Neglect Knows No Bounds

I had promised to be more diligent with regard to this piece of cyberspace,
and I have broken that promise more times than it's worth to mention.
I still cannot speak French. I... I am... very... lazy.

I've also not read a novel in at least four weeks.
Forget it, there is no good excuse, just a bunch of lame ones.

The last book I actually finished was Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk.
It's a novel made up of short stories. Most of them are okay.
Some of them are gross. One of them was so disgusting that I
broke out in a cold sweat, and nearly vomited on the subway platform.
After that, the book kind of went down hill, which bums me out
because I love all of Chuck's other stuff. But hey, when one cranks out
a book practically every 8 months or so, there's bound to be at least
one clunker, right? I'm holding out hope for the next one.

And now I must finish re-reading A Scanner Darkly before
the movie version comes out. God, I hope this adaptation of a Philip K. Dick
classic doesn't eat it the way every other one has...

In local news...

I was a big fan of the Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan collaboration Demo, and Wood's upcoming Local (this time out, a collaboration with artist Ryan Kelly) looks to mine a similar vein of low-key, character-driven goodness. Basically, the sort of qualities in films that I rave about on my other blog. And come to think of it, I do seem to remember Brian Wood stating in an interview that the films of Lynne Ramsay were an influence on Demo. (Given that Ms. Ramsay is the director of Morvern Callar and Ratcatcher, well...that was certainly a circular line of thought, wasn't it?)

There's a workblog up for Local here. Thoughts on the series (both thematic and technical) are interspersed with personal narratives of cities and neighborhoods. Well worth a read...

"...the double face of wonder"

I've raved about Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm elsewhere, and this article by Maria Tatar on Slate -- about both the film and the cultural impact of the work of the Brothers Grimm -- makes some fine points.  Authors invoked within include Tolkien, Woolf, Richard Wright, and John Updike; there are far worse ways one could spend five minutes than in reading it. 

MacArthur

The 2005 MacArthur Fellows are announced.

One of them: Jonathan Lethem.

"Interactivity is exhausting"

Walter Kirn discusses his time guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan. In somewhat related news, the film adaptation of Kirn's novel Thumbsucker opened on Friday.

"He writes not of the heart but of the glands"

I haven't read Faulkner in a while -- not, if memory serves, since I had to for a class in college. 

This piece on today's Slate (part of their "Book Blitz" series) has my interest re-piqued, though.  Perhaps it's time to dust off that copy of Absalom, Absalom! looking wistfully at me from my shelf.

I am trying very hard to read Michel Houellebecq's Platform.

I am trying very diligently.

I have, in the past, been known to truly enjoy books with asshole narrators.

But this is some tedious shit, no matter what the pages of blurbs in the front say. Little Children had three pages of blurbs, and it was sharp, funny, observant and real. This? This is indulgent blandness about a guy who spends too much time hating things about people. I sure hope I stop doing that by the time I'm 40.

Tell me why I'm wrong. Please. I'll tell you if it gets better.

I've been storming through books by the at least half-dozens, I tell you, but I haven't really been getting along with Blogger and now, like any bad blog-lady, I've got catching up to do. I may do something rash like grab my booklog and give you little two-sentence reviews of everything I've read in the last two months, but I'm not sure.

I so feel like I've been missing out on things by not being able to get to this little box. But the Booker shortlist has been announced, and now I REALLY feel behind. I've been meaning to get my hands on that Ishiguru, and I think I've read Banville and liked him ... but I haven't been able to bring myself to get near White Teeth and thus the Smith has little appeal, and while I hear I'm supposed to like Julian Barnes or something, I've never read him.

No McEwan, Rushdie or Coetzee, eh? Is Ali Smith male or female?

On a totally different note, I have a writer-crush on Tom Perotta. I hid out in my room reading Little Children last night while my roommates suffered through Anger Management. I'm supposed to be working, and all I want to do is read.