You should never just read for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior; or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Ones you have to concentrate on while reading.
http://flavorwire.com/95206/john-waters-10-best-pieces-of-advice-for-functional-freaks
Like virtually everyone who engages with it, Jonathan Franzen adores Christina Stead's perpetually neglected, perpetually rediscovered novel The Man Who Loves Children:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/books/review/Franzen-t.html
Some authors are underrated (or just plain unrated) because they are little known; O. Henry is underrated because he has always been popular.
...reading him is always easy and always a pleasure—his facility is very hard to deny. Part of the enjoyment is in realizing just how vital the magazine culture had to be to produce and sustain a writer like O. Henry. To realize that his work—and the work of writers like Saki, Conan Doyle, Conrad, James, Kipling, and, just a few years later, Wodehouse—was appearing week-by-week in large-circulation magazines—and that no one was passing them over for the cartoons.
http://therumpus.net/2010/06/o-henry%E2%80%99s-afterlife-thoughts-and-ephemera/
Now Thyra Samter Wilson she is unknown -- but she sounds like great fun.
http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=402
Colin Marshall at The Millions provides an excellent overview of the four novels of Alexander Theroux (Paul's older brother), one of the least discussed, least appreciated of all the "encyclopedic" meta-novelists who followed down the path blazed by William Gaddis in The Recognitions:
http://www.themillions.com/2010/06/linguistic-revenge-an-alexander-theroux-primer.html
Two Hungarians: Michael Orthofer at The Complete Review is impressed/overwhelmed by Peter Esterhazy's novel Not Art (he correctly gives the author's name as Esterhazy Peter, since Hungarians, like Koreans, write their names that way, surname first):
'Not Art', the title would have it, but Not Art is, in fact, all art, pushing the fictional envelope (while also fully embracing and leaning on the traditions of fiction). Writing with tremendous facility, Esterházy does not present a straightforward text, but Not Art offers many of the usual -- and some surprising and unusual -- rewards of fiction. It can be hard to keep a grasp on it, much less not lose the overview -- but Esterházy's deceptively welcoming (often comic, always fluent and clever) writing makes the reading experience a pleasure almost despite itself.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/magyar/esterhp2.htm
Laszlo Krasznahorkai is probably best known for writing the novel upon which his compatriot, film-maker Bela Tarr, based the seven-hour Satantango. That novel is not in English yet, but two others of his are:
I think I can triangulate some idea of the effect of his extremely lengthy, disorienting sentences....they may bear some stylistic similarity to Thomas Bernhard, but that is all at the surface. While Bernhard uses rhythmic repetition and slight variation to hone in on precise but ambiguous motifs, Krasznahorkai piles on contradictions and reversals: not explicitly, not dialectically, but in the ever-lengthening conditions, slight disparities, and digressions inserted into these long sentences....What seems like a rephrasing often turns out, on closer examination, to be a reimagining, as one idea turns into another. Far from a stylistic tic, this tortuous writing is the symbolic center of Krasznahorkai’s work.
http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-mythology-of-lszl-krasznahorkai
George Simmers at Great War Fiction is excited by the prospect of a truly definitive "Complete Works" of T.S. Eliot:
http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/collecting-eliot/
I'm delighted at the growing number of literary festivals in offbeat locations, such as Bhutan (PMD, May 24), or Jamaica, where the tenth Calabash International Literary Festival was just held:
The entire festival was....an exercise in immersion....It was....an immersion in words, with people whose love of words far exceeds....their love of anything canonical or avant garde or experimental or contemporary or restricted by genre and mode.
http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/2010/06/01/treasure-beach-tales/
Among notables born on this date are novelists Charles Dickinson, Elizabeth Jolley (Australia), Maurice Shadbolt (New Zealand), and Jacques Roumain (Haiti), crime novelist Val McDermid (Scotland), painters Natalia Goncharova (Russia) and Fernand Leduc (Quebec), sculptor Robert Jacobsen (Denmark), architect Hassan Fathy (Egypt), film director Henning Carlsen (Denmark), baritone Robert Merrill, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, jazzman Anthony Braxton, pop singer Freddy Fender, bassist Stefan Lessard, and actors Alla Nazimova, Rosalind Russell, Bruce Dern, Dennis Weaver, Angelina Jolie, and Noah Wyle. Such is the prominence of Brangelina in our pop tabloid consciousness that there is now a whole genre of mock-Brangelina art tributes, such as this religious piece:
"I only want to celebrate and sing her praises. I have been down on my knees all morning, where I know she would want me to be, blessing this holy family. god bless the jolie-pitts!"
http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com/14/2008/07/finally-a-shrin.html
Or this sculpture, Brangelina Forever, enshrined in a house devoted to our gods:
The sculpture is part of the 4,000 sq. ft., $500,000 house named "The Brangelina", by the Los Angeles artist known as Xvala. "Brangelina Forever", a life-size casting of Brad and Angelina in bed, making love Harlequin Romance-style, with a cooing dove perched on Brad's finger, is installed in the ceiling of the master bedroom to inspire a 'sexual healing' for the room's occupants. The statues are embedded with crushed glass containing Brad and Angie's DNA obtained from wine glasses from which they drank while reportedly celebrating the anniversary of their first meeting on the set of 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith.' "The Brangelina" sculpture is destined to exist forever, the way Brad and Angie's relationship will persist in people's memories. Theirs is the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton romance of our time," said publicist Cory Allen...."I believe every home in America should become an 'honorary home' to our superstars...." said Xvala.
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=34751
http://www.dlisted.com/node/35095
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