Between blotch and blok

Well, once I'd broken the less antediluvian of the PCs, I had to do something with the weekend.

( a slog and a romp )

I've got Looby Loo trained to drag me away from any display of books on sale--even second hand--with cries of "You're not to buy any more books, Mummy!" Last week I went into town with the Aged P however and bought one book (admittedly twice over, the second copy being a birthday present for my brother (who I fairly safely assume doesn't read this)). So another interstitial completion

( death )

1. Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
2. Ulrich von Liechtenstein, The Service of Ladies
3. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
4. ed. The Lifted Veil, 19th Century Women's Stories
5. Bremner, Bird, Fortune, You Are Here
6. Polly Bird, How to Be an Effective School Governor
7. Jean Estoril, Ballet Twins
8. Andre Norton, Judgment on Janus
9. Granta 89, The Factory
   
10. Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
11. Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor
12. Patrick McGrath, Dr Haggard's Disease
13. James Barclay, Dreamthief
14. Paul Cornell, British Summertime
    
15. Ken Macleod, Dark Light
    Looby Loo's taken great interest in the title. It's an occasionally annoying read, but also very witty, and the story is tremendous. It even made sense when I hadn't read book one.

( An addition, but no comment )

The list:

1. Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
2. Ulrich von Liechtenstein, The Service of Ladies
3. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
4. ed. The Lifted Veil, 19th Century Women's Stories
5. Bremner, Bird, Fortune, You Are Here
6. Polly Bird, How to Be an Effective School Governor
7. Jean Estoril, Ballet Twins
8. Andre Norton, Judgment on Janus
9. Granta 89, The Factory
10. Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
    Another reread. I found a lovely typo: "... rats that ran in circles and bit their own tales when one clapped one's hands." Well, I assume it's a typo. With Wolfe I'd never be quite certain. The image is lovely, tho'.

OK, so some of this was work and some was just feeling exceedingly pissed off on a Saturday night combined with fond memories of ballet stories when I was ten or so. Also, I've not added anything and I wouldn't like to give the impression I wasn't busily reading away.

The list:

1. Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
2. Ulrich von Liechtenstein, The Service of Ladies
3. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
4. The Lifted Veil, 19th Century Women's Stories
5. Bremner, Bird, Fortune, You Are Here

This was one I bought for M, either for his birthday or Xmas (can't recall which), since he tends to enjoy alternative histories. I tend not to. Although the alternative occupations and fates of various well-known figures in Allen Steele's The Tranquillity Alternative amused me no end, it was not this element that kept me reading, merely a sideshow for a fast-paced thriller.

On with the list:

1. Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
2. Ulrich von Liechtenstein, The Service of Ladies
3. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
   Much more interesting than I'd expected. I have quibbles: the ending's a let down, the potted biographies Anne Morrow Lindbergh to a part of her husband's entry when lesser male figures got their own entries and her part in the outcome of the novel is pivotal. I was both convinced and annoyed by the digressive nature of the narrative and I think this is where the novel's main weakness lies. Structurally it's a bit baggy and inconclusive. The wider results of the events described can only be inferred: the fact that the narrator survives to produce his narrative as an adult could imply no more than he was a lucky one and that much of the program might have continued. It's also a cold novel. I found it hard to warm to any of the characters, but this may be deliberate on the author's part.
   Roth's been on my meaning to read sometime list for somewhere near 25 years, so I'm glad I've got there at last. I may seek some more of his stuff out.

I've kept lists, on paper, of books read over various periods of time. This time, without the risk of losing the pieces of paper, I'm as much interested in the fiction/non-fiction split. I seem, I think, to have morphed from a reader almost entirely of fiction to a reader of mainly non-fiction, mostly history. Somewhere along the way, poetry seems to have dropped right of the map. This end of the year, the contents are likely to be skewed by the nature of whatever we received as birthday or Xmas presents. Being a fairly slow reader, I don't suppose the list will be long: I'm not even expecting to clear the backlog (about 70 unread or part-read volumes alongside the futon).

So, to start out:

1. Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase, fiction, Xmas present from J
   Hardly earth-shatteringly novel after two consecutive Jonathan Carrolls, but well-worth the read, despite the annoying translation: too American--use of the phrase "the longest time" always makes me want to scream--and I don't need hibachi translating by way of a description ("ceramic brazier"). All the same, there were a handful of telling images:

   In a sunken area in the middle of the coffee lounge, a woman wearing a bright pink dress sat at a cerulean blue grand piano playing quintessential hotel-coffee-lounge numbers filled with arpeggios and syncopation. Not bad actually, though not an echo lingered in the air beyond the last note of each number.

   and

   Still, it was unsettling seeing with my very own eyes a scene I had by now seen hundreds of times in a photograph. The depth of the actual place seemed artificial. Less my being there than the sense that the scene had been temporarily thrown together in order to match the photograph.