Bisclavret

September 8, 2001 4:57 PM

Bisclavret is part of a book I'm reading, "Les Lais de Marie de France." [Modern and original French versions, side-by-side]. Also the tragedy Suréna [French link], by Pierre Corneille, and for a reading group, Genesis from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, as a literary, not religious, text. Last week the group read The Dead from James Joyce's "The Dubliners" and before that Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." What are you reading?
posted by Mo Nickels (49 comments total)

I just picked up The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen based on the recommendation of this this review and the strength of his essay Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels. It looks like it'll be a fun read.

I'm also reading Tender Is the Night by the poor son of a bitch F. Scott Fitzgerald and Waiting for God by Simone Weil. Are other people in the habit of reading multiple books at the same time, too?
posted by turaho at 5:23 PM on September 8, 2001

I recently read 1984 by George Orwell and I loved the hell out of it (it's now my favorite book). Right now I am reading Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov. It's also a good read if you can get through the slow middle. Next in line is A Brave New World by Aldous Huxly.
posted by untuckedshirts at 5:38 PM on September 8, 2001

After a glorious week with Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay I'm in the midst of a forest of books for my Information Ethics class at Pitt, including Integrity by Stephen Carter, Ethics for the New Millennium by the Dalai Lama, The Mobilization of Shame by Robert Drinan, and The Great Work by Thomas Berry. Has anybody out there read any of these and/or care to comment?
posted by arco at 5:49 PM on September 8, 2001

Well, I am not quite the literature buff that it appears that others are, but the books I am currently reading are: Work-related Inside C#, Professional C#, The Unified Software Development Process, and sorta work related The Philosophical Programmer. For fun I am reading Hidden Charges by Ridley Pearson and Acolytes of Cthulu - basically a collection of stories that extend the H.P. Lovecraft mythology.
posted by patrickje at 6:00 PM on September 8, 2001

Loved Kavalier and Clay. The scene on top of the Empire State Building is one of the most romantic/erotic things I've read in a long time. Side note: picked up Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh a few weeks back and was not impressed. His love of language and finely-drawn eccentric characters was already in place, but I don't think he pulled it into a satisfying whole, like he did later with Wonder Boys or K&C. Regardless, Chabon's on my short list of favorite living authors, along with Paul Auster, David Foster Wallace, and David Sedaris.
posted by turaho at 6:03 PM on September 8, 2001

diaspora by greg egan. from the inside bookcover: "...the most important SF writer in the world." in the world!
posted by kliuless at 6:09 PM on September 8, 2001

Just don't ever, ever, read his Teranesia. Great start, but then it turns into a rollercoaster ride of crap which doesn't let up until the last page.
posted by darukaru at 6:16 PM on September 8, 2001

Mo, that sounds startlingly similar to my first-quarter reading list at Stanford (Western Civ)... These days, I am reading No Logo, Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, and Catch-22 (which is truly excellent).
posted by jacobris at 6:57 PM on September 8, 2001

Recently finished Don DeLillo's latest (The Body Artist) but found it a bit lack-luster compared to White Noise (which is great). I'm also working my way through the Old Testiment as a literary (not religious) exercise. I'm currently at Leviticus 24. It's been easy to kick through it thanks to Olive Tree's BibleReader freeware for Palm. They have a KJV version for free. Some others are pay. But the reader is freeware. Geek-wise, I've been enjoying Shildt's Java 2: The Complete Reference which is really a soup-to-nuts intro to OO programming (and the best intro to Java I've seen).
posted by wheat at 7:02 PM on September 8, 2001

I'm rereading Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books, and will be starting Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry series either tonight or tomorrow. I've recently read Lois McMaster Bujold's latest, The Curse of Chalion--wonderful. I should be reading Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Paton-Walsh for an online reading group, but I'm not. In terms of trashy reading, I inhaled the newest Stephanie Laurens Regency, All About Passion this afternoon (I love being able to read 400 pages in a matter of hours...).

I am an appallingly indiscriminate reader.
posted by eilatan at 7:32 PM on September 8, 2001

Two weeks ago I finished the Selected Letters of Nabokov and remembered why I love the old bastard. So this week I'm rereading the Collected Short Stories and bits of Andrew Fields' biography Nabokov: A Life in Art.

All that Russian is actually starting to get a bit heavy, so I also cooled off with Tom Robbins' Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and a bitter argument with a friend about whether Robbins just writes the same book over and over. Much better.
posted by gleuschk at 7:32 PM on September 8, 2001

For school: Plato - Republic(Again. This is probably about the fifth time in the past 3 years, in various phil and lit courses. So, I can skim, mostly.) Freud - Civilization and its Discontents. Quinn / Meeker et al - The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity. Alberts / Watson et al - Molecular Biology of the Cell.

For pleasure: Emerson - Essays(I reread this at least once yearly.) Noam Chomsky - The Chomsky Reader(just bits and pieces now and again of late. Trying to keep brushed up on my leftist paranoiac politics.) Tolkien - The Fellowship of the Ring(I read The Hobbit way back when, but never got to the Trilogy. I figure I ought to read it before the movies start coming out, and it's a nice change of pace compared to all of the other rather weighty stuff I tend to go for.)

So, yeah, I guess you could say I keep a few books going at once too :]
posted by jdunn_entropy at 7:34 PM on September 8, 2001

Tons of Web marketing and branding books.. Technical reviews are part of my job.

In other books though.. J. G. Ballard, and also 'Take Me With You' by Brad Newsham, which was the topic of a previous MeFi thread. Yes, I bought it because I saw it on MetaFilter!
posted by wackybrit at 8:01 PM on September 8, 2001

i just finished hornby's "how to be good" and i'm rereading the harry potter books.

also, writer's market. and the odyssey, for school.

and um, a book by psychic sylvia browne. shut UP. i get a free book a week at my new job, and when i went to pick one out i went kind of insane.
posted by sugarfish at 8:03 PM on September 8, 2001

Wow, I'd love to have a job where I could get a free book a week. ; )

For school, I'm reading Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley for one class. It's very well written but very disturbing. For pleasure, I'm reading Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski. I'm also rereading Catcher in the Rye. You can't read that book too many times. : )
posted by SisterHavana at 8:08 PM on September 8, 2001

In the past week I read Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist, Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God, and all three books of Nancy Kress's "Beggars" trilogy. (I'd read these last before, which may be why I was able to get through all three during the Monday holiday.) I also read Kress's Maximum Light today -- raided the sci-fi section at the local library and came home with eight books, which ought to be enough to keep me busy for the next week or so.

I don't generally "keep a few books going at once" -- not much point when most don't last longer than two or three hours.
posted by kindall at 8:14 PM on September 8, 2001

Just don't ever, ever, read his Teranesia. Great start, but then it turns into a rollercoaster ride of crap which doesn't let up until the last page.

As bad as Teranesia is, it's only bad in comparison with Egan's other work. I'm not sorry I spent the time to read it like I am with, say, Calculating God.
posted by kindall at 8:18 PM on September 8, 2001

Some of my recent reading:
Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy.
Steven Johnson's new book, Emergence (about complexity theory & such).
Caelun Vatnsdal, Kino Delirium: The Films of Guy Maddin.
George W. Hudler, Magical Mushrooms, Mischevious Molds.
Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.
posted by Rebis at 8:28 PM on September 8, 2001

I'm in the film industry and have to sit through film dailies everyday for over an hour. I started downloading free books onto my Palm Pilot and now read in the dark instead of being bored silly. I read "Anthem" by Ayn Rand and now am reading the "Anne of Green Gables" series. I'm surprised how entertaining they are. If you want to check out free e-books for the Palm, go to http://www.memoware.com or http://www.aportis.com. Huge library of all categories of books.
posted by Sonserae at 8:36 PM on September 8, 2001

Most recently finished: Haruki Murakami's The Windup Bird Chronicle (in translation). Not as weird as the cover blurbs claim it is but interesting because I get the sense when reading it that there's a lot of stuff I'm not picking up because of the cultural differences.
Currently reading: Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.
posted by davidgentle at 8:51 PM on September 8, 2001

I've currently been reading The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Elis. Before that, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton's auto biography The Seven Storey Mountain and The Way of Zen by Alan Watts. All quite good.
posted by Theiform at 8:59 PM on September 8, 2001

The flat surfaces in my apartment are usually covered in stacks of books (a condition I suspect y'all know something about). For work I'm currently reading "The PHP Cookbook" and "Access 2000 Client/Server Programming" (ack!), while for pleasure I'm trying to decide between starting Tom Robbins' latest effort, or The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I just finished another reading of "The Doubter's Companion" by John Ralston Saul, which once again confirmed that, damn, do I ever love that book.
posted by jess at 9:01 PM on September 8, 2001

I'm reading No Logo at the moment, too (nothing really new, but cogent and well worth the read).

Also on the go : The Koreans (by Michael Breen - an excellent intro to the people, one of very few) and Bull (Douglas Rushkoff) ... and I'm about to take a deep breath and dive into the Bible again this week (not because I'm Xian, just 'cause).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:05 PM on September 8, 2001

untuckedshirts -
<old guy>
Sounds like you're just getting started on the Important Books : I envy you having all that amazing stuff ahead of you...enjoy.
</old guy>
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:10 PM on September 8, 2001

My list includes: Gideon's Spies from a thread recommendation on the Middle East conflict. Not that bad but a little out there IMO. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid which is a bit on the slow and dull side. If anyone can recommend a book about the history of Italy that was good pass it along. That's the next "subject" of interest of mine that I wouldn't mind seeing what others might have read or recommend.
posted by brent at 9:33 PM on September 8, 2001

I just finished reading "W Pustyni i w Puszczy" (In Desert and Wilderness) by Henryk Sienkiewicz. I read that novel as a kid and felt like rereading it.

Currently, I'm working my way through a book featuring Tolstoy's short stories.
posted by Witold at 9:33 PM on September 8, 2001

Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines, Michio Kaku's Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century (it's interesting to reading those two concurrently), and Raymond Carver's Call Me If You Need Me (Raymond Carver f'ing ROCKS). When my soul can withstand the horror, I read a few pages of Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. Plus, I'm waiting for Amazon to deliver Ansel Adams' The Negative, to help my burgeoning photography hobby get off the ground.

I've been working on these for months. When it comes to reading, my eyes are bigger than my stomach, so to speak. I buy books much faster than I can read them.
posted by jpoulos at 9:46 PM on September 8, 2001

Finishing Huck Finn--language so rich it's like an epic poem for me (BTW, the new (Kaplan) version with scenes Twain altered or left out is worth tracking down). For a book that hilariously satirizes gothic lit, there are an awful lot of corpses in this book. Also found the Miller trans. of The Bhagavad-Gita for a buck, and have John Colapinto's About the Author and some Chandler on tap. Latest half.com grabs:

Mary George of Allnorthoven by Lavinia Greenlaw
The Skin Palace by Jack O'Connell
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I also highly recommend The Horse's Mouth, especially if you're an artist. I'll be getting more Joyce Cary soon.
posted by aflakete at 10:18 PM on September 8, 2001

Just tracked down and read a copy of Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick.

'Twas very good indeed. Only 5 or so more books of his to go now.......
posted by davehat at 10:27 PM on September 8, 2001

just finished king's gunslinger (decided to start it again after a thread from a few weeks ago), the 8th issue of scarab (kabuki), and probably going for hornby's new book or the next dark tower book next.
posted by lotsofno at 10:45 PM on September 8, 2001

< ot >
davidgentle: murakami wrote this book a few years ago called 'underground,' about the sarin gas attacks on tokyo subways in, i believe, 95. it was really interesting; a good part of the text was interviews of survivors of the attack. it's in translation too (obviously, because i can't read very much japanese) but i thought it was really good. so, you know, if you like his work...
< /ot >
posted by sugarfish at 11:51 PM on September 8, 2001

Turaho (response to post waaaay up there):

I agree completely about the Empire State Building scene in Kavalier; there's absolutely nothing about that scene I would change.

re Mysteries of Pittsburgh: I understand your reactions, but you have to remember that it was his graduate thesis(!!) that ended up in the hands of a publisher. I personally liked it because it's set in the part of Pittsburgh where I live/work. Did you read Wonder Boys? I loved it, as well as the movie version (I was an extra in it), but Kavalier and Clay was so much more ambitious....
posted by arco at 11:52 PM on September 8, 2001

Agreed on Kavalier and Clay. Absorbing book with fascinating characterizations. Just finished All Tomorrow's Parties by the Gibson. I loved what one character in it, Chevette, thought about using old circuit boards as building materials. "When they came from the scavengers they were studded with components, easily stripped with a torch, melting the gray solder. The components fell away, leaving the singed green boards with their inlaid foil maps of imaginary cities, residue of the second age of electronics. And Skinner would tell her that these boards were immortal, inert as stone, proof against moisture and unltraviolet and every form of decay; that they were destined to litter the planet, hence it was good to reuse them, work them when possible into the fabric of things, a resource when something needed to be durable."

Now that I finished that little bonbon, I'm reading Pat Cadigan's Tea From An Empty Cup.
posted by Lynsey at 11:52 PM on September 8, 2001

Just finished Learning Python--it's a good introduction to the language, and fairly entertaining for a technical book. Had previous to that just finished reading the Harry Potter books (finally!), and I must confess I found them rather delightful. Am currently rereading the comic Transmetropolitan, which is fascinating, and a lot of fun. Imagine a cyberpunk version of Hunter S. Thompson and you won't be too far off. Am also currently reading Speaking With The Angel, a collection of short stories, edited by Nick Hornby--I like the two stories I've finished so far. And now I'm trying to decide whether i'm brave enough to start reading Joyce's Ulysses yet, but I think I may put it off, because I need to reread The Lord of the Rings before the movies come out.
posted by moss at 12:11 AM on September 9, 2001

Odl a Chynganedd by Dewi Emrys, an introduction to the intricacies of strict metre verse. A biography of Teulu'r Cilie [Welsh link], a family of poets who lived just up the road from here. Re-reading (slowly) David Jones' Anathemata. My favourite novelist in English is John Cowper Powys and there's usually one of his books on the bedside table (I read Wolf Solent every year, and so should you).
posted by ceiriog at 2:16 AM on September 9, 2001

The internet, the Sunday newspapers, and Jeffery Deaver's The Blue Nowhere.
posted by flowerdale at 2:44 AM on September 9, 2001

lyn hejinian - 'language of inquiry' and rereading 'my life'
john ashbery - rereading 'flowchart'
orhan pamuk - 'the white castle'
bill burroughs - 'last words'
atlas press - 'oulipo compendium'
posted by juv3nal at 3:42 AM on September 9, 2001

Barbara Taylor Bradford's 'Hold the Dream'. More interestingly, what books have you started but put down after the first two pages. I've just donatedTolstoy's 'Anna Karenina', Italo Calvino's 'If On a Winter's Night a Traveller' and John Irving's 'A Son of the Circus' to Oxfam.
posted by Summer at 3:56 AM on September 9, 2001

just finished reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) to my 12 year old (do Americans still read it? do we all recognise its sweet humanitarian longing and our loss of adventure?), John Ralston Saul's Voltaire's Bastards (do we dare read this critique of the way we are?) and Swami Vivekananda Complete Works (Vol 2)lectures fronm 1890s transcribed) havn't left my bedside in 8 years - reality check - beautiful mature English AND substance!
posted by dodialog at 5:50 AM on September 9, 2001

This week I read Picture This by Joseph Heller, Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, The Republic of Tea by Mel Ziegler, et al, and Trial By Terror by Paul Gallico.

I have become so isolated from readers...it's nice to see that there are some out there, somewhere, who yet read.
posted by rushmc at 9:20 AM on September 9, 2001

Oh dear, I've probably come too late to the party (but grudging thanks to the whining metatalkers for pointing me here at all).
kliuless/darukaru - but at least the characters in Teranesia were a little more developed. Permutation City is full of excellent ideas.
wheat - White Noise is his best, imho, so disarming and wickedly cruel. How does Body Artist compare to the others? I should check it out.
jdunn_entropy - give up, only Chomsky can remember enough to counter their arguments. If you can't beat your conscience into submission, Language & Politics doesn't overlap much, so is also worth getting.
davidgentle - thanks for that comment. I was going to read that, but maybe won't now!
rushmc - what's Picture This like? - I'd read another Catch-22, but hell will freeze over before I subject myself to another Something Happened (the most bitter book ever?)
posted by andrew cooke at 2:04 PM on September 9, 2001

Just a note - this thread and/or the food one is being discussed here.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:24 PM on September 9, 2001

re: Egan. I thought Permutation City and Diaspora were great, and his short-story collection Axiomatic was good--all chock-full of ideas. (I especially like the story in Axiomatic where the geneered super-kid achieves Nirvana and retroactively erases himself from existence.) So, yeah, Egan gets a thumbs-up in general, but Teranesia gets a big thumbs-down. None of the ideas really hooked me, and what was basically a deus ex machina at the end sealed its fate. I sold it to a used book store the day after finishing it, and I almost never get rid of books anymore.
I'm between books right now, having recently finished House of Leaves, which leaves me with a choice: read this Borges short-story anthology (which I picked up for a song) or take my annual attempt at reading Gravity's Rainbow? (I can never get far past page 300 without losing interest.)
posted by darukaru at 3:53 PM on September 9, 2001

Oh dear, missed a tag somewhere... sorry. I'm afraid I don't know how to fix it either...
posted by e^2 at 8:34 PM on September 9, 2001

Just make a post with </i> in it. Or wait for the Post-Fixing Gnomes to do it.
posted by darukaru at 8:49 PM on September 9, 2001

Ah, much thanks. The preview didn't show that fix working (yes, I previewed it first the second time!).
posted by e^2 at 10:27 PM on September 9, 2001

I agree Teranesia isn't as good a book from an ideas POV (which is why one reads Egan - at least, it's what I read him for and he's about the only SF writer I do read), but it's emotionally more believable. Hopefully he can combine both in whatever he does next.

I once waded through Gravity's Rainbow, but remember nothing of it (apart from dark-sucking light bulbs). Mason & Dixon is much more readable (and memorable) (or I changed a lot between the two books). One day I must read Lot V...
posted by andrew cooke at 2:19 AM on September 10, 2001

rushmc - what's Picture This like? - I'd read another Catch-22, but hell will freeze over before I subject myself to another Something Happened (the most bitter book ever?)

I liked it. I haven't read Something Happened (though your description intrigues me), so I can't compare it to that one. At its best, it was a fascinating examination of certain universalities through a comparison of seemingly very different historical figures and eras. At its worst, parts read like flat history or recapitulation of Plato, Aristotle, etc. But the good outweighed the bad, for me, at least. By spots, it was very provocative.
posted by rushmc at 11:56 AM on September 10, 2001