Books [split topic]

[Danger Man]

As others have said, the problem with Kafka is that he isn't very Kafka-esque.

I've started Don Quixote. S'alright.


(Tilts at new page)

[MoonDust]

I love Don Quixote! Read it last year. Still funny even after 400 years. I'm always fascinated how some senses of humour have been largely unchanged for centuries.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Wake Up, Sir! was greatly fantastic!

I'm reading this at the moment, but I'm just not feeling it. 

It's a stab at Wodehouse, but as someone who's been reading him for 20 odd years he just doesn't capture his voice and so the whole conceit is holed below the waterline from the get go.

It might improve.  I guess.

[zomgmouse]

Some books wot I have read:

Scènes de la vie do bohème. Really great read (in French) - some fantastically funny satire of bohemians.

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories. I read it in Spanish with the English translation by the side. I don't understand Spanish but reading it side by side with the English translation I could get most of it. The book itself was okay enough.

Mister Pip. Kind of okay but very problematic (only white man on Bougainville inspires all the kids by reading them Dickens - really?)

The Trouble with Harry. Excellent. Short and light and dark.

They are all books that I read because I wanted to watch and then did watch the films that were based on them. Hopefully at some point I'll get back to reading books because I actually want to read the books.

[Don_Preston]

Still funny even after 400 years.

Paul Simon considers rewrite.

[Pepotamo1985]

Been on a bit of a rampage since I last popped into this thread.

I revisited Bret Easton Ellis' Lunar Park (for the first time since its publication), and it was so, so much better this time. That's not to say I didn't like the book upon first reading, but its brilliance didn't reveal itself to me initially[nb]probably because I was little more than a stupid child at that point[/nb]. It's funny, horrifying, moving, painful, exciting and different, all the time. I want this Ellis back. And he wants you, if you haven't been there yet.

I also blazed through The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness in just over a week. It's a fictionalised account of McGuinness' legit firsthand, eyewitness experience of the fall of the Ceaucescu regime and enjoyed it immensely I did. It's a tad slow-moving for the first half, with lots of setting up and erecting of sub-plot edifices that seem superficially extraneous or wanton. As we approach the midway mark, the book even appears to run out of steam entirely...before the pace and pressure rapidly commence ramping, the previously trifling threads of story start weaving together and growing vital, and the pages started turning faster and faster. It's probably unsurprising that McGuinness is so capable of capturing the look, feel and tension of Bucharest and that point in history given that he was actually there (and it probably helps that, for better or worse, I myself visited the city earlier this year) but it's still mightily impressive. A very eloquent book - perhaps a bit too much so from time to time, but these grievances are minor and fleeting. Definitely recommended.

Finally, I stumbled through White Noise by Don Delillo, which took much longer than it should've - but then again, it was actively irritating to read at points, and after a fairly intriguing initial two thirds the last 120 pages were almost unremitting torture - although even at its very worst, there was almost always a brilliant snatch of observation and/or post-modern meditation just round the corner.

Still, at its lowest ebb boy was it painful to endure. Beyond stupefying sections which seemed to serve less than no purpose, there were portions of dialogue and extended passages that were actively cringeworthy in their pretentiousness (a word I never use, so you know I must feel very, very strongly about its content). Thumbs in the middle from me.

[Serge]

Have just finished Richard King's 'Original Rockers', which is one of the biggest disappointments in books that I've ever had. A couple of years ago, he published the excellent 'How Soon Is Now?', a history of independent music that, whilst covering a lot of familiar ground, managed to make it all seem fresh and interesting all over again. Whatever talent he had for writing there seems to have completely deserted him in the intervening period.

He goes off on tangents which seem like they're inspired by Roger Deakin and Robert Macfarlane, but without the grace that those two bring to their writing. He starts stories which you think will end as a great anecdote but just peter out and go nowhere. Most unforgiveable are the number of factual mistakes - in the space of four pages when he's writing about Krautrock and Can, I counted five errors, including renaming Cluster's album 'Zuckersite' and even worse, praising Damo Suzuki's vocals on...er, 'Yoo Doo Right', a track from Can's first album featuring their original vocalist Malcolm Mooney. A guy who worked in a record shop should really know something like that.

There are flashes of good writing, and I have to agree with the Wire review (who also had a go at his writing for being flowery - pot/kettle/black, etc) that it really only comes alive[nb]Oof. bad choice of word.[/nb] when he's writing about the death of his old friend Joshua Compston, who died in his late twenties of a suspected ether overdose. I'm also glad that he doesn't romanticise the brusque manner of his former boss at Revolver Records, as I don't read anecdotes about shop owners being rude to teenagers because they're buying records they don't approve of and think, "Yeah, tell it like it is!", I just think, "What a dick." But that aside, I firmly don't recommend this book.

[Don_Preston]

Anyone read any of Derek Raymond/Robin Cook's Factory novels? Meades seems quite taken with his prose.

[Serge]

Yes, they're fucking amazing. I went through them at the rate of one a day during a week off a few years ago. I would imagine Funcrusher probably has as well....

[Funcrusher]

Yes, I've read some...

ETA  They're not for everyone, in that they're pretty bleak and grim, and DR is more interested in expressing his anger at the empty cruelty of Thatcher's Britain than faffing with the details of a police procedural. I guess some folks might find them a bit heavy handed, but for me they are written from the heart, and quite unique in the slightly mythic nightmare version of London they create, in which a nameless Sargeant has a boss who is a disembodied voice on the phone.

[Don_Preston]

Yes, I've read some...

For many years, I thought that was the Greek's henchman in series 2 of The Wire...

[Queneau]

I'm quite a bit through the first Henry Pratt novel. It's nicely written and there are some good jokes. I appreciate what he's trying to do with the references/repetitions of jokes but I'm not sure it really works here. It just stands out too much. I have a feeling it's going to get a lot funnier though - at least that's what I've been led to believe.

[GeeWhiz]

Anyone read any of Derek Raymond/Robin Cook's Factory novels? Meades seems quite taken with his prose.

I discovered him around the time I first read Patrick Hamilton. Both equally excellent at anatomising the psychotically dull pub bore.

[Queneau]

I discovered him around the time I first read Patrick Hamilton. Both equally excellent at anatomising the psychotically dull pub bore.

The mention of Hamilton has garnered my interest. Thanks.

[neveragain]

I've just read Rob Grant's Colony - so eminently readable I whizzed through it in four days with a broken arm! Basically, it's a redoing of Red Dwarf with someone gambling their way onto a spacecraft and then being frozen into the far future, with the added plot of a proposed construction of a New Earth out in the cosmos. There's a bit more fun with a farting vicar (stupidly amusing) and lots of over-sarcastic dialogue that made me nostalgic for the nights I spent watching Dwarf as a young'un. The ending is far too sentimental since most of the characters are intensely dislikable, more due to paper-thin characterisation Tha the interminable bickering. And I was very surprised to find it was written as late as 2000. Despite its faults, its creativity and easy-read quality has led me to search out Grant's other solo novels Fat and Incompetence. Anyone here read them, are they any good?

[shiftwork2]

I discovered him around the time I first read Patrick Hamilton. Both equally excellent at anatomising the psychotically dull pub bore.

Thanks, I've just finished Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky and was looking for something along those lines.

[GeeWhiz]

Thanks, I've just finished Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky and was looking for something along those lines.

Of the Raymonds I've read, 'He Died With His Eyes Open' is my favourite and carries a similar weight of sympathy. '...Dora Suarez' needs building towards, a despairing howl of a book. I've LP of readings from it Raymond cut with Gallon Drunk knocking about the house, but I can scarcely bring myself to spin it. Strong medicine, that one.

[Funcrusher]

I've LP of readings from it Raymond cut with Gallon Drunk knocking about the house, but I can scarcely bring myself to spin it. Strong medicine, that one.

I've got that. It took a bit of getting used to initially that his voice was so plummy. I knew that he came from a public school, upper class-ish background, but I hadn't envisaged a voice like that coming out of the face in my avatar. Thought it would be at least wrecked by fags. Makes him all the more interesting, really.

[GeeWhiz]

I've got that. It took a bit of getting used to initially that his voice was so plummy. I knew that he came from a public school, upper class-ish background, but I hadn't envisaged a voice like that coming out of the face in my avatar. Thought it would be at least wrecked by fags. Makes him all the more interesting, really.

I love his quote about social climbers: 'I've watched people like Kingsley Amis, struggling to get on the up escalator, while I had the down escalator all to myself.'

Have your read The Crust on Its Uppers? Pretty much an autobiographical account of his first steps into the criminal world.

[Funcrusher]

I love his quote about social climbers: 'I've watched people like Kingsley Amis, struggling to get on the up escalator, while I had the down escalator all to myself.'

Have your read The Crust on Its Uppers? Pretty much an autobiographical account of his first steps into the criminal world.

I think I read it, but years ago, or I could be mixing it up with Bombe Surprise. I've read 'The Hidden Files', which is sort of a partial autobiography.

[Serge]

Is 'The Crust On Its Uppers' the one that is written mostly in slang? I struggled with that and ultimately gave up. 'A State Of Denmark' is very good, but extremely depressing, and essentially the plot could have been derailed

Spoiler alert

if the main character had bothered to take Italian citizenship

[close]

.

I'm another one with the Gallon Drunk/Derek Raymond record, and in fact that was what led me to him in the first place.

[GeeWhiz]

Is 'The Crust On Its Uppers' the one that is written mostly in slang? I struggled with that and ultimately gave up. 'A State Of Denmark' is very good, but extremely depressing, and essentially the plot could have been derailed

Spoiler alert

if the main character had bothered to take Italian citizenship

[close]

.

I'm another one with the Gallon Drunk/Derek Raymond record, and in fact that was what led me to him in the first place.

It is, yes. A popular source text for slang at the time, I think. Blackly funny, too, but not a patch on Bonfiglioli in the comedy crime stakes.

[holyzombiejesus]

Has anyone read Jernigan by David Gates? I've almost finished it and it's fucking brilliant.

Peter Jernigan's life is slipping out of control. His wife's gone, he's lost his job and he's a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn't work, you up the dose. And when that doesn't work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?)

Jernigan's answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he's busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan's perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end.

I think it's just been republished as Waterstones had a big table of them and some bumpf about it being 'this year's Stoner' (a book it has absolutely nothing in common with). It's really funny; bitter and sardonic, Jernigan could almost be a poster on here (little joke).

[Serge]

Ah, might give that a go. Is that published by Canongate? It looks like their style.

Looking him up, it's clear that David Gates is actually Larry David:

[holyzombiejesus]

It's in Serpent's Tail's Classics series. Do read it; if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back.

[Serge]

Ha! I realised later that it was Serpent's Tail, not Canongate - they come through the same distributor (as do Faber titles) to us, so I get them all mixed up. There are some interesting looking titles in that Classics series - I read Albertine Sarrazin's 'Astragal' last year, and I have my eye on 'Fatale' and 'Pedro Paramo' for a start.

[holyzombiejesus]

Yeah, I was looking for Fatale (and If He Hollers... and Beer in the Snooker Hall) yesterday but Waterstones it shit, so ended up with the new ones by Jonathan Franzen and Patrick DeWitt. The latter looks interesting; I really enjoyed The Sisters Brothers but this new one seems to a totally different genre.

[kittens]

i read jernigan a couple of years ago. it was good. very funny in parts and touching in others, like a good book

[non capisco]

and Patrick DeWitt. The latter looks interesting; I really enjoyed The Sisters Brothers but this new one seems to a totally different genre.

Oh, nice one. Didn't realise he had a new one out. Really liked both 'The Sisters Brothers' and 'Ablutions'.

[Smeraldina Rima]

MoonDust and Danger Man, can you sell Don Quixote? I've only just started and am getting bored. I liked the book burning scene where they keep saving the books though.