I love books, almost as much as I love authors, and have spent much of my life collecting as many of both as I could.
Frankly, however, my authors have often been a bit of a disappointment in the sack.
Not Hemingway, of course. During the years where I was undercover as Castro’s mistress (Fidel smelled like a sheep and liked to call me “Jackie”), I managed to get in a few nights with Papa on the side before he left Cuba. He was a hoot – a man of very few words, who could induce multiple orgasms without either putting down his cigar or spilling his drink.
Then I had a fling with Gore Vidal in the early 60s. Jack Kennedy seemed to enjoy Gore’s company so much that I wanted to find out what I was missing. He was fun sometimes, but I fairly quickly tired of a sex life that seemed to consist entirely of me dressing up in an army uniform while Gore wept and called me Jimmy.
I went for a spin with Anaïs Nin, but that was all a little confusing because she could never remember which of her husbands she was supposed to be cheating on when we were together.
Arthur Hailey was just hard work. He wouldn’t have sex unless he knew it was going to involve 17 people and last for three days.
More recently, I managed to seduce James Frey – before all the unpleasantness, of course. He was hung like a winkle, had no idea what to do and eventually had to pay someone else to come in and finish the job.
Hark at me, rabbiting on, when all I really wanted to do was talk about a couple of books that I have read recently.
I’ve just finished China Mieville’s new novel Embassytown. Mr Mieville has more earrings than all my grandchildren put together, but he still looks like a man I would get along with.
Embassytown is an elegantly written science fiction/fantasy novel set on a planet which humans share with the Hosts, crustacean-like beings who cannot lie, and for whom, therefore, the human facility for untruth holds a strong fascination.
Mieville’s drawing of his odd world is exquisite. As usual, he almost entirely avoids exposition – for example, the Hosts are not really described in detail and as a result the occasional references to physical features like “giftwings” or “corals” remain delightfully jarring and alien. Mieville’s imagination and facility with language here is as fine as that of Iain Banks, and his world has the stink of dust and blood that Banks’ slightly antiseptic civilizations sometimes lack.
There are big themes in this book – like how we can communicate with people whose use of language or beliefs are alien to us, and the power of language to change who we are or destroy us – but the writing is never preachy or heavy handed.
I really enjoyed it and stayed up very late to finish it.
My other pleasure this week has been rereading Titus Groan, the first book in the Gormenghast trilogy. It and Gormenghast are perfect in every way – from Peake’s ornate, comma-splashed prose to his cast of grotesques and lunatics, to the architectural madness of the castle itself. You really should read them.
Next week, I am reading our Mr Levenson’s Newton and the Counterfeiter, the first chapter of which leads me to suspect I am going to like the book very much.
What have you been reading?
[Image: The Bookworm – Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885)] [Cross posted at Sarah, Proud and Tall.]
General Stuck
Anybody you ain’t fucked, Sarah?
shortstop
Sweet jesus, that’s funny.
Just Some Fuckhead
@shortstop:
lol
i think i just shit myself
opie jeanne
Went for a spin with Anais Nin.
Now that’s pure poetry.
shortstop
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Dumbass, Sarah said it, not I. Now quit following me around telling everyone I’m your girlfriend, “Fawn.”
opie jeanne
@General Stuck: No one worth mentioning.
Turgidson
SP&T: Great front-page addition, or greatest front-page addition?
gex
I really want someone to ask this guy if he supports the Minnesota marriage amendment. You know, because *gays* are a threat to children.
Not that he has anything to say other than “No comment” these days.
Mike G
WTF?
jeffreyw
Glad to hear Embassytown is good, I have it next in my queue. Just finished The Dervish House, liked it very much, also Neal Asher’s The Technician, the first Sandman Slim novel, and Zoo City. Muddling through The Information.
shortstop
@gex: Come on! In his defense, we don’t know for sure that he supports the amendme…oh, who am I kidding? Of course he does, the bastard.
Just Some Fuckhead
@shortstop: I was agreeing with your sentiment that it was funny. Stop being this way, doll.
shortstop
@Just Some Fuckhead: Sorry! You told me you liked it rough. Oh, wait, you meant that you…hey, is my face red!
Phyllis
I read Tom’s book about a month ago. Really enjoyed it, especially the part where a couple of fellows approached the government and offered to privately run the mint. Newton quickly pointed out it would would not be a savings for the government, as the fellows claimed. Heh.
I’m working on ‘A Confederate Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ on my Kindle. I see a summer of classics in my future.
jeffreyw
Wingin’ it.
Just Some Fuckhead
Where is cbear when there’s a partay.
Just Some Fuckhead
BTW, Sarah, I’ve nothing to say about books. Words are stupid.
shortstop
@jeffreyw: Do some vegetarian porn for me this weekend, eh?
Just Some Fuckhead
@shortstop:
Please don’t encourage his ritual abuse of fat people.
AlladinsLamp
Oops.
MikeBoyScout
At the request of my better half I am reading Medea and Her Children.
When that’s done I plan to move on to The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Phyllis
@AlladinsLamp: Ah, those pesky little unintended consequences.
Mike in NC
Sounds like a ripoff of Atlas Shrugged.
jl
@General Stuck: Can I get the ebook version of that?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
one time, judy blume let me feel her boobs.
Just Some Fuckhead
@jl: This is Stuck’s idea of an ebook.
Cat Lady
@jeffreyw:
What do you use for the batter for the onion rings? They look amazing!
Sarah Proud and Tall
@General Stuck:
There are a few I haven’t managed to cross of my list over the years. I never shagged Bill Clinton, which puts me in a pretty small group.
shortstop
@Sarah Proud and Tall: There’s still time, although you have to wonder if it’d be worth the post-coital pillow droning.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
You ain’t missing nothin’, honey. I had sex with the Big Dawg.. depending on the meaning of the word “big”, of course.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@jeffreyw:
I really liked River of Gods but haven’t read much more of McDonald’s. I must put him back on my list.
shortstop
@Just Some Fuckhead: Was his cotton-candy hair sticky?
MikeJ
@Just Some Fuckhead: Sweet Connie Hamzy (the one referenced in “We’re An American Band”) said she was mighty impressed by Bill.
BO_Bill
I too, like books. More people should learn to read.
Cat Lady
Obot Alert: Obama in Ireland and England by The Big Picture. It’s gold, Jerry, gold!
ETA: Obama =/= Bush. Also too.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuck you, fucker.
Just Some Fuckhead
@MikeJ:
She shoulda been impressed. It was a $300 cuban.
shortstop
Sarah Proud and Tall answers General Stuck’s question.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
I didn’t mean all words, just book words.
MikeJ
For my summer trash reading I picked up the Sookie Stackhouse books, anticipating the return of True Blood and permitting myself a some books where thinking isn’t required.
tesslibrarian
Finished Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test last night, by candlelight, while our power was out. If you know his voice, hearing the book in your head makes it even better.
Since my research subject reading has been depressing (Nancy MacLean’s Behind the Mask of Chivalry, I’ve been reading a lot of Pratchett as a mental cleanser before bed.
I started Albert Brooks’ 2030, but while dryly funny (only a few pages in, I already have a line to steal and use often: “What are you, the Internet?”), recognizable conflict is more than I want right now. I’m sure I’ll be able to appreciate it better once my hectic June is past.
Cat Lady
Ain’t that America?
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ah, well that’s ok then. Did you have a traumatic experience with “Dick and Jane” that scarred you for life?
Sarah Proud and Tall
@MikeJ:
I really like them. I just wish Charlaine Harris would get out of the habit of having Sookie explain in detail who every character is at the start of every book.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
Dick Cheney and Jane Hamsher?
No, when I went through, it was Sam and Ann.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@shortstop:
Fuckhead and I made the beast with two backs a long time ago (well before Mrs Fuckhead was on the scene, of course). He’s a tiger in the sack.
ETA: By which I mean, of course, that he makes a lot of noise, scratches the shit out of you and then wanders off to find dinner.
kmeyerthelurker
Those both sound really good!
I just finished Miles Davis’ autobiography, which was a hoot, highly recommended. More profanity than Deadwood, which is a difficult feat. Last couple chapters are a bit of a downer (only because I knew he was about to die, while he didn’t), but should be required reading for all white americans who don’t understand ‘white privelidge’, and who of course will never read it.
Anyways. I noticed Sully finally made it to “Blogs we Monitor & Mock as Needed”. Called it!
Denali
So, I would so much more like to hear about your coital(spell check) experiences than talk about actual books, although I did like Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. It was sort of Chinese chick lit though.
Tom Levenson
Boy, now do I have retrospective performance anxiety.
(Channeling Dame Edna, in the best of possible taste, of course).
Hope the follow through matches expectations, in literature as in all else.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
Did we? Drawing a blank..
Sorry, must have been great.
Linda Featheringill
@Just Some Fuckhead:
See Spot run.
Funny, funny Spot.
Tom Levenson
PS FWIW as far as reading goes — I’m almost done reading Sherman’s memoirs, which are fascinating, if nowhere near as well written as Grant’s. (Makes me want to finally get off my duff and read McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom)
Chasing some other old stuff, and some new, and an old friend. (I read a lot of different stuff when I travel) For reasons that kind of escape me, I gutenberged David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and am finding already in the first few pages some beautiful dissection of “public intellectual”BS of the BoBo/Sully variety. Fairly recently finished Seth Mnookin’s The Panic Virus, which I heartily recommend, and the sight of a bunch of jaguar imagery just today in Bogota’s Museo d’Oro has led me to pick up the first of the Pullman trilogy again.
Fun all round.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Linda Featheringill:
No, Sam and Ann had a dog named Nip. And a cat too, but I don’t remember the cat’s name.
I still hate poodles.
ETA: Shit, I haven’t thought about thiis shit in mumblemukble years.
jeffreyw
@Cat Lady: Sorry for taking so long, I was soaking in a hot tub. I mention the breading here.
MikeJ
@Tom Levenson:
Have you read the Twain autobio yet? It’s been loaded on my nook since it came out, I just haven’t gotten around to it.
inugai_kenzo
@BO_Bill: oh noes! (oh boyee?) the return?
Tara the antisocial social worker
I just read “The Dick Cheney Code” by Henry Beard (best known for “Bored of the Rings.” ) It’s a spot-on parody of the infinitely mockable Dan Brown.
Just Some Fuckhead
Alrighty kids, it’s billiards time. Try not to muck up this thread with too much stupid book stuff. You realize every book is the same except with the words changed around? Yeah, I bet you feel stupid now.
jeffreyw
@shortstop: Vegetarian pr0n? This is the weekend for BBQ ribs. I intend to make a killer batch of baked beans but they will have a bunch of bacon. Mmm…bacon.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
This post would have been megawesome even if it didn’t include the information that C.M. has another book out.
hilts
Sarah,
If you haven’t read it yet, you should make time for Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
If you like SF and fantasy, you should check out http://www.hourwolf.com/toc.html. This is the website for the radio show Hour of the Wolf that features interviews with SF and fantasy writers. The site has links to recent interviews.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Zip.
Jewish Steel
I’ve been reading Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt. Eerily relevant and up to date. Coulda been written last year.
Linda Featheringill
@eemom:
Dick and Jane’s cat was named Puff. But you children are too young to know that. :-)
BGinCHI
A little late to the party. I liked Mieville’s The City & the City. A bit over-conceptualized, but he’s doing in that book is terrifically difficult.
Has anyone else read Finch, by Jeff VanderMeer?
Really strange and creepy fungus noir.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: Could be said of most of his books. We’re in that kind of Gilded Age again.
It needs razor-sharp satire.
Mnemosyne
@tesslibrarian:
Is Jon Ronson a Scientologist or something? I’m not quite sure how to take the “madness industry” subtitle.
Lurleen
EWWWWWWWW.
Over-share.
Not funny.
Did I say over-share and not funny?
Why are you an FPer again?
EWWWWWWW.
Emma
Just finished listening to Kurlanski’s Salt: A global History. Recommended. Next week I will be starting C.J.Chiver’s, The Gun. Bless Audible.com, my commute is so much happier these days.
In the Kindle, waiting its turn, Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, which I got but I am reluctant to read. The Congo is just seriously fucked up.
For fun, I am reading Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence stories. Another blessing to Project Gutenberg. I also just loaded Moby Dick for re-reading.
AliceBlue
I’m reading “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson. It’s about the experiences of U.S. Ambassador William E. Dodd and his family in 1933-34 Berlin. It reads like a thriller–hard to put down!
Larson’s “The Devil in the White City” was also excellent.
Tom Levenson
@MikeJ: Not yet. Looking forward to it.
PPOG Penguin
@Sarah Proud and Tall: I loved early McDonald (Desolation Road, King of Morning Queen of Day, Hearts Hands and Voices): the writing had this curious fable-like quality, full of odd imagery and ambiguous is-it-fantasy-is-it-sf-or-is-it-metaphor moments. Desolation Road encapsulates it best, the tale of a village on a newly terraformed Mars, written in terms of angels and magical carnivals and snooker matches with the Devil.
His later “non-Western science fiction” (River of Gods, Brasyl, The Dervish House) actually feels more conventional and less interesting to me. I did like the short story collection Cyberabad Days (set in the River of Gods setting), because it re-emphasised that sense of the magical amidst the sf, with its djinns and goddesses. Since you liked River, I’d recommend checking it out, and if you enjoy it maybe try some of his older stuff.
theBejaysus
I should go back and reread the USA Trilogy by Dos Passos. That was a real feel-goodie type. I can’t remember if I heard about it from Oprah’s bookclub or the Baffler…?
That Oprah, she was a good ‘un. No many like her around is there? I vaguely remember feelin better about my own fucked up life at the time learning about Matty and his heartsongs.
opie_jeanne
@tesslibrarian: I love Pratchett. His new book is supposed to be out sometime soon. “Snuff” is another Vimes book. Yay!
opie_jeanne
Just finished “The Boys of Summer”, what a great book.
About to start “Money Ball” but I’ve already seen a copy of the screenplay. Not sure if they’ve modified it a lot since I read it, right after the deal went south for a while, but it had me laughing. I’m a fan of the team that won the WS that year.
Harley
Liked Embassytown. Loved The Kraken. The former founders on some of its philosophizing. The latter is an amazingly entertaining ride from start to finish.
asiangrrlMN
@Sarah Proud and Tall: I love Charlaine Harris. Her Shakespeare series is her best, in my very humble opinion.
And, Ms. Sarah, thank you SO much for remembering your promise to share a story about James Frey with me. It was deliciously short and sweet (much like him? The short part, anyway). Will a bottle of Dom Perignon and an ounce of blow be enough compensation?
@jeffreyw: Damn. I can’t wait to see the BBQ pics.
Ghanima Atreides
i read the Gormenghast trilogy when i was 9 i think….it was exquistely grotesque. I should reread it as an adult.
Have you read E. R. Eddison’s Zimiamvian trilogy? I read that the same summer.
I have reread that since, but not Gormenghast.
victorian erotica.
Dr. Levenson has a book? i will read it. I wonder what he thinks of Stephensons Liebnitzian/Newtonian computational metaphysics.
Have you read Seeing Further, Sarah?
rhwombat
jeffreyw: Snap. If you like SPT’s Brit/Scot SF lit vibe, try Ken MacLeod: Stone Canal, Cassini Division, and the more recent near future political stuff. Nothing like an ex-Trot teuchter zoologist to explain the world as it should be.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Lurleen:
The fact you keep reading my posts in order to pop in and tell me how much you hate reading them says more about you than it does about me, dear.
Maybe you should get a life?
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Ghanima Atreides:
I’m quite in awe of Mervyn Peake’s ability to write very lengthy passages in which very little happens but which are still rivetingly interesting.
If you liked his books as a kid, then you really should revisit.
There is also a fourth book coming out, which is supposedly reconstructed from his notes.
Now on my list. Thanks.
Valdivia
Reading ‘The School of Night’ by Bayard. Just started and it already has me hooked. He is pretty good doing pseudo-historical literary mysteries. My guilty summer pleasure.
The Fat Kate Middleton
Just a straight up list of good stuff I’ve read lately – guaranteed enjoyment:
Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
The Reservoir – ? (not out till June, I think – SO good)
A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Wolf Hall, Hillary Mantle
Mary and O’Neal, Justin Cronin
Very abbreviated list, first ones that came to mind, will stop now … Too hard to type on my iPad, anyway.
John Weiss
Sarah, if you’ve not read E.R. Eddison’s books, The Zimviania Trilogy, remedy that. Eddison was more or less contemporary with Tolken, though it’s heresy I must say the Edison is rather a better writer with a better story.
CM is a crackerjack writer; I’ve not read everything he’s written, but I probably will.
Cheers Sweetie!
JW
Sarah Proud and Tall
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
This one, definitely.
CynDee
I’ll bet General Stuck knows the name of Tom, Betty, and Susan’s dog.
Cliff
I loved the Ghormenghast books, but goddamn they were hard going for me. I mean I had to invest some brain power to get through his prose.
Ellyn
I read a great scifi novel, “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi. It’s about our world after a series of plagues created by GMOs. It takes place in the Thailand of the future. I recommend it.
Ghanima Atreides
@kmeyerthelurker:
nice.
im calling the LoOG next.
Oops mybad! Lets get rid of teachers unions
AMG this is a horrific post. But good field capture data for my Unified Field Theory of Libertarianism.
Svensker
@Jewish Steel:
Yes, he’s good, isn’t he. Try “It Can’t Happen Here” again.
And Sarah P&T, I know this thread is dead, but I thought of the perfect book for you — maybe will curb your crazier impulses and help you settle down with Mr. Right:
Jane’s Guide to Dicks (and Toms and Harrys)
Jazz Superluminar
This thread is scarily inside my head. The last-but-one books I read was The Windup Girl, then I read the last Banks, I started the Mieville (I got a signed copy, natch) the other day, and Tom Levenson’s book arrived in the post the other day. Weird.
@m_c
Did you see his latest, where he’s announced he’s a libertarian again? Part 564 in the ongoing drama of EDK’s political identity, I guess.
Phoebe
Max Beckmann: Memories of a Friendship by Stephan Lackner.
CLANG! Now the thread is dead.
Jazz Superluminar
To clarify, those two “other day”s were different days, I’m just not really trying at the moment…
Raenelle
All mine are old books it happens. For pleasure, I’m reading James Michener’s Chesapeake. To keep my brain active, Walter Karp’s The Politics of War. Also to keep my brain active (and the 60s alive) Turn, Turn, Turn by Richie Unterberger. For my spiritual growth, No Time to Lose by Pema Chodron.
I have some good advice for readers. Whenever I finish a book I note the date I finished it on the inside cover. I do this because I’ve discovered that, after 10 years, you can reread the book as if it’s for the first time. So, if a book was so good there’s no way you could have drained it in one reading, you really can go back again. Another hint–this doesn’t work the 3rd time. The 3rd time it’s pretty familiar.
Damned at Random
I’m reading Evil Angels, an older book I picked up at a second hand store about the Lindy Chamberlain “Dingo took my baby” case. Fascinating story – the early panic to track the dingo and recover the baby resulted in really bad police work- including letting important witnesses drive away without an interview (or even getting their contact info). What a cluster
Ghanima Atreides
@Jazz Superluminar: he was never a liberal.
it was a scam to get the Forbes gig.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
I know the thread endeth, but I need to note that I first saw a framed print of “The Bookworm” in the mid 90’s in a bookshop in downtown Prague. Goddam girlfriend (and later ex-wife)objected to the purchase. For the fukkin’ 8 bux, I shoulda pre-divorced her on the spot. Goddam goddam goddam.
[she did have a nice ass].