![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What Are You Reading Wednesday
Jan. 30th, 2019 10:12 amBehold, a week in which I finally finished some things!
Currently Reading:
Fiction: Yelena Moscovitch, Virtuoso, which I'm really enjoying but wishing I hadn't decided to read on my phone
Lit Mag: Latest issue of The Lifted Brow, the Blak Brow issue
Academic: 'Contemporary Chaucers Across Time', Stephanie Trigg's feschrift
Other: n/a
Recently Finished:
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow. This was... very slow going (I think it took me four months), although I don't know that that was the book's fault so much as my weird brain-state post PhD.
I enjoyed it, I was moved by it, I admire it as a piece of craft, and more importantly, I will be chewing it over for a long time afterwards.
In the end, the central character for me was MacMurrough. I think you could make a fair case for it being Jim, but I felt in the very final pages, it was not Jim we were seeing, but MacMurrough's impression of Jim.
( Long and complex thoughts hereunder. Nota bene, reference to predatory behaviour )
In short, while I enjoyed it, many wouldn't. I suspect there's also a subset of people who would find it rewarding to study (I would) but not to read for fun. I think I'd love to teach it, although the problematics of teaching a text like this are... many and various, and not being a specialist in either Irish or contemporary lit I might be safer sticking to my own specialist field's problematic texts.
Winter by Ali Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a well-written book, quite readable for stream-of-conscious style. Unless you're such a fan of Ali Smith that more Ali Smith is always the right answer, though, I don't really see what this one has to offer that Autumn didn't already provide. Some meditation on what the point of activism is if the world is truly cooked, and some more on art and/or/vs politics. But where Autumn utterly engrossed me, this seemed a bit samey.
Poetry:
No new online fiction, but I went to a poetry reading by AK Blakemore. I have mixed feelings about her poetry - in general I think I liked the newer material better. Of what I can find online, I recommend 'the new men', from this pair of poems published in Hotel magazine:
Up Next: Hannah Kent's The Good People, from the library. Something else from my hard copy shelf, as a matter of urgent clearing-out.
Music Notes: I noted last week that I discovered Bishop Briggs? Chalk up half a week's obsessive binge-listening, broken only by (I can't recall how) discovering that Florence Welch and Josh Homme did a Live cover of June Carter and Johnny Cash's Jackson.
I love it. They look so mismatched together! Their styles are so wildly different, it's like they triangulated and ended up at country music. I love it so much. Bought Florence's MTV live album for the sake of that song.
Currently Reading:
Fiction: Yelena Moscovitch, Virtuoso, which I'm really enjoying but wishing I hadn't decided to read on my phone
Lit Mag: Latest issue of The Lifted Brow, the Blak Brow issue
Academic: 'Contemporary Chaucers Across Time', Stephanie Trigg's feschrift
Other: n/a
Recently Finished:
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'NeillMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow. This was... very slow going (I think it took me four months), although I don't know that that was the book's fault so much as my weird brain-state post PhD.
I enjoyed it, I was moved by it, I admire it as a piece of craft, and more importantly, I will be chewing it over for a long time afterwards.
In the end, the central character for me was MacMurrough. I think you could make a fair case for it being Jim, but I felt in the very final pages, it was not Jim we were seeing, but MacMurrough's impression of Jim.
( Long and complex thoughts hereunder. Nota bene, reference to predatory behaviour )
In short, while I enjoyed it, many wouldn't. I suspect there's also a subset of people who would find it rewarding to study (I would) but not to read for fun. I think I'd love to teach it, although the problematics of teaching a text like this are... many and various, and not being a specialist in either Irish or contemporary lit I might be safer sticking to my own specialist field's problematic texts.
Winter by Ali SmithMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a well-written book, quite readable for stream-of-conscious style. Unless you're such a fan of Ali Smith that more Ali Smith is always the right answer, though, I don't really see what this one has to offer that Autumn didn't already provide. Some meditation on what the point of activism is if the world is truly cooked, and some more on art and/or/vs politics. But where Autumn utterly engrossed me, this seemed a bit samey.
Poetry:
No new online fiction, but I went to a poetry reading by AK Blakemore. I have mixed feelings about her poetry - in general I think I liked the newer material better. Of what I can find online, I recommend 'the new men', from this pair of poems published in Hotel magazine:
Up Next: Hannah Kent's The Good People, from the library. Something else from my hard copy shelf, as a matter of urgent clearing-out.
Music Notes: I noted last week that I discovered Bishop Briggs? Chalk up half a week's obsessive binge-listening, broken only by (I can't recall how) discovering that Florence Welch and Josh Homme did a Live cover of June Carter and Johnny Cash's Jackson.
I love it. They look so mismatched together! Their styles are so wildly different, it's like they triangulated and ended up at country music. I love it so much. Bought Florence's MTV live album for the sake of that song.