What’cha Reading?

[Sancho]

Greetings fellow bibliophiles, bookworms, constant readers, bookstore lurkers, and library-card holders. This is the thread that asks — What are you reading right now, and what do you think about it? I’m sure there’s another thread around here somewhere that asks the same thing, but this is the only one that actively encourages straying off topic. I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been admonished once or twice or a thousand times for veering off topic to god-knows where, and it’s always a bummer (being admonished not veering).

Anyway, wanderers gonna wander.

So really, what’cha reading, and what’cha think about it?

[Sancho]

I’ll start. I’ve been reading The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, and I’ve been enjoying it immensely. There’s a warmth and humor in McBride’s writing I don’t get anywhere else.

The novel is set in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and mostly in a neighborhood called Chicken Hill, which is a low-rent area inhabited mostly by immigrant Jews and Black folks. The book starts in the early 70s when a new development of townhouses is being built on Chicken Hill and during the construction they find a skeleton and a few other items at the bottom of a well. The cops go to question one of the old-time residents of Chicken Hill, a Jewish man named Malachi, about what they’d found:

They produced a piece of jewelry, handed it to him, and asked what it was.

A mezuzah, the old man said.

It matches the one on the door, the cops said. Don’t these things belong on doors?

The old man shrugged. Jewish life is portable, he said.

The inscription on the back says “Home of the Greatest Dancer in the World.” It’s in Hebrew. You speak Hebrew?

Do I look like I speak Swahili?

Answer the question. You speak Hebrew or not?

I bang my head against it sometimes.

And you’re Malachi the dancer, right?

That’s what they say around here.

They say you’re a great dancer.

Used to be. I gave that up forty years ago.

And so the book goes back forty years back, to the early 30s, and the action begins.

Wonderful. I’m reading it slowly and enjoying the ride.

[Danik 2016]

Good thread, Sancho!

I was in doubt on which of threads I would post it, but this is definitely not Nature Writing though there are descriptions of nature. The book is Frontiers by Chinese author Can Xue. It´s about people that live in a border town called Pebble Town. So far, so good. But while from an external external point of view nothing much happens, everyone and everything is steeped in a weird atmosphere. People keep seing creatures and sounds that are not there. Places appear and disappear. It is as if toften so as if people were functioning simultaneously on different levels.

it is very puzzling, but in time one gets used to it. All this weirdness becomes somehow the norm of the place. In totalitarian countries artists sometimes invent an own language to escape censorship. I wonder if this is the case here.

[Sancho]

Danik, you’ve got eclectic taste. I’m not sure I can keep up with the breadth of your literary interests.

And thanks, I thought we all might like a place to post a few thoughts about what we’re currently reading, and I’m willing to bet that everybody who visits this website regularly is continuously reading something, or several somethings. In fact, I hatched the idea for this thread when you and I and several other folks were going back and forth on the Cormack McCarthy memorial thread. We started out chatting about McCarthy’s work, but then the conversation shifted to what we were reading at the time, government policies towards indigenous peoples, current affairs, and even to a Pokey LaFarge tune.

So here we are.

Wanderers gonna wander.

[Danik 2016]

Oh, Sancho!I haven´t decided myself if I like the book or not. Speaking of keeping up. I read it because the author might be winner of the Noble this year. People on the Noble thread read about 20, 30 books per year, while I toddle on with my current read. Thankfully here we read without any contest in mind. And I enjoy your comments very much, Sancho, even if I don´t know the book.

Reading for me is a form to travel to distant countries. The only one I praticate today.

[Sancho]

Good point. Reading is a great way to travel, and not just to a place but also to a time. I can read about the Iberian peninsula and then I can visit there, but I can’t visit the Spain of Don Quixote and his time without reading Cervantes.

I suppose I’m as guilty as the next guy for reading a book only because it’s won a Nobel or a Pulitzer or a Man Booker prize. I figure the book has been been vetted by some pretty smart people and therefore must have some value. And I’m sure they’re all good in some sense, but they don’t always hit home with me. I’d read a bunch of George Saunders short stories and liked his writing, but then he wrote Lincoln On The Bardo, which got a lot of buzz in literary circles and won a Man Booker prize. I was looking forward to digging into it. So I did, and I gotta say — what a stinker. I kept wondering if he was dropping acid and writing at the same time.

[bounty]

im reading win by Harlan coben, and like all his books, they are really easy to read and enjoyable for the dramatic tension.

also reading a book about the battle of Antietam in the civil war by a fellow named James mcpherson. his premise is, that this battle, more than any other during the war, was the decisive one that changed the tide of the war.

[Sancho]

Is that James McPherson any kin to the Union General of the same name? There used to be a Fort McPherson in Atlanta named for the Union General who was killed in the Battle of Atlanta.

[bounty]

I read the introductory pages and didn't come across anything indicating that, but i'll take a closer peek at the book Sancho to see if there is anything like that mentioned---or maybe even do an internet search!

[Sancho]

Hah! I only use google to diagnose serious illnesses.

My first thought after reading your post was — hey I didn’t know McPherson wrote a book about his wartime experiences. Then I remembered he died young in Atlanta. There were quite a few generals on both sides who wrote about war, some of them trying to come to grips with what they just went through, and some of them trying to skew the narrative about the war and how they’d be remembered in the history books.

I just picked up Michael Punke’s The Ridgeline. It’s a historical fiction novel set just after the Civil War out in the territories. It leads up to a battle between the northern plains Indians and the Army which has become known as The Fetterman Massacre. The writer uses the basic facts of the fight and then he imagines the thoughts and dialogue of the players, the soldiers and the tribe members.

[Danik 2016]

Still grappling with Frontier. Now there is this baby that drives everyone crazy on several possible levels of narrative. The baby appears as an adult person in the first chapter, but if any one expects a regular flash back, he/she is quite wrong. It is all mixed up, for dear reader to sort the things out.

As for reading possible Noble authors, this is a sort of homework. So many new names crop up in the other forum, that if one doesn´t read some of them one isn´t fit to follow the discussion there.

[Sancho]

Haha! Homework.

Great characterization, Danik. Those books feel like something I hafta read rather something I get to read. After struggling through a Nobel prize winner I’ve gotta go read a genre detective novel or something. It’s like listening to some weird fusion jazz, after jangling my nerves with that I need to listen to a good old 1-4-5 pop song in 12 bar structure just to get my world spinning in greased groves again.

[Danik 2016]

Nevertheless I got to know some very interesting authors that way, Sancho. And, of course, I finish only the books I want to.

[bounty]

I have the "have to" vs "get to" thing going on too---and absolutely love being able to turn to the easy reads by virtue of taking a break from the "higher literature" out there.

one of the worst book I ever read (although I didn't finish it) was either a Pulitzer prize winner or a candidate for it (I don't remember), but I do remember thinking, what the heck, this book is terrible, how on earth is it being recognized for a prize?!

nothing in my Antietam book that links the two McPhersons together, and a Wikipedia page doesn't indicate a connection.

on the point though of "contemporary" writing, one of the things he included in the early part of the book are excerpts of writing from people who fought at Antietam. its interesting that such things have survived.

[Sancho]

Yup, I’ve been suckered into buying a book with a highfalutin prize sticker on the cover more than once (hasta). But I’ve come around to Danik’s way of thinking. I don’t finish the stinkers anymore. Life’s too short.

However I do still enjoy a challenging read, but I also enjoy a good who-done-it (Getsta). Tana French has new book coming out early next year. I got hooked on her detective novels shortly after she published her first one, In The Woods.

So I finished The Heaven And Earth Grocery Store and although it’s literary fiction, it is definitely a getsta rather than a hasta. It’s worth the price of the book just for the characters names. Moshe and Chona, Dodo, Malaki the greatest dancer in the world, Monkey Pants, the Lowgods, Miggy, Fatty, Irv and Marvin Skrupskelis (“the most disagreeable Jews in town”), and Paper to name a few. Paper, by the way, is the neighborhood gossip. Nobody reads the newspaper, they all get their information from Paper, hence the name.

Speaking of names and nicknames I just started Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, a Pulitzer Prize winner…ahem. The title is the nickname name of the main character. Copperhead, because of his hair color and also because they live in an area thick with the venomous snake of the same name. Demon, because the name on his birth certificate is Damon. He comments on this:

As far as the Damon part, leave it to her to pop out a candyass boy-band singer name like that.

The “her” he’s referring to is of course his mother. Demon also comments on given names vs nicknames in general:

I didn’t realize until pretty late in life, like my twenties, that in other places people stick with the names they start out with. Who knew? I mean, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Scarface, these are not Mom-assigned names.