... ([info]my_moleskine) wrote,
@ 2004-12-14 09:26:00
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Current music:Joanna Newsom : "Yarn and Glue" : What We Have Known

2005 Reading List [Updated: June 21, 2005]
By the time 2005 rolls around, I will have read fourteen of the books (including, actually, one graphic novel series) from my 2004 Reading List. I am (as of the time of this posting) still reading Mishima's Spring Snow, but with less than two hundred pages to go I am sure to be done with it soon. [I finished it on the eighteenth. It really was a lovely book -- however slowly it took off for me -- and I recommend it.] I should have been done with it sometime back but, well, it took some time getting into it and life itself conspired against my reading time. *shrug* I'm quite enjoying it now.

Below, you will find my 2005 Reading List. It's much shorter than last year's reading list. However, it is very likely I'll be adding more titles to it once I finish what's currently on it. With two exceptions, what's currently listed are books left over from last year's list. When the time comes, I'll add a second section to this entry listing whatever additional books I have chosen to read.

Also, this upcoming year I plan to write some sort of review for every book I read. I regret not having written more about all I've read over this past year, because I've deeply enjoyed the year's offerings and it might have been nice to have shared whatever of my experience I could have shared. Ah, well, live and learn.

Anyway, without further ado, here's 2005's initial (and unordered) list:

Part One: What I'll read first.



Part Two: What I'll read next.



Regular Reading: Title: The New Yorker.

I thank Aqua for kindly getting me a subscription. I honestly can't think of another magazine I'd rather have. I've always loved The New Yorker. From the poetry and stories to the fascinating articles (on a myriad of topics) and excellent writers, the magazine delivers a weekly bundle of quality reading. And let's not forget the priceless cartoons.

Audiobooks Listened to this Year:


Namaste.

[Updated: September 26, 2005]

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[info]sukibean
2004-12-14 07:53 pm UTC (link)
I just went to your 2004 list and copied that down too.. :) I'll try to find time to read this year!! I think that will be my resolution.

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[info]my_moleskine
2004-12-14 09:26 pm UTC (link)
A noble aspiration if ever there was, says I. ^_^

Let me know if you'd like more info on any of the books on my lists (at least on those I've read). There are a few I'd recommend above others (although, to be sure, I enjoyed them all).

Take care, and be well.

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[info]warpsmith
2004-12-16 04:02 pm UTC (link)
Villa Incognito exists as sort of a phantom on my reading list. Maybe it'll get read in 2005, maybe not. My hipster fiction quota has already been met with what I bought last week.

Enjoy 100 Years. It remains the defending champeen for the heavyweight title of My Favorite Fiction.

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[info]warpsmith
2004-12-16 04:10 pm UTC (link)
Pee Ess:

Doesn't Joanna Newsom sound like the cutest thing ever? Or possibly the most annoying? In any case, I dig her.

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[info]my_moleskine
2004-12-16 05:18 pm UTC (link)
I had the chance, with Nuala, to see her play at The Troubadour, in Hollywood, and met her after the show. She's one of those people who simply radiates her good nature. She's sweet and bright, elfin and lovely. She looked like an Appalachian princess. Her performance was amazing. Watching her play her Celtic harp was a treat for the eyes, and her music was flawless and enchanting. I know that some people can't stand her voice, but I find it engaging. It fits her lyrics and style.

If I have any regret, it's that we missed seeing her play with Devendra Banhart at her previous show. That would have been worth far more than the ticket price.

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[info]my_moleskine
2004-12-16 05:07 pm UTC (link)
Sad thing is, I got Villa Incognito more out of loyalty than anything else. I've read all of T.R.'s previous books (that I know of), but I kind of feel like he jumped the shark with Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas (not that he's written anything bad, mind you). Skinny Legs and All will always be my favorite T.R. book.

As for your book haul.... May I just say "wow bob wow" and have done with it?

>>> Blindness by José Saramago. I loved this book. It was the first of his I read and it completely hooked me on his writing. I intend to read all his books.
>>> House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I'll have to re-read this one, too. Many a shiver -- both visceral and existential -- did I have, and I felt compelled to light a lamp for fear of the grue....
>>> Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. I did not read this one, but Nuala loved it. Loved it. I believe she described him as being "like David Sedaris -- only alcoholic and more dysfunctional".
>>> Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. One of the best books I've ever had the pleasure to read. Have you seen this? Or this?
>>> The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. Oh... a classic! I'm inclined to say (though many would hotly debate the issue) that it's a better work than Snowcrash. Have you visited NealStephenson.com? I really need to read his Baroque Cycle books.

I've read G.G.M.'s Love in the Time of Cholera and a short piece or two of his, and I have (but have not read yet) The General in His Labyrinth. LitToC was a deeply moving, wondrous novel that I'll forever cherish. I am really looking forward to reading 100 Years of Solitude.

My favorite novel, still, is Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, as I've mentioned countless times in innumerable places. I know of no other author who's written anything quite like it. Sheer, maddening, poignant, comic genius.

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[info]warpsmith
2004-12-16 07:16 pm UTC (link)
Ooh... Gravity's Rainbow looks dificult and daunting. I know a few people that HATE Pynchon. Yet still GR remains hovering on the fringe of my list. I'll give it a go.

Verrrry clever, what with the making the text of House blue. At first I thought you were linking me to something but when that failed to take me anywhere, the joke hit me.

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[info]my_moleskine
2004-12-16 08:15 pm UTC (link)
I bet that I can sell that book in three quotes:
It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home -- only the millions of last moments . . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.
--Gravity's Rainbow, V148

But out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are these visitors standing . . . these robed figures -- perhaps, at this distance, hundreds of miles tall -- their faces, serene, unattached, like the Buddha's, bending over the sea, impassive, indeed, as the Angel that stood over Lübeck during the Palm Sunday raid, come that day neither to destroy nor to protect, but to bear witness to a game of seduction . . . What have the watchmen of the world's edge come tonight to look for? Deepening on now, monumental beings stoical, on toward slag, toward ash the colour the night will stabilize at, tonight . . . what is there grandiose enough to witness?
--Gravity's Rainbow, V214

Those must have all been important to me once. What I am now grew from that. A former self is a fool, an insufferable ass, but he's still human, you'd no more turn him out than you'd turn out any kind of cripple, would you?
--Gravity's Rainbow, V660

And then there are resources like Spermatikos Logos and ThomasPynchon.com.


"Verrrry clever, what with the making the text of House blue. At first I thought you were linking me to something but when that failed to take me anywhere, the joke hit me."

Heh. I knew you'd get it... ;-)

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[info]fort_kanji
2004-12-19 09:01 pm UTC (link)
Not Spring Snow, but Runaway Horses is the best of the Mishima tetralogy. And Delany's Einstein Intersection is excellent-- though I rather prefer his Empire Star...

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[info]my_moleskine
2004-12-20 06:27 pm UTC (link)
Thank you for the comment. :-)

I've commonly heard that Spring Snow is the "best" of the tetralogy. I can't yet have an opinion about it, as I've not read all four. I take it that you have. May I ask, how do you feel about the books as a whole?

I am ashamed to admit it, but Einstein Intersection will be the first Delany book I've ever read. However, at least it's one step toward filling in an embarrassing gap in my library, no?

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[info]fort_kanji
2004-12-20 07:46 pm UTC (link)
Thanks for adding me... And we must all seek the Kirghiz Light...

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[info]my_moleskine
2004-12-20 10:40 pm UTC (link)
You are most welcome.

How different is the Kirghiz since Tchitcherine went there.
"In the ancient tales it is told [...] that a land far distant/Is the place of the Kirghiz Light. [...] It comes as the Kirghiz Light--There is no other way to know It. [...] The flash of Its light is blindness [...] And a man cannot be the same/After seeing the Kirghiz Light. [...] For the Kirghiz Light took my eyes/Now I sense all Earth like a baby. [...] It is north, for a six-day ride [...] And if you have passed without danger/The place of the black rock will find you. [...] But if you would not be born/Then stay with your warm red fire [...] And the Light will never find you, And your heart will grow heavy with age [...]" Gravity's Rainbow, pp. 358-59

One may only imagine, though, that the light may still find one if one seeks it.

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