a few (more or less) quick 'uns, just because i actually feel like it right now:
finished reading: Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. i never thought i'd get into memoirs, but dammit if this isn't an amazing book, and dammit if i didn't wish more *fiction* was written like this. if i had more cash and could find more copies (i've only seen it in one bookstore here and, as far as i can tell, they only have one copy left), i'd buy one for all my friends, that's right, every frickin' one of 'em, and give 'em away for free, the only condition being that they drop whatever the hell they're reading now and read this instead...
serendipitously: the day i finished Suck City was also the day i finally found a copy of Alexander Masters's Stuart: A Life Backwards. can't wait to crack that open, but in the meantime...
started reading: Julio Cortazar's Blow-Up and Other Stories (thanks Paul! for pointing this out) which, apart from being utterly lovely, inspired me to soldier on so that i finally...
finished reading: part one of Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives. i honestly can't pin down the reason why so many people think this book is so great; much less why i absolutely cannot disagree with them, which isn't just because i wouldn't know how i'd begin, though that's certainly true as well, but because i honestly, absolutely agree with them, despite hitting a bump or two that made me abandon it for months at a time (never completely; i always enjoyed the attempt enough to know i'd be back eventually. i finally got through on my third attempt to read the frickin' thing, and i am sooo glad i did). maybe i really *have* lost my ability to bullshit my way through life because i can not for the life of me give you a good, smartish sounding reason why you should go out and read this book yourself. the first part reads to me like JK Huysmans' A Rebours getting it on hot and heavy with every Mexican Stand-off film you've ever seen, but with poets instead of gunslingers and yes i know that sounds horrible but it just plain isn't, dammit it isn't!
and yes i am reading the rest of it now.
congratulations to: The Rooster for another fun, illuminating, fun tourney! i haven't read Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and have no idea what you're supposed to do with a thingummy, zafa, but let's hope it doesn't involve too many sharp objects.
early on i found myself rooting for Then We Came to the End (even though it was slain in the Zombie Round by a rampaging resurrected Remainder--which was in turn slain by the ostensibly pure-hearted{?} Oscar Wao), three funny bits of which can be heard being read by Joshua Ferris himself over at the Times Online.
incidentally, Tom McCarthy's Remainder fills me with dread not just because it slaughtered (though gently) Joshua Ferris but also because it sounds like he's more or less successfully done what i'd been trying to do decidedly less than successfully with the book i'm writing...ah well. eyes on the ball, kid.
i'm building up a real hankering for some relatively straight-up SF, though, and today at the office i started flirting with Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods. i'd been avoiding the book hoping to either score it of the lib or pick-up a cheaper edition later on but now i might just go ahead and get it...
quietly contemplating: Neil Gaiman's Odd and the Frost Giants. i know, it's short, i could probably read it in a day or two, no matter how slow a reader i am, but part of me really really REALLY just wants the first time i read this to be out loud to a kid...
on the spinner: Putumayo Presents Paris. there was a sale, all Putumayo Presents CDs going at 20% off at Borders and anyway i'm a real sucker for being sung to in French. they were playing Amelie-Les-Crayons's Ta P'tite Flamme when i walked into the store and i fell immediately in love.
phew. i was quit when i walked in, i'm twice as quit now.
i think i might have said that last time though, so i may be back.
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