Wednesday, July 26, 2006

What I've Been Reading

(1) Jonathan Lethem: You can blame this on A White Bear

( http://istherenosininit.blogspot.com/)

who hooked me on Lethem back when, I forget, a month or so ago, with that book Girl in Landscape. Anyway, I've been reading all of Lethem since then. Hah. All I can find at the Pork Smith Public library, I should say, which is, in fact, a surprisingly large selection. Some Pork Smith Public Librarian apparently has a Lethem jones. I have read Gun With Occasional Music, which I cannot recommend highly enough, it is my favorite so far, I think, and Motherless Brooklyn, also excellent, and now am starting Fortress of Solitude.

(2) J. M. Coetzee, The Master of St. Petersburg, which is, so far, odd. It's about Dostoevsky. And anarchists. I think.

(3) Unveiling the Prophet, by Lucy Ferriss, which I think is creative non-fiction. I'm reading this because I'm writing a review of it. It's also sort of odd. I'm trying hard to like it, because I do try hard to like books I review, but it's one of those I'm an oppressed member of the upper classes tales, and, well, fucking shit. I have a hard time sweating out much grief for the oppressed bints whose suffering includes being forced to go to their daddy's country clubs, you know? It's like that new book by Curtis Sittenfield, The Man of My Dreams, which I was also, briefly attempting to read, only I gave it up after about page 30, because, wah, her daddy yelled at her? Her daddy wouldn't buy her pizza? Ooo, she had to go live with an aunt whose husband was a trucker and she had to swim at a club you paid for at the gate? Eeek! Granted, these chicks get some credit because they know enough to know they're shallow, but not much credit, because they still want my sympathy -- and for what? That miserable life of wealth and expensive educational opportunity she has been forced to suffer through? Come tell it to my students, you troll.

(4) John Barnes. More SF. I like that John Barnes.

(5) An on-line gay comic I just discovered. It's actually all over now, and Sandra Fuhr, who draws & writes it, is drawing and writing another one, but it's still archived and you can read it all here:

http://boymeetsboy.keenspot.com/

The other one is here:

http://www.friendlyhostility.com/


Have fun!

1 comment:

Diane said...

The only Coetzee book I have read is Elizabeth Costello. I understand that Elizabeth herself pops up in a more recent novel of his--perhaps the one you're reading. I read Elizabeth Costello because I wanted to read one of his novels and this is the one about the animal rights activist.

I found the novel strange, and could never figure out just what Coetzee was trying to say, which I assumed was a reflection of my own literary limitations. He did capture some of my deepest feelings as an animal rights activist, though. And it was amazing how the critics tried to write about the novel and avoid discussing that aspect of it.

I just finished The Mermaid Chair (I discuss it in my blog), and am currently reading Kevin Fitzpatrick's delightful A Journey Into Dorothy Parker's New York. Some time soon I hope to read Vanessa Redgave's autobiography, a book that I mysteriously missed along the way.