Welcome to the newest edition of the most erudite thread on BigSoccer. Though given what some of us read, erudition is clearly a fleeting thing even in the what-are-you-reading thread! The last of my "impulse borrow" books is from a regional press from here in the Pacific Northwest. It's by a fellow named Craig Danner. Called The Fires of Edgarville, I only sort of ken the plot so far. There's a disgraced heart surgeon living with his elderly mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, in a dying (dead?) logging town in Oregon's Cascade Range. Arson, the Japanese internment, and an estrangement from a polygamous Mormon family all factor in . . . somehow.
1:39 AM. What, you've been waiting all week to start the 2013 thread? Yeah, I spent far too much time of this past year re-reading stuff and reading alongside my son, so I'll be hard-pressed to say that I've read much that was challenging or new. I do like this thread much more the past couple of years as we've discussed a bit more about what we're reading, as opposed to just posting books. So, thanks to all the regular posters in this thread. Here's to an even-more literary 2013. Except for Wankler, who seems to be going strong enough on his own...
What I've been waiting all week for is the aforementioned Dr. Wankler to start his "best reads" thread.
Jeffrey Rosen: The Classical Style. Rosen died late last year. He was a pianist and a pretty serious intellectual as well. This book is quite well written. I don't read music all that well, but I can follow a lot of what he's getting at. Also... A Poet's Mind: Collected Interviews with the poet Robert Duncan, ed. by Christopher Wagstaff. Mostly to prepare for a class I'll be teaching part of. One of the interviews is conducted by a former professor whom I didn't like all that much, and I remember thinking the interview was crap when it came out... Man, was I a dumbass. If time travel were possible, I'd go back to the party where I was denouncing Duncan's poetry and the professor in order to administer a serious pimp-slap to 24 y/o me.
Just started Abercrombie's newest. I'm a fan of his work and this one is definitely not disappointing.
As part of my continued marathon through works related to the the value of landscape, space, nature, and the ********ing sublime.
Well, I would be reading Robert McFarlane's The Old Ways and a bio of poet Robert Duncan, but they showed up yesterday and I had to mail them back to Amazon. The jackets of both books were so damn grimy I didn't want to touch them. They looked like they'd been packed by chronically masturbating gibbons that would eat Slim Jims between wank sessions. Luckily, I'm not going to run out of things to read. Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey To a Room by Geoff Dyer. I've never seen the movie ("Stalker," d. Andrei Tarkovsky), but I liked Dyers essays in Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. This is pretty hard to describe, but ... Well, it's about a movie I haven't seen and whatever else comes to Dyer's mind, and he pulls it off.
2012 was an oddball year for me. I didn't read too terribly much and I look to rectify that this year. I used to read a couple a week and I'd be surprised if I read one a month last year. I'm hoping this year to get on pace to one every two weeks.
For my book club. Larsen's books are always a great read. Perhaps a bit formulaic in his approach, but he takes research seriously, and knows not only how to tell a story, but how to identify great stories that, for reasons unknown, haven't been told (at least in this way) before. I'm about half-way through, and will devour the rest of the book as quickly as I can find the time to do so.
I'm reading "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azerrad as a break from "Gravity's Rainbow." It astounds me how poorly written biographic works tend to be.
The Sea and the Poison by Shusaku Endo (1957) I first encountered Endo's work in a Japanese history class as an undergrad with a novel called The Samurai. I enjoyed the book and picked up four or five of his books immediately, but never made my way through all of them. I was going through some boxes last night and found this one and decided to plow into it because I've had it forever and it's only about 150 pages and I need a quick read.
Roadside Picnic & Troika by Arcady and Boris Strugatsky. Soviet era SF. Damn strange stuff and pretty clever storytelling. The first novel is the source of the Tarkovsky movie, though there are apparently huge differences. Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso, an Italian writer I'd never heard of until Dyer mentioned him a few times in a book I red last year. There's a soccer connection, too: The translator is Tim Parks, author of what many consider the essential soccer book, A Season in Verona
I am not certain what 2013 will bring for my reading list. For several years I have had an up-and-down reading list compiled using WorldCat. It covers a whole host of things, from books that sound interesting to ones published by my favorite (usually non-fiction) authors. I have shortened my big list to one that mainly involves my favorite authors/genres, while still keeping and adding to the larger list. I have developed serious health issues that have put a premium on my available-to-read time, and I figure if I can only come close to getting through one list, it will be he one with my faves on it, although I still have hope I can get through the larger list at some point. Wish me luck, ladies and germs, and hope I can provide some good news to you as the year progresses.
Working on two right now: JFK's work about eight senators who went against the prevailing perspective of their parties to accomplish something great - I've meant to read it for ages, and am finally about it. Taking my time on this Christmas present, as I believe a compilation like The 50 Funniest American Writers ought to be.
ok ... here's the background: i've worked in bookstores for almost 20 years now, and have managed with Barnes & Noble for over 10. this last year, however, i've transferred stores (promotion, raise, etc.) and gone from working with one of the most erudite, knowledgable groups of professional booksellers to a big mall where - if their responses to inquiries are not just evasions - people basicly don't read, at all. the question "so, what are you reading?" has gone from being a constant source of conversation, information, and professional growth to being all but meaningless. that's why, starting now, i will be participating in this, the 2013 bigsoccer version of the booklovers' query. i'll try to be brief ... but prepare to be bored out of your asses.
from anne applebaum, author of Gulag: A History, comes: Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-56 i've no more than 50 or so pages left on this, and will finish it tonight at The Acme (my local) over pizza and a pint. it's basicly a 'nuts & bolts' look - primarily through the prisms of hungary, poland, and east germany - at the systematic process through which the USSR brought (what would become) the eastern bloc nations to heel in the post-war years. it's essentially a study in totalitarianism, and the manner in which a regime (or regimes) insert themselves into, and undermine the independence of, virtually all of societies' institutions. to be honest, there's not a great deal in here that you wouldn't expect, assuming one's got basic familiarities with both coldwar dynamics and orwell's 1984. but ... history geeks will find it worthwhile, and political science dorks will find it riveting ... and since i'll concede to fitting into both of those demographics, and since it's reasonably well put together, and since i'm close enough to done that i'm saving myself the trouble of coming back to it, i'm going to go ahead and give this an endorsement. not great ... but quite good. 7 pooks of 10, if you will.
why, thank you so much ... even if you are a gooner. and you'll be pleased to know that, after finishing the Applebaum book last night, i've opted to take a day or two to knock out the christmas gift that my ex-girlfriend - but still very good friend with strong gifting skills - gave me a few weeks back ... The Ghost of White Hart Lane, by Rob White, the son of john white, himself the legendary inside left on the great spurs teams of the early 60s. john, as everyone knows, was struck by lighting and killed in 1964; and as rob was only an infant at the time, he has no first hand recollections of his father, whatsoever. this book is, apparently, a reflection/manifestation of his efforts to discover/come to terms with his absent dad. i can't say that i've got massive hopes for it, as there haven't been more than 2 or 3 football books that i've ever genuinely liked (from dozens read), and they almost never get good marks from me. but there should be scads of good spurs stuff, eh? we'll see.
Yes, a Gunner here, although likely a 10-year or thereabouts version. Cannot tall you the exact reference year, but it does revolve around the two years my son played in a club soccer tournament in the Cincinnati area that was sponsored by Sycamore Arsenal club. The two years he played there the tourney was well-played and well-run. At that time I was just beginning to look for an EPL team to follow, and for no other reason I settled on Arsenal because the tournament was well-run. So, a large, well-run soccer tournament has since led me to a book forum. Of such things are life made from.
I've been totally sucked into John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" universe, having read the first four books in the series as well as his short story After the Coup; I still need to delve into "The Sagan Diary" and "Questions for a Solider". However, just this past Tuesday, the first episode of his new 13-part novel ("The Human Division") was released, with subsequent episodes released every week. Just plowed through The B-Team.
after finishing the john white book, i figure i'd go ahead and dig into the new biography of mao by alexander pantsov that i'd received as a christmas gift. but at the last minute, i opted to quickly knock out the david horowitz book i'd had on the stack, instead. as it's only a couple hundred pages and i've a few days off work, i figured it better than waiting until after doing mao, which i intend to follow up with yang jisheng's Tombstone (about china's [and mao's] great famine), meaning i might not get to anything else for awhile. so ... Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion by David Horowitz not a great deal new, here, if we're honest. communist apostate horowitz, whom i like alot, has a bit of a go at a handful of lefties (whom i like/dislike to varying degrees) with a view to reinforcing the burkean premise. ok. i'm on board. but i have been for about 30 years, so ... still, i won't say it's not worth it.* his insights into the motivations and mindset of his old friend christopher hitchens are ... er, pardon the redundancy ... insightful. and he eulogizes feminist 'the politics of orgasm' author susan gordon lydon - who'd struggled with and overcome all too many demons of her own making - with sympathy and respect. and, c'mon, what's not to like about calling out cornell west as exactly what he is - a bigot and an intellectual charlatan? yeah, well ... it's still rather thin gruel, if we're honest. not that it's poorly reasoned or laid out, mind - it's done well enough - but only that most of us will have heard it all before. oh, and a $27.95 list price for less than 200 pages of text? good thing i get a discount. anyway, i suppose it might make a nice counterbalancing gift to your young, naive, smartass undergrad nephew who's just had his 'eyes opened' by the likes of howard zinn. but frankly, unless you're fairly new to the game, it's probably not worth it. a charitable 6/10. *or maybe, if you read all the way to the end, i will.
Minnman recommended this for me. Started it today. Unless the wheels fall off after page 50, this is a damn fine book. Thanks to Minnman.
I revisited one of my all-time favorites, something I haven't read in decades: Wilson Rawls' book Where the Red Fern Grows. All these years later and the ending still makes me cry.