ffortsa's general store

I've already joined the 75 in 2010 group, but I can list a more comprehensive list of what I'm reading here - for instance, all the old New Yorker articles I'm working my way through. Feel free to look at my thread in the 75 group, too. Ffortsa's 2010 75-Books thread I'll try to keep these two cross-referenced.

For years, I've been working my way through a chronic backlog of New Yorker Magazines. Somehow they always come in faster than I can read them, and I just stack them up and keep burrowing. I'll list the articles, as I don't necessarily reread the entire issue.

As of now, I'm speeding through 2004, and recently read the following:

1. in the May 3 issue, two articles
"Self Inventions" by Jane Kramer, on the painter and poet Dorothea Tanning
"The Misery Broker" by John Cassidy, on the divorce lawyer Raoul Felder
2. in the May 17 issue,
"The Silver Thief" by Stephen J. Dubner, on a burglar who only stole the best silver
3. in the June 14-21 issue,
"Blocked: by Joan Acocella, on writers' block
4. in the July 5 issue,
"To Hell with All That', by Caitlin Flanagan, on the domestic earthquake that ensued when her mother chose to go to work.
Adam Kirsch's review of Andrew Lycett's "Dylan Thomas"
5. in the July 12-19 issue,
"The Button Man" by Nick Flynn, on the history of his father's homelessness
also, in the reviews section, reviews of books on the Bush family, a biography of Cole Porter, and an evaluation of Childe Hassam
6. in the August 9-16 issue,
"Getting There" by Roger Angell, a short personal memoir
"The Bad Mother" by Margaret Talbot, on the fashion of diagnosing Munchausen syndrome by proxy

For some reason, these issues didn't have the one page 'financial page', which is always interesting in retrospect(!).

Uh oh - I'm on a mystery kick. Two Graftons in a row ("H" and "I"). Well, we'll see what comes next. I've got a book slated for my next face-to-face bookclub meeting in February 2, so I might have to start that soon.

I wanted to do an Anna Karenina group read, and a Moby Dick group read, and a Faulker read - but I can't do them all at once. What a dilemma.

ffortsa--I feel your New Yorker pain. I always have my own little stack of New Yorker articles to catch up with. Right now, I'm back in the January 4 issue reading Gopnick's piece on Van Gogh's ear.

Ah, but you're in this year's issue! I'm reading a food issue from September 6, 2004 now - very interesting articles which I'll list when I get home.

editied to include: Jim Harrison on a 37 course, 9 hour lunch he attended in France, Calvin Trillin on snoek in South Africa, Yiyun Li on his grandfather and the appreciation of food a life of deprivation can produce.

I've got to get going on The Book Thief for my February book club meeting, but I also have a new (to me) mystery book from the library - The Pyramid and four other Kurt Wallender Stories - 'origination' stories about Wallender, which I'm eager to start. Maybe I can do both before the end of the weekend.

Oh this feels like home. I did LT challenges the past two years -- had fun and improved my reading habits but my magazine reading suffered. I'm only backlogged those two years of New Yorkers ... hoping to get to them among this year's reading too. It's funny -- if I find one interesting article in an issue, that's perfect. Two means I'll have to come back to the issue, and three starts to feel like too much! :)

"The Button Man" by Nick Flynn, on the history of his father's homelessness
If you liked that, did you know that he develops it further in his memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City -- it's on my wishlist because two friends loved it.

bah touchstones; inserted hyperlink

Just had to let you know that I finally read a Steven Millhauser short story from 2007 New Yorker. Another one removed from the stack! See you've inspired me!

I feel SO MUCH BETTER about my New Yorker addiction. Thanks to both of you for making me feel so much at home.

>6 detailmuse:

I hate to say it, but I really disliked Flynn's memoir near the end. It was really annoying because I had been so interested in it at first! But in the final chapters, I felt like he was getting too "artsy" without enough substance. Of course you may like it more! I do want to read the article in the New Yorker; somehow I suspect that I might like him more in a condensed form.

Just joining the choir here when I say that I have a LOT of New Yorkers to finish reading! And I only got around to subscribing this year! In the past I've removed old issues from doctor's offices, waiting rooms of all stripes, etc, so that accounts for some of my backlog.

I've begun to register my zillions of books on LT, inspired by acquiring a CueCat. I've discovered stuff:

1. Many of my books don't have barcodes for their ISBNs.
2. Many of my books don't have ISBNs.
3. I have a whole mountainrange of books I haven't read, or don't remember, or want to read again.

I had a dream about all the books. I was playing cards with friends (I think they came from my online groups), and somehow acquired three cats and several mouseholes in my apartment. While mayhem ensued, one of my friends took out her lipstick and wrote next to each of my many bookcases: Books for sale, $1 each or 5 for $3. !!!!!

I finished The Book Thief in spite of having to stop in the middle, in a sort of terror for the characters involved. My review is here

Catching up with my recording: a Maigret mystery (the title escapes me), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Dirty Snow.

Also a very interesting and discouraging article from the March 2010 Atlantic, by Don Peck, titled "The Recession's Long Shadow: How a new jobless era will transform America". Gave me the willies.

Hooray. I've finished The Warrior Queens at last. You can find my review here

Oh, my - I missed April completely. Oh well.

My bookclub read Pale Fire this past month - not a happy experience for most, and we had few people show up. It was my second time through it, and I managed to reread my original college text (40 years on!) before it crumbled to dust.

It is in some ways an extended game Nabokov plays with his audience. I see him up on the high wire, grinning and juggling like mad, inviting us to join him. But not all agreed. We managed to have a good discussion, but it was hard to start.

Catching up. I've been continuing my epic journey through my New Yorker back issues - I'm just about finished with April 2005. Some interesting articles on the way.

from February 14&21, the 80th Anniversary Issue, I read
-- Andy: At Home With E.B. White, a touching portrait by Rojer Angell of his mother, Katharine, and step-father, E. B. White, their marriage, their aging and struggle with illness, and finally E.B.'s last year.
--Sole Survivor: a study of the shoes the Ice Man was wearing, a whether they would be more comfortable than the overengineered stuff we wear today, by Brukhard Bilger, complete with a personal trial, and a history of shoes and shoemakers. Fascinating, especially as I struggle with my own tiny feet.
--The Misfit: a truly fascinating portrait of the very idiosyncratic David Milch, who created and wrote 'Deadwood', among other shows. I didn't follow the show, but Jim did, and I will catch up via Netflix one of these days.

Much more in this terrific issue, but these articles stand out.

from April 11,
-- Capturing the Unicorn: An account of how two mathematician brothers, Gregory and David Chudnovsky, helped record The Hunt for the Unicorn for the Cloisters. The tapestry was too large to photograph in one shot, and the complexities of matching the many photographs used to document the piece proved a huge challenge requiring a supercomputer and exceptionally creative mathematics.
--Global Warning: a portrait of Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer, a writer of wildly scary children's religious books and wildly bigoted and inaccurate travel books, composed without the trouble of stepping out of England. Very popular in her day (mid-1800s), and hopelessly biased.
--The Tangle: A medical detective story about a rare neurological disease that was improbably common on an island in Guam, and how the research was done to decipher the cause.

I'm almost exactly 5 years behind now, and determined to cut that down to 4 years by the end of 2010. The issues are more familiar to me as I move forward in time, so I think the acceleration is likely. And I do admit looking at the current issue, of course. Always something tasty.

I'm impressed with the timelessness of those articles and how interesting their content remains. Definitely going to look at "Sole Survivor" in the digital archive.

Roger Angell the baseball writer? I wasn't aware he was related to E. B. White.

#17 - Yep, that's the one. He's written about his parents often, and I found this a very affecting memoir.

More New Yorker backlog

from April 15th, 2005:
- A fine Hilton Als review of "The Pillowman", a play by Martin McDonagh that Jim and I saw in the summer of that year. The play is, among other things, a meditation on creativity and the truth of stories, and was one of the most affecting and scary performances I can remember. A writer is interrogated by two hard-edged and illogical policemen about grisly murders of children, murders that closely resemble unpublished stories he has written. His mentally handicapped brother who seems to know all the stories, is pulled into this Kafakesque scene as well. By turns terrifying and farcical, it never really lets the audience know the truth - which is what fiction is, isn't it?
- An essay in the form of a book review, by Adam Gopnik, on the true story and nature of John Brown and his influence on the country before the Civil War. The excuse was "John Brown, Abolitionist" by David S. Reynolds, a book I may have to take a look at eventually.

DetailMuse, your comment about the timelessness of New Yorker articles is true, unfortunately, for a series I just read from April and May 2005.

The work, "The Climate of Man" was written by Elizabeth Kolbert, and reading it left me truly anxious about our changing climate. The worries of 5 years ago are still present today, the denial and refusal to act to mitigate the coming crisis remains - and time rolls on.

Along with the by now usual story of climate change and man-made emissions, she writes of civilizations like Akkad, which collapsed suddenly after a hundred years, because of drought, prolonged and complete drought. It happened to the Maya, it happened in Egypt. Of course, they weren't contributing to the catastrophe as we are, but they are examples of how climate change can evaporate an entire city, culture, empire. What is happening, what can it do to us, what is to be done - the article examines each question.

I live on the coast, I depend on the rest of the country - no, the rest of the world - to grow my food and provide me with all the necessities and delights of my life. The thought of radical weather changes sets me thinking of a farm in the Catskills, subsistence farming, and a great struggle to simply go on.

A part of me wants to hang on as long as I can to witness what happens - stark curiosity. A part of me wants to DO SOMETHING - aside from the individual behaviors that I can adopt to do my part. And a part of me is simply scared that we might be ruining our only home with something called 'progress'.

A little intense, I guess.

I finished Let the Great World Spin last week - very good. I'll write more after my book club discussion tomorrow.

The New Yorker catch-up continues; May 16th, 2005 has an interesting review of Radio Golf by Wilson, along with commentary on his other plays in his great ten-decade cycle. A profile on a doctor specializing in mummy forensic analysis was not as fascinating as I had hoped, and a book review of a biography of Tallulah Bankhead was similarly forgettable. Alas.

May 23rd of the same year has a book review of McCullough's 1776, which concentrates on his portrayal of Washington as a self-consciously self-made icon. He sounds very modern, if somewhat more controlled than our current crop of politicians! (edited to add that Jim, my in-house historian, feels that the reviewer got Washington more than McCullogh did!). More articles in this issue attract me; I'll list them after reading.

My current reading is languishing on the shelf. Maybe the collection was more suited for the winter.

Re: Let the Great World Spin and Philippe Petit, have you seen the DVD, "Man on Wire"? Terrific documentary about planning the stunt, with excellent footage -- the man danced and reclined on the wire!! Especially moving, post-9/11.

And not with an old issue, but The New Yorker disappointed me this week, too -- the May 31 issue includes an article by Patricia Marx that twice references renowned author Ann Patchett as Padgett :(

Forewarned is forearmed! Thanks - I'll try not to wince.

I haven't seen 'Man on Wire' yet, but it's on our list.

Agreed. Man on Wire was wonderful!

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The grit of New York in 1974 permeates this novel, composed of the stories of interlocking characters in all corners of the city. McCann gets the city almost perfectly right, and his characters are varied, often compelling, intersecting in sometimes unexpected ways. The device of the graceful, perfectly centered wire walker contrasts with the lumpy, often off-center lives of the people struggling to make their way in this time and place - some succeed, some achieve escape velocity of their own, others do not.

I enjoyed the book, but was unsurprised that it raised controversies in my book club. The ending, set in 2006, feels artificial, and makes the book as a whole feel less serious than it might have been. In addition, the book shows a woeful lack of copy-editing. My printing, one round later than some of the others the group read, had some errors corrected (it's Entergy, not Con Ed, that supplies power to New Orleans) and some not corrected - Mr. McCann needs a hand-calculator to correctly estimate the age of one of his central characters. In some editions, the bus fare in 1974 was listed as ten cents (I was there, and it wasn't). And please, won't anyone admit the difference between gantlet and gauntlet anymore?

I found the book somewhat less than the sum of its parts, an enjoyable read but a promise not quite fulfilled.

Finishing up May 23, 2005 of the New Yorker:

- An article by Thomas A. Bass on "The Spy Who Loved Us", about a Vietnamese reporter and spy whose double-headed spying was essential to the Communist victory, in spite of his appreciation of the west.

- An hysterically funny review of "Star Wars: Episode III" by Anthony Lane. A must for the Star-Wars cognoscenti.

This past week I've continued my New Yorker saga. In the June 27, 2005 edition, there's a rather curious article on Poppa Neutrino, a man who renamed himself (pretty obvious, I guess) and set about devising ocean-going rafts out of junk. He did make it across the Atlantic, and the story ends as he puts out to sea to attempt the Pacific.

The article raises interesting points about rafts vs. boats - for instance, that once a raft is bouyant, the only art required is to keep it upright, since it can't fill with water. The article is "The Crossing" by Alec Wilkinson.

In the same issue: A short story by J.M. Coetzee called "The Blow", which starts out very well but, I think, droops at the end. While I can see the author's intent and the parallels he makes, it was like watching a fine but somehow wrong-headed performance at the theater. I can understand the aim of the actor and director - I just don't think it works.

I did read an actual book recently, After Dark by Haruki Murakami. Very Murakami-ish, a short dark journey through a realistic night and a techno-nightmare at the same time. You can find my review on the work page if you're interested in this writer.

A little behind on recording here. Since my last, I've read Darkness at Noon, Hungry Hearts, several alphabet mysteries by Sue Grafton and Sarah Graves (except that I seem to have read them before), and a bunch of New Yorkers. I'll go back over the New Yorker articles in a separate post.

Those New Yorker articles went out before I could say a word about them. Oh well.

I've been reading for my face-to-face book club (Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade - a disappointment) and the TIOLI challenge on '75 books in 2010' (the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I'm almost finished with How Proust Can Change Your Life.

Looking through the recommendations list, I had a momentary flashback. Marguerite Henry's Black Gold popped up. I remember her mainly for a book my uncle gave me a thousand years ago, Born to Trot which weaves a (then) contemporary coming-of-age story with the history of the great trotting horse Hambletonian. I hadn't thought about Black Gold in decades, but I still have the horse book.

I finished Bitter Lemons this past month, and enjoyed it very much, both the writing style and the glimpse of Cyprus just before the push for independence. Just now, I also finished The Appointment by Herta Muller, to be discussed this coming Tuesday at my monthly book club meeting.

At the moment, I'm here avoiding The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (well, and the laundry). Huck's unblinking eye on human venality is just so sad. As good as the writing is, I'll feel set free when I'm done.

The general store has been definitely quiet for a while now. I've continued reading through my New Yorker issues of years past, but maybe 2005 and 2006 weren't the most interesting years to me - there must have been something to recommend, but I didn't find it. On, there was one article on Phillip Pullman.

I've read a number of books after Huck Finn, including Dead Souls by Gogol. I was so enjoying it, but it petered out in a series of religiously-toned fragments in book II- so sorry Gogol didn't get to finish it, but the religious tracts make me wary of getting what I wish for!

I've also read several mysteries, including the first two Louise Penny Inspector Gamache mysteries, very good, and the last Spencer novel, not so good. Next I'll be reading The Death of the Adversary for my face-to-face book club, and I'll also be listening to an audio of Death in Venice for the same group. Someone did mention that our group seems dedicated to books with death in the title or theme - purely an accident, I assure you!