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enframed wrote: Sat Apr 13, 2024 7:02 pm Their Four Hearts by Vladimir Sorokin. Insane book.

I'd like to read something by him. Don't know where to start.

jimmy spako wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2024 4:44 amI finished By Night In Chile, which was brilliant. Decided to read Bolaño's Amulet next, a sort of companion novel it seems. Also reading and enjoying the last issue of Sound American and Jim Harrison's final collection of poems, Dead Man's Float.

I finished Amulet. It is certainly brilliant and very compelling at times, but fairly, or even very, uneven.

I started this one, which I'd mentioned up-thread:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/591 ... f-the-wild

"In the Eye of the Wild begins with a terrifying account of the anthropologist Nastassja Martin’s nearly fatal run-in with a Kamchatka bear while conducting research in Siberia. As an anthropologist, Martin has made a name for the fullness of her engagement with the peoples she studies. In her dangerous encounter with the bear, however, she faced something else altogether: the animal. Left severely mutilated, she undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, whose ghastly chief surgeon sports a mouthful of gold teeth and presides over a harem of young nurses. Back in France, she is put through new operations, meant to fix the work done in Russia, from which she emerges even more damaged. She comes to the conclusion that she must return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Evens people call it, a miedka, a person who is not only human but beast. That is the only way for her to continue her work as an anthropologist and to reconstitute herself as person."

jimmy spako wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2024 3:38 pm

enframed wrote: Sat Apr 13, 2024 7:02 pm Their Four Hearts by Vladimir Sorokin. Insane book.

I'd like to read something by him. Don't know where to start.

I also have his Blue Lard but have not read it yet. Not sure there's a good place to start but after reading Their Four Hearts I feel that is an appropriate starting point. It's very disturbing, completely bonkers, and quite funny in an absurd kind of way. The Queue sounds really interesting also.

jimmy spako wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2024 3:38 pm
I started this one, which I'd mentioned up-thread:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/591 ... f-the-wild

"In the Eye of the Wild begins with a terrifying account of the anthropologist Nastassja Martin’s nearly fatal run-in with a Kamchatka bear while conducting research in Siberia. As an anthropologist, Martin has made a name for the fullness of her engagement with the peoples she studies. In her dangerous encounter with the bear, however, she faced something else altogether: the animal. Left severely mutilated, she undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, whose ghastly chief surgeon sports a mouthful of gold teeth and presides over a harem of young nurses. Back in France, she is put through new operations, meant to fix the work done in Russia, from which she emerges even more damaged. She comes to the conclusion that she must return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Evens people call it, a miedka, a person who is not only human but beast. That is the only way for her to continue her work as an anthropologist and to reconstitute herself as person."

Please report back, especially if it’s really great. I am interested but am not in a hurry to think that much about getting eated

I got two books by Clarice Lispector this weekend. I am soooooo excited to read these. I don't recall how I heard about her but she and her books seem fascinating.

Tom Sawyer, took it out of one of those book swap boxes that people like to post in their yards. I did not provide a trade. I think Tom Sawyer would approve.

Knife, the recent Rushdie memoir. It's not great so far, but there's half to go.

enframed wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 5:46 pm I got two books by Clarice Lispector this weekend. I am soooooo excited to read these. I don't recall how I heard about her but she and her books seem fascinating.

I found The Passion According to G.H. to be a slog. YMMV though.

zircona1 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 8:31 am

enframed wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 5:46 pm I got two books by Clarice Lispector this weekend. I am soooooo excited to read these. I don't recall how I heard about her but she and her books seem fascinating.

I found The Passion According to G.H. to be a slog. YMMV though.

That's the one that actually didn't interest me. I got Near to the Wild Heart and The Apple in the Dark.

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant.

America was Hard to Find by Kathleen Alcott. Pretty good so far.