Reading is not a vice; fake-complaining about all the books I have to read is the vice.
Reading has been called the solitary vice (a title it shares with the more obvious one). I think the real vice that readers enjoy is fake-complaining about how many books we have in our backlog, how the stack of unread books on the bedside table grows higher and higher, and how half the floor has disappeared under unread books. This fake-complaining is really boasting: I have so many books to read, I can ward off boredom AND avoid pointless social media battles! Plus: I grabbed the last copy before you did, nyahahaa.
These are the books that will occupy me in the coming months. I would like to declare a moratorium on book-buying, but why would I do that to myself? Why would I deprive myself of this pleasure when there’s so much heinousness in the world? Also I just ordered something from Book Depository.
I am currently reading Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marias. I bought the book from Shakespeare & Co to keep from hearing the poetry reading upstairs and laughing maniacally. (Never take me to a poetry reading. No matter how good the stuff is, when the reader puts on the “poet” voice my eyeballs start rolling. I like poems read conversationally.) This is my umpteenth attempt to read Marias (the digressions exhausted me) but I think I finally get it.
I said I liked doorstop books so massive they could break a coffee table, so my friend got this Trotsky bio from Kinokuniya in Bangkok. It’s at the bottom of the unread stack, but who knows? Along with the three inch-thick bio he lent me a fictional bio of the man who killed Trotsky. Again, who knows?
This year I did a lot of traveling, mostly for the TV show. We shot two episodes in Hong Kong, where I always go to Swindon’s (even if it’s not what it used to be). Our schedule was full so I didn’t have time to go to Swindon’s, but I couldn’t leave Hong Kong without buying a book so on our way to the airport I spotted a mall and cried, “Stop the bus!!!”
I realize most of the books on this list were written by men, but having Angela Carter and Jean Rhys on it almost makes up for that. On my next trip I’m getting myself books by Nicole Claveloux, Magda Szabo, and Ali Smith.
One of my closest friends Noel is now based in Singapore, and whenever he comes to Manila I impose on our friendship by asking him to bring me a book from Kinokuniya in Singapore. (Does Kinokuniya have a membership card that covers all their bookstores worldwide?) Our friendship is solid enough to withstand lugging a doorstop that could get you charged overweight baggage. I read a Trevor story in the anthology My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead and resolved to read all his stories.
Alan Hollinghurst’s last novel came out six years ago and I recapped it here. Hollinghurst is on my “Buy without question” list along with Ali Smith, Kate Atkinson, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan, Antal Szerb, okay it’s a long list.
Noel also got me Moving Kings by Joshua Cohen, one of my favorite books from the past year, in which two Israelis who have just completed their army service come to New York to work for a moving company that also evicts homeowners from their foreclosed homes. The parallels are obvious and Cohen overreaches, but Moving Kings is a work of great intelligence and ambition. So I got his first novel, Book of Numbers (hopefully not a retelling of the most boring part of the Old Testament).
Found Eugenides and Grossman at the National Bookstore in Glorietta, the branch with the largest selection of books in the Makati area now that the Rockwell branch has shrunken.
In September I went to Tokyo for the very first time for my World Domination Project. My greatest achievement was finding my way from the hotel in Shibuya to the Kinokuniya store in Shinjuku and back without getting lost. I only know Rhys from her Jane Eyre prequel The Wide Sargasso Sea, whose protagonist is the first Mrs Rochester.
On the same trip I got a collection of scary stories selected by Edward Gorey, and a debut novel that got rave reviews.
This one is an imagined biography of Herman Melville by the author of The Horseman on the Roof. It is said to be bonkers and brilliant.
And two more that I’ve heard good things about, which I got at Galignani after two hours of agonizing over my choices. That’s fake-agonizing, by the way. The real agony is not being able to afford all the books I want, and flying economy so I can only carry so many books.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
December 21st, 2017 at 00:52
Sarap lang magbasa nang magbasa ng libro at sana mabasa ko lahat ng libro na yan.
December 21st, 2017 at 10:50
Chus: Since you’re in LA, why not read books set in LA, like Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz? When you’re through with it, you can pass it on to me haha.
December 21st, 2017 at 22:05
I’ve stopped buying books because I told myself I’ll just buy new ones once I finish In Search of Lost Time, Penguin edition. Also, I’m unemployed (but enjoying Scandinavian unemployment benefits) so it’s not like I have the capacity to go book shopping.
I’ve been reading for a little more than a month now, and currently I’m on the 4th book, Sodom and Gomorrah. I’m a slow reader: I can only read about 20 pages an hour, I need long breaks in between, and my limit per day is about 50-60 pages. After that I don’t understand the sentences anymore, so I stop and turn to Netflix.
I think if I hadn’t been unemployed, I wouldn’t have gotten this far. It’s not that it’s boring (sure, the dinner parties on the 3rd book are super boring and excessive; I know they’re meant to be boring but Proust could’ve used an editor). It’s just taxing on the brain to hold on to those long and winding sentences.
But I love it. Proust is really a genius. I like how he describes emotions: like that moment when you get what you want but not in the way you want to get it; like how Swann fell in love with Odette, though she isn’t his type in the beginning; like how it is to be obsessed/infatuated with someone and knowing that the other party isn’t feeling the same way for you, etc. Also, like Tolstoy, there’s so much wisdom in the book, about friendship, love, trust, honesty, habit, how people see you, how you see people, etc.
I still don’t have a job prospect at the moment, so I expect that I’ll still be unemployed in January. I plan to finish it by then.
Sorry for the long comment. I have no one to talk to about these things in my near vicinity. :)
P.S.
I think the Lydia Davis translation is the worst so far in the series. Prose glides more smoothly on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th books. I read somewhere that Lydia tried to sort of translate word for word, that’s why the syntax is weird on Swann’s Way.
December 22nd, 2017 at 10:15
allanrvj: Congratulations! This is the best use of unemployment time. As a bonus, you’re rewiring your brain for deep reading. Get to the end!! If the Penguin translations are not yet complete, go to the CK Scott Moncrieff that all the translations are based on, anyway.
Yes, I read Julian Barnes’s criticism of the Davis. I’ve only read Swann’s Way, and it took me ages. I hope this means the next volumes will be “easier”.
Any time you want to talk about what you’re reading, leave us a note. Post your reading journal. And thank Scandinavian social welfare for making this possible. Enjoy the winter!
December 22nd, 2017 at 17:44
Thank you.
The Penguin translations are complete. It’s only the first four that got the pretty Deluxe Editions because the last two (The Prisoner and The Fugitive, Finding Time Again) are hit by the Sonny Bono Act in the US, so they did not make the cut. The paperbacks are printed on ordinary paper, instead of those creamy, acid-free ones used for the Deluxe Editions.
Since you’ve finished Swann’s Way, give the second book a chance; maybe it will inspire you to finish the entire novel. It’s translated by James Grieve, who I think is a far better translator than Lydia Davis. He translated Swann’s Way during the 80’s but it’s out of print now (though available in specialty book stores in Australia).
—–
Lydia Davis’s Swann’s Way:
For many years already, everything about Combray that was not the theatre and drama of my bedtime had ceased to exist for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, suggested that, contrary to my habit, I have a little tea.
James Grieve’s Swann’s Way:
One winter’s day, years after Combray had shrunk to the mere stage-set for my bedtime performance, I came home cold and my mother suggested I have a cup of tea, a thing I did not usually do.
——
The second book is also Alain de Botton’s favorite in the series. Speaking of de Botton, I found out that his book How Proust Can Change Your Life was made into a BBC documentary and is available on YouTube. Proust is played by Ralph Fiennes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9dwwVvGfVQ
I don’t keep a reading journal but maybe I should. I’ll let you know.
Enjoy your new books!
December 26th, 2017 at 11:37
Orgasm!
I also ordered the Grossman novel from TBD but my copy hasn’t arrived yet. Regarding the remaining volumes of In Search of Lost Time, the deluxe editions are supposed to come out in 2018.