The Telegraph‘s Peter Robins has, to my great astonishment, followed up on my suggestion of asking book critics what they read for fun. Robins has queried his fellow staffers, even registering the response time and emotional reactions of his colleagues. This certainly sets a very important precedent, and I do hope that other newspapers follow Robins’s example. In the meantime, it seems a fine time to ask what you, dear readers, have read for fun these days. (For my own part, I have been wildly entertained by Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels and have enjoyed revisiting a number of stories for a book I’m currently reviewing.)
Newspaper Accountability
– June 9, 2008Posted in: Reading
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
This is heartening news. As for myself, I’m working on the first “Dangerous Visions” anthology. It feels almost a mythic, important object from SF’s past, but it’s actually pretty enjoyable.
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler is what I always return to for fun – if there has been a decent delay since the last reading. Brilliant book.
The Worst of perth
BC Silvia:
Dangerous Visions 1 and 2! I’ve owned, and then lost, copies of those books *three times* since DV2 was originally published (I got my first copy in the mail as a teen member of a Sci Fi book club). Wonderful stuff; I wonder how different an experience it is to read those stories, for the first time, as someone older than 13? (laugh)
Fun? Dare ya to ask David Ulin. Betcha he can’t even spell fun.
As someone who writes for Ulin from time to time, I can assure you that he knows fun. But that’s not a bad idea!