after getting bogged down in work, i’ve finally finished all the books lying around in my room. it’s time for something new! can you recommend me a good book to read?
books i have read recently and liked:
- Grow Up by Ben Brooks
- Sunset Park by Paul Auster (I just wrapped up a P. Auster binge, so better if you don’t reccomend other works of his)
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
So, hopefully that gives you an idea of my preferences, but feel free to throw in anything that you think is worth a read. Bonus points for books generally available on Amazon (I have a giftcard).
¿Alguien que pueda recomendarme un libro?
Por fín he dispensado con la montañita de libros que estaban ocupando un rincón de mi cuarto.
algunos libros recién leídos que me han gustado:
- Tenían viente años y estaban locos, edición de Lina Miguel
- Las teorías salvajes por Pola Olixarac (pues, éste no me gustó tanto)
- El rey pálido por David Foster Wallace
a propósito, me encanta el poesía igual que las novelas - ¡muchísimas gracias!
Well, it’s been a while since my last installment of ‘Books I’ve Read’ (November 28th, 2011), so here is a hearty update.
December 2011
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (still reading, currently on page 323/547).
The last of DFW’s work - The Pale King is Wallace’s unfinished novel. I’m a bit more than half-way through, and The Pale King is no different from Infinite Jest in terms of it’s style and difficulty. That difficulty is the product of Wallace’s patent writing style which includes SAT-list dwarfing vocabulary, extremely long-winded sentences, and extensive use of footnotes. An additional feature of The Pale King that only adds to it’s difficulty is the matter at hand: the IRS. The truth is that there are whole chapters which are devoted to the various procedures and highly embellished bureaucracy of the organization. I think it will be another two or three months before I finish the book, as I’ve been reading other works in between. I guess one of the most striking properties of DFW’s work is the diligence and care a reader must take while consuming and processing the information, as well as the commitment that is created between the reader and the work. Through my prior readings of his novel and various collections of short stories, I know that Wallace had an ability to make such a struggle worthwhile, and I can only hope that this isn’t missing from his last and incomplete work.
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.
Supposedly Auster’s most recognized work (I read that somewhere), I enjoyed The New York Trilogy for it’s inter-connectivity, and it’s easyreadin’ 3-section approach. This is definitely more along the lines of Invisible and Leviathan, rather than Sunset Park or The Brooklyn Follies; in other words, it’s vaguely a mystery novel, without the rote and dry repetition of the mechanics which make most mystery novels a plug-and-print kind of formula. It’s probably my fourth favorite Auster novel thus far (placing The Brooklyn Follies in dead last at spot number five).
The Better Angels Of Our Nature by Steven Pinker (Christmas gift).
My family got me this new Steven Pinker book for Christmas (my sister is also a Pinker fan), in it’s beautiful hardback edition. Since I’ve been endowed with so many books, I’ve had to try and find a reasonable way to read without starting books never to end up finishing them. Therefore, I’ve been taking to reading this hefty edition when I’m at home. I’ve only managed to finish the first chapter thusfar but it’s certainly an interesting book. The premise is that over time violence has decreased among humans, rather than increased (backed up of course by a nearly 100-page bibliography).
January
January has been an exciting month in terms of my book-reading, because I visited and became a card-carrying member of the new Stuttgart Stadtbibliothek at Mailänder Platz, which is the most incredible library I have ever visited (see here).
Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski (library copy).
This collection of short stories by Bukowski was a quick read, and nice for my daily bus ride seeing as how the stories were on average 3-4 pages in length. I really am a fan of Bukowski - for having balls and just writing what he wanted to instead of trying to polish what he himself called his shit. But this collection is out-dated, sexist, and only has a few memorable stories. I certainly wouldn’t say that this collection is without reading merit - Bukowski does hit on some feelings which will resonate with most readers, but damn, it really isn’t his best.
Lumpenroman or Novelita lumpen by Roberto Bolaño (German translation, library copy).
Well, this was pretty exciting for me because Lumpenroman was the first full book I’ve read in German! Sadly, my library only has a select few of Bolaño’s publications in English translations, and absolutely none of his work in the original Spanish. That said, they have a pretty good collection of his work translated into German, so I took a shot at this short novel of his. The story centers around a brother and sister, orphaned by their parents’ recent fatal car crash, living in Rome and hardly managing to scrape by. I am by no means a master of the German language, and spent a good bit of time with a dictionary in order to make my way through the book, but I still feel like this translation was missing something. The characters simply didn’t seem to be graspable, and the ending was to me fairly standard, almost cheap. Familiar with Bolaño’s writing, I am fairly sure this disappointment stems from the combination of my poor management of the German language and the translation of the novel into German. I plan to find a copy of the original Spanish and give it another go. Still - first German book down!
Los funerales de la Mamá Grande (Funerals of the Great Mama) by Gabriel García Márquez (library copy).
I’ve been itching to read the entirety of this collection of short stories by Márquez ever since I read three of the stories in my high school AP Spanish Lit class. Finally I found a copy (a French-Spanish Bilingual edition, but hey…) and was able to enjoy the others. I can’t explain how wonderful these little shorts are - of course many are rooted in the history of Márquez’s imaginary town of Macondo, and reading those stories brings up the kind of feeling you get when you re-watch a movie with a trained eye on symbolism, or even goof-ups like watches on switched wrists. Really glad I managed to find this!
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (library copy).
Another incredible South American writer, Borges is the master of the labyrinth and the human mind’s exponential ability for complexity. I’ve read about half of the included short stories, and each one is a reminder of this man’s complete domination. Invented planets which start to leave artifacts in the ‘real’ world, dreams within dreams (yes ladies and gentlemen, Inception wasn’t really that ground-breaking), and symbolic mazes. He also writes in a very clear Spanish without too many regionalisms, for which I am incredibly thankful.
and finally found a copy of Gabriel García Márquez’s Los funerales de la Mamá Grande in Spanish! It’s actually a bilingual Spanish-French edition but it’s cool because it has footnotes in French which I can 75% understand, and it has the most awesome cover illustration which I am too lazy to take a picture of, sorry. Yeah, my life is boring.
Christmas came a bit early today, in the form of a cardboard amazon box containing these three beauties.
It’s actually quite difficult to photograph three books while simultaneously concealing my ghastly hands, and making sure that all titles are legible. We have here Moon Palace, In The Country of Last Things, and The New York Trilogy, all by the great Paul Auster.
Thanks mah, I’m a happy camper. My life has been reduced down to books. I like it.
‘Our house was outside of the city, off one of the blacktop roads. We had us a big dog that my daddy would keep on a chain in the front yard. A big part German shepherd. I hated the chain but we didn’t have a fence, we were right off the road there. The dog hated that chain. But he had dignity. What he’d do, he’d never go out to the length of the chain. He’d never even get out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up, or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn’t hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. Maybe he wasn’t pretending - maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain. I loved that damn dog.’
Books I’ve Read: November, 2011
Another well thought-out novel from Paul Auster that seems to capitalize on his ability to create a novel’s atmosphere while simultaneously injecting the kind of puzzling aspect of a mystery book. Great but heart-breaking ending. After this book decided to take a little hiatus from my Auster streak just to get a bit of a broader spectrum of reading. Planning on working on the rest of his bibliography after the Holidays.
I was a little hesitant to buy this book after reading on the back cover, ”The first Great American Novel of the post-Obama era.” It seems like everyone is trying to write the ‘post-9/11’ or ‘post-Obama’ novel, but has that much really changed since Obama took office, social-atmosphere-wise? Well, I’m glad I proceeded with it - after a slow first 50-60 pages it started to pull me in. Eventually I felt as if the characters’ situations had be custom tailored for me as the singular audience. That kind of a good book.
This book has got (per the norm) a lot of hype from the Alt Lit crowd, so I decided to pick it up. Not a bit disappointed - in fact it turned out to be a desperately needed break from the Post-Modern which is inherently a bit depressing. Kids and alcohol and sex-campaigns. I laughed at least 5-6 times loudly on the bus while reading the last 20 or so pages. Made me realize how much I miss my friends back home and being a lousy teenager. Fuzzy ending that was a welcome departure from the win-some/lose-some of the last batch of books I read.
