I can't stop reading this book, yet I can't seem to finish it either. Instead, I find myself crawling through it page by page waiting for the slightly monotonous magical realist tale set in post World War II Iraq to come to a close. Many fascinating characters are housed within the pages of The Last of the Angles, but overall the book smacks of something intended for a middle aged ladies' book club.
The amanuenses of Joseph Conrad and Henry James meet by accident and one, unnervingly conniving as she is, convinces the other timid one to participate in a plot that she believes will make them immortal, in a certain sense (the literary sense). I was slightly enthralled by this piece of inventive historical fiction. But it was also disturbing. Anything that makes me believe in human nature a little less is disturbing.
I haven't read much further in this collection of novellas.
I can't wait to read Music for Landing Planes By. In the meantime, I've been reading Eireann Lorsung's blog.
After a week of waiting for the book to arrive from Amazon, it still hasn't come. I finally broke down and ordered it online since none of the local independent bookstores seemed to carry the book, even Modern Times which seems to have a rather good selection of small publishers and poetry titles.
I seemingly failed to keep this blog alive. But I've been reading. At the least, I was hoping to catalog my reading materials. Later, I could look back and find myself pleasantly surprised by the quantity of books I really have been reading.
So maybe it's time for a little catch-up.
I'm off to the library in a short while to attend the RADAR Reading Series, which is always wonderful. I might attempt to acquire some books at the same time. And after that, continuing on in the bookish theme of the evening, I might sit down and catalog the books I have read over the past few months. They are all sitting in stacks against my wall, as I have yet to acquire a bookshelf.
Right now I am reading The Extra Man, by Jonathan Ames. As most of his books are, this one is severely strange. There is something entertaining about it's perverse humor.
It is rare that I find a book in the free book pile at work that really strikes my attention. It was one of those rare situations the other day when I came across Ali Smith's contribution to the Cannongate myth series, Girl Meets Boy. The title might be deceiving. It is a contemporary retelling of Ovid's Metamorphosis. I am always surprised upon reading these modern myth re-tellings because they are all quite potent and relevant. As the title might suggest, the book is about gender, in part the point of intersection where two genders become fluid, and multiple. But the book is also about corporate culture, art and resistance. Not only the subject matter was fascinating, but the writing style was infectious. Reading the book was like entering the minds of the characters and following them around for a while. I didn't want the very short novel to end. But inevitably, I finished it quickly, then proceeded to flip back through to find the most wonderful morsels of language. I have loved all three of the books in this series that I have read thus far. Mostly, I just like how Ali Smith tells a story.
Occasionally, I have a weakness for young adult literature. It's easy to read, often adorable, and unriddled with the darkness that often plagues adult literature. Last week I came across the Minx series of graphic novels, targeted at teenage girls. The first one that I read had a bit of substance, as it dealt with the cultural importance of art, specifically street art, and presented some biting commentary on suburbia. The Plain Janes was the story of a girl who had been present at a cafe bombing, and as a result, her parents moved her to the suburbs where she attended the very boring local high school. Rather than fighting to enter the popular crowd, she fought to befriend the misfits by developing a guerrilla art project that made the whole town descend into irrational fear. The comic I am currently at the heart of is far less redeeming. Clubbing is the story of a rich, goth snob from London who is sent to her grandparents' house for the summer to prevent her from getting into too much trouble. But there is something infectious and adorable about these graphic novels for teens. They are like tv shows. And because I don't have a tv, they seem to fill the place that tv might if I had one.
