[AndyR]

FOAM (On Burroughs) I treated myself to a limited (1/10) silkscreen print by Ralph Steadman which is a montage of WSB and a large ragged target in the centre.  Burroughs then shot each print at his farm in Kansas in 1996 with a different gun, both artists signed each canvas and the series was entitled 'Something new has been added' - I have #7 which was shot with his magnum.. and it now hangs above my stereo in the lounge... I also got a couple of signed B&W photo's from the Beat Hotel of Burroughs and Gysin staring into the dream machine..

I have one of the small moroccan boys at home that he used to bugger when in tangiers.
He eats a lot of couscous.

[SA Chris]

I have one of the small moroccan boys at home that he used to bugger when in tangiers.
He eats a lot of couscous.

Well I've got nicotine stains on my fingers, I've got a silver spoon on a chain, I've got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains, I've got wild staring eyes, I've got a strong urge to fly but I've got nowhere to fly to

[Pantontino]

Try: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. One of the best books I've ever read.

"Six interlocking lives - one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us."

That might sound like the usual back cover hyperbole, but I'd say it actually underplays the mind blowing magnificence of this incredible book.

[AndyR]

Try: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. One of the best books I've ever read.

"Six interlocking lives - one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us."

That might sound like the usual back cover hyperbole, but I'd say it actually underplays the mind blowing magnificence of this incredible book.

Just bought it - am looking forward to reading it.
Also just read The Time Travelling Geezer's Wife (or whatever its correct title is) - most entertaining - although may be a bit soppy for all the tough, manly young chaps on this site.......

[moose]

second the Cloud Atlas recommendation - a top read, not the indigestable guff that usually shows up on Booker shortlists.  Preferred his debut, Ghostwritten, myself though.  Again, composed of lots of interlinked tales scattered through differenct places, and recent (and future) history:an Aum Cult Sarin bomber, a Mao-era chinese women, a young lad in Tokyo lad etc.  Thought provoking yet really fun (especially if you have an interest in the far east).

[Stubbs]

Ghostwritten is awesome, and appartently even better on the second read, as you see more connections, etc.  Now i know this is the same author i will defo be hunting that out.

[Fingers of a Martyr]

FOAM (On Burroughs) I treated myself to a limited (1/10) silkscreen print by Ralph Steadman which is a montage of WSB and a large ragged target in the centre.  Burroughs then shot each print at his farm in Kansas in 1996 with a different gun, both artists signed each canvas and the series was entitled 'Something new has been added' - I have #7 which was shot with his magnum.. and it now hangs above my stereo in the lounge... I also got a couple of signed B&W photo's from the Beat Hotel of Burroughs and Gysin staring into the dream machine..

  :D

how much did it set you back?

also what's your favourite book by him?

[Falling Down]

  :D

how much did it set you back?

also what's your favourite book by him?

That would be telling....

Fave book is The Place of Dead Roads

[Duma]

As Mentioned in the snap general election thread:

Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts.

From Wikipedia:
Shantaram is an uncompromising story of a fugitive - Roberts himself - on the run in Bombay, India; a man who sets up a free clinic in a third world slum, works for the biggest Don in the Bombay Mafia, works as a money launderer and street soldier, heads straight into Russian guns in the mountains of Afghanistan, and earns the name insightfully given him by his best friend's mother - "Shantaram", or man of peace

Love this book!

[Houdini]

I treated myself to a limited (1/10) silkscreen print by Ralph Steadman which is a montage of WSB and a large ragged target in the centre.  Burroughs then shot each print at his farm in Kansas in 1996 with a different gun, both artists signed each canvas and the series was entitled 'Something new has been added' - I have #7 which was shot with his magnum.. and it now hangs above my stereo in the lounge... I also got a couple of signed B&W photo's from the Beat Hotel of Burroughs and Gysin staring into the dream machine..

(I've wanted to build my very own Orgone Collector for years...)

You have excellent taste, Sir.  I want these prints, like now.  They were just too pricey for me to consider adding to the west wing.  Steadman is amazing.

Shantaram, is fab.  Roberts is so good at capturing the way Indians speak English, which is most especially of the funny.  One hell of a life.

Burroughs.  Stunning really, but as Moose pointed out with HST, you need to pick and choose your titles carefully to avoid being put-off by the more abstuse works.  The Western Lands Trilogy is his masterpiece (after Naked Lunch, which is a perfect book for putting people off reading WSB for life). I would recommend Ghost of Chance which is my fave WSB book by far. 

Quite perfect.  His style by the time this book was published was just perfect written English.  Top notch.  Also Last Words is phenomenal, which are the journals he wrote before finally carking-it.  Also the letters of WSB are so very much worth reading.

Fans of WSB could do worse by reading You Can't Win by Jack Black.  Which was one of his favourite books from his youth.  And it is a mindblowing book, ahead of it's time.  Published in 1926.



Hunter S Thompson.  Possibly my favourite writer, I'd recommend Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, '72 - it's quite brilliant.  Also, I'd take The Curse of Lono over F & L in LV any day of the week.  Though you won't find this in paperback: it's a massive tome originally issued privately by HST in silly numbers, and recently republished by Taschen Books, it's full of astonishing Ralph Steadman artwork.  I think it's more Gonzo that anything he wrote.   Not all of HST's work is rooted in US politics, but most of it is, it's was his oevre.  With HST, I think it's not so much what he's writing about, but the way he writes that attracts me.  Any book of his - even the later period stuff where he knew as well as anyone that he was losing it - still has something completely insane and ludicrous about it, and therefore, worth reading.  For real fans only, I would recommend the letters of HST, in particular, Fear and Loathing in America, the Brutal Odysses of an Outlaw Journalist.  He was a fantastic letter writer.  (The Great Gatsby was HST favourite book.)   




Hubert Selby Jr. is, in my opinion, the greatest post-war American author.  In terms of the ground he covered, better than WSB and HST rolled into one.  Requiem for a Dream is blinding, and the Darren Aronovsky (sp?) directed film of this book is really quite remarkable, if unsettling viewing.  His best work is The Willow Tree and I'm fairly speechless on it.

Brett Easton Ellis I can't read any more. Glamorama I didn't feel like finishing; just too fin de seicle.  American Psycho is stunning though.  (Am I the only guy on Planet earth that think the film of this is awesome?  Twisted art rocks!)

[SA Chris]

Brett Easton Ellis I can't read any more. Glamorama I didn't feel like finishing; just too fin de seicle.  American Psycho is stunning though.  (Am I the only guy on Planet earth that think the film of this is awesome? )

I really like the film, I think Christian Bale is cast perfectly, and plays the part spot on. The Huey Lewis and the News rant is superb.

[Bubba]

I really liked Grlamorama.

I thought the A.P. film was good for what it was - they did it pretty much the only way it could have been done for a public release; i.e. they turned it into a black comedy.

But the book is dark and downright nasty - pretty much unfilmable as it was written.

[Houdini]

Anyone like Bales' The Machinist?  He really should have started bouldering around the time this film was filmed.  What commitment!

He looked here like he could pull a middle and ring finger one-armer no problem.

[Bubba]

Yeah, The Machinist was very good - I think he should have started eating instead of bouldering

[Monolith]

Still haven't read/seen the machinist but is high on my list. Anyone read The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kurieshi? I'm half way through at the moment and it's great! Sort of reminds me in a way of East is East when I read it, for the juxtaposing of cultures to location. Highly recommend it.
Also reading Letters from Burma by Aung San Suu Kyi. I think it's a real shame that Myanmar is never documented in any detail on television, other than to lament it's government. The book thankfully fills this void.

[Falling Down]

Currently reading A PLACE IN THE MIND by R. Gerallt Jones - Jones (poet and writer) was born and raised on the Llyn in the 30's and 40's & this is his account of his childhood published after his death.  Quite moving and very interesting if you have any kind of affinity with that corner of North Wales.

Houdini - I definately agree with Ghost of Chance.  Quite accessible but also draws together many threads from his earlier works.  On Hubert Selby Jr... I was lucky enough to attend a reading of The Room when Henry Rollins bought him over on one of his early spoken word tours which was pretty intense.

[Houdini]

Presumably you have Get in the Van by Rollins?  If you don't - you should.  It's a Black Flag tour/life book.  Much better reading than his other stuff like Black Coffee Blues & Now Watch Him Die.  Excellent photography too.


Henry, you lost it a long long time ago.  But I still like you, though I cannot explain why...


Hubert Selby Jr.  RIP.    I'd give my eye/teeth to write prose as good he.

[JaseM]

Brilliant a book thread, my, we are all very intellectual (well maybe not the pratchett readers)
Catch 22: laugh out loud and read excerpts to strangers funny. Started reading Closing Time (I think it was called that) but it was not nearly as good and I was so disappointed I didn't finish it.
For people who actually like the outdoors I strongly reccomend The Way of the Scout by Tom Brown, which is a collection of memories of him learning about the outdoors. Quite spiritual but made me value the outdoors even more.
Anything by Iain Banks, but strangely I like very little by his alter ego Iain M Banks.
Oh and The Butcher Boy.....
.... no Ben, I do not have your copy

[a dense loner]

quite scary jaseM i agree with all your book choices, except i read pratchett as well. so this must make me a giant intellect as well as knowing when to get lost in another place. anyone who doesn't think the hobbit, silmarrillion and lord of the rings are not amongst the best books ever written do not deserve to be able to read

[a dense loner]

ps currently reading down under by bill bryson

[Bonjoy]

 Haven't been reading for a while. Only thing I've read lately has been Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which was brilliant. A near future dark dystopian set around the collapse of our civilisation caused by man carrying on pretty much as they are.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake

[Houdini]

Bon', that book sounds fucking horrific.  I must read it.

I find the Silmarillion unreadable, Dense.

[BenF]

Brilliant a book thread, my, we are all very intellectual (well maybe not the pratchett readers)

Don't include me in the "intellectual" gang Jason.  I was going to say that my current read is the CC Llanberis guide and printed topos off Lakesbloc.  But I am also reading a real book too.  Coincidentally it is Catch22 for the umpteenth time.

Oh and The Butcher Boy.....
.... no Ben, I do not have your copy

So where the hell is it then?  I don't believe you.  I bet you've got my copy of South West Climbs too.  It is worth pointing out that The Butcher Boy by (Patrick McCabe I think) is a fantastic if rather upsetting book.

[moose]

Haven't been reading for a while. Only thing I've read lately has been Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which was brilliant. A near future dark dystopian....

I quite liked that book too.  Though am I the only person who gets a bit annoyed by Margaret Atwood's repeated denials that she is, in any way, a sci-fi writer?  I'm sorry Mag's but if you're writing about genetic mutants in the future at least have the honesty to admit some kinship with the genre. 

It's part of a wider issue that has bugged me for years in reviews etc.  If a book is critically deemed to be "literary" enough it is allowed a get-out-of-genre-free card so that reader's don't have to risk any sense of shame they might feel about reading a work of fantasy ("I'm not a nerd, this isn't sci-fi... its a disection of current woes via the prism of an imagined dystopian future" ).  David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (and parts of Ghost Written), Kazuo Ishiguru's new book, much of Atwood's output, even the "daddys": Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, are all essentially sci-fi it's judged to be okay to like... although for many of these books the sci-fi elements are by far their weakest aspects and seem cliched to those with any previous knowledge of the area.  A bit like how mainstream film critics got ridiculously over-excited by Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero: films that were nothing particularly special (though admittedly very expensively and beautifully done... if incredibly humourless) to people who had seen any other martial arts films that used wire-work.

Not even sure why it bugs me so much as I rarely read sci-fi these days.... still got it off my chest and wasted a bit of time!

[Houdini]

What's not to like about being called a sci-fi writer?  And what the fuck is literary fiction?

Sci-fi: I used to be a voracious reader of this.  The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov I found to be particularly good reads.  And also the Rama series by Arthur. C. Clark.  Great stuff, these multi-tome series.  The Amtrak Wars too.  The 7 books in the Dune series by Frank Herbert?  I got to four and gave up.  I really do prefer the film; the fact that Sting is in it doesn't bother me at all.

I just want to plug Shantaram by Greg Roberts one more time.  I don't think I've read a one thousand page book so rapidily.  It really is fabulous. 

(I never have, but in a way I've always wanted to spent say, a month in prison - just for kicks.  And to make a daring escape from it.  A good genre, prison fiction.)