The Books/Reading Thread

[Manic Ferocity]

Finally finished Deadhouse Gates and holy fuck. Could not put it down for the last hundred pages or so. I was going to take a break from Malazan but I don't think I'm going to be able to control myself from moving right to Memories of Ice.

 

[Einherjar86]

I need to re-read that book eventually; I think it's still kicking around in the basement of my parents' house somewhere. I've become mostly disenchanted with fantasy literature except for Scott Bakker, but the praise that Malazan gets around here makes me want to revisit it. Fucking long series though, Christ.

The closest I really get to fantasy anymore on a regular basis is China Mieville. I've read Perdido Street Station twice, and that book blows me away. Really looking forward to his next novel.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

 

[MasterOLightning]

Finished The Pale King by DFW recently. Can't really recommend it unless you loved Infinite Jest, in which case you likely have already read it. Big chunks of it feel like deep background that never would have made it into a finished story. There were enough flashes to keep me going through to the end.

Started Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle today. Got about 20 pages in and enjoying it so far. Translated books tend to be much more readable than so much of the writerly stuff out there.

 

[Master_Yoda77]

This American Literature Post-1960 is killing me. We are reading White Noise by Delillo this week and I'm probably going to put an ax through my head. Or, I just won't read it and read Memories of Ice instead which leads me...

Fuck school and read fantasy I say.

 

[Einherjar86]

White Noise is one of my all-time favorite novels. That's the world we live in man.

There's a woman in my PhD program who studies early modern drama (i.e. seventeenth century and prior) and who hates anything "postmodern." A couple weeks ago we were arguing about the difference between an argument and exhibit source, and she said that argument sources are clearly about an exhibit source; I asked about fiction that is metatextual, and she replied: "People shouldn't read those kinds of books."

Gave me a laugh.

 

[Funerary_Doom]

Currently reading Pop.1280 by Jim Thompson. Really killer novel so far.

 

[Einherjar86]

I've also been checking out some interesting excerpts/essays lately, primarily a chapter from this book:

...and a really interesting essay from PMLA in January titled "Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution."

 

[The Ozzman]

Finished this today:

Anti-climactic ending. I think the book had a good message though.

Now starting this:

 

[Einherjar86]

^Nice! I never really got into Gaiman, but I own American Gods; I've heard good things.

Card is another writer I've never gotten into, mainly because he just isn't the style of SF that I really enjoy.

 

[The Ozzman]

This arrived yesterday (sorry that the pic is so large):

Can't wait to read it.

 

[Einherjar86]

Recently finished Henry James's The Ambassadors; good book, but what a slog of a read.

I started this book over the fall break. Well-written and really funny:

 

[tagradh]

Half way through Ancillary Justice because of all the awards it won.

It's okay.

 

[unknown]

100 pages to go in the first book of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, The Town. It's been pretty good but hasn't been my favorite Faulkner (which goes to Absalom, Absalom)

 

[Einherjar86]

I've never read Absalom, Absalom!, but I think it's on the syllabus for a Modernist Gothic seminar I'm taking next semester (my last course of the doctoral program).

In the realm of theory, I've been digging into a gem titled Corridor: Media Architectures in American Fiction; a really interesting take on the attention paid to interior "corridic" spaces in early-20th-century American literature. Also, for those interested in fantastical or irreal literature, this author's next book is called Novels By Aliens, and it looks at contemporary fiction's challenge to conventional narrative.

I'm also reading through this tome, which might be of interest to any history buffs:

 

[Dak]

I have like 3 books sitting on an Amazon wishlist right now that I want to read, on top of the half finished books sitting on my kindle account. Ugh. Maybe next semester. Books I'm interested in:

Also a couple of Foucault books.

 

[Einherjar86]

The second one looks intriguing; published by Cambridge too...

Which Foucault books?

 

[Dak]

Madness, Discipline.

 

[Einherjar86]

Excellent. I had my students read excerpts from Discipline & Punish; specifically, the section on Panopticism. It's a great text.

Which version of "madness" are you looking at? There's the abridged Madness & Civilization, or the full study, History of Madness. The Routledge edition of History of Madness includes Foucault's response to Derrida's criticism of the work. All in all, a fascinating study.

 

[Dak]

Unabridged of course.