What books are you reading?

[poseidon]

Finished "Runes Of The Earth" and hope its sequel arrives soon. Still waiting for King's "Cell" to come from my bookclub. In the meanwhile am about to begin Michael Palmer's "The Society."

[Rit]

I started to read Theodor Adorno and i gave up quickly. Wretched snobby writer.

[rockkid]

Reading The Ghosts of the Medak Pocket. By Carol Off.
Canada’s role in the Serb Croat conflict in the early 90’s.
Enlightening to say the least

[Rit]

rockkid said:

Reading The Ghosts of the Medak Pocket. By Carol Off.
Canada’s role in the Serb Croat conflict in the early 90’s.
Enlightening to say the least

damn, that sounds like it would be hugely interesting. Do you recommend it?

and also, have you read Dallaire's book?

[rockkid]

You bet I would!
Not that far into it yet but from an insiders vp (read affiliated with the DND for eons) it’s high time we saw a truthful book.
In response to your second question……. not yet but dying to get my paws on it.

[Rit]

sexy.

as for Dallaire's book, i'm going to read it right after i finish Michael Ignatieff's book.

[Mary]

I just finished reading The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas - I had never even heard of this book before my roommate mentioned it to me, and described it in such an intriguing way that I promptly hunted it down. Apparently in the 1980s it was a major "it" book, but I guess today it has somewhat faded from collective consciousness. In any case, I'm rarely compelled to write reviews of fiction books, but I am dying to know if anyone else here has read this utterly singular and profoundly haunting book - I've never read anything like it before, and it was such a strange, unsettling, lyrical, and ultimately devastating experience that I'm honestly completely spent for the evening - I've cancelled all my plans and I'm just going to bum around the apartment. It's very rare that a book has such an effect on me - I'm not really sure if any book has ever had such an effect on me - hence my compulsion to write about it here, and to ask if anyone else has experienced this book.

It's difficult to describe because the book is kind of a riddle that only very gradually reveals its true meaning and subject matter, so one can't even really say what the book is "about" without ruining the experience. However, I can give a general sense of the structure, which is striking enough - the book continually retells a dream/erotic fantasy of its central characer, a young female opera singer, each time in a slightly different register which reveals more and more details about the woman.

First it is told in the form of a hallucinatory and disorienting first-person poem, which is strangely lyrical and hideous at the same time - the woman recounts an intensely passionate tryst at a hotel with a strange man she's met on a train, describing the sex often in the most pornographic and ribald terms possible - yet at the same time, in the same fantasy, just beyond their hotel room, there are nonstop horrifying tragedies and deaths and disasters all over the hotel, and as the central couple continues their nonstop sexual affair, there are literally charred corpses floating by outside the window, horrible fires, landslides, ski-lift accidents, etc etc, wiping out the other guests at the hotel. The bizarre juxtaposition of sex and death is discomfiting - probably because it's oddly beautiful and makes you feel guilty for enjoying it. Then the same encounter is retold in third-person prose, with some added details, some slightly changed details, and a whole new level of hallucinatory madness and bizarre, symbolic visions. Then the same story is told yet again - except from the perspective of Sigmund Freud himself, acting as the woman's psychoanalyst, and trying to figure out the meaning of the dream. Then the book suddenly jumps ahead 10 years in the woman's life, and now it's told as a straightforward narrative. In the fifth and sixth parts, the woman suddenly takes a place on the stage of world history - I can't say anymore without giving away too much - but suffice to say these parts of the book are unexpected (although, in retrospect, heavily foreshadowed) and genuinely shocking. Upon reading them, the meaning of the violent erotic fantasy shifts and transforms from a particular revelation of this woman's own efforts to deal with details of her personal biography into a universal allegory about... well, again, I can't say what, but about concrete history that impacts all of us.

There is so much more I'd like to say, but I fear that almost anything I say will reveal too much about the true subject of the book - part of the book's shattering impact is the slow, dawning realization of what it's really about. Every time you think you know, another layer is peeled back and you realize the central fantasy means something in addition to what you previously thought. I also fear I've described it in a way that makes it sound like some silly shock value cult goth book - oooooh sex and death, weird imagery, rotting corpses, etc etc - that's soooooooo not an accurate depiction, for despite its sometimes violent and erotic imagery, it's nothing like pop surrealism or silly goth morbidity, and it proves to be about something profoundly serious and universally significant.

One other word of warning to the curious - DO NOT READ THE BACK OF THE BOOK. It gives everything away - whoever wrote the back jacket should be banished from the publishing industry forever! Also stay away from internet reviews or anything of the sort - many of them reveal too much, and the experience of the book can't possibly be the same when you already know what's really going on.

I'll also say the book is, ultimately, about as tragic as a story could possibly be - but again, not in some miserabilist-chic way. It's not so much about tragedy as about how the human psyche copes with tragedy, and as such, it's quite gorgeous and elegiac.

10/10 - I think this might be my new favorite book, seriously. I hope someone hear has read it/will read it - cause I desperately want to talk about it!!!

Cheers,
M

[Mary]

ritalinpants said:

I started to read Theodor Adorno and i gave up quickly. Wretched snobby writer.

what did you start reading?

couldn't disagree more. if i were forced to identify with any one single thinker in history, it would be adorno.

[Mary]

fwiw, here's the very beginning of the white hotel, for the curious (actually there are a very few letters which precede the initial poem, but the poem is the real beginning of the story) --

I dreamt of falling trees in a wild storm
I was between them as a desolate shore
came to meet me and I ran, scared stiff,
there was a trapdoor but I could not lift
it, I have started an affair
with your son, on a train somewhere
in a dark tunnel, his hand was underneath
my dress between my thighs I could not breathe
he took me to a white lakeside hotel
somewhere high up, the lake was emerald
I could not stop myself I was in flames...

....and on it goes, into one of the most bizarre and haunting "stories" you'll ever encounter. read it!!!!!!!

[Rit]

it was a book called Minima Moralia..

i might have given up too soon on it (i've actually returned it at the bookstore and traded in for Pascal's Pensees)

i just found it too in thrall with "bourgeouis" observations... which don't really seem to have much relevance in the 21st century.

[Rit]

That poem's good.

[Mary]

ritalinpants said:

it was a book called Minima Moralia..

i might have given up too soon on it (i've actually returned it at the bookstore and traded in for Pascal's Pensees)

i just found it too in thrall with "bourgeouis" observations... which don't really seem to have much relevance in the 21st century.

Minima Moralia is one of Adorno's most aphoristic and obscure works - tough reading. Not that I'm suggesting you wouldn't be able to read such a book - I just don't think it's the best starting point for a first excursion into Adorno's writings. Though I'm not entirely sure what your comment means - I don't know whether you're accusing Adorno himself of being excessively bourgeois, or of being too obsessed with the critique of the bourgeoisie. And I'm also not sure why such observations would be irrelevant in the 21st century - actually, Minima Moralia aside, I tend to think that certain aspects of Adorno's thought which in his own time seemed shrill and paranoid are much more convincing in today's world - I think Adorno is the thinker for our times.

In any case though as a starting point with Adorno I'd suggest a collection of his essays on the culture industry, aptly called The Culture Industry. There is also his classic critique of enlightenment co-written with Max Horkhemer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, which is probably the single most famous work with his name attached to it. Negative Dialectics is probably his most systematic philosophical work, but it's also wretchedly difficult - worse than Hegel.

Cheers,
M

[Rit]

yeah, that's what i meant, that book seemed like Adorno was too obsessed with the critique of the bourgoise.

[Rit]

it started to get on my nerves after a while. I didn't think it was still relevant. but maybe i've missed the connections. Also, it's entirely possible i was in no mood to enjoy Adorno at all.

[phil]

Tree
A Life Story

Author: Dr. David Suzuki, and Wayne Grady,
Original Art by Robert Bateman


A magical portrait and a salute to life itself.

This is a story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions. It is the story of a single tree.

In this clear, concise, and captivating book, renowned scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki and award-winning writer Wayne Grady describe how the tree grows and receives nourishment and what role the tree plays in the forest throughout its life. Tree also looks at the community of organisms that share its ecosystem, and the tree is placed within the context of the events going on in the larger world during the tree’s lifetime.


David Suzuki and Wayne Grady’s lyrical, richly detailed text is augmented by Robert Bateman’s evocative original art. The result is a revelation, a salute to life itself.