Catch-up

Waiting at the airport for my flight back to New York. Figure it's a good time to get the light reading log up to date: when I don't have tabs to close, I tend not to get around to blogging what I've been reading either.

Two books I loved: Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, which is almost unbearably bleak and sad and true to life; and Gabriel Roth's altogether delightful The Unknowns, which I am tempted to blurb as Ready Player One for grownups! I can't imagine what novel-reader wouldn't love this one - it's super.

Also all quite good: A. S. A Harrison, The Silent Wife; Max Barry, Lexicon; Karin Slaughter, Unseen; Todd Robinson, The Hard Bounce; Aric Davis, Nickel Plated; Lavie Tidhar, The Projected Girl; and Ian Tregillis, What Doctor Gottlieb Saw.

Only book I read this week that I really didn't like was J. M. Ledgard's Submergence - in retrospect, the presence of the word "lyrical" in so many of the descriptions should have warned me that it is a book with a portentous sense of its own importance and little sense of humor - really I am just not the target audience, I should have put it down right away but I was slightly mesmerized by my dislike for it!

Don't seem to have anything on my Kindle that I'm quite in the mood for - will go and trawl now for some reasonable crime fiction, I never can get quite enough of that to have a sufficient pipeline. If I really can't find anything, I might reread World War Z - seeing the movie gave me an irresistible desire to reread the book (the movie is very poor - Despicable Me 2 was much superior!). I enjoyed this piece about Max Brooks, as I too seem to spend a good deal of time contemplating the zombie apocalypse....

Treat!

I am not much of a one for Halloween, but I got home on Monday just as large numbers of highly excited children were congregating in the building lobby for the annual Halloween party and maniacal subsequent hallway-and-stairwell trick-or-treating, and was swept up in the hospitality of some neighbors I like very much but don't see too often!  Walked away from their place an hour or so later feeling the soothing effects of cheese, beer and candy but also with a real treat tucked under my arm: an advance copy of Heidi Julavits's The Vanishers, a novel I have been coveting ever since I first heard about it a few months ago. 

I am very happy to report that it is divinely satisfactory, her best book yet (which is saying quite a lot).  It is also curiously and perfectly suited to my own reading tastes: imagine faint shades of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled and Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, a way with steeply pitched verbs that's slightly reminiscent of Gary Lutz or Sam Lipsyte ("magneted," "throttled up," "pay-per-viewing"), a quasi-Parkian reflection on disambiguation and an amazing new definition of override, an eclectic and idiosyncratic mix of occult and spiritualist references, the notions that the "oblique glimpses into the lives of cinema strangers" one gets from seeing foreign films might be the only thing that would partly compensate one for the cessation of "psychic forays" and that parapsychologists would never use social networks due to the fact that they're "'a boon for psychic attackers.'" In short, an unusual and memorable first-person narrator, a fantastic and compelling story - strongly recommended...

Two other things I also liked very much this week: N. K. Jemisin's novel The Kingdom of Gods, the final volume of her excellent Inheritance trilogy; and a gripping Kindle Single by Mishka Shubaly, The Long Run.

Two bits

I read Sara Gran's seven pieces of advice to a young writer with considerable interest; I love her books (check out Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead if you haven't already), but I am also very impressed with her professional acumen. This advice is much more directed to those who will have a realistic chance of making a living as fiction writers than to those who will combine writing with some other means of support (I would note that I myself am in flagrant disregard of points #2 and #6, but I also would have to dissent respectfully from point #7 - it would make me absolutely crazy and bored out of my mind to be a full-time fiction-writer, I am truly a professor at heart, I need the stimulation that comes from having a full-time academic appointment!).

Also (a very good recommendation from Cristina Linclau): Elisabeth Weed interviews agent and publicist Lucinda Blumenfeld.

The case of the green parrot

As soon as I heard of this book the other day, I knew I had to read it as soon as possible: I sent several emails, and due to the kindness of the author and her in-house publicist, I received an ARC several days later.

The book is Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead; it is at once rather divinely good and also exactly the sort of book I most like! Let's call it metaphysical noir and group it with two other favorites of mine, Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist and Victor LaValle's Big Machine. Oh, it was so good...

(The only trouble with books is that they take years to write and only a few hours to read, so that I know I won't be getting the next installment any time soon! But I can re-read this one when it comes out, there's a thought...)