - Glad to see you're a Houellebecq fan. I really disliked "The Map and the Territory." I found it aimless, which is ironic given the cartographic theme. I found "Platform" and "The Possibility of an Island" extremely compelling.

His sociobiological explanations of human sexual relations are pretty crude and reductionist, but are a nice counterweight to the mindless romanticism of most dramatic fiction. It's unfortunate that his misanthropy (of which I think his misogyny is a subcategory, though I would understand if feminists called this a cop-out) prevents so many people from appreciating what an incredibly talented writer he is.

I'm definitely going to check out "The Third Reich." Thanks for the recommendation.

[Sir Charles]

Jeff,

Thanks. It's funny -- I thought "The Possibility of an Island" not up to form and that "The Map and the Territory" a better effort, but these things are so individual.

I know that Houellebecq is often said to be a misogynist, but I don't really see it that way. It seems to me that he has a relatively low opinion of people and relationships writ large, but that the women in his writing, although often not fully realized, are in no way treated as inferior beings.

He does have a huge grudge against his mother who seems to have basically abandoned him to fulfill her own "free love" longings and that seems to have colored much of his world view. He's a hippy puncher too.

He has also written very clinically about commercial sex without any sense of abhorrence, which I think is probably the source of claims regarding his misogyny.

It's funny because I think he has a lot of limitations as an observer of mankind and yet I find his writing quite compelling. I am not sure I could give a coherent account as to why. At some level it either hits you or it doesn't I guess.

I also enjoy that he is thoroughly sentimental about dogs.

I don't know what your tolerance is for really long works, but if you have that stamina I would definitely put in a plug for 2666. It's a pretty amazing bit of work.

Eric,

I went through the phase where much of my reading was involved in reading aloud to my son. It was actually pretty fun -- I read things that I never had read and probably would not have read -- the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Hobbitt, the Chronicles of Narnia (although those get a bit creepy at the end), and the first three or four Harry Potter books. It's a great bonding experience and nice when the books can actually entertain you too.

[Sir Charles]

Paula,

Thanks for the tips. I feel like I should check out "Run" now. As I recall, "Bel Canto" got pretty stellar reviews.

That Groucho Marx quote is featured on a t-shirt for our local bookstore. My son has one -- it's quite amusing.

[kathy a.]

my adult daughter is about to unload a bunch of books from her youth, including several series of books. she is definitely not letting go of HP, and probably not the narnia books.

let it never be said that i failed to support reading. i think this next phase of daughter cleaning things out involves a lot of poundage.

[nancy]

I'm taking a deep breath before attempting to respond -- have always considered myself to be a 'promiscuous' reader, but since the onset of the high-anxiety-post-Bush era GOP madness, I've noticed my reading habits to be changed. Am I alone?

Three or four years ago I'd finished Virginia Wolff's remarkable The Years and Dickens' (who I'd come to appreciate rather late in my reading career) Bleak House . Also Marilynne Robinson's Gilead , Updike's late career Seek My Face where I believe he finally grappled successfully with realized women characters, as well as all things Ian McEwan and Alice Munroe. Anita Brookner another quirky favorite.

Now I'm finding my reading lists to be much more heavily non-fiction. Sign of the attention-deficit times perhaps? I did read 'Tristam' in graduate school. Go for it, I'd say. It's a hoot.

Oh Paula. Rotten Ralph! I'd no idea.

[Eric Wilde]

Yeah, I'm very pleased she's so interested in reading. She devours anything even close to age appropriate that she can get her hands on - which at 4 years old means I have the joy of reading it to the girls. She's occasionally brought up Bilbo Baggins and asked me to read excerpts.

My favorite part is that she's totally enthralled with making up her own stories.

[Bill H]

"Like you, Sir C, I give a book 50 pages."

Try the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. It only takes about fifty words.

[paula]

Nancy---I've moved from non-fic to fiction in the Post-W era, probably for the same reason. Reality is just a little too real for me right now.

Bill H---are you recommending Child's novels or saying the first 50 words would be enough to turn me off? Always looking for a new mystery writer to devour.

Sir C---one warning: Run is a slow starter. You have to get past the statue stuff in the first chapter. Then it takes off.

Eric Wilde---I don't think it matters what a kid reads, as long as she enjoys it. That's one area where a parent can spoil a child and know it's a good thing.

Sir C and others: You've convinced me. I'm going to load Wolf Hill onto the Kindle, especially if you think it makes good flight reading.

[Bill H]

paula, definitely recommending. There are a dozen or so in the series and they are action-mystery. Reacher is an ex-Army MP who bums around the country helping people who the law cannot. He is, to say the least, highly capable and self confident. When confronted by some guys from a motorcycle gang, for instance, he stands facing them and says, "I'm disappointed. There's only four of you. I told you to bring your army," and then puts all four in the hospital.

[kathy a.]

nancy, i've gone the other way - -i buy non-fiction that looks interesting, and it sits there in piles because i keep choosing fiction for my comfort reading. maybe i get enough non-fiction in my daily diet, between work and the issues of the day. i've currently got at least 20 non-fiction books waiting for attention, all recommended, all on topics of interest.

[nancy]

"Tristram" of course.

Oddjob, I think dialogue written in dialect is an extra slog and why Huck Finn is tough-going. We tried reading it aloud at bed-time and had to give it up rather quickly as I recall.

And btw, you were correct -- the Boston Globe pay-wall comes down for a link to a story after 24 hours.

[low-tech cyclist]

I was going to say something about children's books myself, and I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I have only one important thing to say about children's books:

Julia Donaldson is the best writer, ever, for kids of ages 1 to (I'm guessing) around 7 or 8.

I grew up on Dr. Seuss. She's easily better than Dr. Seuss.

She started off writing songs for children's television over in the U.K., but about 20 years ago, one of her songs was illustrated and turned into a book, and the rest, as they say, is history. Her books are off-the-wall romps, carried forward by the buoyant rhythms that definitely owe to her songwriting background.

Most of her best books are illustrated by Axel Scheffler, who definitely brings the right spirit to things. (I'd love to see him illustrate Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - he could give Steadman a run for his money, I think.)

The essential Julia Donaldson canon:

The Gruffalo (link is to the complete text)
The Gruffalo's Child
Room on the Broom
Stick-Man
Zog
Tiddler aka The Fish Who Cried Wolf, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on
Tyrannosaurus Drip
What the Ladybug Heard

Also fun:

The Princess and the Wizard
A Squash and a Squeeze (This is the one that started off in life as a song, then was turned into a book. I will sing it for people at the drop of a hat.)

[kathy a.]

mark twain is really more suitable for older kids and adults. part of why is the different time + different place. (some of huck finn does not hold up; it needs to be seen in its historical place, now; and the dialog needs translation.) but i don't think twain was really writing for kids. his humor is not kid humor.

[Eric Wilde]

The Gruffalo is awesome! I've not read the others but will look them up in our weekly Saturday trip to the local used bookstore.

[Linkmeister]

If you like social commentary with your mysteries, Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian books are for you. There are 26 or 27 of them now. The third back was essentially the Dover evolution case of a year or two ago, fictionalized.

[nancy]

kathy -- you're right about Twain and kids. We were doing bed-time reading probably up through 4th grade, long after son was doing his own forays and I'd hoped that the social and history lesson of Huck was worth the literary read-aloud effort. We exited to the Oz books and Roald Dahl and his 'childhood can be surreal and strange and some people are surprisingly horrid and will earn their fates' narratives. Ten/eleven was about right for that I think.

[kathy a.]

i'll second linkmeister on jane haddam. i think i'm behind, which is great! because that means i can find the ones i'm missing.

i also like (because it is somewhat historical and somewhat humorous) elizabeth peters and her amelia peabody emerson series -- mostly set in egypt between the late 1800's and the discovery of tut's tomb in 1922 or so. (prup would back me up, although i think he has mentioned her suspense novels, which i don't like as well.)

[big bad wolf]

read "everything is illuminated" by jonathan safran foer earlier this week. it was very good. i have some quibbles with it and one strong disagreement (involving humor and the obviousness of the authorial intrusion to make sure we don't miss his (i think mistaken) point about it) but the story was quite moving and the writing very strong.

i am now rereading "as i lay dying." it's as good as always.

i haven't read huck finn for years, but i thought it was very strong for the first two-thirds; after that, like many a book, it struggles to figure out how to finish.

i think there is something ironic, although not necessarily incorrect, in the difficulty or impossibility we experience in entering the imaginative world of undeniably good to great novels of the past.

[nancy]

Since this post was, as they say, overtaken by events, I wanted to add a couple of unqualified recommends, before the Typepad fairy closes comments.

"The Past Is Myself" by Christabel Bielenberg -- her recollections as a British expat marrried to a German husband working with the resistance during the second World War. This is one of very few books I've read where each and every sentence grabbed and stood its own. Not beach reading, I read it at the beach.

"The American Home Front, 1941-42" by Alistair Cooke. Cooke travelled the country recording his encounters and recollections as a young British emigré. The manuscript was found in a shoebox in his Manhattan apartment, shortly before his death in 2004. It's a time-capsuled journalistic gem. Pre-Kunstler "Geography of Nowhere" Twentieth-century America never looked so good.

[nancy]

Oh, one more, then -- I hit the post button too soon.

"Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child" by Noël Riley Fitch. Written in 1997 before the more recent Julia-fest. From girlhood in Pasadena, to Smith College, to the OSS in India and China, Julia's life was large before she became, well, "Julia". Beloved husband Paul and his state department career, the laborious creation of "Mastering the Art", her influence on now generations (see "Me and Julia"), laid out in a sweep. My goodness what a life they lived. Not just a chick read, I promise.

Fiction queue I'll keep to myself. It's getting embarrassingly lengthy.

[nancy]

I didn't know this when writing my recommendation -- Julia would have turned 100 tomorrow. A tribute here.

"Bon Appétit", in falsetto. :)

[Sir Charles]

Thanks for the many suggestions.

I am going to have to read through these and figure out what to take on my next road trip.

[paula]

Thanks, Nancy! These sound like keepers.