Book Shopping

[queerbychoice]

I've been reading so much lately that my huge supply of unread books has finally actually begun to run low. No, not really low in the least, I just feel like it's gotten "low" anytime I get the stack down to fewer than 25 books. Heh. Anyway, I'm down under 25 books left now, so I promptly ordered a ton of new ones this evening from the Powells.com website. Behold my treasures!

• Paul Beatty: The White Boy Shuffle: A Novel (recommended to me by fightingwords last December-ish)
• Bruce Benderson: User (author recommended to me by Frank Aqueno two years ago, back when I was still speaking to Frank Aqueno; Frank used to live with this author)
• Caryl Churchill: Plays, Volume One (recommended to me by frankepi; I also already read one of her plays for a college class)
• Jeffrey Eugenides: The Virgin Suicides (author recommended to me by frankepi; Frank, Middlesex was only available in hardback so I'm saving it for later)
• Mary Gaitskill: Because They Wanted To (recommended to me by metacarp last summer)
• Peter Høeg: Smilla's Sense of Snow (recommended to me by theobscure; I also already read another of Peter Høeg's books already on the recommendation of theobscure)
• Peter Shaffer: Equus (recommended to me by Frank Aqueno two years ago; author recommendation endorsed by theobscure)
• Starhawk: The Fifth Sacred Thing (recommended to me by sapphiretrance)

Currently I'm in the middle of reading an actual nonfiction book for a change: it's a literary theory book called The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing, edited by Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A. Walker. Paul Gordon Schalow's name is the reason I bought it, because his writings on and translations of the torrid male-male love affairs of 17th century samurai have very much delighted me for quite a long time. But mostly what I'm learning from the current book is how very many more Japanese women authors I need to go start reading now; I've read at least a dozen different Japanese male authors, several of them in extreme depth, but as for female authors, all I've read are The Tale of Genji (from 1000 years ago) and everything by Banana Yoshimoto (from the present day).

The following books are still sitting on my floor waiting for me to read them before the new ones arrive. Please advise me as to what I should read next.

• Sherman Alexie: The Toughest Indian in the World
• Margaret Atwood: Cat's Eye (I've already read one other book by her)
• Kirsten Bakis: Lives of the Monster Dogs
• Joan Didion: Slouching Towards Bethlehem (I've already read one other book by her)
• Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere (I've already read one other book by him)
• Jean Genet: Funeral Rites (I was already forced to read another play by him for a college class and I abhorred it, but in a long-ago moment of insanity I seem to have let frankepi talk me into trying another one)
• Derek Jarman: Modern Nature
• Barbara Kingsolver: The Bean Trees (I've already read several other books by her)
• Rick Moody: Demonology
• Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way
• Jane Rule: Memory Board (I've already read one play by her)
• Salman Rushdie: The Ground Beneath Her Feet (I've already read and adored just about everything else he's ever written)
• Leo Tolstoy: Walk in the Light, and Twenty-Three Tales (I've already read and adored his two famous novels)
• Edmund White: A Boy's Own Story (I've already read numerous other books by him)
• Jeanette Winterson: The PowerBook and The World and Other Places (I've already read eveyrthing else she's ever written, but I'm not sure why I keep reading them, because although I did adore Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Boating for Beginners, I really haven't that much liked anything at all that she's written ever since those two)
• Shawn Wong: American Knees
• Richard Wright: Native Son and Uncle Tom's Children

I can't believe I've actually started buying more when I still have that many left. Something really must be done about my book addiction.

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read Ulysses when I was in college (not for a class, just on my own during the time I happened to be in college). Well, I read most of it . . . I remember skimming over some pages at a few points. I was both impressed and yet not quite connecting. I was glad that I had tried to read it, but I didn't really feel like it was quite my kind of book somehow.

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it's definitely not for everyone, of course. And I can see why I would have a much more powerful connection with it than you. (Not suggesting it's too hard, or anything, because I know damn well you're smart enough and enough of a literary geek to appreciate and understand it.) Yeah. My connection with Joyce is so emotional, I often feel like I'm cheating on it, because I don't even like his books for being insanely hard and studious. That's just s nice addition. I think after this reading, though, I’m going to have to put it away for a while and get my brain back.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't really relate to Joyce as a human being much. I can admire his literary skills but I never feel like he's my friend. You do? What makes the difference?

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but not so much with James Joyce the person, specifically, as I do with some of his characters. Especially, like, Leopold and Molly Bloom, and how wonderfully endearing they are, despite all the strangeness they’re framed in. And I have this unhealthy identification with Stephen Dedalus, as a former Catholic boy obsessed with a religion that’s no longer mine, who also struggles with a negligent and absent father and the whole notion of paternity, and, most profoundly, the obsessive desire to be an artist, yet finding myself creatively impotent and bitter. Cheerful stuff. :)