I love to hear what other people are reading.
So here’s Broom of Anger’s list. I need to check out Carol for the Dead myself. I am not familiar with Patrick Dunne’s work, and I love Newgrange.
The book that Erin O’Connor is reading right now sounds fascinating, and I almost want to go out and buy it right this minute.
“Hoot” at Fish Fear Me talks about his response to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink – a book I still haven’t read. It’s on the dern list. I found his thoughts very interesting.
Book Slut talks about reading The Lobotomist – a book which fascinates, compels, and disgusts me. I’ve been drawn to the subject of lobotomies ever since I first learned (in high school) that Tennessee Williams’ sister had been institutionalized, and was eventually lobotomized. His grief at “escaping” his childhood without going mad was expressed unforgettably in The Glass Menagerie, with Laura standing in for Rose (his real-life sister). The guilt he felt, just in being sane, and in having to leave Rose behind, tormented him until the end of his days. The letters he wrote, after hearing that some “operation” had been done on his sister – are terrifying. I have a primal fear of lobotomies, it’s a dark shape that sits on the periphery of my mind, not connected to anything rational. Perhaps it is connected to my need to understand what is “the self” – where does it reside? What IS it? Can it be killed, cut out? Lobotomies strike at the very heart of that question. Then, there is my enduring fascinating with poor doomed Frances Farmer (I was into her before the movie came out, thank you very much!!) Lobotomies are not pleasant to ponder, of course, and I honestly don’t know if I could make it through that book, as much as the topic draws me in. I wonder if I was lobotomized in a former life. There’s something about the entire subject that is eerily (and unexplainably) familiar and terrifying to me.
If you feel like it – tell me what you’re reading in the comments.
To be added to, if necessary
And here is Anne’s list of reading material. Prep does, indeed, sound as though it were created just for you. :)
And here’s Steve Silver’s list! Which reminds me I have to pick up the latest Hitchens book. I’m dying to read Hard News, too.
Well I’m just starting Electric Universe – How electricity switched on the modern world by David Bodanis.. looks like a quick read (nicely spaced type), BTW the version printed here has a different subtitle to the US version.. heh.
and I’ve just got a copy of The Whole Equation – A history of Hollywood by David Thomson.. which may take a bit longer to get through.
David Thomson is incredible.
The reviews I read gave it a two thumbs up, Sheila.. including the review by JG Ballard.
I answered this chez moi, because I can.
Because I can’t just read one book at a time, here are my current projects:
The Anglosphere Challenge by James C. Bennett, in which the author pitches his claim that, due to the Internet and some societal factors, the English-speaking nations (the “Anglosphere”) will continue to be at the fore-front of world cultural development, and may very well pull away from the rest of the world. Kind of a complicated theory, and being half-way through the book, I’m still not sure I’m properly understanding it all. Very interesting, though.
Grails: Quests of the Dawn, a collection of short stories that I thought would be about, you know, the Holy Grail, and Arthurian grail quests, but in reality the stories mostly have nothing to do with that, or grails, at all. The editors should be, to quote Garfield (the cat), drug out into the streets and shot. Disappointing, but with barely enough interesting stories to keep me reading.
JLA: Riddle of the Beasts, a graphic novel in which the author takes familiar DC comics characters (Batman, Superman, etc.) and reworks them into a high-adventure, swords and sorcery story. I haven’t started this one, but it is coming with me on my business trip next week.
I’m reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. It’s the first thing I’ve read by Wallace and wow, he’s quite the interesting writer. I like it, though. It’s helping me gear up for the eventual tackling of Infinite Jest.
Joel:
I liked a lot of the Hideous Men book – but I honestly don’t think I can do Infinite Jest – even though I just LOVE him for having his second novel be a thousand-page treatise on addiction. I mean … the balls! You definitely need to gear up for that one!! :)
Panama, by Eric Zencey. Picked this one up more or less at random, and though it started slowly I’m enjoying it as we move into the final act. It’s a detective story set in Paris in 1892, with Henry Adams as the protagonist. Interesting enough; it’s a first novel.
Also Henry V, which serves to remind me how long it has been since I’ve casually read any Shakespeare.
Just finished Time Travellers Wife and started Chabon’s The Final Solution.
I misread the title to this post as Too Many Boobs. Before my mind determined I should have a second look at the title, it instinctively thought: there’s no such thing.
Dearset: I continue with Proust [3rd volume], almost finished the last volume of Foster’s Yeats, a volume of Fintan O’Toole’s essays [a bit pretentious for a newspaper columnist], Conor Cruise O’brien’s Memoirs, Edmund Wilson’s Europe without Baedecker. I started, but stopped after 20 pages, Roddy Doyle’s latest Oh play that thing. That’s it. love, dad