What We're Reading

What I'm not reading:

Amber Frey's (who ever she is) book

Anything about Brad and Jen

Curtis Sittenfield's Prep

The Boston Globe

Boston Magazine

Boston Herald


What I am reading:

Nick Tosches in Bookforum on "blurbs"

Steve Rodrick at Slate on Sportswriters

A Reuters feature on Gore Vidal

Valley of Bones by Michael Gruber

The Whole Equation by David Thomson

Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

Christopher Dickey's Death Squad Democracy at Newsweek online

Mark Danner's How Bush Really Won in the NYRB

Darin Strauss' NYTBR review of SIGHTSEEING Stories by Rattawut Lapcharoensap.

Kurt Vonnegut's forward to a new edition of Nelson Algren's The Man with a Golden Arm

-Robert Birnbaum
posted by Matt Borondy at 1/27/2005 03:08:00 AM

I am reading the book "The Divine Husband" by Francisco Goldman. I love this book. During a search for "Francisco Goldman," I was led to "Identity Theory" and the wonderful interview with Robert Birnbaum. My mother is a Guatemalan and my dad found her when he ventured into Guatemala in the early 60's. The book "The Divine Husband" has given me insight into the 19th century's fascination and industrialization of the Central Americas. My mother is a product of all of this, as her own father was educated in the United States and later worked for the railroad system in Guatemala during much of the 20th century. I plan on letting my mom read the book and the interview as well. Thank goodness the brilliance of our authors can be reflected in sites like yours! I consider my self an avid reader but once I read a book I want to understand the underpinnings of the author as well. This Senor Goldman has touched a part of me by giving me "eyes" to understand what it was like in Guatemala.

-Raphaelana@aol.com
posted by Matt Borondy at 1/27/2005 03:02:00 AM

This weekend I read Willa Cather's A Lost Lady, which someone I knew back in Nebraska used to say was as good as if not better than The Great Gatsby (the "Great American Novel" of the same time period). I wish I could remember who used to say that, because I would like to give that person credit for being a genius. Ever since I finished Alice Munro's Runaway last fall, I have been in a state of literary depression. Although I have read some great books, nothing could quite measure up, but now I have found a way to go on. More in an upcoming Book Rate.

In the meantime, I requested for review a new book of Mark Rothko's essays. I hope I get it, because I went to the library this weekend to look into him a little and refresh my memory, and found that I had as much interest in his life as I have in his mesmerizing, meditative art. I read a little picture biography of him while my husband was lost in the stacks, and now I have started on the James Breslin biography. I was thinking of this time I was in the Kansas City art museum, and I saw a whole gaggle of children, no older than first or second graders, who had sort of settled in this gallery where they had a lot of modern art. I was sitting in front of the Rothko they have there, which is totally black. The "objects," as Rothko called them, were just different shades of black, if you can imagine. These little girls (who I had noticed carefully circling the gallery perusing each piece one at a time) sat down next to me and sort of contemplated it. One of them turned to me and confidently said, "I like it." I liked it too, and I liked the Rothko chapel in Houston when I was there a while back, so I am looking forward to the biography and this book of essays that I hope I get.

angie kritenbrink

posted by Angie Kritenbrink at 1/24/2005 08:45:00 AM

I'm in the middle of R. Ford's "The Sportswriter"; long overdue, but what can you do. Anyway, the back-cover copy says it's the story of a "goodhearted man" yada yada. Granted, I'm not at the end of the book yet, but "goodhearted" is not what I'd call Frank Bascombe. I'm not saying I don't like the guy, and whether I like him or not isn't the point anyway. But I just want to know if I'm alone in thinking "Goodhearted is not what I'd call him."
-Christian Bauman

posted by Christian Bauman at 1/21/2005 10:55:00 AM

This week I assigned my "Argument and Research" students the introduction to Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, in which she discusses the specious nature of standards of beauty and how they are a political backlash to the feminist movement. It was kind of fun to discuss with my students. I am trying to decide if I want to pick up the book; has anyone out there read it or have any recommendations to read it? The introduction was pretty intriguing, but I can't decide if I want to read a whole book about how screwed up our culture is with respect to perceptions of beauty.

-angie kritenbrink

posted by Angie Kritenbrink at 1/21/2005 09:28:00 AM

Lately I've been skimming through this book called ASTONISHING ANIMALS, and then I stumbled on The Believer Magazine's website (www.believermag.com). I thought about how great it is to look at animals these days. The book has 97 animals, all but one of which are real. The illustrations are detailed, but stylized, and the descriptions are pretty intriguing. Think about this: There is a creature called an Olm that lives in caves, in complete darkness, in nearly freezing water. They are newborn-baby pink and they look like 1-2 foot long salamanders. They have gills and lungs. They have no eyes. One lived without food in a jar for 12 years. When it was taken out, killed and dissected, the creature had absorbed its entire digestive tract. 'Ohm' is the sound Buddhists believe resonates beneath the din of our terrestrial noise. I think the Olm must be that noise as well. The book doesn't get all woo-woo like I do about these connections, but the writers for The Believer do. In their section under the heading 'Mammal' you can read about ancient mariners' lust for manatees, or the fantastic disappointment genetically invented Unicorns present. I also recommend "Animal Stories" by Jason Brown from his collection DRIVING THE HEART. I'm not positive how healthy all of these interests are, or if I'm inventing the importance of crossovers like Olm and Ohm. They only live in caves in and around Slovenia, though, and they can live for 100 years. That big black nothingness, then, that people are thinking themselves toward - sitting cross-legged in candlelit monasteries, makes me think of this salamander that is called a Human Fish, the one explorers in the 1600's thought were baby dragons.

ASTONISHING ANIMALS: Extraordinary Creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit TIM FLANNERY AND PETER SCHOUTEN. Atlantic Monthly, $29.95 (208p)/SBN 0-87113-875-1

- Drew McNaughton

posted by Drew McNaughton at 1/18/2005 01:10:00 PM

I have this huge stack of periodicals that I have been trying to make it through this weekend. These are issues of Poets and Writers, Bomb, Bitch, and a few random current events monthlies that I didn't read as they came in last fall because of being insanely busy teaching new classes in new places. Not to mention The Believer, which I haven't read for months, but that's a project in and of itself.

So far I have made it through the last couple of issues of Bitch (which I still read despite the fact that last year they rejected a story idea of mine with a dismissive "read our magazine before you submit" and then I saw an eerily similar story in the next issue), which is fun because they do these really intense graduate-school-ish feminist analyses of pop culture on a theme. For example, the fall 2004 issue (theme:"Fake") was particularly entertaining because it contained a huge article about the portrayal of sexual assault on daytime soap operas AND an analysis of infertility in TV shows, most notably "Friends" and "Sex and the City." I start to feel a little dirty/guilty for reading this stuff -- kind of the same feeling I get when I accidentally watch a half hour of VH1 -- but then again, it's feminist, so it's cool, right? English majors have to have something to do after graduation. And the "Jane Petty Criticism Corner" makes the whole subscription worthwhile.

-angie kritenbrink

posted by Angie Kritenbrink at 1/17/2005 11:47:00 PM

This weblog is going to be the first book-related weblog on Identity Theory, despite the fact that we are often grouped in the "literary weblog" category. Robert Birnbaum's a reader's progress is categorized as a weblog but is actually more like a (rarely updated) reading journal. We have other weblogs, but none contain much in the line of literary discussion.

"What We're Reading" (what you're reading) is a weblog about reading experiences. The contributors are Identity Theory staff members and some other fine, upstanding members of the literary community. You can even add a few posts if you ask nicely.

Unfortunately, I don't have any compelling reading experiences for this inaugural post. Most of my books are in boxes lately since I've been moving. The majority of my reading in the past month has been poker-related. I took in the entirety of A. Alvarez's The Biggest Game in Town on a flight from Orlando to Austin and finished up Andy Bellin's Poker Nation on the flight back to Florida. Look for complete reviews of those in our soon-to-be-launched poker section. The main non-poker book I've been reading off and on is Susan Orlean's My Kind of Place, which is a pretty fun collection of travel stories. I plan on finally getting around to Chris Hedges' War is a Force that Gives us Meaning next.

-Matt Borondy, Identity Theory Founding Editor
posted by Matt Borondy at 1/17/2005 11:14:00 PM