[Houdini]

Plugged in the Neglected Masterpieces thread a while back.  Just great, a fantastic unpretentious joyride of an underground novel.  Read it.

And my current squeeze:



A recent (early nineties) journey by an ex-army cock across the Taklamakan desert of S. W. China.  At the moment, it rules.

[Jaspersharpe]

I'm reading this at the moment although it's not normally my type of thing...........



.......very Blade Runner and really rather good. Read it before the film comes out next year and spoils it. 

[Somebody's Fool]

Someone's just posted this on UKC. 

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217735,00.html

It's fucking dynamite.

syllables older than language

[nik at work]

Excited to hear about that Alan Garner book, sounds amazing. Going to school in Alderley it was unavoidable I'd end up spending weekends looking for Svartelfein, seem to remember the sequel to Wyrdstone was the first book I ever read in a sitting...

You went to school in Alderly? Mount Carmel or AESG? Certainly explains the hair....
 

[Bubba]

Someone's just posted this on UKC. 

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217735,00.html

It's fucking dynamite.

syllables older than language

Those excerpts are fucking well funny

[Johnny Brown]

You went to school in Alderly

Ryleys... only for a few years. You may remember the fetching yellow and black striped blazers - I don't know why they chose them but it were summat to do with bees.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217735,00.html

It's fucking dynamite.

Indeed! In a similar vein Brooker's screen burn is particularly good this week.

[Jaspersharpe]

Brooker is fucking brilliant. I think his Jeremy Kyle article is perhaps the funniest I've seen. Will see if I can find it.


Edit: That was easy.......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,1596805,00.html

[Andy B]

You went to school in Alderly

Ryleys... only for a few years.

You went to school in a snooker club?

Well that explains a few things.

[nik at work]

I certainly do remember those blazerzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (thats a lame bee joke by the way).

As I sat, repledescent in green, on the coach staring out of a misted window each winters eve as we crawled through Aderley on the journey home I always said a silent prayer to the gods of haberdashery that there was a school with a more distorted sense of style than that which I attended.

[clm]

recenlty

Hemmingway  - the old man and the sea
solzhenytsin - a day in the life of ivan denisovich
last year; waverly - sir walter scott - a ripping yarn.

i liked the midnight children.

and not cool or that good but beau geste was fun - pc wren

[Pantontino]

Just read the following:

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan - an excellent book. It might even be a masterpiece. Incredible prose and such acute understanding of the human condition. Brilliant.

Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith - Very good. Nice and short too, i.e. you could rattle through it in a few days.

[andy_e]

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Anything like Moonfleet? 

[BenF]

I recently read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.  Its an utterly stunning novel, full of wonderful prose and a captivating story that encompasses sexual identity, the American dream, prewar Europe and a bunch of other stuff I probably didn't get on to.  I couldn't put it down and I even rarely pored over my pile of guidebooks whilst I was reading this book.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780676975659

[Falling Down]

Well I finally completed Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon and it was well worth the effort.  My sister bought me it for Christmas last year and as a weighty hardback novel pushing 1200 pages I found it challenging enough from a logistical standpoint with it being so difficult to carry around nevermind actually reading it.

Set between the closing years of the 19th century and into the 1st World War, the basic plot follows three (or four... or n) main themes.  An Anarchist miner named Webb Traverse and his offspring set against the plutocrat businessman Scarsdale Vibe and his giant corporation; a group of airship borne Victorian adventurers named the Chums of Chance searching for Shambala; the runaway daughter of an early photographer coming of age in Balkan Europe and two warring factions of mathematicians, the Vectorists and Quaterionists.  As the plot shifts, so does the genre and style from pulp Western to steampunk sci-fi to political thriller and then on and on.

Many of the usual Pynchon hallmarks are present with obscure branches of science, talking animals and music hall songs punctuating the narrative.  Unusually, some real historical figures make guest appearances with Nicolai Tesla, Archduke Ferdinand and numerous lesser known individuals playing important roles throughout.

At times it gets tough as the plot, or lack thereof, wanders way off the map and I found myself at times having to summon enough enthusiasm to not throw in the towel.  Other times I was completely immersed and enthralled by what I was reading, by turns absorbing, exotic, bizzare, thrilling, transcendental, hilarious and tragic.

Against the Day is probably the most lighthearted and warmest of all his books so far, much less cynical than Gravitys Rainbow and it is far, far better than Mason and Dixon which was too dry and stuffy.  I got the sense that as he approaches his eighth decade that this could well be the last and the closing line 'Together they fly toward grace' reminded me of WS Burroughs last written words where the old cynic softened and wrote 'There is only Love'. 

It is a marvel.

[Pantontino]

FD that sounds like a real trip (man!), and good effort for seeing it through to the end. These days I can be very grumpy and impatient with a book (or a film) if I think it has gone off the rails. I got part way through the much lauded Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth recently, then ditched it when my initial amusement shifted to boredom (what shocked in the 1960s doesn't necessarily have much currency these days). Similarly I started Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (recommended by my wife), but found the prose wooden and the plot set ups achingly obvious; after a while I lost faith and flicked onwards, skimming to the last chapter (just to confirm my suspicions - I was right).

[Pantontino]

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Anything like Moonfleet? 

My guess is that the location is more metaphorical than literal - although I've no conscious idea what the meaning of the metaphor might be. "Pebbles on a beach, kicked around, displaced by feet..." as a great man once sung.

[al]

In a similar vein Brooker's screen burn is particularly good this week

agree JB, this dude is approaching 'bill hicks' god-like status (with the written word anyway) - it is the main reason I buy the saturday guardian, the rest makes good flooring material for my incontinent dog.

"The most depressing spectacle is the sight of Marc Bannerman repeatedly dribbling over Cerys from Catatonia, who seems to be playing along out of confusion. This is disappointing because Cerys is quite sweet, while Bannerman looks and sounds monumentally gormless. It's like watching a well-intentioned student nurse letting a brain-damaged adult baby get too close for comfort. Lord knows what Bannerman's "oh" face looks like, although I fear we're about to find out. My guess is that at the point of climax he merely looks confused, gawping at the yop spurting from his funpole in cowed amazement, like a dog trying to follow a card trick."

[Pantontino]

"...like a dog trying to follow a card trick"

 

[Jaspersharpe]

The book is worth getting as there are probably some you've missed.



Good holiday reading. Think the yanks on the same Mexican beach as me wondered why I was howling with laughter every few minutes.

Four quid on Amazon by the way.

[Bubba]

Just read (well listened to the audio books) of Noam Chomsky's "Failed States" and his Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

Excellent books on the sickening way that the US leadership pursues it's terrorist agenda against countless other states and at the same time beats it's own people down.

[Yossarian]

I am reading about Chechnya.

Anna Politkovskaya - A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya
Arkady Babchenko - One Soldier's War in Chechnya

I have a couple of others, but haven't started them yet.

Anna Politkovskaya was killed because she reported on Chechnya. Her story and they book is fucking horrific, yet no-one here seems to have the faintest idea what's going on.  The Chechens are pretty fierce and not strangers to bending the rules of war, but what the Russians got (and are still getting) up to is monumentally criminal. 

The Babchenko book is amazing because it reveals why the Russian army, despite its huge size and array of vicious weaponry was so unable to defeat the Chechens. The first time round anyway. He reveals that most of the aggression and fighting spirit is not focused on the enemy, but instead with beating up other Russian soldiers. And getting drunk. And shooting up.

Both books require a strong stomach. But people should read about it...

[Houdini]

Can't vouch for it but Fraudini nominates

Khaled Hosseini - A Thousand Splendid Suns

[BenF]

Alex Garland - Coma.  A short book, read it in a few hours, but worth checking out for it's unusual narrative and plot.  Some cool black and white prints by the author's father adorn the pages and add an interesting touch.

Just started Ed Husein - The Islamist.  Not got far but it promises to be interesting and certainly a window into a world that I know little about.

[Jaspersharpe]

Just started Ed Husein - The Islamist.  Not got far but it promises to be interesting and certainly a window into a world that I know little about.

Ah nice one. My mate recommended this and I was going to borrow it from him. Cheers for the reminder.

[BenF]

Ah nice one. My mate recommended this and I was going to borrow it from him. Cheers for the reminder.

It is progressing nicely too.  Very interesting and well written so far.  Plus, apologies for my typo: it is Ed Husain.