reading

A couple friends and I are working our way through House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This is the predecessor of ONLY REVOLUTIONS, which I attempted to read a couple books back and failed to finish. House of Leaves is, itself, a difficult book, but it is an engrossing story very deftly told.

 

  

Oh, Wendy & I adore Christopher Moore! He’s one funny writer, as nice as he can be in person, and writes enjoyably messed-up stories.

YOU SUCK is a follow-up to BLOODSUCKING FIENDS that Mr. Moore has written at the request of his readers. I’m only 80 pages in and have laughed out loud several times already.

I am currently reading The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine by Steven Rinella. It’s sort of a road book meets hunting book meets culinary book, and it’s fun. Mr. Rinella’s activities as he tries to collect ingredients to re-create a 3-day, 45-course meal from Le Guide Culinaire are very entertaining.

   

I decided to put down ONLY REVOLUTIONS for the time being. Though I was enjoying the book, I was struggling with it because this period of time is so busy with the holidays and my busiest time at work. I kept losing the thread of the book because I wasn’t able to devote the time and attention this book demands and deserves. I will get back to it once things calm down, and will start with SAM’S side this time, as it seems the more logical place to begin.

So, I’ve put it down in favor of GASTRONAUT by Stefan Gates. Gates is an “epicurean desperado”, willing to cook and eat anything — at least once. After all, he argues, if we eat 22 tons of food over our lifetimes and use 16% of our waking lives preparing food, shouldn’t we try for the occasional “culinary epiphany” by maximizing our “excitement-to-mastication ratio”?

I like the light tone of this book. It’s interesting reading and going quickly, so I will soon have to decide what to read next…

 

Currently reading ONLY REVOLUTIONS by Mark Z. Danielewski, the author of the very-weird and much-enjoyed House of Leaves. This book is more challenging than House of Leaves and I am not immediately enjoying it as much. However, I will stick with it.

If you’re interested in an unusual story told in an unusual way, check out either of those books.

 

Tonight was Wendy’s early night off of work, so she got home around 7:00pm. I’d been home since about 5:30, reading over the Only Revolutions website & forums. Mark Z. Danielewski is one tripped-out author — he’s the same guy that wrote the mammoth House of Leaves, a 700+ page horror story told on many levels. It was described by the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle as: “A rollicking Pynchonesque oddity, a Nabokovian linguistic obsession, and a Borgesian unreality, House of Leaves jumps and skips and plays with genre-wrecking abandon, postmodern panache, and an obsessively imaginative scope that absolutely shames most books on the market today”.

 

Only Revolutions carries on in the same twisted tradition as House of Leaves – they are both a books that are very aware of the fact that they are books, forcing you to consider not just what you’re reading but how you’re reading it as well. In each book, there are pages that are formatted in such a way to make you spin the book or read backward (or through a mirror). “It is a great mix of pop culture, intelligence, sex, angst, and a great story in a world so detailed that it must be real. At times, it is a play within a play within a play and sometimes you’re not quite sure how many layers there are. The layout of the book itself is also amazing.” (M. Keisler “PhilosophyMusicMan”) And, even 6 years after the original publication of House of Leaves, people are still finding things ‘hidden’ in the footnotes, or putting together pieces of the puzzle. If the television show LOST had a decent story (that went anywhere) and was a book, it might be a lot like the work of Danielewski. 

 

Wendy & I had dinner this evening at Outback Steakhouse — not the type of place we’d normally dine, but I was given a gift certificate, so we wanted to use it up. Their steaks are seasoned to within an inch of their lives — no tasting the beef there — but they’re tender and cooked appropriately. I had a fillet, Wendy had the tilapia, and we split an onion appetizer.