I liked the ending of All the Names by Jose Saramago. Just a slight twist at the end, but it left me feeling happy (and no, I'm not going to say what it was). I wish they'd left the reading group guide out of the end of the book though. Reading groups that need those sorts of questions definitely aren't for me. "What roles do chance and coincidence play in Senhor Jose's endeavors? To what degree is he aware of the importance of chance and coincidence? What does the narrator have to say about the part they play in all our lives?" (that was #6). This one actually WAS a read for book group, but I doubt we'll be going numerically through the questions. (We better not).

This was the first Saramago book I've read, though I have a few more on my shelves waiting. It reminded me a little of some of Borges' short stories. The one complaint I had was with the punctuation style on conversations. Perhaps that's the translator, or perhaps it's a Portugese thing (or maybe it's just Saramago) but it forced me to reread chunks regularly to remember who was saying what. (for example "From his other pocket he drew a copy of th record card, he looked at it for a long time as if memorising all the names on it, then he said, And your husband was the godfather, Yes, Can I speak to him too, I'm a widow, Ah, in that quiet exclamation there was as much genuine relief as there was feigned emotion, that was one less person with whom he would have to do battle."
posted by kristin at 10:56 PM

I finished Perdido Street Station before bed last night. I really liked it overall, but am not entirely sure how satisfied I am with the ending. I don't want to give too much away though in case people read this that want to read the book. I'm not necessarily sure how else he could have ended it, but that wasn't what I was expecting. I'm still not entirely sure how to classify the book semi-urban-fantasy, semi-steampunk, but that's ok as long as I'm not trying to recommend it to someone and need to describe it. I'm pretty sure King Rat and The Scar (Mieville's other two books) will get moved nearer the top of the stack now.

I started All the Names since I need to have it read within the next 9 days.
posted by kristin at 9:59 AM

I have no willpower.

I went to Powells today to pick up Jose Saramago's All the Names for book group and came away with it plus:
Lying Cheating & Stealing
Drinking Smoking & Screwing (both anthologies)
Dancing with Mermaids by Miles Gibson and
The Scar by China Mieville

I'm almost done with Perdido finally (not that I really want it to be over). I'll finish it before I sleep tonight. It turns out Mieville will be at Powells in July, while I'm in Sweden.
posted by kristin at 11:54 PM

Another trip to Vancouver, another huge stack of books from Pulp Fiction.

Douglas Coupland - All Families are Psychotic
William Kotzwinkle - Doctor Rat
Connie Willis - Miracle and Other Christmas Stories
Douglas Rushkoff - Cyberia
Iain Banks - A Song of Stone
Connie Willis - Fire Watch
Connie Willis - Impossible Things
Bill Bryson - Neither Here Nor There
Bill Bryson - Notes from a Small Island
Louis de Bernieres - Captain Corelli's Mandolin


I only read about 4 pages over the weekend. Within the next couple of days I'll finish Perdido Street Station which I'm enjoying.
posted by kristin at 1:07 PM

I finished my most recent purse-book this evening. Nebula Award Stories Eleven. It's from 1975, but surprisingly not too many of the stories felt that dated. Some good stuff, but nothing that inspires a lot of writing from me.
posted by kristin at 10:54 PM

Friday I went downtown for a full day class with Edward Tufte. He's a pretty good speaker and a lot of the material was interesting, but he had two odd habits. One was showing off his library (which I'm jealous of). First printings of Newton, etc. The other was spending a lot of his lecturing time saying "Please turn to page 41 of Envisioning Information", etc. Fortunately it was to show off diagrams and pictures and stuff mostly, but it still seemed a little odd to me. The upshot of this though was that I came home with all three of his books, which I've been wanting for awhile.

On the way there I finished The Hot Jazz Trio which like the other Kotzwinkle book I'd read (Fata Morgana) was ok, but not really my thing. I'd picked this one up somewhere cheap in SF based on the title, but I think I"ll probably pass on picking up more of his stuff in the future.

At home I started Perdido Street Station by China Mieville since I'd seen so many great reviews of it. So far I'm enjoying it, but it's over 700 pages long and not the world's fastest read so it might be awhile before I finish.

I sold quite a few books to Powells yesterday (a few duplicates, a few old UNIX programming books I've not touched in years, and a few books I really didn't like when I read them) and bought 3 (two there and one at Value Village which I stopped in for the first time ever). The VV book was a first edition hardcover of Rita Mae Brown's Bingo (for $2.99). At Powell's I bought Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey and Hotwire by Simon Ings. It's my third unread book by Ings, but since none of them are in print in the US, I figured I'd seize the opportunity.
posted by kristin at 9:21 AM

So I finished the Hartman book last night. It's got a gay PI, Wiccans, high school geeks, a "Satanic" conspiracy, a sleazy televangelist-politician, a sociopath, Native American shamans, and more (well-defined) first person narrators than you could ever imagine. What more could you want?

I realized this morning that I've been forgetting to rate the books I finish on here as I go. This one gets 4 stars (out of 5). I enjoyed it, but it's probably not a good one to send to your conservative Baptist aunt.
posted by kristin at 8:35 AM

In my re-post I forgot to mention the book I read as a detour from the Hartman book Thursday night before I left town. Slug Tossing by Meg DesCamp. I ran across it while googling for a good method to rid my irises of slugs. It's kinda a memoir of becoming a gardener in Portland. I'll never become that much of a gardener (don't have the thumb for it) but it was entertaining and well-written. I'm definitely not adopting her method of slug removal however as I don't think I could bring myself to touch them bare-handed.
posted by kristin at 11:24 PM

Firewall complications ate a post earlier today. Ah well. I'll attempt to recreate.

I put The Gumshoe, The Witch & the Virtual Corpse aside for the weekend since I didn't take it with me to Illinois (but I went back to it last night and am pretty sure I'm going to want to track down the sequel).

On the trip out I read A Wrinkle in Time and most of Connie Willis' Uncharted Territory (which I finished before I slept that night). I really wish I'd read A Wrinkle in Time about 20 years ago (when I was 8) for the first time instead of now. I think I'd have appreciated it more that way. I didn't dislike it by any means, but it didn't totally grab me. Uncharted Territory I liked quite a bit more. I've liked everything I've read by Willis so far. (Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellweather are the others).

I started William Kotzwinkle's The Hot Jazz Trio which starts out with a really warped story about Django Reinhardt, but I haven't gotten very far yet since I fell asleep for a decent chunk of the return trip and read an entire issue of the Economist. It'll become my carry-around-in-my-purse-for-times-I-want-a-book-handy book until I finish it.
posted by kristin at 11:19 PM

Don Webb's short stories are a lot of fun if you're into really strange rather unclassifiable fiction. I finished his collection Stealing My Rules last night. A few of the stories were repeats of ones I'd read in another collection but most were new and most were really odd but in a mostly good sort of way.

I started Keith Hartman's The Gumshoe, the Witch & the Virtual Corpse last night. It was one of the books I brought home as part of my challenge to the guy at Borderlands Books on my previous trip to SF. (After this one 3 down 1 to go). Since it was a challenge and since I'd either read or already bought most of the books he tried to suggest they've all been a bit on the unconventional side, but that's definitely not a problem.
posted by kristin at 8:41 AM

Bought in SF:

Hanif Kureishi - Midnight All Day
Hanif Kureishi - The Black Album
Michael Chabon - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Bill Hayes - Sleep Demons
Lisa Goldstein - Tourists
Nicholson Baker - Double Fold
Craig Curtis - Fabulous Hell
George Alec Effinger - Those Gentle Voices
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - The First Circle
Geoff Ryman - Lust
Junichiro Tanizaki - Naomi
Jonathan Carroll - After Silence
Tom Sharpe - Wilt on High
Neil Stephenson - Snow Crash (trade paper)
Lucius Shepart - Kalimantan
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years of Rice and Salt
William Kotzwinkle - The Hot Jazz Trio
Philip K. Dick - Now Wait for Last Year

posted by kristin at 1:20 PM

A weekend in San Francisco meant finishing several books in airports and on airplanes as well as needing a new bag to get all of the books I bought back with me (a list to follow once I've unpacked).

Actually to back up, I finished Gain Wednesday night before I left but have little to add over what I already said. Friday on the plane I finished Replay by Ken Grimwood. I'd had it in my purse for awhile for random reading waiting for trains, etc. The main character dies of a heart attack in his 40s and instantly finds himself back 25 years in his college dorm room, relives his life (though with changes such as winning loads of money betting on horse races and so on that he knows the winners of) and dies again at the same time. Grimwood did a good job of making the character continue to change throughout (and a good job of condensing the later "replays" so we didn't have to relive each minute each time.

Today on the airplane I finished Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent, his thoughts on driving around the US in two trips. He started out from Des Moines with observations dead-on from what I remember of the town (though fortunately I only lived there as a child). He even mentioned Merle Hay mall where Leslie and I used to hang out all the time. It did make me want to re-read William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways though.

After that I started Octavia E. Butler's Pattern-Master to finish off that series. It's a bit unusual in that it's a trilogy but there's large gaps with unexplained happenings between each of the three books. I'm almost done and expect I'll finish before I sleep tonight.
posted by kristin at 11:56 PM