books wot it bought today

[lobelia321]

I am in such a state over having posted the Cadman fic, my first really long and endlessly-revised and properly-betaed and non-experimental and emotionally-involved fic I've posted in years. Desert Prince is probably the last, and that wasn't finished, and before that When in Malta.

Anyway, what I was going to say is that I am in such a state over it (and it doesn't help having posted last thing at night which led to me waking up early and lying there and thinking 'I need to change that pronoun' and 'I need to switch around that proper noun' and 'I want to substitute 'being in a state' for 'being rattled', the adjective I spent quite some time last night hunting for in thesaurical lists and that suddenly came to me at 6 a.m.), ... where was I?

I am in such a state over this fic that I am not even daring to look at my Friends List or my Recent Comment lists or my email in case I discover the absence or presence of feedback, ack. I am floating along in willed ignorance, doing procrastinatory and substitutive tasks such as reading David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and buying second-hand books at Browne's and the Amnesty Bookshop.

And David Mitchell! I must resurrect my DM icon because this is a thing I also get into a complete state over: new David Mitchell novels. I did this when Cloud Atlas came out, and now I'm doing it again for Black Swan Green. I bought that book about ten days ago but I haven't dared open it; I've been reading all sorts of other things and just glancing at the book out of the corner of my eye, and then three nights ago I read the first 2 pages in a kind of breathless pretense-of-not-reading-at-all, without a bookmark. Today I started it again and I can almost not see the words I am in such a state. I am willing myself into calm appreciation, trying to evaluate in a rational manner the authorial devices used and the narrative strategies and the way paragraphs break and how descriptions of weather are used -- but all the while my pulse is palpitating. It is really quite absurd. I loved Cloud Atlas so much that I actually haven't been able to re-read it, and then, a dread at the back of my mind, I think, 'Maybe I'm dreading re-reading because it won't be any good second time round? Maybe it's all a nothing??' This is also the dread of Black Swan Green: what if I don't like it?? Oh, the psycho-ways of the brain.

If there's anyone whose style I aspire to it's David Mitchell.

But, on a less cathected note: books wot i bought today

• Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels (introduced by our friend Phil Hensher!)

• The Abduction of Sita, a Penguin epic (now what is that for a clever marketing ploy?), an extract from the Ramayana, modern prose version of R.K. Narayan) (I love the Ramayana. I saw it as a child, the four-night long version as performed in song and dance in front of the Prambanan temple in Yogyakarta in Indonesia; it was absolutely out of this world; the monkey king Hanuman was my first hero and lust object; this, dear reader, is how I knew I was straight by the tender age of five)

• Benito Pérez Galdós, Fortunata and Jacinta (19th C. Spanish novel of two women who love one man, one's the wife, the other's the mistress -- part of my reading-19th-C-novel project and also, hey two birds one stone, part of my reading-world-literature project!)

• Ursula K. LeGuin, Malafrena (I went through a LeGuin binge late last year and rediscovered why I love her. What a mistressful story-teller and gorgeous imaginer of intricate sexualities.)

• Raymond Queneau, Exercices de style!!!! Yes, *waves it at sheldrake*, I found it for one pound 50 second-hand in French! *falls over* Fodder for stylistic madness galore!

• Alan Garner, Red Shift. *waves it at sophrosyne31* I found it! Not in Borders but at Amnesty for one pounderoony and fifty pencitos! And guess who endorses it as 'brilliant' on the front cover? Heh, Ursula LeGuin. My authors are talking to each other.

• Chekhov, Lady with Lapdog and other stories It's an odd thing but I don't read many short stories off-line. This is curious because, of course, I spend my fannish print-out-reading life reading almost nothing but short stories of the fanfic variety. So I thought to sharpen the critical faculties and the writerly muscle, I'd read some publshortstories. Also, it's the 19th C. (birds, stone). Also, this is what sold me: One of the stories of 1889 is called A Boring Story. *waves at orlisbunny and brightest_blue and any other member of the boring!club* So it can be research, haha, for Boring!Orli. *sporfles* Chekhov wrote of this story, as I gleaned from the Penguin edition's Intro, that he had never written anything like it before. So: experimental writing is us!

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret. Because the chapter I am currently completing of my tobepublbook is on crime and clues in the 19th C. and this is a best-selling sensational novel of crime and murder of 1862.

• Philp Roth, The Plot Against America. Not a book wot i bought but a friend lent it to me and it's on the same pile of to-be-read books.

And now I must ponder the Herculean decision: to go back to my desk and write more on crime and clues? Or to brave the lion's den, grasp the thistle and the nettle and so forth, and actually look at my Cadman fic post? And add in those pronouns?

Um. I'm opting for murder. *runs away*

Comments

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Gosh, you are in a state, aren't you. Take some deep breaths.

Heee, you found Queneau for 1.50! And Red Shift! I've never read that, often meant to.

I am a little bit sad because I didn't get to see The Divine Comedy after all. :( What's worse, it was entirely down to my own stupidity. Oh well.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You mean you didn't end up in Cambridge? Shellie!!!! Buggerypoots.

I am circling round the Cadman fic. I looked at my email inbox. Now I am reading Friends' posts with great attention. *stabs head*

Queneau!!!!! Exercises! Phew, now that I've posted a 'real' fic, maybe it's good therapy to go back to some frivolous experimentation. I leafed through Joyce's Finnegan's Wake: it is insane. The interesting thing about doing experimental writing oneself is that one appreciates it more in others. Because it is such *fun* to do!

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

i miss boring!orli!!!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Maybe boring!Chekhov will inspire me!!!!

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

that's one hell of a terrifyingly good-looking clutch of books you bought. you're just showing off, aren't you? and i love that you namecheck both mr garner and ms le guin and then bring them together in a clinch of two-of-my-favourite-authors-in-the-universe-ness.

i have to say, i was slightly irked by cloud atlas, which response disappointed me after hearing such breathless gaspy raves.

don't look at the cadman post. just let the anticipatory magic linger a bit, that's the best part!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I was on a book roll! And all so cheap, too! Plus for a good cause! Plus books I've been meaning to buy and some new discoveries! (I'd never heard of the Spanish novel.) I'm not sure if I was showing off; I'm not usually the showing-off type; in fact, the other way round, diffident, hiding light under bushel, writing a big word and then deleting and dumbing down for fear of sounding supercilious -- LJ has actually made me better at flinging myself around. :-)

Hm, you didn't like Cloud Atlas? why not? It gives me pause that I haven't re-read it. All the other books in my top ten have been read and re-read with lust and abandon (Jane Austen? I can't even begin to count.) but this one I tried to re-read a few times and then somehow couldn't. His Ghostwritten I've dipped in and out of since first reading but Cloud Atlas had me in such a state; I think I'm afraid it'll be found wanting the second time round. I'll tell you what I remember loving: the different voices; the plot structure of a b c d e e d c b a (simple but I found it very effective); the different registers and styles; the move from realism to two layers of sci-fi: the utopia gone wrong techno sci-fi and the apocalyptic after the world has blown up and techno is dead scenario; the hilarity of the one with the old guy; the language of the boy in the apocalyptic one and the ethical point about death; Onmi broke my heart; the move from past into future; the play with genres; the beauty of the language; the unobtrusiveness of the language; the sense that this guy is insane.

I am having conflicting feelings about my fb and I haven't worked out why yet! Ack. Writing. It goes straight to the guts.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

P.S. I was thinking why I posted this and the 'showing off' point. I think you're onto something because I did want to make a point of sorts; I guess I sometimes want to show the LJ Flist that I read Literature with a capital L, somehow to put my stylistic experimentations and reading background into context. I'm not into genres and I know a lot of people who write fanfic are, particularly sci-fi / fantasy. The only genre, in fact, I read with great regularity and gusto is fanfic. And generic fiction experiments less than does general literature; no, I rephrase: the experimentation occurs at a different level, more within a set of conventions and a framework that fans are relied upon to know so that they can pick up subtle deviations and playing arounds.

Sometimes the tendency (on my current Flist, anyway) to prescribe and make rules about How To Write gets me down and I need to assert Literature Wot Doesn't Care About This and Makes Its Own Rules as a counter. This is especially in the wake of Contraflow fic where I came up against this and it was a bit of a problem for me.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Finnegan's Wake is a slightly cathected site for me, but more so is Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. This is the sort of thing we occasionally had read to us at bedtime, when I was a child. Might explain quite a lot about me, I suppose...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Wow. I read the children Harry Potter. Am I aiming too low? I loved Riddley Walker when I first read it!!! The other Russell Hobans tend to be very pretentious, except for that mouse one for children which is heartbreaking.