In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
It’s tricky to talk about Susanna Clarke’s new novel, Piranesi (September 15, Bloomsbury), without talking about what it’s not—i.e., a second Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the sweeping, epic, deeply humane 2004 doorstopper that made Clarke an instant new voice in the world of fantasy literature. (A voice she’s been extremely selective about using publishing only a single volume of stories in the decade and a half that’s passed since then.) Piranesi doesn’t sweep, except in the mind of its title character, an eternal optimist whose entire world seems to exist only within the vast, platonic halls of the strange tide-washed realm he calls home. Part Gormenghast, part House Of Leaves (but with a far more pleasant minotaur roaming its halls), Piranesi’s world is one occupied by only one other living person—and 13 dead ones. And rather than an 800-page mirror image of all of 19th-century England, Piranesi operates as a tight, brisk, existential mystery—albeit one just as interested in delving into the satisfying mysteries of loneliness as the question of who did what to whom. When finally unraveled, that plot ultimately proves to be far less interesting than the presentation, and the protagonist. (The book occasionally feels like a short story unnaturally extended, or a novel cut short, somehow all at once.) But Piranesi himself remains an endlessly engaging travel guide, a spotless mind whose strange knowledge and odd blind spots provide just as interesting a labyrinth as the one he spends his days wandering through. [William Hughes]
Lecture by Mary Cappello and Stranger Faces by Namwali Serpell
A coincidence, to be sure, but it would seem prognostic that a publisher would choose 2020 as the inaugural year for its series of undelivered lectures. Independent press Transit Books announced in February it would begin publishing a series of books of “discursive prose of exceptional literary and cultural value that’s more lasting than a magazine piece but less substantial than a 300-page hardback.” The first book, Lecture by Mary Cappello (September 8), makes a case for reimagining “knowledge’s dramatic form,” where nonfiction meets performance. Cappello hopes to loosen lectures from the stuffiness they may conjure, the way “lecture” may make one think of being lectured to. (If you especially appreciate Anne Carson’s live performances or Madness, Rack, And Honey, Mary Ruefle’s exceptional collected lectures on poetry, you’ll be into the vibe here.) In this way, Lecture and Stranger Faces, the second book in the series, are more gambits, propositions, and what ifs, than fixed essayistic arguments. They wander and wonder and suppose more than they state outright. In Stranger Faces (October 20), Namwali Serpell, author of 2019’s Old Drift, stitches together her thoughts on human faces that do not fit the mold of the “Ideal Face.” Serpell roams from the Elephant Man to the narrative of a white-passing Black slave to Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, homing in on the way that “stranger faces” both “attract and repel recognition,” drawing us in while slipping from our understanding. If Serpell sometimes becomes what she calls a “Too Close Reader”—fixating, for example, on a pair of mops in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho—she just as often arrives at surprising insights that see the familiar with new eyes. [Laura Adamczyk]
24 Comments
Loved Piranesi. I listened to the audiobook version, read by Chiwetel Ejiofor, which is excellent.I just read Drew Magary’s Point B: A Teleportation Love Story, which I’m very mixed on. I liked the central plot a lot, and how it delved into all the problems that would be caused by teleportation, but it suffers from having some awful supporting characters and a very rushed, too easy, ending.
There’s also the problem that I never once believed in the central love story. The main character worries occasionally if the relationship only exists in her head, and I found myself thinking that was the only option that made sense. It doesn’t help that the love interest is barely in the book at all.
Another issue I had is that there’s a massive coincidence at the heart of the story that didn’t work for me at all. It would have made some sense that the coincidence was actually part of the villain’s plan, but nope.
I also listened to the audio of Piranesi. I totally loved it. Just stunning.
Piranesi was amazing, and I can’t stop recommending it to everyone. Right now I’m reading ghost stories — Ellen Datlow’s Echoes collection and the stories of M.R. James. Because, you know, October.
I found the Joyce Carol Oates and Gemma Files stories in Echoes outstanding. Datlow’s anthologies never disappoint.
Just got back from my local library and I’m reading an odd mix…A Joe Lansdale non-Hap and Leonard book…A bio on Jim Bouton of “Ball Four” fame…An old western by Elmer Kelton called “Six Bit a Day” Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero about a group of crime solvers from the late 70’s grown up in the early 90’sI finished the biography which was pretty good covering his career and the Ball Four uproar but which (like most) rushed his later years. Joe Lansdale is always like Pizza: even bad it’s pretty great, and the western is your typical entertaining but not deep story of that genre. I’m really looking forward to reading the Meddling Kids book when I finish the Lansdale one.
I really enjoyed Meddling Kids. It does some fun stuff to twist the Scooby canon around and play with tropes.
Good to hear. The Goodreads reviews were pretty mixed, but it sounded like something I would enjoy. And I’m the right age in that I was a kid in the 70’s and fondly remember all those ‘Mystery’ solving shows of the era.
Oh dang, I was hoping for a little deeper dive into Bouton’s later years, he was an interesting dude, above and beyond the baseball gig. Oh well, it’s on my shelf to read so I’ll still give it a dig…
It did go into his immediate post-Baseball career rather well (the 70’s with acting and newscasting) but it definitely wasn’t the depth of the baseball years.I never knew that he was one of the founders of Big League Chew!
To Green Angel Tower, Tad Williams. (I look forward to answering the same for the next 8 months.)
I loved Piranese. There was something so beautiful about being able to live inside his mind and experience the world through someone so full of love and kindness, despite the occasional cruelties and constant mysteries of the setting.
There’s really so much hope and beauty in that book, despite the circumstances.
I just finished Allie Brosh’s new book (graphic novel?), and it elicited some of the most intense laughing and crying I’ve done in awhile. I was a bit skeptical, expecting some funny stories from her childhood (while also figuring that surely that well runs dry at some point), but its a much broader range than than I expected. One of those stories where sometimes the real poignancy is in the words she chooses not to commit to paper. Really enjoyed it.
I’m still burning through a stack I got for Christmas and my birthday, and just finished Franzen’s latest, Purity. I don’t know that I’ve ever disliked a book as much as this one, and only finished it out of some weird obsession I have with completing anything I start. You get a deep dive into multiple deeply unlikable characters who routinely made ridiculously self-destructive choices. Unless you are interested in an 800-page character study of badly flawed people doing nothing of much interest, this should be a hard pass. I’ve moved on to a 2019 mystery called The Current by Tim Johnson and enjoying it so far. Good to be reminded that reading is supposed to be a fun or rewarding experience.
I’m lukewarm on badly flawed people, but you’re telling me they’re also boring? SOLD!
Piranes is on my list next! Right now I am reading Nixonland, and while I wish I had picked something a bit more escapist, it really is a good book to help me understand what is happening right now. That and it is a very well written book, funny and irreverent, which is not what I am used to when reading historic non-fiction. Basically the US is still fighting the cultural battles that began in the 60’s. The seeds the conservative parts of the Republican Party sowed with Nixon are now fully realized with Trump (even though Trump wasn’t even a factor when Nixonland came out). I always kind of knew that, but the book makes it very obvious how and why these cultural divides happened, and just how good Nixon (and now the rest of the Republican Party) was at exploiting those divides for power.
Short stories about strangers coming to town — Diana Wynne Jones’ “The Plague of Peacocks” is delightful, kicking the crap out of obnoxious busybodies, Thomas Ligotti’s “The Last Feast Of Harlequin” is, uh, not delightful. But it mixes horror and despair very well, there is a metaphor that is not The Real Horror but just real and horrible.
The Wind-Up Bird ChroniclesThis Is the Way the World Ends The Wicked + The Divine
The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRueAll of you, go read it. It was great.
I’m on the back half of Rage of Dragons, which is just an absolutely brutal African fantasy that I cannot stop listening to. Really propulsive listen. Between this, Poppy War and Grace of Kings, I’m really refreshed by some non-Tolkein/medieval Europe style fantasy. Also on Vol. 3 of Skyward, which is a really fun romp of an adventure graphic novel.
I just finished Machine Man by Max Barry, about an engineer who loses his leg in a workplace accident and decides to make a better prosthetic leg for himself but eventually begins to replace other body parts with robotic limbs. It was really good, probably his best book since Company.
I’ve been on a binge. In the last three weeks I’ve read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, and I just finished Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of my all time favorite books and I loved Piranesi, my only half-complaint being I wish it was 600 pages instead of under 300. I wanted to spend more time in that world.The Midnight Library was okay; cathartic at times, rote at others. It’s basically a self-help book disguised as a fiction novel; detailing the loss of will to live and the realizations it takes to regain it.The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was very good, just short of amazing. This may have been a result of reading it right after Piranesi since I loved that so much. A faustian deal made by a young woman wishing to live free and being cursed with the inability to form ongoing human connection. I would still definitely recommend it, it’s very entertaining, it just might not blow you away.Once and Future Witches is absolutely, unquestionably, phenomenal. This one just came out last week and I cannot wait for the subsequent explosion of appreciation this book is going to get. Three estranged sisters bring witchcraft back into the world to aide the Suffragist Movement in 1893?! Yes, please. It is a book written for both Nasty Women and their allies. It is enthralling and breathtaking and it will burn its way into your very being.
I’m apparently on some kind of weird exploration of Austin, Texas’ most famous unsolved crimes: I’m reading Skip Hollandsworth’s book about the 19th century Servant Girl Annihilator, The Midnight Assassin; and on audio I’m listening to Who Killed These Girls?, about the 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders. The former is pretty great and Hollandsworth really gives you a sense of the time and place, reminiscent of books like The Alienist and Devil in the White City.I’m also reading Inventing New Orleans, a collection of Lafcadio Hearn’s writings about the city.Also read in October so far:The God of Small Things by Arundhati RoyThe Vices by Lawrence DouglasA Furious Sky: A 500 Year History of America’s Hurricanes (ironically, started while I was evacuated from Hurricane Delta)The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael ZapataMapping the Interior by Stephen Graham JonesExploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley
I’m working my way through Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick and it is very much a David Wong/Jason Pargin work. Which is good if you dig that style, but…Me, I’m enjoying it. I might dig the Zoey Ashe series better than his other series with Amy, John, David.