What are you currently reading?

[lennytheweedwhacker]

i might reread everything is illuminated

i love this book so much

It's pretty fucking great. Do you like Extremely Loud?

yes but not near as much...i probably liked here i am more also

I still haven't tackled Here I Am.

But Extremely Loud was the first JSF that I read and it captured me. I still rank that one above EiI. But both are just outstanding.

don’t ask me why but i feel like you won’t like it as much

Here I Am? Yeah, I've actually gotten that feeling too. Which is why I haven't jumped on it yet.

it might make you want to manufacture z’s

[epilogue]

i might reread everything is illuminated

i love this book so much

It's pretty fucking great. Do you like Extremely Loud?

yes but not near as much...i probably liked here i am more also

I still haven't tackled Here I Am.

But Extremely Loud was the first JSF that I read and it captured me. I still rank that one above EiI. But both are just outstanding.

don’t ask me why but i feel like you won’t like it as much

Here I Am? Yeah, I've actually gotten that feeling too. Which is why I haven't jumped on it yet.

it might make you want to manufacture z’s

He's too good a writer for that.

[Simple Torture]

“When I walked through the large iron gate of the hospital, I must have still been alive…” So begins Ahmed Bouanani’s arresting, hallucinatory 1989 novel The Hospital, appearing for the first time in English translation. Based on Bouanani’s own experiences as a tuberculosis patient, the hospital begins to feel increasingly like a prison or a strange nightmare: the living resemble the dead; bureaucratic angels of death descend to direct traffic, claiming the lives of a motley cast of inmates one by one; childhood memories and fantasies of resurrection flash in and out of the narrator’s consciousness as the hospital transforms before his eyes into an eerie, metaphorical space. Somewhere along the way, the hospital’s iron gate disappears. Like Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, the works of Franz Kafka—or perhaps like Mann’s The Magic Mountain thrown into a meat-grinder—The Hospital is a nosedive into the realms of the imagination, in which a journey to nowhere in particular leads to the most shocking places.

[BurtReynolds]

this was good.

[Simple Torture]

A delightful fictional memoir about César Aira’s small hometown. The narrator, born the same year and now living in the same great city (Buenos Aires) as César Aira, could be the author himself. Beginning with his parents—an enigmatic handsome black father who gathered linden flowers for his sleep-inducing tea and an irrational, crippled mother of European descent—the narrator catalogs memories of his childhood: his friends, his peculiar first job, his many gossiping neighbors, and the landscape and architecture of the provinces. The Linden Tree beautifully brings back to life that period in Argentina when the poor, under the guiding hand of Eva Perón, aspired to a newly created middle class.

As it moves from anecdote to anecdote, this charming short novella—touching, funny, and sometimes surreal—invites the reader to visit the source of Aira’s extraordinary imagination.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

A delightful fictional memoir about César Aira’s small hometown. The narrator, born the same year and now living in the same great city (Buenos Aires) as César Aira, could be the author himself. Beginning with his parents—an enigmatic handsome black father who gathered linden flowers for his sleep-inducing tea and an irrational, crippled mother of European descent—the narrator catalogs memories of his childhood: his friends, his peculiar first job, his many gossiping neighbors, and the landscape and architecture of the provinces. The Linden Tree beautifully brings back to life that period in Argentina when the poor, under the guiding hand of Eva Perón, aspired to a newly created middle class.

As it moves from anecdote to anecdote, this charming short novella—touching, funny, and sometimes surreal—invites the reader to visit the source of Aira’s extraordinary imagination.

better than bolano

[pepperwhiteMFC]

I was invited to a leadership book club. This is the first book:



Seems that a lot of former military personnel start consulting and/or mentoring businesses. I read a sales book titled “Never Fly Solo” by an Airforce pilot and it was a mixture of service experiences and how to apply the lessons learned to business.



For fun I’m cracking open Lucifer’s Hammer tonight. I borrowed it from a coworker so I’ll need to get it read pretty quickly.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[96583UP]

[pepperwhiteMFC]

Next I'd love to see a book on armed combat from a C-level executive

The 1st chapter starts with “blue on blue.” Aka friendly fire.

This happens a lot in an office setting! Except it’s not exactly the same because ... relational aggression as compared to unintentional.

[Simple Torture]

A delightful fictional memoir about César Aira’s small hometown. The narrator, born the same year and now living in the same great city (Buenos Aires) as César Aira, could be the author himself. Beginning with his parents—an enigmatic handsome black father who gathered linden flowers for his sleep-inducing tea and an irrational, crippled mother of European descent—the narrator catalogs memories of his childhood: his friends, his peculiar first job, his many gossiping neighbors, and the landscape and architecture of the provinces. The Linden Tree beautifully brings back to life that period in Argentina when the poor, under the guiding hand of Eva Perón, aspired to a newly created middle class.

As it moves from anecdote to anecdote, this charming short novella—touching, funny, and sometimes surreal—invites the reader to visit the source of Aira’s extraordinary imagination.

better than bolano

Game recognizes game: Bolano loved Aira. There's an essay called "The Incredible Cesar Aira" that is in Between Parentheses and appears as the intro to one of Aira's books.

[epilogue]

I really want to read that now.

[Simple Torture]

I really want to read that now.

It's good so far, more grounded and less fantastical than his other books. But it really flows.

[guestT]

I was invited to a leadership book club. This is the first book:



Seems that a lot of former military personnel start consulting and/or mentoring businesses. I read a sales book titled “Never Fly Solo” by an Airforce pilot and it was a mixture of service experiences and how to apply the lessons learned to business.



For fun I’m cracking open Lucifer’s Hammer tonight. I borrowed it from a coworker so I’ll need to get it read pretty quickly.

I attempted Lucifer's Hammer a couple years ago and didn't get very far. I did enjoy the list of characters at the beginning, with one guy simply listed as "child molester."

[bune]

Finished Semiosis by Sue Burke the other day. Chapter two was a real chore to read because of the characterizations of the people who left Earth. Ostensibly they left because they were tired of the way Earth was going but then they acted the same way. No growth at all there, though I was glad that the non-Earthlings were better than that by the end.

I do wish the humans would have been described more in their physical changes from the Parents to the latest generation. It sounded like they were much shorter - at one point the descendants walked on stilts like the Parents so I know they were shorter - but just how much shorter?

I would love to see a sequel - or short story, even - set in the future of the planet, just to see where the plants/people/etc. get on after finding a way to coexist. And guess what? She's writing one. So that'll be nice, but I wonder if it'll be told in the same way. I kind of liked the generational story-telling effect.

[epilogue]

I really want to read that now.

It's good so far, more grounded and less fantastical than his other books. But it really flows.

I'm completely unfamiliar with his work, unfortunately. Part of what attracted me though about the blurb you posted is the reference to the fantastical. I'm big into that. What other works would you recommend for a first timer who digs magical realism?

[Simple Torture]

I really want to read that now.

It's good so far, more grounded and less fantastical than his other books. But it really flows.

I'm completely unfamiliar with his work, unfortunately. Part of what attracted me though about the blurb you posted is the reference to the fantastical. I'm big into that. What other works would you recommend for a first timer who digs magical realism?

I think Ghosts and The Literary Conference are two that I remember fondly, and also two that I desperately want to re-read.

[pepperwhiteMFC]

I was invited to a leadership book club. This is the first book:



Seems that a lot of former military personnel start consulting and/or mentoring businesses. I read a sales book titled “Never Fly Solo” by an Airforce pilot and it was a mixture of service experiences and how to apply the lessons learned to business.



For fun I’m cracking open Lucifer’s Hammer tonight. I borrowed it from a coworker so I’ll need to get it read pretty quickly.

I attempted Lucifer's Hammer a couple years ago and didn't get very far. I did enjoy the list of characters at the beginning, with one guy simply listed as "child molester."

I haven’t started it just yet, because I got sidetracked- but...

Oh man. I’ll let you know what happens.

[epilogue]

I really want to read that now.

It's good so far, more grounded and less fantastical than his other books. But it really flows.

I'm completely unfamiliar with his work, unfortunately. Part of what attracted me though about the blurb you posted is the reference to the fantastical. I'm big into that. What other works would you recommend for a first timer who digs magical realism?

I think Ghosts and The Literary Conference are two that I remember fondly, and also two that I desperately want to re-read.

Thanks!

[epilogue]

Hey ST.... have you read Catling's The Vorrh trilogy?