Atomic Razor: Me and My Biscotti

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Thursday, 27 November 2008

Me and My Biscotti

Strictly speaking, I learn from the Fount of All Knowledge, it should be "Me and My Biscotto". There was only one. Yesterday in the London Review Cake Shop. At the London Review Bookshop. My spiritual home. When can I move in? But it was probably the biscotto I have ever tasted. Like thin shortbread. Probably because it was a thin shortbread. Very rich - you could taste the butter and, I am sure, a faint and pleasant suggestion of raspberry, very appropriate for a Scottish confection.

Posted by PMC on Thursday, 27 November 2008 | Permalink

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Books We are Reading

David Nicholls: The Understudy
Not as good as "Starter for Ten". Nicholls would have written a better book if he had had the chance to read it out loud. (***)
Evelyn Waugh: The Diaries Of Evelyn Waugh
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Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow
(*****)
Steven Weisenburger: A "Gravity's Rainbow" Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
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Robin Farquharson: Drop Out
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Tom McCarthy: Remainder
(****)
Howard Mittelmark: How NOT to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs If You Ever Want to Get Published
(****)
Alphonse Daudet: In the Land of Pain
(***)
Peter Barry: Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Beginnings)
(****)
F Turner: From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
(***)
Malcolm Bradbury: Mensonge: My Strange Quest for Henri Mensonge, Structuralism's Hidden Hero (Arena Books)
Annoyingly amazon.com does have a picture of the cover. A bit like a Bluffer's Guide to Deconstruction and Structuralism" - just not as funny. (***)
Jorge Borges: The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory: AND Shakespeare's Memory (Penguin Modern Classics)
(*****)
John Byrne: Writing Sitcoms (Writing Handbooks) (Writing Handbooks)
(***)
J.G. Ballard: The Atrocity Exhibition: Annotated (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Described by Zadie Smith in her recent (and, I think, seminal) article in the "New York Review" as "possibly the greatest British avant-garde novel". I have to admit that I find Ballard annotations to each section much more interesting than the actual pieces themselves, which probably says more about me (is there a word to describe people who prefer the critical apparatus of a thing to the thing itself - other than, of course, "pretentious"?) than is does about Ballard or TAE. But there is, I think, something here. One could imagine an undated version in which almost nothing had to be changed - almost all of the celebrities the text is fixated on are still icons forty years later, which, as Ballard indicates, probably tells us something about the 1960s. It's amusing that Ballard (writing, I suppose, in the late 1980s) is rather dismissive of Ralph Nader, well-known in the 1960s for "Unsafe at Any Speed"; if only he had known that it would be Nader or rather the fuckwits (I think that is the technical term) who voted for him in 2000 who would condemn us to eight years of George W. Bush. There's probably a story in that. (***)
Adolfo Bioy Casares: The Invention of Morel (New York Review Books Classics)
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Michael Clark: Paradoxes from A to Z
(****)
Neal Stephenson: Anathem
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Adele T. Haft: The Key to the "Name of the Rose": Including Translations of All Non-English Passages (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)
(****)
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
This is not the edition I am reading (which is the early Picador paperback), but it is the edition with the David Lodge introduction, which I am currently reading in Lodge's collection "The Year of Henry James", which made it clear to me that here was a book I had to prioritise immediately. (*****)
A.S. Byatt: Possession: A Romance
(****)
Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Modern Classics)
I think this this should really be three and a half stars. I know, I know. OK, OK. Coming off the fence then three stars. The thing is that it is very clever and witty and funny, but it is also rather one note (leaving aside the first couple of chapters) and it would work better as a 60-page novella. After a few chapters, you get the shtick and after that it is just pretty much more of the same. Of course, it doesn't help now that Gibbons's explicit models (Mary Webb, Sheila Kaye-Smith - see http://segalbooks.blogspot.com/2008/07/further-beyond-woodshed.html) are pretty much forgotten and that D.H. Lawrence's star is no longer in the ascendant. (***)
Kingsley Amis: The Old Devils (Vintage Classics)
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The Poem of the Cid (Classics)
(***)
Posy Simmonds: Tamara Drewe
(*****)
Zachary Leader: The Life of Kingsley Amis
(****)
Posy Simmonds: Literary Life
Superb. I hope to been speared as a type by Posy by the time I am 50. Why is she merely an MBE? (*****)
Jenny Turner: The Brainstorm
(***)
Julian Barnes: Love, Etc.
(****)
Julian Barnes: Talking It Over (Picador Books)
(****)
David Lodge: The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel
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Ari Rafaeli: Book Typography
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Robert McKee: Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
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David Lodge: Author, Author
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John Rolfe and Peter Troob: Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle
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Marc Blake: How to Be a Sitcom Writer: Secrets from the Inside
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Evelyn Waugh: The Complete Short Stories
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Mitzi Szereto: Getting Even: Revenge Stories
(*****)
Belle de Jour: The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl (tv tie-in)
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Jorge Luis Borges: Antologia de La Literatura Fantastica
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Lucy Fry; Heidi James; Kay Sexton: Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel: Anthology of Shorter Fiction
(***)
M.R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
(***)
Evelyn Waugh: Put Out More Flags (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Marie Phillips: Gods Behaving Badly
(***)
Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
(***)
Evelyn Waugh: Unconditional Surrender
(*****)
Alexander Waugh: God
(****)
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
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Jorge Luis Borges: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Evelyn Waugh: Officers and Gentlemen (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Rob Long: Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke
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Scarlett Thomas: PopCo
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Julian Barnes: A History of the World In 10.5 Chapters (Picador Books)
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Julian Barnes: Metroland (Picador Books)
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Julian Barnes: The Pedant in the Kitchen
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Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot (Picador Books)
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Ian McEwan: Enduring Love
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Tom Wolfe: The Bonfire of the Vanities (Picador Books)
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Alan Judd: The Kaiser's Last Kiss
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Michael Frayn: The Russian Interpreter
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Michael Frayn: Towards the End of the Morning
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Michael Frayn: A Landing on the Sun
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Ryan Bigge: A Very Lonely Planet: Love, Sex and the Single Guy
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T.A. Shippey: J.R.R.Tolkien: Author of the Century
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Brian W. Kernighan: The Practice of Programming (Professional Computing)
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Evelyn Waugh: Men at Arms (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Barry N. Malzberg: Breakfast in the Ruins
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Anthony Hope: The Prisoner of Zenda (Penguin Popular Classics)
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Evelyn Waugh: Black Mischief (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive
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John Baxter: A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict
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Matthew Sweet: Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema
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Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
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Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart: What Does a Martian Look Like?: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life
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Candace Bushnell: Sex and the City
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Humphrey Carpenter: The Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s
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Neal Stephenson: The System of the World
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Elizabeth Benedict: The Joy of Writing Sex
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Chris Turner: Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation
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Jonathan Coe: Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
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Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (Gollancz SF S.)
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Andrew Collins: Where Did It All Go Right?: Growing Up Normal In the 70s
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Peter Robinson: Snapshots from Hell: Making of an MBA
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Neal Stephenson: The Confusion
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Karl Sabbagh: Dr Riemann's Zeros
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Alan Ayckbourn: The Crafty Art of Playmaking
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