September Wrapup

I've been reading plenty, but not blogging much. Oh, well... Here was my month's reading:

Thrillers

Hammond Innes/The Trojan Horse

Brits dueling with Huns in World War II. A great one, I thought. More here. 

E. Philips Oppenheim/The Great Impersonation

Brits dueling Huns in World War I. I was under the impression this was one of the greats, but just so-so for me. The politics are, of course, archaic, but I was expecting that. Maybe I read too many mysteries/thrillers/spy novels, but I also saw the final surprise twist a mile away.

My first Oppenheim. And I really wanted to like this one better because of the great George Starbuck poem:

Said

Agatha Christie to

E. Philips Oppenheim,

"Who is this Hemingway,

Who is this Proust?

 

Who is this Vladimir

Whatchamacallum, this

Neopostrealist

Rabble?" she groused.

 

Prydain

 

Lloyd Alexander/Taran Wanderer

Lloyd Alexander/The High King

Lloyd Alexander/The Foundling and Other Tales

Prydain is a disguised Wales. High fantasy for a younger audience. The High King completed the series of five and won the 1969 Newbery Medal; the stories came after. (I read the first three novels in the series earlier.) Based on Welsh mythology, with a strong dash of Tolkien, of coure; Taran is assistant pig-keeper for the oracular pig Hen Wen. He fights evil in the form of sorceresses, undead, and a dark king. Pretty fun stuff, with maybe Taran Wanderer being my favorite.

 

I could have read the series as a kid, but didn't know of it until I saw it on Lark's blog.

 

Poetry

 

Anne Carson/Nox

 

This may be more -ish than actually poetry. The genre is sort of undefinable. About the death of her brother and her half-failed attempt to translate Catullus 101, which was about the death of his brother. Just now I think this is her masterpiece, though I'd still start with Autobiography of Red. Lithub the other day quoted her odds of winning the Nobel Prize this year at 33-1. She'd be a good choice as far as I was concerned.

 

Shakespeare/Measure for Measure 

 

Saw a superb production of the play a week ago here at Crow's Theatre, and reread it before going. 

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice

That's either Claudio's idea of a Dantean hell, or an ordinary spring day in Toronto, I'm not sure which... 

 

Criticism

 

Philip Lopate/On Sontag

 

From 2009. Quite solid if you're interested in Sontag. He likes the things that are good and dislikes the things that aren't.

 

Lopate is a novelist and essayist. He's got a new book out about Washington Irving, and I was reading a review. That review said his new book was just OK, but to see Lopate really shine in literary criticism, you should read his book on Sontag. So I did.

 

Emily Eakin/The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory

 

Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Althusser, etc.  Eakin's book came out this year and is a good introduction to deconstruction and other French literary theoretical constructs. Her approach is mostly biographical rather than theoretical, and includes some autobiographical material about her own expericnce of Theory. Unlike quite a lot of actual French theory, it's readable.

 

She says she was influenced by Sarah Bakewell's At The Existentialist Café, and it shows. (Which I think a good thing.) If you liked Bakewell, you'll like this--it could be thought of as a sequel.

 

W. E. B. Du Bois/The Souls of Black Folk

 

My spin book was Du Bois' Autobiography, and this will show up in that upcoming post. This is on the Modern Library best non-fiction books of the 20th century, and deservedly so. 

 

Other Novels

 

Lidia Jorge/The Wind is Whistling in the Cranes

 

Jorge won the Camões Prize earlier this year--a lifetime award for writers in Portuguese, similar to the Cervantes Prize for Spanish writers. This came out in Portuguese in 2002. Sort of a three generation family novel, with a white property-owning family, and a black family of Cape Verdean immigrants, but told out of order. I tried to write about it but it didn't come together. It was interesting, but I didn't love it.

 

Martin Hansen/The Liar

 

A Danish novel that came out in 1950. The war is over but not forgotten or even forgettable. Johannes Lye is a schoolteacher on an island that is inaccessible in winter due to sea ice. Lye is not an accidental name; he's not to be trusted.

 

Qntm/There Is No Antimemetics Division

 

A sci-fi novel that came out this year that's been getting some buzz. I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but I liked this pretty well.

 

This books still around the house:

 

 

Both The Great Impersonation and The Souls of Black Folk come from Project Gutenberg.

 

And next month? I've mostly finished my spin book, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois. There's also the 1949 Club coming up, hosted by Simon and Kaggsy. 

 

I'm looking at Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of This World, but, heck, that's still a week away, and everygthing could change... 😉