January reading / playlist

I dropped the ball with these monthly reading summaries early last year, but it was never intentional. So here I am, picking the ball back up..

(As a bonus: some songs I liked this month:

)

Case Histories – Kate Atkinson (audiobook)
Far be it from me to criticise a book that blurs genre boundaries, but Case Histories never really got going for me, I think because it used aspects of Crime Fiction (crimes!, a private detective) and Literary Fiction (multiple perspectives, lot’s of non-detective characters, lots of time spent on characterisation) that don’t gel. Rather than letting the crimes drive the plot, they seemed to pull it apart, making for a slow read.

When you reach me – Rebecca Stead (audiobook)
My wife and I listened to this on two separate car trips up to the Kapiti Coast over the summer. Haven’t done much in-car listening before., but found it an enjoyable experience. Probably helps that this YA novel about time travel is simply told…

Somewhere in time – Richard Matheson (audiobook)
Continuing the time travel theme, this novel opens with a note from the narrator’s brother, disclaiming some of the zany stuff that’ll follow, and apologising for the slow start to the tale. An apologia – just the sort of thing to put you in a good frame of mind… In all, it felt like a padded out short story. This is true of many of the early greats of this sort of spec-fic, like HG Wells and Verne. So much padding and plodding in order to veil the premise a little longer. Such coyness wears on me (right now).

At the Mountains of Madness – HP Lovecraft (audiobook)
My first ever Lovecraft. May be my last. Early on it has some nice resonance with Shackleton’s South, which I read in 2011, but it moves slowly to the reveal (Cthulu mythos stuff) and wasn’t very horrifying to me. Oh well.


And books in progress (in case I forget something this time next month)...

The Recognitions – William Gaddis (audiobook)
This'll take a while. I listened to the first two hours while driving, and you can't get much further from the straight-forwardness of When You Reach Me. But The Recognitions is amazing, once you get your ears tuned in to Gaddis's flow. It's like listening to Shakespeare. In more ways than one. But it is 38+ hours long, or Hamlet + Othello + Lear + MacBeth + As You Like It + Much Ado + Midsummer Night's Dream + Henry V + Winter's Tale. Okay, that's totally unfair. I wish I never did that. As you were.

The Flamethrowers – Rachel Kushner
I'm reading this ahead of Kushner's appearance at Wellington Writers and Readers Week next month. Digging it so far... (reading it makes me use terms like 'digging it').

Aside: the UK cover (right), which is the paperback cover we get here in NZ is one of the ugliest, least appealing covers I've encountered in a long time, down to the embossed silver foil flame in the upper left. Ugh. Wonder what RK thinks of it?

The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton
I didn't explain in my Best of 2013 list, but I read The Luminaries the first time on fast forward. I'd left my copy in NZ when I went to the States (luggage space was at a premium) and instead borrowed a friend's US edition for three days in late October, always intending to go back and give it a more considered read. Which is what's happening now. I'm 300 pages in and those 3/4 page chunks of character exposition I skipped over on my first reading have been dutifully scrutinised (though I still feel like skipping as soon as I realise it'll be one of those paragraphs).

My first-time impressions remain the strongest: (1) There are some cracking scenes (like Jo Pritchard w/ Anna Wetherall in the Gridiron - the first time we see Anna up close - then Gascoigne arrives...) that help you hoover up the pages. (2) Every page has one or two moments where I go: 'Gee, that must have taken multiple days/drafts to get right. Respect.' (3) 'This is so Deadwood set in Hokitika' (a compliment).