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What are you reading these days?
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
I began the second book of Don Quixote around the start of the year. I really enjoyed my time with the first part, but there were stretches that left me thinking "Well, this certainly is satire of chivalric romance novels from twenty generations ago." A bit too much direct reference and ridicule for a current palate, but in the majority of cases, when Cervantes wasn't riffing on and mocking his contemporaries so specifically, it was just hilarious. Book Two, on the other hand, feels so ambitious and reflective. Many specifics from the first book are retconned/corrected, and it shines a much more human light on the main characters. The reader begins to ask if they really ignored the subtle wit of Sancho Panza and the wisdom hidden in Quixote's bullheadedness, or if Cervantes would simply rather there had been. Either way, despite the adventures thus far (~250 pages in) being generally less cartoonish than those by this point in the first book, I'm laughing every page or two.
Since it's so fatiguing to put myself in the mindset of a 1600s-era romance, I've been taking frequent vacations to the parallel 18th century with my first reread of Mason & Dixon. It's just so damn engaging and goofy and mindbending and real. The plot is at first glance entirely tongue-in-cheek, but the primary characters, even those not included on the cover, feel so sincere. It almost seems as though Pynchon spent decades compiling research, investigating every known nook and cranny of the true Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, digging into any part that gave way, and, using them as anchors to reality, twisted the world around them into a beautifully surreal, allegorical, and moving epic. I love how their friendship blooms, however slowly to us across 800 pages, even more slowly to this basically incompatible duo through trial after trial of fate.
Spoilers for M&D, very light spoilers for V.
What is the duck??? Of everything in the book thus far, through episode 48, the duck perplexes me most. I'm not trying to fit everything into a neat and tidy 'x symbolizes y' box, but, dear lord, this duck seems loaded with meaning. It's a clear reference to Frankenstein's Monster, but where the Fiend ultimately loses sense of purpose and turns its rage onto humanity despite striving for connection through self-improvement and education, this metal duck is described as simultaneously reaching for the powers of angels while becoming baser and baser in its personality. It's reminiscent of Pynchon's love of parabolas and, more generally, duality, but, so what? Does that have something to do with the looping layers of the narrative of the book? It's Vaucanson's Duck...is it the V, the other automatonical character from one of his major works? or just another instance of the author's tendencies to load meaning onto that letter? I notice a lot of overt references to the book, V., whether Fender-Belly Bodine, or the strange revolutionary group that "Amelia" calls family reminding me of the Whole Sick Crew, not to mention many thematic overlaps with it and The Recognitions, a book which I got the sense of influencing Pynchon in the writing of his first novel.
I've also been reading The Dawn of Everything, which I knew was off to a good start when the authors began viciously assaulting Rousseau and Hobbes in the first chapter. About halfway through, they've already given me a ton of material to fuel reconsideration of my political opinions, and I don't consider myself terribly ignorant, for a layman, of political philosophy and history, but I suppose that's why they wrote the book. A lot of the implied shade thrown at their contemporaries in popular science is incredibly cathartic, even as someone who wouldn't be qualified to critique Atlas Shrugged.
That should really be all that I'm reading, but a week or two ago, lying in bed, bored enough to know I should've been heading to sleep, I opened up Ducks, Newburyport on a whim. Expecting to bounce off some obtuse stream of consciousness, it's suddenly half an hour later and I'm a couple dozen pages into the book. Given its density and the rest of my reading list, it's been slow-going, only on page 100, but this book is terrifically accessible, even though it has no right to be. Once I clear one of the other novels from my plate, it will definitely take priority. It's ambitious, but very easy to get sucked into. The story is beginning to emerge, and I fully expect the emotional weight to come through like a bus.
I just finished Neuromancer for a book club at work (my first time reading it). Was really interesting to come across all the little seeds that clearly inspired so much of the media that was a big part of my childhood (The Matrix, Bladerunner, etc.)
The writing style was very difficult for me to follow. I started out listening to the audiobook but had to switch to reading it on my Kobo after a few chapters, because I was getting completely lost without the ability to either pause and think or go back and re-read things that were confusing on the first pass. The narrative progressed too quickly and used too much metaphor-rich prose for my brain to properly absorb at my normal reading pace (which is already relatively slow, I think).
Overall I did enjoy the read and am glad I finally knocked it off my backlog, but don't think I'd ever revisit.
Yes, William Gibson has a difficult writing style. He tends to drop you into situations without explaining anything, where the characters are using made-up jargon. I found it got easier as I got used to it and after a while I sort of started to like it.
I've read all his books, though I'm not entirely sure why. Mostly I read them as they came out. He has his moments.
If you enjoyed Neuromancer but found it a bit too dense and serious, you should consider checking out Snow Crash next. IMO it's a lot more fun, and even satirizes some of the Cyberpunk tropes established by the likes of Gibson et al. And incidentally, Snow Crash is also where the term "metaverse" originated, and after reading it you will likely also begin to see how much media (and technology) was clearly inspired by it too.
Snow Crash is one of those books I've never settled on what is satire and what is hyperbole and Neal Stephenson being a delicious mall ninja. Like asking Tarantino if he was trying to subvert a genre and him responding post-ironically that he added something because he thought it was cool.
Pontypool might be worth watching if you liked the
minor plot spoiler.
neurolinguistic elements...of Snow Crash?
Spot on! Yeah, I don't know if satirize is the right word for what Stephenson did in Snow Crash either. It's more like he just took the genre tropes to their logical but almost absurd extremes. However, I don't think it was necessarily done with criticism in mind, so is that really satire, or more like an homage of sorts?
I don’t know about Tarantino, but Stephenson definitely puts things in his books because he thinks they are cool and expects his readers will think they are cool too. For example, he’s really into physical combat using swords and spears and other hand weapons, so that often shows up in his later books. (There will often be some reason not to use a gun.) He’s also into the technical details of flying airplanes. But he can geek out on just about anything.
His latest book is about geoengineering and climate change. While there is interesting politics involved, I don’t think it adds up to anything in particular. It’s full of stuff he thought was cool, though, often described in great detail.
The word I’d call this is a Pastiche though I guess that doesn’t quite imply the “dial it up to 11” aspects.
I've made it a goal this year to read one book at month. I started just before the new year re-reading The Eye of the World of the Wheel of Time series. I finished that sometime before the 15th, and have since completed the second book The Great Hunt, and I'm coming up on the halfway point of the third book, The Dragon Reborn. I have an advantage, since I have read them before, but I have a halfway decent reading speed once I get into it.
I'm reading it on my eReader, instead of the physical books, and despite my prior complaints about eReaders the past nearly 10 years, I actually like it. Not prefer it, but I'm liking it so far haha.
I'm off to a slow start this year. I just finished The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I had not planned to read this, but my wife sent me a link to it when the Kindle book was on sale, so I picked it up. I didn't particularly enjoy the first 3/4 of it, but then the last 1/4 I couldn't put down. It's a retelling of the Iliad, but with a focus on the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus. Overall, pretty good. If I were a book quitter though, I might not have found out that I actually enjoyed it.
And the day I finished that one, John Darnielle's new book Devil House arrived. I just started it and do not have any feeling for it just yet. I enjoyed his other two books, even though they're fairly odd reads.
After I fell off of reading it late last year, I'm fully reinvested in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Kundera's writing is lovely and philosophical, but there's a vague melancholy underpinning it as well. I'm about halfway through it but I have an urge to reread it as soon as I finish.
man... I started World War Z... and stopped. I'm just not feeling it. Its rare that I'll stop a book --- maybe the second of third time ever -- but it was 1am and I was shame eating peanut butter and suddenly I blurted out, 'who the fuck cares?' and stopped.
In about thirty years, when we're over this pandemic (emotionally), I'll give it another swing, but until then, I'm out.
I'm going to read The Chrysalids
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
@eladnarra recommended this book back in the best of 2021 thread, and I just finished it a few minutes ago. It’s been a good long while since a novel has intrigued, surprised, and moved me like this one did.
The book is very hard to talk about without spoiling, and I recommend anyone interested in it go in with as little foreknowledge as possible. It’s a very quick read, but it’s pretty deeply compelling and resonant.
Thanks for the recommendation, eladnarra! I can definitely see why this book made the cut.