So... What Are You Reading? (2015 Edition)

Three Kinds of Motion: Kerouac, Pollock, and the Making of American Highways by Riley Hanick (2015). The author worked at an Iowa City museum that at the time hosted a huge Jackson Pollock mural and the scroll on which Jack Kerouac wrote the near-final draft of On The Road. That seems to have set him thinking... People who like their books to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, IN THAT ORDER, will likely not like this book, which has a few beginnings, quite a few middles, and at least two endings already, and I'm only halfway through.

 

My Cousin Rachel -- Daphne Du Maurier

Seeking inspiration for my next stab at writing, I really wanted to re-read du Maurier's Rebecca, but my library didn't have it, so I got a new book, My Cousin Rachel. It doesn't seem that different from Rebecca: a love story/murder mystery where a Room-with-a-View type English mansion predominates. Oh, and it's very moody.

du Maurier is a very interesting writer. She can go along, stringing together entire paragraphs of 6 word paragraphs -- bopita bopita bop, bopita bopita bop, bopita bopita bop, bopita bopita bop -- and then, bam, two or three of the more sublime paragraphs ever written. It was like her editor picked single pages at random to edit. And she tells a fine literary mystery.

Now, as to whether it provides inspiration, I'll soon find out... Because I wanted to take a moment to wish all this thread's regulars many happy reads over the next couple of months, and may your Christmas grab bags be filled with great books. I'm going to be taking an extended break from BS because tomorrow begins NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, and the only way I'm going to get a novel done in the next two months is if I don't spend silly time on line. I spent the last two years writing a cozy mystery, and it's done, and it's crap. Two years. I figure if I'm going to write crap, I ought to be able to finish it in two months. So that's the goal: one young adult novel about a teen who lost his proprioception, and correspondingly, his ability to walk. He learns to walk only by looking inward and visualizing his muscles, only he also learned to visualize the future. And that can be pretty dangerous. Hopefully it's a story I can tell in about 85,000 words. If you don't see me back here before Ismitje posts the 2016 thread or Wankler posts his great reads of 2015 thread, then I'm pretty much on my way....

Cheers!

 

The Muslim Next Door -Sumbul Ali-Karamali


I had to really look past a lot of stuff to finish this book. An American Muslim tackles all the things wrong with how Westerners view Islam. There is plenty historical and factual stuff that educates those of us (I include myself) who know little more about Islam than what is portrayed in our media. The author builds an awful lot of straw-men though and much of her time is spent either justifying certain aspects of her religion or using the "well Christians and Jews did this or that" defense.

 

Mortal Causes - Ian Rankin

The sixth Inspector Rebus novel. After a young Edinburgh man is murdered, Rebus and his colleagues uncover a connection to the crime with sectarian gangs and paramilitaries in Scotland and Northern Ireland. I really enjoyed this one.

 

Very much enjoying this one

 

Ta Ta DADA: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara by Marius ************ (2015) a biography or a Romanian Jew named Samuel Rosenstock who went on to become a major French poet, after a stop in Zurich where he was one of the key figures in the Dada movement.

Edit: Why the ******** is the authors last name typographically beeped? And could that have something to do with the weird looks I'm getting at the coffeeshop when I read it in the morning? Something tells me not to google it here...

 

OK, I did. And I'm really puzzled. I couldn't find anything on the first three pages of google.

Marius Hentea. Must just be you.

 

The Year 1000 -- What Life was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium
Robert Lacy and Danny Danziger

This is easily one of the more fun history books I've read in some time. I'm reading it for research for a young adult novel I'm writing and this is a barrel of fun. It's a perfect bedtime read. The chapters, organized around the life on a month by month basis, are maybe 12 pages long and each chapter is fairly discreet. This is a great pop history book.

 

Urban dictionary too the rescue...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=************

************ is animated pornography showcasing women who have better bodies than any real women (yet have weird hairstyles and hair-colours) and men with enormous penises.​

​

I must've misspelled the guy's name. Anyway, the next paragraph may explain a bit more...

Every character in a ************ has body features several times better than any real person. 13 year old boys with 12 inch erections. 8 year old school girls with breasts better than most 16 year olds. The thinner the woman, the bigger the breasts.​

​

Yikes.

 

A.J. Liebling -- Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris

"In the heroic age before the First World War, there were men and women who ate, in addition to a whacking lunch and a glorious dinner, a voluminous souper after the theater or the other amusements of the evening. I have known some of the survivors, octogenarians of unblemished appetite and unfailing good humor--spry, wry, and free of the ulcers that come from worrying about a balanced diet--but they have had no emulators in France since the doctors there discovered the existence of the human liver. From that time on, French life has been built to an increasing extent around that organ, and a niggling caution has replaced the old recklessness; the liver was the seat of the Maginot mentality."

 

Finished this one and really enjoyed it. It is very dense with a lot going on, lots of sides, and lots of characters so sometimes it was hard to follow what was happening, but I always wanted to keep reading it and enjoyed it the entire time.

Now onto this....

 

Irving's "Western Narratives" (as LOA titled them when combining them into one volume) have been on my "to read" list for some time. Glad to see you seem to have enjoyed some/all of them.

 

Looks like one for me. I like this genre. one of my favourites is from Irving Stone. "Men to match my mountains."
Oregon Trail. Mormon Trail. Kit Carson. John Wesley Powell. Donner Party. Gold! The start of Los Angeles and San Francisco from mud huts to cities and statehood for CA.
It has it all.

 

Hey, I like the cover. a good way to choose a book..
Even though that Wall was 1,000 years old at the first millennium.

 

So they already had a tradition of building things to last: that's something that's different now.



The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr (2015). Quite skimmable, which is good because I'm more interested in her insights into good, well written memoirs rather than her pointers for writing one's own self indulgent, self-serving pseudo-literary wank job.

 

With a recommendation from one of my fav action authors, Lee Child. I may have to look for it.

 

She is a good writer, keeps the action flowing, makes it entertaining. Not unlike Lee Child.

 

Guess I'll have to take a look at this trilogy. Sounds a lot like the Irving Stone book I mentioned a couple of posts back. Stones writing was excellent, for his book. I'll be ready for DeVoto's!

One book "Not to read" is Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy" It's just Agony..

 

I've been reading the Rivers of London series from Ben Aaronovitch. The rivers are supernatural beings "of" each of the rivers in the area. Most of the stories are pretty interesting police procedurals with a side of magic from an interesting protagonist (as opposed to books about magic with a side of procedurals).

 

I read the first and quite enjoyed it. I should get back to the series.

There is also a comic book miniseries set in that world in progress now. 3 issues out, I believe. I've picked them up, but they current sit in my to-read pile. Aaronovitch says that other comics miniseries set in that world are planned to follow (as well as more books).

Paul Cornell (like Aaronovitch, long associated with Doctor Who-related work) also has two "Shadow Police" novels out that may go over similar ground. I haven't yet read one of those to see how similar they are.

Possibly of interest: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/festival...al-book-festival-ben-aaronovitch-paul-cornell

 

I've ordered her first book. I was surprised to see how long she has been writing.