Books [split topic]

[djtrees]

Crumbs. I hope no other fucker has got to the weird cat shop by my house and bought it before I can get there tomorrow. Ta Jemble.

[Jemble Fred]

Well maybe someone else thinks different – I'm no real arbiter of great literature, but I found all the books, including Legacy, to be addictive, and very affecting in a way no TV version is, or could be. Interestingly Poncily enough, I exchanged emails with Nobbs about attempting a stage adaptation of the first book a few months back, and he was very encouraging. But I'll wait for my own mid-life crisis before I really give it a go.

I was going to add a recommendation for Going Gently, but I realised what it comes down to is that Nobbs is a brilliant novelist full-stop. And I've barely read half of his output, so I should reccomend everything else he's written to myself before blabbing on.

[vrailaine]

Thought Sirens was horrid, Mother Night was my favourite, closely followed by Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. Only others ones I've read are Slaughterhouse, Hocus Pocus and a short story collection(Welcome to the Monkey House?), the short stories didn't do much for me either.
I've probably said this a few times already in this thread but Sirens felt like Vonnegut trying to sound like Vonnegut, not a fully formed product just yet, shit.

Closest I've came to reading lately is glancing through my Fist of Fun book.

[Serge]

I found Joey a fun character, reminded me of Chip.

As Chip was my favourite character in 'The Corrections', this has now got my mouth watering for 'Freedom'. Hopefully it'll turn up in one of my local charity shops soon. Talking of which...

Book question. Are the books of Reggie Perrin any good? I really liked the series and I have read Nobb's autobiography. There is a collection in a charity shop that I annoyingly didn't pick up the other day...

I have to completely concur with Jemble here. I read the books before I ever saw the Rossiter version, and they're still the definitive version in my mind. In fact, I was trying to think what I might read next, and now you've got me thinking I should re-read those! I love them so much I've even memorised the phrase, 'LITTLE BRING A HINE SUNS UR LIFE INTO YO'.

[Famous Mortimer]

Edit: Looking at the Wiki entry for the novel, I am assured that I really read this too fast and did not understand much of the physics and chronology. I will give it another go.

Reading that myself, I came across the stage play information:

In 1974 Stuart Gordon adapted a version of the novel for the stage with the Organic Theatre Company of Chicago. According to notes on a playbill from 1976 being auctioned on eBay, the 1976 production featured actors Joe Mantegna and Dennis Franz.

I would absolutely love to see Joe Mantegna and Dennis Franz perform the Sirens of Titan.

[Queneau]

Has anyone read The Local: A History of the English Pub by Paul Jennings? I can't find a lot of information about it. Or perhaps someone can recommend a decent book on pubs.

P.S. What's the Amazon affiliate code for CaB?

[the midnight watch baboon]

I found Joey a fun character, reminded me of Chip. Surely the most frustrating is Patty? So much time is spent on her and I still can't work her out...

joey is a character which gre with me more after I'd read the book, but probably reminded me]of my younger days in a not too positive way. But I suppose half of reading is the immediate effect, and the other half is what you take away with you longer term.

Patty is an odd one; selfish, overbearing, victim and as you say hard to define.

The sister was curiously purposefuly underwritten, I wonder why.

[Famous Mortimer]

Just racing through the autobiography of Bruce Campbell, "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor". The stuff he's interested in (the first Evil Dead film) gets half the book, the stuff he can't quite believe he ever did (failed soap) gets two paragraphs, and that's only because a clip from it was used in the film "Fargo".

But you get the feeling from it he'd be a pretty fantastic guy to get drunk with and hear his stories.

[the midnight watch baboon]

I'm finally reading the Complete Sherlock Holmes - shamefully late with this for a big crime-fiction fiend.

And popping back into Bukowski short stories for amusement and theft.

[Mythical Wet Patch]

I've read quite a few Dostoyevsky and your post prompted me get this one out, seeing as its only short, and I've liked everything else a great deal.

About 30/100 pages in and, while I'm impressed with the style (especially considering the date, like you say), the message seems pretty ignorant and anti-intellectual. He says that science, and recording data using numbers ("mathematics" and "almanacs" are particularly scorned) isn't going to tell us about what the full nature of humanity is (and probably makes us less natural in some way). I don't get this romanticist idea that discovering things is awful and dangerous if you do it methodically and with number.

This seems to be the main message, but most of the others are just as rubbish. Take Chapter one, part three. The whole hypothesis is literally that people positively enjoy pain because they get to exaggerate their woes to disturb and shame the healthy. The reasoning doesn't even include "the sick are jealous of the healthy", he just states this hypothesis baldly and, I think, expects you not to notice that, behind all the rhetoric, he hasn't justified any of his assertions.

Did you finish this Retinend?

Did your opinion of it alter at all after you read the narrative section? It does frame the opening rant to expose all it's imperfections. It's clearly the thought process of a ridiculous, flawed individual, but one Dostoyevsky broadly agrees with (well, it's probably just him isn't it? He's just detached himself enough to make the self-loathing appear less indulgent).

[Retinend]

I'd agree with that. The narrative, to me, betrayed that the character is lying to himself when he puts on the pretences of the opening essays. After talking in detail about how the prostitute will most likely die (to her face), he is surprised that she continues to talk to him and this makes him immediately open up and impulsively invite her to his home. When he says that he later regrets it, it's more like he's confused by the new social impulse. The character's bleak outlook seemed affected to me in a way that was hard to read, knowing that the book didn't have a reputation as satirical. I wasn't fully sure whether this was a deliberate characterisation. If it was, then it's an effective portrait, but wouldn't that make it hard to except as the "existentialist prototype" text it's often claimed to be?

[hoverdonkey]

This year I have read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn and Five Days in December by Sebastian Faulks.

The Corrections was good, and by far the longest book I have ever completed. Introducing a new character on page 400 was a bit of a shitty trick, having ploughed through getting to know the family. Far be it for me to tell Franzen how to plot a novel, but it could have been a lot shorter. There was far too much stuff about Lithuania and it's politics that had nothing to do with what was essentially a family drama set in the US.

The News Where You Are was enjoyable and pretty sad by the end. It dealt with loss and absence pretty well, but I didn't enjoy it as much as her first book, What Was Lost. It was just a little light I suppose. I can't really remember much about it.

Five Days in December, well, I didn't finish. It's an ensemble piece and I read 150 pages and then realised I didn't give a fuck about any of the characters. There are pages and pages detailing the complicated deals made by a hedge fund twat, most of which I didn't really understand and seemingly added little to the story. It felt like a finance lecture in parts.

I'm now 20 pages into Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.

As you may have guessed, one of my resolutions was to read this year at the expense of mindless internet surfing (most of which I can do at work). Every time I am tempted to open up Google Chrome for nothing in particular, I go and read instead. It's amazing how much time I have to read now.

[mr. logic]

Fucking in love with Freedom.  The man writes so, so well.  Every little facet of Walter's relationship with Richard read so much like mine and my best friend that I wanted to sob. 

[hoverdonkey]

Yeah I'm looking forward to Freedom. Mum bought it for me for Christmas but I wanted to read The Corrections first.

Edit: I did of course mean 'A week in December', not five days.

[Famous Mortimer]

My favourite currently operating American novelist is probably Joshua Ferris. I loved Franzen's latest, but "The Unnamed" is just superior to it.

[Cambrian Times]

Have just finished Slaughterhouse 5. Now reading Exterminator!, a short story compilation by William Burroughs.

[Queneau]

Have just finished Slaughterhouse 5.

How did you find it? After somehow losing the copy I was reading, I picked up another one for £4 in a Birmingham HMV. Decent price I thought. Can't wait to restart it.

[mr. logic]

The Passage doesn't feel like it's going to my thing at all, yet it's sat here.  Is it worth it?

[Famous Mortimer]

The Passage doesn't feel like it's going to my thing at all, yet it's sat here.  Is it worth it?

Yes.

[Cambrian Times]

How did you find it? After somehow losing the copy I was reading, I picked up another one for £4 in a Birmingham HMV. Decent price I thought. Can't wait to restart it.

It wasn't what I expected. I still enjoyed it though. Very sad at times. So it goes.

[Hanslow]

You may be joking but 'The Map That Changed the World' by Simon Winchester is great, in fact it was the first of his forgotten history books I read, if you're not genuinely fond of maps take a look at his biography of Joseph Needham.

nar mate I wasn't joking. My copy is making its way to me now.

[mrlizard]

I've just finished The Man In The Grey Flannel suit and I loved it. Really good stuff. The sequel's not supposed to be as good but I'll jump straight into it when it comes in the post this week.

I'm currently reading The Road which seems like hard work. I thought it'd fly by but it's been a bit of a non-starter so far. Hopefully it'll pick up.

[Famous Mortimer]

Trying to read "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood. I struggled through the first 200 pages, but it's no fun. I admire what she's trying to do while having zero interest in reading any more.

[Queneau]

I'm not sure when it airs but, as part of the BBC's book season, there's show a documentary called 'Armando Iannucci On Dickens'.

Armando sets out to rediscover Dickens the novelist – how he wrote, what he thought and why it works.

From here; http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/seasons/books/documentaries.shtml

[mrlizard]

The Road was brilliant. Can anyone recommend any of Cormac McCarthy's other stuff?

Has anyone read James Franco's book yet? I'm quite tempted because he seems like a clued-up bloke and it's had some alright reviews.

[CaledonianGonzo]

The Road was brilliant. Can anyone recommend any of Cormac McCarthy's other

Blood Meridian is probably his masterpiece.

[Johnny Townmouse]

Blood Meridian is probably his masterpiece.

Really, this is absolutely true. It is the most well realised of all his books, and the perfect environment for his stripped down style. Bleak as fuck though.

[mr. logic]

Read The Great Gatsby.  Loved when Daisy started singing to herself at the end of one of Gatsby's parties- like a lament for age, so sad and almost haunting, yet also beautifully accepting.

A cracking book all round.  Way funnier than I was expecting it to be. 

[mrlizard]

OK I've bought Blood Meridian. Looking forward to that.

Just finished all the Bukowskis with Hollywood and Pulp. Hollywood was nice, but it seemed very different from the others, largely because he's so much older. I don't know if sensible Bukowski is for me. Pulp was a right laugh though. Seemed like a love letter to fiction considering it was finished just before he died.

Currently reading A Confederacy Of Dunces. It is brilliant, I'm plowing through it. Ignatius J. Reilly must be one of the funniest characters ever written. I miss him when the book is going on about the other characters, and I'll be sad to finish it.

Have you lot seen the Gatsby game yet? http://greatgatsbygame.com/ I really enjoyed playing it; it's a lot like NES Castlevania.

[Hanslow]

God I never thought I'd resort to MAN books but I'm after reading about the SAS. Something that offers insight into the political situations they have to deal with, and cuts through the mythology surrounding how many press-ups they can do. Any recommendations?