Books I am reading
Douglas Coupland "The Gum Thief:" (RMO; 3 hrs): Would have worked better as a novella. Personally, I stopped caring about the characters halfway through. Coupland's novel-inside the novel does have a neat twist: it's terrible, and deliberately so. He does get points for the dead-on "writing teacher's note" at the end of the book, which is wonderfully corrupt.
Neal Stephenson "Cryptonomicon:" (RMO; 2 weeks) Bought this years ago and was never in the mood to read it, but am about 600 pages in and am enjoying it. While the characters completely lack any personality (they are all basically mouthpieces for Stephenson), that's not always a bad thing, and in a plot-driven book such as this one, arguably a plus. Guy obviously knows a lot about ciphers and computer technology, and his geek-speak is dead-on. I still think his "Snow Crash" is one of the best books of the last twenty years, and this one comes close.
Thomas Pynchon "Against the Day:" (RA; 2 weeks) Totally brilliant. Probably the best thing since "Gravity's Rainbow" (a book more people claim to have read than actually have) and certainly the most accessible book of his since "Crying of Lot 49" (which I also enjoyed a great deal). Since it's centered around the Chicago World's Fair, this has special "adopted hometown" significance as well. It's a doorstop of a book, but I didn't feel it was a slog to get through. Probably the best "big book" I've read since "Infinite Jest (RA; 5 weeks, two bookmarks)
Michael Eury "Comics Gone Ape:" (RMO 1 hr). Diverting. Long-time commix fans know the old saw that DC's Mort Weisinger believed that comic books with a gorilla on the front cover sold more copies in the 1960s than one without, and so stuffed his Superman books with Kong knock-offs. Julie Schwartz followed suit, and so for a (perhaps mercifully) brief period, DC books were chock-full o' primates. Diverting, but like all Two Morrows' publications, a bit thin.
Donald Bartheleme "Flying to America (SK, 1-2hrs?) Collection of Don B.'s "uncollected" short stories. (This is, in fact, not true as these stories were actually published, with three exceptions, in early short story collections that may now be out of print.) I like the late modernist's stuff a lot, but this a mixed bag. "Sixty Stories" kind of setthe "canon" as the best of Don B, but this collection of odds and ends has its pleasures. Particularly amusing is the New Yorker fiction contest winner, where Barthelme wrote the first three paragraphs and a reader won $250 to finish the piece.
David Michaelis "Shultz and Peanuts" (IP, 3 hrs?) Not really grabbing me the way I thought it might. So far, the article in the New York Review of Books on this book is more engaging. Maybe I wasn't in the mood, but I am bogged down at present in his early family life and his Norwegian relatives.
Douglas Coupland "The Gum Thief:" (RMO; 3 hrs): Would have worked better as a novella. Personally, I stopped caring about the characters halfway through. Coupland's novel-inside the novel does have a neat twist: it's terrible, and deliberately so. He does get points for the dead-on "writing teacher's note" at the end of the book, which is wonderfully corrupt.
Neal Stephenson "Cryptonomicon:" (RMO; 2 weeks) Bought this years ago and was never in the mood to read it, but am about 600 pages in and am enjoying it. While the characters completely lack any personality (they are all basically mouthpieces for Stephenson), that's not always a bad thing, and in a plot-driven book such as this one, arguably a plus. Guy obviously knows a lot about ciphers and computer technology, and his geek-speak is dead-on. I still think his "Snow Crash" is one of the best books of the last twenty years, and this one comes close.
Thomas Pynchon "Against the Day:" (RA; 2 weeks) Totally brilliant. Probably the best thing since "Gravity's Rainbow" (a book more people claim to have read than actually have) and certainly the most accessible book of his since "Crying of Lot 49" (which I also enjoyed a great deal). Since it's centered around the Chicago World's Fair, this has special "adopted hometown" significance as well. It's a doorstop of a book, but I didn't feel it was a slog to get through. Probably the best "big book" I've read since "Infinite Jest (RA; 5 weeks, two bookmarks)
Michael Eury "Comics Gone Ape:" (RMO 1 hr). Diverting. Long-time commix fans know the old saw that DC's Mort Weisinger believed that comic books with a gorilla on the front cover sold more copies in the 1960s than one without, and so stuffed his Superman books with Kong knock-offs. Julie Schwartz followed suit, and so for a (perhaps mercifully) brief period, DC books were chock-full o' primates. Diverting, but like all Two Morrows' publications, a bit thin.
Donald Bartheleme "Flying to America (SK, 1-2hrs?) Collection of Don B.'s "uncollected" short stories. (This is, in fact, not true as these stories were actually published, with three exceptions, in early short story collections that may now be out of print.) I like the late modernist's stuff a lot, but this a mixed bag. "Sixty Stories" kind of setthe "canon" as the best of Don B, but this collection of odds and ends has its pleasures. Particularly amusing is the New Yorker fiction contest winner, where Barthelme wrote the first three paragraphs and a reader won $250 to finish the piece.
David Michaelis "Shultz and Peanuts" (IP, 3 hrs?) Not really grabbing me the way I thought it might. So far, the article in the New York Review of Books on this book is more engaging. Maybe I wasn't in the mood, but I am bogged down at present in his early family life and his Norwegian relatives.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
i really enjoyed Snow Crash. i've been tempted by Cryptonomicon, but always backed away at the last minute.
They finally got copies of it in at the Borders here.
I remember you saying something about autographed copies. If I wanted to get a few for friends how would I go about doing that? I can pay for whatever shipping and things of that nature.