June 2010 Summer is here, well Irish Summer less rain and I am reading...

I just finished This Gun For Hire by Graham Greene. It was a noir suspense novel, it wasn't bad. The most interesting part was that it was written a couple of years before WWII and the threat of war was a major theme. I'm continuing my streak of novellas for the month with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It's one of the few books I've started before and never finished, but I definitely will finish it this time. Conrad's non-native English reads funny to me, but I also find it extremely interesting. It slows me down quite a bit though.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Catch 22!

13 reasons by Jay Asher

I'm not reading it yet, but a friend just lent me To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism by Chuck Thompson. Has anybody here read that?

Finished Ironweed by William Kennedy.
Now reading The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien. At Swim-Two-Birds was...different, in a pleasant aspect.

The Road To Los Angeles by John Fante. (In honour of Amydigits!)

I just finished the audiobook of The Go-Between by LP Hartley. I have been doing a lot of driving recently and prefer to listen to story tapes, otherwise I end up playing with my iPod too much. The only bad thing about audiobooks is the severe highway hypnosis effect. No accidents yet though.

Not sure what I'm going to read next...

Hattie - I've been doing that a lot too. But the trouble I have is the same. To totally get into the story, you kinda have to zone out a little bit.

Finished Practical Demonkeeping.
I think I'm going to re-read the Harry Potter series.
But, my boyfriend wants me to read The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey.
I'm unsure.

Shoplifting From American Apparell by Tao Lin.

Meat by Joseph D'Lacey

So... I guess that Shoplifting From American Apparel was pretty short then? lol

Yip, I started it at 9am and finished it at 5pm. Its short and really unmemorable. I might read another by him since it was only a novella but overall I'm Meh about it.

I was talking to Brandon about him. I really can't decide if I want to give his stuff a shot or not.

yeah, i don't. he sounds like a prat. that interview Brandon did with him was excruciating to read. his character is so unlikeable. i can't imagine his books would be any better. i think he's probably just another intelligent, self-serving wanker born out of this lovely generation of instant-gratifictaion.

just finished The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. it was pretty damn good, but fuck me with the dashes, buddy.

now i'm reading a book called What Came Between by Patrick Cullen. he lives in my hometown, newcastle where the book also takes place in 1989, i would've been three at the time. anyway, in 1989 a weird thing happened in newcastle--we had an earthquake. maybe not strange for you guys, but we never have shit like that going down around here. and yeah, so that's when the books takes place, so i'm really looking forward to reading it and hoping i don't just enjoy it because the settings are familiar. i hope it can stand on its own.

it's really cool. i've recently discovered a number of loacal writers that have published work, so i'm having fun buying their books and reading them, knowing their from around here. makes me believe that maybe one day i'll have my name on a front page. which is exciting. the next one i'll likey read is a collection of shorts called The New Landscape which is by a local fella who also started probably the best independent bookstore in newcastle. they stock all local writers and a ton of australian literature. it's fantastic. his name is Mark MacLean. it's sad, becaue i doubt any of you guys will be able to get hold of these books, just like Little White Slips by Karen Hitchcock which i can't rave enough about. i'll just have to start buying in bulk and shipping them out.

Finished Baer's Kiss Me, Judas last night. Kinda strange, I was expecting a big showdown of some sort at the end. Really great characters, great reading overall, though sometimes the lack of quotation marks tripped me up.

Right now I'm picking through a little tome I picked up at a used bookstore in Santa Fe, a collection of SF shorts called Alien Sex. (!) Lady at the counter laughed and said "I knew someone would buy this!" with only a trace of derision, probably 'cause I was also getting The Price Was High - The Last Uncollected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Chris Mooney's The Republican War On Science at the same time.

i think it's meant to trip you up. Phineas is the ultimate unreliable narrator. he sn't even sure if what he is saying is real, or true, so by having nothing in quotations it not only shows you something about him and the way he is telling his story but it also allows you to get lost in the world of Phineas which only gets more trippy in Penny Dreadful. the omittion of quotation in this book was one of my favourite things.

Fugue State by Brian Evenson

Unsettling short stories. A bit of a mixed bag so far.

Well, damn, it sure worked. So, is Penny Dreadful a sequel? I'd be interested to read that, and more of Baer's work in general.

The books in order:

1. Kiss Me, Judas
2. Penny Dreadful
3. Hell's Half Acre

Of the three, Kiss Me, Judas and Hell's Half Acre are the most similar. Penny Dreadful almost feels like a different story all together.

yeah, at first i wasn't in to Penny, but it grew on me, and i think if KMJ wasn't so damn good it would probably be my favourite. i even started a thread along the lines of Penny Dreadful, is it dreadful? but yeah, it's a fucking trip.

I'm going through The Outlaw bible of American Literature and Essays. I've had the poetry antho for awhile and found some great writers, d.a Levy being one that really stands out. Vonnegut's essay, with short Big Space Fuck attached is one of the better ones that I've read so far.

Hey, I am vile and disgusting too as it turns out because I ended loving this book! I laughed so much. I hate the main character and thought Drenka was an awful character. I mean, her dialogue was stilted and she never seemed real.

Does Roth hate women? I mean except nymphos? I'm getting that sense from the books I've read.

Woo, she loved it! Excellent. I'm not alone in loving it. Hating women always seems like a gross over-simplification to me, and I've never got that from Roth. Confused by them maybe. The writing always seems to be parodying the grotesque thoughts of men rather then being complicit with them. What do you mean?

Imperial Bedrooms.

I wondered about it because of that pee monologue being the last thing she (spoilers) talked about before dying. It seemed not meant to be humorous so I had to wonder why that woman's life ended with that on her mind. Was Roth trying to be outrageous? Funny? The Swede's first wife was viewed by the Swede in a generous and understanding manner, but her choices were quite shallow, really. The French prof in The Human Stain is a brilliantly written and realized character, but so extremely evil and petty, that I wondered where she came from and the amount of wrath Zuckerman (Roth) heaped on her.

The Turning: Stories by Tim Winton. Thanks for the rec, Matt! I'm going to the Mormon rose garden by my house to read for a while. I've packed lunch. See you all later!

I can't wait to hear what you think about this one!

Me too.

Is that a Mormon rose garden?

Nope. It's the "Morcom" rose garden, but I call it the Mormon rose garden to piss people off! I love it there. I get there from the Vernon entrance, but the main entrance is behind Ace Hardware..I can't remember the street name.

Matt, I thoroughly enjoyed the first three stories in the collection. Then I got antsy and went to a book store and got another Roth book. I think he's my new favorite writer, but I kind of hate his books even as I love them!

Thanks for the chat, dear Phil!

Provinces of Night by William Gay. I've burned through my last several books, and am taking my sweet time with this one. The dense descriptions demand it, and they're gorgeous as usual. He does the no-quotation-marks thing, and while in some books it doesn't bother me, this one it does, because he's not quite as skillful at making obvious what's dialogue and what's narrative. As a result of both of those pieces of praise and criticism, I've read each paragraph at least twice. He's very much in Cormac mode here.

This one disappointed me. I loved 'Twilight', 'The Long Home' and 'I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down' (I love that title!). I'm saving 'Wittgenstein's Lolita/The Iceman: Short Stories' for now.

I'm not sure what my problem was with 'Provinces' exactly, but it read really clunky to me.

The Passge by Justin Croin.

Beat the Reaper.

Yep, done in a day. It's only 169 pages.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

i love the little short books!

I expect it with Chuck because he's on that book a year contract, but Bret...man, I don't know. Kinda disappointing, yeah.

Less Than Zero wasn't a tome, so i didn't really expect Imperial Bedrooms to be one either. i figured he'd try to match LTZ.

Irina Marina:
i loved the Bell Jar. i read it when i was 20 after my mom died. it was one of two things that kept me going. so glad you love it too!

This book started off really great for me, but then somewhere in the 2nd act it started to unravel. I found myself not caring about Clay's situation or the mystery surrounding Rain Turner and the blue Jeep. The stakes weren't very high, but I kept going mostly to see if things would pick up.

I'm about 130 pages in on Beat the Reaper and loving it so far. The way Bazell handles to the two timelines is seamless and all the medical stuff is just brilliant. I can't wait to finish this so I can finally open the Reaper thread. I've been intentionally avoiding it because of spoilers.

Started Imperial Bedrooms today. I'm a few chapters in and I refuse to let you nay-sayers sway my opinion. I'm trying to go into it fresh.

i knew you'd be all over Beat The Reaper. I KNEW IT!