Wed Reading Meme
Jan. 14th, 2015 06:56 pmDifficult day, with various and sundry work headaches. At one point a co-worker saw me editing an RFP, and said - "you're obviously a lawyer". "Eh, no," I replied, "a writer. I love the writing and word smithing, but hate the formatting, which seems to be what all the other people get off on. All these pretty charts and tables." Although the tendency to debate to a standstill is definitely a side-effect of law school. As MD stated once to someone about to enter a debate with me on some topic or other, "Don't argue with the former lawyer, we'll be here all night."
Anyhow, without further ado, the Wed Reading Meme.
What I just finished reading?
Leviathan Wakes by J.A Corey - a decent space-opera/speculative science fiction story that blends a bit of noir and horror in for good measure. More horror than noir for my taste. Think the series "Helix" by way of Battlestar Galatica and Blade Runner.
Had some interesting themes though regarding both the death penalty and journalism or how much information should be provided and when to the public at large. There's two main points of view - Jim Holden, a sort of idealistic space captain, and Josephus Miller, a cynical and somewhat nihilistic detective. The two argue at various points and both appear to be right and wrong in equal measure.
This is not hard sci-fi, they play loose and fast with the science. Also, the characters at times feel a bit on the shallow side or not quite developed. Miller is most likely the best developed or amongst the few that we get a complete back-story on. And his arc is also more or less completed by the end of the book.
The Kindle version is misleading. The book is finished by the 50% mark, which means about 40% of it is acknowledgements, a lengthy book club style interview and and sample chapters from the next one in the series.
I enjoyed it. But it wasn't quite as good as Russo's Ship of Fools, which was more character driven.
What I am reading now?
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman - this is Gaiman's award winning novel about a man who revisits his unhappy childhood in a small English town.
It's hard to describe - since it is well, Neil Gaiman, who writes a bit along the same lines as Haruku K. (the novelist behind Kafka at the Shore) and Jonathan Carrol, except far more whimisical. He's a dark fantasy horror writer specializing in magical surrealism. His books at times feel a bit like exercises in prose poetry. My only difficulty with them is often the protagonist feels like cipher or difficult to emotionally relate to or care about. (Which was my problem with both American Gods and Neverwhere. However, it was not a problem with Coraline, and this feels like it was written in more or less the same vein as Coraline. So we shall see.
Only 20% of the way through.
What I am reading next?
The Most Dangerous Book:the Battle for James Joyce's Ulysess by Kevin Birmingham
Blurb from Amazon:
"A great story—how modernism brought down the regime of censorship—told as a great story. Kevin Birmingham's imaginative scholarship brings Joyce and his world to life. There is a fresh detail on nearly every page."—Louis Menand, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Metaphysical Club
For more than a decade, the book that literary critics now consider the most important novel in the English language was illegal to own, sell, advertise or purchase in most of the English-speaking world. James Joyce’s big blue book, Ulysses, ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel for all time. But the genius of Ulysses was also its danger: it omitted absolutely nothing. All of the minutiae of Leopold Bloom’s day, including its unspeakable details, unfold with careful precision in its pages. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice immediately banned the novel as “obscene, lewd, and lascivious.” Joyce, along with some of the most important publishers and writers of his era, had to fight for years to win the freedom to publish it. The Most Dangerous Book tells the remarkable story surrounding Ulysses, from the first stirrings of Joyce’s inspiration in 1904 to its landmark federal obscenity trial in 1933.
Literary historian Kevin Birmingham follows Joyce’s years as a young writer, his feverish work on his literary masterpiece, and his ardent love affair with Nora Barnacle, the model for Molly Bloom. Joyce and Nora socialized with literary greats like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Beach. Their support helped Joyce fight an array of anti-vice crusaders while his book was disguised and smuggled, pirated and burned in the United States and Britain. The long struggle for publication added to the growing pressures of Joyce’s deteriorating eyesight, finances and home life.
Salvation finally came from the partnership of Bennett Cerf, the cofounder of Random House, and Morris Ernst, a dogged civil liberties lawyer. With their stewardship, the case ultimately rested on the literary merit of Joyce’s master work. The sixty-year-old judicial practices governing obscenity in the United States were overturned because a federal judge could get inside Molly Bloom’s head.
Birmingham’s archival work brings to light new information about both Joyce and the story surrounding Ulysses. Written for ardent Joyceans as well as novices who want to get to the heart of the greatest novel of the twentieth century, The Most Dangerous Book is a gripping examination of how the world came to say yes to Ulysses.
Hmmm...we'll see if I make it through it.
Anyhow, without further ado, the Wed Reading Meme.
What I just finished reading?
Leviathan Wakes by J.A Corey - a decent space-opera/speculative science fiction story that blends a bit of noir and horror in for good measure. More horror than noir for my taste. Think the series "Helix" by way of Battlestar Galatica and Blade Runner.
Had some interesting themes though regarding both the death penalty and journalism or how much information should be provided and when to the public at large. There's two main points of view - Jim Holden, a sort of idealistic space captain, and Josephus Miller, a cynical and somewhat nihilistic detective. The two argue at various points and both appear to be right and wrong in equal measure.
This is not hard sci-fi, they play loose and fast with the science. Also, the characters at times feel a bit on the shallow side or not quite developed. Miller is most likely the best developed or amongst the few that we get a complete back-story on. And his arc is also more or less completed by the end of the book.
The Kindle version is misleading. The book is finished by the 50% mark, which means about 40% of it is acknowledgements, a lengthy book club style interview and and sample chapters from the next one in the series.
I enjoyed it. But it wasn't quite as good as Russo's Ship of Fools, which was more character driven.
What I am reading now?
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman - this is Gaiman's award winning novel about a man who revisits his unhappy childhood in a small English town.
It's hard to describe - since it is well, Neil Gaiman, who writes a bit along the same lines as Haruku K. (the novelist behind Kafka at the Shore) and Jonathan Carrol, except far more whimisical. He's a dark fantasy horror writer specializing in magical surrealism. His books at times feel a bit like exercises in prose poetry. My only difficulty with them is often the protagonist feels like cipher or difficult to emotionally relate to or care about. (Which was my problem with both American Gods and Neverwhere. However, it was not a problem with Coraline, and this feels like it was written in more or less the same vein as Coraline. So we shall see.
Only 20% of the way through.
What I am reading next?
The Most Dangerous Book:the Battle for James Joyce's Ulysess by Kevin Birmingham
Blurb from Amazon:
"A great story—how modernism brought down the regime of censorship—told as a great story. Kevin Birmingham's imaginative scholarship brings Joyce and his world to life. There is a fresh detail on nearly every page."—Louis Menand, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Metaphysical Club
For more than a decade, the book that literary critics now consider the most important novel in the English language was illegal to own, sell, advertise or purchase in most of the English-speaking world. James Joyce’s big blue book, Ulysses, ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel for all time. But the genius of Ulysses was also its danger: it omitted absolutely nothing. All of the minutiae of Leopold Bloom’s day, including its unspeakable details, unfold with careful precision in its pages. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice immediately banned the novel as “obscene, lewd, and lascivious.” Joyce, along with some of the most important publishers and writers of his era, had to fight for years to win the freedom to publish it. The Most Dangerous Book tells the remarkable story surrounding Ulysses, from the first stirrings of Joyce’s inspiration in 1904 to its landmark federal obscenity trial in 1933.
Literary historian Kevin Birmingham follows Joyce’s years as a young writer, his feverish work on his literary masterpiece, and his ardent love affair with Nora Barnacle, the model for Molly Bloom. Joyce and Nora socialized with literary greats like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Beach. Their support helped Joyce fight an array of anti-vice crusaders while his book was disguised and smuggled, pirated and burned in the United States and Britain. The long struggle for publication added to the growing pressures of Joyce’s deteriorating eyesight, finances and home life.
Salvation finally came from the partnership of Bennett Cerf, the cofounder of Random House, and Morris Ernst, a dogged civil liberties lawyer. With their stewardship, the case ultimately rested on the literary merit of Joyce’s master work. The sixty-year-old judicial practices governing obscenity in the United States were overturned because a federal judge could get inside Molly Bloom’s head.
Birmingham’s archival work brings to light new information about both Joyce and the story surrounding Ulysses. Written for ardent Joyceans as well as novices who want to get to the heart of the greatest novel of the twentieth century, The Most Dangerous Book is a gripping examination of how the world came to say yes to Ulysses.
Hmmm...we'll see if I make it through it.