What i read in November..

Look out, here comes underwear..

The Wary Transgressor by James Hadley Chase

(1952)

So when i picked this up in Troutmark i was drawn in by the glamorous 70's cover and the Italian setting, and was a little disappointed to find out it was from the 50's and would probably be less racy than i'd hoped. Luckily, this was a totally gripping pulp-thriller, with sweat-inducing tension and a brilliantly cruel climax that made me go WHAAAAT.

 

The Werewolf Principle by Clifford Simak

(1967)

Great cubisty cover, kinda forgettable novel. I liked the idea of it, a genetically modified 'human' gets sent into space and assimilates the consciousness of the beings it encounters, ends up back on earth with amnesia, with a kind of harmonious schizophrenia, and gets chased by dogs and shit. I wasn't sold though folks.

   

A Meeting By The River by Christopher Isherwood

(1967)

I really rate Isherwood, when he's good he's fully-all-the-way good...but this, his last novel, was one of his weaker moments. Still, it was short. Written with a deceptive lightness and authenticity - you do get a real sense of Isherwood's immersion in hinduism, the conflicts and doubts there - also, he nails the fraughtness of brother relationships. It was quite posh though. 

 

The Underground Man by Ross Macdonald

(1971)

Another beauty from Macdonald, near perfect.

 

The Tangier Diaries: 1962-1979 by John Hopkins

(1997)

The diaries of a novelist i have not heard of, which really capture his experience as a twenty-something in Tangier, surrounded by the expatriate bohemians that lived there (William Buroughs, Jane & Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams etc.) - wonderfully descriptive and cumulatively it had a kind of hypnotic, slow sense of profundity. 

Vanishing Ladies by Ed MacBain

(1957)

Easily wins best cover of the month. That's Blanche there on the bed in her purple dress, somehow she seems to have leaped 30 years and landed in the 1980's. That doesn't happen in the novel, by the way. She just slutty in the novel. So, i just noticed i went a whole month without reading a book by a woman. Shame on me. That's a catastrophic fail, which can't be defended by the fact i was reading gold like this. 

What i read in October

Ugh, Autumn reading...it's the snugliest.

Odd Girl Out by Elizabeth Jane Howard

My bestie LOVED the Cazalet Chronicles by EJH, so Sian borrowed one and about 20 pages in was all like "this is so freakin' boring, fuck this shit.." (except that she would never use swears like that, she's a lady) which piqued my interest enough to try one of EJH's earlier (70's, obvs) novels. It was ace. A quietly devastating cat-scratch to the face of middle-class complacency, lush. 

Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood

An odd little novel about crazed aristocracy and the trauma of the lost generation...both worlds that Caroline Blackwood, heiress to the Guinness dynasty, writer, journalist, it-girl, knew well. I hate it when people are described as 'muses', ugh. I mean, this was excellent in every way and kind of reminded me of Franny & Zooey - it does so much with so few scenes.

Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

What i liked most about this memoir was how un-rock n' roll it was, but when you think about it, the food allergies, panic-attacks, self-doubt, all that stuff, actually seems pretty rock n' roll - like, the true spirit of rebellion and survival and reinvention are all there. 

Chilly Scenes Of Winter by Ann Beattie

Definitely my favourite book of the month! A whimsical, smart, New Yorky, 70's novel about absence and 20-somethings trying to find meaning and love. Beattie was touted as a bit of a voice of her generation it seems, and her debut feels fresh, beautifully self-conscious, and somehow full of warmth and heart despite all the post-60's dejection. 

The Signalman by Charles Dickens

Read this on Halloween as a lil spooky bathtime read. The BBC version with Denholm Elliot is one of my absolute favourite things so when i spotted this at work i was all like "hallo below theeere!!" and it was great. Turns out Dickens wasn't always shit.

What I read in September..

A bit late, sorry...*punches self in face*

Wax by Ethel Lina White
This month I discovered Valancourt Books , a brilliant independent small press who publish some truly gush-worthy lost classics, and they do it beautifully with original cover art and everything. This little waxwork horror mystery from the 30's is slight but charming and cute, with some good sassy dialogue and some creepy smalltown Britishness. Riverpool, heh..

Musical Chairs by Kinky Friedman

We went to End Of The Road Festival in Sept, and so much fun we had, and I bought this from the Rough Trade tent. My first Kinky (actually number 5 in the series, nerds). If you're into detective fiction, outlaw country, cats, and 70's counterculture I guarantee you'll enjoy this as much as I did.

Confidentially Yours by Charles Williams
A highly regarded pulpster, I've read one other Charles Williams (can't remember it's name right now but it's on Hard Case Crime) and it was a good'en, and Confidentially Yours is too. Dude finds himself in the usual ungetoutable situation, the police are at his heels, stylish, snappy, short...Barbara (his secretary) was totally the highlight for me, probably deserved her own series if the genre wasn't so MAN.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Brilliant, you should all go read this. Has absolutely not dated at all, and remains a profound, troubling, sad thing about humanity and its limitations in the face of the truly alien.

This Was Ivor Trent by Claude Houghton
I'm still flummoxed by this one, and feel like I want to read more Houghton who was a bestselling author in his day but sadly quite forgotten now. Does the whole rainy late-night London of the 30's so well, but also in some ways felt dated and ungraspable. An odd narrative about a reclusive writer (Ivor) and a series of meetings and connections made by the people in his life after he is confronted by a man from the future and goes into convalescence.  Yep, this was somehow a bestseller in the 30's... Also, a whole lotta Nietzsche goin' on...(oh, and this is from Valancourt Books also).

What i read in August...

Hey Bert! What did you read in August? 

Well friend, thanks for asking...
let me see now.

Syzygy by Michael G. Coney

Got this second-hand from Troutmark, it sounded promising and i was attracted by that alluring sperm-esque front cover. Aside from one inexplicably homophobic passage, it was an enjoyably dour 70's slice of fishy sci-fi.  

The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

Silverberg fucking rules, and this is him at his mid-70's best. A jivey, countercultural soup of mythology, mysticism, and cynical post-60's comedown. College kids in search of immortality in the desert. Seriously, Silverberg is truly the Laphroaig of writers.

Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso

Loved this short investigation into the nature of writing as documentation, and Sarah Manguso's own obsessive relationship with her own diary. This was so strong and meticulous, and unafraid, Manguso makes you look at your own concepts of self and time and mortaliy, all the terrifying shit and see them starkly, as impermanent but, y'know, beautiful maybe.

1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray

A novel about drinking and wanking that plays around with text and storytelling and then somehow turns into a straight-up novel that'll break your heart. Power and powerlessness, guilt, sexuality, politics, and a whole shit-heap of regret, you want to throw accusations of misogyny at it but you'd be way off. Brilliantly conceived joyful thing.

So Nude, So Dead by Ed McBain

I absolutely loved this slab of prime Fifties pulp.  Junkie wakes up next to a dead filly, who killed her and WHERE'S THE HORSE? 

Red Hot Ice by Frank Kane

A fast-paced little detective caper with an out of control blonde lush. Not bad.

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

In some ways this felt quite slight, but people, there is so much depth here. A melancholy, sparse character-study of a mercurial woman and an elegy for passing time, lost illusions and the Old West. Willa Cather can do no wrong.

The Whole Shot: Collected Interviews with Gregory Corso

Corso will always hold a special place in this tender heart (I did my dissertation on him at uni). What a brilliant cantakerous bastard he was. And though he was possibly drunk and repeated himself quite a bit in some of these interviews, you get the FULL FORCE of his mind and spirit, the last of his gang to hold true to the Beat ideology and the streets he grew up in. 

Day of the Ram by William Campbell Gault

Jock-noir!! OhYeah, really enjoyed this, another one from the Fifties, with an ex-American football player-turned-Private Eye investigating the murder of an L.A. Ram. The Los Angeles setting really notched it up a level and gave it a bunch of period-charm.

What i read in July...

Goodbye July! You were bittersweet, and for a while in that first week you seduced me into thinking that I didn't like reading. You'll notice i only read very short books for a while. Short books are best anyway, aren't they you hussies.

The Mahe Circle by Georges Simenon

I do love Simenon, but the last few i'd read by him were just ok. This one was shit-hot though, and reminded me how much Simenon is capable of doing in so few pages. His characters are always somewhere on the cusp of despair and desire, and he writes about heat and claustrophobia better than anyone. Weirdly though, this little novel would just make a great holiday beach read. 

Black Leather Barbarians by Pat Stadley

Troutmark Books here in Cardiff is a mecca of second-hand books, and my good buddy bought me this little biker gang gem recently, so yeah.

 

Happy Endings Are All Alike by Sandra Scoppettone

I finally got around to reading this! And it was great. A YA novel from 1978 about a teenage lesbian relationship in small town America and how their friends and family react when it goes public. Harrowing in places but still totally relevant with a strong feminist and LGBT standpoint.

 

The Furnished Room by Laura Del-Rivo

If you love early-60's Soho then this is a great example of what that time and place felt like, that pre-Beatles existentialist bedsit grim Britain. And while it wasn't 100% successful (i was a bit disappointed that she chose to write yet another male anti-hero in this oeuvre) it did make me fascinated enough in Laura Del-Rivo to order another of her books, Daffodil On The Pavement (which looks great and DOES have a female protagonist..)

  

Jernigan by David Gates

This reissue (originally published in the early 90's) is out any day now, and people will be gushing about it. It pretty much deserves the hype because it is one of those great American novels which pokes at the American Dream and pops it. Jernigan is kinda a dick, and yeah this is another alcoholic dude novel, but his journey over the edge is quite enjoyably bleak and very 90's.

  

Mr. Weston's Good Wine by T.F. Powys

Enjoyed this! Think bawdy Christian fable meets Ray Bradbury, with a touch of Wicker Man pagany sexual shenanigans. The mysterious Mr. Weston rolls into town with his wine wagon and for one night in November time stands still. Whimsical, funny and quite saucy...a weird tale of old English village life with a totally unique, slightly disturbing, feel to it.

What i read in June..

June was an excellent reading month! Sian and i both had birthdays and bought each other a bunch of books, and we also had some time off work, so not even The Man could interfere with our book-guzzling. Oh, and the sun came out and that was nice too, and everything's peachy. Here's what i read.

It Always Rains On Sunday by Arthur La Bern (1945)

This was a decent early kitchen-sink type of affair. I'm a fool for a novel that all takes place in one day, so if you're into that and like a bit cockney-speak, you might want to snap up this lovely new reissue on the London Books Classics range.

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman (2005)

Hoffman doing what Hoffman does best, small-town americana, a bit of myth and magic, and a whole heap of grim realness. Lightning-strike victims, sex in the bath.

The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink (2014)

She's kinda a big deal right now, and her writing will definitely divide people, but i found this totally compulsive, fucking nuts, intensely smart and hurty. It reminded me a little of Miranda July in that way that she dissects something to the point of seeming both ridiculous and profound in a new way.

The End Of Vandalism by Tom Drury (1994)

I really loved this. More small-town shenanigans. This is one of those novels that takes its time, rambles all over the place, doesn't seem to be doing much and then somewhere in there you start to realise just how much you are enjoying yourself. Full of warmth, dry humour, sadness and sweetness, if you like a bit of Richard Russo or Gilmore Girls you should check it out.

The Fever by Megan Abbott (2014)

Let's just stop for a second and appreciate how utterly fantastic Megan Abbott is. An author i feel genuinely lucky to be living at the same time as, and who can seemingly do no wrong. Her latest is very much in the same territory (teenage girls) as Dare Me, except it's about a strange inexplicable epidemic, girls having seizures, highschool, sex, a weird flourescent lake...pulp meets YA.

In The Enemy Camp: Selected Poems 1964-74 by William Wantling (2015)

I've been waiting for some Wantling to be reissued for YEARS people. Admired by Bukowski, an ex-con, heroin addict who fought in the Korean war, Wantling was of the new wave of post-beat 70's poets - raw, taboo-busting, but also sensitive and courageous. Thurston Moore's disappointing intro tries to depict him as some of rock'n'roll poet, whatever that means, lame. 

Sylvia by Leonard Michaels (1992)

Set in early-60's Manhattan, this seems to be a mostly autobiographical novel about a young writer that falls in love with the Tom Cruise-level mental Sylvia. Yeah, i know all you need right, another book about a seductively damaged fantasy-girl and the POOR DUDE who gets burned. But, it good. Real good. 

1965: The Most Revolutionary Year In Music by Andrew Grant Jackson (2015)

Ahh...i love the Sixties. Can't really go wrong with a book about the Sixties.

What i read in May..

Hmm, I didn't read much in May. And now that i look back at what i read i'm like huh, weird.

Tucker by Louis L'amour

If you like westerns, you've probably read some L'amour. This is a particularly good L'amour.

Lust Queen by Don Elliott

Don Elliott is actually Robert Silverberg, the science fiction author. He wrote a bunch of trashy pulp erotica back when he was a struggling writer. Hollywood, cocktails by the pool, and wildcat sex. 

Agostino by Alberto Moravia

Uber-Fruedian 1940's Italian coming-of-age. Serious. Not bad.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Lots of novels dissecting marriages these days. This was really great, sad, precise and meditative and full of lines you'd want to tattoo on you. I love being married.

Death Claims by Joseph Hansen

The second Brandstetter novel, just as good as the first. Well crafted and stylish, these novels are great on setting and really capture the era (70's California),  this was also full of mourning and grief.

What i read in April..

Hey bambinos, did April treat you like a lady? It's been good here. We drank us up some hot lemon and ginger water, watched a bunch of Castle, listened hard to Sufjan's latest, Sian did some tarot and yoga, I got some new stripey 1966-style trousers, we did a readathon, and I ended up having a really good reading month. It started off not so great and got better, and by the end i'd pretty much got my groove back reading-wise. Reading ruts suck so bad, sometimes it feels like you're deliberately choosing letdowns just to hurt yourself, like eating Yum Yum Instant Noodles when you're craving soul food. We just watched the movie Soul Food..

(here's what Sian read...)

 

Grosse Pointe Girl by Sarah Grace McCandless

This was cute and i especially liked the scooby-doo-esque illustrations.

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

I obviously bought this one because it's got a great cover and some Joanna Newsom lyrics at the beginning, and who can blame me? Me. I can. It was kinda shit. 

Mira Corpora by Jeff Jackson

I don't remember much about this. Though it did leave a sour unsatisfying taste in my mouth. See Yum Yum Noodles above.

Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman

Seriously, you can't beat 90's Hoffman - hypnotic, vivid writing full of downbeat real life, magic and revelation.

The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty

Delightful short comic novel of the American South, told with sass and a whole heap of enthusiasm. 

The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns

A great and peculiar novel which showcases Comyns' unique mix of grim Dickensian reality (female oppression) and very British magical stuff (levitation). Reminded me of Edward Gorey and those 60's toytown pop songs about grocers and flowershop ladies. 

Fadeout by Joseph Hansen

What a find! Wonderful ultra-70's West Coast noir. The Brandstetter mysteries were apparently one of the first to highlight strong openly gay characters in what was (and still is) a heavily hetty genre. This first one was so great. 

The Red Box by Rex Stout

This was what i read for the 24-hour readathon (which sian and i interpreted to include naps and full-on sleeps). My first Nero Wolfe (i got this out of the library) and despite being maybe a little too long i really found it charming and funny. Who doesn't love a bit of cyanide poisoning? 

Jerusalem The Golden by Margaret Drabble

A very decent novel from 1967, about a girl who goes to London to escape an unloved Northern childhood. A real character-study, packed with moral complexities, depth and ambiguity, and some Bohemian types with great clothes and hair.