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March 28, 2024, 05:11:15 PM

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Books [split topic]

Started by Serge, August 06, 2010, 11:50:55 PM

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CaledonianGonzo

While it's worth persevering with, it's not really an injustice that the stuff with the windmills is the most fondly recalled bit of El Don.


Queneau

I think I could have sold it to you but you didn't ask me, so I won't bother.

chocolate teapot

Ohhhhhhh Don Quixote. I was thinking of Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

Van Dammage

Got my hands on The essential Kafka and a few other books from suggestions in this thread. I like to just pick a random page of this thread and see what pops up.

The essential Kafka includes The Trial, The Castle Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, The Judgement, Letter to my Father, A Hybrid, A Message from the Emperor, On Metaphors, A Commentary, A Little Fable.

Only arrived today so I didn't get a chance to get stuck in but I got it for 1p on amazon so I can't really complain if they're shit.

holyzombiejesus

Finished Jonathan Franzen's Purity last night. It wasn't particularly riveting. Apparently, the Morrissey novel is out Thursday, think it's only about 7 quid in Waterstones.

Serge

It's only about 120 pages long, which surprised me.

holyzombiejesus

So about sixpence a page the. That's ok. Has anyone said what it's about?

I'm presuming it's embargoed (or whatever it's called). Does this mean that you can't pick it up and look through it if it's in the stockroom or is there just a block on speaking about it in public?


Serge

There's an embargo on selling it, but I haven't signed anything that forbids me from describing the little I know about it (and it is very little!).
Spoiler alert
It seems to be about an American college relay team.
[close]
I told you it was very little. I'm actually disappointed that it isn't about a tender young flower called Kevin Borrissey growing up in sixties and seventies Manchester.

Queneau

Quote from: Serge on September 22, 2015, 05:31:10 PM
It's only about 120 pages long, which surprised me.

Have you heard any of The Smiths records?

Serge

Er...yes? They're not noticeably briefer than anybody else's records are they, or is this a joke I'm not getting?[nb]Let's be honest, it's the latter, isn't it?[/nb]

GeeWhiz

Read the last two Mortdecai novels over one week's soggy commuting. Like bidding farewell to a lecherous uncle who's looking a little worse for wear. Really rather bereft. Honestly, if all you've seen of them is the marketing behind Mr Depp's recent flopperama, I urge you to go back to the source material; like the lightest of Wodehouse interbred with the darker end of Chandler.

That said, the last two are definitely the most problematic of the set. Book no. 3 trades uncomfortably in sexist gags, though redeems itself a little by ending on a wonderfully sour note. The last of the quartet is a fine romp until the very end, which was completed by arch pasticheur Craig Brown some years after the author's death. I love me some Brown, honestly I do, but he seems to willfully overlook the dark kernel of the other books, opting instead for a cartoon flourish that reminded me of some the more outré work my 13 year old students produce.

Famous Mortimer

I decided to read all the Iain M Banks novels, after having them sat on my bookshelf for years while his non-M output was devoured years ago. And they're bloody brilliant, I'm up to "Inversions" at the moment and while it's taking me longer to crack it than the others, I'm still enjoying it too.

I was at a thing the other day where a few of my friends were discussing the Stephen Donaldson "Gap" series, which they reminded me I'd read once too, as they'd previously discussed it with me. Well, thanks to my swiss-cheese memory and a fantastic charity shop, I've now got them again and will give them another read-through next. I sort of remember bits of it, now I really concentrate, but I think I'll have a good time with them.

Then, because I seem to have burned out on non-fiction for the moment, I thought I'd give the Malazan Book of the Fallen series a try. Fingers crossed all the folk who said they knocked ASOIAF into a cocked hat were telling the truth.

Hanslow

I'd like to learn some British history. Perhaps something containing a despotic monarch, a power struggle or group of revolutionaries fighting for their cause... Nothing not terribly dry and academic. Preferably a book with a beginning, middle and end.

Famous Mortimer

I like Christopher Hill's stuff, although I'm not sure it's exactly what you're after.

Or, if you wanted to widen it to Europe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Distant_Mirror might be worth a read.

TheFalconMalteser

Well I picked up Ferguson's Kissinger, going to be a big read.  I think Ferguson's readable but I'm aware it's not going to be the most critical of works...


zomgmouse

I finished reading an anthology of W.R. Burnett books, all of which were adapted into films. It included Little Caesar, The Asphalt Jungle, High Sierra and Vanity Row. I've only seen The Asphalt Jungle out of those but the first and third are on my list. I didn't even know Vanity Row had been adapted, but it was adapted under a different name (Accused of Murder). I may or may not watch it.
All four books were pretty top-notch pulp writing. Little Caesar was perhaps the weakest of the bunch.

I also read Billy Liar. What a brilliant book! It resonated deeply with me. I then read the play, which was a really great adaptation. Now watching the film.


Also a few months ago I read Death in Venice, which was intense and burning with suffering, an intricate dissection of infatuation.
I also read Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun and then John Whiting's The Devils (shortly before watching the Ken Russell film). The Huxley book was very intriguing but I didn't much care for the points of pontification - which I suppose were the whole reason he wrote it, but I found the history and the facts so compelling that I really didn't want to read his philosophical musings. I didn't much care for the play, it felt too direct.

mr. logic

Any Ian McEwan fans?  Reading Saturday and thoroughly enjoying it. I'm not actually sure what I was expecting, but it's completely confounded those expectations.  What's his best one?

thraxx

Quote from: Don_Preston on August 28, 2015, 01:57:54 PM
Anyone read any of Derek Raymond/Robin Cook's Factory novels? Meades seems quite taken with his prose.

+1 for all the Derek Raymond novels, especially the Factory novels.  The nameless detective is one of my favorite characters.  Has there ever been a screen version?

A State of Denmark is great - others have already covered that perfectly.  The Crust on its Uppers too.

The only Raymond book I've never enjoyed was The Nightmare in the Streets.  I don't know if he wrote it in French or he died and left it unfinished, but it was most disappointing.

Queneau

Quote from: zomgmouse on October 18, 2015, 07:37:18 AMI also read Billy Liar. What a brilliant book! It resonated deeply with me. I then read the play, which was a really great adaptation. Now watching the film.

One of my favourites. The film is also wonderful. Avoid the sitcom at all costs! Worth checking out Waterhouse's other work. His first novel, There is a Happy Land, is particularly brilliant. Still got a few more of his to work through.

zomgmouse

Quote from: Queneau on October 18, 2015, 10:35:18 PM
One of my favourites. The film is also wonderful. Avoid the sitcom at all costs! Worth checking out Waterhouse's other work. His first novel, There is a Happy Land, is particularly brilliant. Still got a few more of his to work through.
I'll try to check that out! I'm going to at some point try to find Billy Liar on the Moon as well.
Will definitely not be watching the sitcom!

grassbath

Quote from: mr. logic on October 18, 2015, 10:53:23 AM
Any Ian McEwan fans?  Reading Saturday and thoroughly enjoying it. I'm not actually sure what I was expecting, but it's completely confounded those expectations.  What's his best one?

Saturday's the one I enjoyed most - it's easy to be annoyed by his smug, complacent middle-class tone (and sometime slight misogyny), but here he cleverly undermines that perception (and the nods to Joyce never go amiss). On Chesil Beach was my second favourite - short (flew through it in a single day) but emotionally very satisfying. The Comfort of Strangers and the short story collection First Love, Last Rites are less "mature," earlier period writing and more rooted in his fondness for the gruesome and macabre, but might be nice as demonstrations of his range.

Currently reading Dracula for the first time since I was a kid, following up on some fascinating links between the Gothic and the digital in Laurence Scott's superb treatise on how the Internet has changed us, The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World.

holyzombiejesus

Y'know that Patrick Hamilton? Are any of the pubs in his books a) real and b) still trading? Google seems to say not but I'm sure I read someone (not in a Patrick Hamilton book) talking about visiting one.

Serge

Quote from: zomgmouse on October 18, 2015, 11:29:16 PM
I'll try to check that out! I'm going to at some point try to find Billy Liar on the Moon as well.
Will definitely not be watching the sitcom!

I love 'Billy Liar On The Moon', but I should warn that it probably isn't quite as good as the first novel, though it does have several lines which absolutely slayed me, even on repeat readings. I am surprised that Waterhouse didn't return to Fisher a few years later and make them a trilogy.

I can confirm that the film is indeed great.

neveragain

Has anyone here read Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov? Beautiful, intelligent, puzzling book. Darkly amusing, witty, gorgeous. It's set out like an academic appreciation of a poet's final work before his death, which we find out was a murder. The editor of the book, who acts as narrator, shows himself as utterly self-indulgent, widely disliked and possibly insane (believing himself to be the exiled King of a -possibly fake- distant land called Zembla). To say anything else would probably spoil things but the novel juggles three plotlines, one relating to the poet's life, and goes from fantasy to mundane unreliable narrator comedy to tense thriller to satiric commentary on literature in the blink of an eye. Well, several blinks. Masterful, and a great example of the sort of thing David Mitchell strives for but it all feels much more natural. Ingeniously set out with even the Index adding to the story. Such exquisite language too! Will definitely give Lolita a go.

buttgammon

I love Pale Fire - you've summed it up nicely there. It's such a beautifully written book. Lolita is absolutely brilliant too, probably on a par. They're different enough for it to be crass to compare but the richness of language carries from one into the next, even though the structure is very different and it is deployed to very different effects.

the midnight watch baboon

Anyone recommend a non-Le Carre/Lecter, ink black, spy or serial killer thriller...? I read an article about thrillers being right-wing and crime fiction left and this thesis interests me and I would like to explore it some more.

Talulah, really!

#1737
Quote from: the midnight watch baboon on October 20, 2015, 07:28:21 PM
Anyone recommend a non-Le Carre/Lecter, ink black, spy or serial killer thriller...? I read an article about thrillers being right-wing and crime fiction left and this thesis interests me and I would like to explore it some more.

There is certainly a tradition in imported Scandinavian crime novels of being left wing, from the crusading left journalist hero of Steig Larsson's books to the outlook and concerns of Henning Mankell's Wallender books and this goes all the way back to the Marxist critiques of Swedish society that form the background of the Martin Beck books, co-authored by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (The Laughing Policeman as good a place to start as any.

In Britain, there are some obvious followers of the crime novel as critique of society method, with its ability to encompass all strata of social class and pressing contemporary concerns, almost all major cities will have their own detective from the Edinburgh of Ian Rankin's Rebus to the Nottingham of John Harvey's Resnick. Thrillers by their nature tend to be either one off locations or if a serial character, a globe trotting secret agent although there were and are thriller writers who are left wing as opposed to obvious right wing ones like Tom Clancy and Frederick Forsyth. John Le Carre's works in recent years are probably more left than right and like Graham Greene he has always been sceptical of American expansionism for instance.

So on the hand P.D.James was clearly an old fashioned Tory whilst her great rival (and close friend) Ruth Rendell was Labour through and through.

Sam

I'm reading How to Clog a Tramp by Wendy Shit.

Pit-Pat

I just finished the Scientology book (Going Clear). It's a real downer, honestly. So many of the characters are extremely unpleasant and don't really get their come-uppances, and the stuff that's still going on there is a lot worse than I realised. Definitely worth reading if you're interested in the subject though.