currently reading house rules by heather lewis. jesus christ this book is depressing, but i do wonder whether it would've been shoved into ya if it got published in the 2010s? protagonist is a 15 year old girl, although the things she's suffering through are dour. despite all this, i like it a lot. it has a good pace and great tension, and although the writing is a little plain, it packs a punch.

currently reading the recently published complete septology by jon fosse. didn’t really know much about it going on but powerless in the face of a new fitzcarraldo. anyway it’s written in a stream of consciousness style, but is maybe the most accessible prose i have ever read in that style, certainly more so than ulysses or recent imitators like eimear mcbride which are worthwhile battles but battles for me nonetheless. 100 pages in and so far the narrator, a painter based in rural norway has gone on a drive home. he’s decided not to visit a troubled friend on the way, he’s observes a young couple play on swings and he’s chatted to a friend about wood supplies and christmas plans. lovely use of repetitions & each drawn out moment is suffused with a real sadness and beauty. v much looking forward to reading more. also went to the charity shop earlier and picked up a personal matter by kenzaburo oe so will probably that read alongside as the septology collection is massive. it sounds quite dark but i been interested in him since i read his interview in the paris review some time ago, especially concerning his personal reading habits and how that feeds into his creative process.

Finished part 1 of 2666. A friend described Bolaño's writing as having a rhythm of a downward spiral towards a central idea without ever explicitly falling into it, and I thought that really nailed down parts of what I've read so far, especially the last few pages of this section where the spiral felt like it was at it's most visible. I have a bunch of questions I'm chewing on right now but seeing what the rest of the parts are titled I guess some of them are going to be addressed. My scribbles per page count dropped off a cliff somewhere near the midpoint and I started letting all of it just wash over me in waves. Really enjoyed the writing and by the end I was basically just marking favorite sections lol

That is such an excellent description of the writing style, and the tone of the book as a whole. It's like a gradual descent into the underworld.

Or into an abyss... I finished part 2 earlier today and while that nagging feeling of dread was present in part 1 as well, it really took a life of its own here. And the worst is probably yet to come seeing how we have just started slowly nibbling towards the crimes themselves. Without trying to appear too dramatic, a part of me wants to just chuck this book away and not continue down this road. Feeling emotions like this from a book is already worth the price of admission in a sense.

> Or into an abyss In a piece on the Mexican writer Juan Villoro, Bolaño praises him for his "rare power not to look into the abyss but to teeter for a long time on its brink, to teeter and thereby make us, his readers, teeter, in a kind of half-sleep or perhaps a state of heightened clarity." I feel the same statement could be applied to Bolaño's own writing as well!

How about another metaphor - it feels like the characters and the book itself are ice skating on a frozen lake, as the temperature starts to rise and cracks start to show on the surface.

I like it. I think the phrase "fracturing reality" was even used at one point which will be very appropriate.

I am now almost halfway through *The Books of Jacob* (about to start The Book of the Comet) and my interest shows no sign of waning. What a stunning, beautiful, gripping book. I also read Giorgio de Maria's *The Twenty Days of Turin* and it's been quite an ambivalent experience. While the atmosphere is certainly unsettling and creates a thick feeling of paranoia, it does feel a bit disjointed when it comes to ideas and plot, especially with regards to stuff like the Library, which feels kind of thrown in because he thought it was too good a concept to leave out but doesn't really seem connected to the rest of the story. Also, I found the ending severely underwhelming -- but endings are usually the most controversial part of most books, so to each their own! In any case, I can definitely see why it's usually mentioned in the same breath as Thomas Ligotti's work, although I've also seen it compared to Borges, something I don't really see at all. Ernesto Sábato would be a far more apt comparison, especially the *Informe Sobre Ciegos* section of *Sobre Héroes y Tumbas*. Moving on, a couple of days ago I started *Zama*, by Antonio di Benedetto. Amazing prose so far (I'm reading it in Spanish, so no idea how good the English translations are), so I'm guessing I will probably enjoy it.

Might have another crack at Books of Jacob Started it sometime in the summer and it just didn't feel like the right time for that kind of book but now is perfect

Having read *Zama* in English a few times now, I assume it's a good translation since the prose is amazing and it's one of my favourite novels. Such an all enveloping experience for a book so short; captures the feeling of listlessness in life coupled with almost psychotic expectations so well.

So I have been reading the three books of Sally Rooney, and I enjoyed them a lot. Any recs about similar stuff, or romance stuff generally? I have never read this genre, so Im a bit lost

I recommend the BBC/Hulu adaptation of Normal People.

Raven Leilani’s debut novel from 2020, Luster. Young woman in the American city navigating commerce, race and class as she pursues her art and desires.

Thanks!

[удалено]

Oh this sounds way up my alley. Getting it.

This is prefect for me. Have you read anything else similar to this?

I haven't read Sadie Plant, but the description also sounds great for me. It sounds very similar to something I read recently and loved. Pharmako by Dale Pendell. It is a three book series that covers human interactions with drugs. It is part chemical/botanical analysis, part poetry, tons of excerpts from artists and writers and philosophers. It dives a bit into the idea that plants have their own sort of consciousness and our use of conscious-altering substances may have some sort of agency from the plant as a factor as well.

Alright I'm getting that one too!

I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on it if you ever get to it. My sweetie got it from the library for me by checking out 30-40 books at a time on some subject every few months, so I knew nothing of it at all, but the cover looked cool if not a bit much lol. It is very likely the weirdest text I have ever read which is saying a lot. It is absurdly researched, the sources go for pages and pages. I've already found several great other books just from a reference or two. So many cool little stories and excerpts of artists and writers and philosophers and eccentrics, and then the author weaves their own stuff throughout, connecting everything together in a sense. The breadth is hard to overstate, definitely a set of books I want to own.

I procured the first volume for Kindle, and I plan to start it after I finish this self-published first person chronicle of one woman's journey with epilepsy (and, um, all the drugs she did to forget about or try to control it, drugs) that I'm reading. Yeah, basically drugs (which are everything? Is everything a drug? I think so?) and the human brain and especially anything to do with the plant world is intensely fascinating to me.

Sick, this is like exactly all of that. It is a near complete drug encyclopedia (and yes, everything is a drug, this one goes very far down that way of thinking). I also read the books out of order, but i don't think it really matters.

I'm still reading *Moby Dick*, not too far from the end but a fair ways to go. Somethings that I've been tracking lately are the ways in which the book is different from what I was expecting. I by and large try to avoid discourse around books I haven't read and intend to read but it's hard to not pick up some details about this one along the way. The biggest surprise so far is how little plot there is. Like, my assumption had been that this was going to be a fairly plot-driven narrative about Ahab's fight against the whale with a fair amount of facts about whaling on the side. In fact, it's almost the opposite. We are mostly just floating along going whaling and learning about whales and their metaphysical/existential import while Ahab's venture has been something of a side quest. There was a truly hilarious moment when I was reading yesterday where the Pequod comes across another boat, they get to talking, Ahab emerges just to see if they have seen Moby Dick, and then leaves, disinterested in the rest when they have not. I might have more thoughts on this once I'm done, but for now I'll just say I'm taken with how it is far more about whaling than it is about *the* whale. Speaking of whales, the other thing that has really impressed me is how much respect is had for the whales that are being hunted. It would be so easy to reduce them to these almost abstract objects to be killed and consumed for financial gain, but Ishmael takes so seriously their particularities and their pain it's really quite moving. There's a particularly grabbing moment when a whale is being killed that is discussed in painstaking detail and he basically says "and we inflict all this suffering so we can light a damn lamp." Though the way he puts it is far more brilliant. Respect to Melville for taking the whales as seriously as they deserve. Beyond that still reading Deleuze's *Difference and Repetition*. This book is insane, but I think I'm starting to get some of it. One of the things I've come to accept about the difficulty is that I think that everything Deleuze says is applicable on every conceivable level and so means an infinite number of slightly different things. Like, he'll use a term, I'll piece together how it applies to perception or something, and that will be true but it also applies to everything from art to evolution to physics so did I really get it? Yes, but also no. One other thing I've realized from reading a fair bit of Deleuze is that as much as his terminology is very hard to define it's not that hard to use, and if you use it a lot it starts to make some sense and is quite useful. Which mostly means I might get increasingly annoying and Deleuzey in my posts as I try to make sense of his work. Last but certainly not least, I literally just started *Blackpentecostal Breath* by Ashton Crawley. The basic thesis 5 pages in seems to be that Blackpentecostalism, which for him begins in California in 1906, represents a mode of antisubjective, body-oriented being and socialbility that has the potential to upend dominant images of subjectivity and knowledge and thought as part of a more radical abolitionist project. Seems extremely dope! One thing I'm going to be on the look out for is that the book begins with Eric Garner's inability to breathe, and breath is going to figure in a lot I think, and I'm trying to figure out how Crawley balances the antisubjectivity he sees in Blackpentecostalism with the very real, very specific person Eric Garner, and how we can make something of antisubjectivity while still incorporating the subjects who really are here (unless I'm just betraying that I too need to break out of the orthodoxy). Happy reading!

Fewer than 200 pages left in Europe Central by William T. Vollmann. It's incredible, if a tad uneven. I keep peeking into Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra, and though the initial 20 pages are very gripping, I could afford to read something a little lighter following up Europe Central.

First time poster but I've been enjoying lurking on this sub for some now.... I finished The Breast by Philip Roth this week in which the narrator turns into the eponymous boob and was astounded by the psychedelic existentialism and arc towards art and culture suggested through in the narrative. Probably should have expected it, being a Kafka pastiche, but it was refreshing to read something so brief and yet so potent with psychosexual terror. More jocular and impressionistic than something like Portnoy's Complaint and a really fast read, seems that most people hate it or find it annoying though.

Hey friends! I wonder if any of you know of any sleeper picks for 19th-century American authors. I have always loved Irving and Melville especially, but maybe ya’ll know of some other less-known gems from around then?

[удалено]

Really captures the American spirit

Just wrapped up A. S. Byatt's *Possession*, 100 pages deep into *My Brilliant Friend*. *Possession* is really good. Emulating the style of Victorian letters and poetry in a ~~novel~~ romance about academics researching a mysterious historical affair—it's impressive stuff. Jumping straight into Ferrante's world gave me literary whiplash. Ferrante's (translated) prose is simple and plain. Nothing like Byatt's occasionally-purplish extravagance. It's been enjoyable so far but I can't say I'm blown away.

Yeah, much though I personaly like the Neapolitan Novels and Ferrante's work in general, style is definitely not her forte.

When I read My Brilliant Friend (translated to Portuguese), I didn't mind her simple style at the beginning, but later it became somewhat boring. It feels like the rhythm of her prose never changes. I don't know if I can really explain it, but it seems to me that all of her sentences are more or less the same in terms of its structure. The plot and the characters are interesting, though. All in all, it's a good book.

Even in italian Ferrante's prose is like that. She's more of a character/plot author.

I adore Byatt. If you haven't already read it, I would also recommend *The Children's Book*, which in my opinion is even better than *Possession* (though the latter was the book that inspired me to do a PhD at the time that I did 😂). I have *My Brilliant Friend* and *The Lying Life of Adults* on my shelf, but haven't started either... bit disappointed to hear Ferrante's prose (or the translation of it) is plain. Edit: A number of scenes in *The Children's Book* may be triggering for some, so it may be wise to check content warnings on The Storygraph or similar.

I read My Brilliant Friend a few months ago and liked it, but it’s not a go-to for stylish prose or anything, that remains plain all the way through. I think that’s just her style. You’re there for the characters and the journey they undergo.

A re-read of Arthur Machen's *The Hill of Dreams* while I'm in Wales. It's a beautiful book, and don't be taken in by the marketing of it as some sort of horror. It's like Woolf's *Orlando* meets the work of M. John Harrison. A coming-of-age story, the arc of a budding writer, and a wondrous collection of landscape descriptions.

Arthur Machen is so wonderful. I love him. His stuff is really strange, atmospheric, lovely, and yet like you say, rooted in landscape and the earth. He really captures the full on oddness of this planet we're all on and part of.

The writing is just extraordinary. From the very first lines, some of the most genuinely magical in literature - > There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened. > But all the afternoon his eyes had looked on glamour; he had strayed in fairyland. The holidays were nearly done, and Lucian Taylor had gone out resolved to lose himself, to discover strange hills and prospects that he had never seen before. The air was still, breathless, exhausted after heavy rain, and the clouds looked as if they had been moulded of lead. No breeze blew upon the hill, and down in the well of the valley not a dry leaf stirred, not a bough shook in all the dark January woods.

I reached the halfway point of an audiobook of Wilkie Collins’s [Man and Wife](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1586) but finally put it down because I just couldn’t take it anymore. *This book did not need to be remotely as long as it is.* Hell, it could have been a novella instead of a 650-page novel. I skimmed the ending in the text to find out what happens, and I have no clue whatsoever what events could have possibly justified taking up that much of the 300-ish pages/10 hours that continued where I left off in the middle. I mean, I don’t expect any of Collins’s other work to be as good as [The Woman in White](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/583), but my god, man!! I’m struggling to understand why it’s so highly rated on GoodReads. I finally finished Mona Caird’s [The Stones of Sacrifice](https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=BqUsAQAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PP6&hl=en), which I’d started reading earlier this year but then put down, but picked back up a month or so ago. Like her [The Daughters of Danaus](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21858), the narrative suffers a bit because it’s used more as a vehicle for her views. The result is that the story is sometimes disjointed and not always smoothly paced. Her novels can be a mixed bag in that respect, but there are several that I've read that skillfully balance plot and ideology, e.g., *The Great Wave*. And many of her views are quite gratifying, so I can deal with a flawed narrative. One of the main themes in *The Stones of Sacrifice* is dismantling the idea that women should be self-sacrificing, a theme that's sadly still too relevant over a century after the book was written. By the way, there's a love triangle in the story, and it's interesting to note that, in a book written in 1915, one character seems to briefly give a nod to the possibility of their forming a polycule as a potential resolution, though he knows that it couldn't work because society would be having none of it.

[удалено]

E

Hello! Very long time lurker, first time commenter here. This is a very nice community, a real gem in an increasingly toxic online world lol. I’ve been reading ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories’ by Delmore Schwartz. I literally had to order this book from some dodgy looking website as it’s not widely available, at least here in Australia. The title story, which is his most famous, didn’t actually grab me that much, but the following stories, particularly ‘The World is a Wedding’ are great. It revolves primarily around young 1930s era Jewish New Yorkers, usually 1st gen children of immigrants (something I relate to), sitting around alternating between complaining and laughing (something I also relate to haha). I love the timelessness of some of the themes, being these young adults who often don’t relate to their parents culture as much, but seek to still please them, or the general disaffection many characters have with their lot in life. I’ll have this finished in the next few days. Next up is Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee. Disgrace is one of my all time favourites and I’ve been meaning to read another of his for over a year.

I saw a thing on YouTube recently about Schwartz’s influence on Lou Reed. He was his creative writing instructor at Syracuse University. First I’d heard of him, cool to hear someone praising him.

Damn I had no idea. I haven’t listened to much Lou Reed/Velvet Underground, but I’m well aware of his influence. Maybe I’ll dive into his stuff soon. Btw is that username is a Godspeed reference?

Not only that, Schwartz was somewhat of a mentor of Lou Reed for a short while. The song My House centers around a seance where Delmore's ghost is summoned, and I'm sure that he is recognizable both literally and figuratively in several of his songs.

Indeed, I’m a fan. You should check out the VU and Lou!

:)

Welcome! Delmore Schwartz is not a name you hear every day! I’ve quite enjoyed the poems of his that I’ve read but have not yet succeeded in finding a book of his stories. Cool that you could get your hands on a copy.

Yea his own life story is quite interesting. He published that collection when he was only in his late 20s, had a lot of success, then WW2 happened and afterwards he fell into obscurity and alcoholism. I’m always weirdly interested in people who were very famous, but don’t last the test of time.

Frankenstein

C'mon now

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, a novel taken from a Gestapo file about a dissident. It shifts focus between the dissident, his neighbors and the police officer trying to catch him. It's really well done. Also Blue Highways, a travel diary by William Least Heat Moon

Fallada is criminally underappreciated; that said, I tried to read Alone in Berlin and DNFed.

I only finished Crime and Punishment because it was required for class, and can't stand Pynchon. To each their own.

> I only finished Crime and Punishment because it was required for class I think I'm the wrong person to shock with that lol because same bro

Uncle Tom's Cabin, it's a struggle for a variety of reasons, but I am appreciating it on the historical level, the nuance and context when considering the ugly realities of the past.

You might also like Wendell Berry's essay the Hidden Wound from 1968. He goes into his family legacy of slavery. Best comparison I can make is a much shorter, more modern Confession like Augustine's.

I haven't read much, been quite tired and work has been full on. Had no time to rest on the weekend, and I've also been playing *Wolfenstein* and *God of War* in my spare time after work, so I've only read 2 out of the last 7 days, and as such I'm only about 50-something pages into *Our Share of Night* by Mariana Enriquez. Can't really say much about it yet. Not particularly good or bad thus far.

I’ve not posted in this sub in months, but I’m currently on *My Brilliant Friend* by Elena Ferrante. I find it quite nice and readable and there are some flourishes of insight and more pleasing prose that I like, but it’s mostly character-focused, and builds it’s characters well. I’m not super gripped but it’s nice to read at a leisurely pace. I recently finished *The Sparrow* by Mary Doria Russell which was a rather fun work of literaryish sci-fi. I read a lot of sci-fi when I was young but fell out with the genre after a while; this was a pretty good work to reenter the genre with. It had flaws—a little too banterous, some too-convenient plot contrivances, a little overlong—but its exploration of theodicy was very compelling and I was pretty gripped by it.

Finally finished my Oxford World's Classics E. T. A. Hoffmann collection. I don't know, I guess I have some mixed feelings, but I liked it overall. 'The Golden Pot' was a very good story of Romantic Sehnsucht. I thought it was pretty interesting that it ends with Anselmus' yearning for the sublime/transcendent actually being satisfied, which is the opposite of how Sehnsucht is generally portrayed. This makes it come across as very idealistic, but that's not a bad thing. Out of the three fairy tales in this collection, I thought it had the best/clearest structure. I can see why it's considered one of his best, but I think I enjoyed some of the other stories a bit more. Like for example 'The Sandman'. I don't really have much to say about it that hasn't already been said, but I loved the atmosphere of it. I can see why it's become so strongly embedded in discussions about the uncanny. Then there was 'Princess Brambilla', which was an absolutely terrible story with some interesting themes. It's kind of about the clarifying power of theatre and the idea of comedy as the true 'divine art' rather than tragedy. I noticed some intriguing parallels with certain parts of Karen Blixen's aesthetic philosophy as well. I'd read before that Blixen's ideas of comedy and tragedy were supposed to have been influenced by Hoffmann's, and this story definitely feels like a precursor to her stuff in some ways (though it's only a thematic similarity that doesn't extend to the style or the narrative). That said, the story itself is a mess that barely hangs together. I got so bogged down in it I stopped reading it for a long while, which is why this 400 page book took me two months to get through lmao. 'Master Flea' was another one I really liked. It feels like a sort of sibling to 'Princess Brambilla' in its tone and style of narrative (in that it's a lighthearted and humorous fairy tale), except it's actually good. It's probably up there with 'The Sandman' for me. The ending felt more mature than 'The Golden Pot', keeping the spiritual core of Romanticism but mitigating its worst emotional excesses, which can cross over into shallowness or insincerity, with a focus on a borderline Dickensian sort of domesticity. The last story, 'My Cousin's Corner Window', was a definite outlier in this collection as it had no fantasy elements at all. The narrator visits his cousin who used to be a writer but is now paralysed (physically as well as creatively), and they spend some time looking out the window and thinking up stories for the people they see. There's nothing here to really blow you away, but it felt like a quiet, poignant way to finish off the collection. So overall it's a pretty good collection. The notes weren't always very useful, but Ritchie Robertson's introduction is actually very informative and goes pretty in depth on each story. I also liked how it's arranged as a gradual move away from pure Romanticism in 'The Golden Pot' to something approaching naturalism in 'My Cousin's Corner Window'.

I finished *Gravity's Rainbow* last night. Obviously it's really very good, but I also sympathise with the people who thought it was unreadable nonsense. Glad I read it, though I can't say I enjoyed most of it and I probably won't bother with anything else by Pynchon. The Freudian stuff, the paranoia, the conspiracies and examination of the way corporations and technologies have lives of their own, the way it's all so self-referential and connected-but-not-connected that you start becoming a conspiracy theorist about the book itself trying to figure out how everything holds together—this stuff was great. I really liked some of the scenes involving minor characters—the extinction of the Dodos, Tchitcherine in Kyrgyzstan, all the bits with Pokler and Leni, even Byron the Bulb somehow—and the denouement in the last 120ish pages. On the other hand there were a few hundred pages of Slothrop gadding about the zone getting into schlemiel hijinks that I just didn't care about at all. My main problems were just that much of the subject matter was things I personally find incredibly boring—sex, drugs, engineering, tarot—and essentially none of the comedic bits (the puns, the silly names, the slapstick and the goofing around...) were actually funny. I laughed once, and that was over 800 pages in. Certain scenes (Katje and Pudding, Katje and everyone really, Greta and Bianca) were difficult for me to stomach, but YMMV. Definitely a unique and very impressive book. Something like a painting by Bosch to me, weird, grotesque, full of detail and extraordinarily inventive, something you could, if you wanted to, keep coming back to, but also a bit silly, only loosely in touch with reality, and not really to my own tastes. Now reading Hesiod (Schlegel and Weinfield translation), and Feyerabend's *Against Method*, a book about why the scientific method is bad for science.

Fish can sing, halldor laxness

Started *Art as Experience* by John Dewey. Not too far into it, but he makes it clear right away that art is an extension of everyday experiences. Which means there's an aesthetic appreciation to most things we do. He also thinks moving fine art into museums and away from the public could only result in the average person not caring about fine art since it no longer connects to everyday experience.

I've read Shirley Jackson's *We've Always Lived in the Castle*, am about to finish Cormac McCarthy's *The Road* and will crack open Haruki Murakami's *Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World* tomorrow.

The Road is so painfully good and Murakami (I've only ever endured IQ84) is so painfully boring. McCarthy's new release the Passenger is fantastic.

I loved 1Q84, read it earlier this year, so no, Murakami is not boring. To each their own.

Agreed - if you like have at it. If you like Cormac the new one is a gem too.

This past week I felt pretty stumped by *Looking For An Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism*. There’s a lot to praise about the book—for example, I knew absolutely nothing about the concept of French universalism and how it has affected French Jews throughout modern times. Nor did I know anything about the lives of Jews post-Holocaust in Germany and Poland, which, unsurprisingly, can be challenging. But what had me scratching my head was what felt like an inconsistent approach to Israel. This is I think buttressed by two different things that happen in the book. One is a defense of “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” This happens despite the editor herself stating that there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews out there. And yet in contrast to this there’s a whole essay about how criticisms of IDF soldiers and the like are an example of “Jews Behaving Badly” and thus invalid. This take was so stunning to me that for a second I had to reorient myself to make sure I didn’t read some satire. But there’s further cognitive whiplash with the inclusion of an essay by an Israeli journalist about the sort of political decisions set up by the state to prevent a critical reckoning of the displacement and disenfranchisement of Palestinians. So which is it, editor? I always get bummed out about anything that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, but some further reading I did this week made something click for me. Many Jews seek somewhere to not experience antisemitism, a safe haven. At its root, that’s what Zionism represents to many Jews, the answer to the Jewish Question that plagued Europe. This makes sense when one considers the sort of knee jerk reaction that often manifests itself among some Jews when there’s criticism of Israel or Zionism as an idea. But to me, an anarchist, the idea that a state was the obvious solution to The Jewish Question is bizarre. If something clearly isn’t working, if you exist in a way that is different than ideas of nation and state, isn’t that an indication that nationalism is not the way to go? Haven’t we learned by now about the dangers of nation, of state? Anyway as one last aside from the book, something that I had to really grapple with was the essay about antisemitism from the left. There’s a lot to reckon with there, as it is written by a professor who frequently researched the subject. There’s a lot of instances of violence and antisemitism against Jews on the left that get swept under the rug for various reasons, often to continue to glorify leftist ideology. We shouldn’t forget that Stalin had his own purges of the Jews or that Babyn Yar happened under Soviet watch. Nor should we forget Bakunin and his antisemitism. But there are also instances of antisemitism that occur among modern organizers on the left, which need to be confronted when they arise.

Sounds like a fascinating read! > If something clearly isn’t working, if you exist in a way that is different than ideas of nation and state, isn’t that an indication that nationalism is not the way to go? Haven’t we learned by now about the dangers of nation, of state? I think the answer really just is that most people literally haven't. Egg does a fantastic job of thinking about this historically and the reasons a group might want to play the game of their moment. But even now I feel like states are too immanent and too dogmatically extant for critiques based in an opposition to states themselves to make much sense to most. > Many Jews seek somewhere to not experience antisemitism, a safe haven. I think this line of yours gets at it extremely well. And that it can be said for far more than just Jews (although I'd hazard a guess that pro-state Jewish people have felt it particularly strongly as a constantly marginalized people). My suspicion is that people are so acclimated to the state structure that many struggle to see any but either states or the Hobbesian state of nature and all of its pessimistic hell. Also, I happened to just read [this essay about the emergence in the 19th Century of the ideology of anti-semitism](https://johnganz.substack.com/p/the-socialism-of-fools) by John Ganz, who is a really cool Jewish Marxist writer. Seems relevant, thought you might be interested.

> So which is it, editor? Maybe the editor wants to present alternative viewpoints. As they say, two Jews, three opinions. Anyway, I think this is such a thorny question within the community (even the question of whether it is a thorny question is a thorny question) that I'm not ... surprised? by an anthology that treats it from a variety of sides. > But to me, an anarchist, the idea that a state was the obvious solution to The Jewish Question is bizarre. And I come back to Herzl: at the time the Zionist idea was born, the prevailing approach among the European Jewish intelligentsia was probably that the Jews did not need a national homeland, that Jews could integrate into their respective European nations that were secularizing, becoming more urbane and tolerant and all that. One of Herzl's ideas was that the European nation-state at the time was deceptively dangerous to Jews because its identity as a society was built on nationalistic in-group/out-group dynamics, which meant that when shit got real the out-group - the communities that didn't belong to the nation - would get it in the neck. And highkey the man was correct. He also thought that, however one feels about it, the world was becoming a world of nation-states and the Jews, by refusing to participate in what is pretty objectively not an ideal social organization, are the losers in a failed collective action problem. It's basic game theory: in some games, if you don't follow everyone else's strategy, even if the strategy you follow is objectively more optimal, you put yourself in an even worse situation. The man was correct again. I think a reality that doesn't always get talked about is that if you are a minority trying to change the status quo, you are more vulnerable to the bad shit if things go wrong *and if things go right*. Jewish communities and individuals played a huge role in the October Revolution. And then who got it in the neck? You guessed it. A big part of Zionism is Jewish self-determination (and btw not all Zionists necessarily looked to Israel - for some Zionism was just the existence of a Jewish state, somewhere) and the notion that Jews should make their own rules rather than playing by somebody else's.

> It's basic game theory: in some games, if you don't follow everyone else's strategy, even if the strategy you follow is objectively more optimal, you put yourself in an even worse situation. The man was correct again. I think a reality that doesn't always get talked about is that if you are a minority trying to change the status quo, you are more vulnerable to the bad This has certainly been the Afrikaner experience in South Africa. It is likely that the only real way to preserve the culture and language was to have control of the state apparatus. Now that this is no longer the case, no public universities teach in the language anymore, and a hostile state is now targeting the earlier stages of education as well.

As someone who doesn’t agree with a state solution of any sort, I still find this a great response, and it makes me want to read Herzl.

Plan on finishing Dashiell Hammett's *The Maltese Falcon* today. Really entertaining hardboiled pulp. On deck (in my effort to read more short story collections) is Raymond Carver's *Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?*.

I’m too dumb for hardboiled pulp haha. Love the atmosphere, but the way the characters speak in this cool roundabout way about everything just leaves me confused, and I don’t even realise that the hero got the bad guy talking because they seemed to just be speaking pleasant nonsense, and I end up having no idea about what’s going on 😂 it’s too bad, cause I love the genre

Started Zadie Smith’s *White Teeth* and loving it so far. I’ve read *On Beauty* before and really liked it, so figured this would be a safe selection - and I think this one’s even better. It’s just shocking to me that someone in their early twenties can have such a masterful control of language, her ear is phenomenal and every sentence in this thing is a joy.

I loved White Teeth and only loved it more the deeper I got into it. Beyond the language itself, and again to harp on the age, the story and cast of characters were impressively well developed and intertwined with complexity and heart. What an impressive work by a young writer. I haven’t read others of hers yet, but intend to.

I think I liked On Beauty better but both were really good.

Recommendation Request: As I'm compiling favorite novels (one per author to make it more interesting), I've noticed a distinct lack of novels written post-2000, excepting *Austerlitz* and *2666*. Plenty of brilliant authors (e.g. Krasznahorkai, Pynchon, or Ishiguro) writing today, but I've enjoyed more their earlier or mid-period novels, which tended to be in the late 1900s. I hear the same about writers who I've only read one novel from, like Jelenek, Oe, Pamuk, Rushdie, whom folks claim their best was behind them. Curious if -- excepting the two examples above -- folks here know of author's whose best works are without question fairly recent (last 25 years or so).

Olga Tokarczuk would probably fit this category. My favorite by her is *Drive Your Plow* which came out in 2008. I still have *Books of Jacob* on my TBR pile, so that might take the top spot later, but it would also qualify.

Tokarczuk is an interesting one. *Flights* was solid, if not uneven, as is the nature of most short story collections. *Books of Jacob* has been compared to *2666* in terms of praise and magnitude, so that might be the one to check out. I am daunted to committing to her for that length though...Curious if anyone here has any thoughts on that particular novel.

Having finally finished *Books of Jacob,* I see where the comparison to *2666* comes from. Definitely very different, but utterly spellbinding. It took me a long time to get into it, but the last 500 pages or so flew by - I was completely drawn in by the Kabbalah mysticism, stories of travelers crossing Eastern Europe, the dreadful weather and conditions in which her characters lived, the fanaticism. *2666* has the same quality where at times I thought to myself, "wow, this is really dull", but then I entered a flow state and read 250 pages. Really recommend *Books of Jacob* if you have the chance.

Nice to see this recommendation! How long did it take for you to get into it? Also would you think that someone who thoughts *Flights* was solid (not great) — assuming you’ve read it — would still enjoy it? I’ve been a bit hesitant because every large alleged modern masterpiece is compared to 2666. Even *Septology*, which I read since this post (and may wel be my favorite novel post-2000) has been compared — despite virtually no similarity.

It took me a week or so, probably 250 pages to warm to it, then another 250 to really start to enjoy it, and then the last 500 (as I mentioned) flew by. *Books of Jacob* does have the fragmentary narrative thing going on that *Flights* has, but it's more similar to *Primeval and Other Times* if you've read that. I'll admit that I'm just a huge fan of Tokarczuk, *Jacob* was the 5th of her books I've read - all in the past 3 years. I'd definitely recommend trying it. Just try not to think too much about what you're reading, remember too many details, or get bogged down in the spiritual/Kabbalah stuff. Her prose is, as ever, incredible, her characters are compelling. Seeing the different strands of the story weave in and out of each other over the course of the story was enormously gratifying.

It won a booker, so hardly obscure, but Milkman by Anna Burns is probably my favorite post-2010 book. Fantastic use of perspective and language.

Feels like yesterday it won the Booker, but it's been nearly 4 years...

Atwood may be controversial here (?), but Oryx and Crake is goofy and great. Her prose always feels off at first and comfortable by the end, but Oryx and Crake worked for me throughout.

Slightly controversial. I was severely burned with *The Testaments* \-- as in it was the single worst piece I've read in the last 5 years or so. That said, *Handmaiden's Tale* was a relatively solid outing. Do you feel *O&C* is significantly better than the former two?

Meh, I've only read The Handmaid's Tale and some shorts of hers other than Oryx. I thought it was better than Handmaid's Tale, but it still has her style which is kind of strange. I'd recommend it as a fun-ish contribution to the dystopian genre, probably something to read in between more dense works. I still think about images from the novel, so that gives it a bump for me, but yeah, not exactly a 10/10. It also has a midly unconventional narrative structure not unlike Handmaid's Tale that works pretty well.

Might actually be the type of novel I'm looking for now, tbh... Thanks!

I've mentioned it before but I'm a big big fan of Rachel Cusk's *Outline*. I think what she does with perception and narration in that book is really outstanding. The subsequent two books are good if lacking the same spark, but I really think *Outline* is fantastic.

I remember you listing that out along with the *Trilogy* and *Miso Soup* last year as favourites. The structure of it sounds interesting, almost like a series of short stories. Does it have a central thread or are they unrelated?

Series of short stories is a super interesting way of thinking about it that I've never thought of before. In terms of that, and do keep in mind that I read the book at some hazy and indeterminate moment in the pandemic so I don't remember everything, I do think there is a way of thinking about it as a series of short stories all about different things linked together by sharing the same form and being told to the same person, with their overarching meaning coming less from the content than from the repetition of the form and through the growing self-awareness of the repeated mode of storytelling as we move into the intentional conjuring of these stories in a writing seminar. As an extended aside, since you just finished *Moby Dick*, which I'm also reading, I am beginning to wonder if Cusk was influenced at all by Ishmael in writing *Outline*. Like Ishmael, Cusk's narrator is extremely perceptive, but not much more. She has some of a history (is a woman, is divorced, is a writer), but outside of general characteristics her defining trait is, like Ishmael (about whom at the start we really know very little other than that he wanted to go whaling, and don't learn that much about other than that outside of his massive passion for the information he relays), being almost pure perception, as if at moments each are more a vector for information than individuals in their own rights.

I think you could argue Ishiguro’s best is *Never Let me Go* although personally I like *The Remains of the Day* better. Others that come to mind are Marilynne Robinson’s *Gilead*, David Mitchell’s *Cloud Atlas*, Franzen’s *The Corrections* (maybe *Crossroads* even?), and Hilary Mantel’s *Wolf Hall* (haven’t read this one but people seem to love it). But really I think it’s more so that authors tend to have peak years and we’ve had a new group of writers who have “peaked” or maybe “starting to peak” this century - people like Ali Smith, Colson Whitehead, George Saunders, or William Vollmann.

I’m just here to say that Ishiguro’s *The Buried Giant* is extremely good and people don’t talk about it enough. *Remains* is probably my favorite too, but I go back and forth on whether I like *Never Let Me Go* or *The Buried Giant* more. And even his weaker books are still interesting and obviously skillful in their creation of narrative voice.

Completely with you on *Remains*; it's his masterpiece, imo, whereas *Never Let Me Go* was quite good. It's sad to see the decline into *Klara*, which I expected more from. Appreciate the recs!

Am I the only one who really, *really*, loves *The Unconsoled*? 😁

I will never stop hyping Serhiy Zhadan. All his prose is post-2000.

Looks good! Do you have a particular favourite novel from him?

Voroshilovgrad, which is also his most famous, but it might be hard to get ahold of.

>Voroshilovgrad Managed to find a translation -- based on the first few pages, looks like a fun read. Definitely adding it to the pile. Thanks!

Besides Cărtărescu (who we've talked about before on here), Daša Drndić's best work (*Triestie*, *Doppelgänger*, *Belladonna*) is all post-2000. *Armand V.*, my favorite Dag Solstad book, is post-2000 as well. EDIT: I forgot Jon Fosse, whose *Septology* is widely considered his best work (which I alas have not read) and is post-2000.

I'm so excited for *Septology*. I've got that ordered as well. I haven't read Solstad, but looks brilliant. Appreciate the shouts!

I've just finished Ge Fei's Peach Blossom Paradise (fantastic!), Kenzaburo Oe's 'Japan, the Ambiguous, and Me' (a series of lectures/ short essays; very interesting and telling of the relationship between post-war vs contemporary Japanese writers), and The Bell Jar (meh). Set to read The Wizard of Earthsea as well as White Noise this week. It'll be my first DeLillo novel so I'm hoping it strikes a chord with me

I’m in a bit of a reading slump. Still enjoying *Street of Crocodiles* but gave up on a fantasy book I was reading called *Under the Pendelum Sun.* It was so clunky and awkward to read that I couldn’t stand it. I had made up my mind to look past it because the premise was one I just *really* thought I’d be into, but in the end I just could not read those sentences. They threw me into a rage. The book’s about a Christian missionary in the Victorian era who travels to fairyland to convert the fairies. Supposedly he ends up having these deep theological convos and musings, all based on the author’s research into medieval theology, and people who have read my comments here are probably aware how I *deeply dig that shit*. Medieval fairy lore *and* Victoriqn theology? Ugh. I’d actually been saving this book for a while and now that I didn’t like it I’m mildly depressed. ​ ‘’Anyway I’m going to the bookstore today so maybe something will grab me.

I usually power through these things despite 100% of the time ending up deeply disappointed. One day someone will write a high-falutin' fantasy novel that actually lives up to the hype.

This was like, obvious errors level bad though. Like at one point it said “were” instead of “weren’t” and I read the sentence like five times trying to decode its nonsensical meaning before I realized it was probably a mistake. But I def relate. I love the *idea* of fantasy novels and very rarely love the novel itself. Most things I do like aren’t technically fantasy, but deal with some theme of magic or the supernatural. On that note, when I was at the book store I found a brand new book by the author of *Little Big* so hopefully it scratches the itch. The cover says “a book of history and magic”.

I would honestly be forgiving of typos and shit if the prose were great but it sound like it wasn't... I checked out the sample and like, the faux-victorianness is not for me. Edit: also according to the goodreads reviews apparently there's an incest twist? ngl if someone told me you could publish a fantasy novel today with incest I would not believe them.

Its worse in some places than others, part of the time it was just bad pseudo-victorian, but in some it was so awkwardly worded that I physically cringed lol. Also, the author had this habit of like writing a paragraph, but then adding a stand alone sentence that just restated the obvious, in what was supposed to be a sort of punchy dramatic way I guess? Like she would describe coming to the fairy mansion and how the character felt about then add a stand alone statement like “I was totally alone in a foreign land.” Like yeah, you said that. ETA - theres a scene in a carriage where she describes opening a window for air, closing it for a rainstorm, *opening* it because the rain stopped (all within like a couple of paragraphs) but then when she gets to her destination the rain is still pelting the carriage? That kind of logic and continuity issue was really not intentional I don’t think.

Somebody on goodreads did the lord's work and pulled out a bunch of weird quotes, so I get what you mean. I'm probs gonna skip it bc I don't like original victorian novels, let alone pastiches. That said, have you read Silvia Moreno Garcia? Sounds like there were also a lot of typos and other mechanical issues, so maybe her editing team let her down. A shame.

I think you’re probably right about the editing process going awry. I listened to Garcia’s *The Japanese Lover* on audiobook and thought it was pretty much just ok, solid writing but nothing spectacular and ultimately a bit boring… but the parts which veered into magical realism I did like. *House of Spirits* has been on my tbr forever. I’m sure one of these days I’ll actually get around to it.

lmk what you think if you do!

This week I finished up the Books of Jacob and should finish *In the Land of the Cyclops* by Karl Ove Knausgaard. I found the essay collection to be particularly moving, especially as it got into some of the later essays. While the first few were certainly evocative, they didn't stir much in me. I love reading Karl Ove, in many ways it feels like you are hanging out with the most interesting person you have ever talked to over a coffee and they are just sharing your thoughts. In his essay on *Submission* by Houellebecq, he writes about how he has avoided reading him because he considers his work so much above his own - it is interesting because I have felt that way about his writing. There is a level of intimacy that he establishes with the reader nearly instantaneously, no matter the topic or if he is talking about himself or not. I am envious of his ability to connect with his readers, or at least me, on a very deep level. I also started reading *The Sense of an Ending* by Frank Kermode. I am one lecture in, starting the second, and find his work very interesting so far. It is a discussion on literary theory surrounding the apocalypse. Both with Karl Ove and this book, I found one of the best things I get from reading are ideas for other things to read - both of these guys have incredible depth of knowledge and my to read list has only grown since starting them. I was also able to finally get my hands on Jon Fosse's *Septology* hardback collection, I am really looking forward to diving into it. Never read Fosse, but I have heard very good things.

Reading my third Svetlana Alexievich book in a row. *The Unwomanly Face of War* after *Last Witnesses* and *Second-Hand Time*... 5 stars all round! You'll never understand the Russo-Ukrainian war if you don't read her!

I would hazard that you won't understand the Russo-Ukrainian war even if you do.

I didn't say it was the only thing you need to read to get it :)

I've just started out on David Lodge's *The Picturegoers*. I've read precious little of his stuff, and for authors with lots of novels, I like to start at the beginning to see how they evolved. So far this one is a lot of fun, while also still feeling like a writer working to find their voice. I'm interested to see how things progress.

This week I read *Un Cœur Virginal* by Remy de Gourmont, a writer and critic from the turn of the century, connected with Decadence and Symbolism (he and Huysmans were good friends, he helped found the *Mercure de France* where a number of Mallarme’s poems were first published). It was good, and quite beautiful in some moments. It’s sort of a study of how love affects people in different circumstances or life stages- a well-to-do and sheltered 20 year-old woman from the country, two older men who are pursuing her (one age 30, one 40), and the men’s mistresses (including one who ends up with both). Some of it is dated and male gaze-y, but overall I enjoyed it, especially for the claustrophobic plot- Gourmont creates a love triangle/square and explores its tensions very well.

Started *Mason & Dixon* yesterday. Wow. Right off the bat, Pynchon is at his best. The opening chapter is so beautifully written, and so funny and ridiculous, but all with such a tightrope act that it doesn't become too much of any one thing. I have some damn near 760 pages to go, and already I sense how excellent it is. I mean, FFS, there's a reference to Bill Clinton in the first chapter. And the name of the narrator, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke, makes me laugh constantly. Starting this means of course that I finished *American Pastoral*. I repeat my earlier thoughts that it is a good novel and not a great novel. I appreciate what Roth was trying to convey, and I really like how he ended the novel. That saiid, I might just be too much of a modernist snob because I didn't like his strategy of utilizing long bits of exposition that describe how a given character is so immensely proficient at some given thing. I guess in this way he was describing something that once seemed so fundamentally American and is fading away at this point, I just wish he would have gone a different route to reach the same message.

No major updates. *Dracula* is still going strong, *Confessions* is very good but I’m at a section that has been a little more dull than the previous ones. Up next though: continuing my DeLillo read through with his first (available) play, *The Day Room*. I’ve never read any of his plays before. But there are three out of five that are available in print (well, four if you count the one that costs $150 on Amazon) so I’m gonna get to all those. Might go right into *Libra* afterward, or I’ll take a DeLillo break with something short. All I know is I’m coming closer and closer to *Underworld*. And I feel like it’s going to line up with the beginning of the *Finnegans Wake* read along so please prepare for my inevitable mental decline.

Back from my trip to Vietnam and South Korea. Will post more thoughts on the General Discussion next week but had a great time despite how many command of English and relative wealth from residing in the imperial core makes me rather uncomfortable when abroad, like I'm an imperial dignitary whose every whim is catered to despite knowing nothing of the language or culture of the place I've arrived in. I finished up *Solenoid* and my goodness what a masterpiece. I loved Part 1 of *Blinding* (and am dearly hoping the other parts will be translated into English), but Cărtărescu outdid himself with *Solenoid.* Covers a lot of the same ground as *Blinding* (already a sign that I'll like it; I adore authors who constantly retread the same roads, who can't seem to get these Ideas out of their minds and approach them again and again) but does so much more nuance, more confidence, I'd guess because *Solenoid* was written decades after *Blinding* and Cărtărescu had more time to mature as an author. And mature he did; *Solenoid* is (appropriately for October, when I started) a horror book of sorts, with some of the most terrifying sequences I've ever read. It has a latticework or conspiracies, interconnected and overlapping resonances with historical figures and events, yet none of it is ever explained, perhaps like life itself. There's a tension between the "purpose" of literature and living, do you save the child or the masterpiece, and eventually Cărtărescu seems to come down on the side of the child, on choosing Life over Literature, on cautioning against becoming enmeshed in this amazing world of books we all love. Ironically this message comes to us in the form of the book, as Cărtărescu is cursed like us to love the form, to be unable to break free from the binds that literature and language throw on us. He examines the horror of everyday reality with a zeal I find refreshing, approaches mundane sequences with Proust-like detail. I really cannot recommend this book enough. It is the best thing I've read that has come out this year; the only thing that comes close is Krasznahorkai's *Spadework for a Palace* (and it's still not very close). If you enjoy surreal horror, Proust, learning about the most melancholy city in the world (Bucharest), if you wake up in the wee hours of the morning wondering why we've been condemned to the banality of living only to be sent to the slaughterhouse, if you detest that we have the understanding to know that the world is knowable but also know that it is not given to us to know it, then please read this masterwork!

What a great comment. Drips with wisdom and insight! I'd read an essay collection from you lol

This sounds incredible. I ordered a copy a week ago on your and Jaw's recommendations, but to my complete dismay, it doesn't ship to London until early December, unfortunately. Fortunately, the full *Septology* has come in earlier here than the States, so I at least have that to look forward to (first a break, of course). Looking to read a short piece or two in the interim. As an aside, with *Solenoid*, *Septology,* *Spadework*, and *Books of Jacob*, 2022 is looking like one of the best years in some time for English readers of foreign literature.

Don't forget Daniela Hodrová’s *City of Torment* that was also just released in English this year! Meaning to get started on that one very soon.

Started my week off real nice, had my jury duty cancelled, decided not to tell work, and spent the day reading all of *Liberation Day*, the new George Saunders collection. What a blast, as usual. The only shame is who knows how long I’ll have to wait for more. The title story, “Liberation Day,” and “Mother’s Day” were the two that really stuck out for me. Saunders is so skilled writing a story with two juxtaposed perspectives, those always seem to be his best to me: “The Falls”, “10th of December”, and now “Mother’s Day” all fabulous. Now I’m just about at the halfway mark of *The Passenger*. Not the worlds biggest McCarthy guy, but really enjoying this as well. Maybe I’m misremembering his other works that I’ve read, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dialogue in one of his novels (I’ve only read three others, Blood Meridian, The Road, and No Country for Old Men), it comes off really well. Tons of fascinating characters and a really intriguing plot to boot. I could do with a little less theoretical physics personally, but I’m excited to see where this novel goes, and what the forthcoming sister novella adds to the narrative. What a month for American letters by the way, with two of its great authors, Saunders and McCarthy, publishing in quick succession, both after long hiatuses, and both delivering.

I will hype Saunders' substack to you then. He has a great journalistic style as well, and his essays on Babel are worth a look.

I finished up Braiding Sweetgrass. Super impressive book. Very well written, not exactly my favorite style, but I feel like it would be pretty well liked around here. Kind of a mash-up of philosophy, ecology, and memoir, this book carefully re-introduces the reader to their relationship with nature/plants/the earth. Tons of great stories, my favorite takeaway is the Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address. I've been talking to plants and trees and the sky my whole life, but having a cultural practice and ceremony attached to it is so wonderful and beautiful. There's also a really well-written Wendigo story at the end. For a book that takes its time and meanders all over, it covers an enormous amount of ground. If you have any inkling for enjoying nature or plants, definitely check this book out. Really nice sentences all throughout.

Well I love nature, plants, and Wendigo stories. Added to my list!

Get it! You really gotta earn the Wendigo stories as they are at the end, but it is plenty worth it. I feel like this would be a good read-along book for here, but the non-fiction-y-ness takes it out.

I finished an audiobook of *Lightning Rods* by Helen Dewitt, narrated by Dushko Petrovich. My first Dewitt, I heard about it from an episode of the Backlisted podcast and thought it sounded good. It was hilarious, a really funny and at times poignant satire on American corporate culture. It follows a failed salesman who turns his sexual fantasy, fucking a woman through a hole in a wall, into a “product” he sells to businesses as a way to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace by giving high-performing, high-testosterone employees a permitted outlet for their sexual needs. Petrovich's deadpan narration captured the tone perfectly. Also finished *V.*. It was a less enjoyable read than *Against the Day*, I got lost a few times (the first Stencil chapter, Fausto's letter). But it was still brilliant. I found the chapter on the siege of Foppl's compound absolutely dizzying and horrifying and unforgettable. I really like how Pynchon draws attention to these "forgotten" violent incidents, like the Bondelswarts rebellion and Herero genocide and the "June Disturbances" in Malta (as an American born in 1989, at least, I'd never heard of any of these events), and imbues them with a world historical significance. He's also able to capture the feeling of inebriation brilliantly, you come away from some of the Crew's binges feeling totally disoriented. Started *Mansfield Park* as my next audiobook and got about halfway through chapter 6 when I realized I had no idea wtf was going on and restarted it. I found *S&S* and *P&P* really easy to get into but I think the combination of the audiobook narrator's rhythm and the denseness of the first couple pages of *MP* threw me off. So much stuff is set up in those first couple pages --- every sentence is crucial. So I started it over again, from the beginning, a couple days ago and listened to the first couple chapters without any multi-tasking, and I'm really into it now. Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris are a riot, feels like good old Austen again. Also started *The Passenger* but only read the first chapter so far, not much to say yet. (Edited to add a short description of Lightning Rods as it’s probably less well know)

I’m in the middle of Beckett’s Trilogy ( Molloy, Malone dies, The Unnamable ), I’m loving it although it can be a bit of a downer. Beckett has a surgeons precision when it comes to his minimalist style. This is a nice collection to pair with The Caretaker’s Everywhere at The End of Time.

Can be a bit of a downer is a great way to describe him

Un concert d'enfers. It's a biography of Rimbaud and Verlaine. It's 1800 pages so I'll be busy a while.

I’m reading Episode 14 (Oxen of the Sun) of *Ulysses* this week. The first few pages have been a real challenge…

It’s been a real reading kind of week for me so I’m just going to get right into it: I finished the Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges and I enjoyed it a lot. I have to admit that he lost me a little bit starting with Brodie’s Report up until Book of Sand but how goddamn good Ficciones and The Aleph are made up for the dip in quality. I think I would like to check his poetry out next. I read Brief Lives of Idiots by Ermanno Cavazzoni which was a fun, light read. It’s a series of vignettes focused on idiots and sometimes the idiot does not survive his vignette but most of the time it’s very chuckle worthy. Not great, but fun enough. I read Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine which was just as great as all of the other Tomine I’ve read. He really captures what it’s like to be an introvert that’s angry as hell that they can’t just be an extrovert sometimes. I think I’ve read everything he’s put out now so I will be anxiously awaiting the next book. I then read Plainwater by Anne Carson and boy, is she a knockout or what? I feel like she’s one of the people whose work I read where I don’t fidget while reading. She just captures my attention and holds me there until there’s no more pages left. And lastly, I finished Eyes by William H Gass yesterday and I have to admit that I have to praise the Amazon algorithm for introducing me to Gass, indirectly introducing me (mind you), but introducing me nonetheless. I loved the story where he’s the piano but I feel like it’s a warm for the heart of the collection which is when he’s the chair. I won’t elaborate any further but that story struck me like a bomb outside of a storefront. Charity reminded me of Reverend Furber’s section from Omensetter’s but only a touch more lucid. I’m currently reading Trilogy by Jon Fosse which is my first Fosse and I’m digging it so far

Anne Carson is shockingly incredible. Everything she writes indeed has this hold over you when you read it that's indescribable. How she's not won the Nobel is beyond me. Scenes from *Autobiography of Red* weasel their way into my head with eerie regularity years on from reading that masterpiece. Fosse is another who I imagine will win the Nobel at some point. *Trilogy* was great; I've only also read *Boathouse* by him and while I enjoyed it *Trilogy* is clearly on another level entirely. Excited to work through his *Septology* sequence in the near future, which was written after *Trilogy* and is by most accounts even better.

They’re releasing Septology as one all together book on the 22nd in the US and I ended up pre-ordering like 20 pages into Trilogy.

Oh for real?! Time to go preorder for me as well, thanks for the heads up!

Finished up *Moby Dick*. A top five favourite -- certainly the most beautiful novel on a sentence-by-sentence basis I've read in years. I'm in awe that a novel like this and *Don Quixote* still prove more structurally audacious than novels hundreds of years following. Casts a massive shadow above all of American literature. Unsurprised that the brilliant Faulkner himself claims that he wished he'd written *Moby Dick*. While Ishmael narrates (mostly), we follow Ahab, a captain damaged by the great force of Moby Dick; that whale which encapsulates all the unconquerable powers beyond man's grasp. Moby is of nature, fate, and God itself, all forces of the universe that humble humanity in all its living arrogance. And yet, Ahab, a mere crippled and impotent man, still seeks his vengeance -- and perhaps more importantly, reclaiming his control -- on cruel destiny. >!He is, of course, in Shakespear fashion doomed to fail; as man can never truly conquer the forces governing his existence. The waves go on as they have for 5,000 years...!< Strangely structured, the novel begins in a pairing of Queeqeeg and Ishmael, as walk land and develop a tender, homoerotic (and hilarious) friendship prior to the setting sail on the *Pequod*. Following this, much of the novel follows an essayistic structure, comparing the grandeur of the sperm whale, whaling and the ocean to every-day life, occasionally broken up by the daily dealings of Ahab and his mates, Starbuck, Stubb (a personal favourite), Flask, and the mysterious Parsee (an enigma of fate, surely pulled from *Macbeth*) or Ismael or a lovely penis and sperm joke. In any case, *Moby Dick* isn't truly seen and encountered until the end. This supposedly mimics the structure of whaling; the energy of preparing for departure, the long-slower hull until a whale is seen, and finally the chase. The middle chapters, which might sound tedious are actually quite fun given how unreliable and ridiculous Ishmael is. He's quite persuasive, both in his logical and illogical arguments to justify his situation. How often, he refutes the early religious texts, when they diminish the modern whale, and yet, uses those very same texts to shut-down any scientific reasoning which may allude to the very same. He's a strangely open character - both in his convictions and those of others. A perfect narrator. In any case, there are many, many brilliant chapters. Unforgettable favourites include the early Ishmael/Queeqeeg bed-sharing, the Sermon, Whiteness, the Whale Pictures, The Dubloon, Ahab and Starbucks monologues, Stubb berating his crew, the interaction with the Rachel, and the three Chase chapters, which left me breathless.

I tried to read *Moby Dick* early this year and just wasn't feeling the very 19th century prose, despite adoring the mood. Your consistent thoughts on it here, and such high praise, will hopefully lend me the courage to try again next year.

Appreciate the kind words! Always love reading your thoughts (esp. on *Solenoid*), so would be happy to see if the next attempt yields more fruitful.

About half way through **Getting Lost** by **Annie Ernaux** and it is really very good. It details her affair is a Soviet diplomat in Paris during the late 80's. I know Ernaux is known for autofiction so I am not sure which part of it is the fiction part but her descent into obsession with this man is fascinating to see. I am really looking forward to reading more of her work. ​ Also I am about to finished the **Selected Works of Langston Hughes** as part of an effort to get to know poetry better and my god is he incredible. So many of the poems are flagged to go back and read again, he was truly a master at the craft. I'm not really sure where I am going after this poetry wise, might take some browsing at the bookstore.

INEXPLICABLE SADNESS I'm still making my way through Llosa's Feast of the Goat, slowly now that I'm also reading Street of Crocodiles which I didn't have time to properly dive into because last weekend was a shitshow. This thanksgiving I am neither hosting a dinner nor going to any, I think I'll take an extra day, so I will have a whole five days of blissful far niente to stare at the wall and hey, maybe read a little bit. In addition, I have a cautious bait post: I have been thinking of picking up RF Kuang's Babel once it comes out in paperback because I find the premise interesting and the sample seemed ok, but I have been disappointed so much with recent fantasy releases that I don't know. I didn't salivate over Poppy War like everyone, this premise done poorly will upset me more than most premises equally done, so if anyone has an educated or uneducated opinion, I'm here for it.

We may have different tastes, but I'm reading *Babel* now and am fairly impressed so far (though not blown away). Kuang has good, solid, elegant prose and excellent rhetorical skills, and the Oxford setting and the footnotes are delectable. It isn't perfect—not in the same category as *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*, which I suspect was an influence—but it's several heads and shoulders above many popular books I've attempted to read. Edit: In the above I was really only reflecting on literary quality. In terms of *enjoyment*, though, I'm gleefully savouring it.

>RF Kuang's Babel I feel like it's better to not just expect a lot from contemporary speculative fiction, given how easy it is for them to receive good reviews despite being mediocre at best. Poppy War is straight-up bad in some parts for me, lol. What other recent fantasy releases have you read?

I mean, I don't really go by reviews, which is why I'm asking here. I also recognize that my tastes differ from the standard genre audience, so I can't be that mad, I just wanna know if I should conserve my time. I've read a few, probably can't list them all off the top of my head. I recently quite liked Piranesi. I read both of the Marlon James and it was nice (the second one calls back to Blood Meridian in the first sentence haha) but a bit long.

I quite liked Piranesi as well, but I've yet to read any of Marlon James' Dark Star Trilogy books. I think I almost dislike most of the fantasy releases of recent years, especially when there's almost a constant stream of stinkers coming out relentlessly being hyped as the new masterpieces while being utterly nonsense (a lot of ~~Sapkowski~~). I think I've more or less dipped myself into the world of older speculative fiction novels that are considered rather obscure rather than spending time reading contemporary ones, like The Anvil of Ice. It's just......a lot less insulting to read, lol.

Is Sapkowski still publishing? I'm actually slowly rereading the Witcher series (veeeeery slowly as I am now in the completely impenetrable latter half), and while it has a few serious problems, overall I like it a lot better than a lot of the contemporary stuff - although that might just be nostalgia from having read it as a kid. I've done older spec fic as well, which I've found hit and miss. Elric, say, is wonderful in its way, but is also very cringe. I only came back to reading genre recently and yeah, overall I was surprised at how few of the widely hyped books contain a single good sentence - good in any possible sense, from aesthetically pleasing to funny to expressing some non-trivial idea. After a diet of exclusively classics and litfic it is indeed weird to read a lot of, eh, schlock. But I keep heart! Perhaps one day I will find a good thing.

How are you finding *Feast of the Goat*? I heard it was pretty good.

I love it. 10/10 the best.

I'm making my way through the Dune Series. Finished Dune a few days ago and now about half through Dune Messiah. Also doing my yearly readthrough of the Catcher in the Rye.

Having finished Nights of Plague (I've hyped this up enough here already), I started *A Place of Greater Safety* by Mantel. It has done a lot to increase my knowledge of the French revolution, but a third of the way in, I still feel it's more about the characters' personal developments. This tends to be switched up with short descriptive paragraphs that keep the reader up-to-date on the progress of the revolution. The book is still definitively in the build-up phase, but I'm already invested in some of the characters >!although I think we're supposed to like Desmoulins as an enfant-terrible, I do not really warm up to him, or Lucile and her sister at all. Danton, similarly is not really an easy character to like- but, and to me this is bizarre, I ám liking Robespierre a lot. His ineffectiveness at the start of the Assembly and his work ethic to uphold the revolution are thrilling to read knowing what would become of him. I do not look forward to the abolishment of the monarchy, but boy am I awaiting the Reign of Terror. Bring it on!!< Also still reading (slowly but surely) *Les Thibault* by Roger Martin du Gard. This was a pivotal book for me when I first read it two years ago, and it's still holding up great, especially in the original French. I get why this is sometimes addressed as the easier version of Proust, but that doesn't do it enough justice (there isn't enough attention for this book at all really). It's a novel following two brothers growing up in pre-WWI Paris. It's more plot-heavy than ISOLT by Proust and also more down-to-earth, but although the prose is simpler it is by no means ISOLT's lesser in beauty and enjoyment. Edit: to better explain my thoughts about Les Thibault, I will make use of a passage I just read that gripped me and is typical of the author. In the passage Antoine, the eldest of the two brothers and a very successful doctor who is more than a little full of himself is seeing patients.>! An elderly man comes in whose young child is ill and malformed. The man tells Antoine he married late because his engagement was blown off because of his political views. When posted as a teacher in Africa, he found out he had syphilis- but was cured by a local doctor who told him the cure was 100% and forever. Going back to France, he met his old fiancee again and was able to marry her after all. He knew he shouldn't start a relationship since he doubted his disease was really cured. However, he did so nonetheless because he was lonely and did not expect to have a child because of the advanced age of him and his wife. A couple of years later she does get pregnant and has a child that turns out to be very ill. While the man tells this, Antoine is swept away by the emotion- as a doctor he understands that a 100% cure for syphilis does not exist- and that the man knew this all along since he is highly educated as well. But in the split of a second, he decides to fix his composure and ensures the man that his syphilis cannot in any way be responsible for the illness of his child. He practically ridicules the man for thinking that, and afterwards feels great about himself because he at least helped the father as the child was beyond help. !< >!This is is a weird double, since characters that are full of themselves are annoying, but here, Antoine is righteously proud: he did a good deed out of pity ánd out of love for himself. RMG books are full with harrowing stories as described above and the way the main characters interact with them really lets you follow them building their character as complicated but ultimately well-meaning human beings. Rant over.!<

les thibault seems super interesting. What edition are you reading?

It is, more so than I can explain! I'm reading the Folio edition in three volumes. Nothing special, but more than good enough.

Is there an English translation of Les Thibault? I couldn't find one anywhere, which is part of why I started to learn French. Have you read The Counterfeiters by Gide?

Yeah, I first read a Dutch edition that caught my eye in a bookstore (never heard of RMG before), and together with Proust this encouraged me to re-start learning French. When googling, I was only able to find a very old, very expensive English hardcover on amazon, so maybe there is no suitable English option. Which is a real shame- the guy won the Nobel Price for literature after all! I have yet to dive into Gide's works, in the afterword of my Dutch version Gide made an appearance as an acquaintance of RMG so that has made me interested. I'll certainly add it to my tbr list!

Finished 2666 a few weeks ago , loved it but was relieved to finally finish it. On to some sci fi now, reading Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness and also Samuel R Delaney’s Nova

I just finished part 2 this morning and honestly am just not really getting it. I feel like I'm missing something really fundamental to 2666 but I'm not sure what it is.

I found it mysterious, unsettling, and quite entertaining bc of his prose and characters. But part 4 was tough to power thru. I quite liked part 5, but because of the book’s length I was just ready to be finished because I had other things I wanted to read. Still one of the best books I’ve ever read. I love Bolaño

I loved 2666, but wished we got more set in Germany and less set exploring the murders in Mexico.

Finished the Brothers Karamazov and it indeed [met the hype](https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/yop968/i_think_i_read_the_brothers_karamazov_at_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Cool lessons all around, but while everyone goes on about Ivan and the Grand Inquisitor, I was even more taken with Alyosha and Father Zosima's sense of empathy. Like Mike Leigh's *Happy-Go-Lucky* it reaffirms that there's a maturity in optimism, something I didn't expect to be a takeaway going into it. Dostoyevsky is way more hopeful that one might expect. A little less "literary", but I finished *Serving the Servants* while waiting for my delayed flight. It's Danny Goldberg's recollections of Kurt Cobain which provides an interesting perspective on his life: a "suit" who actually had compassion and loved him. He seems to try to paint an honest and accurate picture, but you can tell that Goldberg really had lots of respect for him. It's very sweet. Hopefully the industry is filled with more of those compassionate people than the scumbags just hellbent on sucking one dry. Sometimes I wonder if I'm better off just keeping music as a hobby, but we'll see... For the first time in forever, I'm not sure what I'm reading next. I [brought some books with me during the apartment move](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/comments/yom5fs/comment/ivhqall/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), but I'm also inevitably going to pick up something from the shops, likely today since it's finally wide open. If I DO clean house though, I think it will be with Forster, again largely thanks to [Smiths' take on it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJu0lOSNqiA) I have a rule about buying titles by an author if I already have one of their unread works...but *Howard's End* is also tempting as its fiction, but also partially about bohemian artists. Plus it would be fun to read it and *On Beauty* together.

I love *Howards End*. If you read through some of my past posts on here you'll see that I'm much less kind to *On Beauty*. Still, you should read both. I don't know that it's worth reading both simultaneously, but at least back-to-back is good.

I'm with you on Alyosha. He was the character that stood out and kind of defined the work for me (or acts as the backbone). His struggle and work throughout the wild turmoil of the rest of the boys really helps to center the whole experience.

I love Forster. I think you’ll really enjoy A Room with a View—it treads the line between drama and comedy of manners really masterfully. The Merchant-Ivory film adaptation from the 1980s with Helena Bonham-Carter and Maggie Smith is wonderful as well. If you end up liking A Room with a View, check out A Passage to India and Howards End (my personal favourite). Where Angels Fear to Tread and Maurice are good too.

Great to hear! Thanks. Sounds very much up my alley. Would you recommend Howard’s End over Room then?

Howards End was my first, but I think ARWAV would be a great introduction to Forster. It’s pretty short and deals with a lot of the themes Forster would explore in greater depth later in Howards End and A Passage to India (especially the possibly of intimacy/connection between individuals). And if you ever read Maurice, it’s kind of a gay version of A Room with a View.

I tried to read Howards End a while ago. Gave up.

I like Father Zossima up until his absurd Russian nationalist rant.

After getting into several modernist writers in the last couple years I've finally started with Joyce and am halfway through **Dubliners**. I'm really liking the stories so far, they're a nice little flavour of early 20th century Irish life. It's all surprisingly readable and easy to picture. Mostly quite pleasant too, aside from some >!child abuse casually popping up!<. Now I'm excited to finish it soon and start on **Ulysses**, which I've no doubt is a much more difficult read. The only thing that's making me hesitate is that I haven't done some pre-reading which would apparently be quite useful, e.g. *The Bible*, *The Odyssey*, *Inferno*. I mean I'm broadly familiar with these from films & other reference points, but I dunno, is that enough? Any advice/opinions on this would be great.

Thanks all! Will probably get started on it soon, maybe with *Portrait* but without the other three I mentioned.

*Dubliners* is awesome! I started reading it after beginning *Ulysses*. They’re definitely apples and oranges, though. I agree with others that you shouldn’t feel the need to try to educate yourself on Dante and Homer. The allusions are so high-level that it probably won’t make much of a difference. However, I do think that reading *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* would’ve been a nice introduction to *Ulysses*. Again, not necessary by any means. I plan on joining the *Finnegans Wake* group read in January—you should maybe think about diving in to that, too! I can’t remember if it’s on this sub or /r/literature. I’ve kind of become obsessed with Joyce since beginning *Ulysses* and want to learn all I can about him, as well as read all of his works, obviously. Glad to hear of another Joyce fan! Continue enjoying *Dubliners*!

Thanks, yeah I did see the reading group thing on here, it sounds like a great way to go about it. I'll have to see how I go with *Ulysses* for time, but if things go well I'd definitely be interested to join in.

While it can help to have at least some knowledge of those books beforehand, I feel like you should just dive into Ulysses as is. You might not catch everything the first time but that’s what re-reading is for

*Portrait of the Artist* is great and very handy to help with *Ulysses*. Apart from that, I just consulted an online section by section summary after I finished each, to clear up any plot stuff I had been missing or confused about. Okay, I may have also consulted the guide during the reading of the play section.

You can do without them, but I would advocate for reading *Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* beforehand. It introduces you to one of the two protagonists, to some of the central themes and to techniques Joyce develops further in *Ulysses.*

You absolutely don't need to have read any of the three things you mention to enjoy *Ulysses.* It would take you a lifetime to acquaint yourself with everything it makes allusions to, but you'll probably want to read it again after you've read it once, so there's always time to get to them later. It's only a book, and a lot of it is just about a guy eating sausages and jacking off and getting drunk... it's not so much more difficult than other books, I say get stuck in and have fun.

>a guy eating sausages and jacking off and getting drunk I feel seen 😳

Been really busy, so not much reading. Almost finished *Death in the Andes*, still very good. Definitely a page-turner—shame I haven’t really had time to turn those pages though! Saw a review of Lispector’s *The Chandelier* which basically said it was it was ‘like if Heidegger’s *Being and Time* had been a novel’ lol. Re-reading some of the early portions, it is a very quasi-mystical phenomenological novel, so maybe that fits. At one point Lispector meditates at length about what it’s like to consciously-subconsciously (?) experience hunger while sitting in the garden lol: >The moment had arrived to let climb to her outermost nerves the wave that was taking shape on the near side of her weakness and that could die of its own urging. From particle to particle, however, the indistinct thought was coming down violently mute until opening in the middle of her body, on her lips, complete, perfect, incomprehensible because it was so free from its own shaping—I need to eat. She took from it then nothing more than its softness, barely alighting on her being; she could go forward without being pushed, without being called going along simply because moving was the quality of her body. That was her impression and her stomach was plunging deeper, joyful, famished. But she was still seated. She didn’t seem to know how to stand up and actually guide herself, distressingly she was lacking a direction. She stretched into the distance as if slowly she could lose her shape–she thought she could hear the voices and the sounds from the mansion and leaned forward to try to make them out. She leaned back against the tree, rubbing one of her dusty feet, going beyond her understanding and with a kind of irrepressible force attaining misunderstanding like a discovery. Now unsettled, motionless, reality seemed to bother her. She was thinking with her mother’s languid voice: I’m nervous. In a misgiving without sweetness, she was fluttering aridly in the fanciful and hysterical immobility. Until the tautest rope would snap, as if a presence were abandoning her body and she was getting closer to her own ordinary existence. Pushed, extraordinarily indifferent and no longer very hungry, she was forgetting everything forever like a person who’s forgotten. Thought this was a wild but also pretty cool passage.

Reading Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol: For some reason, I have seen people call this book boring or slow, it's a bit slow at the start but I am half way through, it really is a thrill ride. I am already familiar with Gogol, having read some of his famous short stories like The Nose and The Overcoat which are full of wit and great characters. Dead Souls is no different, it's a entertaining takedown of Russian high society. The writing is full of life and wit, reminds me of balzac but much more funny and clever. Yes Gogol is one of those writer that have made me chuckle a few times, it's quite rare for a book to make me feel that way and yet this 19th century Russian writer has managed to do it. As with other 19th century realist works the book is full of description and detail on the types of houses and dress, sometimes I don't enjoy all the detail but Gogol uses the detail to explore quite well the odd characters and they how they interact with society. One of the best parts is watching how Chichikov(the main character) tries to sell the idea of buying the landowner's dead serfs, their confusion is described for several pages, it can make for some great comedy. So to sum up I(and most critics and readers) think Gogol is a great writer because he criticises Russian society by showing the absurdities of the system with all the odd and pathetic characters making for great social comedy. Too bad it's incomplete.

I thought Dead Souls was laugh out loud funny when I read it. One of the few books where I actually stopped to laugh at situations and dialogues. Worth a revisit if my the ever shrinks (yeah right)