Discussion: What are you reading at the moment?

[RareForm]

Slaughter House 5 = amazing. yes.

I'm currently mind deep into Candide by Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet). Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. “When we observe such things as the recrudescence of fundamentalism in the United States, the horrors of religious fanaticism in the Middle East, the appalling danger which the stubbornness of political intolerance presents to the whole world, we must surely conclude that we can still profit by the example of lucidity, the acumen, the intellectual honesty and the moral courage of Voltaire.”

 

[Amanita Mary]

Ok ok... i get that we all love vonnegut... BUT--- Tom Robbins anyone? Still Life With Woodpecker is amazing, as is Skinny Legs and All
Im sure someone's a fan.

 

[(Wordy)]

Currently reading Affluenza, by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, who are Executive Director and Deputy Director, respectively, of the Australia Institute - a left wing 'think tank' which focuses most of its research on public policy and social issues. The book examines the epidemic of hyper-consumption linked with economic growth, the psychology of marketing, and the problem of debt in Australian society, amongst other issues related to the pursuit of wealth. Fascinating stuff... well-researched and loaded with statistics, but easy to pick up and read (a la Naomi Klein's No Logo).

Also recently read Luke Beesley's first book of poetry, Lemon Shark. Absolutely glowing stuff - this really sets the benchmark for a debut book. Inventive and unashamedly beautiful, with sharp twists of language... Beesley has his finger on a pulse that's refreshingly out of kilter with convention; somehow, in the midst of noise and hyperactivity, his poetry creates a time and space for music (smooth jazz of the senses), for falling in love with the world again.

Oh, and I read Saul Williams' , said the shotgun to the head. Published by MTV, the book houses one long, prophetic poem about the second coming... but with a twist. The messiah happens to be the girl of the poet's dreams! The poem begins vividly, with all guns blazing, but Williams can't sustain the intensity throughout... The fact that he tries to do this is probably his main mistake. It's like he's driving with only one gear / trying to impress with technical audacity the whole time, without taking the time to build structure and contrast. Nonetheless, the presentation is 'outspoken', and there's a healthy level of experimentation going on in terms of language play - so there is plenty of enjoyment to be had. Who knows, it could open up a new poetry-reading market amongst the current MTV generation... but I think it would need a stronger sense of narrative, character and setting to really succeed in this way. The messages (and there are many of them) hit home, but on the whole there's a lack of sustenance - just a beautiful scratching of the surface. Maybe it could be the prologue to a fully-fledged modern mythology? So far Williams has just dropped a hint that this might be within his artistic reach.

 

[yakksoho]

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

Bang crack blam splash crackle crackle crunch grunt pwutt roaar rumble blomp sbam buizz schranchete slam sprank blomp swoom bum thump clang tromp trac uaaaagh vroom augh zoom . . .

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by the inimitable Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose.

I would reommend this book to absolutely anyone. No matter what tickles you, it's in here. Surrealism, realism; comic books, literature; poetry, prose; Facism, revolutionaries.

It's compelling, sickening, beautiful, terrible, exquisite, alarming, provocative, a dream, undead, unreal.

It is worth every penny. It is even worth stealing from Borders and getting sent to jail. If I could do the world one final favour I would give every literate individual a copy of this book. I would teach animals to read and toss them tomes till a second Golgotha surrenders us to oblivion.

There are no further words. Save these:

They were poems. Poems so bad they could have been no one's but mine. Teenage acne. I think everyone writes poems when they are sixteen; it is a phase in the passage from adolescence to adulthood. I do not remember where I read that there are two kinds of poets: the good poets, who at a certain point destroy their bad poems and go off to run guns in Africa, and the bad poets, who publish theirs and keep writing more until they die.

Underage Canadian girls reccommend this book!

Autobots & Decepticons alike reccommend this book!!

Especially Ravage.​

 

[(Wordy)]

^ Best book review, ever.

I've read The Name of the Rose and a fair bit of non-fiction by Eco... I'll have to check this out. EntrenchdMentalist is forever singing the praises of Foucault's Pendulum also. My reading list gets forever longer!

 

[(Wordy)]

Also I think Rimbaud takes out the award for most joked-about poet, yet the joke is never on him. Quitting while you're ahead is still as cool as it ever was.

 

[Curious Quetzal]

'Libra' Don Delillo
Just finished this book. The life of Lee Harvey Oswald and his interaction with various organizations who wished death upon former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Chilling and apocryphal this is some of the best Post-Modern lit I've come across.

'The Fate of Africa' Martin Meredith
History of Africa since WWII. Well-written account of the struggle for independance in the continent.

'Blindness' Jose Saramago
What happens when a contagious milky-white blindness overcomes a group of people in Portugal?
Bad shit, that's wot.

 

[(Wordy)]

Good stuff, Curious Quetzal. I've read a fair bit of DeLillo, but not Libra. Will have to add it to the list.

Let's see, what have I been reading...

Tales From the Thousand and One Nights (Penguin edition; translated by N. J. Dawood)

Classic stories such as Aladdin and the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, in a bawdy, colourful and episodic form which aims to be faithful to the originals. Many of the tales are like Russian dolls, with tales within tales within tales, a la Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Lots of jinnees (genies), magic, rare treasures, strange creatures, princesses "as beautiful as the moon", hapless vagabonds and cruel twists of fate. Righteousness tends to triumph over greed and cunning, but not always! My personal favourite is the tale of Judar and his brothers, which I'm sure had an influence on the creators of the Indiana Jones series (as did the tales of Sinbad - famously filmed by Ray Harryhausen).

Dorothy Porter: What a Piece of Work

This was Porter's third verse novel, and followed on from the award-winning The Monkey Mask, which was adapted for stage and film. What a Piece of Work follows the travails of a psychiatric ward director who has a dark past. As usual, Porter's poetry is lucid, with knifelike images and no quarter given to taboos. Indeed, the novel revolves around eros and thanatos, and their intersection. It left me wide-eyed with dread, my mind spinning in the possibilities of a suggestive, open-ended narrative. Dorothy was actually writing this while I was her student at Melbourne Uni. Next year I'll be undertaking a mentorship with her through the Australian Society of Authors, which is something we're both very excited about.

 

[EntrenchdMentalist]

I was reading A Scanner Darkly but I can't find it now

I just bought the first two books in L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series. I've actually read the first one about 7 years ago but will read it again just to bring it back into memory. He's a great, funny writer. Reading his books makes me think that Scientology is a big joke...




...on the Scientologists.

 

[(Wordy)]

Scientology is scary, what else can I say...?

Latest reads:

Jennifer Maiden: Friendly Fire

Maiden is one of Australia's greatest living poets in my opinion, and this is a mature, fearless, multi-faceted collection. As hinted in the title, the book deals with contemporary events such as the Iraq war, September 11, etc, but also takes the phrase in other semantic directions. Friendly fire comes to mean the benevolence of insight and creativity (Promethean fire). It's also a metaphor for the inter-generational relationship between the poet and her daughter, encapsulating the fire of difference, and the need for burning to clear psychic land in order to protect our individuality. The layering of these themes makes for rich, probing poetry with an eye for small, haunting detail. Maiden's poetry is deeply personal, but there's no navel-gazing here - these poems are lived out in the world, and capture the anxious mood of our time.

John Tranter: Urban Myths (New & Selected Poems)

I have a lot of respect for Tranter as an editor and anthologist (and especially for his online poetry magazine Jacket). As a poet, I think he’s hit and miss. Sometimes he’s very much on the money with his astute observations of urban / city life, which are rooted in the quasi-anthropological comic. In Tranter’s universe, everything seems to be up for ridicule, and yet craves to be taken seriously – and when his poems turn on this duplicity, they tend to be acerbic and very funny. He likes to take culture and iconography for a spin, set up strange bedfellows (especially that implosion of high and pop culture beloved of the New York School), and rarely veers away from a studied deadpan. But to me, some of it comes off as self-indulgent bricolage claptrap, devoid of life, lacking flavour of any kind. Don’t get wrong… when he’s good, he’s very, very good. But there’s too much chaff in this collection, and most of the new poems seem rattled-off, do nothing to expand his oeuvre, and do absolutely nothing for me.

Currently reading David Antin's I Never Knew What Time it Was. Awesome stuff... will write a full report when I'm done.

 

[Toltecsuperhero]

I've been reading some Richard Bach of late: Illusions- the adventures of a reluctant messiah, One, Bridge Across Forever, and, of course, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Also been dipping a bit into modern fantasy/erotica by means of Laurell K Hamilton, though the erotica seems to be rather repetitive after reading three of her works.
Carlos Castaneda is my old stand-by. I don't think I've stopped reading his books since I first picked them up eight years ago. Currently rereading The Art of Dreaming. One of my favorites.
As far as poetry goes, I've been delving into the Spanish language poets... namely, Pablo Neruda, Antonio Machado, Cesar Vallejo, etc. I just love the way the beauty of the language seems to somehow survive even the worst of translators- i.e. myself

 

[topo]

I read The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson a while ago, about the military intelligence and stuff like that. It's quite scary since most of it (if not all) is true, yet it's written in a very good and funny way, really nice read.

Right now I'm reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (trilogy of 5 parts hehehe), and I'm at the start of the second book, called The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I really really liked Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, and this one looks promising so far.

 

[(Wordy)]

Yeah, the Hitchhiker's Guide books are good fun - probably an approximation of what would happen if British humour took over the universe. I love the Vogons... I think a few people I work with are probably Vogons disguised as humans.

As far as poetry goes, I've been delving into the Spanish language poets... namely, Pablo Neruda, Antonio Machado, Cesar Vallejo, etc.

I haven't really read Machado, but I love Neruda and Vallejo. What about Lorca, have you read his stuff? I wish I could read all of them in Spanish!

 

[Toltecsuperhero]

Yeah, I really like Lorca, too. I think that Gregory Corso, while a stunning poet, probably ripped his style off from Lorca, except that Lorca's mastery of imagery far outshines Corso, and I doubt Corso ever read Lorca.
I don't actually speak Spanish, but I have learned to translate from the written word. I have been at it for about six years now, but my versions seem only to shine in the light of my own eyes. I just picked up a few translation dictionaries and did my best... ironically, I think my understanding of the language is far better than if I had actually taken classes (I took French in high school, so Spanish was no huge leap) Plus I ask a few of my Mexican friends when I'm stuck. Either way, it's an endeavor I wholeheartedly recommend to any lover of linguistics.

 

[vurtomatic]

I am reading Kij Johnson's Fudoki. It's a story within a story.

A dying empress fills up the empty pages of her notebooks. As she embarks on her final journey, she begins the journey of a cat who lost her family and her tale, who became a woman, and catches the attention of a god.

The pace of the story is very slow, the tone melancholic, as befits a tale told by an aged empress. This is not a story to be hurried, but savoured languidly because some of the sentences are just so beautiful, and memories should not be trampled.

 

[(Wordy)]

Hi vurt!

Sounds like a good read...

I think that Gregory Corso, while a stunning poet, probably ripped his style off from Lorca, except that Lorca's mastery of imagery far outshines Corso, and I doubt Corso ever read Lorca.

So you're saying Corso ripped off Lorca's style without having read him? I can see the connection though.

I'd love to do literary translation (especially poetry), but all I have at the moment is meagre highschool French. I'm planning to head to France briefly next year... maybe that'll inspire me to take classes again? Or else teach myself?

 

[vurtomatic]

It is as long as you have the patience, which I sometimes lack at the end of a work day.

Hey I tried to look for Lemon Shark on Amazon but couldn't find it. It sounded good from your review.

 

[(Wordy)]

vurt, I suggest you order it directly from the publisher:

http://www.papertigermedia.com/shop/default.htm

I think you'd definitely get into Luke Beesley's style. In fact, if I was to recommend one book to you based on your own tastes and writing style, this would probably be it!

Another thing: you can probably forget about ordering small press poetry through Amazon. US titles maybe, but even then...

Although soi 3 / papertiger positions itself as a small press, there's a real sense of quality to the imprint. I would argue they are Australia's leading publisher of poetry when it comes to innovation, design and embracing technology. If you have a browse around their site, I think you'll see what I mean.

 

[vurtomatic]

Visited the website and checked out two samples from Lemon Shark, sounds like you're right

I'll find out if they send to Singapore because on the Paypal page, there's only a standard fee for postage which I presume is for within Australia. Otherwise I'll have to remember it for my Melb trip in January. And it's about time we catch up!

 

[EntrenchdMentalist]

I was reading A Scanner Darkly but I can't find it now

Found it! The way he describes the degeneration of the link between the role and the role-player is fantastic. Yet to finish, but it's making me reeeeally look forward to the film.