First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg, a collection of interviews, most of which are not readily available, with the poet, edited by Michael Schumacher.
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith "The hours we pass with happy prospects in view, are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first case we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter nature cooks it for us."
Anything is Possible interlinked short stories set around the same fictional town featured in My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout. It's Winesburg, Ohio moved to North-central Illinois, as conceived by a 21st century Edith Wharton.
I have started reading again after a long eight weeks of 80+ hour work weeks, and things look good for the next ten weeks or so. Starting with this as something I am looking through in dribs and drabs: Atlas Obscura, An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders is a fun compendium of oddities and curiosities that folks can visit around the world. There is a website of the same name which I have never visited - I like my odd spots in print I guess - but I imagine it is as fun as the book.
Finished this on the plane to and from Salt Lake City: All the Birds in the Sky by io9 editor Charlie Jane Andrews. I loved about 2/3rds and found the final third, I don't know, banal. It was still creative but it became predictable in a way it was definitely not earlier on.
Brother Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation, a biography of two writers that winds up tracing the effects of their friendship on each others lives and writings. Quite well done by the co-writers Ann and Samuel Charters, the latter of whom is quite will known for his extensive writings on American music, mostly the blues tradition.
I have no idea why - or when - I added this to my list at the library, but it came in for me late last week and I am reading merrily along: Robert Gottlieb was - is - a giant in the book publishing industry. He worked at Simon & Schuster for almost 20 years, and Knopf for about 20, and then the New Yorker, editing and shepherding and generally working with some of the greats. I am about through the section on the S&S years, and I find I really like the parts about books/authors and bringing them to the public, and less about his friendships and family life, mostly because I have no point of reference to him/of him while I do of/for the books. Someone else might enjoy that part equally and thus the book even more than I do. (The book is Avid Reader, A Life in case the image does not show.)
I finished an audacious sci-fi novel called Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. For all of its 450 or so pages, new ideas, characters, interpretations, situations, philosophical traditions, political factions - new stuff, repeatedly. Deep stuff, interesting stuff; odd and compelling narrator, interesting world building, complex society. I liked it but won't read the next book I don't think; this was too much work, if that makes sense.
It does to me. There are certain things I'm willing to expend the effort on, and there are other things I read mostly for entertainment that I'm not. I like Robert Parker's Spenser novels, and older novels in that tradition by the likes of Ross MacDonald, Chandler, etc. ... But not enough to spend more than a couple nights on them. I know someone who thinks Greg Iles novels set in Mississippi are the greatest crime novels ever ... but they come in at 700 pages minimum. Same with SF ... Much over 200 pages, and I'm not likely to stay with it. And Stephen King ... Well, thanks for all the money you donate to your alma mater so they can publish scholarly journals on American poetry and host an annual conference, but... Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries a riproaring exposé of the seamy underbelly of lexicography by senior Merriam Webster editor Kory Stamper. Here is a link to an Onion AV club interview with the author on swear words. NSFW http://www.avclub.com/video/learn-history-your-favorite-swear-words-lexicograp-255348
Okay, last heavy read for me for awhile: Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad where the railroad is real rather than metaphorical - always underground, but a tangible railroad. There aren't many books about slavery which are "light" in any way so I should not be surprised at how staggeringly and unrelentingly horrible life is for Cora (the protagonist) as she makes her way from one locale to the next. It is very good - National Book Prize, Pulitzer, Oprah - and is an interesting mix of historical novel and sci-fi book.
The Town and the City, the first published novel by Jack Kerouac. Not bad. A pretty good first novel of the sort that were being published in the 1930s. Given that Kerouac was writing in the post WWII world, though, it wasn't a path that he was going to be able to pursue...
The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth About a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker by Daniel Mahoney, a pretty decent overview of A.I.S.'s post Gulag Archipelago career.
I read a couple of truly relaxing books, and hooray for me. The novels are from Becky Chambers, who introduces conflict throughout but is always more interested in resolving the conflict than letting it fester. I like the characters and the plot, which admittedly isn't terribly complex, and the characters have real affection for each other. Book one (her debut) is The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; book two is A Closed & Common Orbit, and while they are in the same universe, they are essentially stand-alones. They are . . . optimistic sorts of books, and I found that refreshing.
I finished Leviathan Wakes, book one of a planned nine-book series (six are published), and while I enjoyed it, I think I am going to call it good after this one. The stuff I am interested in I can read up on somewhere on the web, as I did not like ti enough to want to continue pursuing it all the way through. The listed author - James A. Corey - is a pseudonym for a couple of other guys, which confuses me a bit. I always figured one of the main reasons to have a pseudonym was to protect one's anonymity, but these two have their names in the book and all over the web, so why use a pseudonym at all? Seems goofy to me. This has become a well-received SyFy series called "The Expanse" that my wife has been watching for a couple of seasons. Maybe I will join her.
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger , "There’s no use arguing that modern society isn’t a kind of paradise. The vast majority of us don’t, personally, have to grow or kill our own food, build our own dwellings or defend ourselves from wild animals and enemies. In one day we can travel a thousand miles by pushing our foot down on a gas pedal or around the world by booking a seat on an airplane. When we are in pain we have narcotics that dull it out of existence, and when we are depressed we have pills that change the chemistry of our brains. We understand an enormous amount about the universe, from subatomic particles to our own bodies to galaxy clusters, and we use that knowledge to make life even better and easier for ourselves. The poorest people in modern society enjoy a level of physical comfort that was unimaginable a thousand years ago, and the wealthiest people literally live the way gods were imagined to have. And yet."
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a series of lectures by Indian-born novelist currently based in Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh.
Last completed was A Maze of Death, my first dip into this collection of Philip K. Dick novels: Lots to like there. Reminds me that I've read too little of his work (previously only LOA's 1960's collection: The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Ubik). Now finishing up Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard from this LOA collection: I'm about 75% done; the film stayed very close to the source material.
Nothing More to Declare memoirs and essays on the post WWII American literary scene by John Clellon Holmes. Tried to read it in college. Didn't like it. I conclude again that College Me was a moron.
David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter Poet, a new biography by the under appreciated Welsh modernist poet (who was also a visual artist, and who holds the record among British writers/artists for most time in the trenches during WWI at 115 weeks) written by long time friend and Jones scholar Thomas Dilworth. Very well illustrated with decent reproductions of his paintings, and thoroughly researched.
I have been reading several books following a trip to the local used bookstore - Brused Books (good name!). The first is Byron Farwell's The Great War in Africa, 1914-1918 which is an odd combination of interesting in its coverage of a lesser-known part of World War One, and frustrating in its this-then-this-then-this sort of rote reporting of what seem to be battlefield reports, along with the relegation of African combatants themselves to secondary or tertiary roles. Then also I am reading Man Seeks God by former NPR correspondent Eric Weiner. I liked the concept - irreligious fellow (Weiner is a secular Jew) decides to give a good run to several candidate faiths a la seeking a romantic partner - but hated the first two chapters, which were both too clever by half and not good representations of the faiths to start with (why go to a retreat in California to learn about Sufism, or find a reformed Anglo investment banker in Nepal to experience Buddhism?). I really like the chapter on Franciscans in NYC, and think my enjoyment of the rest will depend on how much he tells a story, and how much he tries to get, I don't know, overly creative or cute. And finally, a Fantasy book with a title I don't like, a cover I don't like, and a description I don't like - but when you find something from an author you like at the used bookstore, then it is time to take a risk. And I really enjoyed Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion.
That is pretty much my response to this book. It has problems that didn't hobble his previous book, The Geography of Bliss, which looks at "happiness" in various places around the world. Representative Men: Biographical Essays by John Clellon Holmes. About half of the essays were in the book I posted above, but there are a few interesting new ones, and quite a few updates. Pretty interesting. Looking forward to the portrait of Nelson Algren.