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June 26
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Pierce
gave  to:
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (Hardcover)
by
Kazuo Ishiguro
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my rating:
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read in June, 2009
Pierce said:
"Hmmm... While I enjoyed the pace of these stories, and the ease of them, I kind of felt like I was going through each one waiting for that kick that Ishiguro has delivered in every other thing of his I've read (all novels). And it's not in these. He...more
Hmmm... While I enjoyed the pace of these stories, and the ease of them, I kind of felt like I was going through each one waiting for that kick that Ishiguro has delivered in every other thing of his I've read (all novels). And it's not in these. He's going for something much softer.
And his writing is quite ordinary. Which always made sense in the context of his earlier novels, but in here there's no real excuse for a middle-aged musician to talk so plainly unless he's kind of... plain? I get the feeling these stories are very considered and carefully balanced, but what I'm getting out my end is... kind of flat.
The overall message is quite bleak: love dies, people change. There's an obvious thread running through the five stories. Music and change. It's not too subtle, unless there's something I'm missing.
While I didn't feel like I was wasting my time, this had very little of the mystery and layering I love this author for. One story had me in fits of laughing. At least two I really didn't like.(less)
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June 25
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Pierce
gave  to:
London Fields (Paperback)
by
Martin Amis
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my rating:
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read in June, 2009
Pierce said:
"It's possible that in the past I may have represented myself as someone who has read London Fields. That's because I absolutely thought I did! I was confusing it with Money, or the Rachel Papers, or something. All I know is that every time I saw it o...more
It's possible that in the past I may have represented myself as someone who has read London Fields. That's because I absolutely thought I did! I was confusing it with Money, or the Rachel Papers, or something. All I know is that every time I saw it on a bookshelf I checked it off and moved on.
So recently a particularly ugly cover made me pick it up and, scanning the first few pages, I realised I'd never read it at all! Exciting.
And holy shit. It was pretty amazing, as an Amis novel. His magnum opus? Unending bleak and cynical and as black as funny as all heck. It could be labeled misogynistic, classist, racist, but really is just even-handedly misanthropic. No one is held in high regard. If you went in with an axe to grind there are any number of millstones. I myself was offended on behalf of ineffectual and winsome white men everywhere.
The plot is convoluted but ingenious. The characters are preposterous. The sleeve notes make a Dickens comparison and it rings true. These are stereotypes writ large, more awful and scheming and selfish than seemingly plausible for a novel with serious intent. Marmaduke may be my favourite villain in a lifetime of reading.
Amis is a unbearable and showboating smartarse. I wish he'd come back.(less)
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Pierce
gave  to:
Other Voices, Other Rooms (Vintage International)
by
Truman Capote
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my rating:
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read in June, 2009
Pierce said:
"This was way, way better than I expected. Always had this feeling I wouldn't like Capote, from hearing about In Cold Blood, the first true-crime novel. Which is a format I find distasteful and opportunistic.
But then I read this, and it's a...more
This was way, way better than I expected. Always had this feeling I wouldn't like Capote, from hearing about In Cold Blood, the first true-crime novel. Which is a format I find distasteful and opportunistic.
But then I read this, and it's a proper, beautiful, dark novel, full of great descriptive Gothic prose.
The first third is quite Kafka-esque (I do not use this term lightly, and apologise for any cringe-reactions) in its confusion and secrecy. The final third is quite dream-like, the resolution both threatening and a release.
Just really good southern stuff with a wonderful turn of phrase and mysterious, larger-than-life characters.
Also a coming of gay story? Which I didn't explicitly see on reading. But is undeniable thinking back on it.(less)
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Pierce
gave to:
Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories (Hardcover)
by
John McGahern
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my rating:
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read in May, 2009
Pierce said:
"I've been reading this on and off for quite a while. Short stories between other novels. I think this might be the first time I've ever had a very strong personal reaction to a set of short stories.
McGahern has always been there floating on...more
I've been reading this on and off for quite a while. Short stories between other novels. I think this might be the first time I've ever had a very strong personal reaction to a set of short stories.
McGahern has always been there floating on the periphery for me. A man who comes up regularly as an important Irish author, but I'd just never gotten round to reading him. He died in 2006.
I think this collection has a strong overlap with The Collected Stories; it has just two new ones. So if you could get your hands on either then either would do.
And I think you should, if you are at interested in what happened to Ireland in the latter half of the twentieth century. I've never encountered anything that encapsulated both urban and rural culture so completely. The interactions and social arrangements contained in these small, largely uneventful tales explains more than any number of histories you might read. It's all in here: the family, the farm, the land, the pub, hurling and football, the escape to Dublin, trips home, the drinking, marriage, the civil service, the teachers, the priests, the gardai, trade unions, Protestants, neighbours, mass, weddings, funerals.
A lot of the stories follow repetitive structures, slight variations on common experiences. It feels natural, cyclical.
I'm having trouble articulating how big and moving I found this collection as a whole. I feel like it has impressed something important upon me. It has not so much changed my outlook as given it foundations and scope.(less)
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June 12
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Pierce
gave  to:
The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems (Paperback)
by
Michael Ondaatje
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my rating:
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read in May, 2009
Pierce said:
"Okay, I can understand why people give out about the poet Ondaatje! Some of this is quite laboured. But again, some is quite lovely.
Big metaphors, silly similes, occasionally.
I liked the stuff about his family, now that I've read ...more
Okay, I can understand why people give out about the poet Ondaatje! Some of this is quite laboured. But again, some is quite lovely.
Big metaphors, silly similes, occasionally.
I liked the stuff about his family, now that I've read his "autobiography." There's a lot of extra detail in it.
Again, I prefer the poetry interspersed with prose in Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter. More... grounded. But I liked quite a lot of this more than I imagined I would.(less)
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June 05
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Pierce
gave to:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Paperback)
by
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
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my rating:
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read in May, 2009
Pierce said:
"I shouldn't have waited so long to write something on this. Read it a month ago.
Luke handed it to me saying that it was a kind of shoddy translation, but I think I would have come to this conclusion myself. This has been a real feature in t...more
I shouldn't have waited so long to write something on this. Read it a month ago.
Luke handed it to me saying that it was a kind of shoddy translation, but I think I would have come to this conclusion myself. This has been a real feature in the Russian books I've read, but I'm not sure if it's that Russian doesn't play nice when made to English, or simply that Russian prose is not particularly pleasing to read, at least for a westerner.
But for its historical value, the book is well-worth it. It's practically autobiographical, Solzhenitsyn having spent time in gulags. The life is unimaginable. The day is centered around tiny achievements, miniscule nuggets of happiness won through wit and experience. A crust of bread, extra porridge. The day described is actually a good day as days in the gulag go, although the description is relative. Massively relative.
There's an interesting kind of conflict where the author is critical of his keepers and the system, but takes huge pride in his team and his work at the gulag. There are pages that read like communist propaganda praising the man who works selflessly for his team, the "in this together" mentality. But the story as a whole, and the described histories that brought the men to the prison camp, are openly damning.
Jesus. We have it so good.(less)
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May 20
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May 19
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New comment on Artifice's status update: Added a status: "Only like 25 pages left on Remains of the Day." see all comments
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May 04
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May 03
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Pierce
gave to:
Privacy (chapbook)
by
Molly Young
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my rating:
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Pierce said:
"
I cycled out to Howth which is not a daunting prospect in itself, but I barely know the roads and accidentally tackled Howth Hill. I have no gears, you see, or at least cannot fix them, and the bike weighs more than its fair share.
...more
I cycled out to Howth which is not a daunting prospect in itself, but I barely know the roads and accidentally tackled Howth Hill. I have no gears, you see, or at least cannot fix them, and the bike weighs more than its fair share.
Somewhere half-way up I was weak and wheezing and there was a gap in the wall and a trail leading down through the gorse. I strapped my steed to a well-nettled lamppost and set off down what I thought was the cliff walk, but I was sure of nothing. The day was warm sunshine with a chill gale. Fleeting greyness rather than fleeting sunshine.
I walked for some half a mile along a mud path at the edge of the cliffs. It was a tiny, less-used thing, small latch-gates dotted ever fifty yards. Most led into ill-kept gardens or the woods at the back of houses. Old cliff-side homes that seemed remote through the trees. A short-lived fence appeared between myself and the sea and then a hole appeared in that sudden fence. I climbed out and wrapped my hand through a blue rope tied to the concrete fencepost. It was four feet almost vertical drop and then a short walk sideways allowed me to sit out on an earthen throne, from where I could see Howth lighthouse away to my left, the north, and the cursive cliffline looping away to my right. A half-formed pier was forty feet below, and the blue rope extended down for my benefit, but I was alone and it seemed unwise. And I would have sacrificed my view.
Ham sandwiches were lunch, with lots of lettuce. I read Ms. Young's book sitting in an increasingly cool breeze from the south. It almost got away from me, once or twice, taken by gusts, and I almost let it, taken by the idea of the review it would leave me writing.
A man climbed down past me after I'd finished eating. We said hello but that's all he wanted. He continued down leaning heavily on the rope, and I watched him. Feeling responsible. I watched him even after he was down and taking photographs from the headland. I watched him climb up too, not even pretending to read.
Few books can be read in the space of a sitting. It ties them to a time and place. They become part of a wider experience and not an independent signal. This book was lucky then, I suppose, in this regard. I bit into my apple as I rose to leave, having to hold it in my teeth for the vertical portion. It tasted like ham sandwiches.(less)
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