fiction list part one: recent discoveries

Disorder Peculiar To The Country' by Ken Kalfus
for Everyone! Why Aren't People Reading This Book?! It Should Have Been On The Orange Prize Shortlist, At Least!

No one, in my opinion, has written as good a book about 9/11 as Ken Kalfus. Why? 'Cos he made it the background for a satire. He even made post-9/11 New Yorkers - fire-fighter worshipping, newly communal, dark tourists in their our homes New Yorkers- the point (and a sharp point it is) of this hilarious novel about a married couple who each survive a different part of the famous events (and wish their spouse had not).

...so now you can skip 'Falling Man' by Don DeLillo (I love him, but this was an eye-roller).


'Diary of a Bad Year' by J.M. Coetzee for The Political Guy

NOT a traditionally written turn-the-page linear novel. Instead in this novel the two-time Booker winning and Nobel prize winning Coetzee has split the page in three, each third reading at a seperate element of the whole 'story'. The biggest part, it should be noted, is devoted to the political and philosophical musings of the social anarchist intellectual protagonist, not the also intriguing relationship with his Filipino secretary.

also see 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' by Mohsin Hamid or 'Terrorist' by John Updike

Anything by E.L. Doctorow ('Ragtime', 'The Book of Daniel')
for Flapper-era romanticists, Fitzgerald fans and 'serious' literature readers

Anything by Mario Vargas Llosa ('Captain Pantoja and the Special Service', 'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter')
for Boys And Girls Who Believe In Magic


other good books I've started but not yet finished:
'Girl Meets Boy' by Ali Smith
'Run' by Ann Patchett
'No One Belongs Here More Than You' by Miranda July





stay away from:
'You Don't Love Me Yet' by Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem's written some good books. This is not one of them. Tiresome, pretentious, complete bollocks. An overwritten fantasy about being an urban twenty-something who's, you know, like interested in art projects and stuff, and like, indy music. That kind of person is excruciating company in real life, so why spend your spare time with them?

'The Quiet Girl' by Peter Hoeg
I like the idea of this book, even if it's just a cover, or remix (I suppose), of Suskind's 'Perfume'. A Clown who loves Bach and hears music in the everyone around him. But it's over-written, indulgent, complicated without any real pay-off or explication. It took him ten years to write. It's not really worth your week.

'Suite Francaise' by Irene Nemorovsky.
In terms of questions of testimony and the institutionalisation of 'memorial voices' Irene is a very interesting phenomenon. But her 'discovered' novel that was such a hit last December and January (and is still pretty popular) was not really a good book. It's okay, we can all own up to that. She died in Auschwitz, and that's tragic and worthy of our attention, but this book, as a novel, is not a good book. It's fluff.

blue bolts from the vault

Things To Make And Do

I'm putting together my fiction and other book lists... oh yes I am.

Also, I've decided I'm going to make Horchata this week, at some point. I'll publish the results here... I may even make a photo essay of it.

Unfortunately I DID NOT make a photo essay of my awesome weekend with Marcey, camping in Turangi and doing the Tongariro Crossing. We started the walk and M pulled out the camera. I struck a pose. The camera died. Boo.

But imagine a frozen lake... and a steep rocky cliff. And a forest. And steaming sulphorous maws. All in one 6 and half hour walk. I think I'm going to do it again when I get back from Chile... and make a team effort of it.

This was bracketed in by one expertly cooked dinner and one mish mash disaster, as well as plenty of ice forming on our tent and on the car windscreen. Ice!

Also, Adele told me to read this. I didn't read all of it, but I read some of it, and it was very informative.

Unlike this post.

The Black Kids are actually good, but we also shouldn't be talking about them. We are, but we shouldn't. They should be a small discovery, something you accidnetally happenstance across and then play to your friends - they have an indifferent reaction and then no one speaks of it again until they release an album. Then they play a middling-ly attended show or two, then the hit single. THEN we can talk about them...

in which our hero decides he's actually going to attend to the business of blogging

I've decided that since I'm not going to be around New Zealand for Christmas I'm going to get one of my favourite Christmas jobs done... here on the interweb. What, you may ask, is a favourite Christmas job of mine? Well, it is recommending books whither they be presents for people or holiday reading. I'll begin my preliminary list with Non-Fiction:




'Planet Chicken' by Hattie Ellis
for The Person Who Is On The Borderline Between The Morality Of Meat Eating And The Uncertainty Of A Vegetable-Only Dinner Plate

While overall Hattie advocates eating chicken, she certainly don't think much of what you usually see on the plate. Partly a morality tale about meat eating this book is also, more importantly, a history of how chicken went from a delicacy to the absolute cheapest meal in the world. It even includes a few mentions of New Zealand's 'standard' (read: 'substandard') agribusiness practices.


'In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists' by Todd Hignite
for Anyone Who Reads Graphic Novels

In my experience very few people don't like graphic novels. The reason you don't see many people out there reading them on the bus is 1) they're pricey and 2) there are actually very few of them to read. So you liked Maus and you want to read more Art Spiegelman? Well, tough titties because while the (time to make dived by time to read) equation is heavily skewed with graphic novels. A novel might take a year to write and a week to read, whereas any hefty graphic novel will take 5 to 10 years to write and a few hours to read. Anyway, this book will not only take you more than a few hours to read, it contains a lot of insights into the works and personalities of some of the best underground comic writers.


'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klien
for Both Objectionably Loud Leftists And Unaffiliated Curious Social Historians Alike

During the intervening years between No Logo's success and now (a period during which a lot of people have either been wholly convinced by or wholly hostile to her critique of mass culture) Klien has not been sitting around doing nothing. No! She's been off researching what is a fascinating slant on international economics (actually fascinating, not just for economists) and their relation to not only regime changes but also a plethora of other unsettling phenomena. At times this book's historical myopia and leftist tone are a bit glaring, this is a very thorough and involving treatment of some important and oft-ignored corners of very recent history.



'The Ghost Map' by Steven Johnson'
for The Pop-Science Person (Probably Male)


The best non-fiction book I'd read for a while back in February. Steven Johnson (who also wrote the though-experimenty Everything Bad Is Good For You) covers a important turn in science at the same time as documenting a famous outbreak of Cholera. Part detective story, part pastiche, this book uses the outbreak to illustrate all different aspects that led to a lot of changes in not only epidemiology but also the sustainability of mass cities.





'The Best American Non-Required Reading 2007' edited by David Eggers (intro by Sufjan Stevens)
for The Cool And Worldly Nerd

Hillarious, serious, bizzare, all in turn. In my opinion, better than McSweeney's Quarterly Concern... just putting that out there.

In the future, I'll also list books to stay away from but... today I don't have much to say on that topic and it's relation to recent non-fiction. Nothing to say at all.

In case you DON'T know, John Cale - a man I identify with (see below) - is coming to town on November 15th, just before I go to Chile. How cool is that? It's cool, that's how cool. The only thing cooler would be if I got to meet him or, as Princess Chelsea mentioned the vague previous-possibility, if someone i knew was on stage with him... and waved to me and my Dad (who I'm hoping will join me, though I thinks we're going to see J.J. Cale, a different beast).

Since the tour, I've been very busy, but not as busy as before. I made a lot of empanadas. I went to Anawhata.

This post is dissintegrating... I need PHOTOS.

Essays to mark.