OT: What are you reading?
Finished The Crossing the other day. Not sure if it’s better than All THe Pretty Horses, it’s certainly a more ‘dense’ novel, and in some respects it goes a little ‘deeper’, and the characters are little more fleshed out, but the constant use of Spanish really bothered me, as i’ve said before. I had to keep resorting to Babelfish translator haha. It also takes longer to get going too. All the McCarthy novels i’ve read were slow burns, but The Crossing even moreso. Having said that, the last 150 pages=brilliant. Some of the best contemporary writing i’ve come across in a while.
The Melville influence comes across most strongly in this novel too, but not in a way that feels overly derivative. He just shares the classic author’s feel for the dark, grand and mythic qualities of the natural world—as well as man’s uncertain place within it—although McCarthy’s rendering of this world is certainly bleaker, though just as vivid and detailed.
Anyway, i’m going to take a break from McCarthy right now. I don’t feel like moving onto the final installment just yet, so i’m going to occupy myself with this first:
^^always wanted to read this!!
LOVE Pinocchio! Enjoy!
i am reading YOU DESERVE NOTHING by alexander maksik
It was my birthday yesterday so i bought my wife Aphrodite, a Memoir of the Senses by Isabel Allende. A celebration of sexiness and food, with some erotic and sensual chapters and plenty of recipes too. I’m crap at cooking but i expect to dive into this book from time to time myself.
“i am reading YOU DESERVE NOTHING by alexander maksik”
Is that the book by the teacher who had an affair with a 17 year old student who then wrote a book about a teacher who had an affair with a 17 year old student?
Now reading Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor, about the battle in WW2. Read it before some years ago, but it’s still a page turner. The first chapters cover the attack on Russia starting in June 1941- sweeping movements almost to Moscow and then pushed back, massive atrocities, millions killed and captured, numbers that make US/UK casualties pale into insignificance, all covered quite quickly but effectively. Coverage of the battle of Stalingrad later in the book gets down to astonishing details of resistance and hardship.
@Ari
Currently reading: A Short Story of Cahiers du Cinema by Emilie Bickerton.
I’ve decided that I’m going to read a heck of a lot of Japanese literature this year. Right now I’m on this:
Others I’ve read this year are:
Isle of Dreams by Keizo Hino
Vita Sexualis by Ogai Mori
Recommendations are appreciated, but no, I don’t need anyone to tell me more about Murakami. I know already, and am on it. Also, I already know about Kazuo Ishiguro and Natsuo Kirino and Kobo Abe and Mishima, and Tales of Genji are on my list as well as I am a Cat.
—PolarisDiB
rereading: 
i fully intend to get snowed in and curl up with something fluffy.
Dude, you are on a roll.
Haha, I can only hope so. Have only read the first chapter of August so far but that alone was extremely promising, just concerned that I’m OD’ing on his work [though I’ll certainly take the risk.]
Go for it! It is one of his best (in my limited opinion).
H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds
Pauline by George Sand
Atemschaukel by Herta Müller
PolarisDiB, Banana Yoshimoto probably is on your list already, too?
agree, light in august was one of my favorites as well =D
you’re making me want to read those again…
The author seems to have an agenda – trashing Tod Browning. Almost ruins the entire book for me.
Ruby: Blame the covers, they’re extremely evocative.
yes, that’s a beautiful one
^ Reading another one of those Marxist scumbags, Wu? :)
Kenji
Ah, that looks interesting, just from the cover and title! I shall look into it.
I’m reading Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a 17th century collection of short stories by Pu Songling. And also, A Most Exemplary Monk by Tan Jinxian, follower of Pu, and Princess Lotus by Song Tao, Tan’s nephew. But it turns out the latter 2 books were written by ghosts of people who never existed, and are a figment of mortals’ imaginings, so how they came to exist in parchment form for me to read is quite bewildering. I suspect a trick by the ghost of Pu Songling.