What are you reading the week of October 14, 2012?

[DUgosh]

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

2012 - book 154

[Curmudgeoness]

1. "The Custom of the Country" by Edith Wharton

Back to my classics for a while.

[idahoblue]

2. The Comedians

By Graham Greene.

I just returned from Haiti. This is an interesting read.

[getting old in mke]

3. _The Shanghai Moon_ by SJ Rozan

Haven't read any of the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith books before.

[Goblinmonger]

4. Dexter by Design by Jeff Lindsay

Read the first 3 a few years ago and really hated what he did with the Dark Passenger in the 3rd one. Figured it was time to come back to them and see how the novels have developed compared to the series. So far it's not too bad (1/3 way in) but his descriptive abilities are frustratingly sophomoric at times.

[pscot]

5. The Education of Henry Adams

I seem to be stuck in the 19TH Century.

[YankeyMCC]

6. I've been there

I've been working my way through kindle collections of Conrad, London and Crane for a while now

[pscot]

7. On the whole, i much prefer it

to the 21ST.

[dmallind]

8. Decided to retry Joyce starting with Portrait... nt

[Goblinmonger]

9. If it's not too late, I would start with Dubliners.

That's what I recommend to students first wanting to tackle Joyce. If his style hasn't bothered you in the past, then ignore me.

Would love to talk Joyce with you.

[dmallind]

10. Only one I have tried is Ulysses, which I did not like at all.

Yes I could see most of what its fans point out as great strengths - the multiple structures as well as the plot echoing the Odyssey, the characterizations, even most (sure I missed some though) of the allusions from my Greek and Classical Studies days, but I just can't shake the impression that that's all it is - some Comp.Lit grad student's intellectually masturbarory idea of form over function. I'm far from anti-intellectual in taste, but with, say, Eco or Rushdie, I see the erudition as the tool not the whole damned point. I think there's too much of a self-conscious attempt to validate the ideas of The Nation and Young Ireland. And if I wanted that, Yeats does it with more aesthetic refinement.

But, enough genuinely clever buggers keep telling me I'm missing something and that it makes more sense as a genuine novel not just a look-at-me party trick if I read POTA and The Dubliners first, so I'm trying that out. The same clever buggers tell me I'm missing soething in Moby Dick though too, and my (even more) negative assessment there still stands. I hope Joyce does better, because eventually I'll get up to Finnegan's Wake someday soon.

[Goblinmonger]

11. It's not for everyone

I LOVE Ulysses but completely understand why people don't like it and don't just blame them for not understanding it. Though I think it is beyond the abilities of a lot of people. I frequently think, each time I have read Ulysses, that James Joyce was laughing his ass off when he wrote it because he knew it was going to be an impossible beast to tackle.

The reason I would say to start with Dubliners is because it does a good job of getting you used to abandoning the plot arc in the way Joyce wants you to. In Dubliners, you are plopped down right in the middle of things and often taken back out before there is any resolution. This frustrates a great deal of people, but you need to understand that the meaning Joyce wants you to get lies in what he has given you and not in what you want because of your devotion to traditional story arcs. Once you get used to that, POTA gives you a good sense of how that all looks in a larger work. Plus POTA doesn't fuck around with the narrative structure like Ulysses does.

And Moby Dick can kiss my ass. Every time some pretentious twit wants to tell me that I don't like it just because I don't get it, I ask them why Moby Dick is inherently more confusing than Ulysses. Because I get Ulysses and understand it pretty damn well. Moby Dick is not a more complex work than Joyce.

[dmallind]

12. But (and this is a genuine question) is there anything else there?

I'm sure Joyce was sniggering aplenty, but trying to understand what one man's practical joke is set out to be, however intellectual, is no more fun or edifying than trying third party oneiromancy. I have no problem at all doing my best at tackling the beast if the beast is going to be worth subduing in the end, not if it's just a "oh I get the cod now, Jim - good joke on all the English pseudo-intellectuals there, me old mate."

To take a frequent parallel, I find Flann O'Brien's stuff worth the effort. There's genuinely biting humor and genuinely original intelligence in there, along with a narrative that's worth the deconstruction. I either missed that in Ulysses or the necessary deconstruction is the whole intent. Is the whole of the parts greater than the sum with Joyce, or is "doing" the sum the be all and end all?

EDIT. I'm not sure confusing is the term I'd use for Moby Dick. Insufferably tedious and in need of a savage editor is more like it. Yep yep symbolism blah blah but why dress it up with enough extraneous and technically didactic crap to enable the reader to become at the least second mate on the 19th Century whaling vessel of their choice?

[Goblinmonger]

13. For me there is

Though I will be honest and admit that tackling the beast just to tackle it is a huge reward for me. But I think Joyce gives a singularly unique inspection of the utter bullshit the average person goes through in their epic journey of life. Penny jumps into my soul in the last chapter.

And I was on the same page with Moby Dick. "Insufferably tedious" sums it up well. But, invariably, the first thing people accuse me of is not "getting" the hilarity and symbolism of the middle whaling chapters. I assure them I do but that they just suck.

[bemildred]

14. "The Travellers' Tree" -- Patrick Leigh Fermor

Also new Harper's, and found a book of Melville's more obscures short works in the used book shop for $3.

[MountainLaurel]

15. Rasputin's Bastards by David Nickle n/t

[fadedrose]

16. A CARRION DEATH (2008) by Michael Stanley

David Bengu, a large assistant police superintendent known as “Kubu” (hippopotamus), in Botswana, a mystery...

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/S_Authors/Stanley_Michael.html

This is the first in the series. I was so anxious over the debate, it was hard to concentrate and only got as far as page 5 in 4 days, but a few paragraphs are enough to tell me that I like the author's style.

What's really cool and unusual is a Glossary, Map, and Cast of Characters for those of us who can't remember who is who after a space of a half an hour...

Book 95 of 2012

[getting old in mke]

17. I've been meaning to try

the "Steelworks" or what ever the name of Kubu's soft drink mix was, but keep forgetting.

[fadedrose]

18. Just read about those Steelworks a few minutes ago...

Will write down what it said & post tomorrow....

For benefit of those who don't know Kubu, a steelwork is called such because it's a large cup made of steel, filled with ginger and what else I forget, then loaded with ice....

[fadedrose]

21. Finally finished this last night...

Long book, close to 500 pp.

Anyway, "steelworks" don't/doesn't really have anything to do with steel. It's a drink that could be made in a glass, or even poured into a flask if Kubu wants to take some somewhere. The glossary shows this definition:

Steelworks - Drink made from cola tonic, ginger beer, soda water, and bitters.

My confusion is in using "don't" or "doesn't," since there does not seem to be any case of singular steelwork used in the book.

Had a hard time starting the book. In the first 50 pp somewhere, they described how a diamond mine is configured, and the description put me to sleep everytime I started to read it. Finally, I decided to skip a couple of pages and the book went smoothly after that, especially after the first 100 pp. I like Kubu quite a bit and hope that some people I met in this book are in the ones to come...

I'll probably regret not paying more attention to diamond mine operation if in the future I decide to start one.

[getting old in mke]

22. I put it down for a while in the first 100 pages, too,

but also found when I came back to it that it moved much better from there on out.

[Berne Thau]

19. The Joad Cycle (www.joadcycle.com)

Try The Joad Cycle, an AntiCapitalist Love Story, a dystopian novel about America of the near future owned by the rich who have made a Christian religion out of Capitalism. www.joadcycle.com

[Moe Shinola]

20. The War After Armageddon, by Ralph Peters

...well-written, but more military jargon than I ever thought I'd encounter in my short life.