So I'm still reading the Stendhal but intermittently as I keep picking up and putting down other stuff. I will spare you the details of various serial killer thrillers. But I did reread Pattern Recognition by William Gibson and I liked it much more this time than when it first came out. I wonder if it's because OTF is much more like the forum he describes, so it seemed more real to me (I think at the time I read it I was spending much more time in the kinds of places where on-topic posts were the exception, maybe).
And thenyesterday I started on Lautreamont's Chants de Maldoror which is top stuff. Horribly sadistic 19th-century surrealist dream nonsense, it's brilliant.

I've just, five minutes ago, finished The Cantos. Finally.

I may start a thread, when I get my breath back. Bloody hell, that took a while.

The push to finish it (them?) has dented my headway on Sontag, but I've started into Sartre's The Age of Reason, which like of all of his stuff is great, albeit pushing way too hard for his wrong philosophy of wrongness. Why didn't Merleau-Ponty write novels?

Crikey. Congratulations.

Since Lorca I've gone through Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and have now started on Farewell, My Lovely. I've got them in a one-volume trilogy which ends with The Long Goodbye so although I wouldn't normally read three books by one author consecutively* it's going to happen this time...



*Borges excepted, of course.

I'm currently reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, a seriously in-depth look (900 pages) at Nixon and American society based around the elections from '64 to '72.

It's full of interesting detail excavated mainly from his long study of newspaper archives, though much of the material is familiar to any novice student of the period (hardly an understudied one). Unfortunately, at times it feels like reading bits of all the nation's daily newspapers chronologically, interspersed with Perlstein's sometimes clumsy attempts to inject pithy analysis (by following quotes with notes in parenthesis and using exclamation marks! or italics!).)

The writing is a little too forced; whilst I get tired of traditional dry historical writing, there's a little too much effort to insert some colour into every paragraph here. That said, the vast array of anecdotes Perlstein's collected have many gems amongst them.

The central thesis is to emphasise the conservative backlash that developed in the period, and which Perlstein seems to think has been underexamined compared to the counter-culture he also explores, and led to the blue-red divide still with us today.

I'm only halfway through so I'll reserve judgment on it as a whole for now.

SamKelly, if you haven't done so already, you should read Chandler's short stories, they are brilliant.

I'm making good headway on the Sontag, which is every bit as superb as AdeC says. I'm also nearing the end of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, which is staggering. Having not read him before, I'm definitely seeing why people talk about him with such awe.

The sociology library at Cardiff is currently doing its summer purge of books, so I'm getting lots of free books, whose analysis is somewhat out of date.

Just read Steve Barnett Games and Sets on the history of Sport and TV, which was very interesting, but being written in 1988 was a different world from today. Think I might start a thread on it in fact.

Am now splitting my time between The First Casualty by Phillip Knightley, a history of war correspondents, which is great, readable and informative, and with some very quotable anecdotes; and Ursula le Guin The Dispossed, which is good fun too. Think I'll be looking for more of her stuff afterwards.

Finished Sontag and Faulkner, am now embarking on David James Duncan's The River Why (his The Brothers K is pretty much my favourite book ever) and Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self, which I always feel I skimmed through waaaaay too fast the first time I read it.

Thanks for the recommendation, JtS, I will be doing (although not immediately).

Am stocking up on summer reading and have these in a checkout at Amazon - would like your comments before I click to purchase...

What a Carve Up - J. Coe
The Accidental Woman - Coe again
(I have read and enjoyed Rotter's Club and House of Sleep)

Mother's Milk - E. St Aubyn
Teenage - Jon Savage
White Noise - Delillo
Being Dead - J Crace

Am currently reading 'In Irons : Britain's Naval Supremacy and the American Revolutionary economy' which is actually really fascinating stuff.

I didn't like What A Carve Up (having enjoyed House of Sleep a lot), I thought it was a bit like being repeatedly hit with a sledgehammer of liberal outrage - and I'm all in favour of liberal outrage.

I haven't read any of the others.

Ooh, no What A Carve Up! is excellent. My favourite Coe is The Rotter's Club, but for me What A Carve Up! runs The House of Sleep close as his next best.

The only one of his I thought disappointing was The Closed Circle.

Funnily enough, I'm currently close to being finished his latest, The rain Before It Falls, which is a definite return to form.

What A Carve Up is certainly the most overtly political/satirical of Coe's books but it's also brilliantly plotted and has a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments (for me, anyway). I thought Accidental Woman was okay but nothing special. It was his first novel but the fifth one I read by him so maybe that's what underwhelmed me.

I haven't read any of the others either.

I think his earlier ones are slighter than 'the big three' but still very enjoyable reads.

Finished Farewell, My Lovely and I'm now onto The Long Goodbye. After that I'll probably have to get down with some MORE spy fiction and read Our Man In Havana, on account of I'm goin