Relaxed Parents

I got tagged by Karen over at the distinctly misnamed Only Sometimes Clever! No problem – I love getting tagged. Problem is this tag requires an accounting of the books you’re currently in the middle of. Tricky. Could be a long list. I’ll limit myself to five.

• “Blood Rites” by Barbara Ehrenreich. This is her exploration of war and the origins of war – why humanity (or rather men) fight and how come the business of organised slaughter kicked off in the first place. It’s as readable and thought-provoking as any of her books but leans less on journalism than academic research (at least in what I’ve read so far), drawing on scholarly expositions of myth, anthropology, archeology and ethnography to build up a compelling picture of war as an outlet for the disenfranchised hunter of the species (I’m very much over-simplifying here). Can’t wait to see where the book as a whole goes. Ironically, the rise of patriarchy seems to have as much to do with men’s loss of power as anything else.
• “Somersault” by Kenzaburo Oe. One of my favourite Japanese writers but not his easiest book, the most fascinating element is the way he uses fiction to face up to the spiritual crisis many Japanese face as exemplified in the rise of “new religions” such as Osho or (more tragically) Aum Shinrikyo. Two aging men, Patron and Guide, begin the task of reviving/reinventing the movement that they disavowed ten years previously on discovering that a faction within it planned attacks on Japan’s nuclear reactors. It’s a dense, epic book, uncompromising and even-handed. Not the best place to start for new-comers to Oe, mind you. Try ‘Rise Up Oh Young Men Of The New Age” (especially if you like Blake) or the “The Silent Cry”.
• “Positions” by Jacques Derrida. This is related to the research to do with the course I’m reading. I’m confident I’m taking in about one word in five! I’m trying to find a method of approaching the analysis of interview transcripts which is less dependent on the ‘grand narratives’ of critical discourse but that stops short of the pessimism of much of Foucault (of whom I’m none-the-less a big fan). Derrida seems (with the strategies of the inversion, the pharmakon and the ever-slippery difference amongst others) to offer a thread of a possibility of approaching these texts with a degree of openness. If I can ever manager to get a grip on whatever it is he’s on about, that is.
• “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2″ by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil. I loved the first volume of this comic (and to read it is to understand why Moore disowned the appalling film) but this is a little bit of a let, feeling under-developed, somehow. Character motivation plain falls to pieces and some marvellous parts rather fail to cohere.
• “Anansi Boys” by Neil Gaiman. I haven’t even started this yet. It’s waiting on the shelf as a reward for when I finish slogging through the atrociously dull texts on career development I’m supposed to have finished by next week.
• “Frank Zappa” by Barry Miles. What would life be without a big, fat rock biography close at hand? Sex, rock’n'roll and no drugs whatsoever in Frank’s house. Detailed but never dull – a model of how to write a music book. My favourite story so far is Frank, lionised by the freaks of London in 1967, being offered a big lump of hash at a “be-in” or some such quaint “happening”. Frank looks at it in genuine bemusement. “What is it?” he asks, before being hustled quickly away by his more clued-in minders. What a role-model, eh? Frank the family man is less amusing, his fifteen year old daughter reduced to pushing notes under the studio door offering to do ‘valley girl’ imitations on his records to catch his attention.
• Charlie and Lola books in general by Lauren Childs. Can’t get enough of them. Dudelet and I just read “I will not ever eat a tomato.” “I’m not really a fussy eater”, dudelet proudly commented at the end.

OK – which victim gets tagged? I really want to know what Koonj is reading and if the Boob Juice Factory is back on line, well that would interesting too.