What are you currently reading?

[Ken B]

I am reading Rachel Cusk's Kudos. It is the 3rd part of a trilogy, but as there are is no plot and no characters (except the author), it shouldn't matter that I am reading it out of order (I read book 1 some time ago). Beautiful writing and provocative ideas. I'm a big fan.
[asin]B077DZ1WNZ[/asin]

   Exact OPPOSITE of my summer reading experience, which might serve as a warning for some. I wanted some light "beach fare"--and chose a famous fantasy series. I like the escapism of fantasy, but find it is usually (pretty much always?) unreadably bad. Anyway, after hearing of it off and on for years, I started Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time".  I have big problems with aspects of the writing--huge mountains of unnecessary detail and description--but it was narratively engaging enough that I kept reading. It ended up being 14 LONG books. I kept deciding to stop, but then fell back in... It ate my summer.

I am told you have to read it twice to fully appreciate it ...

[jwinter]

... Anyway, after hearing of it off and on for years, I started Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time".  I have big problems with aspects of the writing--huge mountains of unnecessary detail and description--but it was narratively engaging enough that I kept reading. It ended up being 14 LONG books. I kept deciding to stop, but then fell back in... It ate my summer.

You finished all 14 books?!  I'm impressed, I tried to read it years ago and stalled out around book 5, too many unresolved plotlines and characters to keep track of.... I really loved the first book though.

Having finished it, was it worth the 10,000+ pages?  I enjoy epic fantasy, but that's like half a dozen Lords of the Rings....

My father keeps trying to get me to start Terry Goodkind, but I can't get past the first few chapters.  I just can't take his prose; too wooden, no sense of style.

[Mookalafalas]

You finished all 14 books?!  I'm impressed, I tried to read it years ago and stalled out around book 5, too many unresolved plotlines and characters to keep track of.... I really loved the first book though.

Having finished it, was it worth the 10,000+ pages?  I enjoy epic fantasy, but that's like half a dozen Lords of the Rings....

My father keeps trying to get me to start Terry Goodkind, but I can't get past the first few chapters.  I just can't take his prose; too wooden, no sense of style.

  Jordan was a smart guy, and the action and political motivation of his characters and their respective cultures, etc. were consistent and complex, But his powers of description are very limited--he returns to the same adjectives, motifs, and expressions over and over again. I am a guy who generally feels obligated to read every word of a book, but in this series I skimmed massively.  Clearly he loved working on it, because he inserts a gazillion mundane details, which often do little to develop his world. The work has 100s of characters, and dozens of plot lines--and you're right, many just disappear.  He died before he finished the series, and a guy named Brandon Sanderson wrote the last 3 books. Happily, Sanderson is a much more disciplined writer, with a better sense of pacing, sharper sense of irony, broader vocabulary, and better instincts about what can safely be skipped or elided. In other words, the series was stronger at the end than the middle. I guess that's why I couldn't stop.  But, I'm very glad it's over.

  And no, KEN, I will not be reading it again

[Ken B]

  Jordan was a smart guy, and the action and political motivation of his characters and their respective cultures, etc. were consistent and complex, But his powers of description are very limited--he returns to the same adjectives, motifs, and expressions over and over again. I am a guy who generally feels obligated to read every word of a book, but in this series I skimmed massively.  Clearly he loved working on it, because he inserts a gazillion mundane details, which often do little to develop his world. The work has 100s of characters, and dozens of plot lines--and you're right, many just disappear.  He died before he finished the series, and a guy named Brandon Sanderson wrote the last 3 books. Happily, Sanderson is a much more disciplined writer, with a better sense of pacing, sharper sense of irony, broader vocabulary, and better instincts about what can safely be skipped or elided. In other words, the series was stronger at the end than the middle. I guess that's why I couldn't stop.  But, I'm very glad it's over.

  And no, KEN, I will not be reading it again

Can't blame a guy for trying.

[Ken B]

Actually Mook it sounds like you would enjoy Guy Gavriel Kay. He is not really my cup of tea but he is strong in the ways Jordan is weak. He writes mostly fantasy based on history. So a book based on Constantinople, or French troubadours, or early china etc. I might read his Last Light of the Sun "about" medieval Iceland.

[Mookalafalas]

Actually Mook it sounds like you would enjoy Guy Gavriel Kay. He is not really my cup of tea but he is strong in the ways Jordan is weak. He writes mostly fantasy based on history. So a book based on Constantinople, or French troubadours, or early china etc. I might read his Last Light of the Sun "about" medieval Iceland.

I'll keep an eye out, but I tend to really dislike that particular mix. When a writer creates an alternate reality with a tight set of rules to govern how things work, it's quite a challenge I think. But as far as our own world goes, I prefer cold logic, reasonable physics, and probability for everything. If it is supposed to be "our" world, even when fate and karma take a hand, or aboriginal peoples suddenly have mystical visions and insights, it turns me off cold.

[Ken B]

  I'll keep an eye out, but I tend to really dislike that particular mix. When a writer creates an alternate reality with a tight set of rules to govern how things work, it's quite a challenge I think. But as far as our own world goes, I prefer cold logic, reasonable physics, and probability for everything. If it is supposed to be "our" world, even when fate and karma take a hand, or aboriginal peoples suddenly have mystical visions and insights, it turns me off cold.

My mantra is "nature has no mind". Any book that violates that gets turfed. I once gave up on a 1000 page novel on page 950 when something like those mystical powers happened.

I hope then I can enroll you in the "magical realism is shit" club. Every year we pick a Garcia Marquez book to not read. Each October a book will not arrive by mail.

[SimonNZ]

I hope then I can enroll you in the "magical realism is shit" club. Every year we pick a Garcia Marquez book to not read. Each October a book will not arrive by mail.

I haven't read Marquez (started one once and stopped after a few pages for reasons I can't remember now) or really anything else that self-describes itself as "magical realism", but am a pretty big fan of Murakami, whose occasional dashes of dream-like elements are said to fall within the wider definition of that genre. have you read anything of his?

TD: into the last quarter of Richard Evans, vol.3. Am reminded that I have been meaning to read Ian Kershaw's The End. Might try that immediately after, depending on the extent and approach to which Evans covers the fall of Berlin, and if I feel in the mood for a compare-and-contrast. If not that then probably Giles MacDonough's After The Reich, which is also waiting.

Apparently Evans also has a couple of stand-alone volumes out there on the legacy and changing memory of the war, which I'll also have to track down.

[Florestan]

Re: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Not everything he wrote is a masterpiece --- Chronicle of A Death Foretold is a huge letdown --- but when he's good, he's actually very good, nay excellent: Hundred Years of Solitude, The General in His Labyrinth, Love in the Time of Cholera, Of Love and Other Demons are masterpieces IMO. Plus, he was an avowed Communist, good friends with Fidel Castro --- yet there's no trace of Communist ideology in any of the above named masterpieces --- a big plus (pun) in my book.

In the same vein I heartily recommend Alejo Carpentier: The Lost Steps, The Rite of Spring, The Harp and the Shadow --- all very good.

And now that I think of Latin American literature, I also heartily recommend Augusto Roa Bastos' I, the Supreme and Alvaro Mutis' The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

I also read Ernesto Sabato's On Heroes and Tombs but honestly it's too dark and enigmatic for my taste --- the chapter on blind people was downright repulsive to me. On the other hand, his essay Man and Mechanism is interesting and insightful, albeit not very original.

That being said, my favorite Latin American writer is Mario Vargas Llosa.

[Ken B]

The General in His Labyrinth is the book we won't be reading next month.

[Florestan]

The General in His Labyrinth is the book we won't be reading next month.

Your loss, big big time. Count me out of your darn club.

[Ken B]

Your loss, big big time. Count me out of your darn club.

In Solitude a woman learns of a tragedy, I think the death of her son, when the pot of milk on the stove turns into snakes. The world is full of books that never get quite that silly or that maudlin. It's the stuff Cervantes mocked.

[Florestan]

In Solitude a woman learns of a tragedy, I think the death of her son, when the pot of milk on the stove turns into snakes. The world is full of books that never get quite that silly or that maudlin. It's the stuff Cervantes mocked.

Margaritas ante porcos.

[Ken B]

Margaritas ante porcos.

Actually today it's Gin&Tonic before the pork. Port afterwards.

[Florestan]

Actually today it's Gin&Tonic before the pork. Port afterwards.

Nu ştie ţăranul ce e şofranul. 

Google it --- and ask me for genuine translation 

[Mookalafalas]

My mantra is "nature has no mind". Any book that violates that gets turfed. I once gave up on a 1000 page novel on page 950 when something like those mystical powers happened.

I hope then I can enroll you in the "magical realism is shit" club. Every year we pick a Garcia Marquez book to not read. Each October a book will not arrive by mail.

Wow. A lot of hatred for Marquez.  Actually, I like him fine, and used to be a really big fan.  His favorite writer was William Faulkner, and his first book of short stories "No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories" is amazing, but even bleaker than Faulkner.  When he moved into "magical realism", there is certainly no divine power acting for the benefit of good and making sure everything turns out fair and happy because mystical powers are helping the characters. Just the opposite, usually. To me he is something like Kafka, politically, but poetic and often funny. However, life is equally hopeless and everyone is still doomed by human nature and oppressive governments (Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in His Labyrinth, 100 Years of Solitude). And his mid-period short stories tended to be surrealist/absurdist.  I remember really liking "The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." But there was no power acting for good in these, either. Love in the Time of Cholera was his huge hit, but I considered it a decline. I don't think I read anything after that. I tried his autobiography, but soon got bored with it.

[Ken B]

Wow. A lot of hatred for Marquez.  Actually, I like him fine, and used to be a really big fan.  His favorite writer was William Faulkner, and his first book of short stories "No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories" is amazing, but even bleaker than Faulkner.  When he moved into "magical realism", there is certainly no divine power acting for the benefit of good and making sure everything turns out fair and happy because mystical powers are helping the characters. Just the opposite, usually. To me he is something like Kafka, politically, but poetic and often funny. However, life is equally hopeless and everyone is still doomed by human nature and oppressive governments (Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in His Labyrinth, 100 Years of Solitude). And his mid-period short stories tended to be surrealist/absurdist.  I remember really liking "The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." But there was no power acting for good in these, either. Love in the Time of Cholera was his huge hit, but I considered it a decline. I don't think I read anything after that. I tried his autobiography, but soon got bored with it.

Sounds like you have a LOT of patience for violations of logic and probability, just not when they make for a happy ending.

[JBS]

Sounds like you have a LOT of patience for violations of logic and probability, just not when they make for a happy ending.

But most books are full of violations of logic and probability.  The Sherlock Holmes stories are full of them. The difference is that Conan Doyle wrote as if they weren't violations of logic and probability (or provided complicated pseudoexplanations to make them seem to be no violations,  whereas magical realism makes no pretence that they are not violations.

[Ken B]

But most books are full of violations of logic and probability.  The Sherlock Holmes stories are full of them. The difference is that Conan Doyle wrote as if they weren't violations of logic and probability (or provided complicated pseudoexplanations to make them seem to be no violations,  whereas magical realism makes no pretence that they are not violations.

Well the point at issue was fantasy novels and *physics*. Al said he like fantasy world building, but if the book was recognizably about "our" world he didn't like the woo, he wanted physics. You don't get that in magical realism. You might think Holmes's logic is full of holes but DOYLE'S physics isn't full of trees that weep blood because *sob* the lovers must part. If a character can read in the sky the death of his brother five hundred miles away I put the book down.

[Mookalafalas]

Well the point at issue was fantasy novels and *physics*. Al said he like fantasy world building, but if the book was recognizably about "our" world he didn't like the woo, he wanted physics. You don't get that in magical realism. You might think Holmes's logic is full of holes but DOYLE'S physics isn't full of trees that weep blood because *sob* the lovers must part. If a character can read in the sky the death of his brother five hundred miles away I put the book down.

Sorry, for some reason I didn't see any of the intervening posts before mine went up. I didn't mean to ignore all your comments.
  Anyway, the other day some woman running for president in the US put up a post suggesting that if we all concentrate on the hurricane not hitting the coast, maybe it wouldn't.  She deleted the post, but she thought that might work in the real world.  Some writers share her sense of...reality. Paul Coelho, perhaps. I hate that stuff.  I don't think Garcia-Marquez really thinks a tree might, under any circumstances, bleed human blood out of sympathy. But he might use it as a poetic metaphor. In the "General in His Labyrinth" the ocean by the corrupt tyrant's country was gone, and there was a desert where it had been, because he had sold it to an American company. That's clearly an image, and a political statement, rather than an indication of his lack of understanding of basic principles of reality. Shakespeare has lots of magic in "The Tempest." In Macbeth, too, I suppose, and there's the ghost in Hamlet, but those don't bother me at all.  But when a Native American detective sees a vision that helps solve a grisly murder in a "realistic" police procedural, I have a problem.  In Twin Peaks, however, I enjoy it quite a lot (especially as there were giants, dwarves, and people who speak backwards in the vision). I guess my view is that authors can make any laws they want in their fictional world, and its fine if they are consistent. But using the tools of true realism (or naturalism) indicate they are subjecting themselves to the laws of empirical phenomonology, as does using real historical events and figures, unless the story is parody or comedy or tongue-in-cheek.  I hated when Tarantino showed moving and horrific scenes of Nazi brutality and then turned the movie into a fantastical farce. So was all that human suffering just "entertainment"?
  Anyway, sorry to ramble on.