Sat, 05/16/2009 - 1:00pm — gqmartinez
Has it been two weeks already? Appears so. What's on your previously read shelf?
Even though I already have a long list of your recommendations, I'm looking for more! Specifically, since I'm going to be commuting by public transportation M-F about 45 each way (depending on traffick), I'm looking for good cummute reading. Something that has short chapters or frequent narrative breaks, Kurt Vonnegut being a good example. I hate having to stop in the middle of a 20 page fight scene. What do you all recommend?
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Tristram Shandy
You can stop a picaresque narrative anywhere and pick right up.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I am currently reading
"Critique of Criminal Reason" by Michael Gregorio. I'm not a big mystery fan but this is amazingly good. It's set in Napoleonic Era Prussia. Unexplained deaths investigated by Enlightenment-inspired magistrate who has a connection to Immanuel Kant.
Very atmospheric but chapters are short. I have had to read it in short bursts all week long and it hasn't lost its allure.
Short bursts
I like those kinds of books since that's often how I read. The danger is that I can stay up past my bed time reading "one more chapter".
Short stories
Anybody have favorite collections of short stories?
Windy City Blues
by Sara Paretsky
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Good short story collections
Anything by the late, great Grace Paley. I love short stories. Paley is my favorite.
Speaking of short stories
take a look at 5 Chapters, which publishes a new short story online each week, in five installments.
I've previously (briefly!*) reviewed Kevin Brockmeier's collection The View From the Seventh Layer, and the story "The Lady With the Pet Tribble" was also published on 5 Chapters.
*but I've beat that record today with my even briefer "review" of Windy City Blues!
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
cormac mccarthy's border trilogy
all the pretty horses, the crossing, and cities of the plain, set in texas, new mexico, and mexico. very dense, dark, and depressing, and beautifully written. i read all the pretty horses like you -- bedtime? whuzzat? what? it's breakfast time already? -- then read the other two in small doses in self-defense, just because i found them so depressing.
cormac mccarthy is also the author of no country for old men, also set in the border country [which i haven't read yet]. before that he wrote novels set in the south, which from what i've heard make the border trilogy look light-hearted.
if you're looking for short stories, i've only read ursula k le guin's buffalo gals and other animal presences, but she's got more.
for light-hearted and fluffy, but with non-fluffy female protagonists, charlotte macleod [murder mysteries] is one of my absolute favorites. i find them hard to set down [ok, i it difficult to stop reading anything] but easy to pick back up later without losing the thread.
you can't go wrong with "Lord Peter Views the Body" by
Dorothy L. Sayers, for short stories. "The Five Red Herrings" is, properly, a short novel, but the others are lovely little bursts of wonderful, entertaining reading.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
PG Wodehouse
whether the novels or the short stories, is ideal for commute reading (and all other reading, I might add).
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi