Revolver (one, an addendum).
The book I’m not reading is on the internet
The book I’m not reading is a brand new movie
The book I’m not reading isn’t out yet
And it’s all new to me
The book I’m not reading isn’t written down
The book I’m not reading is an English translation
The book I’m not reading should be read aloud
And I’m getting impatient
Peace, by Gene Wolfe; Land Under England, by Joseph O’Neill; Fairyland, by Paul J. MacAuley; Moominpappa at Sea, by Tove Jansson; The Wrestler’s Cruel Study, by Stephen Dobyns; 13 Stories & 13 Epitaphs, by William T. Vollmann; Wormholes, by John Fowles; The Mystery to a Solution, by John T. Irwin; The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman; Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, by Samuel R. Delany; House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski; The Various, by Steve Augarde; Last Love in Constantinople, by Milorad Pavic; Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides; Fantasy and Politics, by Peter S. Fisher; Stone, by Adam Roberts.
(I think the problem’s clear: I can’t commit.)
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I like Gene Wolfe. Read that one.
Ha! You quoted Patty Larkin!
(amused titters)
No, I think the real problem is the trail you leave around the flat with all the books you're not reading.
So many Revolvers, so few Beatles references.
I vote Vollman, but only that one. I don't think I've liked anything else of his, except maybe Whores for Gloria.
Blasphemer! You Bright and Risen Angels is one of the bestest books ever! (I am not the most objective and rational of critics when it comes to Vollmann. I realize that. I choose to be irrational and subjective when it comes to his writing, in spite of the quizzical and even pitying looks I receive from my peers. But I can quit any time I want. Honest.)
The three I've read:
Peace:
You know that scene where the two samaurai run at each other, then one says, "Ha! you missed," and then his top half slooooowly slides off his bottom half?
That's Gene Wolfe's sense of humor. The theme of this one, for those of you playing along at home, is the replacement of the real with the fake and the fake with the fake fake in American life. I didn't catch on to this until most of the way through, so I need to go back and reread it at some point. If there's a plot, it went over my head.
Moominpappa at Sea:
The most moody, least funny of the Moomintroll books, dealing with hard and subtle truths of the moomin condition.
The Wrestler's Cruel Study:
Pretty entertaining. Felt heavy-handedly symbolic and a little sour to me. I don't really recommend it.
...hey! When did you start stripping HTML from comments?
Um. I haven't. It's just the standard MT set of allowable HTML, since I never got around to modding it, about which I feel bad, since, y'know, <cite> is a habit we should all get into, among other things.
As a perpetual proselytizer for Vollmann, despite the fact I have finished virtually none of his novels, I have to say that Bright and Risen Angels is best read aloud. More accurately, it is best listened to while read aloud by Kip. I had the unexpected pleasure of hearing an extended passage read aloud many years ago, and it has left me convinced that that novel at the very least, if not all of Vollmann's works, is better heard than read.
And why does "The books I'm not reading" make me think of Robyn Hitchcock anyway?
Ah, got it. My lovingly-crafted definition list disappeared on Preview, and I wasn't sure why.
Also nice is <blockquote cite="blah blah blah">, but I'm not sure if any browsers actually do anything with the cite attribute.
I read "Moominpapa At Sea" years ago.
Now that I'm a father myself, I should go
back and read it again. It will, no doubt,
shred my heart in ways I could not have
imagined the first time.