with so many things happening so fast, vis-à-vis the sale of our house and moving into an apartment then a few months later moving into our new home, the wife and i have been segregating out things as we pack.
since the apartment we are getting is rather tiny and only one bedroom, we are going to also rent a portable storage unit to keep all of our big furniture pieces and other things (books, movies, most of our wardrobes, etc.). we're putting aside all the things we'll think we need in the 6 or 7 months we'll be at the apartment. the most important thing (for me) was putting aside enough books to keep me occupied. there were a few that i had been meaning to read for a couple of years now, but had never gotten to, that i think would be perfect for this interim period. i put aside five books for the apartment:
* Hunger by Knut Hamsun (it's been nearly 10 years since i last read it)
* The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (i love Russian writers, especially Dostoevsky)
* Blood and Grits by Harry Crews (one of the most underrated writers in America)
* Messiah by Andrei Codrescu (was recommended to me)
* The Stones of Summer by Dow Mossman (subject of the great documentary The Stone Reader)
i almost took 1984 by George Orwell, but decided i would save that for later. not sure why i didn't take it, but i didn't.
i'm a slow reader, so these five books should be plenty to keep me occupied. and, it's an eclectic enough list that i won't get too full of one genre or style.
i'm almost done with the book i am currently reading and i think i'm going to start reading Messiah next. i never know until i start the book which one i'm going to read. if you're really interested, you'll be able to tell from the column on the right.
next, we'll have to decide which clothes to bring. since we're moving in the summer and staying until well into winter, we'll need to bring a wide range of clothing options. we'll have to pare it down as much as possible, though, in order to prevent the little apartment from getting too cluttered. i only hope we don't forget anything too big, because we'll be forced to purchase it as the portable storage unit will not be accessible.
so much hassle for just purchasing a new home. oh well, it'll be worth it.
14 comments:
j
sounds like a good list. whole heartily agree with Chris about Hamsun’s Hunger – it’s a kick in the balls and then some. have read everything else by Crews except Blood and Grits which I have tried to get unsuccessfully from my local library, you cant go wrong with him, well ok, he kinda went a bit wrong with The Mulching of America, which he admits himself but again Crews ‘ll knock yer ballacks in (j, hope your up with your Norn Iron now).
Dostoevsky is a hard man to beat as well – The Gambler is next on my reading list. 1984 is a good book, along the lines of Huxley’s Brave New World, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Zamyatin’s We. I kinda group those books together in my mind.
God, I don’t think I could do a top five book list, maybe and I mean maybe a top ten writer list but books, man, that would be hard. Have read two out of your five Chris and have The Old Man and the Sea on my shelf to read (the only Hemingway I’m still to read). Leonard Cohen I haven’t went near, any good? well you think he’s good or he wouldn’t be on your list but you know what I mean. Dip in and out of Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn as it easy to do so with the pieces being so short but that’s all with him.
with books as the topic there could be a real run on comments here folks – hope so.
wow...top 5. i side with b mcg, i can't pick just 5. here are 5 that i've truly enjoyed:
Geek Love by Katherine Dunne
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Celebration by Harry Crews
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Damned If You Do by Gordon Houghton
there are countless others that i've enjoyed, these just come to mind.
i have a bunch of Brautigan that i bought off ebay, but only read the poetry ones. i need to read the novels and short story collections. maybe when i move into the new house i'll break it in with some Brautigan.
Hello all
Cheers for the info and recommendations Chris, will certainly keep in mind for future reading. lists are a laugh and always generate a bit of debate just as long as you don’t take them too seriously. Enjoyed Celebration myself j but really like the early stuff, the first three novels hit hard as does The Gypsy's Curse and A Childhood, the opening to All We Need of Hell is unforgettable.
If you have not already done so and get the chance read Where Does One Go When There's No Place Left to Go? – it was included in the back of The Gospel Singer re released by Gorse Press London (the only other edition I know of is a limited one by Blood & Guts Press, which I am sure would be much $$$) – it tells the tale of some of his main characters kidnapping him and making demands, a wonderful premise and told with great style and flair by Crews.
Some that have impressed my recently:
John Horne Burns – The Gallery
Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road
Kevin Canty – Winslow In Love
John O’Hara – Appointment in Samarra
Charles Perry – Portrait of a Young Man Drowning
Alan Stilltoe – Saturday Night, Sunday Morning
Horace McCoy – They Shoot Horses, Don’t They
and not so recently Dan Fante – must reads being Mooch and Spitting Off Tall Buildings.
oh and j Ann Rand features, appears, is a character in, Tobias Wolff’s new book Old School – if you liked Atlas Shrugged you might like to give this a go, bit of fun.
right, onward
Wow...you guys are lightyears ahead of me. It's really hard to pick my top five....But here are some books I love...
The World According to Garp/John Irving
I met him in 1988 at a reading/signing just after a Prayer for Owen Meany came out. It was one of the best experiences ever...of course, I stuttered like a moron and he probably still remembers the stuttering moron who named her cat Garp. Or not!
Anything by Alice Hoffman. There is always something magical and beautiful about her novels.
Alot of what I read is Young Adult. Because that's always what I have wanted to write...so, probably the rest of the books I'll list will be ones no one knows.
Anything by M. E. Kerr. Always very real feeling characters and situations. My favorite by her is Night Kites but I have not read one by here that I hated.
And of course, the YA Queen, Judy Blume. Her stories and situations are always very real, too.
Oh, and my all time favorite is To Kill A Mockingbird.
justin, how long until you are in your new house again? Winter?
Hello All
As we are on the topic of books and probably will be for some time - I have had four sitting under my desk in work for a while that I was thinking of baying but am not sure if they would go, so the offer is there, if you want them, they’re yours:
Irving Layton -
The Selected Poems
Fortunate Exile
The Gucci Bag
The Tightrope Dancer
let us know.
b mcg-
if there have been no takers on your offer, i'd like to take them. as Chris said, he mentioned Layton to me and this seems too fortuitous to pass up. :) let me know how much you want for them and i'll paypal you, or whatever. obviously, if it's rare (as Chris said it might be) you're best to Ebay it.
also, i've not heard of a single of those books you listed that you've recently read. crazy...
lots of greats books out there. i read about 25-30 a year (i keep a list, how lame, huh?) and i recently realized that i were to die at 70 (seems typical for a man of my genetic makeup) that means i only have 38 years left, times 30 books (best-case) and that makes only 1140 books left! now, i feel i need to choose my books judiciously. i've only a finite number of reads left, you know? i have to weigh the pros and cons of reading, say, War and Peace vs. re-reading A Brave New World.
Kat, i don't move into my new house until February-ish, but we move into the interim apartment the end of August.
Thanks for the heads up Chris - but no the book you describe is definitely not the book in my possession, three of them where bought second hand for like $5 on the net and one was given to me. no worries about $$$ j will send them from work one at a time so they get out under the radar.
j, thought you would have given a few of the books I mentioned a go but not to have heard of them – but it’s like you say, there are so many good books out there that we could all probably do that to each other – I suppose that Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road, John O’Hara – Appointment in Samarra, John Horne Burns – The Gallery would all be considered classics of American literature, each of them was mentioned or connected or compared to Hemingway in their own way. Burns was a gay writer who only pulled off three published books before dieing of alcohol abuse, Gallery being triumphed by critics the other two being slammed – he stated that to be a good writer you had to be gay or that all good writer where gay as the social stigma they faced gave them whatever artistic edge that was needed to produce quality work – each to their own, personally I wont be putting his theory to the test. Yates is good and like Burns may have suffered because his first novel got so much press, like Cheever he kinda recorded the middle classes of 50’s America, a powerful work. O’Hara is great, he was a bit of a bitcher, saying his work didn’t get enough credit – I think that Appointment in Samarra is a great title, it comes from a folk story about a servant who is sent to market by his master and while there notices a strange figure out of the corner of his eye following him about the market, eventually the servant, having had enough, turns to face the stranger and is horrified to realise that the stranger is death. He flees back to his master’s house where he recounts his tale and begs to be released, being such a good and loyal servant his master agrees to let him go into hiding and gives him his best horse. Aggrieved at losing his best servant and his swiftest horse the master goes to the market himself to admonish this stranger, upon finding the stranger, using the description given by his servant but not recognising his true identity, the master berates the stranger yelling that his best servant has taken his fastest horse and rode for Samarra out of fright. The stranger replies that he was not at the market for his servant but has an appointment in Samarra with him later that evening. it’s all about fate, the main character in the book is a great one.
Perry is a sad case, wrote a great first novel, was working on a second based on the murder of his son but then died of cancer.
you all may like Alan Stilltoe – Saturday Night, Sunday Morning – working class english novel, something different.
I admit that I was a book snob – I have however changed, thankfully, and now even take Potter breaks, as I call them. I also used to reads books because I thought I had to or was supposed to – now I don’t care who you are or what you have written before or whatever, if you don’t hold me I’m giving up and moving on.
So j you keep a list, mate that is lame, however not as lame as keeping a list and recording the length of time it took you to read the book – I used to do that – now I’m just back to a regular old list and regular old lameness.
more on book anyone?
Hi Kath
have you read S.E. Hinton – Outsiders, Rumble Fish – what are they like? I remember the movies, sort of liked them but was more impressed that they where based on books written by a seventeen year old (or is that an urban myth?) The Outsiders, ahh, Tom Cruise without sciencetology and with crooked teeth, those where the days.
Judy Blume – yeah, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - big among the gaggle of teenage girls I used to hang around with – my future wife being one of them – she still remembers it with fondness.
believe it or not I am still to read To Kill A Mockingbird – forgive me.
man, so many comments.
okay, first, thanks b mcg. i really appreciate it. i can't wait to get them.
classics of American literature. funny. we're too busy reading classic of English lit in high school (1984, Animal Farm, Silas Marner, Wuthering Heights, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum). you'd think the way we went on that there was no such thing as American lit. ah, hell.
i AM a book snob. and proud of it. i refuse to read Potter on grounds alone. i understand parents reading it be sure it's okay for their kids, but grown adults without teenagers reading it? c'mon, guys. give Steinbeck or Hemingway or Faulkner or, even, Crews a go. read a big-boy book, for christ's sake. i'm a snob. i know. i know.
Chris, you should really put To Kill a Mockingbird (TKaM) on your short list. i need to re-read it, actually. it's amazing. i read it nearly 20 years ago, and remember it vividly.
j
am sorry to hear of your snobbishness – however I understand, I mean at one time if anyone had even considered touching the dust jacket of a Stephen King I would have quite happily been the guy to set the torch to the petrol soaked tinder in circling the the wooden post to which your naked and flayed body would be tied.
I am different now, more calm, not as uptight – we could debate the Potter thing forever, so we won’t. I became less uptight I think when Logan was born, within the first couple of weeks I had started picking books out for her to read when she was older, books that I would read to her or we would read togetther. I have Treasure Island, Wind in the Willows, The Brothers Grimm Tales etc on the shelf for later – I realised that how can I be a snob when I want my own child to read these story books and I want to read them with her, in fact I just want her to read, anything. I was not encouraged to read and went out and discovered comics when I was younger. When my mother saw that I was reading comics she became concorned (yes, not concerned that I wasn’t reading but became concerned when I began reading comics) and went to see my teacher – the teacher told to wise up and that at least I was reading something instead of staring out the window.
There is a little snobbishness still left – I make a distinction between literary fiction and story telling. I read literary fiction, for me this is something written with the clear intention of making the reader become reflective, to describe or pass something on in regard to the human condition. I have always believed that a good piece of fiction (literary) changes you inside, you cant describe the change but you know it has taken place.
Everything else is storytelling. Some would say that if you look closely at Stephen King he too is passing something on in regard to the human condition (Green Mile, etc), but that is bullshit and those people are fools, he is a storyteller ;)
This is a personal opinion and simply a distinction I make in my own mind, no offence to anyone – I don’t judge readers anymore, Helen Fielding, Tony Parsons – bring them on.
just reminded me, funny article on Helen Fielding:
http://www.bookmunch.co.uk/view.php?id=140
actually the whole bookmunch site is worth checking out.
It is weird to here to think that with the wealth of American literature they are reaching across the water for books to teach in schools – to be honest a lot of the english stuff wouldn’t be on my list, I mean I doubt that in my life time I’ll be reading Wuthering Heights.
Glad to see someone finally mentioned old nazi loving Celine – but m you are the first person I know who prefers Installment – well ok you are the first person I know who has read both books and has made a personal judgment – I am the opposite, Journey for me, I think with Installment he went a wee bit overboard with the whole morse code dot dot dot thing. for by the fact it is a heavy awkward bugger that if thrown with any force at someone would kill them. I also have on offer Installment, if anyone would like it, let me know.
by the way the length of my posts coincide with how little I have on in work – sweet.
Yep,
Also have Richard Ford’s Rock Springs, which was hiding under my deck at work along with a little bit of a battered copy of A Long and Happy Life by Reynolds Price – all free, even the P&P.
bmcg,
Yes, I've read all the S. E Hintons. And she did write The Outsiders when she was 16 or 17...Later on, she wrote a book called Taming The Star-Runner that I always thought might be sort of her own story. In it, the main character is a 17 year old who ends up getting a book contract. She wrote an adult novel that I found while I was running from last year's hurricanes in Atlanta. And if I had been able to stay one more day, she was doing a reading and signing but I had to go home. And I ended up losing the book in Savannah somewhere! A hard cover, too! But I love all her books. She was something different...in a time when most characters in YA novels where female, she wrote about boys. And she didn't write sugary sweet stories.
To Kill A Mockingbird...I so love that book and the movie was great, too. I remember watching that movie on the 4:30 movie when I was about ten years old. (Am I totally dating myself with that one or what?) I think I read it the first time when I was 12. And I re-read that book every year. My oldest daughter now loves it and it's on her favorite list, too.
justin,
I love Harry Potter. I read the first one because my oldest loved it and read it about 40 times. I had to see what was so great. And I loved it. I've heard from a lot of my friends with kids that it's the only books their kids will read. My kids have always been readers so Harry didn't start that trend in my family but it did get my husband, who had only read technical books and the once-in-a-blue-moon short story, reading fiction again. When we were in Disney this week you wouldn't believe how many kids were reading the sixth one. I haven't read one since #4, though. I got tired of it. :)
Did I mention how much I love The Great Gatsby last time? When everyone is high school was getting Cliff's Notes for it...I was reading it and enjoying it!
Okay...do you think I had too much coffee today or what? :)
Chris,
I love John Irving...I just got his new one, Until I Find You....Remember I won that 100 bucks to Amazon? That was one of the books I got out that and so far, it's really good. But it's hard to get time to read here...or I should say it's hard to get time to read when there are three people crashing around the house.
That reading I went to was a present from a good friend at the time. (Nanette! Where are you!?) She told me to bring my copy of Garp and not to ask any questions. We went to the Mitzi Newhouse and there was John Irving and a whole bunch of other people reading. Erica Jong was one of them and to be honest, I thought she sucked. I never liked her writing and I read her when I was far too young to be reading that kind of stuff! :) Anyway, yes, I love John Irving.
I have this really cool tape of him reading from A Prayer For Owen Meany. I worked at a bookstore at the time and they always send these cool things. I have so much stuff from that time period. Advanced copies and stuff like that. Tapes, buttons, magnets...They send all kinds of junk to booksellers!
sorry about the snobbishness, but i do understand what you are saying, brian. i'm sure my tastes would change if i were to have a child. i'm positive of it.
want to know something even worse? i'm a movie snob, too. XXX, Gone in 60 Seconds, Die Hard, all those ridiculous movies, i cannot handle them. i like movies that are like literature.
speaking of literature, i liked your description of literary fiction. well said. i couldn't agree more. well done.
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