100+ pages an hour, 5+ hours a day = an expensive book habit to feed! Maximalist fiction championed by Steven Moore to popular novels hated by Harold Bloom.
Joined January 2023
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Belatedly realized that the bio here has fewer characters than bsky, so I'd better pin my:
Top 3 Books
Ulysses
Gravity's Rainbow
Infinite Jest
Read Peter Heller's "The Dog Stars". I'd heard that this was a post-apocalyptic novel which somehow managed to be uplifting. When it began focussing on the grief of a man who'd lost his wife, and then experienced a second loss at the end of book one I did wonder how this 1/3
could be the case! But by the end it just about managed it. Cordura was a new word for me. I was amused that Hig's favourite books were "Shane" and "Infinite Jest". The descriptions of a deadly worldwide pandemic hit very differently after Covid. The (awful) behaviour of 2/3
Read Rebecca F. Kwang's "Taipei Story". I'd raced through "Babel", "Yellowface" and "Katabasis", but found this slower to get into. Once I was there I stuck with it. Learnt various things and appreciated it for what it was, but definitely prefer the previous three.
Re-read Graham Greene's "The Ministry of Fear". This was even better than I remembered (although reading the smaller font of the Macmillan Collector's Library pocket edition was a chore). Remembered the opening 'cake' scenes very well, but had forgotten large swathes of the 1/2
Read Ian Patterson's "Books A Manifesto". Anyone connected with Nemo's Almanac can do no wrong in my eyes, but I enjoyed this greatly. I learnt about his Jilly Cooper arc from his appearance(s) on @BacklistedPod and had been looking forward to reading this book. As one wise 1/2
Read Joanna Kavenna's "Seven". Remembers zipping through "Zed". This was equally enjoyable, but very different and slower going. Suspects I'll be thinking about many of the issues raised for a while. Has always liked the word 'marmalised' (and was amused by coinage 'boxtopian'.)
Read @StephenKing's ""Under The Dome". Despite greatly enjoying almost all his other books, for some reason when this came out I thought the premise sounded silly and so never picked it up. After being reminded of it, I started and couldn't put it down. Living inside a long 1/5
recommendation from Jack Reacher! Embarrassingly I only put together Colonel Cox's Barbie/Ken joke on page 747... Did like Carolyn Sturges' meta-thought about being 'Maybe a novelist, although it seemed to her that writing novels was pretty risky; what if you spent all that 4/5
Read @j_amesmarriott's "The New Dark Ages". Found this very interesting, and I enjoyed his discussion with @questingvole. Learnt things about 20th century (pre-television) reading habits, and will need to think some more to decide what I make of the arguments about politics. 1/4
due to frittering away far too much time on my 'phone, this may be the impetus I need to follow the author's lead and swap it for a dumbphone. Needs to remember the increasingly relevant quote from David Foster Wallace's 1996 interview. Was delighted to learn that Iggy Pop 3/4
once wrote a piece about Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"! 4/4
classicsireland.com/1995/Pop…
Has started @StephenKing's "Under The Dome" (which I'm really enjoying). In the second section of 'Lotta Dead Birds', after Nora Robichaud honked 'Her best friend, Elsa Andrews, rutted.' Unless there's another definition I don't know, I hope that's a typo for tutted!
Re-read Graham Greene's "Monsignor Quixote". It was (much) better than I remembered, but still not my favourite type of Greene. Had forgotten a lot about it, but remembered smiling at the condom balloons and puzzling out 'que le den por el saco el obispo'. This time around I 1/2
