What are you reading?

[Small Man Big Horse]

Good?

I was wondering that too as I bought it on Amazon last week and am waiting for it to arrive.

[Artie Fufkin]

I was wondering that too as I bought it on Amazon last week and am waiting for it to arrive.

I know it's a book 'n all, but it seems very......wordy?

[chveik]

Good?

Yes, I liked it. The first chapter is very unusual, it reminded me of Beckett's latest stories. The other chapters are more conventional. I guess Moore tried to write some sort of Buddhist novel, with the idea that there is a connexion between characters living in different times. There are really funny moments too.

[Artie Fufkin]

What was (is?) the monthly (?) magazine that Alan Moore used to do? I only bought 3 or 4 of them, but loved them. A kind of newsletter with stories and contributions from various people? I'd like to get them digitally.

[marquis_de_sad]

Dodgem Logic. Dunno where you'd get digital copies from.

[Artie Fufkin]

Dodgem Logic. Dunno where you'd get digital copies from.

That's the fella! Thanks.

[Ferris]

Alan Moore - Voice of the Fire

I just picked this up! Any good?

[Small Man Big Horse]

That's the fella! Thanks.

There are scans available via the piratebay, but I bought some recently on ebay and they were mostly only £2.50 (inc. postage) and £3.50 was the most expensive.

The Troop by Nick Cutter - A Stephen King-esque horror about a bunch of scouts on a small island having to avoid being infected by a horrible disease, occasionally the writing is a bit on the nose but as a throwaway fun read I'm enjoying it a fair bit.

I finished this tonight and it got all a bit silly half way through, it was still a fun read, but in a fairly daft manner and the body horror was over the top. And on the downside the very final page is a bit shit, but I'm just going to pretend that it didn't happen.

[finnquark]

K Blows Top by Peter Carlson
Michael Foot by Kenneth O Morgan
Aneurin Bevan by Michael Foot
The Right Nation by Micklethwait and Woodridge
Out of the Wilderness - 1963-67 by Tony Benn

The most surprising book I've recently read was one I picked up for 50p from the RSPCA shop. The War The Infantry Knew by Captain J.C. Dunn is an astonishingly broad, detailed and humane account of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers during WWI. Known as the Poets' Battalion (Graves, Sassoon, Richards), Dunn was a captain with the 2nd Battalion who served throughout the war and wrote a battalion history in the years following the war. There are over 50 members of the battalion who contributed to the account, which moves from contributor to contributor freely, giving the narrative a very strange and disparate effect at times. There is an amazing chapter which was submitted by Sassoon (on whose side Dunn fell in the Sassoon/Graves post-war tension) which is an account of his one and only attack into German trenches. One thing I thought really insightful was the extent to which the book describes mundanity during the war, and at times is overtly positive about trench fighting as an expression of masculinity. Dunn was a New Zealand born doctor who fought in the Second Boer War, a really interesting man with a unique and often contradictory attitude towards the war. Heavily recommended!

[Artie Fufkin]

There are scans available via the piratebay, but I bought some recently on ebay and they were mostly only £2.50 (inc. postage) and £3.50 was the most expensive.

Ta. Will have a look later.

[Blinder Data]

Donald Antrim's Elect Pete Robinson for a Better World was very good. Funny, prescient, short and readable. Reminded me of DeLillo's White Noise and maybe the work of Gary Shteyngart, if you like that kind of deeply ironic male American author thing.

My copy had an intro by Jeffrey Eugenides. As the case with many introductions/prefaces, best read after you've finished the book as it's full of spoilers.

[Artie Fufkin]

There are scans available via the piratebay, but I bought some recently on ebay and they were mostly only £2.50 (inc. postage) and £3.50 was the most expensive.

Just bought #1 for £2.50. Nice on SMBH.

[poloniusmonk]

Donald Antrim's Elect Pete Robinson for a Better World was very good. Funny, prescient, short and readable. Reminded me of DeLillo's White Noise and maybe the work of Gary Shteyngart, if you like that kind of deeply ironic male American author thing.

My copy had an intro by Jeffrey Eugenides. As the case with many introductions/prefaces, best read after you've finished the book as it's full of spoilers.

Yeah, I really liked Elect Mr Robinson - but that sort of spoilery intro on something less than 50 or 100 years old is massively annoying.

[shh]

Part-way through the NF Simpson collection, it's a bit hit and miss. Here's a gem though (1977):

A moot point
Whether I was going to
Make it.
I just had strength
To ring the bell.

There were monks inside
And one of them
Eventually
Opened the door.
Oh
He said,
This is a bit of a turn-up
He said
For the book.
Opportune
He said
Your arriving at this particular
As it were
Moment

You're dead right
I said
It was touch and go
Whether I could have managed
To keep going
For very much
Longer.

No
He said
The reason I used the word opportune
Is that
Not to put too fine a point on it
One of our St Bernard dogs is
Unfortunately
Missing.

Oh, dear
I said.
Not looking for me, I hope

No
He said.
It went for a walk
And got lost in the snow.

Dreadful thing
I said
To happen

Yes
He said.
It is.

To
Of all creatures
I said
A St Bernard dog
That has devoted
Its entire
Life
To doing good
And helping
Others.

What I was actually thinking
He said
Since you happen to be
In a manner of speaking
Out there already
Is that
If you could
At all
See your way clear
To having a scout
As it were
Around,
It would save one of us
Having to
If I can so put it
Turn out.
Ah
I said
That would
I suppose
Make a kind of sense

Before you go
He said
If I can find it
You'd better
Here it is
Take this

What is it?
I said
It's a flask
He said
Of brandy.
Ah
I said.

For the dog
He said.

Good thinking
I said.

The drill
He said
When you find it
If you ever do
Is to lie down.

Right
I said
Will do.

Lie down on top of it
He said
To keep it warm
Till help arrives.

That was a week ago and my hopes are rising all the time.
I feel with ever-increasing confidence
that once I can safely say that I am within what might
be called striking distance of knowing where, within a
square mile or two, to start getting down to looking,
my troubles are more or less, to all intents and
purposes, apart from frostbite, with any luck once
help arrives at long last, God willing, as good as over.
It is good to be spurned on with hope.

[the midnight watch baboon]

That's cool, it sounds like alternate lyrics for Anne's Song by Faith No More.

[buttgammon]

Flann O'Brien gets mentioned on here every so often and I can't stress enough how brilliantly funny he was. I'm reading At Swim-Two-Birds for the third time at the moment and absolutely loving it.

[BritishHobo]

Two years ago I took a break from the Booker longlist to have a weird experience reading a book from shamed YouTube star Alex Day, as I was in London and it was about the tube. I wrote about it here in the All-New Books Thread as it was a surreal read - a happy cheery aspirational YouTube book written before its author was exiled after many online accusations regarding alleged emotional and sexual abuse, but released after. Essentially it was a book where Day, at the height of YouTube fame, rose to every single Tube stop and wrote about them, tying them to his personal history, his friendships, his girlfriend. Reading it in the light of what ultimately happened was strange and fascinating.

As I am a boring cunt, for symmetry I did the same thing this week with his new book, Living and Dying on the Internet. Unlike the previous book, this directly confronts everything that happened, starting with his early YouTube days, running through the peak of his popularity, and through the depths of scandal.

The more interesting part to me was the first of the book, which goes very fucking tell-all about the nerdy YouTube community of the late noughties, and shows that behind the Wizard Rock/Trock scenes (Harry Potter/Doctor Who-inspired bands), plinky-plonky ukelele music, earnest new songs about love and friendship, were a bunch of fucking strange lads chaotic with their desire for artistic success, who often couldn't bear each other, their conflicting goals leading to daft clashes. I've no idea how much is true, it's all delivered with a heavy slanted anger. Two of Day's 'Sons of Admirals' (a very short-lived 'collective' masterminded by CaB favourite Jonathan King - we'll get to him later) colleagues come under a lot of fire, seen as a drunken mess and a pretentious egotist respectively. Just to see that early YouTube age through a more critical lens is fascinating. There's also a lot of jabs taken at shit YouTube books, which was fun.

The abuse stuff is much of a muchness, and I've no real interest in offering an opinion on what's true - the debate is back underway over on Twitter and Tumblr and many people far more involved than me will be firmly making their case for either side. For the second book in a row there's a section on the spuriousness of the accusations against Jonathan King, and while Day to his credit does often hold his hands up and admit he was a cunt to women (although at one point he genuinely blames his mum for instilling in him not to tell girlfriends if he's cheated), the ultimate takeaway for him is that a few genuine grievances have become mixed up with misunderstandings, exaggerations and outright lies, and led to his total ostracisation for four years, not just from YouTube but from new jobs and attempts to find housemates.

It's an often convincing case, but there are many points where it's easy to picture another side to the story, or it comes purely down to his word against someone else's. Although to be fair to him, this is his response to other peoples' word being accepted against his. Additionally it does seem as if the allegations are now uncritically referenced as him having sexually abused underaged girls, which anyone with no prior knowledge would take as 'he's a paedophile'.

I don't know. It's left me with the same feeling as when it happened, which is it's all just a fucking complicated nightmare mess. I suppose it's interesting to have it as a perspective on internet justice - he wasn't just ostracized from the community, he actively can't look for work or ask for housemates without being loudly outed by someone as an abuser of women, which has never been proven. At the same time, as with Bill Cosby, it's hard to believe so many girls have all concurrently lied about their experiences. Whether it's true, whether justice is done, these are questions I feel utterly unqualified to answer. But they're unavoidably raised.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'm on the second volume of Danny Baker's autobiography at the moment. I enjoyed the first one a lot and there's still a lot to like about the second but despite his warnings that his life has pretty much been one enormous bit of luck after another there's a slight smugness to it on occasion, and whilst it's undoubtedly jealously talking I do get a bit fed up with it at times.

[Wet Blanket]

I've only read the third Danny Baker book (Going on the Turn) but I thought it was great. Plus he breaks his leg and gets cancer of the head, so there's some bad luck stories for you there too.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I've only read the third Danny Baker book (Going on the Turn) but I thought it was great. Plus he breaks his leg and gets cancer of the head, so there's some bad luck stories for you there too.

The behind the scenes bits are great but some of his stories of home life are pretty dull, especially the DIY and dog nonsense. The problem for me is that he goes on and on about how brilliant these stories are, when in fact they're fairly average and so it ends up annoying me.

[Neville Chamberlain]

It's been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years, but I've finally got round to reading it: The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I'm 100 pages in and it's very, very good...

[Wet Blanket]

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is first class too.

I've been reading John Higgs' The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band that Burned a Million Pounds, which I thought was going to be a straightforward account of Drummond and Cauty's antics but is more like a thesis of how the KLF continued in the tradition of the Discordians, taking in long digressions about Doctor Who, the Kennedy Assassination and Alan Moore. It's very entertaining.

[Twit 2]

Will Self mentioned Celine's Journey to the End of the Night in a recent interview. Has anyone read it? It sounds right up my street.

[chveik]

Will Self mentioned Celine's Journey to the End of the Night in a recent interview. Has anyone read it? It sounds right up my street.

Yes, it's phenomenal, one of my favourites. But Death on Credit is even better IMO.

[Wet Blanket]

Will Self mentioned Celine's Journey to the End of the Night in a recent interview. Has anyone read it? It sounds right up my street.

It's fantastic in its relentlessly cynical way but Celine himself was a monstrous, terrible person. You know, a Nazi. I mean, a genuine Nazi who even other Nazis thought was a bit much.

[ASFTSN]

Will Self mentioned Celine's Journey to the End of the Night in a recent interview. Has anyone read it? It sounds right up my street.

It's very good, but occasionally I felt like telling the protagonist to shut the fuck up. But then I was surrounded by a lot of people who thought cynicism was their raison d'etre at the time.

[timebug]

Currently reading 'They All Love Jack; Busting The Ripper' by Bruce Robinson.
I know Robinson as a director (Withnail and I etc) and have never read any of his other books. This one is weirdly fascinating. Initially you have the 'mystery' of Jack The Rippers identity* But BR spends the first hundred pages in this weighty tome,setting up the background,in order to understand certain things about the 'investigation' and as to why the killer was never caught.
All the details you needed, to show that Victorian London was a place where such a killer could easily work, with lots of detail on the (then) police force, the Masons, and upper-class perversions,which the Police generally ignored as being 'par for the course'.
BR feels strongly about he injustices done to the slum dwellers by 'the nobs' and his text burns from the page,with rage and anger at the system. Only about a quarter of the way into this, but I am finding it both fascinating and revealing, in the minutiae that is laid before the reader, to explain certain hitherto obscure aspects of the case. I will report back when I have finished it!

SPOILER ALERT:*A 'Mystery' that is cunningly hidden by the books dust jacket. The Dust jacket shows a map of Whitechapel at the time of the crimes; Peel away the DJ, and the front cover has a photograph of the man BR identifies as 'Jack The Ripper'!

[Small Man Big Horse]

Currently reading 'They All Love Jack; Busting The Ripper' by Bruce Robinson.
I know Robinson as a director (Withnail and I etc) and have never read any of his other books. This one is weirdly fascinating. Initially you have the 'mystery' of Jack The Rippers identity* But BR spends the first hundred pages in this weighty tome,setting up the background,in order to understand certain things about the 'investigation' and as to why the killer was never caught.
All the details you needed, to show that Victorian London was a place where such a killer could easily work, with lots of detail on the (then) police force, the Masons, and upper-class perversions,which the Police generally ignored as being 'par for the course'.
BR feels strongly about he injustices done to the slum dwellers by 'the nobs' and his text burns from the page,with rage and anger at the system. Only about a quarter of the way into this, but I am finding it both fascinating and revealing, in the minutiae that is laid before the reader, to explain certain hitherto obscure aspects of the case. I will report back when I have finished it!

SPOILER ALERT:*A 'Mystery' that is cunningly hidden by the books dust jacket. The Dust jacket shows a map of Whitechapel at the time of the crimes; Peel away the DJ, and the front cover has a photograph of the man BR identifies as 'Jack The Ripper'!

I've heard very positive things about that book so look forward to hearing your thoughts when you've finished it.

[Twit 2]

It's fantastic in its relentlessly cynical way but Celine himself was a monstrous, terrible person. You know, a Nazi. I mean, a genuine Nazi who even other Nazis thought was a bit much.

Yes, it's phenomenal, one of my favourites. But Death on Credit is even better IMO.

It's very good, but occasionally I felt like telling the protagonist to shut the fuck up. But then I was surrounded by a lot of people who thought cynicism was their raison d'etre at the time.

Cheers. What about Thomas Bernhard? Also on my list. I love a bit of nihilistic misanthropy, me.

[Icehaven]

Just started The Stars in Our Eyes by Julie Klam, which I was hoping was going to be a decent study of the psychology of celebrity obsession, the whys and effects and so on. But I'm a quarter of the way in and so far it's pretty bad, just a few extremely obvious, no-shit-Sherlock observations peppered amongst a truly heroic amount of name-dropping and humble-bragging from the author (who has a background in film and TV production and journalism so has been on the peripheries of showbusiness for years and clearly has a fair amount of contacts and a few C list friends) and second hand anecdotes from random nobodies about their fleeting encounters with celebrities.) I think it essentially should have been (probably was) a glossy magazine article extended to book length. Wouldn't even say it's a missed opportunity really as I'm sure there are (and have been) decent books to be written about the subject but she isn't the author to do it.

Maybe it's just her age (she's in her early 50s) and the world she works in but it also all feels ridiculously outdated and irrelevant. While it could be considered laudable that she does seem to be focussing almost exclusively on people who are famous for actually doing something (mostly appearing in American films and TV) and avoiding the mention or exploration of the dreaded 'famous for being famous' phenomenon, in this day and age it's completely pointless writing a book about celebrity obsession/culture and pretending it doesn't exist. The Kardashians and Paris Hilton had fleeting mentions in the introduction, but it was almost as if it was to dismiss them and their ilk as early as possible, and she says a few lines about her 9 year old daughter being a fan of a Youtube star, but only to compare it to her own celeb fixations at that age. She then explains at length her teenage obsession with Timothy Hutton (I'm 39 and I had to Google him) and how (swoon! namedrop!) they're now facebook friends, then devotes the entire chapter to recounting an interview she managed to get with him for the book. Maybe it gets a bit more up to date later on but so far it's just her own personal, not particularly insightful musings, which as she's a 50 something still seemingly only interested in the film stars of her youth, and virtually ignoring the very concepts of Vloggers and reality TV, are of extremely limited concern to anyone actually interested in what she's supposed to have written a book about.