What are you Reading?

[musket]

Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake. For the second time--it requires concentration.

Here's a post-pandemic article about it I came across by accident.

Entangled Life

 

[OliveOyl]

I just read your link. ^

Pretty interesting and yes, the whole conversation required some focus and concentration from me, but still, I liked the gist of it. I like the idea of how these teeny things fuse and branch and mesh and interconnect and just...live on and among and within. Are they the truest of all survivors?

I don’t think I’d ever read the book though, because it might be too hard for me, but I can see it being a very “Musket kind of book.” Also, lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the weblike network of stuff over our muscles. What’s it called? Had to google and oh yeah...I’m thinking of fascia! This was actually in back of mind as I was reading your link and it made me wonder if, and how, fascia is similar to fungi.

Yep, that’s what I wondered.

But the fascia over my brain is way too shrunken, knotted, and dried up these days to figure it out.
I suppose I’m a lesser human than fungi.

 

[Artyczar]

That seems very complex indeed.

 

[musket]

The truest survivors of all are bacteria. Parts of the book (I didn't mean the article) require concentration, but much of it doesn't. Mostly, it's astonishing, a real eye opener about how the world really works.

 

[Dave Woody]

I am fascinated with Charles Darwin's 'Voyage Of The Beagle' journal.
The 5 years of world exploration he documented is priceless.

Scientific knowledge is one thing, being able to write it descriptively is a talent in itself.....
Here is a quote from the book of him describing experiencing an earthquake.

Chapter XVI (edited by me)

An earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very
emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid;
one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection
would never have created.

 

[Dave Woody]

Charles Darwin Voyage of the Beagle
It is a dream of mine to one day film/document his same voyage, in the present day.

Details of the modern people, habitats, landscapes, forna and flora would be interesting.
In 1836 he arrived in Sydney....a population of 23,000.

 

[stlukesguild]

Almost the whole of my library is currently boxed up and in storage.

I have a few boxes here with me of volumes that I have long kept near me on my computer shelf. Among the volumes at hand I count Baudelaire's Fleurs d mal, Rilke's New Poems, Carroll's Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Gautier's Selected Lyrics and Robert Herrick's Poems. Most recently, I have been reading once again Herrick's Rococo gems. I tend to lean more toward the polished language of poetry and short fiction... and prose such as that of Nabokov's Lolita and Flaubert's Madame Bovary which I find inspiring to my own artistic aesthetics.

 

[Artyczar]

I have a few of those so we have some of the same tastes after all. Lolita is a favorite of mine. Do you like Henry Miller? I like Carroll's Through the Looking Glass as well. I don't know if I still own those...I have to look.

I've been reading poetry journals lately, looking for fresher stuff. It's hard to weed out the "good" from the bad and mediocre, but I've been enjoying it. I was recently selected to be published for a new anthology of fictional shorts about sex workers. I've been looking at their publications and their poets from the US and UK. They publish a lot of transgressive fiction and similar poetry.

I read a lot of unknown writers, or writers who I personally know from small presses. One of the last great works I read was The Late Season by Stephen Hines on Tangerine Press, which is out of the UK. Best collection of short stories I've read in a really long time.

 

[laika]

The Doomed City, by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Not sure if it's science fiction or if it's taking place in Purgatory. Finished listening to Paul and Jesus, by James Tabor, this afternoon and am currently listening to The Practicing Stoic, by Ward Farnsworth.

 

[stlukesguild]

I've been reading poetry journals lately, looking for fresher stuff. It's hard to weed out the "good" from the bad and mediocre, but I've been enjoying it.

I think 5 to 7 years ago I was far more "obsessed" with seeking out more contemporary writers... and composers for that matter. Among the contemporary writers I admired most I'd include:

Cormac McCarthy
Thomas Pynchon
Don DeLillo
Margaret Atwood
Milan Kundera
Peter Ackroyd
Mario Vargas Llosa
Günter Grass
José de Sousa Saramago

McCarthy is probably best known for the novels The Road and No Country For Old Men thanks to the films but his "Border Trilogy" (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) and Blood Meridian are his masterpieces IMO. Harold Bloom compared Blood Meridian to Shakespeare and Melville's Moby Dick and I quite concur. The Judge is one of the greatest villains in literature and the passages describing the American West often verge on the visionary... yet the novel is also one of the most harrowing.

Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is almost essential reading against our current increasingly authoritarian politics.

Peter Ackroyd is incredibly prolific... and fluid in fiction and non-fiction. He's written marvelous works of biography and history on subjects including William Blake, Thomas More, Chaucer, Shakespeare, J.M.W. Turner, Albion and English arts, London, ancient Egypt. His novels are often based upon non-fiction and frequently blur the line between the two.

Günter Grass? Well, The Tin Drum is IMO one of the greatest novels of the later half of the 20th century... and one of the funniest. His observations on artists and art school are hilarious... and spot-on.

As I noted earlier, I tend to read far more poetry and short fiction than novels. Among the great contemporary poets I most admire I would include:

Yves Jean Bonnefoy
Anne Carson
Charles Simic
Richard Howard
Richard Wilbur
Adam Zagajewski
Wisława Szymborska
Izabella (Bella) Akhmadulina
Andrei Voznesensky
Seamus Heaney

Richard Howard is a Cleveland-born poet who I discovered as THE translator of Baudelaire's Fleurs d mal the collection of poetry which became my "Bible" as an art student. It still remains among my favorite books and I have Howard's translation here with me in this hotel room. I was fascinated by Howard's marvelous sensuous epistolary poems.

I also discovered Richard Wilbur first of all as a translator... of French poetry and drama (Molière, Corneille, Racine). Wilbur was a modern classicist... often employing historical poetic forms like the sonnet, ballad, etc... complete with the most fluid rhymes... yet dealing with contemporary themes. His poem, Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning which I posted here: Poem of the Day
...in the thread on favorite poems remains one of my favorites.

Anne Carson may be my favorite living poet. She's a masterful translator from the Greek and Latin. Her own poetic works employ quotes, false translations, drama, prose, and a wealth of poetic forms.

 

[rodhlann]

I currently have a few different books of different types going.
I'm reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It's a pretty thick fantasy novel that I'm crawling through. I've read some of his other stuff and enjoyed it a lot, but this series has a lot more depth to it.
I'm also reading Domain Driven Design, which is a software programming design patterns book describing the DDD methodology. It's not the most interesting programming book I've read, but the methodology is massively important to understand for this current step in my career. I've also been reading some other design pattern books, which have been more interesting.
Finally, I'm reading through A Guide To Drawing (7th Edition), which is one of the steps in my current strategy of tackling and relearning drawing fundamentals I haven't been exposed to since high school. I found it randomly in an old box when I was searching for some unrelated hobby materials, and don't actually recall how I came to own the thing. It's a very well paced book and I've been very happy with the drawing exercises the book has you work through. I'm hoping to continue working through each section to further grow my skills in drawing.

 

[Artyczar]

I read Atwoods Handmaid's Tale in my early 30s after studying cults and mind control psychology. It was a good read, but I actually found her writing style a little flat for my liking in all honesty. I wouldn't consider her a "fresh" new writer, but maybe that is not what you meant.

I read The Tin Drum in my teens and did not find it "funny," but the writing style was good. I found it disturbing at the time, but it could have been over my head when I was just 16 or so. I thought it was kinda heavy and dark, but my tastes have changed since then.

I had read a lot of T.S. Elliot and Tolstoy early on...oh and I have mentioned before Bastard Out of Carolina in the past by Dorothy Allison. That is a great novel based on a kind of memoir. I read that a long time ago too and thought she was a new voice at the time, but maybe she wasn't. Myla Goldberg I was reading from her first novels, well before they made Bee Season into a mediocre movie. I also am in love with Miranda July. Her first book of short stories is my favorite. I did find out about her from her first film though: You and Me and Everybody Else. Her style of writing is exactly up my alley, as well as John Fante. He's probably my favorite writer of all time.

 

[stlukesguild]

Most of the poets I listed died within the last decade with the exceptions of Anne Carson, Charles Simic, and Richard Howard. Simic is 83 and Howard is 92. Anne Carson is the "youngest" of the bunch at 71. Two "giants" I forgot to include are Geoffrey Hill and John Ashberry... who both died within the past 6 years. Prior to their deaths, both were cited as possibly the best poets writing in English.

Making judgments as to the merits of contemporary writers is every bit as challenging as making such judgments about contemporary artists... probably more difficult considering that reading a book is more time-consuming than looking at a work of art.

I'll admit I haven't kept up as much with contemporary literature as I did in the past. Part of this may be due to the collapse of the literature forum that I followed for a good number of years where I was introduced to a good many writers. Part of it is also due to my delving more into non-English Language writers. I also suspect this owes something to my digging deeper into and spending more time with music.

 

[Artyczar]

Fante was most popular in the 1930s but made a "comeback" in the 80s right before he passed away, which was when I was introduced to him, thank goodness. I found out about him because of Charles Bukowski, who was a fan, and got his work republished with Black Sparrow Press (his longtime publisher). Luckily, his editor didn't butcher Fante's work as he did Bukowski's. Fante's work was made into a few bad films like Ask the Dust. I wasn't a fan of the movie because the novel is so damn good, which is usually the case of most books that become Hollywood movies.

Although, I read a book a long time ago called Push, written in a similar vernacular to Alice Walker's The Color Purple (also made into a pretty good movie). Push was made into a movie called Precious (I believe was the name), and it was very good. It was cleaned up quite a bit because the book was one of the most intense and graphic novels I may have ever read. The film was very optimistic, which was a nice take on something horrible that had a happy ending. The novel had that too, but not before she went to hell and back.

Music has a sore/bittersweet spot for me, which is maybe why I don't participate in those music threads so much. It was once my life. I have feelings that it was taken away from me, which are probably just distorted beliefs really. Not being able to play anymore due to illness, and going through a lot of undue stress/pressure cooker trauma being on the road, etc. It all led to a bad situation that took me out of the game that I was thriving in. Then, I just couldn't work. It pummeled me completely. I couldn't even listen to music for years after that. Seriously. Maybe because it means so much to me.

Now I listen to it sparingly, and when I do, I truly listen, and almost like a study. I was/am also a songwriter, so I can't help but to listen to composition and production, and all the little crazy details. I'm a huge Beatles fan (who isn't?), so I still listen to a lot of that. But while doing other things, I can't listen to anything except classical or my mind can't be in two places at once. My brain is too deep into the music, and I can't talk to other people, or read, or paint, etc. I'm greatly affected by it.

I'm super picky with classical. I'm into Mozart mostly (all of it, because he was THE genius in my opinion), but I also love Chopin, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, and some Beethoven (depending); I'm not so into his symphonies as I am his string quartets.

Well, this was long! And not totally about books. Sorry.

The last thing I think I read was a Jenny Lawson book: Let's Pretend This Never Happened. Intense and very funny. She is an excellent writer and journalist.

 

[OliveOyl]

I like reading what other people are reading.

Arty, I read Jenny Lawson’s “Furiously Happy” based on your recommendation. She was pretty funny although nobody makes me chuckle like David Sedaris. They both seem to have a “perverse darkness” although, Sedaris might be just a tad…bitchier. Currently, I’m reading his latest called, “A Carnival of Snackery.”

I also read Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” based on SLG’s recommendation. The violence didn’t bother me but the writing was wild (and kind of fun) although yes….difficult! I also read “The Peregrine” by JA Baker, one of Musket’s favs. But I also read another book he recommended about….a woman in NYC? Bio? Eccentric? Fashionista? Weirdly, I liked that the best of all the books mentioned, but I can’t remember the title, or even the woman’s name. Maybe if he comes by again, he can tell me what I read. Ha!

Since August - moving day - it’s been:

• John Hodgman, Medallion Status (funny plane stuff, read on plane)
• Anna Weiner, Uncanny Valley (memoir of Silicon Valley bro culture)
• Jackie Kay, Trumpet (famous transgender jazz artist, fiction)
• Jose Saramago, The Stone Raft (a lovely fable by a fav author)
• Nuala O’Faolain, Are You Somebody (Irish bio, cool woman)
• Emmanuel Carrere, The Adversary (psychological thriller)
• Jamie Quattro, Fire Sermon (priest fantasy stuff, classy not sassy)
• Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (my land! my land!)
• TC Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain (modern day clash of cultures)
• Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (lonely artist stories in nyc)
• Joan Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted (RIP….she’s just sooo good)
• Atul Gawande, Being Mortal (scared me of getting to “the end”)

Now normally, I wouldn’t be able to make this list because I wouldn’t be able to remember any of the names and I suspect this is a problem that will get even worse over time. (Gulp.) But because these are newly mine - and not library books - they happen to be right here in plain view! And I DO remember that I liked them all. There was one which I’ve forgotten the name of, but I remember it was bad. So it was put on a bookshelf in one of the Airbnb’s - cruelly abandoned and left behind to torture fellow travelers.

(Oh well, bub. ^ Better write better.)

 

[stlukesguild]

I picked up another 10 boxes of books that I had stored over my mother-in-law's... the last boxes of books... and moved these to the storage units. I took out a few volumes to have here in the hotel: Aleš Debeljak's Dictionary of Silence (Slovenian poetry), Anne Carson's Plainwater (poetry... and my favorite volume by Carson), and the three volumes of the collected works of J.L. Borges: Collected Fictions, Selected Poems, and Selected Non-Fictions. Borges just may be my favorite writer of the 20th century... along with Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Proust, Rilke, and Hermann Hesse. Right now I'm perusing Rilke's New Poems 1907 and New Poems 1908.

 

[E.J.H.]

Picked up a couple of books in a used book store last friday. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, Trigger warning by Neil Gaiman, and the Lazarus effect by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom.

 

[laika]

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem...

I recently read Roadside Picnic, by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, which puts Stanislaw Lem into soon-to-read consideration, since Solaris and the bizarrely beautiful movie "Stalker", which is based on Roadside Picnic, are often mentioned in the same sentence.
(Be aware that there's a bad translation of Roadside Picnic out there. I think Olena Bormashenko's translation is the good one.)

 

[E.J.H.]

The concept in "Road side picnic" is an intriguing one. I know of the book, but haven´t read it yet. I will keep your remark about the translation in mind, thanks.

 

[laika]

The concept in "Road side picnic" is an intriguing one.

I loved that idea. Some of the trash left behind certainly turned out to be pretty interesting for the humans.