Wake Up Wednesday
Apr. 24th, 2019 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bSketchy and sloppy, but technically on time this week!
What I've Finished Reading
Two re-reads: The Adman in the Parlor by Ellen Gruber Garvey and Doing Literary Business by Susan Coultrap-McQuin - both studies of gender and culture in the mid-to-late 19th century that I was keeping around for the details and the bibliography.
Also Tuck Everlasting, a beautiful middle-grade story about a girl who stumbles upon a family of accidental immortals - another one that I saw a bunch at the Scholastic Book Fair but never wanted to read. Unlike The Girl With the Silver Eyes, this is a book I can recommend to everyone without hesitation - it'll only take about 90 minutes to read, if that, and is worth sitting with even if you don't come to the same conclusions as Winnie.
What I'm Reading Now
I've just started Station Eleven, which I've been meaning to read since it came out - I bought it a month ago and then immediately regretted my choice, for reasons that still aren't clear to me. It's fine so far - a deadly flu has hit Toronto and we know from the back of the book that we'll be alternating between a post-apocalyptic story and a mid-or pre-apocalyptic one. I think my subconscious was trying to tell me that I didn't really want to read a post-apocalyptic story just now, but oh well, here we are.
Henry Miller is an unexpectedly enjoyable chatterbox. I'm not even sure what to call Black Spring, with its alternating reminisces of Brooklyn and stream-of-consciousness fugues on the sublimity of taking a nice long piss and manic dorm-room philosophy that is SUPPOSED to be hard to follow, because clearly constructed paragraphs are the opiate of the midlist, WAKE UP AMERICA. I guess it's a blog. Unlike most books, this is one I'm glad I didn't attempt to read thirty years ago; I would have been constitutionally incapable of appreciating this gabby Gus at any point before 2015.
Over the weekend I visited a very imperfectly organized, ashtray-smelling small-town bookstore and came home with books. One of them is The Coup by John Updike - since I have to wait on the next 99 Novels in sequence, I decided to give this one a try. The Coup is another tale of fictional post-independence Africa, narrated by the fictional ex-dictator of a fictional country, with loads of made-up names that are probably allusions to something. It's very different in style from A Bend in the River, very self-consciously exotic. It's too early to tell if I'll like it or not.
Since last week's post was late, there's not much new to report on Kristin Lavransdatter. Kristin is making bad choices; her parents are worried and upset but trying to be kind; Erlend quietly continues to be the worst.
What I Plan to Read Next
One of the books I bought from the ashtray-smelling bookstore was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, a book I hated in middle school with a burning unquenchable hatred, and which I'm eager to read again. The last reread of something I hated in school was Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, and that turned out not only enjoyable in itself, but a major forgotten source of inspiration for practically everything I wrote during the period in which I was writing things. I'm curious about what Hatchet will turn out to be.
What I've Finished Reading
Two re-reads: The Adman in the Parlor by Ellen Gruber Garvey and Doing Literary Business by Susan Coultrap-McQuin - both studies of gender and culture in the mid-to-late 19th century that I was keeping around for the details and the bibliography.
Also Tuck Everlasting, a beautiful middle-grade story about a girl who stumbles upon a family of accidental immortals - another one that I saw a bunch at the Scholastic Book Fair but never wanted to read. Unlike The Girl With the Silver Eyes, this is a book I can recommend to everyone without hesitation - it'll only take about 90 minutes to read, if that, and is worth sitting with even if you don't come to the same conclusions as Winnie.
What I'm Reading Now
I've just started Station Eleven, which I've been meaning to read since it came out - I bought it a month ago and then immediately regretted my choice, for reasons that still aren't clear to me. It's fine so far - a deadly flu has hit Toronto and we know from the back of the book that we'll be alternating between a post-apocalyptic story and a mid-or pre-apocalyptic one. I think my subconscious was trying to tell me that I didn't really want to read a post-apocalyptic story just now, but oh well, here we are.
Henry Miller is an unexpectedly enjoyable chatterbox. I'm not even sure what to call Black Spring, with its alternating reminisces of Brooklyn and stream-of-consciousness fugues on the sublimity of taking a nice long piss and manic dorm-room philosophy that is SUPPOSED to be hard to follow, because clearly constructed paragraphs are the opiate of the midlist, WAKE UP AMERICA. I guess it's a blog. Unlike most books, this is one I'm glad I didn't attempt to read thirty years ago; I would have been constitutionally incapable of appreciating this gabby Gus at any point before 2015.
Over the weekend I visited a very imperfectly organized, ashtray-smelling small-town bookstore and came home with books. One of them is The Coup by John Updike - since I have to wait on the next 99 Novels in sequence, I decided to give this one a try. The Coup is another tale of fictional post-independence Africa, narrated by the fictional ex-dictator of a fictional country, with loads of made-up names that are probably allusions to something. It's very different in style from A Bend in the River, very self-consciously exotic. It's too early to tell if I'll like it or not.
Since last week's post was late, there's not much new to report on Kristin Lavransdatter. Kristin is making bad choices; her parents are worried and upset but trying to be kind; Erlend quietly continues to be the worst.
What I Plan to Read Next
One of the books I bought from the ashtray-smelling bookstore was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, a book I hated in middle school with a burning unquenchable hatred, and which I'm eager to read again. The last reread of something I hated in school was Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, and that turned out not only enjoyable in itself, but a major forgotten source of inspiration for practically everything I wrote during the period in which I was writing things. I'm curious about what Hatchet will turn out to be.
