What are you reading?
After the breathtaking sweep and sheer abundance of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell I wanted something down to earth. Down to earth, short, set in a more recognizable era. Hence The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis.
The Rachel Papers is narrated by a 19-year-old shit named Charles Highway. Charles is full of himself, but unlike other 19-year-old narrators who are full of themselves he is extremely well-read and articulate. He analyzes and over-thinks every aspect of his life, keeps dossiers on the people closest to him, and not only plans each move but makes back-ups for any contingency.
It’s the early 1970s and Charles is living in his sister’s basement in London while he studies for his Oxford entrance exams. However, his primary goal is not to get into Oxford but to have sex with an older woman before his 20th birthday. That older woman is Rachel, aged 20. Amis’s writing is so sharp and vivid that we stick around to see whether this spotty, skinny, horny, possibly tubercular, repellent youth will score.
Have I mentioned that it is hysterically funny? It goes into my list of favorite funny books:
Anything by P.G. Wodehouse, especially if Jeeves is in it
Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, and Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
The Catcher In The Rye, which is funny and furious
The Pursuit of Love and Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The short stories of Woody Allen collected in Without Feathers and Getting Even
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart
Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
After Japan in 1800 and London in 1970 my next stop is the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s.
My Jedi master calls Blood Meridian “a fucking great book” and a snob with a massive vocabulary he is. Thrice I have attempted to read Cormac McCarthy and failed: I found myself getting more and more depressed as the novels went along, and my faith in humanity, never at a high, was getting whittled down to nothing.
This time I think I’m ready for McCarthy, but just to be sure I listened to these lectures on Blood Meridian that I downloaded from iTunes. You can watch the first part here and the second part here.
After Blood Meridian, The Passage by Justin Cronin, which sounds like The Road with a vampire plague.
Speaking of Cormac McCarthy and The Road, every day since Friday David Cronenberg’s movie A History Of Violence has crept into our conversation from different approaches. Of course we need no excuse to bring up Viggo Mortensen, who unites us all in lust and admiration, but I wonder.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 27th, 2010 at 04:35
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
July 27th, 2010 at 11:38
howcomebubblegum: What a book. They had me at the pea in the ear. Don’t watch the movie adaptation. Horrible. Except for Christian Bale as the Greek boy she abandons for Corelli.
July 27th, 2010 at 11:51
The Tombs of Atuan
July 27th, 2010 at 12:27
Outliers.
Also: not exactly the art of reading, but I’m watching Episode 1 of the recent BBC adaptation of Emma. I’m trying to watch it piece by piece because Jonny Lee Miller is way too hot to play Mr. Knightley. (I’m more partial to Jeremy Northam myself, in that regard. And Paul Rudd, if “Clueless” counts.)
July 27th, 2010 at 12:37
Let The Great World Spin
July 27th, 2010 at 13:10
Just read The Virgin Suicides (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Reading Immortality (Milan Kundera)
Will read Last Night in Twisted River (John Irving)
July 27th, 2010 at 13:15
Martin Amis is sick, I want him to contaminate me. Speaking of which, maybe I should read “Time’s Arrow” (prize I won from way back here on JRTU with backward signature of Miss JZ) again as I haven’t really read anything entertainingly edible in a long while other than my Outlook messages.
July 27th, 2010 at 13:25
2666
July 27th, 2010 at 14:23
Jim Crace’s Arcadia
Alice Munro’s Runaway
Joyce Carol Oates’s Uncensored: Views and (Re)Views
July 27th, 2010 at 15:22
pg wodehouse’s the theatre omnibus, bought for P100 in an nbs branch, and something called it’s only rock and roll, P10. it’s like the lit riffs series although this one was published in the 1990s.
July 27th, 2010 at 19:47
Books that I’m going to read this week (or until next week):
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
July 27th, 2010 at 20:50
I’m going through contemporary Swedish literature at the moment, and have just finished (and immensely enjoyed) Jostein Gaarder’s The Castle In The Pyrenees.
Also, for something macabre and darkly funny, I suggest Dan Rhodes’ Little Hands Clapping. It’s topnotch storyteling.
July 27th, 2010 at 21:04
I know, the pea in the ear chapter is hilarious! What got me though was the gay character’s first chapter. It was funny and sad and weird. It almost made me cry. I’m going to read that part again later. We’ll see if it will make me cry this time, ahehehehe.
I heard Blood Meridian is very violent. I’ve never read McCarthy either, although I have one of his books (the second book in The Border trilogy) courtesy of NBS Cubao. How could I not buy it when it was being sold for 30 pesos only?! I love NBS!
July 27th, 2010 at 21:38
Alternating these three:
Infinite Jest, DFW (around page 650+)
The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro
Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote
July 27th, 2010 at 22:25
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison. I think I’ll read The Handmaid’s Tale after that.
On a related note, does anyone use either LibraryThing or Shelfari?
July 27th, 2010 at 23:48
In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
July 28th, 2010 at 01:37
I’m halfway through The Great Short Works by Mark Twain. I had to stop because I’m evolving my pokemon, really, no metaphor there, I’m talking Nintendo. Finished Puddin’head Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain, and that was two months back.
Love the list! Thanks!
July 28th, 2010 at 05:00
I’m going through the classics more or less chronologically – just slogged through Middlemarch’s 800 pages of dense Victorian prose (George Eliot makes reading Dickens seem like reading the newspaper) – and (re)started Madame Bovary with Money (Amis at his debauched best), The Lemon Tree (shorts from Julian Barnes) and Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances (Kafka for moderns) on the side. I eagerly checked out a library copy of (our) Syjuco’s Ilustrado – a letdown for which I (partially) blame myself because a) one can never be impressed by one’s own culture as exotic, no matter how hard you try b) I’m too old for much of what I thought was puerile jabber.
July 28th, 2010 at 13:32
Alexander Dumas’ Black Tulip.
July 30th, 2010 at 21:45
what am i reading?
will start on The Rachel Papers tonight. got to borrow it via inter-library loan since my city library’s copy is missing. so i’ve got the neighbouring city’s copy. i love canadian libraries.
just finished Night Train as suggested by howcomebubblegum. was startled when i’d turned a page and realized the novel had ended. whaaaat? had to reread the last bit.
started on The Strain by G. del Toro last week. before I read it, I already thought that maybe I won’t be able to take it since I don’t watch horror movies anymore as it is too disturbing for me (even though I read all of Stephen King’s books when I was in high school). but the premise of a plane landing safely and all of a sudden everything stops was too enticing. so i borrowed it and started reading. doubly bad idea since I did that while hubby was away on a business trip. well, I stopped at the point where the coroner was hearing sounds from the freezer. unlike watching a movie, I couldn’t close my eyes on a book. haha
but I really appreciate your and everyone’s book recommendations. Cooking with Fernet Branca was hilarious and I intend to read all the books in your latest list of funny books.
I don’t know how you feel about chick lit but these 2 I enjoyed extremely last year:
Around the World in 80 Dates by Jennifer Cox
The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart
July 31st, 2010 at 13:23
700 Sundays by Billy Crystal..got it from NBS Market Market for P50, can you believe it?
August 2nd, 2010 at 00:22
Dirk Wittenburg’s Fierce People. The blurb says something like it’s got ironic hold of The Catcher in The Rye and Great Gatsby. It got me and I did not get disappointed because it is very funny. Also, David Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:09
I just got a copy of The Rachael and I don’t know why the part where Highway confessed his thoughts of wanking about his sister is more troubling than Cheever’s detailing of prison men’s affairs in Falconer, and made me stop reading it. So warning for the weak: it may be luciferian. Unless someone could post here that there’s a twist somewhere that I missed. Horrible that I wasn’t warned and heard of the book in this blog.