NWR: What did you read this past summer, that wasn't Jonathan Franzen?

J

JasonA

Jason Adams
In order to add life back to the nice thread, I present the more general question.

Two from Paul Bowles:

The Sheltering Sky
Millennials of New York, this story never goes out of fashion. Richly immersive, which I could say the same about the movie.

The Spider's House
Life imitating Art. Should be in every classroom and part of every Foreign Policy discussion. A post 9-11 must read.
 
My reading has been largely colored of late by my son's reading tastes (we're doing some family reading projects). So, this summer I reread all of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide series, which has aged surprisingly well and am now finishing up the fantasy series "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel," which is a surprisingly good yarn.

Mark Lipton
 
I kind of liked and kind of didn't like the somewhat fictionalized narrative L'Adversaire by Emmanuel Carrère, based on a the true story of a man who murdered his family and then was discovered to have built a whole life of lies for the previous 20 years.

The topic was fascinating, but some of Carrère's meta inroads and "philosophical" musings were a bit heavy-handed.
 
I've been reading through the fantasy of Robin Hobb that I hadn't read before. Seriously good world building and much better than fantasy usually is. With all the skepticism stuff I've had to read I haven't had much energy for "serious" literature. But that's ok. Good fantasy and scifi is still very pleasurable even though it isn't the most serious or artistically significant genre.

The exceptions were the new books from Richard Powers (Orfeo: genetic engineering and classical music = yay!) and David Mitchel (Bone Clocks: good but possibly requires knowledge of his previous works). Anyone here read any Mitchell?
 
originally posted by MLipton:
My reading has been largely colored of late by my son's reading tastes (we're doing some family reading projects).
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Our family reading is still at the Berenstain Bears level. Which is actually decently entertaining. (Certainly better than Dora the Explorer!) But I'm not complaining. Everything in due time.
 
On the real subject of the thread, my only non-professional reading this summer was on the 'trashy' side: I read The Help on several flights. Far from great literature, but it gave me plenty to think about.
 
I'm super happy to share I'm a little more low brow. You know, pop histories, things with a nice story to them. It's all my brain can handle.

Eight World Cups is fun. Shock Doctrine was dumb and ill informed. My cetacean field guide was a fun cover to cover read this summer in the San Juans while seeing and kayaking with Harbor Porpoise, Orca, seals and sea lions, and a lone Humpback (not all at the same time). I can't remember what else, par for the course these days...
 
originally posted by BJ:
My cetacean field guide was a fun cover to cover read this summer in the San Juans while seeing and kayaking with Harbor Porpoise, Orca, seals and sea lions, and a lone Humpback (not all at the same time).
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Now, that sounds awesome!
 
originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
I've been reading through the fantasy of Robin Hobb that I hadn't read before. Seriously good world building and much better than fantasy usually is. With all the skepticism stuff I've had to read I haven't had much energy for "serious" literature. But that's ok. Good fantasy and scifi is still very pleasurable even though it isn't the most serious or artistically significant genre.

The exceptions were the new books from Richard Powers (Orfeo: genetic engineering and classical music = yay!) and David Mitchel (Bone Clocks: good but possibly requires knowledge of his previous works). Anyone here read any Mitchell?
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Another fantasy addict here.
I am a fan of Robin Hobb, by the way she is a local Pacific NW girl.

I guess GRR Martin may never get around to finishing his epic.

I'm currently reading The Girl in the Spider's Web which is a continuation of the Lisbeth Salander stories, but by a new author. Not as much a fan of this one as the Stieg Larsson books were much better. I love the characters so I am pushing through anyway.
 
I read and reread multiple times the proposed, temporary, reproposed, temporary, final, and then additional proposed and then final treasury regulations (and the many public comments and the preambles to the next set of proposed regs) under sections 197 (amortization of intangibles), 338 (stock purchase of business treated as asset purchase of business), and 1060 (actual asset purchases of business), along with the revant legislative histories and the regulations under section 848 (deferred acquition costs of life insurers) because some ^|£]£|£***¥¥ partner decided he should write an article on a wrong ruling on the aforementioned issued by the IRS, dumped the assignment on someone who didn't do a good job, and then tagged me to do the rewrite. Then sat on my draft for five weeks. Then i had to reread most of the above (only once this time) so i could remember what I had figured out before i could implement (some) of his suggested edits. Then he took it back and inserted a five (typed) page introduction talking about a slightly related nonprecedential ruling with helpful dicta 14 years old (not mentoning the erroneous recent ruling that is the ostensible subject of the article until page 6) apparently so he could drop a footnote in the second line of the article citing an article he wrote about the other ruling.

I tried taking my name off but to no avail. Fortunately it is now bogged down getting reviewed by others (who don't know the specific area) so by the time it is sent to the publisher it will be too late to publish it.

I would have preferred to read the Berenstein Bears. Or Jonathan Franzen.
 
I'm in the middle of Piketty, which is dry but I like this kind of thing. Before that it was Jed Perl's bombastic New Art City, and before that Vasily Grossman's harrowing Life and Fate.
 
originally posted by maureen:
I read and reread multiple times the proposed, temporary, reproposed, temporary, final, and then additional proposed and then final treasury regulations (and the many public comments and the preambles to the next set of proposed regs) under sections 197 (amortization of intangibles), 338 (stock purchase of business treated as asset purchase of business), and 1060 (actual asset purchases of business), along with the revant legislative histories and the regulations under section 848 (deferred acquition costs of life insurers) because some ^|£]£|£***¥¥ partner decided he should write an article on a wrong ruling on the aforementioned issued by the IRS, dumped the assignment on someone who didn't do a good job, and then tagged me to do the rewrite. Then sat on my draft for five weeks. Then i had to reread most of the above (only once this time) so i could remember what I had figured out before i could implement (some) of his suggested edits. Then he took it back and inserted a five (typed) page introduction talking about a slightly related nonprecedential ruling with helpful dicta 14 years old (not mentoning the erroneous recent ruling that is the ostensible subject of the article until page 6) apparently so he could drop a footnote in the second line of the article citing an article he wrote about the other ruling.

I tried taking my name off but to no avail. Fortunately it is now bogged down getting reviewed by others (who don't know the specific area) so by the time it is sent to the publisher it will be too late to publish it.

I would have preferred to read the Berenstein Bears. Or Jonathan Franzen.
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This is why I write my articles myself, but also why I only write one every 4 years.
 
Other books:
Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson (I am a huge fan, but did not finish)
Cowed by Denis and Gail Hayes (excellent)
Cascadia's Fault (excellent, much better than that alarmist New Yorker article
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough (very relaxing and enjoyable)
The Discovery of Middle Earth by Graham Robb (DNF, somewhat obscure, but still interesting - his France book is fabulous).
And now, The Big Burn by Tim Egan. It's great.
 
originally posted by Tristan Welles:
Ian Bostridge's book on Schubert's Winterreise is a very good read. Intentionally discursive, but never less than interesting.
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God that sounds great. I love Fischer-Dieskau.
 
originally posted by Zachary Ross:
I'm in the middle of Piketty, which is dry but I like this kind of thing. Before that it was Jed Perl's bombastic New Art City, and before that Vasily Grossman's harrowing Life and Fate.
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It was Piketty who indirectly led me to Zola via Balzac. I also read All the Light We Cannot See and enjoyed most of it (and visited the Geology Museum in Paris as a result). Black Chalk was a weaker version of Secret History.
 
Wow, you folks have so much more time for pleasure-reading than I do. I have managed to get halfway through "Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman.
 
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