Holiday Book Club
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So you're back at the desk under a buzzing fluorescent tube; the summer holiday has rushed away like a spilled drink on the deck. Cheer Up! You must have read something good. No? Discuss Christmas books and holiday reading here …
129 Responses
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I'll start.
I cantered through one Christmas present: Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, in which the Guardian columnist gloriously skewered (it was published in 2004) religious lunatics, Thatcherites, new-agers et al, sometimes giving the impression that his own philosophies are above scrutiny.
He then went on to help create that masterpiece of mumbo-jumbo, the Euston Manifesto, which just goes to show.
Also, I'm still having 10 or 20 page snacks of Hamish Keith's memoir, Native Wit , which I'm enjoying as a thoroughly engaging personal journey through an emergent New Zealand culture. Oddly, he skimps a little on himself: anecdotes flow into little thinkpieces without, say, giving us an idea why the young art student was hired from Christchurch to the Auckland Art Gallery when he didn't even want the job.
And one of the other side of the ledger: avoid Michaelle Weissman's nicely-presented coffee book, God in a Cup . It's really nice that she had a great experience writing about the blooming of "specialty coffee" in America. Just a shame that she really cannot write well enough to be writing books. It's unreadably awful.
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Worthy (maybe too worthy for summner):
Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty.
Very apropos in light of the recent election (the USA's, not so much ours). The late Pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty riffs on Whitman and John Dewey, and describes his views on "spectators" vs. "agents" in leftist politics in America. He argues for more of the latter.
I was surprised how much I found his commentary - written several years ago specifically for the American political scene - relevant to contemporary leftist politics in general. Rorty's a philosopher, but this is not pure philosophising; its philosophy, politics and sociology - very "applied philosophy", if you will. He writes really well, it's about as uncynical as you can get while writing realistically about politics, and won't take much out of your day (the primary text is only about 100 pages).
Highly recommended. I can't do better than to paraphrase one of the back cover comments: It feels like a lay-sermon for the untheological.
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Worthless pop culture trash:(I kid, I kid... but this is unlikely to be reviewed on Kim Hill any itme soon.)
Planetary by Warren Ellis & John Cassaday.
I heard plenty of good things from the nerdsphere about this comic by Ellis and Cassaday, so I bought the first trade paperback collection "Around the World" from Graphic the other day. It's basically a superhero comic, but with more of a science fiction style than usual, in terms of the presentation of ideas. The three principal characters are "Archaeologists of the unknown", who discover the secret history of the world (well, worlds, as it turns out) on their adventures. Ellis throws sci fi ideas out there like they're going out of fashion, tells a (roughly) coherent story usually in the one issue, then swiftly moves on the next concept. Somehow original in its derivativeness (is that a word?), it's lots of pulp fun, if that's a cup of tea you like to taste from time to time.
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Probably impossibly biased here, but the Better Half got me Nga Tama Toa: the Price of Citizenship : C Company 28 (Maori) Battalion 1939- 1945 (David Bateman, hardcover) for Christmas. While professional historians could (justly) nit-pick the methodology -- and it does sit uneasily between a scholarly history and profusely illustrated coffee table book -- it's an impressive and accessible work of military history. And I would say that even if my father and uncle weren't two of the veterans whose pictures appear in the roll call at the back.
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No contest for the most popular book for friends and family this holiday, and I've already raved about it on PA
'Stuart: a life backwards' by Alexander Masters (Harper, 2006)
Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2005Alexander Masters, liberal journalist of Cambridge, England, wanted to write about local homelessness and befriended Stuart Shorter for his 'lived experience'. This book is a biography of Stuart, written in reverse chronology. But also of the biographer as he becomes entangled in trying to understand and help.
How can a biography about the desperation of homelessness, chronic criminality, violent prison life and dysfunctional families also be funny?It can - but a very black humour at times.
Get a group talking about this book and they will remember the recipe for prison hooch using catheters, or the scene when the homeless protest camped outside Jack Straw's place for 3 days waiting for him to appear, which he did at the worst possible time.
Or be enraged that people running shelters for homeless people were jailed because their clients used drugs.This happened too, in Blair's England.
And it challenges stereotypes and assumptions all over the place - as it's about basic humanity.
Mark Haddon (of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time etc) calls it 'Bollocks brilliant.Possibly the best biography I have ever read'.
Should be compulsory reading for the Sensible Sentencing Trust. But a challenging sometimes harrowing treat for everyone else.
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Not so much books but working my way through a pile of quality magazines, such as Sight & Sound and The Word (one of the best music mags around). But I particularly savour saving up an issue or two of the US quarterly Stop Smiling ("The magazine for high-minded lowlifes") for summer reading. Does anyone else read this?
A couple of books on the go: David Mamet's Bambi vs Godzilla: on the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business (might not finish this--he does not write non-fiction that well); Wayne Brittenden's The Celluloid Circus: The Heyday of the New Zealand Picture Theatre (an enthralling pictorial history); and maybe Michael Schudson Why Democracies Need An Unlovable Press.
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And for kids I recommend Kate de Goldi's 'The 10 pm question'.
It's about one of those very anxious 12 year old boys. And realistic boy stuff. And has an eccentric girl character. And some family stuff. And a great male teacher.
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Hamish Keith's memoir, Native Wit, which I'm enjoying as a thoroughly engaging personal journey through an emergent New Zealand culture. Oddly, he skimps a little on himself:
Yeah, i chomped through this and thought the same - suspect Hamish got up to way more than he lets on here. I suppose nz is too small to have really frank memoirs, or at least not publish them till one's pushing up daisies.
Alice Hoffman - The Third Angel and The Probable Future. Lightish fiction, just right for holiday reading for sheilahs. Kind of offbeat, sometimes eccentric characters, twisty and vivid plots and unfurlings, I find her stories quite spellbinding.
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I suppose nz is too small to have really frank memoirs, or at least not publish them till one's pushing up daisies.
If by "frank" you mean copious urination on people in no position to defend themselves from beyond the grave, endless relitigation of petty feuds that weren't that interesting at the time, and self-regarding ego-masturbation, then I wish every man (and woman) was an island.
I agree with Russell that Native Wit is a curious blend of (high quality, admittedly) name dropping, little think-lets that would have worked just as well as columns, while being at the same time somewhat impersonal. But I thought it was rather nice that Keith decided to forgo the opportunity to bury an armory's worth of hatchets in any number of heads. Considering he's never been shy about getting into loud and public arguments, it could have been much bitchier than it was.
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Yeah, i chomped through this and thought the same - suspect Hamish got up to way more than he lets on here.
And at the risk of being crude, I've heard that Hamish was very far from the languid, sexless aesthete back in the day. So I'm rather glad he didn't go turn his book into a catalogue of who he got up either. I don't know if anyone else managed to get through Norman Sherry's exhaustive (and exhausting) triple decker biography of Graham Greene -- but I don't think the appendix reproducing an annotated list of 47 prostitutes he patronised added much to the understand of the (rather squalid) man or his work.
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good lord it is summer, I go for fluff and frivolity in the summer. I simply can't imagine laying under a tree and reading all the weighty tomes that others seem to be reading.
Henning Mankell - working my way through his.
Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse series. Enjoyable pulp. I streamed True Blood(based on the books) last year and I must say this is great series, very quirky, Six feet underish. Great characters, and the lovely Anna Paquin - almost our very own!Have re-read Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
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Summer reading is the best. A whole day spent on the beach, just reading and remembering to roll over every now and again. Brilliant.
Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama
The occasional bout of extra verbiage, that seems to be an Obama trait does not spoil what is a clear, passionate and succinct vision for a nation. Read before the hype and pomp of inauguration day celebrations, it gives me hope that the man will deliver. Possibly not on everything - but the book shows that he knows how to critique and analyse situations before offering a deliberate solution. At the very least he's able to discuss ideas using complete sentences. Which is more than could be said about the other guy.The Atrocity Archives - Charles Stross
Hyper-realistic, whip-crack prose. Snappy writing, geek humor, numerology, the occult. Sort of Hell Boy meets the IT Crowd. Loved it.Comics: Fables, Pride of Baghdad - by Brian K. Vaughn, and re-reading Watchmen before the movie obliterates it...
Still to get through before school starts: Mirrormask, Little Brother and Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse
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Flat Earth News by Nick Davies
A former Guardian journalist and columnist deconstructs the newspaper industry to explain why we're all so hideously uninformed by modern journalism and newspapers. Bloody good read, and should be compulsory for Journalism schools and media studies departments everywhere. Mostly applicable to the UK and the US, but I can see similarities here in New Zealand with the enormous growth in reporting and the subsequent reduction in journalism.
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Oh yes - purchase of the summer.
Civil War & Other Optimistic Predictions - David Slack.
Found in a basket of books outside the Mercury Bay Library in Whitianga.
For 50 cents.
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Civil War & Other Optimistic Predictions, by some guy whose name I can't recall :)
Fascinating with regard to what's happened since it was published - some accurate predictions in there.
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Heh - Tm, SNAP! Although the author gave me my copy - goodness knows how he makes a living with such generosity.
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Comics: Fables, Pride of Baghdad - by Brian K. Vaughn, and re-reading Watchmen before the movie obliterates it...
sigh...yes, Fables has also been recommeded to me. As has pretty much anything by Brian Vaughan. Just started reading "Y - The last Man", which is okay so far (bit too early to tell yet).
Watchmen holds up on re-reading. And damit - I'm I'm determined to be recklessly optimistic about the movie!
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He is indeed a generous one that author. :-)
I was stoked to find it actually - not just at that price - but because I enjoyed "Bullshit", which I got from Unity - and because as you say, it's fascinating to read back to see what predictions were made and where we're now headed.
At that price - it was a certain steal - which charity should I be donating too, to ease my conscience?
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I'm on a David Mitchell streak: reread Black Swan Green last week, working on Ghostwritten now, number9dream awaits in the bag o' library books.
Enjoying it all greatly, and having those "nooo, not lights out yet, one more chapter!" moments I remember from childhood except that of course now I have to play all the roles myself.
Also, given that I read Novel About My Wife (Emily Perkins) the week before last, I suppose I'm in a position to play Compare And Contrast The Young Authors. This is not a position I'm taking advantage of, presumably because I am a bad, bad person.
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Am I the only person on the planet who paid retail for Civil War &c?
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@Steve
I'm vaguely optimistic for Watchmen - the movie. The trailers look stunning - but it seems too "shiny" for me. I understand some of the issues over Moore not being credited in any way whatsoever - but it still seems wrong to only have Dave Gibbons in the credits.
On the sheer horror/WTF? tip - not only is Keanu Reeves apparently playing Spike in Cowboy Bebop, but the scriptwriter for Charlies Fricking Angels, John August is working on a script for Preacher - with Sam Mendes attached as director.
Why aren't these sorts of projects being affected/shutdown by the recession?
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Watchmen holds up on re-reading. And damit - I'm I'm determined to be recklessly optimistic about the movie!
Good move -- not even Samuel Jackson in full-tilt scenery shredding mode could redeem The Spirit, which is a shame given the pedigree of the source material.
But there's two words that make me think Watchmen is not going to change the golden duck that is Alan Moore on film: Zac Snyder. I don't drop the f-word lightly, but if 300 doesn't constitute fascist soft-core muscle porn, nothing ever will. Someone once said about Antonioni that you could hang every frame of his films on a gallery wall, but it was running them through a projector 24 times a second that the problems began.
The Watchmen trailer does look wonderful -- but I don't know if I really want to put down $15 to see little more than a transcription of Dave Gibbon's panels. (And you've got to give geek points for putting an extract from Philip Glass' soundtrack for Koyaanisqatsi on the trailer for a film that is in another cinematic universe entirely.)
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I understand some of the issues over Moore not being credited in any way whatsoever - but it still seems wrong to only have Dave Gibbons in the credits.
Tim: Moore didn't want his name in the credits, and if my memory served he actually sued to make sure his name isn't on the credits or any marketing material for the movie. He's also said that any money coming his way from WB would go to Dave Gibbons.
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And for kids I recommend Kate de Goldi's 'The 10 pm question'.
It's about one of those very anxious 12 year old boys. And realistic boy stuff. And has an eccentric girl character. And some family stuff. And a great male teacher.
Seconded, and I'd add that it's a fine book for adults too - my favourite of the pile of NZ fiction I have been reading for review. It also has an excellent cat character. Called the Fat Controller. 'Nuff said.
Amy, what did you make of Novel About My Wife? I liked it in spite of myself, and in spite of itself, if that makes sense. She's a very fine writer, but the plot was disturbing, in good ways and bad.
Another two recommendations: Tobias Wolff's collected short stories (see rave in this week's Listener) and School of Love, Elizabeth Knox's book of essays (see rave in next week's Listener).
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Tim: Moore didn't want his name in the credits, and if my memory served he actually sued to make sure his name isn't on the credits or any marketing material for the movie.
Or any movie based on his work. He regards Hollywood as incapable of rendering his ideas on screen. It's quite decent of him to stand aside and let Gibbons get paid though.
I'm looking forward to the movie. I was in London when the original comics came out. The monthly visit to Forbidden Planet was an exciting thing.
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Amy, what did you make of Novel About My Wife? I liked it in spite of myself, and in spite of itself, if that makes sense. She's a very fine writer, but the plot was disturbing, in good ways and bad.
Oh, I like me some disturbing. I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed that review, too. They should give the reviewer an award or something.
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