Books You've Readed Recently and Don't Know WTF to think

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem

Everything goes down, no internet or power, no oil, ammunition goes bad. We join the story following journeyman, who delivers food and stuff to the inhabitants of a farming community in Maine. Then a nuclear powered supercar arrives, piloted by an old friend and scriptwriting partner of his who has driven across America to see him and his sister, who runs one of the farms and leads the community. Tensions arise.

Journeyman is not so much an unreliable narrator as a clueless one, but you can see the payoff or punchline from the other side of the harbour. Mostly fun, better than the don delillo that used a similar end time premise.

 

[sufi]

kinda like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_for_Zachariah
i'm looking forward to rereading some Robert CO Brien in the recent future probably

 

[sufi]

also kinda like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_and_Villains_(novel) 2000AD Gothic

 

[sufi]

back on topic:

Kitāb Gharāʼib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʻuyūn (كتاب غرائب الفنون وملح العيون) ('The Book of Curiosities')
Shelfmark:
Bodleian Library MS. Arab. c. 90
Holding Institution:
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Date Statement:
1190–1210
Place of Origin:
Egypt
Description:
Incomplete late 12th or early 13th century copy, probably made in Egypt, of an anonymous work compiled in Egypt between AD 1020 and 1050. Contains a number of unique illustrations and rare texts. Erroneously attributed to ʻArabānī, ʻAbd al-Ghanī ibn Husām al-Dīn, d. 1450.
Contents: Divided into two books, one on celestial matters, one on the Earth.
Extent: ff. 48. Size of page: 324 x 245 mm. Size of written area: 291 x 226 mm.
Layout: 27 lines per page. Frame-ruled text area.
Hand: Medium-large Naskh script in dense black ink, with headings in red.
Decoration: 23 maps and diagrams.
Binding: Disbound, binding retained. 18th or 19th century Ottoman binding in poor condition.
Language:
Arabic
Catalogue Description:
Fihrist: Union Catalogue of Manuscripts from the Islamicate World
Provenance:
Bought from Sam Fogg, 2002.
Record Origin:
Description in part based on Savage-Smith, E. and Rapoport, Y. (2013), An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe, pp. 2-4.

Acknowledgements:
The acquisition of the Book of Curiosities was made possible by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and generous donations from the National Arts Collections Fund, the Friends of the Bodleian, Saudi Aramco, several Oxford colleges, and private individuals. These grants and donations, along with the Arts & Humanities Research Council, have also funded the project to prepare a full study of the treatise, including an edition of the Arabic text and English translation, and to disseminate the results as widely as possible through the internet, exhibitions, and an outreach programme.
Annotations converted by Data Futures (https://www.data-futures.org/).

Bodleian Library MS. Arab. c. 90

View high resolution digitized images of Bodleian Library MS. Arab. c. 90 Kitāb Gharāʼib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʻuyūn (كتاب غرائب الفنون وملح العيون) ('The Book of Curiosities')

digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

 

[IdleRich]

The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem

Everything goes down, no internet or power, no oil, ammunition goes bad. We join the story following journeyman, who delivers food and stuff to the inhabitants of a farming community in Maine. Then a nuclear powered supercar arrives, piloted by an old friend and scriptwriting partner of his who has driven across America to see him and his sister, who runs one of the farms and leads the community. Tensions arise.

Journeyman is not so much an unreliable narrator as a clueless one, but you can see the payoff or punchline from the other side of the harbour. Mostly fun, better than the don delillo that used a similar end time premise.

Dunno much about this guy, I knew I'd read one of his and I looked on wikipedia and worked out it was Amnesia Moon - appropriately enough I don't remember that much about it but the premise, or the world it's set in sounds kinda similar in a way. I suppose that some people do have their own milieus or whatever you want to call it where they are happiest working. Something bigger than just a theme - a setting that is different but which may as well be the same. There is a film director called Lopushansky who did three or four films which are all set in the aftermath of nuclear wars, normally there is some sort of pseudo society which is clinging on, you know, it's not a totally derelict world like in The Road or something. Very interesting film maker but he is clearly obsessed by that type of world which to me is interesting in itself and I hope it's relevant here cos it sounds quite like the same type of world where Lethem does his stuff (or maybe it's just these two novels, perhaps his other stuff is about high school girls competing in gymkhana who knows).
Did you ever read Dhalgren? That's another that takes place in that kind of in-between, almost destroyed world. And Dhalgren is certainly a "what the fuck was all that about" kind of book too.

 

[IdleRich]

Has anyone ever read Henry Matthews? I mentioned him in the Borges thread and I must have drunkenly ordered the book I wondered about there cos it turned up the other day. I haven't started it yet but I do know for certain sure that when I do read it I will be utterly bamboozled.

The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, like The Conversions, is the story of a hunt for treasure, this time told through a series of letters between a Southeast Asian woman named Twang and her American husband, Zachary McCaltex. The couple are researching the fate of a vanished cargo of gold that once belonged to the Medici family. As in the earlier novels, there are various odd occurrences and ambiguous conspiracies; many of the book's set-pieces revolve around a secret society (The Knights of the Spindle), which Zachary is invited to join. Reflecting the author's interest in different languages, one pivotal letter in the book is written in the (fictitious) idiom of Twang's (fictitious) homeland, and to translate it the reader must refer back to earlier chapters to find the meanings of the words. In a typical Mathews conceit, the title of the novel is apparently meaningless until the reader reaches the final pages, at which point it reveals an important twist in the story that is nowhere revealed in the text of the book itself. The novel is provided with an index, which may be deliberately unreliable. David Maurer's The Big Con provided Mathews with a number of slang terms, and possibly some plot elements as well. Another apparent source was The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank: 1397-1494 by Raymond de Roover; Mathews implicitly acknowledged his debt by introducing de Roover and his wife in the text as minor characters.

 

[WashYourHands]

Must haves - a ton of cream and even more butter. Everything with butter. A gift and a bit of a hint, no shit love (there's a Last Tango joke in there too somewhere, but not with my better half in, please).

Cuntuchon never uses tins. Snob. However, i've cracked gravy fully now. Base of veg plus a little water. Hmmm. The bread is reasonably straightforward, but fuck it, takes ages. Pick your battles. Buy it IN France, sorted. I'm in too deep, really, half of everything seems reasonable.

 

[woops]

you mean Harry Mathews Rich, yes he was the first name to spring to mind when I saw the title of this thread.

 

[woops]

there's one of his I haven't read called My Life in CIA - Mathews is (was) a well-off writer and his neighbours couldn't figure out what he did for a living so they naturally concluded he was a secret agent - anyway Mathews plays along with it with results presumably either hilarious or insane or both. I must give that a go one of these days.