We haven't had a diary on books for a while, and with the summer here is full force, it's high time we have another one. But if I may, I'd like to make one condition.
The previous book diary http://www.theforvm.org/diary/wombaticus/great-books-6 referred to several lists of books along the lines of 'the best books ever' or 'the best books of the 20th century'.
We haven't had a diary on books for a while, and with the summer here is full force, it's high time we have another one. But if I may, I'd like to make one condition.
The previous book diary http://www.theforvm.org/diary/wombaticus/great-books-6 referred to several lists of books along the lines of 'the best books ever' or 'the best books of the 20th century'.
I think we are far enough into the 21st century to focus in on books written in the past 12 years. The first 12 years of the 20th century were on the whole rather unremarkable compared to what was to follow but they did see the publication of a good deal of Conrad, Wharton, James, Hesse, Mann and even some Tolstoy. By now, we should be seeing some work of this century that will last through the ages.
I don't think any of my own reading are destined for greatness, here they are.
1493 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World_Columbus_Cre...
My nonfiction book. Mosquitoes, potatoes, tobacco, corn, silver, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Europe - together at last. Interesting, and surprising, I hadn't suspected that the introduction of corn to China had such devastating environmental consequences or the Mason & Dixon line followed the line of Malaria. Like many history books, has the tenancy to get tiresome and repetitious. Can be skipped through.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Strange_%26_Mr_Norrell
I'm reading this now, and it's not my cup of tea. Fantasy lovers might enjoy it. The author is a good story teller and the subject matter, English magicians, their rivalries and activities during the Napoleonic Wars is new ground as far as I'm aware.
Thomas Pynchon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon
He's published two so far this century Against the Day and Inherent Vice. I liked Against the Day better, especially the parts set central Asia on the trail of the Tunguska Event, a part of the world which has always been on my list of places to go, but has always evaded me. Inherent Vice is a typical detective story (not one of my favourite genres) and with its dope smoking hippy 'gumsandal' of 1970 LA is entertaining enough, but it's more for Pynchon compleatists.
C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_McCarthy_%28writer%29#C
A boy grows up on an estate around the turn of the 20th with an eccentric father involved in radio, goes on to serve as observer on WW1 aircraft, as a result of heroin addiction gets mixed up in the post war bohemian world of London etc. It's weird and cryptic - a bit like Borges - and difficult to summarize, but I'll be looking into more of this author's works.
Freedom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_%28novel%29
About as good as The Corrections, and engaging enough, but I didn't think Franzen did justice to the fever that has engulfed the country since his last book.
The Sense of Ending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_an_Ending
Clever and short but it probably won't bowl you over. I'm left wondering what the author can do on a broader canvas.
Solar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_%28novel%29
Some interesting musings on science and climate, but mostly following the life of an unsympathetic character as he navigates his life. A bit like the work of Bellow, a decidedly 20th century writer who leaves me cold.
Chronic City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_City
Jonathan Lethem is probably my greatest discovery of this batch of books. Reading this reminds me of the pleasures I had in high school reading Vonnegut. I will certainly be reading more of his work.
Why We Love Sociopaths by Adam Kotsko, a collaborator of Slavoz ZIzek (no wikipedia)
A nicely observed study on TV characters Homer Simpson, Don Draper, folks from the Wire and a bunch of other shows I don't know. It's another non fiction and shows the rise of the sociopath as hero and what that tells of our society.
Glamorama http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamorama
This is actually for 1998 but I include it here to warn others off. The only book here I'd not recommend. Mean spirited and cliched. I won't be returning to Ellis.
Super Sad True Love Story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Sad_True_Love_Story
Love story in a dystopian near future. Like others of this type, interesting most for its take on what's happening now, the main character, 40 is obsessing constantly on his ever diminishing Facebookish 'fuckability ratings'.
That's it for now. On deck for the summer and 21st Century thru and thru is Laura Warholic: A Sexual Intellectual, my first crack at Alexander Theroux, 1Q84, returning to an old favourite Murakami Haruki, and Kraken, giving China Mieville one last chance.
I just wanted to add that all these books are available in ebook and/or audiobook to be got, read and shared via bittorrent. Type the title plus 'torrent' into a search engine and the appropriate links will be returned.
Mods? Help?
(#283718)Interesting (or at least different) diary by Mickey, but do we need four of it on the front page?.
ETA: thanks
My non-fic rec
(#283743)is The Swamp by Michael Grunwald, a beautifully written account of the highly efficient destruction of the Florida Everglades which I was fortunate to see for myself last month.
It also explains, in some excuciating detail, how ultra-environmentalists were behind Mr Gore's loss in Florida in 2000, something that now seems to have had a huge impact on the planet, generally, not just in Iraq.
Also, did not know Paul Theroux had a brother. Thanks for the info.
literally anything can become right or wrong if the dominant class of the moment so wills it
Robertson Screws
(#283760)I've been to the Corkscrew Swamp in the western everglades. A great place for swamp lovers. What surprised me most was the celebrated board walk - held together by, dig this, Canada's very own Robertson Screws, the kind with the square indentation on the head. Must have been put together by snowbird carpenters as Americans are loathe to use anything but slots or philips.
You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it. - Ho Chi Minh
What is this, Screw Canadian patriotism?
(#283777)I prefer the Philips head, you can push harder. (And yes, I get where this is going)
literally anything can become right or wrong if the dominant class of the moment so wills it
Thanks, Mickey.
(#283750)I rarely ever read new fiction, for reasons I'm not sure I could explain (ok I'll try: for some reason I find the narrative voice of most modern authors profoundly grating...a bit like when a close acquaintance of yours tries to sing or act or tell a joke and isn't very good...maybe because they say so many things similar to things I've noticed or thought about, so there's a contempt of the familiar...is it possible I prefer my novelists dead?).
But I've been meaning to try to get over it.
Nonfiction: I've been reading Citizens, Simon Schama's fascinating but ultimately flawed attempt to trace the origins and the invention of violent revolutionary culture (and especially the cult of the citizen) to the ancien regime itself. He doesn't seem to fully realize that civil war, once started, follows its own logic quite apart from the political culture it finds itself in. Yes, the revolution framed The Terror as a hunt for "uncitizens," but really once the fatal step had been taken to extirpate, rather than negotiate with, the ruling classes of the blood, of the sword, of the robe and of the cloth, what followed was mostly inevitable. Tests of loyalty, paranoia and the hunt for traitors is an inevitable part of a struggle for power, in part because the opposition is indeed plotting treason and conspiring with foreign powers. (Schama seriously downplays the extent of collusion and active conspiracy among the aristocracy.)
Also Masters & Johnson's classic Human Sexual Response. So many things I didn't know!
M Aurelius was probably right.
the problem with newer fiction
(#283761)I think the problem with newer fiction is that the passage of time has not yet helped us separate the wheat from the chaff. On the other hand if we really want something new, we have no choice but to pick up something new. Most of the books in my list have come from authors I know and love or have been rewarded with a Booker prize or National Book Award. (The Nobel seems pretty much irrelevant these days.)
You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it. - Ho Chi Minh
Maybe Fiction has lost its Relevance..Entirely, a Cultural Shift
(#283764)...we get this kind of knowledge from screenplays....translated into movies, TV, even Internet content.
I am a little distressed that I myself, who once wrote fiction, don't much read it anymore. I thought maybe it was because I've become old(ish).
But really, it is equally possible that there has been paradigm shift in the culture and the delivery of fiction and myth...
What people want from reading is...facts, real truth from the welter of confusing apparent though not necessarily accurate truth that washes over us ever day.
Best Wishes, Traveller
Might be the internet too.
(#283766)On the internet, you can talk back, criticize, make your own better (or worse) story, film, song, photograph, etc. and send it out to the world.
But with a novel, everything is the way The Author says it is, and you, you just have to deal with it. The publishing industry, professional critics...the keepers of all that is good and great no longer have all that is good and great as their private game preserve, taking the rest of us on guided tours for money.
Or maybe it is just because we're getting older. Heard that before, cliche, boring, tell me another one, etc.
M Aurelius was probably right.
Older? You Certainly Seem Spry...Certainly Intellectually! So No
(#283771)....not as to you. Me maybe, but still to be determined.
Interestingly, I'm being criticized for a title on an image and wandered into my last night:
Yes but in internet years I'm nearly 1000!
(#283772)Which is just to say you're right, I'm young but overexposed to entertainment culture. Better than being overexposed to...malnutrition, knife-fighting, prison life, war, etc., or at least I hope so.
M Aurelius was probably right.
Maybe
(#283828)It's that we've simple been too burnt out on narratives. Any adult today has seen thousands, probably tens of thousands of stories -- novels, plays, TV shows, movies -- so that the conventions of narrative are simply too ingrained in us. Every trick seems old and tired. Instead we seem fascinated by authenticity... which might explain the popularity of the memoir and 'reality' TV.
Lately I've felt saddened that I've spent most of my life in a golden age that has now passed. The most exciting time for an art form is its infancy: Shakespeare wrote his great plays while the English theater was still very young... the same can probably be said for Sophocles and Euripides. We had a golden age for cinema starting in the late silents and going to around 1980. Likewise, there was probably a golden age for music spurred by advances in recording technology, and spanning a similar time frame. Architecture and industrial design had great booms. The 20th century might well be seen by later generations with the same wonder with which we look at the renaissance: a time of prodigious creativity. Form was stripped to its elements by modernism. I lived through a lot of 20th century and didn't realize at the time that it was special, and from here and now, when fashions seem frozen and little excites as it once as it once did, I feel like I'm stranded in a desert.
"I don't want us to descend into a nation of bloggers." - Steve Jobs
Me Too!!!! I Watch with some Regularity, and Insistance....
(#283829)...the Amazing Race on CBS.
Likewise I have been faithful to House Hunters International, on the HGN network...and was recently mildly crushed to find out that most of it is fake or scripted.
But both deliver what I crave, a camera wandering down far away streets, with at least a surface illusion of verisimilitude.
Best Wishes, Traveller
Survivor
(#283845)Was my guilty pleasure, before I cut the cord. It's a genre that does have some possibilities!
"I don't want us to descend into a nation of bloggers." - Steve Jobs
Lonely Planet
(#283851)& they're doing re-runs, so you can catch up on all the ones you missed on the 1st go around.
"Something I think most liberals don't understand is exactly how stupid many conservative leaders are." - Matt Yglesias
What about introducing those less fortunate
(#283831)to those wonders?
Teaching, I mean. And not necessarily in the US, but other, less fortunate parts of the world? The world has always needed missionaries. Maybe this is the age for non-religious ones. Not everyone in the Third World looks to emigrate (you can always skate past the ones who do do).
literally anything can become right or wrong if the dominant class of the moment so wills it
I think the need for passionate creativity is eternal,
(#283833)hard-wired into the animal brain. We also have competing needs: stability, formal integrity, soothing repetition, benchmarks for manners and sanity, competitiveness, and those needs drive us to develop art forms and genres and stick with them long after their sell-by date is gone and their wrappers have started to ooze pinkish brown.
But then someone comes along and invents some totally new way to make shit up. Hip hop. Blogs & imageboards. Guerilla theater. If you want to be really, truly creative and have your head all to yourself for a while, then make up a new art form. Or I guess meditate. I've been meaning to try the latter. :)
M Aurelius was probably right.
I don't think so
(#283843)I think narrative is too hard wired into humans for us to get tired of it. If you think reality TV lacks a narrative, I hate to disappoint you but it's far more manipulated than just pointing a camera. Even in so-called reality shows, we still need a narrative.
As far as the arts, it's been said that bad times make for good art. Not sure if I'm willing to take the trade off so there's more music I like.
I blame it all on the Internet
I agree
(#283846)Emphatically. Creating narratives for my clients in videos is largely how I make my living.
I think what we're a bit burnt out on is the conventions of the narrative, but we will always have narrative.
Not sure I agree about bad times being good for the arts... were the thirties better than the twenties? I do think having a bit of wealth around helps.
"I don't want us to descend into a nation of bloggers." - Steve Jobs
Ha
(#283861)if I use a passive voice ("It's been said"), I don't have to defend the statement. It just sounds interesting and deep.
I blame it all on the Internet
TV Tropes will ruin your life.
(#283947)Sounds like you've been reading too much TV Tropes recently.
--- I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
Both Books are Classics Indeed! I Particularly Liked Citizens...
(#283762)...though there are a number of fine books to stand alongside Citizens in working the details of the French Revolution.
But Citizens is special, if only for the depth of its narrative.
Personally, I am reading The Last Stand, by Nathaniel Philbrick (c 2010) on Custer, the Little Big Horn and what proved to be the last stand for Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and the Northern Indian Tribes, the Lakota, the Cheyenne and Hunkpapa. Custer was apparently a fine Calvary Officer in the Civil War and it is argued that he was instrumental in winning Gettysburg.
As to the rest of his history, I haven't gotten there yet...lol
Also bought yesterday David McCullough's, The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris, especially for the sections on the Paris Commune, 1871. Looks very good so far.
Traveller
The Imperfectionists
(#283879)By Tom Rachman, is a superb novel, really a series of interconnected short stories, about an English-language newspaper in Rome. Best book I've read in ages. It came out in 2010.
Another good one: March, by Geraldine Brooks. It's about what Mr. March, the missing father in Little Women, did during the war. Published in 2006. An excellent novel. (Ms. Brooks is married to Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic.)
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...
-- General John B. Sedgwick, 1864