Max Magee at The Millions, in a post eagerly anticipating three new releases, points me to The Ask, described by one review as ‘brilliant bile,’ by an author new to me, Sam Lipsyte. Literary savagery is just what this reader is looking for.
Last week’s reading:
My first Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs, is a refreshing revelation. Moore’s highly individualistic writing style, all quirky similes and metaphors, laced with lyricism, is nothing like what I tend to read. As with other stylistic writers like Cormac McCarthy, I found the going slow because I needed to roll the [...]
Last week’s reading:
Parrot and Olivier in America is Peter Carey at his most exuberant, wild almost. Recounting the fictional tale of the trip to the new, troubling democratic nation of the United States of America by French nobleman Olivier-Jean-Baptist de Clarel de Barfleur and an artistic servant thrust upon him, John ‘Parrot’ Larrit. Carey succeeds marvellously in retelling [...]
Last week’s reading:
‘What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?’: Jimmy Carter, America’s ‘Malaise,’ and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country is an intriguing single-topic book by Kevin Mattson, an Ohio historian. He tells the story of the critical speech given by Carter on July 15, 1979, covering the energy crisis causing [...]
Last week’s reading:
Robert Harris’s Lustrum is the second of two novels recounting the life of Roman philosopher/orator/lawyer/politician Cicero. Harris can write smoothly and entertainingly about any subject, modern or ancient, Lustrum being a good example. It’s an enjoyable and intriguing read, although the five-year period covered by this book is telescoped at the end, at [...]
Last year, for the first time, I challenged my book club members to read Roberto Bolano’s 2666, way outside our customary range of size and ‘literary’ nature. Four of us took six months, much longer than anticipated, to master the book. Our discussion, over a red-wine-soaked dinner, proved to be scintillating.
As to why take the [...]
2009 was a humdinger of a reading year. Publishers often seem to load up the end of the year with the best stuff, or at least the books that suit my tastes, and this year illustrated that trend strongly. I had to scramble to read enough of those end-of-year books to make sense of the [...]
Also posted in Nonfiction |
After penning modern literary classics - Welcome to Hard Times, Ragtime, Loon Lake and Billy Bathgate – over three decades, E. L. Doctorow retreated to rather obscure novels about the city of Albany in New York State. I for one nearly abandoned him. Last year he made a triumphant return with The March, a riveting account of [...]
Mostly from the latest Readings catalogue:
Barbara Kingsolver’s latest, on Trotsky and art, The Lacuna
Parrot and Olivier in America, Peter Carey’s historical, novelistic gaze at USA
From a great novelist, a personal exploration of vegetariansim, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals
I’m not sure where I found this, but I was drawn to David Kessler’s The End of Overeating: Taking Control [...]
Also posted in Nonfiction |
Research crunches side reading, so October was a poor month. A bit of travel in November invites a flood of fiction:
Stewart O’Nan’s Songs for the Missing
Ward Just is a much-praised novelist virtually unknown in Australia – I’ll try his latest, this year’s Exiles in the Garden
I hope the latest Ian Rankin – The Complaints, featuring [...]