SCFZ

twodeadmagpies wrote: ↑Thu Feb 17, 2022 11:07 am i read and loved petersburg years ago! (although i don't think an unabridged mcduff english translation was available then)

Then I'm 100% sure you'll love it even more if you ever get your hands on an unabridged translation!

rischka wrote: ↑Thu Feb 17, 2022 1:16 am
thinking of finally reading pynchon this year lol

a few friends of mine are currently (re)reading some Pynchon and loving it!
I gave up on Mason & Dixon some 20 years ago and haven't tried any since.

brian d wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 9:42 pm maybe it's time we turn this place into an eclectic book website instead of a movie one?

Maybe we could do a Spin-off? SCBZ, as jiri suggested?

oh, not in my name!
i was joking (as i usually do).
i was a relatively passionate reader in the bygone ages (of my youth) but lately more or less abandoned reading (not completely) after i noticed i am starting to lose sight.
when i hold a book too close, letters are becoming blurred.
i never had good ears but always had sharp eyes.
so the deterioration of sight is almost shocking to me.
while watching movies, the screen is usually far away enough so i can still see everything sharp (and thus not being aware of the shocking deterioration).
thus lately i (clearly) prefer watching films over reading books.
so, don't expect me to fool around on SCBZ (as i do on SCFZ) — maybe when i will start wearing glasses (and thus reading more again), not sooner!

aw....old man! ♥ go get some specs!

not really sure about SCBZ - a screenshot is way too much effort if i have to involve an actual camera each time....

also this thread is bad enough....i've bought quite a few books based on recommendations here and this doesn't help my immense to-be-read pile get any smaller...a whole entire zone and i'll have to start renting additional storage space! maybe wait till i retire and can read 4 books a week....(if am not blind by then)

wba wrote: ↑Thu Feb 17, 2022 11:25 am I gave up on Mason & Dixon some 20 years ago and haven't tried any since.

I've read through everything of his with the exception of M&D. I don't know why that one intimidates me so much. Maybe because of my failed attempt at Barth's Sot Weed Factor... I'm afraid of a humiliating repeat. I've had nothing but joy going through the rest of his books though.

i've only read pynchon's V - & as per everything else, i have completely forgotten it, but i bear it no ill will so it must have been fairly enjoyable.

and regarding the age-degraded reading experience, not sure if i'm getting cataracts or it's just these modern low-energy lightbulbs, but i bought a little coiling neck-snake with illuminated both-ends - and what a difference! the only downside (aside from having to admit to supplementing failing biology with robotic fashions) is that sometimes i catch two glowing spots reflected across the room in the dark glass of framed pictures, and imagine in some fright that i'm being attacked by wolves, or demons.....

(no need for the small child)

have been trying not to buy any books until my "to read" pile drops into the single digits, which if i keep up my current pace will happen sometime later in the year.

finished 3 books (a signal victory, judges of the secret court, people of the book) by david stacton, who might be one of the strangest writers i've encountered in recent years, even just on a sentence for sentence level, where the narrative voice keeps shifting between exciting action, gnomic aphorism, catty wit and melancholy texture. all three are historical novels, and very good, with people of the book (his last novel; he died very young) being my favorite, a book about the 30 year war that somehow shifts into gothic fable with queer undertones. definitely want to track down more...

two random paragraphs shared with a friend -



currently reading sylvia townsend warner's biography of th white. picked it up because she's one of my favorite writers (though i did love once and future king as a kid) but it is so far a near perfect match of subject and author.

^ i walked past that biography in the library yesterday!!! thought of you!


did we have a quote thread somewhere? nevermind, if we're cosplaying a book site for a while, keep em coming

i'll proffer a mere sentence, because i just this second read it & liked it, via igor klekh:

"A validated ticket shone through the chest pocket of his short-sleeved shirt like the poor but honest soul of an engineer."

has anyone read moderan by david r bunch? i get tweets from the daily moderan twitter account and i love them all...although wondering if the book is too much at once....

https://twitter.com/DailyModeran/status ... 7214619650

https://twitter.com/DailyModeran/status ... 2067027969

https://twitter.com/DailyModeran/status ... 8060546050

oh fuck it, i'm buying it

nrh wrote: ↑Thu Feb 17, 2022 8:37 pm have been trying not to buy any books until my "to read" pile drops into the single digits, which if i keep up my current pace will happen sometime later in the year.

I'm actually hoping that my physical to read pile at home will somehow miraculously drop into the 3 digits category, but nope, that probably won't happen in this lifetime.
But I always try to push my borrowed books from the library into single digits and am working hard on it at the moment (I'm especially looking at you, Bely, Carco, Giraudoux and Claudel), so I hope that will happen some time at the end of March, beginning of April.

twodeadmagpies wrote: ↑Thu Feb 17, 2022 9:47 pm
oh fuck it, i'm buying it

that's the spirit!
Please report back to us when you start reading it!

I finished GRAVITY'S RAINBOW a couple weeks back, and got a lot out of it this time (third complete read-through fwiw). This time though the novel's depiction of sexuality was getting on my nerves -- anything that isn't hetero missionary position is bad. Queers/perverts = decadence/corruption/social collapse/fascism.

I've dug on MASON & DIXON a few times, enjoyment growing with each read, it's probably his loveliest book, believe it or not, but after my trip through GR just now I'm a bit afraid to give it another go.

Currently reading Gresham's NIGHTMARE ALLEY and enjoying it a good deal.

Interesting. I've only gone through GR once, and I don't remember feeling those issues about sexuality (but your explanation doesn't ring false to my recollection either.) But taking your reactions it lends credence to the idea of Against the Day kind of working as a mea culpa where he corrects some of his misguided youthful writings. In V there's his most criticized chapter where a young actress is impaled by a large phallic pole, that comes off as sexualized violence against a beautiful, fragile young woman. AtD then sort of retcons this, as a character admits that she faked a death in a sort of Grand Guignol theatre production under a false identity, and even flippantly refers to the ways audiences love to see these types of grotesque deaths.

But in the same way, that book maintains the kinky sex from GR but we get a sort of morally abhorrent threesome towards the beginning, that gets mirrored with a much more romantic and spiritually pure one towards the end. The more explicitly bisexual of the threesomes being the more pure one.
I wonder if he's correcting that interpretation from GR in a similar vein to the one from V?

Speaking of daunting postmoderninsts, I'm about 40 pages from finishing McElroy's A Smuggler's Bible, which I managed to steal for $25. So there's an element of pride at simply obtaining a copy. I've quite enjoyed it. It's a deceptively comfortable read which sets me on edge that I'm missing something major. But to me, it hits really well at some of the major anxieties of writing.

reading from a book The Six Bullerby Children, chapter one...

https://youtu.be/nUgWJCzCcp8

wba wrote: ↑Fri Feb 18, 2022 9:11 am that's the spirit!
Please report back to us when you start reading it!

will do! although that'll probably be sometime in the 2030's seeing as my to read pile is also in 3 digits

ambitious goal this year is to at least clear the ones piled up on the floor....

so strange to think of robert walser getting into drunken hijinks

What's that from????? Looks like I'm spending the next few months under the duvet in horrified depression so can probably get a good few books in. I took his looking at paintings thing out of the plastic today but I need to finish my Ukrainian one first if I can

the susan bernofsky walser bio, "the clairvoyant of the small: the life of robert walser"

Ah that's only just come out! If it's filled out with anecdotes like that I may get it, was worried there'd be a lot of... interpretation, which I wasn't interested in ..

muttonhead... adorable...

definitely not an excess of interpretation, if anything for a biographer so far she is extremely scrupulous about the limits of what we can "know" from what's on record, which i'm sure will only become more difficult as she gets into the later sanitarium years. certainly making me realize how vague my understanding of his career and milieu were.

Sounds great! I have to get this. Hope there's more stuff on many other of his contemporary German writers!!!

sally wrote: ↑Thu Feb 17, 2022 9:31 pm has anyone read moderan by david r bunch?

was dealing with family stuff in jersey this week, stopped into a strange little used bookstore on main street (owner smokes cigars indoors all day, no rhyme or reason to the selection or pricing, most of the books stacked three deep) and got this for 2$ -



plus jg ballard's terminal beach, some leigh brackett stuff, an early book by arts & crafts pioneer/socialist(?) visionary william morris, and a couple of cj cherryhs, all less than $15...

Ha! Nice find, and books for $2?? Wow. Hope it's as crazy as its twitter feed makes out. YES!

I haven't read a single page in days....

had also started a biography of erasmus cuz it was all shiny and new in the library, but only got as far as the introduction where the author said that biographies were meaningless and you should get to know an author through their works instead. i thought good point and returned the book.

ugh. this pigeon post is 2nd hand and there is blood all over a couple of pages. not as bad as squashed insects but *reads fast for a bit*

i'm not reading this (i've only read the merowingians in the past) but i can't remember the last time i saw a book blurb that referenced only film directors

https://twitter.com/nyrbclassics/status ... 2721149952

^^ As I currently can't quote and directly reply to a post: I have this book by Doderer at home, but haven't started on it yet, cause it's 1000+ pages.
ALSO: Doderer himself declared that the book is only a kind of intorduction and prologue for his magnum opus "Die Dämonen" [The Demons] which is even longer (about 1300 pages).
So in actuality you have 2 books with about 2400 pages to read...

I'm currently reading my first Italo Calvino novel, and while the first chapter was mindbogglingly outstanding, the rest of it is unfortunately merely "very good", so far. A bit of a letdown.

andre gide's marshlands