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All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

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READIN

READIN started out as a place for me to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly) how to design a web site.

There has been some mission drift here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of the main things I write about here are reading books, listening to (and playing) music, and watching the movies. Also I write about the work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.

The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.

See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.

READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.

🦋 Reading List

OK, for 2009 I am doing something I've never really done before (that I can recall), which is to make a list of books I'm interested in reading this year. The list is not ordered; I'm just going to be adding titles to it as they occur to me, and without commentary. When I comment on a book that's on the list, I will update with a link to the diary for that book. I'm going to link this post in my sidebar, so it will be at hand for reference.

Just a few books for now, I'll build the list over the next few days. Note that I'm expecting 2009 to be mostly a year of reading Iberian and Latin American lit for me, not sure exactly how this will pan out though.

The List

Novels and stories

  • City of God by Paolo Lins
  • Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
  • The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago
  • Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
  • What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire? by António Lobo Antunes
  • The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, in Güneli Gün's translation.
  • The Double by José Saramago
  • The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago
  • All the Names by José Saramago
  • 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
  • Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya
  • The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
  • Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
  • Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
  • Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
  • The Promised Land by Karel Shoeman
  • Die Blendung by Elias Canetti
  • Cien Años de Soledad by Gabriel García Márquez
  • The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
  • Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
  • Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
  • The Counterlife by Philip Roth (Started this, totally turned off.)
  • My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec
  • The Fat Man and Infinity by António Lobo Antunes
  • The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
  • A Wild Ride Through the Night by Walter Moers
  • The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Non-fiction

  • Cultural Amnesia by Clive James
  • Borges in/and/on Film by J.L. Borges
  • The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz
  • Cuadernos de Lanzarote by José Saramago
  • The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
  • The Hunter Gracchus by Guy Davenport

Poetry

If you have any suggestions for me, any books you think would do me good, please put them in comments!

posted morning of Monday, December 15th, 2008
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Elizabeth Costello by JM Coetzee! I think you'd enjoy it.

posted evening of December 15th, 2008 by Jorge López

Thanks! I added it.

posted evening of December 15th, 2008 by Jeremy

Cultural Amnesia by Clive James- just got it from the library and hate having to put it down; essays on the cultural significance of artists from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig by a gifted writer who seems to have met everyone interesting in the second half of the 20th century (n.b. not all subjects are writers- Duke Ellington, Charlie Chaplin, and Tony Curtis (!) are included, among others).

posted morning of December 16th, 2008 by dalton periphery

That sounds great -- I need some non-fiction for my list. Interesting you would mention Akhmatova -- the only way I know her is via a great, great poem that I used to read on the subway's "Poems in Motion" posters about walking through the snow with her horse -- it has stuck in my head all these years but I have no idea who she was. Thanks!

posted morning of December 16th, 2008 by Jeremy

I had no idea there was a new Pynchon in the works. Let's hope he does a promotional tour.

Suggestion: I haven't read him, but the newest Nobel laureate: Le Clezio. Although I can't say he's at the top of my list.

posted evening of December 16th, 2008 by paledave

Yep, Scott of Conversational Reading linked to the promotional blurb for Inherent Vice a few days back. The rumor's been going around for a while and was confirmed when the book was listed in Penguin's catalog.

posted evening of December 16th, 2008 by Jeremy

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Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

➪ Saramago notes that María Kodama (Borges' widow, who has been the subject of some controversy lately) is in Portugal for the dedication of a monument to Borges in the Jardim do Arco do Cego.
➪ Adam Kotsko incisively points out the failures of A.O. Scott's review of Che.
➪ Holly saw Ray Davies last night; tonight she is thinking about "Working Man's Café".
(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

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