the shizzle > music, art and culture

Books...

(1/419) > >>

Fingers of a Martyr:
After having read Brave New World and 1984 in three days i am now thoroughly depressed :( Poor old Winston Smith :cry:, lol.

On the other hand i thought they are both brilliant.

Anyone else got any good reccomendations/favourites?

I Am Legend, The Long Walk and The Divine Comedy are all very good as well imho.

webbo:
i'm a big fan of geordie lass gets knocked up by the lord of the manor.then thrown out on the street but it turns out alright in the end.by catherine cookson x50million.



 :oops:

Bobling:
"South" by Alfred Lansing is good as is "The Worst Journey in the World" by Aspley Cherry-Garrard.  Both a bit chilly though.  On a sci-fi tip Peter F Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction" is great (though the other two in the series are a bit crap), "Vurt" is great (Jeff Noon), William Gibson's works are great.  And all the Sci-Fi masterworks series are pretty good.

Might be a welcome change from  "a jackboot stamping over and over on a human face"....

moose:
Vurt is probably my favourite sci-fi book: lyrical prose, a great sense of place (a remixed Manchester) and a real feeling of poignancy, unusual for the genre.  I would avoid the follow-up (Pollen) though, personally found it to be an utterly unreadable experiment with language at the complete expense of clarity and plot.

The only other sci-fi authors  I've been able to read since I was 15 (without feeling faintly ashamed of myself anyway!) are William Gibson and Iain M Banks.  Re the former, his debut, Neuromancer, is possibly still his best, though I really liked his most recent effort, Pattern Recognition (though it's not really sci-fi  - set now'ish).  Re the latter - Consider Phlebus or The Player of Games are good introductions to "the culture" (Excession and The Use of Weapons are also pretty damn fine).

Off the sci-fi, the best new'ish book I've read for years is probably Cloudwritten by David Mitchell - several interwoven stories set mainly in the far east.  Clever and great fun - it absolutely flew by (which surprised me as I normally find Booker prize type stuff to be a bit onerous).   You also get to painlessly learn a bit about Japan, and China's cultural revolution along the way... which is nice.

All time classic recommendation: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald.  Just staggeringly beautifuly written - and the only one of his books where I had any sympathy whatsoever for one of his characters (as far as I can tell the rest of his stuff revolves around wealthy, unpleasant types who are drunks as an alternative to working - rather than because of it).

dave:
The best book i ever read is the 1989 Stanage guide.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page