Following David Leo Rice, I’ve decided to provide a list of things I’ve read and/or am currently reading, with (perhaps) a little commentary, just in case anyone out there on the 'ol internet wants to discuss a book, story, or essay. Hit me up on Twitter or something (or, you know, if we’re friends "IRL," call me: chances are I miss the sound of your voice).
Currently Reading
This is what’s currently in the cooker:
- Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze
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This is the next "Foucault Club" book! So far enjoying it, though I’ve got a bone or two to pick about this whole "nonnarrative" thing.
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austin
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I’m listening to this on an audiobook from my library. It’s delightful! Also, so interesting! From a narrative point of view, a political point of view…so fun!
Recently Finished
These are things that are recent enough that I could probably talk about them semi-coherently, if you’d like to have a chat about them:
- The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić
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This was so good. Weird, and I’m still not 100% sure how or why it was so good, but it was (I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish it the other night, like I was a kid again). The topic, obviously, is intense and interesting, but I think what gripped me most was the prose, and specifically something about the oblique repetitions…a lot like the memory of a place, come to think of it.
- Change me : stories of sexual transformation from Ovid by Jane Alison
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I’ve had this on my shelf for years, but a friend of mine borrowed Jane’s Nine Island (which is excellent) and I’ve been wanting to read something very different and this fit the bill. Who knew Ovid was so sexy? Also, I spent a lot of time working with Jane as an undergrad, and it’s a pleasing kind of nostalgia to read her work.
- "Notes of a Lyric Artist Working in Prose" out of Break Every Rule by Carole Maso
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A really wonderful meditation on the novel, art, erotics, rhythm—I really like Carole Maso. She came to UMB to give a reading once and read for (I shit you not) an hour or an hour and a half straight, and it was freakin' enchanting.
- Three by Perec by Georges Perec
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I’ve thus far gotten through "Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?" which was very fun, and am a few pages into "The Exeter Text," which is pleasingly wild though requires a certain kind of attention that I’m struggling with this weekend (10/18)
- Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault
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The "O.G." Foucault Club book… very interesting and fun. Also, Foucault is hilarious! The reading group is with a bunch of writers (a couple of prosers and a poet) so we ended up having a bunch of interesting discussions about the literary style of this one, in addition to all that "discourse" nonsense (it’s not nonsense).
- The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
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I really enjoyed both these novels. This was recommended to me by ol' Askold Melnyczuk when I was working on my MFA thesis, and though I only just got around to reading it (a year or so late), I really enjoyed it! Plus it felt very… timely, given the current political circumstances and my evolving thinking about "decadence" in today’s America.
- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
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I thought this was actually really fun. Turns out a lot of my friends really don’t like Nabokov. I don’t know how I feel about him in a big sense, but I found this one delightful. Very playful and fun.