Truth and lies

"Bob has his trainers feeding dogs baloney treats. We don't do any of that mushy stuff."

(The Robert Crais books are extremely enjoyable reading, by the way: the first is Suspect, the second is The Promise. Crais's books have in my opinion gotten better and better; where Michael Connelly's have become more formulaic over the years (with the last few Bosch books feeling like thinned-out outlines of their former selves), these have become richer and more complicated in terms of character and voice.

The mind's construction in the face

At Vanity Fair, Francis Wheen on the life and work of Josephine Tey.

Catch-up

Clawing my way back to where I should be. Two nights in a row of twelve-hour sleep were highly beneficial: I sat down this afternoon and wrote comments on a dozen student assignments without it seeming like an intolerable effort of will. My inability to do even a single one on Wednesday morning really just told me that I was down to the absolute dregs! That's less than a quarter of the total number I need to comment on for Monday, but it's a good start, and I read a dissertation draft that I've been remiss with - still need to type up comments, but it is a relief to be finally making headway.

(The allergy doctor yesterday clucked with disapproval at the sound of my cough, and took out her stethoscope; she tells me what I knew already, that my lungs are "full up," bronchitis not asthma, and that the only treatment for viral bronchitis is to take an expectorant - Mucinex! - and drink lots of water. I was hoping to exercise today, but it didn't really make sense - tomorrow I will have a stab at something easy and see how it goes. Painful psychological deprivation - all I want is to be running and/or doing hot yoga!)

Seeing Betrayal tomorrow afternoon with a former professor of mine who has an extra ticket. Did finish and send that Bookforum review yesterday, though I am awaiting its return with trepidation as I suspect it is in need of considerable fixing-up!

Starting Tom Jones on Monday, which is fun (I find it easiest when teaching to dig in on a longish book and then just proceed through it in chunks - it requires much less attention than starting a new text or author almost every lecture); and Sentimental Journey on Tuesday, also very good fun to teach. A dissertation defense Wednesday morning early, and then B. arrives Wednesday evening for a 10-day visit!

I am possibly slightly in denial about the fact that the season of letters of recommendation is hard upon us - I have four I think I need to do this weekend, with others looming. Need to start doing daily meditation again - I got out of the habit in August, as I was doing so many training hours & it has some of the same benefits, but really it is very worthwhile, I need to get it back in the mix.

Light reading around the edges: Sara Ryan's amazing graphic novel Bad Houses; Arnaldur Indridason's Black Skies, which gave me a terrible pang of missing my friend Maxine Clarke, who loved these books and all their ilk; and Alex Marwood, The Wicked Girls (some wild implausibilities, but really very good, very gripping, very much the kind of novel I like to read). Close to the end of Pelecanos's latest, The Double; will finish it in bed now and hope for an early night.

Get!

Someone should write this story as a crime novel.

Closing tabs

Cumulative fatigue has made me unproductive! It's a recovery week, training-wise, but of course there are many small things that need to get done before I leave town early Thursday morning: things to do with bicycles, things to do with syllabi and course book orders, things to do with library materials for an article revision and a secret project that is beginning to percolate, etc. etc.

Miscellaneous light reading (not enough of it - I need the soothing mental bath of reading a good many narrative pages!): Ivy Pochoda's Visitation Street (I thought it was very good - definitely lived up to the advance praise - in vein of Richard Price or Colin Harrison, with good feel for inner lives of teenage girls); a reread of Tana French's Broken Harbor; and an extremely good epic fantasy, Daniel Abraham's The Dagger and the Coin. I saw someone reading it on a plane earlier this summer and it looked appealing: epic fantasy is often a dodgy bet (it's a genre I much enjoy, but I also find a great deal of it unreadable), but this really was good. I would have gotten it even sooner if I had realized that Abraham is one of the co-authors of those pseudonymous science-fiction novels I recently enjoyed so much.

Closing tabs:

How the FBI turned Natalie Zemon Davis on to rare books.

Phil Dyess-Nugent on Funky 4 + 1's "That's the Joint" (and check out the whole series here).

Salad-bar ingenuity. (Great pictures at that link.)

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....

Closing tabs

Iain Banks has died.

What is it like to be an octopus? (Via Mike Doe. I note that though I am not a vegetarian, the one creature I really cannot eat is octopus, though in the past I have found grilled octopus delicious. The problem: the part you eat is the part it thinks with....)

Adam Johnson on Kim Jong-il's sushi chef. (Still haven't read the novel - I am torn, often I buy books I suspect I will want to hand on to others in paper rather than electronically, only it makes me much less likely to read them myself - I might have to buy a second copy for Kindle!).

An interesting survey on women and clothes - go and fill it out if you have some spare minutes, I found it quite thought-provoking.

Miscellaneous light reading around the edges: James S. A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes (I don't read a great deal of this style of science fiction, but I hugely enjoyed this one, and will definitely continue with the next installment soon); Jo Nesbo, The Redeemer (it's an earlier installment in the Harry Hole story, I suppose just now published in the United States - I liked it very much indeed, I think it's stronger than the last couple I've read, which lose a little steam compared to the early ones); Taylor Stevens, The Doll (I have been a huge fan of this series so far, but I'm a little worried about the direction it seems to be moving in - I will certainly read the next one, but the Mary Sue element is stronger and there's a bit of Patricia-Cornwellesque grandiosity in the international serial-killer plot - on the other hand, I think Stevens should be counted on a very short list of writers who could be considered to come close to beating Lee Child at his own game, and I still definitely would recommend the series); and Lauren Beukes, The Shining Girls. Curiously extended similarities to Nos4A2 (neither author's fault, just in the DNA of this genre), and not I think as impressive to me as her previous novel, which is probably one of my favorite books of the last five years, but still very much worthwhile, with some really lovely stretches of writing.

Next two weeks: massive triathlon training (especially cycling) culminating in a 70.3 race in Syracuse (I'm not tapering, I'm just going to train through); style book revisions; revisions on the essay I wrote a couple years ago about the relationship between drama and the novel in eighteenth-century Britain. A couple plays - I don't have tickets yet to this, but I'm very keen to see it.

Sent!

I've been quiet here this week, and the week's included rather less exercise than I'd hoped - but that was for the very good reason that I've been working fiendishly on the style book. It's not really finished finished, I will have one more pass through it in June before submitting the final version, but I have just emailed my editor a provisional final draft (with a few missing references and some patches of rougher prose than I'd usually be willing to share); he'll give me notes when I see him in New York at the end of the month.

It will sound immodest, but I think this book really is amazing, it is the book I was born to write! I have a very hard time publicizing my novels - it's not that I don't think you would enjoy them if you are a novel-reader, I am happy saying something like "If you want a novel to while away an hour or two, this one will be pretty well suited to that need, and I hope it will make you feel and know things a bit differently than you did before you read it" - but really I am much more comfortable passionately recommending someone else's novel than my own! This style book (the final title is Reading Style: A Life in Sentences, and it will be published by Columbia University Press) really does do something that is interesting and useful and not quite like any other book about reading and writing. I am excited to shepherd it into the world - I imagine it will be on the fall 2014 list, though I'm not certain.

Flying tomorrow late afternoon from Cayman to the UK for my cousin's wedding. I won't take any work with me, I think, given that I've finished up everything I can do on the manuscript without library access. The extent of obligations to see family and friends will really make it fairly tight even getting in a minimum of exercise, though I'm hoping for a couple civilized runs and at least one visit to the Central YMCA to swim and spin. Back home in New York as of the evening of Memorial Day, and looking forward to what I hope will be a highly satisfactory first block of training for IMWI. Intend to minimize internet time in London, so posting here will probably continue to be very light through to the end of the month.

Miscellaneous linkage:

What Gary Panter doesn't know. (This one really is fantastic.)

What Hilary Mantel's been reading.

Just say no!

Light reading around the edges:

Installments two and three of Ian Tregillis's Milkweed trilogy, The Coldest War and Necessary Evil.

Two crime novels by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson, Daybreak and House of Evidence.

Daniel Friedman's funny geriatric noir Don't Ever Get Old.

Closing tabs

I liked Stephen Graham Jones's All the Beautiful Sinners, although I wouldn't have minded it being a bit clearer at times - there are places where we are just confused rather than poetically oblique/ambiguous in our comprehension about what is going on. Similar DNA to Joe Hill's book, I think, though with different landscapes and long histories.

Have spent morning tidying and packing. I dislike the amount of organization required to leave town, but on the other hand my apartment would probably be an archeological tip of papers and books if I didn't regularly have to clean it up before travel. Trying to gear up for a run on this rainy day, but I fear I have missed my moment, it's absolutely pouring again - it might be I should take the cue from the heavens and have another rest day.

Miscellaneous linkage:

My old schoolmate Nathaniel Frank on Niall Ferguson and homophobia. (Via Katherine B.)

Young singers mangling the Great American Songbook.

"CSI: Monk Seal"?

Animals riding animals! (Via Sarang.)

Catch-up

Strange and distressing week following news in Boston. My trip to Maine for the reading was very lovely, other than Boston thoughts hanging over us all - and some combination of distress and general excess-travel-related discombobulation led to me accidentally leaving my Kindle on the plane on Tuesday in Portland! Have filed missing property report, it's not at the Delta lost-and-found either in Portland or LGA, so I will wait and see whether it turns up - can read on phone (or of course actual "books") in the meantime. Am going to write a separate post tomorrow with Portland linkage, as my host did an absolutely lovely job taking me to all the most delicious and beautiful places, and they deserve a full account.

Logging of light reading will be slightly erratic: I read a lot of novels over last week due to time in airports etc. but cannot swear this list is inclusive without the record in the "Finished" folder on lost Kindle.

I think this is most of it:

I had a good run of books that are exactly what I like. I read Sarah Pinborough's A Matter of Blood and loved it so much (it was perfectly what I wanted to read) that I was only thwarted to discover that the second and third volumes have only been published in England and are not yet available for US Kindle. However ILL (which reminds me I must reread Jo Walton's novel Among Others, the novel written by one of the few other people in the world who loves ILL as much as I do) has served me well, I have volumes 2 and 3 in my possession (UK hardcover) and will shortly finish 2 and turn to 3.

Two absolutely perfect novels by Deborah Coates, crime fiction with excellent sense of place and mild element of supernatural - read them! I liked them enough that I pillaged the Amazon page for her bits of short fiction as well - the novels are just super.

Gene Kerrigan's The Rage: excellent Irish noir (this crime fiction of the Irish financial crisis is a depressing but extremely interesting subgenre - Alan Glynn and Tana French most obviously coming to mind, but make recommendations in the comments if you have any more suggestions).

Harlen Coben's Six Years is not good value for the money, wait and get it from the library - Crais's books have gotten better, I think, as Coben's have gotten weaker. Too often here I just had the feeling He is making this up, this is nonsense!

A Mira Grant zombie tie-in I missed at the time, and thoroughly enjoyed: San Diego 2013: The Last Stand of the California Brownshirts. Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant = true genius of popular fiction!

Melissa Scott's Five-Twelfths of Heaven, which I loved - but I am halfway through the sequel now (very glad these novels are all available electronically) and it does not seem to me nearly as sharp and engaging. However I certainly will read the whole trilogy.

Strangest and most complex of the bunch: a really uncanny and haunting novel by Richard Bowes, Minions of the Moon. I definitely hadn't read this before, though I think I must have an ARC of it sitting around somewhere in my apartment - and I also had a strange conviction that my friend M. had recommended to me, but could not then decide whether this was a real memory or an imaginary one based on the similarity (minus supernatural elements) of this book to Lawrence Block's Scudder novels and also to M.'s own story. The book it is most like, I think, Scudder notwithstanding, is Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy. Highly worthwhile.

Miscellaneous additional linkage:

Beautiful but also distressing: the library at Guantanamo. (Via.)

A happy note to end on: a nice story about a Muswell Hill tortoise.

Closing tabs

The world's first cake hotel. (Pictured below: meringue rug.)

Vacations for cat lovers.

I really cannot get it out of my head that the swimming pool at B.'s condo would be the perfect capybara habitat (dachshund extension optional).

Skulls on stage.

This piece produced in me the sensation that I must read this novel instantly! Fortunately it was available in a Kindle edition....

Miscellaneous other light reading: Peter Dickinson, Shadow of a Hero; Becky Masterman, Rage Against the Dying; Denise Mina, Gods and Beasts (I think that texturally there is almost no crime writer I would rather read than Mina, and I enjoyed this book a great deal - I wanted it to go on forever! - but there is no doubt she's less strong on putting together a coherent plot than on establishing character and mood in language, partly because she thinks in series/stream format rather than in terms of single books); Ian Rankin, Standing in Another Man's Grave (not bad, but perhaps didn't benefit from me reading it right after Mina); the second installment of Seanan McGuire's newest series, Midnight Blue-Light Special; and a very appealing collection of short stories by a college friend of mine, Uli Baer: Beggar's Chicken: Stories From Shanghai.

Catch-up

Very mixed feelings about my month of idyll coming to an end. On the other hand, idyll might pall if it were extended indefinitely (not, in any case, a temperamental possibility for me, even aside from logistical and career concerns). Things to look forward to in New York: the library, Joanna's spin classes at Chelsea Piers, winter running and most of all my little cat Mickey! Also Nadia Sirota on Tuesday night at the Kitchen and an evening of theatergoing on Wednesday with G. (almost certainly to be followed by dinner at Petrarca).

Miscellaneous linkage: a story by Charlie Jane Anders; the coldest journey! (Via B.)

Miscellaneous light reading: Jojo Moyes, Me Before You (a novel my English grandmother would have thoroughly enjoyed!); Alan Russell, Burning Man (very good, and I will certainly read more of his, but it was curious to read two novels about LAPD K-9 officer-dog partnerships in as many days - this was the other one); Matthew Mitcham, Twists and Turns; and an excellent historical mystery (it is a genre that makes me suspicious, but Jane Y. sent me a link that persuaded me I had to check this one out) by Imogen Robertson, Instruments of Darkness. Halfway through the second one in the series now; also midway through Thinking, Fast and Slow, which I have been meaning to read ever since it came out but never quite got around to.

Over the next few days in Cayman, three final hot yoga classes at Bliss (I finished the thirty-day challenge yesterday - thirty classes in less than four weeks definitely leads to a significant feeling of consolidation and progress), a four-mile leg Sunday morning for the Cross-Island Relay (B. has inadvertently intimidated me by observing that he believes I can run 8:15 miles on current fitness and heat acclimation!) and a decadent Sunday-night dinner at Michael's Genuine.

Catch-up

I have gotten fatally behind on logging light reading, mostly because quite a bit of it was undistinguished!

I finished the rest of the Inger Ash Wolfe books (psychologically implausible and with serial killers like nothing that has ever walked the earth, but the writing is otherwise appealing); read several crime novels by Julia Spencer-Fleming; Jennifer McMahon's The One I Left Behind, which I liked a good deal in spite of it again having an implausible serial killer at its heart; Alan Russell's Shame, ditto; Michael Prescott's The Shadow Hunter (dreadful); Grant Jerkins's The Ninth Step (not bad); Alex Berenson's The Faithful Spy (not my preferred kind of thriller, as it follows too many different characters, but good of its kind); and Robert Crais's Suspect (thin in terms of the mystery plot, but gripping as it concerns the relationship between man and dog in K-9 patrol - really very appealing indeed, and especially recommended to those who like reading books with an animal as one of the main characters).

Also, a book that was pretty much as preposterous as I thought it would be - I do not at all buy the basic account of human motivation, either general or specific to the two main characters, and I dislike the melodramatic tinge - and yet it is nonetheless a gripping read, Matt Fitzgerald's Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run. (Here's how the book's subjects responded to the portrait; thoughtful further comments by Dan Empfield here.)

I still think that if you're only going to read one book about endurance sport and you have at all of an interest in the underlying questions of physiology, the best single book has to be Jack Daniels' Running Formula. I am also very partial to 'Doc' Counsilman's The Science of Swimming - really I am enough of an academic and intellectual in my heart of hearts that though I rot my brain with hundreds of trashy novels every year, I really would always rather read a book of substance than a book of fluff - I particularly dislike popularizations and watered-down versions when there is a high-quality and reasonably accessible straight-from-the-source version.

Spa month is coming to an end. I had two pieces of work I had to finish yesterday and it was actually very satisfying to be sinking my teeth back into a real job; I'm going to have a massive training week this coming week, then fly back to New York the following Monday and ramp things back down a bit while I reacclimate to normal life (there will be some school obligations this semester in spite of the fact that I'm not teaching). Am resolved to have at least a "spa week" a couple times a year even if I cannot always spare a whole month! The crucial thing will be to reconceptualize the first half of January and the first half of June not as times to crank out some massive piece of writing that I don't have vim to complete during a teaching semester but rather as times for rest and recovery; this will entail a fairly dramatic change of attitude, I am sure it is easier said than done, but I really am going to try and make it happen....

Survival

I want to read this journal issue; even though I swore this spring I'd never write another novel again, that conviction has waned and I can't help but think there might be a zombie apocalypse travelogue (horror! survivalism!) in my writing future. Part of the appeal is that I wouldn't have to make up the characters or places, just the nature of the zombie apocalypse and the obstacles and dangers our party of adventurers would face. I have the full cast of characters and locations already, in my life....

I did manage to write the lecture (on the first of St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, truly a work of genius) and also the letters of recommendation. Had an extremely strenuous and rather glorious run in the late morning, in short sleeves - temperature was in the mid-50s, perfect running weather. Class went well, but by the time I got home from work I was ready to collapse.

Finished reading the most recent Phil Rickman Merrily Watkins novel, The Secrets of Pain. Will go to bed shortly.

I have the luxury, for the first time in many days, of not setting an alarm, and I hope to take maximum advantage of the fact that my first actual engagement tomorrow is boxing class at 2pm! A long night of sleep is in order.

Closing tabs

The cold I have is making me feel distinctly glum. Exercise deprivation not helping. Came home after morning work and midday meetings and went back to bed for about three hours in the afternoon; am hoping a long night of sleep tonight may make me feel a bit better in the morning, though I think it will be Saturday before I can exercise. (Chelsea Piers is finally reopening on Saturday post-Sandy, and I am much looking forward to attending Joanna's 10am spin class, which I have sorely missed!)

Minor light reading: Jussi Adler-Olsen, The Absent One (don't think I'll continue with this series, too preposterous); Michael Connelly, The Black Box (suitable reading for illness, but fairly slight).

Closing tabs:

Chinese typewriters anticipated predictive text functions (via Wen Jin).

Further clarification on the OED's supposedly missing loan words.

Human skulls carved from books! (Via Nico.)

Closing tabs

Friday night I went to Doveman's Burgundy Stain session at LPR. It was magically good: here's the set list and here's a highlight.

On Saturday, dinner was infinitely better than the play, which was possibly the most abominably bad piece of theater I have ever had to sit through! I am currently having a minor obsession with the dessert known as affogato - both Esca and Petrarca have particularly good versions, though I think it's something you can't really go wrong with...

Had a cold all last week, which was depressing and necessitated woefully reduced exercise volume, but it's pretty much gone now. My class on "Plato's pharmacy" yesterday was highly enjoyable, but the afternoon Golden Bowl session was a little bit like the labors of Sisyphus! Must finish rereading the novel this afternoon and do a more dramatic retool of old lecture notes to see what can be done for the final discussion tomorrow. It is possible that it just suffered by dint of my having been up since 6am to revise a book review and make sure I had time to run before my first class; tomorrow I'll have more attention for that session exclusively.

Miscellaneous light reading around the edges: Diana Wynne Jones's Aunt Maria (reading her posthumous collection of essays on writing has given me irresistible urge to immerse myself in Spenser, Sidney, Tolkien etc., but I am also pleased to see how many more of her own novels are available on Kindle compared to the last time I checked - there are a couple I've never read, so I'm looking forward to those last few also); Thomas Enger's Pierced. About halfway through the fascinating The Secret Race, Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle's account of doping in the Tour de France (and more, via DC Rainmaker, whose lovely bride's new business enterprise makes me wish I could pay a quick visit to Paris!).

My former student Paul Morton interviews Katherine Boo at The Millions.

Dwight Garner praises Benjamin Anastas's Too Good To Be True.

Finally, unanticipated uses of the Fluksometer....

Motorcycle separation anxiety

Great interview with Deon Meyer at the FT (site registration required). I am super-excited to read Seven Days....

"The mind is its own place"

I'm having a good week in Cayman.  If I come here when I'm feeling tormented and obsessive, which is fairly often, it can feel strangulatingly quiet; I count on a certain amount of impersonally chaotic activity in the outside environment as pushback against the internal sensation of "too much traffic"!  But things are in a good place right now. 

Earlier this morning I finished my first close pass through the style book; certainly a few weeks of hard work still remaining on that, but I'm shooting to finish the preliminary rewrite in the next couple weeks and have set a provisional self-imposed deadline of Oct. 1 for a good clean final version. 

In a digressive moment, I drafted what might be the first few pages of a notional essay on why Clarissa is worth your while to read despite its length, and I've read some interesting stuff for the style book too (though I think its new title - it started out as the little book on style and morphed into Notes on Style - is simply Notes on Reading).  Whether or not this will be my best book to date (I think that's a difficult discrimination to make concerning your own work), it certainly feels like the book I was born to write, and the book that most fully conveys the texture of my own interior life.  I'm excited!

Found a great new fitness class here, too; this summer has been colored by back pain in opening and dental woes more recently, but both are now happily behind me and I feel I can (within reason) exercise as much as I like for the next couple of weeks.  It's actually been a good summer for exercise notwithstanding those limiters, and I note that I will take back and jaw pain any day over bronchitis, which really brings everything to a grinding halt....

I've got tickets for some great stuff in NYC in the middle of September, including this trifecta of a single weekend: the Joshua Light Show (with John Zorn, Lou Reed and others); Toni Schlesinger's The Mystery of Oyster Street; Einstein on the Beach.

Light reading around the edges: Victor LaValle's Lucretia and the Kroons (but what I really want is The Devil in Silver - will have to wait another few days for that); Emily St. John Mandel's The Lola Quartet; Sean Chercover's The Trinity Game (of the Dan Brown school of character development, but an enjoyable read); Hjorth and Rosenfeldt's Sebastian Bergman (unstably satirical now and again, particularly in its treatment of the title character, but on the whole appealing); and Katia Lief's Vanishing Girls, which like its predecessors combines the most wildly and distractingly implausible scenarios and procedural details with a very effectively rendered first-person voice and characters.

In other news, it's National Black Cat Appreciation Day.

Nine red herrings

Via Alice, two good Encyclopedia Brown links: Tom Scocca on nine red herrings; Kathryn Schulz on the desire to be Encyclopedia Brown.

Postscript

Following "Encyclopedia" Brown-related thoughts, I am reminded that as a young person I thought this book a pinnacle of human literary ingenuity - I am surprised to see the Amazon reviews are all so negative!...