Sunday, May 13, 2007

Read these recently





The Pratchett was lent to me when I ran out of other things to read in Vietnam (apart from work books and really didn't want to read work books), the Phalahniuk was a airport impulse purchase, and the Ian Rankin was a birthday pressie from my flatmate. The green self help book was another impulse purchase when I was in the shop getting a copy for my other flatmate as a 'get well' present (she'd told me about it and said she'd like it).

Pratchett and rankin were as you'd expect. The Chuck book grated a bit at first with it's dense lists of factoids assembled as paragraphs (in the section 'people together' which are mostly essays for magazines on zany cultural events), but then became more interesting for me when he weaved in more personal stories (in the section 'portarits' and 'personal'). I think the one 'Almost California' about his own experience of going to LA for the making of the screenplay of fight club and the disconnect between his wildest dreams as a writer in the past and then what it felt like having those be realised is very poignant and extremely raw, very good stuff. That junction of writer as celebrity and writer as teller of eth story behind celebrity is interesting. The stories about his dad's recent murder were amazing. That this most horrible, pointless and suddent event is just woven into a couple of the stories makes it even more powerful - like you wonder 'fuck, how can he get it together to keep functioning and concentrating on all this other stuff when that has happened?' - his processing seems all the more powerful because it is restrained.

More on 'refuse to choose' later.

'Bluebeard's Egg' Margaret Atwood


This was unsettling really. A bit early 80's despair at impending nuclear winter and desperation in the face of tiny tight lives with unfeeling husbands, or egoistic young men picking up random women from grimy diners. I don't recommend it if you've recently had a break up or are feeling pesimistic about people. It's not all like this though, there are lots of larger than life characters, and interesting look at possible lives, ways of living lives.Loulou the hefty full-of-life potter who lives with a multitide of waifish poets who make fun of her and gather around her light with eagerness, and Yvonne the artist who lives alone and paints strange men, Emma who survives a boat down Niagra Falls and then beleives she is invincible, the narrator going home to her parents and watching her father get sick and time rush by, Joel the smug ideologue and activist who slowly drives his girlfriend to drastic actions... these people are jam-packed with hope and pain and confusion and wry humour. It's hard to read this and not see parts of yourself and the people around you.

'Yvonne has had to learn how to take care of herself; she didn't always know how. She's like a plant - not a sickly one, everone always comments on how healthy she always is - but a rare one, which can flourish and even live only under certain conditions. A transplant. She would like to write down instructions for hertself and hand them over to someone else to be carried out, but despite several attempts on her part this hasn't proved to be possible.'

The 'to read' pile




here are pictures of my 'to read' piles :) Not getting any smaller, but I have vowed to pause on my second hand book buying so that I might catch up a bit on the backlog waiting to be read.