What are you reading now?

[Jay in SE WI]

I'm still stuck on Dark Back of Time, as having a wife on bed rest makes it hard to find time to read.

The previous Believer is what I'm making the most progress with right now. It's ok. The Yucca article was good, the Per Petterson didn't hold me. The writing style was too... sparse. Yet it wanted depth and weight, I think. I wasn't buying in after 2.5 pages, so I moved on.

In the cue is a UMASS-Amherst dissertation on Marias's postmodern praxis and the interplay of fiction and nonfiction by Berg, which has to be back to UWM by 7/8, so I better crack that soon.

Markos from Daily Kos has a new book coming this fall that is on the stack. Also, a new Arturo Perez-Reverte (Duke of Redonda) ARC is on the same small stack.

At the bookstore, I'm sitting on Warlock and something else that escapes me at the moment.

And John Zittrain's Future of the Internet seems like it could be great and fascinating and total crap. I may find out.

[Justin Riley]

Started and stopped Company of Liars, a Canterbury Tales-esque 'historical horror'. Like it well enough, but I haven't looked at it in a week.

I'm three quarters through The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. I can't say I'm surprised it's as good as it is, but I can feel terrible about myself when seeing how insanely prolific, accomplished, able to work in multiple genres, and completist Alan Moore is. I hate that man as much as I love him.

Cleansing my palate with The Ninja Handbook. Funny stupid stuff from the makers of AskANinja.com.

Amid all of this, I'm reading between six and twelve comics every week. I could list them, but you'd die of old age before getting to the end.

[staciemichelle]

Serena by Ron Rash. It's a novel based on one of his short stories from Chemistry and Other Stories. A strong, fierce female character, logging, the Great Depression, the woods of North Carolina, greed, violence, passion, beauty...all things that in the hands of a grand storyteller make for some stellar reading. Though I am making slow progress due to my 15 hour days here at camp.

[jordan gower]

i'm focusing on re-reading 'jonathan strange & mr norrell' - but i'm also working on 'steppenwolf'.
i've read jonathan strange maybe 2 times already, and it is still fantastic. steppenwolf is good, but the fact that it has no narrative breaks makes it tedious. we'll see... we'll see.

[Carl Hoffman]

Well, I just finished Warlock (Oakley Hall) today. You should make time for it if you want to read a novel that explodes every myth ever conceived about the frontier and the wild west.
And, started Ulysses today. I'll update ye on S-M-P soon. Nuff said.

[Jay in SE WI]

Bless you, Carl.

I have about thirty pages of Dark Back of Time left. Today (or tonight).

Any suggestions for what's next? (Considering my list and whatever else.) I'm thinking faster, lighter, as DBoT is/was great, just tougher to digest and navigate at times.

[staciemichelle]

I finished the Ron Rash a while back.

Picked up the bound manuscript of Alaa Al-Aswany's October release, Chicago. I loved The Yacoubian Building but have hated every page of this new novel. Mostly I blame it on the translation.

So have moved on to another October release, also a translated novel: Fault Lines by Nancy Huston...shortlisted for the Orange Prize and winner of several French literature awards. I'm borderline worshipping this novel. We'll see if the feeling persists.

[Jay in SE WI]

Ok-doke...

So, I'm still working on Here Comes Everybody, which is good, but not great. It's about online social networking tools and how they affect (well, help in Shirky's ever-optimistic text) community, collaboration, and collective action. Like Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous, HCE is mainly concerned with the benefits and ignores the not-so-great implications and consequences of online tools, such as privacy, accessibility and class to name a few biggies. He takes an absolutist stance on "justice" in the opening chapter's narrative, which willingly ignores many, far more complex issues.

But, it isn't a critical book, really; it's a guide for the general population. It's published by Penguin, not MIT. :-)

About a third through Olivier Rolin's Hotel Crystal from Dalkey Archive. I'm having some troubles getting into it, due to its fractured nature and my fractured time commitment.

Next? Maybe the Kos book, maybe some Foucault, maybe The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which won the Prix Goncourt last year. Some other options, too.

[jordan gower]

i just read "machine" by peter adolphsen. it is the precise history of a single drop of gasoline, from it's genesis as the heart of a pre-historic horse, to it's diffusion as a puff of exhaust from the engine of a ford pinto. the book is written in very specific language and is at times very scientific in it's description of the processes by which the drop of gasoline evolved throughout it's life. most of the novella (a mere 85 pages) concerns the people and creatures that interact with the drop at the various stages of it's existence, and the story is told by an omniscient narrator, who we meet in the end.

really, this was a fantastic book and everyone should read it.

[Erik Beck]

If you crack open this month's Harpers it would appear that the ghostly presence of Ben Marcus is offering posthumous parenting advise.

[Jay in SE WI]

v.

[Erik Beck]

The father, the son & the ghostly spirit

[Carl Hoffman]

OK, I've been on a Montana/N. Dakota/Idaho binge with Larry Watson (Montana 1948 and Justice) and Tom Spanbauer (Faraway Places), so I felt like a change was in order. Therefore, I've begun something I found in the galley pile yesterday: Disquiet by Julia Leigh. Set in rural France. Could be called a novella at 121 pp. At page 36, I'm in love with it. Moody, sparse and bewitching.