[Falling Down]

I've not been out of the front door since Monday.  Feeling better than I was mid-week and very grateful for our little backyard.  I must post that book to you when I'm able to go out again!

[andy popp]

I taught Monday and Wednesday and then everything shifted very rapidly. I have to go out to the store occasionally. No hurry on the book, the Piketty is huge and I also have Uwe Johnson's utterly vast Anniversaries, which I'm both excited about and totally daunted by.

[Falling Down]

Anniversaries sounds brilliant and a perfect read during a lockdown.

[Yossarian]

Ok, I’m going to drag this thread kicking and screaming from its current highbrow peak right down to the gutter...

Lee Child - Killing Floor. I had been led to believe that LC wrote literary crack, with so many interesting Twitter people nominating him as their guilty pleasure. I found this insanely tedious, with weird and unlikeable characters and an insane plot. I reluctantly persevered to the end.

Kolymsky Heights - Lionel Davidson. A far more satisfactory thriller, set in Siberia.

Gotta Get Theroux This - Louis Theroux. Rapid-page-turning memoir, including an excellent anecdote about a letter he wrote to Hip-hop Connection lambasting the poor state of UK hip which he signed off as King Lou-E.

Back Story - David Mitchell. Not quite as good, but more entertaining anecdotes inc Olivia Coleman wetting herself.

Got a bit Al Quaeda obsessed during which time I consumed Mark Bowden - The Finish: The Killing Of Osama Bin Laden and Peter Bergen - Manhunt: The Search for Osama Bin Laden. Both quite fascinating.

Also enjoyed some Annie Jacobsen, inc Area 51 (though aware this has received criticism for extrapolating some dodgy stuff about the Roswell UFO incident and experimental German aircraft design)

More airport bookshop recommendations shortly...

[mrjonathanr]

As FD says, Genesis P-Orridge. As original as he was scary.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/14/throbbing-gristle-and-psychic-tv-leader-genesis-breyer-p-orridge-dies-aged-70

[Johnny Brown]

Sure am glad I read The Black Swan last year.

Just finished Under The Rock. Yes, it's another wordy psychogeographical tour of a writer's environs that's been lumped into in the 3-for-2 'new nature writing' bin: this time it's Mytholmroyd. The writing is good, there are the Ted Hughes threads to pull of course, and the floods liven it up, but ultimately mostly tales of dog walking in a Calderdale quarry with the odd plunge in a river or reservoir. I suspect it will be of most enjoyment to those who either know the area well or are far enough removed to imagine it as somewhere more interesting.

[Falling Down]

or are far enough removed to imagine it as somewhere more interesting.

 

I've not read that one but have enjoyed his other books. I thought The Offing, his most recent one was wonderful.

@Yossarian ( sorry for being up my own arse).  To balance things out, I enjoy the Reacher books, they're totally mental and ridiculous but make great holiday reading for me at least.  I'll check out the Area 51 book.

[Yossarian]

No, I love the highbrow suggestions - you and Andy especially provide an amazing insight into what it might be like to be part of a book club called For the Bettermente of All Makinde populated by retired philosophy professors in Portland (Oregon) with a predilection for miscrodosing mescaline and 5-MEO-DIPT...

[Yossarian]

I am also part way through Annie Jacobsen - The Pentagon’s Brain (about DARPA) and Mark Bowden’s Worm - The First Digital World War. But decided I was ODing on this sort of thing...

Read half of Under Pressure - Richard Humphreys this week. A memoir about life on a Polaris submarine - it reads almost exactly like it was written by OMM...

[andy popp]

I don't know, I just read the books I want to read and sometimes I post about some of them here. When I do, I try and give succinct overviews and offer some kind of brief judgement.

[Yossarian]

Argh, my book club comment was intended as a compliment - who wouldn’t want to be a member of a group like that...

I am constantly disappointed in my general lack of enthusiasm for fiction these days - I made reading female fiction authors an aim a couple of years ago but haven’t really acted on it.

I started Fleishman is in Trouble - Taffy Brodesser-Akner last summer but need to start it again I think. Definitely funny and clever...

I have start-stopped some Leila Slimani too.

I feel I am missing out on Sally Rooney.

Has anyone ready any Ben Lerner, or Nico Walker’s Cherry?

[Falling Down]

I know it was Yossarian and it was taken as a real compliment.  Who wouldn’t want to be in a group like that? 

[andy popp]

who wouldn’t want to be a member of a group like that...

Totally!

As to a lack of enthusiasm for fiction, I don't think there's any should or shouldn't about reading. It's not a duty. Why read something you're not motivated to read.

I've read Cherry and thought it was very good - that comes recommended. The whole back story is interesting.

For some quirky female authored fiction you could check out Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. It has the added attraction of being short.

[Muenchener]

M jnr is (or would be, if he were allowed to go to school) starting French for his abitur (A-level equivalent, roughly) . For some reason he's resisting my suggestion of Camus' La Peste for light quarantine reading.

[spidermonkey09]

I have read and enjoyed Normal People and Convenience Store Woman. Neither require excessive concentration.

Few more to add to the general recommendations, since we're all going to be needing them soon.

- The Wall, John Lanchester - good dystopian novel where Britain has been walled off from the rest of the world. Great concept but perhaps a bit close to the bone currently.

- Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams. Fantastic nature writing. In the same vein as Robert Macfarlane

Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War -  a great introduction to the topic.

[steveri]

If you're looking at some nature writing comfort in the absence of actual nature Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is great.

[Yossarian]

It’s not that I’m not motivated to read fiction - I’m just not as obsessed with certain authors as I used to be. I basically find NF very easy to buy / acquire / get excited about. Whereas the fiction I read these days mainly comes from lists in newspapers, and testing new waters (esp with literary fiction) is a more unpredictable process...

The female fiction thing originated from chatting to someone on Twitter and both realising we couldn’t remember the last novel we’d each read that was written by a woman.

I think I mentioned Will Wiles - The Way Inn before - v keen to read his latest - Plume.

[andy popp]

I understand. I read more contemporary fiction now than I used to (basically I used to read none) and it can be hit and miss. Both critical and popular reaction isn't always a good guide. Everyone loved Sebastian Barry's Days Without End, including the person who gave it me as a present, but I thought it was codswallop.

However, fully deserving the hype (IMHO, obviously) is Jesmyn Ward, both Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing are incredible novels. The latter was the one to really catch all the attention but I slightly preferred the former.

[andy popp]

M jnr is (or would be, if he were allowed to go to school) starting French for his abitur (A-level equivalent, roughly) . For some reason he's resisting my suggestion of Camus' La Peste for light quarantine reading.

I mentioned it in the actual virus thread but I have to again recommend Katherine Anne Porter's short novel Pale Rider, Pale Horse, set during the flu epidemic of 1918. Almost hallucinatory, and providing very little comfort, but amazing. Its the lead story in a collection, bearing the same name, of three short novels (they're all novellas really, but apparently Porter hated that term).

[Johnny Brown]

- The Wall, John Lanchester - good dystopian novel where Britain has been walled off from the rest of the world. Great concept but perhaps a bit close to the bone currently.

Ta for that, I've got that on the bedside unread pile (one of the 3 for 2 with Under the Rock).

- Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams. Fantastic nature writing. In the same vein as Robert Macfarlane

Isn't it? Although it irks me a little to see Bobby Mac is now the reference point for Lopez, it should forever be the other way round. Has anyone read either of their recent books - Horizon and Underland respectively? I've been waiting for the paperbacks as my house is overflowing...

I basically find NF very easy to buy / acquire / get excited about.

Ditto, having read literally no fiction for years I'm trying to make a bit of an effort. So far I've managed The Understorey and have a couple more lined up. I tend to find fiction an easier read but less satisfying in conclusion, and rather like TV which I barely watch nowadays, has a habit of saying nothing to me about my life. If anyone's got any recommendations of novels that might I'd love to hear them. Yes, I read and loved MJH's Climbers and Andrew Greig's Electric Brae.

[spidermonkey09]

Isn't it? Although it irks me a little to see Bobby Mac is now the reference point for Lopez, it should forever be the other way round. Has anyone read either of their recent books - Horizon and Underland respectively? I've been waiting for the paperbacks as my house is overflowing...

Horizon paperback is out, I'm planning on buying it later. Totally agree Lopez is superior to MacFarlane but no doubt RF is the UK main popular exponent as far as nature writing is concerned and I was just trying to locate Lopez within that genre for people. I also really like his stuff although he does make it easy to take the piss out of him sometimes.

[Johnny Brown]

Sounds interesting; does it pass the Moz test?

[Falling Down]

I read Underland last year.  It’s McFarlane’s best yet in my opinion.  Really good.  I think I may have written about it further up the thread.

[TobyD]

Recently read

Men without Women
Excellent collection of short stories.  Fairly standard melancholic Murakami, but I liked it.

Frankenstein
Absolute classic, well worth reading if you think you know the story but haven't read it. Very, very dark; I imagined it as readable as a dystopian nightmare of artificial intelligence.  The alpine landscapes are described beautifully. 

Book of Dust
Yeah its 'young adult fiction ' but Phillip Pullman is an excellent author.  A very easy, pleasant read.

Talking to Strangers
Slightly overlong non fiction by Malcolm Gladwell, good but it would have been better trimmed down a good bit.

[andy popp]

Frankenstein
Absolute classic, well worth reading if you think you know the story but haven't read it. Very, very dark; I imagined it as readable as a dystopian nightmare of artificial intelligence.  The alpine landscapes are described beautifully. 

Frankenstein is an amazing book, and as you say we all think we know the story but we really don't. That she wrote it so young is something else. Has anyone read her novel The Last Man? I've never managed to find a copy.