What Are You Reading

[Jay]

I just finished reading American Psycho and Fight Club, now I'm on to Robinson Crusoe for a change of pace.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

At this exact moment, I'm reading the following: "I just finished reading American Psycho and Fight Club, now I'm on to Robinson Crusoe for a change of pace."

.

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

Like old friends indeed! You can slip back into them like a wrap and a pair of slippers - particularly those delicious spooky anthologies. I tend to leave them for a few years, then give them a reread - and being re-acquainted with old favourites. While I like the Victorian and Edwardian staples (M.R. James *never* gets old), it's great when they throw in an unexpected curve ball of a recent yarn. What would be your favourite post-Edwardian story? I'm particularly fond of "Smee" - by A.M. Burrage 1929, which I first came across in the Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. The classic English house party in the inter-war period goes rather awry...a bit conventional, but beautifully written and very creepy, even if you know precisely what is going on. I have a friend who has asked me for ideas for 20s/30s parlour games, as he's having a party in an Art Deco hotel. I'm thinking about recommending 'Smee' as a game.

Phryne not only gives you such a lush tour of the 1920s that you tend to forget there's a murder to be solved, the books are also a non-stop parade of cocktail making (sometimes with recipes). I, too, need a butler who takes one look at me when I walk through the door and can determine whether I'm in need of a gin fizz or an old fashioned.

Must check out this HP Lovecraft bio - I've read all his stories and few inspired by them, but never really a bio of the man. His fascist inclinations turned me off pursuing his personal life, but no doubt there was more to him than that. I seem to recall coming across a suggestion he corresponded with M.R. James - or at least that James had read his work.

I work at Darling Harbour, and every so often look out the window and try to imagine the Vigilant towing the Alert to a berth there, after their interesting encounter with a certain tentacled elder god between NZ and Oz.

Hi Mojito:

Yes, I know what you mean! I get such an overwhelming sense of nostalgia when I go back to some of my favourites - books that defined the times I was experiencing by association . . . . Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and The October Country or Clarke's Childhood's End or, in the present case, a battered copy of the Scholatic Books paperback anthology, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories of Horror, the book that introduced me to Mr. H.P. Lovecraft, Esq. of Providence Plantations over a chilly X-mas break when I was a mere high school freshman.

The Shadow over Innsmouth (along with At the Mountains of Madness) is, hands down, my favourite post-Edwardian tale of terror. Simply put, they represent Lovecraft at his sublime best: a fascinating blend of 18th century stately prose style and a 19th century terror of decay framed within an oppressive 20th century cosmic nihlism. And that poignant coda delivered an emotional knockout that I've yet to recover from 26 years later! What a flourish! This was the first tale that I ever read by him and it left a significant impression, to say the least. Having planted that particular hook firmly into my cheek, I was reeled in and I've been gasping for air ever since!

Much of the horror that has been written since usually fails to satisfy in my opinion, reliant as it is on measuring its success by the yardage of viscera unspooled to sate the public's bloodlust. What's your opinion?

M.R. James is another practically forgotten master. Easily my favourite of the litter, The Casting of the Runes was, as you know, turned into a movie produced by Val Lewton. Unfortunately, my viewing of that movie (i.e. the American theatrical version where they actually showed the demon, thus upsetting the whole tone and sense of uncertainty!) preceeded my reading of the original tale on which it was based. Although strictly of the Edwardian period, I'm also extremely fond of William Hope Hodgeson.

The Phryne books sound like a real time machine. I love it when an author can exhibit such mastery, steeping their reader so thoroughly in a time and place . . . . even if it does become tangential to the main thrust of the book!

What are some of your other favourites?

I've never been to Darling Harbour. I looked it up on the internet and it's quite lovely . . . . even if it is so close to the black, aeon-shadowed depths and home to certain things long past man's remembrance which should not be disturbed . . . .

Of course, a trip inland to the outback holds its secrets dear too . . . . And if you should hear strange piping carried aloft upon the unruly wind, the dunes drift and the moon wanes sallow and gibbous to unveil other things far yet darker and more ancient . . . .

 

[humblestumble]

LOTR-The Hobbit
Various knitting books (Elizabeth zimmerman, stephanie pearl-mcphee)

 

[Haversack]

Chalk me up as another fan of the Phryne Fisher books. My wife, who is the mystery mavin, turned me on to them. She used to travel to Oz quite often and knew Ms. Greenwood through costuming circles. What I particularly like is that each book delves into a different subculture of 1920s Melbourne and Victoria. This is in addition to the 1920s verisimilitude provided by the food, clothing, and artwork. I had never heard of the Eureka Stockade before reading _The Castlemaine Murders_. Unfortunately, they have been a little difficult to get over here in Septicistan so we haven't yet read the two most recent. However, anticipation is the best sauce.

Haversack.

 

[jake_fink]

At this exact moment, I'm reading the following: "I just finished reading American Psycho and Fight Club, now I'm on to Robinson Crusoe for a change of pace."

.

You can read AND type? That's called being bipolar ain't it?

 

[Matthew Dalton]

I just started King Solomon's Mines today.

 

[Paisley]

I just finished The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, translated by a Mr. Pevear (sp?). It seems that original translations into English from French made allowances for English delicacy and censored some of the more, um, earthy passages. There is one scene in the book where the main character (a soldier) is running down the street in women's clothes. That must have been one of those scenes where Pevear says resulted in some confusion for the reader.

I just checked that book in and checked out the sequel: Twenty Years Later.

 

[lavendar lady]

My books

I like a good mystry.Agatha Christie,John Dickson Carr, Also westerns Louis Lamour.
L.L.

 

[koopkooper]

I found a great little book called THE BUCCANEER'S BELL by this crazy cat called Hugh Edwards

He is well known to Australian divers for his many excellent books on maritime history and diving. His latest book is a rediscovery of two major explorers of the modern world, William Dampier and Louis de Freycinet.
In 2001 seven men mulled over their intention of searching for the shipwrecks of Dampier and Freycinet in their South Atlantic graves. What they were to discover in their final days of the mission was beyond even their wildest imagination. I've only just started reading it, but man it's got me sucked in like a Hoover Vacumm cleaner.

 

[Mojito]

Hi Mojito:

The Shadow over Innsmouth (along with At the Mountains of Madness) is, hands down, my favourite post-Edwardian tale of terror. Simply put, they represent Lovecraft at his sublime best: a fascinating blend of 18th century stately prose style and a 19th century terror of decay framed within an oppressive 20th century cosmic nihlism. And that poignant coda delivered an emotional knockout that I've yet to recover from 26 years later! What a flourish! This was the first tale that I ever read by him and it left a significant impression, to say the least. Having planted that particular hook firmly into my cheek, I was reeled in and I've been gasping for air ever since!

Much of the horror that has been written since usually fails to satisfy in my opinion, reliant as it is on measuring its success by the yardage of viscera unspooled to sate the public's bloodlust. What's your opinion?

M.R. James is another practically forgotten master. Easily my favourite of the litter, The Casting of the Runes was, as you know, turned into a movie produced by Val Lewton. Unfortunately, my viewing of that movie (i.e. the American theatrical version where they actually showed the demon, thus upsetting the whole tone and sense of uncertainty!) preceeded my reading of the original tale on which it was based. Although strictly of the Edwardian period, I'm also extremely fond of William Hope Hodgeson.

The Phryne books sound like a real time machine. I love it when an author can exhibit such mastery, steeping their reader so thoroughly in a time and place . . . . even if it does become tangential to the main thrust of the book!

What are some of your other favourites?

I've never been to Darling Harbour. I looked it up on the internet and it's quite lovely . . . . even if it is so close to the black, aeon-shadowed depths and home to certain things long past man's remembrance which should not be disturbed . . . .

Of course, a trip inland to the outback holds its secrets dear too . . . . And if you should hear strange piping carried aloft upon the unruly wind, the dunes drift and the moon wanes sallow and gibbous to unveil other things far yet darker and more ancient . . . .

Ah yes! I sometimes catch a glimpse of a certain type of face in a crowd, and think to myself "He/she has the Innsmouth look!" Lovecraft really invests rural and small town New England (one of my favourite parts of the world) with a particular type of creeping terror - his own mythos merges into a seamless consistency with the dark side of the puritan legacy...the Salem Witches, Cotton Mather and insular communities clinging to life between the sea and the dark woods.

His writing does seem to me to be very mannered, often in self-conscious imitation of Poe as I see it. Poe adopted the same archaicisms, and while this generally creates a splendid, gothic (or 'gothick') atmosphere, though occasionally it does tip into the purple and seem strained and overly baroque. It can make a very jarring, unsettling, creepy atmosphere when used in what was for Lovecraft a contemporary setting. That's when I think horror really works - when we imagine that 'this could happen to me! I'd better be careful!' Your average Joe, visiting Arkham in the year 1926 with his modern suit and snazzy hat, might accidently find himself looking into a very deep pit where a nameless horror squirms.

The list of Lovecraft yarns I'm particularly fond of includes Under the Pyramids - even knowing quite a bit about Ancient Eqyptian belief and ritual, his use of the images of Egyptian gods is deeply distubing (and still flashes up sometimes when I'm looking at tomb photos!). Try as I might - and even knowing the texts on which he based his description of Nitocris - she still lurks somewhere in my subconscious when reading about the land of the Nile.

I'm also a subscriber to his theory about hinting at horror being much more effective than dissecting it. I know Stephen King, for example, believes that a writer must be good enough to carry off an explicit description - and if, having revealed the monster in all its detail, we laugh instead of shudder, then the writer has failed. But I'll go with Lovecraft and M.R. James and find a glimpse of a 'thing' - a tentacle here, a hair covered hand like a great spider - allows the mind to fill in the dark spaces with things far more terrible than a monster exposed to the cold light of scrutiny. This is where I'm not so keen on Lumley, as I think he filled in blanks that should have left blank. Henry James subscribed to the same concept of allowing the reader to imagine the darkness, although I have to say I'm not a Henry James fan.

One of my favourite Lovecraft stories is 'The Unnamable', precisely because it addresses the concept of whether horror can be beyond description.

With him all things and feelings had fixed dimensions, properties, causes, and effects; and although he vaguely knew that the mind sometimes holds visions and sensations of far less geometrical, classifiable, and workable nature, he believed himself justified in drawing an arbitrary line and ruling out of court all that cannot be experienced and understood by the average citizen. Besides, he was almost sure that nothing can be really "unnamable." It didn't sound sensible to him.

The Haunter of the Dark is right up there with my favourite haunted house tales (and I'm fond of the Bloch tie-ins as well) - I'd have to say the only haunted house stories I like more are Smee and Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House.

My brother - with whom I share a few literary tastes - is a Lovecraft fan as well. The family home overlooks the Tasman Sea, and whenever we're back there sitting on the balcony enjoying a quiet drink and a catch up, one of us will inevitably remind the other that we'd have a front row seat should R'lyeh rise again.

 

[Mojito]

Chalk me up as another fan of the Phryne Fisher books. My wife, who is the mystery mavin, turned me on to them. She used to travel to Oz quite often and knew Ms. Greenwood through costuming circles. What I particularly like is that each book delves into a different subculture of 1920s Melbourne and Victoria. This is in addition to the 1920s verisimilitude provided by the food, clothing, and artwork. I had never heard of the Eureka Stockade before reading _The Castlemaine Murders_. Unfortunately, they have been a little difficult to get over here in Septicistan so we haven't yet read the two most recent. However, anticipation is the best sauce.

Haversack.

(I promise to keep this post shorter than the last!)
Great to see another Phryne fan, Haversack. Everyone I've loaned the books to has fallen in love with her. And you're absolutely right about the depiction of subcultures of the 1920s being one of the most interesting elements to the series - while I'd studied the goldfields in school and am descended from a man who made his fortune when he struck it rich in the 1870s, nothing has ever brought life on the goldfields for the Chinese as much to life as The Castlemaine Murders.

I had an absolutely wonderful surprise when reading the Sydney-based book, Death by Cricket. Phryne was in a cafe talking to Bohemian students from Sydney University (my old Uni), and had a short conversation with Bert Birtles about the the scandal involving Bert and his girlfriend Dora. Bert was expelled and Dora was rusticated for publishing erotic devoted to each other. I was utterly delighted by the cameo - Bert was a mentor and friend to my father when he started out as a journo in Sydney in the 50s, and he and Dora (whom he married) became lifelong friends of both my parents. I remember them vividly, and their wonderful harbourside house, crammed full of antiques and objects from their worldwide travels. It was like a fairyland to me as a child. Both my parents were thrilled when I showed them the passage in the book, and felt that in those few paragraphs Greenwood had done justice to the youth of their old friends.

 

[Sunny]

I like a good mystry.Agatha Christie,John Dickson Carr, Also westerns Louis Lamour.
L.L.

HIGH props on the first and third! I've read one John Dickson Carr and liked it, but they're as rare as hen's teeth at both my city and (current) university library.

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

Ah yes! I sometimes catch a glimpse of a certain type of face in a crowd, and think to myself "He/she has the Innsmouth look!" Lovecraft really invests rural and small town New England (one of my favourite parts of the world) with a particular type of creeping terror - his own mythos merges into a seamless consistency with the dark side of the puritan legacy...the Salem Witches, Cotton Mather and insular communities clinging to life between the sea and the dark woods.

His writing does seem to me to be very mannered, often in self-conscious imitation of Poe as I see it. Poe adopted the same archaicisms, and while this generally creates a splendid, gothic (or 'gothick') atmosphere, though occasionally it does tip into the purple and seem strained and overly baroque. It can make a very jarring, unsettling, creepy atmosphere when used in what was for Lovecraft a contemporary setting. That's when I think horror really works - when we imagine that 'this could happen to me! I'd better be careful!' Your average Joe, visiting Arkham in the year 1926 with his modern suit and snazzy hat, might accidently find himself looking into a very deep pit where a nameless horror squirms.

The list of Lovecraft yarns I'm particularly fond of includes Under the Pyramids - even knowing quite a bit about Ancient Eqyptian belief and ritual, his use of the images of Egyptian gods is deeply distubing (and still flashes up sometimes when I'm looking at tomb photos!). Try as I might - and even knowing the texts on which he based his description of Nitocris - she still lurks somewhere in my subconscious when reading about the land of the Nile.

I'm also a subscriber to his theory about hinting at horror being much more effective than dissecting it. I know Stephen King, for example, believes that a writer must be good enough to carry off an explicit description - and if, having revealed the monster in all its detail, we laugh instead of shudder, then the writer has failed. But I'll go with Lovecraft and M.R. James and find a glimpse of a 'thing' - a tentacle here, a hair covered hand like a great spider - allows the mind to fill in the dark spaces with things far more terrible than a monster exposed to the cold light of scrutiny. This is where I'm not so keen on Lumley, as I think he filled in blanks that should have left blank. Henry James subscribed to the same concept of allowing the reader to imagine the darkness, although I have to say I'm not a Henry James fan.

One of my favourite Lovecraft stories is 'The Unnamable', precisely because it addresses the concept of whether horror can be beyond description.



The Haunter of the Dark is right up there with my favourite haunted house tales (and I'm fond of the Bloch tie-ins as well) - I'd have to say the only haunted house stories I like more are Smee and Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House.

My brother - with whom I share a few literary tastes - is a Lovecraft fan as well. The family home overlooks the Tasman Sea, and whenever we're back there sitting on the balcony enjoying a quiet drink and a catch up, one of us will inevitably remind the other that we'd have a front row seat should R'lyeh rise again.

Poor you! Between me and your brother you're getting the "Why-Lovecraft-is-relevant-in-today's-modern-world" lecture in stereo across 2 continents and 1 ocean!

I can just visualize you now, relaxing on that balcony with a Brandy Alexander, a raised eyebrow and a front row seat to the rising of that engulfed city of the damned. What do you suppose it'll do to the local real estate values? The seafood market? The tourist trade? Immigration? Not that it'll mean a tinker's damn, but let's just get our stories straight now: neither one of us have ever liked calamari! Uh, uh, never touched the stuff! No sir!

Funny you should mention the "Innsmouth look", about 3 weeks ago I ran into a family at a grocery store that looked like a school of groupers. Big, thickset, uncouth bruiserfish with attitude to spare! When they rudely cut me off in the checkout queue I asked them if, perchance, they hailed from Arkham, Massachusetts, were related to the Whateley clan or if they were of Innsmouth stock. Needless to mention they didn't get the backhanded joke at their expense. They just blankly stared at me. Real charmers!

I still remember like it was yesterday when I read my first Jackson tale, The Lottery. Absolutely chilling. Loved it! It hooked me on her stuff forever.

Yes, Brian Lumley is something of a disappointment. I read his early Lovecraftian pastiches a while ago, but I was never really enthusiastic about him as a storyteller. Another example of someone who could play all the notes without ever making any music.

Well, I can't bash poor Stephen King too hard, after all he is a sincere weaver of tales and he did turn me onto Lovecraft in an interview he gave in a mid-1970s issue of the Writer's Life. His stuff is frequently uneven in quality and much of it panders to the lowest common denominator type of potboiler mentality. However, I personally recommend his early collection of short stories entitled, Nightshift. Not exactly subtle, but certainly cleverly constructed latter-day morality fables with a satisfying twist and sting in their tails!

And as for good old Henry James, I'll let Oscar Wilde have the last word: "Henry James writes as though it were an extremely painful duty." lol

 

[Harp]

James

And as for good old Henry James, I'll let Oscar Wilde have the last word: "Henry James writes as though it were an extremely painful duty." lol

...quite right.

 

[Mojito]

Curt, bless you - that's a Wilde quote that I don't believe I've ever seen before...and it sums up James perfectly! That utterly mannered, self-conscious, cumbersome style seems as strenuous to write as it is to read (look! I'm an artist! I'm weighing the nuance of every word and phrase! See me do it!). You see it also in his great admirer Edith Wharton, although I can read her books and am fond of some of her ghost stories (e.g. Afterwards). What was that wonderful, delicate put-down by MR James? I can't put my hand on it at the moment, but after expounding enthusiastically at length on writers he admired such as Sheridan Le Fanu, he mentions in a blunt line that when questioned about The Turn of the Screw, his reply was "I have read it".

Yes, we do mull over the implications of an vast cephalopodic form lobbing up among the sunbathers and surfers at our beach while watching the waves and water. Consensus is that it would be about the only thing to check rising Sydney coastal property values!

I stumbled across The Haunting of Hill House in the library - a cheap 70s paperback with a lurid cover (girl in white dress running up stairs, looming giant skull in background). I picked it up as a throwaway read for the weekend...now it's one of my 'Desert Island' books. We Have Also Lived in the Castle is also a great read - and I'm not much of a fiction fan, more a lover of historical biography. Ghoulies, ghosties and long legged beasties aside.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

I ... don't like Agatha Christie. Yikes. I think maybe I've read Raymond Chandler bashing Christie too much -- it's sunk in. But generally, I ain't much for a mystery, even if I do read detective fiction.

Right now I'm reading:

Hunky by Nicholas Stevenson Karas about all the Eastern European immigrants in the 20s in NY, Pittsburg and the like. Parallels to my own family cause it to be quite interesting.

and

And We Sold the Rain, which is a compilation of Central American short fiction. Mostly, I picked it up because a couple of the stories were baseball shorts. Unfortunately, I've already finished the baseball ones.

Both of these reads are going considerably slow, though.

 

[jake_fink]

Stop dissing Henry James or I'll 'ave you!

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

Curt, bless you - that's a Wilde quote that I don't believe I've ever seen before...and it sums up James perfectly! That utterly mannered, self-conscious, cumbersome style seems as strenuous to write as it is to read (look! I'm an artist! I'm weighing the nuance of every word and phrase! See me do it!). You see it also in his great admirer Edith Wharton, although I can read her books and am fond of some of her ghost stories (e.g. Afterwards). What was that wonderful, delicate put-down by MR James? I can't put my hand on it at the moment, but after expounding enthusiastically at length on writers he admired such as Sheridan Le Fanu, he mentions in a blunt line that when questioned about The Turn of the Screw, his reply was "I have read it".

Yes, we do mull over the implications of an vast cephalopodic form lobbing up among the sunbathers and surfers at our beach while watching the waves and water. Consensus is that it would be about the only thing to check rising Sydney coastal property values!

I stumbled across The Haunting of Hill House in the library - a cheap 70s paperback with a lurid cover (girl in white dress running up stairs, looming giant skull in background). I picked it up as a throwaway read for the weekend...now it's one of my 'Desert Island' books. We Have Also Lived in the Castle is also a great read - and I'm not much of a fiction fan, more a lover of historical biography. Ghoulies, ghosties and long legged beasties aside.

As Dorothy Parker once quipped, "If it's witty we all assume that Oscar said it first!" Poor Henry James. If his writing is any reflection of his personality, it's no wonder he remained a bachelor his whole life!

Ah, good memories! I have a real warm spot in my heart for those old paperback cover illustrations - some are lurid and laughable while others are brilliant and compelling. So much better than what's being churned out today: cover art has been stripped of its individual flair and personality because it's been Photoshopped to death . . . . a five-finger exercise in composited, cut-rate, clip-art ersatz "creativity".

Funny how attached one can get to these things. My original paperbacks I wouldn't part with for the world even though I now have them in fine hardcover editions too, some signed by the authors.

Historical non-fiction's another favourite subject of mine. I just finished Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower and A Distant Mirror not too long ago. The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold by Brendan Carroll, Walter Winchell and the Culture of Gossip by Neal Gabler and Stravinsky: A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882-1934 by Stephen Walsh are 3 recent books that I highly enjoyed.

What are your recommendations for historical biography?

 

[Mojito]

Dear Dorothy! If it isn't Oscar, we assume it's her.

I love lurid, B-grade type covers for excellent books. Nice, refined night scenes of country houses and winter trees by Grimshaw are all very well for genteel Edwardian ghost stories (and I do love Grimshaw!), but a girl who looks like an escapee from a downmarket horror 70s slasher flick is tremendous fun, juxtaposed against the high quality contents of a book like 'The Haunting of Hill House'.

Great list of books - and I don't think I've read a single one! I have a soft spot for well-written biographies of minor historical figures, often the result of a lifetime's loving work and research.

Limb & Cordingly's biography of L E G Oates, "Captain Oates: Soldier and Explorer" is a beautifully written piece, although it's very apparent where Cordingly's contribution in the way of regimental history comes in (there are moments when we thoroughly digress to a dissertation on reformation and reactionism in the British Army in the pre- and post- Boer War period...all good fun, but I imagine a few readers skipped some pages!). It rises to a perfect, lyrical, elegantly understated recounting of Oates leaving the tent...in absolute accord with Oates' end.

Staying in the Antarctic - Sara Wheeler's "Cherry", the life of Apsley-Cherry Garrard, is gorgeous. She handles the highpoint of his life, the Antarctic years, very well, but what is even more accomplished is her sensitive handling of the fragile and sometimes less loveable aspects of his personality, and also his breakdowns, depression and mental illness. She also brings deftly to life with a few well chosen pars the wonderfully rich array of characters around him, and does so with more sympathy than the high-strung Cherry ever felt for such characters as Kathleen Scott.

Trulock's biography of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, "In the Hands of Providence" - this one, again, is elegantly researched and written. There have been other Chamberlain biographies before and since, and revisionism has grasped the Chamberlain story with sharp claws, but I still think this not only the best Chamberlain bio, but one of the best bios of any subject.

Then some of the larger figures of history - E. W. Ives recently revised and reissued his biography of Anne Boleyn, and it has managed to expand and improve on what was probably the best bio of Nan ever written (the only other contender for the title is Warnick's "Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn" - both are magnificent works, even if not always in agreement).

Every few years I re-read Carl Sandburg's multi-volume Lincoln bio ('The Prairie Years' and 'The War Years'). I agree with the writer who said something along the lines of 'to read these works is to walk with Lincoln'. I have a shelf-full of Lincoln bios, many of which are more up-to-date in terms of information and methodology, but Sandburg's is a work apart. The quintessential American poet interpreting the quintessential American.