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.
I really liked both Vurt and Pollen - well worth reading.
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).
The best book i ever read is the 1989 Stanage guide.
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.
I can recommend anything by:
- Carl Hiaasen
- Kinky Friedman
- Hemingway (esp Old Man and The Sea, and Farewell to Arms)
- Garcia Marquez (esp Love in a Time of Cholera)
- Hunter S Thompson (esp Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Great Shark Hunt)
Moose: I'd say you need to read 100yrs twice to appreciate it. Or read Love in a Time of Cholera. It's exceptional.
I also second Requiem for a Dream and anything by Murakami (esp Sputnik Sweetheart and Norweigian Wood)
Yeah, when I first read the wasp factory about ten years ago I thought it was the best book ever! Re-read it recently and wasn't as impressed, (are you ever on a second read?) but some of his other stuff is pretty cool.
sci-fi writer? r u on about iain m. banks? who is a different person
Currently waiting for the softback versions of:
Iain M Banks - Alchemist
Adam Roberts - The Snow
China Meiville - Iron Council
Alastair Reynolds - ???
I like Brett EE though he can be hard reading sometimes with his almost bland, disconnected style.
American Psycho is a classic, though I know a few people who haven't been able to finish it because of the gnarl, and I really enjoyed Glamorama too.
Duma - I really like Reynolds stuff because it's just very "proper" sci-fi with no pussying around diluting it for the washed masses.
Ursula Le Guin - Changing Planes - ("Unreal" fiction) various short stories offering tantalising glimpses
oooh - we could have a ukb book club, just like they did on cocktalk!
one of the few books which made me laugh out loud on a regular basis.
Cofe dragging some culture back into the forum.
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.
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.
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..
:o :D
how much did it set you back?
also what's your favourite book by him?
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..
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? )
Brilliant a book thread, my, we are all very intellectual (well maybe not the pratchett readers) ;)
Oh and The Butcher Boy.....
.... no Ben, I do not have your copy ;D
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....
. 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 readwhilst have read your post.i have not read any of the above and i do not intend to.
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.
Got bought the Philip Pullman - Dark Materials series for christmas the other year. Read it, it's great.
Dark Materials series for christmas the other year. Read it, it's great.
Jury is still out as to how good it would be.
i can understand your reluctance to the silmarillian houdini but being sad i have read LOTR a fair amount of times, yes i know there are more books but... and consequently find the other book very good.
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 readI've not read much of Pratchett, but, I must say I wouldn't place him along side Tolkien. Slight aside but I live in the town which is genuinely twinned with Ankh Morpak. We regularly have visits from Pratchett and his fans all dressed as their favorite characters! Rather bizarre seeing an OAP barbarian walking down the high street in just a fur pair of speedos.
I haven't read Bryson. What's the one to read?I go for the Short History of Everything too.
this morning i finished "the catcher in the rye" for tenth time, this time in english.
i dont believe at all to the statistic theories (esp. american ones) about serial killers. theyre far too simplified to match with the complexity of real life.
thought catcher in rye was the most over-rated book i've ever read
Here's my favourite of late, a re-take on Wildes' tale. But now with AIDS! The major protagonist is fantastically rude.
nonsense...
when fergus henderson put grey squirrel on the menu at st john that was all over the papers.
tanni grey thompson got double gold. the sun dined out on that one.
what about danger mouse's grey album?
grey goose vodka - always in the sunday supplements
grey's anatomy
charlotte grey
grays inn road (ok, so i'm slipping)
grey is good...
according to the person who recommended it to me
"like a mixture of the Bible and the Koran, only more insprirational"
Hear Hear!
Can also recommend Selfs' most recent book, Feeding Frenzy, a collection of journalistic works (Similar to Junk Mail). It's all good, he'll not a write a bad book.
Just finished Cormac McArthy's new one 'No Country for Old Men'.. very high quality indeed. Similar to Blood Meridian but set in the present day... dark, bleak and very, very good.
Just read quite a sweet little book by Fred Forsyth called The Shepherd. All about a guy flying his jet from a German airbase to the UK to get home for Xmas - getting totally lost but being guided to a disused wartime airfield in Norfolk by an old Mosquito bomber. Yes, a ghost, whose job it was to search for lost returning airplanes during the war (who one time never came back). A slim tome with lots of canny sketches. Really sweet.
Ben - selling it to me, I will keep an eye out for that.
I can strongly recommend Cloud Atlas by Mitchell as well. Such a skilful and powerful writer.
Alistair Reynolds - Century Rain.
Think Dawes is working on an autobiography at the moment no?That's great news if true.
Think Dawes is working on an autobiography at the moment no?That's great news if true.
I thought The Bedroom Secrets of the Masterchefs a little disappointing to be honest. I think although the more fantastic themes were intricate and well handled there wasn't a single laugh out loud moment in the whole book.
it is still Welsh and therefore still well worth reading.
Ideally avoiding anything that makes you feel emotionally run over?
I'd go for a rock etc..
Finally, who ever it was that recommended Marco Pantani's biog. thanks a million - it was great.. and I want a bike seat like Paz's...
canadiens
A "friend" just bought me War and Peace - she thinks I need "distracting." Will have to tackle it over the summer out of friendship but am contemplating buying her Proust in revenge
Read it in one day yesterday..... :thumbsup:
(http://www.bloomsbury.com/media/hp7_low.jpg)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers - turned out to be a riotous stream of conscious rap which somehow skips back and forth between deeply amusing and deeply moving with incredible surges of energy and drive.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers - turned out to be a riotous stream of conscious rap which somehow skips back and forth between deeply amusing and deeply moving with incredible surges of energy and drive.
this annoyed the tits off of me. so arrogant.
I'm keen to read the David Mitchell books. I thought Cloud Atlas was an astonishing book, one of the best I've ever read.
:lol:
Thanks for the comments JB.. you'll enjoy Thursbitch - this might whet your appetite.
I read the first three chapters of the Macfarlane in front of a log fire over a few pints of Guiness in a local pub which was the perfect setting in which to immerse myself. I sometimes catch myself thinking 'Is he overdoing it a bit?' but then think 'f*ck it.. someones got to do it'.
If you can get the hardback of the Deakin book I would as it has a lovely cover and the print/paper quality is well worth the extra money.
Did you know that R S Thomas lived in the little cottage below Plas yn Rhiw overlooking Porth Neigwl? There's a blue plaque there now and you can go for a wander around the garden
I'm keen to read the David Mitchell booksprobably been mentioned before on this thread but 'black swan green' si - captures the 70's just as i remember them (all brown nylon shirts,other people's back gardens and bullying)
Edit: Just read the link. Holy cow! Got goosebumps
I've had that David Eggers book on the shelf for ages
Thanks for the comments JB.. you'll enjoy Thursbitch - this might whet your appetite.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon/votd.html (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon/votd.html)
I bought both The Wild Places (Macfarlane) and Wildwood last month from a tiny little bookshop in Dornoch near Inverness. I read the first three chapters of the Macfarlane in front of a log fire over a few pints of Guiness in a local pub which was the perfect setting in which to immerse myself. I sometimes catch myself thinking 'Is he overdoing it a bit?' but then think 'f*ck it.. someones got to do it'.
I read the introduction and opening chapter to Wildwood and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. Saving the rest of it until I've finished the Thomas Pynchon (nearly there after 9 months). If you can get the hardback of the Deakin book I would as it has a lovely cover and the print/paper quality is well worth the extra money.
Did you know that R S Thomas lived in the little cottage below Plas yn Rhiw overlooking Porth Neigwl? There's a blue plaque there now and you can go for a wander around the garden.
syllables older than language
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...
Someone's just posted this on UKC.Those excerpts are fucking well funny
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217735,00.html (http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217735,00.html)
It's fucking dynamite.Quotesyllables older than language
You went to school in Alderly
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217735,00.html
It's fucking dynamite.
QuoteYou went to school in Alderly
Ryleys... only for a few years.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Anything like Moonfleet? ;)
In a similar vein Brooker's screen burn is particularly good this weekagree 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."
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.
Robert Fisks testament to thirty or more years of reporting from the middle east is an amazing read "The Great War For Civilisation, The Conquest Of The Middle East".
Struggled w/ many books over the last 6 months, finished few; feel this could be the next one to actually reach the end of.
Suits my current mood perfectly: it's full of Jews and Nazi's and is narrated by none other than Death himself. Recommended.
(http://pubimages.randomhouse.co.uk/getimage.aspx?id=0385611463&issue=1&size=large&class=books)
Sci Fi: Iain M Banks new thing - Matter if you like his stuff, you'll enjoy this, but it's not the best culture novel - I'd wait for the paperback...
Sci Fi: Iain M Banks new thing - Matter if you like his stuff, you'll enjoy this, but it's not the best culture novel - I'd wait for the paperback...
I was unaware this was out, shame it doesn't sound too good, I fucking love Culture novels, will it please a fanboy?
Sci Fi: Iain M Banks new thing - Matter if you like his stuff, you'll enjoy this, but it's not the best culture novel - I'd wait for the paperback...
I was unaware this was out, shame it doesn't sound too good, I fucking love Culture novels, will it please a fanboy?
Fanboys will be quite happy - lots of special circumstances, and the shell world concept is pretty cool.
Struggled w/ many books over the last 6 months, finished few; feel this could be the next one to actually reach the end of.
Suits my current mood perfectly: it's full of Jews and Nazi's and is narrated by none other than Death himself. Recommended.
(http://pubimages.randomhouse.co.uk/getimage.aspx?id=0385611463&issue=1&size=large&class=books)
Pretty sure that my house mate has recommended this to me - I will double check and borrow it if this is the case.
As for that feeling of struggling with books. Lately it is one that I know too well - I really dislike leaving a book unfinished but some of the stuff I have tried to read over the last few months has made this seem an attractive option.
bluebrad
Forgive me if this has been posted before but I've just read Sebastian Faulks' Engleby and have to say that it's one of the best things i've read for a long time; absolutely gripping and a fascinating study of a very disturbed individual indeed.
Blind Willow Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami - collection of short stories that you can dive into, read and interpret as you wish.
Reading "Bedroom Secrets...." By Iring Welsh at the moment, pretty good.
Murakami is an interesting choice slack-line. I read 3 or 4 of his books in 2 weeks whilst on holiday and I thought the first one was good (Wind up Bird Chronicles). The next 2/3 were basically the same book with slightly different characters and slightly different stories, but essentially the same underlying subtext. I soon got bored of him so haven't read any more books by the guy.
Obviously I have to make one more recommendation, and that is anything by Umberto Eco. I find his books rather mesmerising and also challenging. Unfortunately I've read all of his fiction ones, and several of his non fictions ones. His non fiction books/lectures are fascinating and I particularly enjoyed "mouse or rat". I'd start with something like Foucault's Pendulum or The Island of the Day Before. He's a genius I think.
My second time reading it
I am currently reading my way through all the Christopher Brookmyre (http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/books.htm) books I can get my hands on cause I think is ace.Brookmyre is good, also go for some Colin bateman and Carl hiaasen.
I've been reading "south, the endurance mission" by Ernest Shackelton. it's not well written but if you ever need the the inspiration to dig a little deeper you'll find it there. the shit those poeple lived through is amazing!Yeah, an amazing tale. Survival against some extremely steep odds.
Carl Hiaasen's tourist season is one of my top 10 books that I've readTa, I'll check it out, Native Tounge is ringing a bell so I may actually have already read some of his stuff.
I would strongly recommend Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, basically its about how the media is manipulated and PR is fed into the machine,
Not sure if it was recommended here originally, but currently reading "Blood River: A journey into Africa's Broken Heart"
About a guy trying to retrace Stanley's journey down the Congo River. Fascinating reading, but also very sad how deeply fucked the place is. Definitley worth a read if you like this sort of thing.
Currently reading Georges Bataille's 'The Story of The Eye'. I suppose it falls under the rubric of 'art pr0nography' so don't go reading it to the young ones at bedtime.
Pole escapes from POW camp in Siberia, walks through Siberia, round lake Baikal, across Mongolian desert, Tibetan plateau, over Himalayas, to British controlled India! :o :o
the coma by alex garland : style above substance
the coma by alex garland : style above substance
I think this is the best Garland I've read. But then, I can spell neoplasm. ;)
I'm reading this:
(http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0876855826.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg)
I like this book.
Other thing from that part of the world I read last year and enjoyed was The Long Walk (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Walk-True-Story-Freedom/dp/1845296443/ref=pd_cp_b_0?pf_rd_p=212521391&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0094743401&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0EV614W5073NTSHCF9K6), Amazing true story: Pole escapes from POW camp in Siberia, walks through Siberia, round lake Baikal, across Mongolian desert, Tibetan plateau, over Himalayas, to British controlled India! :o :o
Other thing from that part of the world I read last year and enjoyed was The Long Walk (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Walk-True-Story-Freedom/dp/1845296443/ref=pd_cp_b_0?pf_rd_p=212521391&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0094743401&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0EV614W5073NTSHCF9K6), Amazing true story: Pole escapes from POW camp in Siberia, walks through Siberia, round lake Baikal, across Mongolian desert, Tibetan plateau, over Himalayas, to British controlled India! :o :o
Anyone read Roberto Bolaño's 2666 yet? On to it as soon as I finish the biography above.
http://roberto-bolano.com/?p=3 (http://roberto-bolano.com/?p=3)
Previous to that, I failed once again to get more than 100 pages into Will Self's The Book of Dave.
Have also tried to read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell recently with much the same result...
Arup Associates are awesome.
Actually in the same vein as Andy's Oppenheimer biog is "Ove Arup: Master Builder of the 20th Century". He was the structural engineer who's work allowed for some of the greatest buildings of the C20th and an amazing man. You can't quite believe your engrossed in the life of a structural engineer.
I am currently reading my way through all the Christopher Brookmyre (http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/books.htm) books I can get my hands on cause I think is ace.
Have also tried to read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell recently with much the same result...
Could've been brilliant but waffled and dragged and ultimately disappointed me.
Anybody read this?
(http://www.booksattransworld.co.uk/houseofleaves/house%20leaves%20small.jpg)
The book is based on the game, if you enjoyed the game you will like the book
Currently battling through Don Quixote which is pretty amusing so far but long winded to say the least! I'd love to see a series of film adaptions, it's all a bit Pythonesque.
Currently battling through Don Quixote which is pretty amusing so far but long winded to say the least! I'd love to see a series of film adaptions, it's all a bit Pythonesque.
Yeah it's a bit long winded la, part 2 loses it's way a little and it all gets a bit morose. Apparently numerous directors have attempted to adapt it but it seems to be cursed, there's a documentary about one such attempt I recall, think Jonny Depp was on board to play Don but the entire set was washed away in a biblical flood.
Thanks for thinking of me Jasper you CUNT.
I'm 140 pages into China Meiville's The City And The City (http://www.amazon.co.uk/City-China-Mieville/dp/0330493108/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281474828&sr=8-1#noop) and finding it very good and engrossing so far.
I've just finished Bad Science (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/?tag=bs0b-21) (which is awesome and everyone should read) and the first two books in the Millenium Trilogy; The Girl with the dragon tattoo (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Dragon-Tattoo-Stieg-Larsson/dp/1847245455/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281627540&sr=1-1) and The girl who played with fire (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Who-Played-Fire/dp/1906694184/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b). Now I am reading 59 Seconds (http://www.amazon.co.uk/59-Seconds-Think-little-change/dp/023074429X).
There would never have been such hype about them had he not died, they're alright books but not ground breaking or half as amazing as they were made out to be, and I found a lot of the names a pain to remember or pronounce and some of the writing odd, which is no doubt due to the translations, but still a bit of a pain.
I can't recommend strongly enough Bird and Sherwin's American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer -
Stuff wot I 'ave read recently.
Matterhorn - Karl Malantes A big f*ck off dense novel about Vietnam that took the author thirty years to write. In close focus rather than expansive, it covers a small, relatively inconsequential part of the war about Bravo Company's attempts to take and retake a series of nondescript hills in Vietnam. It's all about the characters and the visceral horrors of war and is clearly semi-autobiographical in the main character Melas. Very good, tough going at times but very good.
Assault on Lake Casitas by Brad Alan Lewis - Only available on Kindle (cheap) or second hand (ridiculously expensive) this is Lewis' account of walking away from the official US Olympic camp to train with his mate and then go on to win Gold at the 1984 Olympics on home soil in the double scull rowing event. For a book on rowing it's absolutely gripping and for anyone interested in training and sports psychology it should be required reading. Superb.
I can't recommend strongly enough Bird and Sherwin's American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer -
I got this for my birthday on your recomendation and it's been sat on the shelf bearing down on me since. It's a biggie!
A few years back I read The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes which again was a real page turner (and won the Pullitzer).
Dolly, I've been thinking about reading what I think about when I think about running :-\Very good :)
I'm working my way through the entire works of Thomas Hardy on the Kindle. I started by reading The Woodlanders because I wanted to see the references to green wood pole lathe turning, but found it utterly gripping - all the books so far are the same; romantic tragedy, perhaps ivolving a love triangle, but he does it very well. For me it's a very kinaesthetic and visual experience reading this stuff as the minutiae of the country are so well expressed, and it makes me wish I was a farmer in 1800s Wessex
(albeit a really rich farmer and not 'courting')
Dolly, I've been thinking about reading what I think about when I think about running :-\
The pick of recent reads:
Flaubert, Madame Bovary: is there a finer novel. As beautiful as it is cruel.
de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons: more French cruelty. The great epistolary novel.
David Grossman, Be My Knife: two strangers, who never meet, conduct an affair entirely through letters. One of the most intense reading experiences ever. Got inside my head.
Martha Hanna, Your Death Would be Fine: moving microhistory recreating the marriage of French peasant couple during WW1. Again reliant on letters as a source.
[Anyone noticing a theme here would be correct. I am near obsessed with letters. I read letters, I read about letters and I write letters.]
Tolstoy, War and Peace: fully worth the effort. Master storytelling.
Tove Jansson, A Summer Book: Moomin author goes adult, light, funny, moving
W.G. Sebald,Austerlitz: strange and dreamlike, seems to encompass all of C20th European history.
Herzog, Annapurna: gets my votes for finest mountaineering book of all time.
Just finished Taking Leave (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Taking-Leave-Hubank-Roger/dp/094815375X/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1290504392&sr=8-8) by Roger Hubank. Excellent. a must if you know The Peak well, very few books are as deeply seated in the landscape as this.
Just finished Feet in the Clouds: A Story of Fell Running and Obsession by Richard Askwith. Fantastic book and much better IMO than Born to run (Admittedly different subject matter). If it doesn't make you want to get out and push yourself then nothing will!
Dont think its been mentioned but apologies if it has.
Not sure if this is the most recent thread on good books but this is what the search turfed up.
Anyway, just finished You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers (http://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Shall-Know-Our-Velocity/dp/0141013451), which was excellent. Great humanist story in the fashion of Jonathan Safran Foer.
Speaking of which, he has just brought out a new book (which I have got and is next on my list) called Tree of Codes. It looks amazing. (http://visual-editions.com/our-books/book/tree-of-codes)
Of late I have read:I've always found Welsh's books excellent in the nasty side of things - he does do grim and downright horrible characters very well. I thought Trainspotting was far more compelling as a book due to the depth of it in comparison to the film.
pr0no, Irvine Welsh
Sequel to Trainspotting following the same group of characters on their latest venture into the pr0n industry. Sadly this feels like it was purely written because Welsh knew that it would sell off the back of the success of Trainspotting. At times it felt a little tedious, however it does highlight the exploitative nature of the pr0n industry for those naive enough not to be aware of it already. Begbie is also a great, terrifying character. Some scenes, particularly those at the end, do well to explore the complexities of what the group call "friendship".
Seem to remember a few folk bemoaning the escalating second-hand price of Julian Cope's The Modern Antiquarian a while back. Happily its back in print in the original rainbow hardback with slipcase at under £20 from Amazon. Essential.
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/615KTHZ20ZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Antiquarian-Pre-millennial-Megalithic-Prehistoric/dp/0722535996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315240552&sr=8-1)
Dracula by Stoker. Awesome. Surprisingly contemporary narrative and great fun to read. Full of gothic verbosity (which can at times become wearisome. Perhaps a book to read alongside something else?) Tense and exciting.
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee. Somebody in the book exclaims that Lee has "beautiful thoughts". They couldn't have put it better. A great portrait of rural Spain before Franco.
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. Another beautiful portrait, this time of a childhood spent in an isolated Cotswolds village. Even the most mundane things are described in a way which sparks the imagination. I couldn't stop smiling as I read it.
Moby Dick is my second favourite book, I just love the mixture of the whaling plot and all of the digressions into the uses and habits of the whale and whaling.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/game-of-thrones-is-'fantasy-gateway-drug'-201111044505/ (http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/game-of-thrones-is-'fantasy-gateway-drug'-201111044505/)
:lol:
Moose, what is your favourite book (having Moby Dick as second)?
Moose, what is your favourite book (having Moby Dick as second)?
My favourite book is Proust's In Search of Lost Time - I'm waiting for the right time to start the final (seventh) volume. It's got its flaws, the sentences can be very convoluted and difficult to follow, at least until you "tune-in", and some sections significantly outstay their welcome (unavoidable for a book about an obsessive snob, even one of huge insight). But, I've never read anything with as much... well, truth... about everthing. From the fleeting impression of a snatch of music, or a shaft of sunlight through a tree, to the most profound truths of memory and prejudice. And all shot through with setpieces of incredibly savage social comment and black humour.
I read Swann's Way a few years back and loved it. Before i dive in to volume two, have either of you read both the English translations and which do you prefer?
Devoured Atomised (Houllebecq) in a single evening and middle of the night Insomnia on Wednesday and thought it was tragic, riveting, very moving, and not at all unpleasant apart from the grisly descriptions of the Californian satanist murders.Atomised is amazing - surprised that you haven't picked that up before. His other books are also worth reading though often darker and more challenging.
Off the top of my head and in no particular order:
Catch 22*
Rings of Saturn*
Read a various times in my life so may have a different perspective in them now. Defo recommend*
Personally I have been reading John Le Carre - have gotten through The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and the Karla Triology (Tinker, Tailor.... The Honourable Schoolboy and Smileys People) in about a week - fantastic writing, very few wasted words and excellent plot construtuction. Any other recommendations by him or just read the lot?
Has anyone, by any chance, read Bob Mould's autobiography, recently published?
Personally I have been reading John Le Carre - have gotten through The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and the Karla Triology (Tinker, Tailor.... The Honourable Schoolboy and Smileys People) in about a week - fantastic writing, very few wasted words and excellent plot construtuction. Any other recommendations by him or just read the lot?
Snap. Reading them at the moment. That's a lof of reading in a week. Nice one.
Personally I have been reading John Le Carre - have gotten through The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and the Karla Triology (Tinker, Tailor.... The Honourable Schoolboy and Smileys People) in about a week - fantastic writing, very few wasted words and excellent plot construtuction. Any other recommendations by him or just read the lot?
i don't know if its been mentioned before, but I recently read le metier and it is brilliant (even to non-cylcists)
Cyclist David Millar's autobiog next...
Devoured Atomised (Houllebecq) in a single evening and middle of the night Insomnia on Wednesday and thought it was tragic, riveting, very moving, and not at all unpleasant apart from the grisly descriptions of the Californian satanist murders.Atomised is amazing - surprised that you haven't picked that up before. His other books are also worth reading though often darker and more challenging.
Is the Insomnia a reference to another book BTW or just you saying that you read it while suffering from it?
Personally I have been reading John Le Carre - have gotten through The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and the Karla Triology (Tinker, Tailor.... The Honourable Schoolboy and Smileys People) in about a week - fantastic writing, very few wasted words and excellent plot construtuction. Any other recommendations by him or just read the lot?
Tom Wolfe: A Man in Full.
Le Carre: Read Russia House, Single and Single then Our Kind of Traitor back to back. RH was written immediately post Glasnost, S&S 2005 and OKOT in 2010/11. The usual superb, spare, precise writing, excellently drawn characters, and they paint a fascinating picture of societal change in Russia over last 20 years.
Looks like Fiend's work:
I'm currently reading "Blood Meridian" by Cormack McCarthy at the moment and I think it is brilliant. Unlike another book i've ever read.
Fiction:
A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz. A book to devour. Hilarious, heartfelt, moving, all with a deft, light touch.
Tom Wolfe: A Man in Full. His best, IMHO. Excoriating satire. Great setpieces. Big, bold 'great american novel'.
China Mieville - the City & the City. Crime + kafkaeque fantasy. Constructed around a (deliberately obvious) plot device / twist but really excellently done.
Non fiction:
Surely you are joking Mr Feynman. Prob been mentioned before. Anecdotes about his eccentric & extraordinary life. Very funny, and it's got SCIENCE in it too.
Le Carre: Read Russia House, Single and Single then Our Kind of Traitor back to back. RH was written immediately post Glasnost, S&S 2005 and OKOT in 2010/11. The usual superb, spare, precise writing, excellently drawn characters, and they paint a fascinating picture of societal change in Russia over last 20 years.
Cheers for that - just finished the Russia House book a few days ago and the difference between that and the previous ones I read is striking. Will add the other two to the list of things to buy sometime soon.
Got to agree with Cofe that Tinker, Tailor... does seem to end really quickly - noticed it when I read it and it almost seems that Le Carre wrapped it up in a hurry. A bit of a pity but a great book all the same.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VANm_LmdqMA/TnocB7O_6RI/AAAAAAAAAF4/uJUdBCCHtSw/s1600/tzeentch2.jpg)
Adams.
Just re-read Dirk Gently.
Might stop laughing by Easter...
China Mieville - the City & the City. Crime + kafkaeque fantasy. Constructed around a (deliberately obvious) plot device / twist but really excellently done.
The city& the city : Brilliant book - one of those my mind just drifts back to and finds a semi-conscious reference to every now and then. I
China Mieville - the City & the City. Crime + kafkaeque fantasy. Constructed around a (deliberately obvious) plot device / twist but really excellently done.
The city& the city : Brilliant book - one of those my mind just drifts back to and finds a semi-conscious reference to every now and then. I
Ohhhhh yeah. I know Mr Meiville is more famous for the classic Perdido Street Station and The Scar, but The City And The City is right up there in brilliance. Thoroughly intriguing and gripping.
I'm reading The Perfect Fool by Stewart Lee (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/jul/15/fiction.features). I've had it for years and only recently started reading it. I wish I'd have started sooner as it's proving to be brilliant.
Cyclist David Millar's autobiog next...
That's a good read.
Sounds interesting (says middle aged male climber).
Recently finished Hans Fallada's excellent Alone in Berlin; publ.ished in 1847 a thinly fictionalized account of Otto and Elise Hampel, who for three years left anti-Nazi postcards around wartime Berlin. Terrifying, heartbreaking and ultimately supremely humane.
Sounds interesting (says middle aged male climber).
Sounds interesting (says middle aged male climber).
Recently finished Hans Fallada's excellent Alone in Berlin; publ.ished in 1847 a thinly fictionalized account of Otto and Elise Hampel, who for three years left anti-Nazi postcards around wartime Berlin. Terrifying, heartbreaking and ultimately supremely humane.
An interesting piece of Prognostication...
Assault on Lake Casitas by Brad Alan Lewis - Only available on Kindle (cheap) or second hand (ridiculously expensive) this is Lewis' account of walking away from the official US Olympic camp to train with his mate and then go on to win Gold at the 1984 Olympics on home soil in the double scull rowing event. For a book on rowing it's absolutely gripping and for anyone interested in training and sports psychology it should be required reading. Superb.
That sounds properly brilliant, nice one FD have another wad. Shame I don't have a kindle...
Before that, having shunned F Scott Fitzgerald for the whole of my life I devoured both The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night in a sinlge week; brilliant writing, incredibly dark. What have been missing all these years.
Seem to remember a few folk bemoaning the escalating second-hand price of Julian Cope's The Modern Antiquarian a while back. Happily its back in print in the original rainbow hardback with slipcase at under £20 from Amazon. Essential.
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/615KTHZ20ZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Antiquarian-Pre-millennial-Megalithic-Prehistoric/dp/0722535996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315240552&sr=8-1)
This book (and the megalithic European) are absolute joys. I thought I was the only one who bought the originals. Just looking at them on the bookshelf gives me a golden glow.
Funnily enough I just finished Great Gatsby last night, not the usual sort of thing I pick up, but I was recommended it by a friend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like you say incredible writing, great characterisation. I found some Patrick Bateman in Gatsby and wonder if it was an inspiration.
Funnily enough I just finished Great Gatsby last night, not the usual sort of thing I pick up, but I was recommended it by a friend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like you say incredible writing, great characterisation. I found some Patrick Bateman in Gatsby and wonder if it was an inspiration.
I found The Great Gatsby a very odd book. Not a lot actually happens for 99% of it. I do like American Psycho though, I've read it a few times now.
I just read Maus:
Funnily enough I just finished Great Gatsby last night, not the usual sort of thing I pick up, but I was recommended it by a friend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like you say incredible writing, great characterisation. I found some Patrick Bateman in Gatsby and wonder if it was an inspiration.
I found The Great Gatsby a very odd book. Not a lot actually happens for 99% of it. I do like American Psycho though, I've read it a few times now.
I'd agree, I sit on planes a lot and read a lot so recently went for the 'classics' and i enjoyed the great gatsby but wouldnt exactly sing or dance about it, good but not to the legend level I half expected.
Some of these classics are good, but not that fekking good.
Looking for something else next.
Funnily enough I just finished Great Gatsby last night, not the usual sort of thing I pick up, but I was recommended it by a friend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like you say incredible writing, great characterisation. I found some Patrick Bateman in Gatsby and wonder if it was an inspiration.
I found The Great Gatsby a very odd book. Not a lot actually happens for 99% of it. I do like American Psycho though, I've read it a few times now.
I'd agree, I sit on planes a lot and read a lot so recently went for the 'classics' and i enjoyed the great gatsby but wouldnt exactly sing or dance about it, good but not to the legend level I half expected.
Some of these classics are good, but not that fekking good.
Looking for something else next.
**SPOILERS**
I don't read a lot of these sort of books (mainly stick to PKD) but I kind of thought the point of it was that it documented a gradual downwards decline - everything starts off quite rosy for Nick and Gatsby seems like a mysterious but great guy, but as the book rolls on the parties get more out of control and become darker; you realise the majority of the main characters are living hollow lives with little meaning (or based on falsehoods) and everything spirals towards the climax. I loved how it was slow to start but everything seems to become more chaotic until everything crashes together.
I hope Mr Popp will be along to put me right!
Wasn't sure whether this should go on the comics thread but it's a bit more than that so...
I just read Maus:
(http://paul-server.hum.aau.dk/pics/maus1.gif)
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Maus.html?id=BmtQAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Maus.html?id=BmtQAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y)
Saw it in the library and remembered it had been mentioned on here a few times.
It's really, really good. In some ways perhaps a graphic novel is the best way to convey the utter horror of the holocaust and it couldn't have been done a lot better than this. It's fucking savage, but it should be, that was what happened. It also perfectly conveys the way things got gradually worse and worse for people without them realising how bad they could get, and then it was too late....
There is even plenty of dark humour in there as the author shows the difficulty of dealing with the behaviour of his father, the survivor, who is telling him his story.
I can't recommend it highly enough.
house of rumour - really good.
here’s a proper review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/29/house-of-rumour-jake-arnott-review (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/29/house-of-rumour-jake-arnott-review)
it’s a good read and, pastiche aside, he comes over like a less up himself mid-period Pyncheon with more sympathetic and believable characters.
I’m an anti-conspiracy theorist but weird things do happen, like the flight of Hess and his suicide decades later, Fleming’s erm wartime career and Waldheim’s come to that, with his Sec Gen UN recordings launched on Voyager; Crowley’s connections with the above, pulp sci-fi authors funding a new religion… All woven together nicely. Bit of a romp really. And as someone else who spent time there, I think I can smell the mid-80s Leeds 6 undergrowth… Which is a good thing.
have enjoyed Neal Stephenson "Snow Crash", quite visionary really but we'll researched & detailed about religion, linguistics and a quite frightening possibility with regards to consumerism/corporations.
I'm sure it's been mentioned elsewhere previously, but I just finished reading and really enjoyed Troll Wall. Brilliantly written and a great climbing story. Unbelievable it went unpublished for 50 years, and well done to VP for seeing the value in publishing it.
John, I enjoyed House of Rumour, a bit of a romp as you said earlier and very entertaining. You might enjoy Sex and Rockets, the biography of Jack Parsons.
Finished Nicholas Royle's Reigicide. Quite grim and disturbing.
Just started Man with a Blue Scarf, Martin Gayford's (art critic) account of sitting for Lucien Freud.
What I want to know is wtf happend to Fingers of a Martyr :-\
Falling Down if you liked Cryptonomicon you will like probably like Reamde, which I think is Stephenson's latest. I couldn't read Anathem either, I found it painful for some reason.
anyway for the kindle-less among us to read it?
anyway for the kindle-less among us to read it?
Jagged Red Line by Nick Williams.I was looking for something new when you posted this and I finished it last night. I was hoping I'd make it last a little longer.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jagged-Red-Line-ebook/dp/B009T8XBD2 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jagged-Red-Line-ebook/dp/B009T8XBD2)
This is quite a book.
Stags Leap by Sharon Olds. I've been to the winery and have a bottle of the Cabernet that the poet named this anthology after in my limited wine collection. It was the favourite wine of Old's and her husband until their separation which this collection describes in excruciating and moving details. Very, erm, relevant for me but equally as rewarding I suspect for the casual reader.
Olds has just this evening won the T.S.Eliot Prize with this collection. You've given me the final nudge to read it.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game)
I read this about 15 years ago, but recently listned my way through the audio book while walking between work sites
A cracking bit of sci-fi
I mention it because it has been made into a film which comes out later this year. Hopefully the film will be pretty good, but for those of you who like sci-fi it might be a good idea to read the book first - just so the film can't ruin it for you
I didn't rate his related novel Speaker For The Dead as much - still good, but not anywhere near as good as Ender's Game
Cloud Atlas - David Stephen Mitchell. Picked this up off a bookshelf in a villa in Mallorca 2 years ago but left before I could finish it. Love my Kindle for this sort of thing. I actually think this novel is a pretty big achievement - a weird sort of story across 6 characters in different centuries. So moves from historical novel to crime thriller to sci-fi to post-apocalyptic. And pretty much nails them all. Some very interesting and distinct voices in this book. I don't know if I understood the story arc but I liked it.
The Gathering Storm & The Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan/Brian Sanderson - I re-read these in preparation for the release of the final Wheel of Time novel, A Memory of Light, which I'm reading at the moment. No point reading these books if you haven't read the other 11(!) Wheel of Time novels. I think this is my favourite fantasy series, despite a couple of awfully meandering and pointless books in the series. Massive scope and complexity of story, utterly epic in scale.
Picked up The Game of Thrones series before Christmas and that is just awesome...Unfortunately another series that is not complete yet and the last book ended in multiple cliffhanger story lines which is not so bad when you have the next book in the series to get on with. Unfortunately the penultimate part is due for release in 2015 so that would probably mean the final part is out in 2018/2019 judging by his previous release dates. :(
I'm also impressed at the rate at which you guys read. I average about a book a month!
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game)
Museums without Walls by Jonathon Meades. Meades! in writing! all the essays! essential!
You have two very young children (and spend too much time on t'internet :P)
Museums without Walls by Jonathon Meades. Meades! in writing! all the essays! essential!
Cheers for mentioning this, out here in the cultural abyss that is provincial Oz we here nothing about Meades and his doings. Now all I need is for somebody to get his series on Scotland and France copied onto DVD and mailed out and we'll be really happy!.
Les Liaisons dangereuses - Choderlos de Laclos. Best 'epistolary' novel I've ever read - better use of the medium even than Dracula. Clever unveiling of character and story through the sequence of letters. Sexy, dark, memorable.
25% fantasy novels
25% fantasy novels
Any good recommendations? I like fairly darkish fantasy with good world-building and a strong sense of place (both of which are usually very weak in fantasy compared to sci-fi)
Here let me help you with that Meads Shrine (http://m.youtube.com/#/user/MeadesShrine?&desktop_uri=%2Fuser%2FMeadesShrine) :)
Also finally got stuck into Thomas Mann and his short stories. Summary - Little Herr Friedemann was a very melancholic story.
I'm glad it wasn't strung out over any more pages but was impressed by Mann's ability to condense a narrative without appearing overly abrupt.
Any good recommendations? I like fairly darkish fantasy with good world-building and a strong sense of place (both of which are usually very weak in fantasy compared to sci-fi)
Also finally got stuck into Thomas Mann and his short stories. Summary - Little Herr Friedemann was a very melancholic story.
I'm glad it wasn't strung out over any more pages but was impressed by Mann's ability to condense a narrative without appearing overly abrupt.
Read Buddenbrooks - not short though.
abanker'smanagement consultants stay-at-home wife with a monstrous entitlement complex ... I've observed a lot of these down the years and the stereotype is nailed perfectly.
Stags Leap by Sharon Olds. I've been to the winery and have a bottle of the Cabernet that the poet named this anthology after in my limited wine collection. It was the favourite wine of Old's and her husband until their separation which this collection describes in excruciating and moving details. Very, erm, relevant for me but equally as rewarding I suspect for the casual reader.
If you liked 'City of djinns' you'll love 'Age of Kali' and 'white mughals' by the same author.
I finally got around to finishing a book - quite glad it was such a good one, and surprised that nobody on here has mentioned it yet (unless they have and I missed it). The 100 year old man who fell out of the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson has been passed around my family and has quickly been devoured the wife, my mum and my dad who all loved it.
If you liked 'City of djinns' you'll love 'Age of Kali' and 'white mughals' by the same author.
Both excellent. Ben, if you're looking for any more India/subcontinental books...
Maximum City, by Suketa Mehta, all about the high and low life of India's commercial capital.
A Million Mutinies Now, VS Naipaul. Grumpy English novelist interviews a huge variety of Indians. Everything Naipaul writes is good, mind, and his novel A House for Mr Biswas, tho set in Trinidad, is deeply Indian.
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry, a novel set in 1970s Bombay. Excellent.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Danial Mueenuddin. Short stories set in Pakistan.
Midnight's Children and Shame by Rushdie. Bursting with life and linguistic fireworks - just like the subcontinent.
Last night I finished Nevil Shute's 'On the Beach.' I couldn't say what my idea of him was but I think I've always had the wrong idea about Shute. I thought 'On the Beach' a very good book. Heartbreaking.Agree with you about On the Beach. Growing up in Victoria it was on the school curriculum not surprisingly and I still have my original copy around somewhere. Living just down the road yfrom Melbourne again now and you've got me thinking it's time to read it again soon...if I can ever get through the backlog waiting to be read (well into three figures... :-[.)
I've already spent at least £300 on books this year. I think I might have a problem.
2 other amazing India booksl Shantaram & A Suitable Boy.
Very different - Shantaram fairly dark about the semi-underworld of Mumbair, ASB more a very interesting story of love and marriage.
I just finished reading the Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. A great story about an eco-terrorist gang fighting back in the SW USA. A fun read, in a similar vein of humour to Tom Robbins stories.
Has anyone read Desert Solitaire by the same author? Is it as good?
Looks like Iain (M) Banks has been given months to live.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22021298 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22021298)
An amazing mind.
I've already spent at least £300 on books this year. I think I might have a problem.
I've already spent at least £300 on books this year. I think I might have a problem.
I'm just as guilty. Money well spent though I reckon. I had a friend though tell me about his mate who had a complete mental and financial breakdown as a result of his book addiction. In therapy now with a house full of unread books. I can see how it might happen.... :-\
Just started reading My Struggle. No, not that one, but Vol 1, A Death in the Family, of Karl Ove Knausgaard's Min Kamp. Another multi-volume autobiography disguised as novel. Massively compelling already (in a nothing happens sort of way).
:ohmy:Just started reading My Struggle. No, not that one, but Vol 1, A Death in the Family, of Karl Ove Knausgaard's Min Kamp. Another multi-volume autobiography disguised as novel. Massively compelling already (in a nothing happens sort of way).
I've read about those for some time. Hope it's good.
Gun Machine - Warren Ellis: Comic book writer turns his hand to novel that works really well. Kind of weird and a bit creepy. Good horror noir.
Another author i have just never fancied for some reason...Dickens.I never really got Dickens. I mean, as a prose stylist yes. Nobody can craft an English sentence like he could: see for example the opening paragraphs of Bleak House. But I was never able to give a sh*t about any of his characters or plots.
... So Dickens first up and just read The Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations and....wowzer. I guess that's why they are called classics.
Also any recommendations for British classics for when i've got through a good proportion of Dickens'?Jane Austen. Brilliant.
On another note for all you SF addicts...Lord of Light by Zelazny...a must read.:agree:
Jane Austen. Brilliant.
Jane Austen. Brilliant.
Agreed, an author whose style is so beguiling you'll catch yourself speaking in an arch C18th manner for weeks afterwards. PG Wodeshouse has a similar effect and a compilation of the Wooster short stories is recommended for some light relief.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is brilliant - another "so that's why it's called a classic" read. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is wonderful and thought provoking, the films are truly only half the story.
This thread does remind me though how little Dickens I've read... sad to say but I've been put off his best works by their length... I just don't have the leisure these days for books over 700 pages.
Jane Austen ... being arch and witty
Another author i have just never fancied for some reason...Dickens.
So, having in recent years got through most of the Russian/German/French classics i thought i'd better make a start on the British authors. So Dickens first up and just read The Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations and....wowzer. I guess that's why they are called classics.
GE in particular is a proper gem. I had never really heard or associated Dixens with comedy, but both books are at times proper laugh out loud funny. Black humour at its finest. So what are your favourite Dixens books that are must reads?
Also any recommendations for British classics for when i've got through a good proportion of Dickens'?
On another note for all you SF addicts...Lord of Light by Zelazny...a must read.
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyesky would be on my foreign classics, and whilst on the russian theme I've recently reread the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn and thought again it was amazing. I was always put off by Dickens as that's my surname, but thought Oliver Twist was passable - however there was a bit too much singing in it for my liking.
Best foreign classic - Madame Bovary, for too many reasons to explain.
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyesky would be on my foreign classics, and whilst on the russian theme I've recently reread the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn and thought again it was amazing. I was always put off by Dickens as that's my surname, but thought Oliver Twist was passable - however there was a bit too much singing in it for my liking.
I've only ever read 'Hard times' by Dickens and it was O.K. a bit full of caractures I recall.
Best foreign classic - Madame Bovary, for too many reasons to explain typ9ng on a phone.
I do like being Oliver twist though.
I've only ever read 'Hard times' by Dickens and it was O.K. a bit full of caractures I recall.
Interesting. I thought there were a lot of caricatures in Madame Bovary eg. the druggist. I thought it was extremely well-written, and felt the theme rang very true. But I just couldn't sympathise with Madame Bovary herself. Maybe that's the point, but I never rate a novel as highly if I just don't like the main character in any way.The last few years I've read all of Thomas Hardy and books about trees and woodlands, and Silas Marner by George Elliot. Struggling for time to devote to envelop myself in books to be honest, what with driving to work instead of using public transport, children staying awake past 9pm and the tiny bedtime window being so small I don't get beyond a couple of pages...
I don't like Jane Eyre. I don't recognise humans as having emotions that are so overblown and consuming yet so well-articulated. I don't find it realistic and so I can't believe in the characters. Then I start to just see them as transparent agents of the story or means to convey the author's moral or message. I find this annoying and it stops me enjoying the book.
A previous colleague of mine (commercial manager in an IT consultancy - shows what an arts degree can manifest in career wise ?!?!) did her Masters thesis on how the role and character of a translator can influence a novel or text.
As a Kindle owner, this is why I never read the freely available ebook classics as most are really bad translations or reproductions that go nowhere near the original.
As a Kindle owner, this is why I never read the freely available ebook classics as most are really bad translations or reproductions that go nowhere near the original.
Notes From underground - Dostoevsky
Ashes & Diamonds - Jerzy Andrzejewski
Starting "...Ivan Denisovich" next, and very much looking forward to it.
Can anyone recommend any sci fi with a political/philosophical bent? Apart from the culture (rip) or Alastair thingy?
Can anyone recommend any sci fi with a political/philosophical bent? Apart from the culture (rip) or Alastair thingy?
Can anyone recommend any sci fi with a political/philosophical bent? Apart from the culture (rip) or Alastair thingy?
Can anyone recommend any sci fi with a political/philosophical bent? Apart from the culture (rip) or Alastair thingy?
Not read any myself but M John Harrison's recent output sounds like it would fit the bill. His previous works include Climbers, the second-best climbing novel of all time, which I can recommend.
Can anyone recommend any sci fi with a political/philosophical bent? Apart from the culture (rip) or Alastair thingy?
Duma suggested Le Guin - I remember the Dispossessed in particular being pretty good.
Can anyone recommend any sci fi with a political/philosophical bent? Apart from the culture (rip) or Alastair thingy?
:agree:
I always forget about Climbers. What a great read, halcyon days.....
Read no decent novels for ages then two arrive in quick succession. Just finished John Lanchester's Capital, a big fat satire on modern London life set around 2008. My start position with the book was "oh no, yet another clueless writer moralising about the financial crisis" but John Lanchester has done his research and the book is anyway about much more: how Britain deals with asylum seekers and terrorist suspects, conceptual art, east european builders and nannies, atomised families, money-vs-happiness and much more. The character treated least sympathetically is a banker's stay-at-home wife with a monstrous entitlement complex ... I've observed a lot of these down the years and the stereotype is nailed perfectly.
Can anyone recommend any sci fi with a political/philosophical bent? Apart from the culture (rip) or Alastair thingy?
The People's Tragedy - Orlando Figes. Probably the finest narrative history of the Russian Revolution yet written, a huge masterpiece.
I've not read this but have already recommended (probably more than once) the same author's The Whisperers and Just Send me Word, both about the reality of living in Stalin's Russia.
Just ordered Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersch (Throwing Muses) following a recommend on Radio 6.
Super SYKED for this - one of my all time favourite singer\songwriters........
Sorry should have mentioned, yes I'd read all of Barker's stuff up until Sacrament, I did quite like the scale and the dark fantasy elements, esp in the Arts, Weaveworld, and Imajica.
Into the Silence - Wade Davis. A history of the early attempts on Everest culminating in Mallory and Irvine's fateful attempt. The book is a study of the effect that the horrors of the First World War had on mountaineers' attitude to risk in the high places of the world. I found it very interesting although I plodded through it pretty slowly. Although I'm pretty familiar with the political and military fiascos of WW1, seeing stats of how mountaineering clubs were decimated was really shocking. Juxtapose these with quotes from generals etc and you get a feeling for this book.
American Tabloid - James Elroy. Haven't finished this yet but I'm pretty impressed with it so far. Cool, witty, violent, racy, utterly cynical.
American Tabloid - James Elroy. Haven't finished this yet but I'm pretty impressed with it so far. Cool, witty, violent, racy, utterly cynical.
Probably my favourite book of all time. I remember reading it for the first time when I was 17 and literally reading through the night - I read from 7pm to 7am and then had to go to school.
Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series: I read about 6 of these in a row because once I'd started it was hard to read any other books.....
American Tabloid - James Elroy. Haven't finished this yet but I'm pretty impressed with it so far. Cool, witty, violent, racy, utterly cynical.
Probably my favourite book of all time. I remember reading it for the first time when I was 17 and literally reading through the night - I read from 7pm to 7am and then had to go to school.
I agree. I assume you've read The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover, the last two parts of the America trilogy.
Has anyone used worldofbooks.com? I've just ordered a couple of classics (via amazon) but was wondering if it's best to go direct with worldofbooks? Prices seem cheaper and I'd rather amazon didn't get any more of my money...
We read it to each other...well, she mainly reads it to me as I'm rubbish at reading out loud
Just finished 'The Pike', Lucy Hughes-Hallett's biography of the Italian poet, politician and serial womaniser Gabriele d'Annunzio. A seriously good book about a truly appalling character - worthy winner of the Johnson Prize this year.
Just finished 'The Pike', Lucy Hughes-Hallett's biography of the Italian poet, politician and serial womaniser Gabriele d'Annunzio.
That sounds great.
Just finished 'The Pike', Lucy Hughes-Hallett's biography of the Italian poet, politician and serial womaniser Gabriele d'Annunzio.
That sounds great.
My read-of-the-year so far although Barbara Tuchmann's 'A Distant Mirror' is shaping up as a late challenger.
Nice history list, any suggestions for Ottoman empire books?
Have you read 'Empire of the steppes' by Grousset which is another 600 odd-page sweep through the early history of central Asia and the roots of the Turkish people. Academic in parts but one to take your time on, recommended if you like that sort of thing.
Good work DaveC.
Nice history list, any suggestions for Ottoman empire books?I know of three quite different single volume histories of the Ottoman Empire:
1. The Ottoman Empire by Lord Kinross. An old classic work but still a great read and more recent works don't really have much to add.
Nice history list, any suggestions for Ottoman empire books?
I love Dalyrmple. If you haven't read it 'Age of Kali' is worth your time.
I love Dalyrmple.
First two books of the year:
Patrick Leigh-Fermor, A Time of Gifts. I've been aware of Leigh-Fermor for a long time. In 1932, aged 18, he walked from Rotterdam to Constantinople. AToG is the first of three books recounting this walk and has a stellar reputation - which it totally deserves; an almost visionary, very erudite, and entrancing read.
First two books of the year:
Patrick Leigh-Fermor, A Time of Gifts. I've been aware of Leigh-Fermor for a long time. In 1932, aged 18, he walked from Rotterdam to Constantinople. AToG is the first of three books recounting this walk and has a stellar reputation - which it totally deserves; an almost visionary, very erudite, and entrancing read.
Andy, my sister has just read all three books in succession and reckons the third book (released posthumously last year I think) is a little weaker than the first two (she found the ending a bit...meh!) but still well worth it.
I read it last year and was very impressed; very bleak as everyone says. But did anyone else think it copped out a bit at the very end? It seemed to offer a tiny chink of light that jarred for me.A hard story to end maybe, whatever the tone?
Finally tackled The Road ... the long winter nights here are pretty quiet and lonely, so it was easy to sink into the mood of the thing.
Finally tackled The Road ... the long winter nights here are pretty quiet and lonely, so it was easy to sink into the mood of the thing.
I read most of The Road in a single night, in a compound in a mountainous and remote part of Afghanistan. No electricity, very dark, totally quiet. Going out to pee I felt like the last person on earth. Perfect.
Blood Meridian is also good. Alas, his stories are essentially about men chasing each other, but you read them for the mood and the setting rather than the plot.
Last night I finished Nevil Shute's 'On the Beach.' I couldn't say what my idea of him was but I think I've always had the wrong idea about Shute. I thought 'On the Beach' a very good book. Heartbreaking. Has anyone read any of Shute's other books?
There's also that bonding-with-your-son thing that runs through it.You mean trips to A&E?
Classic books that I dislike often seem to have the same element: that is characters that feel so wildly and extravagantly that I cannot recognise their behaviour as consistent with what I have observed in real life.
Is Blood Meridian written in the same style? What do other people think about the style?
Last night I finished Nevil Shute's 'On the Beach.' I couldn't say what my idea of him was but I think I've always had the wrong idea about Shute. I thought 'On the Beach' a very good book. Heartbreaking. Has anyone read any of Shute's other books?
Andy recommended this to me last week and I couldn't keep my nose out of it. Best book I've read in years. However this comes with a very real health warning. Finished it last night and then had a fitful night's sleep. Then moped around a great deal today, requiring regular hugs. Was eventually sent out to the wall to cheer myself up which I succeeded at. It really is heart wrenching in every respect but utterly compelling throughout.
I've just read Frankenstein, more out of curiosity than in real expectation. But this is a seriously good book, and suprisingly modern in many ways.
I've just read Frankenstein, more out of curiosity than in real expectation. But this is a seriously good book, and suprisingly modern in many ways.
Agreed - I've taken to listening to old classics when I'm driving to Wales and apart from being irritated by dodgy accents that change every chapter, I've been quite impressed by what I've listened too. Bram Stoker's Dracula stood out for some reason too.
Ditto, turns out I had no idea at all what Frankenstein was about. I'll be really interested what you make of 'Last Man'.
Recent reads:
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco - absolutely brilliant, I thought. Beautifully written, nice little story, lots of theology, philosophy and history of an interesting period. Maybe a bit of a contrived ending is the only sour note for me. Strongly recommended to fans of historical fiction or just good novels.
If anyone has any suggestions for good books mixing history, fiction, theology, philosophy....
The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers. Early spy novel from 1903. I enjoyed the narrative voice on this one - I like when the narrator initially starts out a bit dislikeable and sort of comes good because of their experiences in the book. Perhaps quite a prescient novel as foreshadowed German Imperial ambitions a long while ahead of war; but the plot to a modern reader seems completely unrealistic. Then I read that in 1910 two guys were inspired by the novel and spied on German military instalations off the East Frisia coast just by sailing their yacht about. So it's a snapshot of a different, more innocent world.
Don Quixote - I am struggling through this at the moment. There are parts that I'm finding amusing in a slapstick way, but I'm not laughing out loud. In my view it's improved a lot after the first section, which is essentially setting Don Quixote up as a character / stereotype from that era. It's moved onto the sort of stuff that might have formed the basis for a Shakespearean comedy, I'm finding it more palatable. Anyone got any views on this book, is it worth persevering with?
If anyone has any suggestions for good books mixing history, fiction, theology, philosophy....
Ditto, turns out I had no idea at all what Frankenstein was about. I'll be really interested what you make of 'Last Man'.
Just started this - I'll stick it in the post when I'm finished if you like?
fried - it might seem a bit of an off the wall suggestion, especially if you have the usual *geek alert* alarm when some one mentions science fiction
If anyone has any suggestions for good books mixing history, fiction, theology, philosophy....
Neal Stephensons The Baroque Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle) Trilogy of books Quicksilver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(novel)), The Confusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confusion) and The System of the World (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_the_World_(novel)).
I also enjoyed his earlier book Snow Crash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash) which covers linguistics, philosophy, theology, politics, computer science and pizza delivery.
Been thinking I should try to read some Canadian fiction,
And on the theme of German imperial ambitions (and more) I'm currently getting stuck into Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 and I'm learning a great deal. Very dense but fluidly written.
And on the theme of German imperial ambitions (and more) I'm currently getting stuck into Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 and I'm learning a great deal. Very dense but fluidly written.
Spooky! Just got started on this myself and agree with your early assessment.
BTW, I also thoroughly recommend his earlier history of the rise and fall of Prussia, "The Iron Kingdom." Superbly written history.
I've been reading but there's not that much that's really hooked me apart from:
Wolves: Simon Ings. Disturbing contemporary fiction. Vaguely sci-fi in a Ballardian/Burroughs sense. Found it hard to put down and it gave me bad dreams.
Meades has written his autobiography.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's recent death gave me the push I needed to at last get round to reading him, starting with One Hundred Years of Solitude. And I hate it ... trite and incredibly boring (I'm over half way and will finish). Am I the only one?
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's recent death gave me the push I needed to at last get round to reading him, starting with One Hundred Years of Solitude. And I hate it ... trite and incredibly boring (I'm over half way and will finish). Am I the only one?
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's recent death gave me the push I needed to at last get round to reading him, starting with One Hundred Years of Solitude. And I hate it ... trite and incredibly boring (I'm over half way and will finish). Am I the only one?
Me too. Didn't get far with Midnight's Children either. Evidently not cut out for classic contemporary lit.
Me too. Didn't get far with Midnight's Children either. Evidently not cut out for classic contemporary lit.
I love both Midnight's Children and 100 Years...
Quick question, to see if a theory of mine holds: have any of you guys who disliked these novels been to a non-western country? (I'm thinking more than a quick business trip or working on a Nigerian oil rig...)
Another recent read that left me speechless "Stoner" written in the late sixties (but not what you'd think from the title and the times). A quiet reflection on an average life, in an average place, struggling to achieve and maintain mediocrity.
A bit like my climbing career really.
Me too. Didn't get far with Midnight's Children either. Evidently not cut out for classic contemporary lit.
I love both Midnight's Children and 100 Years...
Quick question, to see if a theory of mine holds: have any of you guys who disliked these novels been to a non-western country? (I'm thinking more than a quick business trip or working on a Nigerian oil rig...)
I've not read Rushdie. In fact I can come up with a long list of people I 'should' but haven't read ... Don Delillo,
I've not read Rushdie. In fact I can come up with a long list of people I 'should' but haven't read ... Don Delillo,
I fought my way through Underworld on the recommendation of a friend whose opinion I respected, desperately hoping the whole way that something I could give a shit about was going to happen at some point. Spoiler Alert: it didn't.
I just read the passage about Remedios the Beautiful levitating away last night. My question was rhetorical really. I get (presume) it's meant to be allegorical but find it banal.
I just read the passage about Remedios the Beautiful levitating away last night. My question was rhetorical really. I get (presume) it's meant to be allegorical but find it banal.
I loved Garcia Marquez, Murakami and their ilk when I was younger. I think that, as I've gotten older, my cynicism has grown and limited my ability to appreciate magic realism, to the point where I will refuse to read almost anything with a magic realist bent.
I just read the passage about Remedios the Beautiful levitating away last night. My question was rhetorical really. I get (presume) it's meant to be allegorical but find it banal.
I've not read Rushdie. In fact I can come up with a long list of people I 'should' but haven't read; Mario Vargas Llosa, Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, John Updike, Martin Amis, Joseph Heller, Gunter Grass. I've decided that basically life is too short.
Is Animal Farm better?
Fourth: Trainspotting I've seen the film a few times but never read the book before. I'm sure it's a challenge for non-sots to read, but I think it's much better than the film in many ways. I sometimes find it hard to figure out who the main character is at any point though...
Is Animal Farm better?
All Orwell books are equal, but some are more equal than others. :clown:
Is Animal Farm better?
All Orwell books are equal, but some are more equal than others. :clown:
I much, much prefer his 'realist' fiction, especially 'Coming Up for Air,' which is really worth reading. Burmese Days and Keep the Aspidistra Flying are also good.
And any recommendations for books on the French resistance....
Andy - the second one is exhausting. Felt like I was OD'ing myself... Absolutely brilliant.
Erndt Junger's Storm of Steel is another extraordinary personal WW1 memoir. A challenging counterpoint and companion to Remarque's book.
That does sound good.lI'm enjoying it a lot even though It does sometimes make me want to go live in the woods. It was recommended by an old tutor who does some work in the area (philosophical interest in the possibility of changes to the human condition). Partly as a result of his influence, the piece I'm currently writing will suggest transhuman alteration as a possible mechanism for moral enhancement*, specifically by (perhaps partly) doing away with our dispositions to reactive attitudes - attitudes of e.g praise and blame which we have in response to others**. These RAs underpin desert and I'm claiming that they should be undermined so as to do away with the evils of desert (e.g retribution and pseudo-meritocracy).
Accelerando http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando)
Follows 3 gens of a family through a technological singularity (a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity)
Brilliant stuff if you're into that kind of thing.
Accelerando http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando)
Follows 3 gens of a family through a technological singularity (a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity)
Brilliant stuff if you're into that kind of thing.
Accelerando http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando)
Follows 3 gens of a family through a technological singularity (a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity)
Brilliant stuff if you're into that kind of thing.
Read this. The style was hugely annoying at first with a relentless barrage of the trendiest of cyberpunk cliches (obligatory rise-to-power of insignificant countries / cultures / fashions, liberal kinky sex, "meatspace", "wetware", obscure internisms etc etc), and basically made me wish the world had stopped before William Gibson was born. BUT it moved entertainingly enough and the characters were likeable enough that I kept going and it got better and more captivating throughout. The whole economics-ish aspect and some of the terminology still grate a bit, but the scope of the story, the way it progresses (especially as technology advances) and in particular intertwines the different perspectives and characters is rather good. So thanks for that!
Edit: Just started reading the Wiki out of curiosity, I think the book's origins as short stories explains my main flaw about the early aspects (ramming the world / culture down your throat), but also one of the main positives of the book overall (interesting snapshots covering a substantial amount of time).
Just started Wolves (on a UKB recommendation tip at the mo), quite bleak so far...
Fourth: Trainspotting I've seen the film a few times but never read the book before. I'm sure it's a challenge for non-sots to read, but I think it's much better than the film in many ways. I sometimes find it hard to figure out who the main character is at any point though...
In the book there isn't really one. Mark Renton is portrayed as the main charcter in the film, but I don't think there really is one in the book. I just finished Skagheads the prequel to Trainspotting, and thought it was a better book, worth checking out if you want a long read.
Fourth: Trainspotting I've seen the film a few times but never read the book before. I'm sure it's a challenge for non-sots to read, but I think it's much better than the film in many ways. I sometimes find it hard to figure out who the main character is at any point though...
In the book there isn't really one. Mark Renton is portrayed as the main charcter in the film, but I don't think there really is one in the book. I just finished Skagheads the prequel to Trainspotting, and thought it was a better book, worth checking out if you want a long read.
I read Skagboys (get it right Chris!)
Jasper where have you been? I've been worriedLiving the high life of course.
Hard Times - Dickens - another book that's more a polemic than a novel, but with some good observations of characters and damning depiction of Industrialised Britain. I liked it, will have to read some more Dickens again now and give him another chance after writing him off as overly sentimental in the past.
He could craft an English prose sentence like nobody else - see e.g. opening passage of Bleak House (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm) - but generally I rate Jane Austen higher.
If you can read only English, start on Fielding. There you have a solid foundation. His language is neigther strait-laced nor all trimmings.
After which I suppose one should recommend Miss Jane Austen. And that makes almost the list, i.e.:
The list of things safe to read an hour before you start writing, as distinct from the books a non-writing reader can peruse for enjoyment.
Books of late.
After the Charles Stross recommendation on here I plumped for "The Atrocity Archive" a modern Cthuluhu mythos black comedy. Entertaining but a bit too "Hail fellow well met" farty real ale fan sci-fi. After this though I was directed by the author to Declare by Tim Powers, this has a similar premise with intelligence agencies dealing with occult forces. However, this is a really great book that weaves the life of Kim Philby, WWII and the Cold War into quite a strange and unsettling work of speculative fiction. Its a bit like Neil Stephenson's "Cryptonomican" in pace and and style.. Really enjoyed it.
...
Now a third of the way into Perfidia by James Ellroy.. I was pretty excited when this came out a couple of weeks ago as it's the first in (another) trilogy but this time as a precursor to the LA Quartet. It's fucking brilliant...
a bit too "Hail fellow well met" farty real ale fan sci-fi
Julian May - The Many Coloured Land / Exiles / Book1 / whatfuckingever.
Interesting premise of several thousand humans from a heavily developed / galactic colonised 22nd century being sent back to the Pliocene era 6 million years ago and discovering an alien race are already there. Very firmly degenerates into semi-confusing, extremely flowery and badly over-written turgid fantasy conflict.
If you like sharp, modern, well-written fantasy, I'd pick up a paperback copy of
Julian May - The Many Coloured Land / Exiles / Book1 / whatfuckingever.
Interesting premise of several thousand humans from a heavily developed / galactic colonised 22nd century being sent back to the Pliocene era 6 million years ago and discovering an alien race are already there. Very firmly degenerates into semi-confusing, extremely flowery and badly over-written turgid fantasy conflict. If you like sharp, modern, well-written fantasy, I'd pick up a paperback copy of this and wipe your arse with it instead of reading.
Magician by Raymond E. Feist
I've crawled through Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. I began by enjoying this but ended up frustrated and a little bored. After the Garcia Marquez debacle I've decided I'm simply uninterested in anything fantastical (except Mervyn Peake).
I enjoyed Magician (maybe a bit long though!) and have some more of the Riftwar Saga books in my "to read at some point" pile. Are they worth bothering with or not?
Andy - I started Knausgaard yesterday. Been reading reviews and praise for the last few years so decided to take the plunge. Was gripped from the first few pages. Extraordinary.
Now racing towards the end of The Broken Road, the last in the series describing Patrick Leigh Fermor's walk across Europe in 1933
Now racing towards the end of The Broken Road, the last in the series describing Patrick Leigh Fermor's walk across Europe in 1933
How is it? I have been saving that one after really enjoying the others. I believe it was unfinished and was pieced together after his death?
I have recently enjoyed Stoner by John Williams. Thought it was fantastic and much better than his other novels. Butchers Crossing was good but for me a poor man's Cormac McCarthy (Border trilogy - which is amazing). Augustus seemed really well researched but not that engrossing, probably because of the format (letters).
And any recommendations for books on the French resistance....
I've just realised that I have finished over 20 books since I last posted any of my own reading on here.
I've just realised that I have finished over 20 books since I last posted any of my own reading on here.
Slacker.
Just read an interesting popular history. The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power and the Seeds of Empire by Joe Jackson tells the story of Heny Wickham's 'theft' of 70,000 seeds for rubber trees from Brazil, laying the foundations for the rubber plantation industry of Asia. Its a rip-roaring adventure (Wickham was one of the most hapless, ridiculous characters ever) but also a fascinating portrait of the creation of a global commodity, mixing in economics, ecology and politics.
I've just realised that I have finished over 20 books since I last posted any of my own reading on here.
Slacker.
Just read an interesting popular history. The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power and the Seeds of Empire by Joe Jackson tells the story of Heny Wickham's 'theft' of 70,000 seeds for rubber trees from Brazil, laying the foundations for the rubber plantation industry of Asia. Its a rip-roaring adventure (Wickham was one of the most hapless, ridiculous characters ever) but also a fascinating portrait of the creation of a global commodity, mixing in economics, ecology and politics.
I liked the sound of this and got it on Kindle. Perfect commuting reading, easy to read boys-own-stuff, never dull and continually illuminating about a period of history I knew absolutely nothing (and should know more). Thanks for the heads up.
Andy - I started Knausgaard yesterday. Been reading reviews and praise for the last few years so decided to take the plunge. Was gripped from the first few pages. Extraordinary.
Enjoyed The Martian by Andy Weir. Was given this to read and initially slightly turned my nose up at it - it's endorsed by the 'Richard and Judy Book Club'. Once I got into it I really liked it. It's basically hard sci-fi written like a thriller, with lots of profanity and randomness. Like many thrillers, I did get a bit tired of all the plot twists, but they are all based on the author's interpretation of how life might be for an astronaut stranded in the harsh Martian environment. He's a proper space-geek and it all seemed pretty plausible to me.
Also reading The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. Good and dark as his other stuff. I do find I have to have breaks from this though as it's so bleak and disillusioning. Feels like I'm wading through the filthy detritus of someone else's mind. Scares me beyond telling that it's all based on a real murder. Sometimes I think I like to keep my illusions.
Glad you're enjoying the Knausgaard the_dom. The first is probably (no, definitely) the bleakest of the first three.
Funnily enough, I find this one of his weakest books - there's all the bleakness and harshness with none of the grand sense of context and history that his best writing (i.e. The American Underground Trilogy) incorporates brilliantly. The first time I read this, I had flu and had nightmares so vivid that they almost put me off the book.
You guys might like this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Annihilation-Southern-Reach-Trilogy-VanderMeer/dp/0007550715/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1421170310&sr=8-3&keywords=southern+reach (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Annihilation-Southern-Reach-Trilogy-VanderMeer/dp/0007550715/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1421170310&sr=8-3&keywords=southern+reach)
Jeff Vander Meer - Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy)
It's pretty much as if the ghost of Iain Banks came back to haunt Adam Roberts, beat him with a large stick until he stopped putting such annoying characters in his novels, and they teamed up to write a subtle, dislocated, psychological thriller inspired by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game...
You guys might like this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Annihilation-Southern-Reach-Trilogy-VanderMeer/dp/0007550715/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1421170310&sr=8-3&keywords=southern+reach (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Annihilation-Southern-Reach-Trilogy-VanderMeer/dp/0007550715/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1421170310&sr=8-3&keywords=southern+reach)
Jeff Vander Meer - Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy)
It's pretty much as if the ghost of Iain Banks came back to haunt Adam Roberts, beat him with a large stick until he stopped putting such annoying characters in his novels, and they teamed up to write a subtle, dislocated, psychological thriller inspired by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game...
Finished this trilogy. You guys who like unreal fiction / subtle sci-fi need to get on this, I'm sure it would be worth a look for people like Falling Down. It's low-key, mysterious, and creepy.
Ticked Kerouac's On the Road in pretty short order while on leave from work. Some of the language seems odd now but it is an interesting portrait of a certain time and place written in a fascinating style.
Ticked Kerouac's On the Road in pretty short order while on leave from work. Some of the language seems odd now but it is an interesting portrait of a certain time and place written in a fascinating style.
I liked On the Road but I though that The Dharma Bums was a better and more developed elucidation on the same theme/topic. I liked the characters and story trajectory more.
Ticked Kerouac's On the Road in pretty short order while on leave from work. Some of the language seems odd now but it is an interesting portrait of a certain time and place written in a fascinating style.
Jagged Red Line by Nick Williams.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jagged-Red-Line-ebook/dp/B009T8XBD2 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jagged-Red-Line-ebook/dp/B009T8XBD2)
This is quite a book.
I knew Nick as we were at Leeds University Mountaineering Club together in the early 90's - and in 93 he went off to Ukraine as part of his course and spent a considerable part of it climbing (esp the final summer there..). When he returned there were grim tales of a horrible climbing accident, people he was climbing with fell and perished - and what followed were even grimmer sounding hints of a epic overland journey - with a body - back from the 'stans' to Kiev. Only with a beer (of several) in hand and with a look that switched from intense/manic to distant he sometimes let on what happened over there. With good reason, as it was clearly a horrendous experience...
Nearly 20 years later on, I found (via Facebook) that Nick has penned his account of his experiences and its up on Amazon as a self published book. It starts as an autobiographical travel tale - relating the quirks, oddities and ways of post communist Ukraine - then as Nick forges links and friendships with climbers it moves into a climbing travel book - until the tragedy and its ramifications unfolds. I found it one of the most moving mountaineering books I have read - it is funny, incredibly sad, touching in highs and lows. Superbly written with a very clever and moving shift in tense from first to third person. I'm probably biased - knowing Nick many years ago - but the incredible tale, the comeradeship forged and the hardships encountered and overcame made this a truly compelling read. I can't reccomend it enough.
One of the interpretations that most astounded/fascinated me was that the national distribution/demographic of Tory voters vs Labour now closely corresponds with the national distribution/demographic of Anglican vs Dissenter religious views in early centuries. There was definitely a feeling in the book that like it or not our political attitudes, conscious or unconscious, are deeply shaped by the religious past of our country.
For the Knausgaard fans out there:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-travels-through-america.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-travels-through-america.html)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaards-passage-through-america.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaards-passage-through-america.html)
Fiend I read Annihilation and enjoyed it. Very Lovecraft... Going to read the other three parts. Thanks for the recommendation.
Great stuff. That Norman Davies book sounds really good. Have you read Michael Moorcock's "Colonel Pyatt Quartet"? it opened up a big chunk of missing Prussian/Russian and Asian/East European history for me and was really entertaining, albeit through the eyes of a Jewish yet anti-Semitic unreliable narrator.
Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto. Writer of True Detective's first novel. A gritty sun-boiled noir journey through the Deep South. A mob fixer/enforcer learns he has lung cancer and ends up in a right mess of what was supposed to be a simple job. On the run into Louisiana with a young prostitute events unfold and get really difficult. A proper holiday book.
Don't expect tales of derring-do on the cliffs
Galveston[/b] by Nic Pizzolatto.
My favourite Peter Carey are Oscar and Lucinda and the The True history of the Kelly Gang. Thanks for the reminder about him, I see he has a couple of new books out since I last looked although the reviews are a bit mixed.
QuoteDon't expect tales of derring-do on the cliffs
Although there are some great bits - the 'you live dangerously pal' route on the Ben is about the best described bit of winter climbing I've read, all too familiar.
Chris - Peter Carey a writer I've never read but keep meaning to do will add to THE LIST. Hams - I enjoyed The Sportswriter, similar to John Updike's "Rabbit" quartet of brilliant every-man existentialist novels so will try Canada. Thanks both for taking time to write up.
The best Peter Carey of read, of approx five total, is Oscar and Lucinda. It's got all the panache/swagger of, for example, Theft but is the most complete and well rounded of his that I've read.
The best Peter Carey of read, of approx five total, is Oscar and Lucinda. It's got all the panache/swagger of, for example, Theft but is the most complete and well rounded of his that I've read.
Good stuff, thanks. May plump for that over Kelly Gang for my next Carey read then.
Falling Down - just took delivery of The Sportwriter so looking forward to it.
Moose - appreciate the write up on Heller. Have re-read Catch 22 often and found it very moving, but always worried that I'd 'break the spell' by reading his other stuff. May have to branch out! I read Rabbit, Run a few years ago and found it a bit forced, but I wonder now if it might be better to tough it out and try the whole quartet as a single large novel. Rabbit, Run is easy enough reading for the sake of completeness.
Just finished Sugar Street, the final volume of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy - a marvellous set of books following one Egyptian family across the tumultuous first half of the C20th. A must for anyone who enjoys multi-volume novels.
Obviously I'm feeling in need of escapism at the moment because I re-read Dune by Frank Herbert. I think this is an absolutely stonking novel and I'd say definitely my favourite of the sci-fi genre. Swirlingly complex and many layered, it's a pretty classic story arc with a very unusual treatment. I love it. But having previously read one of the sequels, I'm not inclined to read any of the rest of the series. I feel it will let me down, and rather would rest with this apogee of Herbert's work.
The Baroque Cycle on the contrary made me a massive fan of Stephenson, which was confirmed when I read Cryptonomicon. Absolute belter of a novel. Psyched to check out more of his work.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poisonwood-Bible-Barbara-Kingsolver-ebook/dp/B002RI91MG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434449138&sr=1-1&keywords=%27the+poisonwood+bible%27
Has anyone reads this? I've had it recommended to me by a few people, but I'm struggling to persevere after a few chapters, and thinking of bailing before I commit and have to stick it out to reach the chains.
I appreciated this one (http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/06/26/anakana-schofield/diseases-incident-to-literary-and-sedentary-persons/)
I've been reading Seveneves, Neal Stephenson's new novel. In my typical fashion, I started it, read about 100 pages, got a little bored, read something else, then came back to it and am in the process of devouring it. It's safe to say that if you have enjoyed his recent books (Anathem, Reamde), you'll probably enjoy this one. It's much more punchy than the phenomenal but occasionally rambling Baroque Cycle trilogy, which I know put some people off his writing.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poisonwood-Bible-Barbara-Kingsolver-ebook/dp/B002RI91MG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434449138&sr=1-1&keywords=%27the+poisonwood+bible%27
Has anyone reads this? I've had it recommended to me by a few people, but I'm struggling to persevere after a few chapters, and thinking of bailing before I commit and have to stick it out to reach the chains.
Yes, I really liked it and have recommended it to others. The first Kingsolver I read ('Pigs in Heaven' I think) was reluctantly picked up in a hotel lobby when I'd run out of holiday reading. I was probably a bit sceptical, but she's a good, thoughtful writer. I thought 'The Poisonwood Bible' had quite a strong, compelling narrative ... I'd say it gets quite gripping really, I wanted to know what would happen to the characters.
Cowardice, A Brief History – Chris Walsh
Not just a history of Cowardice but a look at what Cowardice actually is and how perspectives have changed over the course of the last century.
Cowardice, A Brief History – Chris Walsh
Not just a history of Cowardice but a look at what Cowardice actually is and how perspectives have changed over the course of the last century.
Might be interesting to read this against 'Fear: A Cultural History' by Joanna Bourke, though fear and cowardice are not the same thing. Bourke has also written histories of pain, rape and killing (I'm sure she's an absolute hoot at parties). I haven't read any of her books but her papers can be very good.
Uncommon Carriers – John McPhee
John McPhee is one of my favourite writers about America and this is a fine example of his work. Made up of a series of long essays about different aspects of the freight transport industry in the U.S. He writes about experiences travelling by road, river and rail but throws in a chapter on the college in France where captains go to learn how to really control the huge tankers and container ships they are in charge of and another on his re-enacting Thoreau’s wanderings on the waterways of his native Massachussetts in the 19th century. It is a fabulous book and close to being my favourite read of the year so far.
Oooh this sounds great, just ordered, thanks for the tip.Uncommon Carriers – John McPhee
John McPhee is one of my favourite writers about America and this is a fine example of his work. Made up of a series of long essays about different aspects of the freight transport industry in the U.S. He writes about experiences travelling by road, river and rail but throws in a chapter on the college in France where captains go to learn how to really control the huge tankers and container ships they are in charge of and another on his re-enacting Thoreau’s wanderings on the waterways of his native Massachussetts in the 19th century. It is a fabulous book and close to being my favourite read of the year so far.
This looks particularly interesting.
Just finished Sugar Street, the final volume of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy - a marvellous set of books following one Egyptian family across the tumultuous first half of the C20th. A must for anyone who enjoys multi-volume novels.
That looks great Andy, just ordered it. Thanks for posting
I recently just finished reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces) and it is probably one of the funniest books i have ever read. Very sad at times too. I would highly recommended it, although i suspect it is not to everyones taste.God damn it! This post reminded me how great it is, and my copy seems to have gone awol at some point in the last ten years.
Just finished go set a watchman, not in the same league as mockingbird. Atticus is dead to me now.
I recently just finished reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole and it is probably one of the funniest books i have ever read. Very sad at times too. I would highly recommended it, although i suspect it is not to everyones taste.
I recently just finished reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces) and it is probably one of the funniest books i have ever read. Very sad at times too. I would highly recommended it, although i suspect it is not to everyones taste.
Just finished go set a watchman, not in the same league as mockingbird. Atticus is dead to me now.
I'm really nervous about ever reading it. You've completely put me off now.
Just finished go set a watchman, not in the same league as mockingbird. Atticus is dead to me now.
I'm really nervous about ever reading it. You've completely put me off now.
I've read it now and I'm choosing to deal with it in the way that I believe some others are. That is, to treat Watchman as an alternate book set 20 years later in an alternative Maycomb. If you look at the controversy around the book's release then this approach seems to add up.
The writing of Watchman is quite sloppy and reads very much like a first draft. A thoroughly inferior version of events to Mockingbird.
Just finished go set a watchman, not in the same league as mockingbird. Atticus is dead to me now.
I'm really nervous about ever reading it. You've completely put me off now.
I've read it now and I'm choosing to deal with it in the way that I believe some others are. That is, to treat Watchman as an alternate book set 20 years later in an alternative Maycomb. If you look at the controversy around the book's release then this approach seems to add up.
The writing of Watchman is quite sloppy and reads very much like a first draft. A thoroughly inferior version of events to Mockingbird.
I haven't read it but suspect that Ursula K Le Guin's review is quite a bit better than the book...
http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/08/03/a-personal-take-on-go-set-a-watchman/
QuoteI recently just finished reading "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole and it is probably one of the funniest books i have ever read. Very sad at times too. I would highly recommended it, although i suspect it is not to everyones taste.
That's interesting. After the initial description of Ignatius which made me laugh, I got fed up with it really quickly. It seemed to just consist of people complaining, with various degrees of justification.
That said, it's a runner-up for best thing I've ever found on the Ceuse campsite Free Shelf. Nothing on that bottle of Polish vodka (wad-ka) though.
Just finished The English and their History by Robert Tombs having been put onto it by FD's mention of it above.
Wow. I thought this was an absolutely wonderful tour of English history and a very thoughtful exploration of what it means to be English - what values are deemed as English, why, what has changed, what has remained the same.
I got a sense of shibboleth-busting in this book - the 'traditionally accepted' views were challenged again and again. I got the feeling that there was a lot of revisionist history written in the Marxist school from the 1960s onwards in the UK and that Professor Tombs was cutting against this as a new generation of academic.
One of the interpretations that most astounded/fascinated me was that the national distribution/demographic of Tory voters vs Labour now closely corresponds with the national distribution/demographic of Anglican vs Dissenter religious views in early centuries. There was definitely a feeling in the book that like it or not our political attitudes, conscious or unconscious, are deeply shaped by the religious past of our country.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poisonwood-Bible-Barbara-Kingsolver-ebook/dp/B002RI91MG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434449138&sr=1-1&keywords=%27the+poisonwood+bible%27
Has anyone reads this? I've had it recommended to me by a few people, but I'm struggling to persevere after a few chapters, and thinking of bailing before I commit and have to stick it out to reach the chains.
Yes, I really liked it and have recommended it to others. The first Kingsolver I read ('Pigs in Heaven' I think) was reluctantly picked up in a hotel lobby when I'd run out of holiday reading. I was probably a bit sceptical, but she's a good, thoughtful writer. I thought 'The Poisonwood Bible' had quite a strong, compelling narrative ... I'd say it gets quite gripping really, I wanted to know what would happen to the characters.
It seems to be quite a divisive book. I've spoken to a few people that loved and others that absolutely hated it. Guess you have to be able to identify with Ignatius on some level and agree with what he is rallying against. Although maybe not to the extreme that he does. I'm sure we've all watched something on TV just to get the satisfaction of thoroughly hating every moment of it. For me it is x-factor and those kind of shows. There is a perverse pleasure in watching a show like that and hating everything it stands for. Just like Ignatius at the cinema.
Or maybe I just like complaining. :-)
Read a few books on holiday which I'll summarise quickly:
Galveston - Nic Pizzolatto (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/books/review/Lehane-t.html?_r=0) - Recommended by FD as perfect holiday reading earlier in the thread. I concur. Having just finished watching the second series of True Detective, you can see where the sense of tension and creeping dread comes from. He's a very good writer.
Cartel: Don Winslow
A massive, MASSIVE sequel to Winslow's “The Power of the Dog” which picks up the story of America's "War on Drugs" straight from the ending of the first book. There's enough five star reviews in the papers and online that do better justice than I can here. Both are absolutely brilliant and as with the first one, I could not put this down.
Cartel: Don Winslow
A massive, MASSIVE sequel to Winslow's “The Power of the Dog” which picks up the story of America's "War on Drugs" straight from the ending of the first book. There's enough five star reviews in the papers and online that do better justice than I can here. Both are absolutely brilliant and as with the first one, I could not put this down.
I thought The Power of the Dog was amazing, and somehow missed this. Excited now.
The Odyssey: Homer (translated by Walter Shewring)
Well, I didn't expect it to be so entertaining and relatively easy to read. What a story about us all. I now see why Homer matters. Give it a try, it's fantastic.
Thanks FD, I'll put it on my list. I needed a new book quick and ended up going for DaveC's recommendation of Jonathan Sumption's Cursed Kings. I really want to get back into some fiction, but history's so much easier to read on public transport.All part of the service, it is a great piece of history writing. Astonishing that Sumption has been producing this series while becoming an outstanding barrister and now a Supreme Court judge!
I think I might be tied up for a while with this one....reads superbly so far. Cheers Dave.
Recent reads:
Shackleton's account of his epic Endurance voyage in South. Cracking real life adventure story, incredible just how tough those guys were and the conditions they endured. Shackleton must have been a hell of an inspiring leader to keep everyone from each others' throats on a ship trapped in an ice sheet for 6 months. One of the bits I liked the most was when Shackleton recounts how they shook hands four times over their voyage when they'd achieved something really significant eg. walked over a mountainous glaciated island to get to a whaling station and thereby save (a) their own lives and (b) the lives of twenty other men they'd left living in a boat/snow cave on a spit of shingle in the Antarctic. Warranted a handshake. Extraordinary.
Recent reads:
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.
The Rational Optimist. Just great. Touches on many topics but the central theme is how labour specialisation and trade in goods, services and ideas have inexorably raised human living standards throughout history (and why economic pessimism is fashionable but almost always wrong). If any of you soft-lefty types can stomach reading just one book that challenges your confirmation bias, make it this one.
If any of you soft-lefty types can stomach reading just one book that challenges your confirmation bias, make it this one.
Then I read the section on the last 30 years. This felt like an extended Telegraph leader. The one topic I have a slight scholarly knowledge of - health economics - was way off the mark in my view. It made me question the rest of the book.
Big recommendation: English Passengers by Matthew Kneale. Fantastic - C18 set tale of (amongst other things) a smuggler's voyage to Tasmania and the early settlement of the place. Skips from proper funny comedy to man's-inhumanity-to-his-fellow-man without missing a beat.
Big recommendation for anyone who likes intelligent fantasy/sci-fi is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.
Big recommendation for anyone who likes intelligent fantasy/sci-fi is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. I can't believe this passed me by when I read loads of this sort of thing at Uni. Very well-written, very clever philosophically and in structure, extremely weird and engaging.I just finished the first book and unfortunately I have to say it's the worst of the nearly 100 fantasy/sci-fi books I've downloaded since I got an e-reader, the only one I've deleted and regret buying in the first place. Stilted and turgid writing (recently I found The Southern Reach Trilogy and Firefall occasionally challenging to read, but this was just frustratingly murky), characters and events that seem to appear out of nowhere for no reason, unbearably dull side anecdotes from random characters, and a plot that hardly went anywhere. I had a vague interest in how the protagonist developed as a newly qualified torturer, and that just about got me to the end, and no further.
He treads an infinitesimally slender line between smartly creative linguistic futurism and infuriatingly jargonistic techno-babble, but does so with enough pace and entertainment, to pull it off, just.
Well done, you spotted it :clap2:
Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour. Simply a masterpiece. Thinly fictionalised account of Waugh's own experience of WWII. One of the funniest books I have ever read but also deeply melancholy and humane. I read the revised, single volume version first published in 1964 (not the earlier three volume version). Apparently the later one was how Waugh wanted it read. I cannot recommend this highly enough.
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester - liked this. Born of the pulp sci-fi serial generation, the frame for the story seems a bit tired but the development of the main character, Gully Foyle, is fascinating. This would make a good film.
Just finished River Grenier's Palace of Books, a look at the how, why and whatever of writing by a veteran French editor and writer. A fabulous little book. Andy, I think you might really appreciate this one if you haven't come across it.
For some reason I had a weird impulse to read about Waterloo and plumped for Bernard Cornwell's Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles as I just wanted a straight forward account. Its well written and very good at keeping a very complex and confusing story clear. I always knew where I was, as it were.
The Windup Girl - post-oil-crash cyberpunk in a very sweaty Bangkok. Full off relentless cyberpunk-esque names and stylings, but still rather good as the intrigue and confusion builds. Not quite finished but it's getting exciting.
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester - liked this. Born of the pulp sci-fi serial generation, the frame for the story seems a bit tired but the development of the main character, Gully Foyle, is fascinating. This would make a good film.
Attempted to get into A Time Of Gifts again, which was recommended to me by Andy - I've got about half way through. Autobiographical work by Patrick Leigh Fermor recounting his time walking through Europe. Sleeping in hayricks one night and Transylvanian castles as the guest of some Count or other the next. I do like it but Fermor seems more engrossed with the architecture and art that he encounters on the way than the people and cultures. He spends pages and pages describing and comparing different artists and theorising about how the geography of the region has influenced their work and yet mentions other potentially interesting events (such as being taken skiing by the innkeeper he is staying with) as mere footnotes. There will be some lovely writing about his journey and then it's back to another long diatribe which, without a classical education in the arts, seems completely impenetrable.
Excellent piece by Karl Ove Knausgaard about the writing of his novel My Struggle:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/26/karl-ove-knausgaard-the-shame-of-writing-about-myself
Volume 5 out next week.
Attempted to get into A Time Of Gifts again, which was recommended to me by Andy - I've got about half way through. Autobiographical work by Patrick Leigh Fermor recounting his time walking through Europe. Sleeping in hayricks one night and Transylvanian castles as the guest of some Count or other the next. I do like it but Fermor seems more engrossed with the architecture and art that he encounters on the way than the people and cultures. He spends pages and pages describing and comparing different artists and theorising about how the geography of the region has influenced their work and yet mentions other potentially interesting events (such as being taken skiing by the innkeeper he is staying with) as mere footnotes. There will be some lovely writing about his journey and then it's back to another long diatribe which, without a classical education in the arts, seems completely impenetrable.
Sorry about that Will :'(
High-Rise - J.G. Ballard
Just polished this off and would highly recommend it. Gloriously fucked up, you're drawn in all the way through, then occasionally you'll step back and think 'did I really just read that?'
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett. I really liked this original of the hard-boiled detective genre. Complex, conflicted, slightly soiled characters and a good story that kept you guessing. Clean prose, Hemingway-esque. Recommended.
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster. Postmodern detective fiction. I didn't like this. Was attracted by strong reviews but in my view it's very much 'critic's choice' reading. If you have an academic interest in post-modern theories of literature and mind (which I recall from my English degree) then I'm sure this is very stimulating reading. However, in my view if you undermine the element of narrative and story, then you are undermining one of the pillars supporting the reason for reading fiction. I found these stories unfulfilling in a quite fundamental sense, although I recognise that they are very clever and very well-written. But not to my taste.
As an aside, I'm thinking of doing a book reviews blog, to structure my thoughts about the books I read and make recommendations. Is this the sort of thing anyone would actually read?
ClearVista is used by everyone and can predict everything. It’s a daily lifesaver, predicting weather to traffic to who you should befriend. Laurence Walker wants to be the next President of the United States. ClearVista will predict his chances. It will predict whether he's the right man for the job. It will predict that his son can only survive for 102 seconds underwater. It will predict that Laurence's life is about to collapse in the most unimaginable way.
I can tell you what happens...
Picked up The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for £1 in a charity shop, just finished it yesterday. I was surprised at how easy a read it was considering its age. I can see why it's considered to be a classic.
Agree, huckleberry finn is an awesome read, always found it odd that it is classed as a children's bookPicked up The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for £1 in a charity shop, just finished it yesterday. I was surprised at how easy a read it was considering its age. I can see why it's considered to be a classic.
Yes that's a fantastic book. If you haven't read it, have a look at Huckleberry Finn too. A more grown up and serious sequel but brilliantly written with the same sense of fun.
I would highly recommend Mark Twain's autobiographical stories. Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It are amazing. The man lived a phenomenal life.
All the Devils Are Here - David Seabrook. A much darker version of WG Seabald's 'Rings of Saturn' with Seabrook wandering the towns and villages of the Kent coastline (Margate, Thanet etc.) digging up its bizarre and secret history. TS Eliot, the history of Buchan's 39 steps & William 'Lord Haw Haw' Joyce alongside the British Union of Fascists movement - the precursors of UKIP and the NF; alcoholic Charles Hawtrey and an explanation behind Dickens' unfinished last novel.
1. Cursed Kings - Jonathan Sumption. The fourth volume in an anticipated five part history of the Hundred Years War that started to appear some 25 years ago and which will apparently be concluded somewhere around 2018. Deeply researched and beautifully written, this volume also has the best material to work with, book-ended by two political assassinations, you have the madness of the king of France and one of the great characters of English history, Henry V, and some momentous battles, most notably Agincourt. I love reading history when it has been done properly and this is a masterpiece, definitely my favourite book of the year.
I found Sebald a bit confusing. In places I enjoyed the writing in Rings of Saturn but I had to skip some of the tangent sections, and I very rarely skip read. Then I found out it was all fiction, which made it more impressive but less interesting.
Read One Green Bottle last week, a short climbing novel written in the fifties about a working class girl from Birkenhead discovering Snowdonia. Very of its time, or older; the author did her climbing interwar. The first half is great, Cathy escapes the slum, starts climbing and leaps into the same Ogwen scene that Gwen Moffat describes. I found it very funny, although not always with the author. Second half less good as the need to marry herself (at 20!) puts the landscape and climbing into the background. Tricky to get hold of by itself but included in a big Games Climbers Play-style anthology One Step in the Clouds, published in the early nineties and on Amazon for pence. Plus lots of bonus content (all fiction) from the likes of M John H and John Long.
...one of my favourites, a Kurt Diemberger trilogy - this is some of the best climbing writing I've ever read I think. The scene where he has to leave a dying Al Rouse on a tent on K2 is just heartbreaking.
In contrast, an absolute delight of a book that I would recommend to anyone who likes war fiction, was Winged Victory by V.M. Yeates....There is a beautiful and poignant contrast between the pilot's love of flight, the breathtaking glory of the sky, the soaring exhilaration of flying an aircraft, and the mind and body numbing experience of war...
Liminov by Emmanuel Carriere
An extraordinary biography of one of Russia's more enigmatic figures of recent years, poet, rebel, rogue, mercenary, manservant, writer and now politician, Edward Liminov, written by one of Frances finest writers. Would have been a great novel if the guy didn't really exist! 8/10
Finally finished One Day as a Tiger by John Porter, the book about Alex MacIntryre (and the whole Himalayan climbing scene as a whole).
I have no great interest in climbing in the Greater Ranges, but thought it was excellently written; informative, gripping and amusing. A great read.
I've been neglecting this thread this year so here goes....
Alex MacIntyre was no mean writer himself either. There's a piece called iirc Mama's Boys, about alpine style attempts on the Harlin Route on the Eiger, that very much impressed me. It was in Mountain I believe, and I've never seen it reprinted anywhere.
Liminov by Emmanuel Carriere
An extraordinary biography of one of Russia's more enigmatic figures of recent years, poet, rebel, rogue, mercenary, manservant, writer and now politician, Edward Liminov, written by one of Frances finest writers. Would have been a great novel if the guy didn't really exist! 8/10
I remember thinking much the same about White Mughals by William Dalrymple. The story reads like the plot of a a lost Shakespeare tragedy.
The Crimean War by Orlando Figes
Possibly the outstanding historian writing about Russia in recent years, Figes turns to the Crimean War and delivers another fine book, maybe not quite up with his history of the revolution (A People's Tragedy) or his cultural history of Russia (Natasha's Dance) but nonetheless, this is an excellent book giving plenty of information not only on the war itself but on the period leading up to it, outlining the contributing factors that led to the war. 8/10.
I've been neglecting this thread this year so here goes....
Liminov by Emmanuel Carriere
An extraordinary biography of one of Russia's more enigmatic figures of recent years, poet, rebel, rogue, mercenary, manservant, writer and now politician, Edward Liminov, written by one of Frances finest writers. Would have been a great novel if the guy didn't really exist! 8/10
Empire of Liberty, A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
Volume 2 of the Oxford History of the United States, Gordon Wood's monumental look at the first 25 years of the nations existence, is a long and detailed work, massively researched, very well written, probably too dry for most tastes, it is no work of literature. Particularly good at explaining the evolution of the political system towards the mess that U.S. democracy has become. 7.5/10
Sweet Land Stories by E.L.Doctorow
An intriguing little collection of stories by one of America's finest writers of modern times. Tales from the American heartland but with some very odd twists in the tails... 8.5/10.
Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood and the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami
Read all the above at various times over the last 6 months or so and I can honestly say the Murakami's writing agrees with me. I have a soft spot for the "outsiders" who always seem to lie at the heart of his stories. Kafka on the Shore is probably my favourite of his, both of the other two here didn't quite match it, I found the endings rather soft, but all were highly readable once you got used to the author's distinctive and slightly surreal take on the world. 9,7 and 7.5/10.
The March by E.L.Doctorow
Sherman's march across Georgia and the Carolinas in the closing months of the American Civil War seen from the point of view of various characters within and around the Union Army as it cut a swathe of devastation through the south. Freed slaves, white refugees, deserting soldiers all contribute to this fabulous book giving a very different perspective on one of America's defining events.
The Crimean War by Orlando Figes
Possibly the outstanding historian writing about Russia in recent years, Figes turns to the Crimean War and delivers another fine book, maybe not quite up with his history of the revolution (A People's Tragedy) or his cultural history of Russia (Natasha's Dance) but nonetheless, this is an excellent book giving plenty of information not only on the war itself but on the period leading up to it, outlining the contributing factors that led to the war. 8/10.
The Baltic, A History by Michael North
Translated from the original German, this is quite an academic work but is still a very readable account, if a little Germano-centric at times, of the history of this crucial waterway at the heart of Northern Europe. A solid attempt to show the Baltic as holding a similar place in the culture of the North as the Mediterranean does in the South. 7/10
Seiobo There Below by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
I don't know where to start on describing this book. The prose is rich and dense and at times astonishingly beautiful, the sentences can seem to go on forever - try reading it out loud! There is no real plot, each chapter describes some event, or events, or a place, or someone's work, or something else entirely, concentrating on the beauty of even the simplest task, or object...but some of the chapters hold a dark undertone, a sense of something evil or that something very bad is about to happen...nope, I cannot begin to do this book justice. The most amazing thing I've read so far, leave all your preconceptions of what a novel should be at the door please. 10/10?... :shrug:
There is Simply Too Much to Think About, Collected Non-Fiction by Saul Bellow
A fascinating collection of reviews, essays and lectures by another of America's leading modern writers. Definitely worth reading, an excellent one to dip into. 8.5/10
Labyrinths,Selected Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
I love Borges writing and this is a wonderful collection of his short stories and writing that I originally read back in the 90s and I'm glad I found it again. 9.5/10
That's enough I think, there's at least another dozen I've finished this year but I'll stop at ten for now...before I bore you all to death! :yawn:
I've recently finished two excellent books. First, "Independence Day, " the second of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe books. I know some people can't get on with these; people don't like the narrator's voice, or the endless digressions and lack of plot. But I love them completely. I love the rich humanity with which Frank' character is portrayed, the pathos and humour, the wonderful prose.
My sister left me with this book when she visited Canada in July. She has been a good source of book recommendations for much of my life so I have tried my hardest with this one. However ... I am definitely in your "can't get on with these" camp. My sister assured me that it picked up pace after the protagonist embarks on a road trip with his uncommunicative teenage son (perhaps as I have one of these) but it has been a tough ask to wade through 2/3rds of the book to get there, and even now the needle on my "give-a-shit-meter" is barely flickering. I am actually deriving very slightly more pleasure from reading the objectively-ghastly Percy Jackson and The Olympians book series out loud to my eight year old. Do you feel any resonance with the characters or their observations, Andy, or is it more that you admire the craftsmanship of the book?
Alan Moore's Jerusalem - anyone bought this yet?
Alan Moore's Jerusalem - anyone bought this yet? I'm a bit nervous if I'm honest, as I think it'd take my life over for a while. Obviously living in Northampton since '79 and for 15 years just down the road from him, it's something I need to read at some point.
Lowering the tone as I seem to read at a much lower brow level than most contributors to this thread (not a dig BTW) but for what it's worth, I am on book 8 of 10 of the Bernard Cornwell Saxon Stories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saxon_Stories). Enlightening for the historically challenged (me), I am fascinated by how the country must have looked having been deserted by the Romans. It seems the Saxons existed in an almost post-apocalyptic world of Roman ruins and built around them with wattle and thatch - who knew!
Am looking forward to book 10 which comes out today!
More worryingly, as a historian, I didn't realise it was pointless to study things that are already "toast".Fair point. I was just being ironic, really. Bezos seems like a quite popular guy at this point in time but I feel confident that at some point in the future people will find reason to criticise him. I imagine at some point in the past the same might have applied to Sam Walton. Anyway, FWIW I think I will read this book. It does sound quite interesting.
Second, Mikhail Sholokhov's sweeping masterpiece of war and revolution "And Quiet Flows the Don," which follows a group of Don Cossacks from one village through WWI, revolution and civil war. It's wonderful how Sholokhov is able to combine epic scale and fantastically rendered characterisation on the same page. You live every moment with these people. And there's breathtaking descriptions of the lives of the Cossacks and of the Steppes. Hard to recommend too strongly. Read with Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and Vassily Grossman's "Lifeand Fate" it would comprise part of an incredible trilogy.
Over the past week and a half I've reread the His Dark Materials trilogy. I read them when I was young and, reading them as an adult, they are completely different books. Amazing. I've now got that inconsolable bittersweet feeling of loss and satisfaction that comes with having to leave the story that you were immersed in when you turn the last page.
Over the past week and a half I've reread the His Dark Materials trilogy. I read them when I was young and, reading them as an adult, they are completely different books. Amazing. I've now got that inconsolable bittersweet feeling of loss and satisfaction that comes with having to leave the story that you were immersed in when you turn the last page.
That's interesting. I tried to re-read them recently, having loved them when I was younger. I enjoyed the first two, but found the Amber Spyglass was horribly heavy-handed and preachy. It seemed like Paulmann bit off more than he could chew.
Alan Moore's Jerusalem - anyone bought this yet?
Got it this afternoon on the Kindle as I hear the physical version has a tiny font which I really struggle with as I get older. Looking forward to getting stuck in as I enjoyed Voice of the Fire and Unearthing (and the comics of course).
Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being.
Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.
Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.
I read this over the winter break, mainly after this recommendation. Very big, 800 pages of very small print, mostly magnificent. It's a history of all Europe, not just the western bit familiar to Brits. There are numerous examples of hideously complex and hard to understand topics like The Troubles and the 1990s Balkan conflicts explained with utter clarity and brevity without seeming simplistic. His specialism in French politics, Jewish background, and a youth spent in the class-war trenches inform the book throughout, usually to it's benefit.
Picking nits? An overemphasis on French political philosophers and he's hopeless on culture that isn't French New Wave film. Albert Camus gets numerous mentions, The Beatles none.
Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.
I read this over the winter break, mainly after this recommendation. Very big, 800 pages of very small print, mostly magnificent. It's a history of all Europe, not just the western bit familiar to Brits. There are numerous examples of hideously complex and hard to understand topics like The Troubles and the 1990s Balkan conflicts explained with utter clarity and brevity without seeming simplistic. His specialism in French politics, Jewish background, and a youth spent in the class-war trenches inform the book throughout, usually to it's benefit.
Picking nits? An overemphasis on French political philosophers and he's hopeless on culture that isn't French New Wave film. Albert Camus gets numerous mentions, The Beatles none.
Read two books from the big wall book club thread over Christmas, both excellent.
Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, first half is history of nuclear physics up to 1941, then the race to build the bomb, the descriptions of Hiroshima are rightly memorably horrible. Could have done with more of the industrial science behind producing enriched uranium and plutonium and less Szilard but maybe I'm a geek about these things.
Currently enjoying Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler
Read two books from the big wall book club thread over Christmas, both excellent.
...
Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, bleak bleak tales form the Gulag, some beautiful writing though. In particular found last story Graphite very powerful.
Big thanks for the recommendations.
Just finished off Law unto himself, Mike Law's autobiography.
Really good, reminded me a little of Andy Pollit's book but a little more coherent. ...
Moose's recommendation of Command and Control - Eric Schlosser was really good. Read like a thriller, interspersed with meticulously researched history. It was a bit daunting on Kindle as it seemed to go on and on, until it abruptly ended and I figured out the remaining 40% was all the references and notes.
Just finished off Law unto himself, Mike Law's autobiography.
Really good, reminded me a little of Andy Pollit's book but a little more coherent. A really succinct history of some good bits of australian climbing history if nothing else.
Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.
I read this over the winter break, mainly after this recommendation. Very big, 800 pages of very small print, mostly magnificent. It's a history of all Europe, not just the western bit familiar to Brits. There are numerous examples of hideously complex and hard to understand topics like The Troubles and the 1990s Balkan conflicts explained with utter clarity and brevity without seeming simplistic. His specialism in French politics, Jewish background, and a youth spent in the class-war trenches inform the book throughout, usually to it's benefit.
Picking nits? An overemphasis on French political philosophers and he's hopeless on culture that isn't French New Wave film. Albert Camus gets numerous mentions, The Beatles none.
Excellent summary Duncan. I agree, the one area of weakness is popular culture. which he fundamentally seems not to get (see terrible section on punk). But this is a very minor weakness against the many great strengths.
Any interest in having a kindle lending service on here?
Any interest in having a kindle lending service on here?
I've got loads i would happily pass on / loan out both hard copy and electronic.
Just finished off Law unto himself, Mike Law's autobiography.
Really good, reminded me a little of Andy Pollit's book but a little more coherent. A really succinct history of some good bits of australian climbing history if nothing else.
Is this available at a reasonable price anywhere; kindle etc. £14 is a bit of a hard hit.
The Circle by Dave Eggers. Sort of a satire of the dystopian present more than future. A fairly interesting idea on the premise of a girl starting work at a kind of Google/Facebook-esque enterprise. The storyline after this is much like The Firm (the John Grisham novel/film with Keanu Reeves). Ultimately I found the novel irritating and predictable. I didn't warm to the protagonist so I didn't really care what happened to her. Lots of characters used as mouthpieces for the author's ideology (which I have some sympathy with). Apparently it's being made into a film which I think would be a better medium for the idea. At novel length it became trite and tedious. Though I did persevere reading it so it must have something about it.
Currently enjoying Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler
I'll be interested in your verdict on this - it caused some controversy amongst historians.
Currently enjoying Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler
I'll be interested in your verdict on this - it caused some controversy amongst historians.
I finished this the other day. I thought it was fascinating. I appreciate that it wasn't universally acclaimed, and that various other historians have issues with some parts of it. But even if those sections are perhaps overstated, the accounts of the tank crews early in the war and the Seehund crews at the end of it were very powerful.
The rate at which you guys consume books astounds me. I usually manage a few pages on the 10 min train ride to work and back and 5 mins at night before I fall asleep on the book.
The rate at which you guys consume books astounds me. I usually manage a few pages on the 10 min train ride to work and back and 5 mins at night before I fall asleep on the book.
I'm the same unless I feel the need to sit down and read for an hour. We don't have TV, so when I'm not arsing about on forums... it does happen once and again.
The Underground Railroad about the secret network that smuggled escaped slaves to free states in the north. In a kind magical realist touch the underground railroad is real, not a metaphor. I thought the book worthwhile but this device didn't work for me. The vast majority of the book is perfectly plausible and realistic so bits that weren't felt out of place. If he was going to do this he needed to do it much more wholeheartedly. Finally, I'm nearing the end of Lucy Hughes-Hallet's biography of Gabriele D'Annunzio The Pike. This is, as others here have said before, magnificent.
The rate at which you guys consume books astounds me. I usually manage a few pages on the 10 min train ride to work and back and 5 mins at night before I fall asleep on the book.
I have a stock of Lee Childs' Jack Reacher books purchased from charity shops for the direst emergencies of self-doubt!
Probably my least favourite of his books. It's OK, but a bit...meh.
The Price of Glory, Verdun 1916, Alistair Horne Literature disguised as military history.
The Guns of August and Price of Glory where both written in 1962, The Guns of August seems the more contemporary in tone and style, the Price of Glory more traditional, though I thought it was the best of the three.
I finished Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads on Audible the other day. All 20something hours of it. I'm always a bit suspicious of non-fiction bestsellers, and was also quite surprised that this had become one. But as an alternative angle on a big subject - the effect of the silk road and that region on world history - it's a really brilliant piece of work. Some excellent torture techniques too. For example, sewing someone up inside a camel...
How long did I sleep for? 😴😳 I have a vast amount of good reading to recommend but I promise not to put it all in one marathon post!
Just read Tim and Time Again by Ben Elton. Really enjoyed it! Lost it's way a little bit in the middle but the plot gathers pace and had a brilliant ending. As ever, was left wishing I'd listened a bit more in history. Recommended!
How long did I sleep for? 😴😳 I have a vast amount of good reading to recommend but I promise not to put it all in one marathon post!
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she also recommended Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind.
she also recommended Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind.
Looks promising at the start, and I recommended it to Fiend on that basis a while back, but I found it lost its way rather quickly.
💧💧A highlight of this last year for me was finally reading J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun. Ballard is never easy reading but I have always found his prose interesting and his way of relating a story absorbing and this book was no exception. It is a darker and far more complex story than the movie of the same name with few redeeming characters and you are in no doubt at any time that the boy Jim is in a struggle to survive and very much alone. Definitely recommended.
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Poetry: where does one start?
Poetry: where does one start?
I was going to say "Four Quartets" too, but its not exactly an easy route in (not that Roethke is much better).
Poetry: where does one start?
The Sellout by Paul Beatty.
Finally, despite what I said on the Trump thread, I tore through 'Hillbilly Elegy' by J.D. Vance. I'm glad I did and I can see why it has a wide appeal - he tells his story (which has some extraordinary moments) in a direct and vivid way. But he wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to unpick a desperately dysfunctional culture - that of white Appalachian hillbillies - that causes great misery to many people but in the end he can't help himself from celebrating, despite knowing all the damage it does. The whole thing is riddled with contradictions that he doesn't quite have the courage to confront. The last third is also one of the biggest humble brags ever. I'd still recommend it and it does give some clues as to how America got where it finds itself in 2017.
I read this book a few months ago and would agree with all you say. I also felt that he overstated the possibility for social mobility from his peer group, perhaps to give the "humble brag" about his glorious military 'n' law school career more impact. He mentions quite few relatives in brief asides who seemed to be doing fine in a dull middle-class way, and thus not really fit with his central narrative. But the book is worth reading.
A few years ago I also read "Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, the law professor at Yale who egged JD Vance on to write his book. The two books would actually work quite well as a boxed-set, representing the the two polar extremes of modern parenting (and how both can potentially fuck kids up).
Solzhenitsyn
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, the classic of Gulag literature, sparsely written and tightly focused.
Cancer Ward, found this a bit of a struggle in places, quite meandering, worthwhile in the end.
I think there should be a special prize for anyone that can get through Atlas Shrugged.
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I think there should be a special prize for anyone that can get through Atlas Shrugged.
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I think there should be a special prize for anyone that can get through Atlas Shrugged.
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Exactly my thoughts. I feel like I should read it (not least as I've taught Rand) but I've never been able to face it.
Deep South - Paul Theroux. The best travel book on the American south I have read
QuoteDeep South - Paul Theroux. The best travel book on the American south I have read
That's interesting. I read a few Theroux books in my teens and enjoyed them, but recently picked up a couple and found them pretty dull. Have read a couple of Jonathan Raban's on the US though too - Old Glory and Hunting Mr Heartbreak - which I'd thoroughly recommend.
If you enjoy Jonathan Raban's style I recommend Passage to Juneau, which is (loosely) built around a solo trip up the BC and southern Alaska coast
I found Beevor's account of the Spanish Civil War very readable.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview4 (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview4)
Hugh Thomas' The Spanish Civil War is the classic account. Beevor does his usual clear and engaging job.
There are also the accounts of writers and journalists there at the time: Orwell's Homage To Catalonia of course and a more qualified recommendation for Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War starts with some astonishing reporting from the war in Spain and continues all the way to Central America in the 90s.
I like taking a book about the country I'm visiting on climbing trips.
Hugh Thomas' The Spanish Civil War is the classic account. Beevor does his usual clear and engaging job.
There are also the accounts of writers and journalists there at the time: Orwell's Homage To Catalonia of course and a more qualified recommendation for Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War starts with some astonishing reporting from the war in Spain and continues all the way to Central America in the 90s.
I like taking a book about the country I'm visiting on climbing trips.
Thanks. I was a bit put off the Hugh Thomas version by some reviews suggesting it was dated and biased but will take a look. I love Hemingway so For Whom The Bell Tolls was devoured a while ago. Homage to Catalonia is also on the list.
I really enjoyed Homage to Catalonia and For Whom The Bell Tolls, but they're very different books by very different writers. FWTBT reads (to me) as a glorification of death in the gallant struggle against Franco - and I've heard Hemingway variously described as a warmonger and a fascist. Homage is far more honest in it's documentation of the chaotic management of the Republican forces and the futility of their resistance in the face of their own brutal in-fighting.
Bear in mind that Orwell fought with the POUM when in Spain; this is what Hemingway has to say about them:
"The POUM was never serious. It was a heresy of crackpots and wild men and it was really just an infantilism. There were some honest misguided people. There was one fairly good brain and there was a little fascist money. Not much. The poor POUM. They were very silly people."
What I'm trying to say is, don't just read Hemingway without reading something else.
Before you read any of this you should probably read Laurie Lee's As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, which is just one of the most mind-blowing books I've ever read. Lee travelled to Spain, without knowing any Spanish, and walked from north to south, earning money along the way by playing his fiddle on street corners. He was naively oblivious, as he travelled, to the mobilisation of Franco's rebellion and was eventually plucked out of Malaga by the British Navy when war broke out. He wrote of his return to Spain to fight in A Moment of War, though many claim that his account is a fiction and that he never returned. Again, his naivety comes through strongly - it's a similar account to Orwell's in it's description of barely organised chaos, but Orwell feels like a more significant actor in the conflict, while Lee is merely someone being swept along (and very nearly killed) by events that he can neither comprehend or control.
On the subject of travel writing. I quite enjoyed reading this piece on Bruce Chatwin (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/24/bruce-chatwin-in-patagonia-fortieth-anniversary) in the Obs. the other weekend.
Read Nicholas Shakespeare's biography a couple of years back - incredibly thorough and full of fascinating insights into the man, but a bit of a wade at times and by the end I liked him rather less.
I've nothing to add to this specific conversation, having never read Theroux, Raban, or even Chatwiin. But I love it when this thread bursts back into life, as it does from time to time.
Worth noting though, I've a good friend (and phd student in sociology) who grew up in a saami/laplander family with a semi-nomadic lifestyle (they still have plenty of rain-deers and quite a nomadic lifestyle), and she didn't much rate the stuff Chatwin wrote on saami nomads.
Reactions to Ishiguro receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Just read The Invention of Nature, The Life and Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt
We never fall twice down the same abyss. But we always fall in the same manner, with a mixture of the dread and the ridicule. And the will to not fall again is so strong that we brace ourselves and scream.
Falling Down, I highly recommend all of Steinbeck's writing with East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath as my favourites.
Also halfway through Barbarian Days by William Finnegan, an excellent autobiography of his surfing life, and really enjoying it. Recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in surfing, brilliantly written.
5. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I read this years ago and fancied re-reading as I remembered it being amazing. It was less good than I remembered. Very melodramatic, gothic tale set in mid-twentieth century Barcelona. A page turner but inconsistent tone of voice and ultimately a very odd story.
Thanks Rocksteady. Its great that some of your recent choices have come as recommendations on this thread; shows why its why its worth keeping going.
What Ruskin are you reading - sound like its probably "The Nature of Gothic"? I've read that, though not the whole of The Stones of Venice. I would also recommend Unto this Last, which best presents his ideas on the economy. Incidentally, I probably agree with him on the Gothic.
I didn't comment on any of my recent choices. They've all been good but Ethan Frome is probably the stand out.
Finished The Old Ways by Robert McFarlane last night. I absolutely loved it. Very beautiful and moving. Anyone else read it?It's on my shelf. Probably read it next.
Just finished , the sheltering sky by Paul Bowles. A really interesting novel, introduction bills it as American travel horror. That covers it well. In places alternately philosophical, beautiful, and very dark.
U.S.A. Trilogy by John dos Passos. An incredible book, a standout for me in recent years. A vast epic insight into the battle for America's soul in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century up to the years following WW1. A good antidote to Ayn Rand. Unbridled capitalism vs socialism, told from a myriad of different character perspectives, with interpolated Camera Eye sections of stream of consciousness writing showing the development of the writer's own perspective, Newsreel sections of disjointed headlines, and really interesting biographical excerpts of key figures in the shaping of American culture, especially working culture. Very literary, 1000+ pages to sink your teeth into. At times I found it hard going but it was immensely rewarding. Highly recommended for anyone interested in American literature and culture.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I thought this was spectacularly good. Luminous writing and a wonderful insight into the mind of the author's character. I had previously discounted James Joyce having failed to get on with Ulysses but am inspired to try again.
Is Gilead a sequel by another author to The Handmaid's Tale?
Gonna read that Tooze book Andy. Sounds good. The Wonder Woman too.
What did you make of Tree of Smoke?
It’s always a bit worrying recommending a big tome. I will seek out the Tooze book.
Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.. Basically, anyone who wants to understand the world today, economically and politically, should read this book (IMHO obvs). Tooze is a historian and it shows, his 600+ pages of dense, detailed text - supported by incredible research - reads like a thriller. Adopting a narrative approach is part of Tooze's argument - alongside massive systems and structures there were huge doses of contingency and indeterminacy; narrative allows us to watch that unfold. At the same time, he doesn't let any off the hook - the Republicans come of worst, not just now under Trump but throughout. Essential reading.
Any pointers on a decent, simple economics book?
Cheers.
One of the first books in a long time that I've felt completely lost reading. Any pointers on a decent, simple economics book?
Welcome back DaveC
One of the first books in a long time that I've felt completely lost reading.
One of the first books in a long time that I've felt completely lost reading.
I want to point out that I in no way fully understand all the technicalities involved, not even close - and that's with regard to both the behaviour of the banks etc. and policy responses.
Hi Andy, I thought Adichie's first novel was better than Americanah and I have the one in between on my shelf which I've heard is better than either. Norte was actually my second best read of 2017 after Ghosts...
Now I've got my login here sorted I'll be around again. ;D
I just finished the road (in about 3 sittings). Best book I've read in years. It's extremely unsettling. I had to read something else before going to sleep. Highly recommended.
I just finished the road (in about 3 sittings). Best book I've read in years. It's extremely unsettling. I had to read something else before going to sleep. Highly recommended.
The section with the child tugging his dads sleeve as the zealots walk towards them across the field still gives me the shivers. Utterly brilliant book.
Not sure if you've read any other McCarthy, but if you haven't I highly recommend No Country for Old Men (even if you've seen the film) and especially the Border Trilogy, starting with All The Pretty Horses. That trilogy is the best literature I have ever read I think, absolutely peerless.
Plus Helen Morts Black Car Burning was very good.
Thanks JWI, that sounds fascinating. Do you know if its only available in French?
Its interesting to think of China in 1978 as experiencing a conservative revolution, typically the open door policy would be seen as a liberalisation. The other great conservative revolution of the period was, of course, Reagan. In some ways it feels as though we have been in a near permanent conservative revolution ever since.
Thanks Jonas, bugger that the FT is paywalled.
Thanks Jonas, bugger that the FT is paywalled.
Sorry.
This is such a great thread - thanks to everyone who contributes. My 'to-read' list just gets longer and longer.
Other than that I've been mainlining Charles Olson and his Maximus poems set in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts. Can't get enough of it.
An earlier essay “Disordered World (https://www.ft.com/content/cce95c0e-e9f4-11e0-b997-00144feab49a)” is available in English. I haven't read it but I suspect it covers some of the same ground.
While we're in the Middle East I'm going to take the opportunity to recommend anything by Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz - I've read the so-called Cairo trilogy (a masterpiece) and more recently two slim novellas, Adrfit on the Nile and The Beggar, which were both also excellent.
"Things We Lost in the Fire" - Mariana Enríquez. A collection of short stories set in modern day Argentina. Really unsettling, dark and macabre. The author is exploring how Argentina's past flows down into the present - a kind of national inherited trauma. Gothic horror and magical realism. A really good read that's stuck with me for several days. She's a great writer.
Purity, by Jonathan Franzen. First time I've read Franzen. I really enjoyed it, I thought he was just a great storyteller, weaving some interesting threads around.same here, on all counts.
Just browsing and remembered this favourite thread! I've been doing rather a lot of reading this year and not really saying anything about it but I just realised that I finished my 100th book of the year on Boxing Day...I thought I was doing well with 80+ in 2018! I'm trying to put together a nice concise best fiction & non-fiction list which I'll post up once its done. In fact, I might make it a best of the last two years since I don;t think I posted a lot in 2018 either!
Canada is by Franzen also I think? I really enjoyed that. Argues a strong argument doesn't he.
The Lark Ascending by Richard King (The Music of the British Landscape) - Read this over Christmas and loved every page. It's a history of the British countryside loosely framed through its music. A fascinating read that explores our relationship to the land which wanders all over the place. From Vaughan Williams and the first world war, through the fascist Blood and Soil volkish movements, post war environmentalism and hippy idealism of the 60's, the traveller convoys and the battle of the Beanfield to the rave at Castlemorton and the Criminal Justice Bill into the present day. Beautifully written, thoughtful and introspective. I've gone down loads of Wikipedia ratholes and added loads of interesting music to my playlists. A really great and absorbing read. Recommended.
The Lark Ascending by Richard King (The Music of the British Landscape) - Read this over Christmas and loved every page. It's a history of the British countryside loosely framed through its music. A fascinating read that explores our relationship to the land which wanders all over the place. From Vaughan Williams and the first world war, through the fascist Blood and Soil volkish movements, post war environmentalism and hippy idealism of the 60's, the traveller convoys and the battle of the Beanfield to the rave at Castlemorton and the Criminal Justice Bill into the present day. Beautifully written, thoughtful and introspective. I've gone down loads of Wikipedia ratholes and added loads of interesting music to my playlists. A really great and absorbing read. Recommended.
This sounds just my cup of tea.
Another one:
Wilding by Isabella Tree.
Word - worth persevering. Currently struggling through Cocker's Our Place - loved his other stuff but this is heavier going.
Another one:
Wilding by Isabella Tree. To be honest I'd been avoiding this due to my prejudices. Rich woman marries richer man, moves into his castle, stops farming and delights as wildlife returns, writes book. Ooh how lovely? I was wrong. For starters this is her fifth book and it shows. Then we get a detailed evisceration of modern farming, initially on purely economic grounds, from the very heart of the establishment. The neighbours must be horrified. But if it couldn't work for them who can it work for? And then the miracle of nature returning in unexpected ways that traditional conservation would never have allowed. Recommended: well written and a rare beacon of hope.
I would imagine the area required to meet the calorific demands of the UK population would be larger than the area of the UK so we would have to import food, exporting our environmental impact abroad.
I haven't read this but I did hear her on Desert Island Discs. Whilst it sounds like a nice idea...
Once in a while you meet a book at just the right moment in your education, and you go flying along the learning curve together.
A mixed bag then?
Over the weekend I read two short novels by Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz - Autumn Quail and The Search. He ploughs a quite narrow thematic path (men having existential crises, basically) but is always absolutely compelling. If you've not read him start with the Cairo Trilogy.
This week I read John Higg's short book William Blake, Why He Matters More Than Ever. It's only seventy pages long but really good. Higgs wrote that great book on the KLF, Robert Anton Wilson and Magick and several other really interesting essay type books. I've yet to see the exhibition at the Tate so thought this might be a good precursor.
Went to this towards the end of last year, was very underwhelmed tbh. Wish I’d chosen the Gormley instead...
I’ve heard mixed reviews - I plan to go in the morning when it’s quiet so there’s some space.
Also, just finished reading Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead. Awesome. By the noble prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk. The novel is set in rural Poland and follows an eccentric older woman as a string on shocking events occurs. Apparently its caused genuine political outrage in Poland...
The translation is brilliant, bar one confusing bit were a Blake poem is translated to polish and then back again for our benefit.
or are far enough removed to imagine it as somewhere more interesting.:lol:
who wouldn’t want to be a member of a group like that...
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.
- 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
I basically find NF very easy to buy / acquire / get excited about.
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...
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
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.
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.
Why we are living in J G Ballard’s world.
https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/04/why-we-are-living-jg-ballard-s-world (https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/04/why-we-are-living-jg-ballard-s-world)
What is 'the Moz test'?
Yes, hang the dj etc
Given that most of the genre seems to consist of London based writer moves to the country and discovers nature, Person with actual outdoor experience moves to London could potentially be a hot new take!
Given that most of the genre seems to consist of London based writer moves to the country and discovers nature, Person with actual outdoor experience moves to London could potentially be a hot new take!Having moved from the Midlands to London for work (and now out of London again) my greatest nature hits from the capital were/are:
Some people might find interested in Who Owns England?. Finished it the other day. Lots of research gone into it clearly and some amazing facts in there. Slips into polemic occasionally but on the whole it's a well reasoned argument. If you have particularly strong beliefs on the sanctity of private property (unlikely on the climbing forum) you might struggle but everyone else should find something to like. In paperback now too.
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.
Given that most of the genre seems to consist of London based writer moves to the country and discovers nature, Person with actual outdoor experience moves to London could potentially be a hot new take!Having moved from the Midlands to London for work (and now out of London again) my greatest nature hits from the capital were/are:
- The number of herons and wildfowl in Regent's Park
- Seeing bitterns at the wetland centre which was only a tube and a bus away
- The flocks of parakeets in Ealing and Hampstead Heath
- Grey wagtails around the water feature in our local park in Ealing
- The variety of wildfowl I could see on my commute by walking along the canal round little venice in winter including pochard and red-crested pochard
- The number of red kites you see over the M40 when driving out of London/back
A pretty good synopsis of a book about a time long,long ago. Or so it seems...
The author certainly doesn't like Geoff Weigand much, that's for damn sure....
One Day as a Tiger, John Porter.
The story of mountaineer Alex MacIntyre, who died in 1982 aged 28, hit by a stone on the south face of Annapurna. He certainly crammed a lot into those few years of life, not just hard routes in the Alps and Himalayas but also designing gear, shaping the BMC and forging links with Polish climbers. Porter was one of his climbing partners and this book is as much about the milieu of 70s and 80s British Alpinism as it is MacIntrye himself. It's all reasonably rock and roll as you'd expect, with some truly hair raising moments: a gem deal gone wrong in Afghanistan is one of the more frightening tales in the book. He captures how wild the Himalaya must have been in those days.
Porter plays it totally straight until the final few days of the Annapurna trip, when the paranormal and premonitions of fate loom large. MacIntyre is being pulled into a vortex he cannot escape from, it seems, or is this just Porter's hindsight speaking? Either way, I'm glad he waited 30 years to write the book as it gives it a heft of maturity and insight that most mountaineering books lack. Definitely one of the best of the genre.
On the Iain (M) Banks front, I didn't get on with the sci-fi on a previous attempt (Consider Phlebas),
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll maybe try again at some point. I read and really enjoyed Transition which was an Iain (not M) Banks, but was definitely more on the sci-fi side. Might be a while though - arrival of daughter means I don't get through anywhere near as many books as I used to!On the Iain (M) Banks front, I didn't get on with the sci-fi on a previous attempt (Consider Phlebas),IMO Consider Phlebas is one of the weaker Culture books, if you are going to have another go at any point I’d recommend Player of Games, Use of Weapons or Surface Detail.
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
In keeping with the forgotten books theme, I've not deliberately bought any of the books new, but found them in bookshelves on holidays or charity shops.
I've read loads of the culture books, but really can't remember which ( a bit like Terry Pratchett).
One Day as a Tiger, John Porter.
The story of mountaineer Alex MacIntyre, who died in 1982 aged 28, hit by a stone on the south face of Annapurna. He certainly crammed a lot into those few years of life, not just hard routes in the Alps and Himalayas but also designing gear, shaping the BMC and forging links with Polish climbers. Porter was one of his climbing partners and this book is as much about the milieu of 70s and 80s British Alpinism as it is MacIntrye himself. It's all reasonably rock and roll as you'd expect, with some truly hair raising moments: a gem deal gone wrong in Afghanistan is one of the more frightening tales in the book. He captures how wild the Himalaya must have been in those days.
Porter plays it totally straight until the final few days of the Annapurna trip, when the paranormal and premonitions of fate loom large. MacIntyre is being pulled into a vortex he cannot escape from, it seems, or is this just Porter's hindsight speaking? Either way, I'm glad he waited 30 years to write the book as it gives it a heft of maturity and insight that most mountaineering books lack. Definitely one of the best of the genre.
Read this last year and thought this was excellent. I'd agree it was one of the best in the genre - up there with Echoes (Nick Bullock).
The Shadow of the Wind
The first of a trilogy by Carlos Zafon. An exciting story somewhere between magical realism, fantasy and a standard thriller. I'm really surprised that no one has made a film of it.
Yep a book review blog would be a good idea rocksteady :thumbsup:
As you can see I am a bit of a rereader, so any suggestions for others which the above suggest I may enjoy are welcomed!
As you can see I am a bit of a rereader, so any suggestions for others which the above suggest I may enjoy are welcomed!
As you can see I am a bit of a rereader, so any suggestions for others which the above suggest I may enjoy are welcomed!
Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man series are comparable to Rothfuss' books in many ways. If you liked TNOTW you will really get into Hobb's books. They are within only a handful of books i re-read as i'm not much of a re-reader (i opened 1 at a random page to kill some time and before i realised i re-read all 6 books again), along with TNOTW and the whole Malazan Book of the Fallen series which i'd also recommend even though the last 3 or 4 books get increasingly tough to follow.
On the sci-fi front Richard Morgan's books of Altered Carbon fame are excellent, as are his Fantasy books. I never been into sci-fi but his books got me into it, and though they may be a bit plot twist prone they still make for good re-reads.
Also supports a massive personal YYFY of publishing my own novel last week. Has been a side project of mine for over 15 years.
Also supports a massive personal YYFY of publishing my own novel last week. Has been a side project of mine for over 15 years.
If you like epic fantasy it could be up your street.
Also supports a massive personal YYFY of publishing my own novel last week. Has been a side project of mine for over 15 years.
Also the Ian Cameron Esselmont spinoffs in the Malazan world are pretty good, especially the most recent ones with the birth of the Malazan empire.
I loved all the Culture novels but wouldn't be able to say which ones or indeed much about them. My favourite was about a bunch of intelligent and peaceful gas clouds that when roused, laid waste to a massive intergalactic fleet of tyrants. A bit like the Ents.
Justin Hopper[/b], The Old Weird Albion. Hopper takes a series of Sebald’esque walks around the Sussex and Hampshire downs where his grandparent’s lived. An attempt to resolve an unknown secret about his Grandmother provides the backbone to the travels which explore old Albion, myth and landscape. My kind of thing.
Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man series are comparable to Rothfuss' books in many ways. If you liked TNOTW you will really get into Hobb's books. They are within only a handful of books i re-read as i'm not much of a re-reader (i opened 1 at a random page to kill some time and before i realised i re-read all 6 books again), along with TNOTW and the whole Malazan Book of the Fallen series which i'd also recommend even though the last 3 or 4 books get increasingly tough to follow.
On the sci-fi front Richard Morgan's books of Altered Carbon fame are excellent, as are his Fantasy books. I never been into sci-fi but his books got me into it, and though they may be a bit plot twist prone they still make for good re-reads.
> Southern options - the distance does really make all these places long weekend trips for me and for some North Wales / Lakes / Yorkshire more appealing, maybe I just like driving north? :D
Just to confirm is the North Wales guide the one by Simon Panton?
Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder was an unexpectedly good read. I thought it was a recommendation from here but might have been from the other side? It's a well written look inside the mind of a guy who spent most of his 20s deep in the bodybuilding scene. There's an intensity that's reminiscent of the psyche you get in climbing, though in his case it seems to stem from somewhere fairly unhealthy.
I got consider phlebas for christmas on the back of recomendations here and just finished. Proper good sci fi, so thanks for the recomendation!
Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder was an unexpectedly good read. I thought it was a recommendation from here but might have been from the other side? It's a well written look inside the mind of a guy who spent most of his 20s deep in the bodybuilding scene. There's an intensity that's reminiscent of the psyche you get in climbing, though in his case it seems to stem from somewhere fairly unhealthy.
I recommended it here (and I think someone else might have too). Glad you liked it.
Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder was an unexpectedly good read. I thought it was a recommendation from here but might have been from the other side? It's a well written look inside the mind of a guy who spent most of his 20s deep in the bodybuilding scene. There's an intensity that's reminiscent of the psyche you get in climbing, though in his case it seems to stem from somewhere fairly unhealthy.
I recommended it here (and I think someone else might have too). Glad you liked it.
I got consider phlebas for christmas on the back of recomendations here and just finished. Proper good sci fi, so thanks for the recomendation!
Big fan of Iain M Banks! I'd definitely recommend pretty much all of the other Culture books if you enjoyed Consider Phlebas, particularly Player of Games & Excession. Also The Algebraist, while not Culture, is also good.
Yeah, I read Grapes of Wrath quite a few years ago. A classic and for good reason. Although a tough read a times. I love Steinbeck. This is supposed to be the untold story of the people that stayed behind. Definitely an interesting read.
Kevin Barry, "Night Boat to Tangier." Blimey, one of the best novels I've read in a long time. The book criss-crosses back and forth across the lives of two ageing Irish gangsters as they sit waiting at the port of Algeciras, hoping to spot Dilly, the daughter of one of them. So good, in my opinion, because of the great vividness with which Moss and Charlie come alive through Barry's sparse prose. These are not characters you like - they are, after all, pretty awful men - but they are ones with whom you empathise, in the sense of grasping their humanity. If one thing you want from a novel is to live awhile as or with another person, then this book delivered hugely for me. Barry is not a writer of great literary flourishes but the book is shot through with beauty. He's one of those writers who leaves you wondering how he achieves so much affect.
Kevin Barry, "Night Boat to Tangier." Blimey, one of the best novels I've read in a long time. The book criss-crosses back and forth across the lives of two ageing Irish gangsters as they sit waiting at the port of Algeciras, hoping to spot Dilly, the daughter of one of them. So good, in my opinion, because of the great vividness with which Moss and Charlie come alive through Barry's sparse prose. These are not characters you like - they are, after all, pretty awful men - but they are ones with whom you empathise, in the sense of grasping their humanity. If one thing you want from a novel is to live awhile as or with another person, then this book delivered hugely for me. Barry is not a writer of great literary flourishes but the book is shot through with beauty. He's one of those writers who leaves you wondering how he achieves so much affect.
Good recommendation, I enjoyed this. It took some time for me to get in to it but it grew on me all the way through as I got to know the characters.
Read Dyer’s novel “The Colour of Memory” many years ago, enjoyed it a lot.I'll add it to the list
I’m a bit of a fan toonice one ben, will check those out too (am familiar with 'the on going moment' better than susan sontag on this subject ;) - I like his inquisitiveness & ability to put it into words
Les modes sont à la fois péremptoires et sinusoïdales, qui imposent leurs oukases sans logique ni raisons apparentes(Fashions are simultaneously peremptory and sinusoidal, imposing their ukases without apparent logic or reason.)
A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine, Tor Books)
(*The ultimate example remains this from the Guardian in 2002 - https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2002/mar/09/restandrelaxation.shopping (https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2002/mar/09/restandrelaxation.shopping))
I read and enjoyed both of those links.
I wonder if the Dan Mallory piece is an industry hatchet job, wearing the clothes of investigative journalism, or if the intent is really to unpick the lies of a sociopath in the way the author lays out. I half expected the byline to be an obvious Dan Mallory pseudonym but this appears not to be the case!
Just this morning, at the very moment I dipped the homemade Greek cookie into my first coffee of the day, the instant relese of its sweet, gentle aromas caused a series of deep memories to flow across my mind. I fell into a reverie. Ah! Marcel, how I do love you. How "A le Recherche" is the greatest novel of all time. Have I mentioned that before? Perhaps, but no reason not to repeat it. I've been thinking about rereading it. It's a big commitment ... but, then again, I've got plenty of time now I'm no longer climbing (though, of course, I have thought about starting again). We'll see. It would give me lots to post about.
Just this morning, at the very moment I dipped the homemade Greek cookie into my first coffee of the day, the instant relese of its sweet, gentle aromas caused a series of deep memories to flow across my mind. I fell into a reverie. Ah! Marcel, how I do love you. How "A le Recherche" is the greatest novel of all time. Have I mentioned that before? Perhaps, but no reason not to repeat it. I've been thinking about rereading it. It's a big commitment ... but, then again, I've got plenty of time now I'm no longer climbing (though, of course, I have thought about starting again). We'll see. It would give me lots to post about.
Just loved "A le Recherche" which I think I alluded to somewhere a long way up thread. Big commitment to re-read though. I'd be tempted to just re-read my favourite bits. I really enjoyed in particular the second part, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.
I've never read any John le Carre - where does one begin?
Le Carré does have his cake and eat it all the time. He will tell you the facts he wants you to know and then he will deliberately withhold information. A significant part of the famous complexity of Le Carré’s fiction comes from the adroit manipulation of these double standards.
One instance will have to suffice. In The Honourable Schoolboy there is a classic example of this withholding technique. Halfway through this long novel (by far Le Carré’s longest) George Smiley receives a report from an agent named Craw about a key target’s movements in and out of mainland China. This report gives Smiley “a rare moment of pleasure”. Clearly, Smiley has spotted a solution to a vital mystery.
“But don’t you see?” [Smiley] protested to Guillam… “Don’t you understand, Peter?” – shoving Craw’s dates under his nose… “Oh, you are a dunce.” “I’m nothing of the kind,” Guillam retorted. “I just don’t happen to have a direct line to God, that’s all.”
Le Carré, the novelist, knows the significance of Craw’s report. So does George Smiley, a character in the novel. But Peter Guillam, another character, doesn’t know. And, of course, neither does the reader. This feeling of not wholly understanding what’s going on, of missing the point, is something Le Carré finesses regularly, with great skill.
This is a genuine Le Carré device – almost his trademark. The immediate consequence is that readers feel a bit stupid; they urge themselves to pay more attention; to read more closely – but there’s nothing they can do. In fact Le Carré, if he is to play by the strict rules of omniscient narration, shouldn’t be indulging in this. He could easily tell us what the significance of Craw’s report is, but in this instance he chooses not to. This pointed withholding is an illicit trick, in literary terms, but very, very effective in a novel of espionage. “God” in this instance is the novelist, and Le Carré has just cut the lines of communication.
I know nothing about the series or book, but the haydon prideaux relationship is definitely implied in the film.
I went back to the literature of the Edwardian period because, as I think I've mentioned to Andy elsewhere but not on here, I've been given a copy of my grandfather's diaries, from the early 1920s to the early 1980s, and I wanted to get some light on the world he grew out of. (I've been meaning to write something on this "book" for this thread...) My grandad was a deeply progressive man and I've found no sign of racism or anti-semitism at all -
As you say, this says something about the culture my grandad came out of - comfortably middle class, liberal and outward looking but not particularly socialist. Admittedly the examples above come a few years after Graves wrote his book, but Graves was a self-proclaimed radical and a writer, not a provincial architect. That's what left the bad taste in my mouth.
A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine, Tor Books)
Recent reads:
The Broken Empire Trilogy by Mark Lawrence. Probably the most grimdark fantasy I have read, replete with graphic violence, torture etc. At times I didn't really enjoy it because of this, but I think it's well written and in the ending I thought struck a note of hope that somewhat redeemed the monochrome bleakness of the rest of the story. If you enjoy Cormac McCarthy and like fantasy you will like this.
Anyone read The Three Body Problem? I just finished it on the train, thought it was quality.
Helen Mort and Mo Omar on M John Harrison’s “Climbers” from R4’s A Good Read today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rw3d (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rw3d)
Anyone read The Three Body Problem? I just finished it on the train, thought it was quality.
The Space Between Worlds
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B084D9VSV1/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=
I rather liked this. It starts with the catchy premise that after parallel universe travel has been discovered in a very class-divided post-apocalyptic society, the travellers between worlds (spies, essentially) need to be recruited from the lowest classes which have had the lowest chance of survival on alternate worlds, because reality rejects any attempt to travel to a world where the person's alternative self still exists (backed by the equally entertaining premise of some attempted travellers being returned disassembled). The endearingly nihilistic protagonist is under no illusions about her place in society, until she breaks that general rule and gets drawn into more malicious machinations... The character and background exposition is not always as clear as it could be, but I found it a smart, captivating story, including the warped cross-class romance.
A few from the Summer.
M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again.
A brilliant and unsettling (as always) novel following Shaw, a displaced loner recovering from a breakdown who winds up with an odd job on a moored barge in London and Victoria, another unsettled soul who moves to her recently deceased mother’s house in Shropshire. Shaw becomes tangled up in a strange job that he doesn’t quite understand. Victoria obsesses over doing up the house. Dislocation, confusion and a sense of collapse pervades throughout with a strange, atavistic, aquatic theme. Odd, funny and flint sharp. I loved it.
I keep meaning to attempt one of these. Light first then?
Cryptic crossword aficionados might get it quicker than I did.
A very short essay on science fiction and the Luddites, posted for all the SF fans on here:
https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/
A very short essay on science fiction and the Luddites, posted for all the SF fans on here:
https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/
Interesting! Is it true though? What does the historical scholarship say about the motivation of the luddites? (I have no idea, and since there wasn't any reference to the literature in the article I cannot easily find out.)
A very short essay on science fiction and the Luddites, posted for all the SF fans on here:
https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/
Interesting! Is it true though? What does the historical scholarship say about the motivation of the luddites? (I have no idea, and since there wasn't any reference to the literature in the article I cannot easily find out.)
Highly recommend Stasiland, a book about an Australian journalists interviews with East Germans about their experiences with the Stasi during the GDR period.Certainly puts in perspective folk complaining about 'the surveillance society' (copyright Daily Mail).
Black Car Burning - Helen Mort.
Climbing fiction doesn't come along very often, and yet, despite being from and about the heart of the Sheffield scene, published in 2019, with a lot of promotion and positive reviews from writers like Macfarlane and M John, review or comment for this book is weirdly absent in the climbing world. It didn't get a UKC review or shortlisting for the BT, nor generate any forum traffic. To be honest I wasn't drawn to it either (received it as a gift) - someone else's perspective on something so close is likely to jar - and the cover with a rope sewn into a carbine hook isn't a great start. But I enjoyed the first 100 pages, the writing style is a bit terse for my liking but I soon got over it, and I enjoyed the one page landscape statements. but it soon started to drag. Nothing much happens, the characters never really develop, and everything is told from inside someone's head in a manner that is perhaps intended to be gritty and real but just comes across as dull and tedious. By the final 100 pages I was just trying to finish in the hope it might improve. There are a few nice descriptions of soloing but mostly the climbing seems to be a vehicle for people to have accidents or exhibit selfish behaviour - just the sort of cliched outsider perspective I was hoping to avoid. There is a lot of drinking and sex which seem equally joyless, the moral perhaps being hinted at that perhaps risky behaviour in life and relationships never works out. The 'action' constantly jumps around Sheffield and the Peak without much reason, and anyone who doesn't know the area well will be left bewildered. Meh.
I loved Cloud Atlas too, Julia Donaldson did it better with Charlie Cook's Favourite Book though :)
I've never watched the film for fear that it it won't live up to the book, might need to sometime though, it's on prime.
Didn't rate cloud atlas. Could t tell you why because it was ages ago, but found it irritating.
Didn't rate cloud atlas. Could t tell you why because it was ages ago, but found it irritating.
Read Hamnet by Maggie O Farrell recently, rated that, very readable if not very cheery.
Currently on Pachinko which is equally as good so far, about a Korean family who migrate to Japan from the 20s ish to the 60s (I think, haven't got there yet!). Very readable.
For the sf/f crowd: anyone mentioned Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir yet? The promo line was "Lesbian necromancers in space!" and it lives up to it; original, fun, twisty, fast-moving, gleefully macabre, and IN SPAAAAAAACE.
I'm pretty sure I'm the s/f crowd but I'm embarrassingly out of touch with the flourishing lesbian necromancers in space sub-genre....
Incidentally I was wondering "Where's jab_happy gone these days?? Maybe taking a break now the jab / covid situation seems to be settling....".
Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, Clive Ruggles. After Prof Thom's '67 and '71 conceptual bombshells (mentioned in my previous post) split the archaeological establishment in two, Ruggles was the most prominent worker to undertake extensive field work to try to move the discussion forward. Published in '99, this a magisterial overview after 25 years at the forefront of what became the 'interdisciplinary boundary dispute' of spherical trigonometry vs the muddy trowel (Ruggles himself started out in astrophysics). Although enthusiasm for the subject among UK professionals remains muted, Ruggles' subsequent work on sites in Peru and Hawaii is less equivocal and ties in with the previous books in this post.
Sea People, Christina Thompson. A history of Polynesia. Really enjoyed this, perfectly paced, draws on many sources and very even handed on the colonial aspects. The settling of Oceania - a scattering of tiny islands in a vast ocean, against the prevailing winds and currents by a people with only stone age tools - was one of the great conundrums of anthropology and the story is brilliantly told, from the likes of Cpt Cook meets Tupaia, to Nainoa Thompson 'closing the triangle' by sailing a Hawaiian canoe to Rapa Nui using only traditional navigation. Highly recommended if you've any interest in the region, sailing or just great non-fiction.Just got this based on your recommendation JB, sounds great (I grew up sailing, loved A Pattern Of Islands (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_of_Islands) and The Last Navigator (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/707571.The_Last_Navigator), and did my final year project at uni on proas (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proa), so I am probably the perfect audience...)
Wow, that's amazing, would love to have met him. It sailing the west coast that started it all off - in particular ghosting into Loch Roag one evening and seeing Callanish silhouetted against the rising moon.
...
For books like these you can set up Abebooks to email you when copies come up for sale, or I'd be happy to lend mine (or don't you have access to a Uni library?). I think Thom's books are worth reading first and they're not expensive. Definitely an absorbing rabbithole, there are a couple of biographies I'd like to read too.
Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. A Great Man biography but one that puts his life and thought very firmly in the socio-political background of his times. A liberal dissenting upbringing in Shropshire, near the heartland of the Industrial revolution, and close connections with the Wedgwood family gave him an intellectual freedom and network of other independent thinkers allowing the germination and evolution of his radical ideas. As importantly, it gave him the time and money to pursue these ideas: the voyage of the Beagle was an extended gap-year financed by his family. The big speculation is how much the 15 year delay in publication of the theory of evolution was due to the turbulent politics of the time. The book's thesis is Darwin knew the revolutionary impact his ideas would have and was being cautious about stirring things further. Or was he just being a good scientist and collecting more data and polishing his arguments before going public?
I studied this era at school but got no sense of how the people, thought, culture, and commerce of the time were so interconnected. Any suggestions on further reading?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSY4x1Wki-Q
The algorithms recently pointed me at AN Wilson's entertaining documentary on Josiah Wedgwood, very much part of the Darwin circle, which does a similar job of placing the man in his time. Spot the ukb contributor!
Some stuff I've read recently:
The Ratline, Philippe Sands. Had a go at this based on Wellsy's recommendation. It's not for me: I think the issue is that the underlying subject matter (Nazi war criminals escaping justice after WW2) just doesn't interest me that much. I plowed on to where I thought it was going to naturally end only for the author to start dragging it out for an age afterwards. I optimistically read on thinking it surely had to wind up sooner or later, but it broke my will before I could get to the end. Given I got as far as I did suggests it's actually pretty well written and would be good if you're interested in that sorta thing.
Whatever you do, don't read A.N. Wilson's novel based on Wedgwood's life - it's a travesty (which is weird, because his father was managing director of Wedgwood at some point). Tristram Hunt, fomer Stoke MP and now director of the V&A, has just publsihed a new biography of Wedgwood, but I haven't read it. What I've read about it put me off a bit, but I was reading with a fairly critical eye. Hunt had a successful academic career as a historian before he entered politics so it should be a pretty solid piece of work.
Filming that scene was funny. Wilson is unbelievably posh. It was 10am on a Monday. The pub was open and full of exactly the characters you'd expect to find in a pub in Liverpool city centre at 10am on a Monday morning. They kept trying to join, singing, walking behind us, mugging at the camera etc. Wilson was a pretty good sport.
Anyway, read Uglow.
Papillon, Henri Charrière. Mega! An autobiographical account of a chap who gets sent to the penal colony in French Guiana and his ongoing attempts to escape. I got the sense that many of the stories are made up (or borrowed or heavily embellished) but they're told so simply and so well it draws you in. If you've read Shantaram it's got a pretty similar vibe.
Some stuff I've read recently:
The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman. Second int he Thursday Murder Club series. More easy reading.
Feeding The Rat, Al Alvarez. A really touching piece of writing and rightly a climbing classic. Going in I vaguely knew the names of the main protagonists but this really brought them to life. Alvarez is a good writer by the standards of climbing books and it shows.
Sunfall, Jim Al-Khalili (of Life Scientific fame). Sci-fi + thriller kinda thing. It's a fun read but it's unlikely to change how you look at the world.
Papillon, Henri Charrière. Mega! An autobiographical account of a chap who gets sent to the penal colony in French Guiana and his ongoing attempts to escape. I got the sense that many of the stories are made up (or borrowed or heavily embellished) but they're told so simply and so well it draws you in. If you've read Shantaram it's got a pretty similar vibe.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Russian dystopian novel written in the 20s. Apparently an inspiration for 1984 by Orwell, although apparently not for Brave New World by Huxley, despite probably having more in common with the latter.
Written in a diary/report format that makes it quite immediate and at times confusing (I think it is meant to be to emphasise the main character's state of mind) as the main character wrestles with various desires and duties pulling him in different directions. A little more sci-fi (and kind of humorous) than 1984 (which if I remember correctly is very serious) but an excellent read. Especially if you like the other dystopian novels. Remarkably (or depressingly) prescient given it was written over a 100 years ago. A lot still feels very relevant to current politics/societal rhetoric.
Would definitely recommend, especially since it is quite short too.
Finally finished Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain which I was inspired to read after it being discussed in Knausgaard's books. Can't say I loved it, and it took me an age. Anyone else read it?
A comparable book that went pretty much completely over my head was Robert Musil's "A Man Without Qualities." I finished it, but got just about nothing from it.
If you're not completely put off Mann, "Buddenbrooks" is a much more approachable book - and very good.
There is also a nice podcast episode on the scandal here https://www.ft.com/content/eebabfef-8a34-4b25-bb72-55fce734e72c
Read Empireland recently. https://www.waterstones.com/book/empireland/sathnam-sanghera/9780241445310
Excellent analysis of how the British empire affects what British people are like today, rather than a history of the empire (which is obviously a vast subject extensively covered in a number of historical tomes). In Empireland the author has a particular political slant, as would any British person writing on this subject, but he's open and honest about this, and writes with enough nuance to depict the empire as neither good nor bad. I especially liked the premise which runs through much of it that most people in the UK know almost nothing about the empire, despite its existence affecting what we're like as a country as much as the world wars which are done to death in secondary school history, whereas the empire is barely mentioned.
Read Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams. Fantastic coming of age story set in the American west at the end of the ‘wild west’ era. One of a number of more grounded and realistic western books/films etc that came out as a response to the over romanticised earlier westerns. Apparently paved the way for books like blood meridian by Cormack McCarthy which I can see but it’s much less brutal than that and much more poignant. Very easy reading and well written. Highly recommend.
Read Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams. Fantastic coming of age story set in the American west at the end of the ‘wild west’ era. One of a number of more grounded and realistic western books/films etc that came out as a response to the over romanticised earlier westerns. Apparently paved the way for books like blood meridian by Cormack McCarthy which I can see but it’s much less brutal than that and much more poignant. Very easy reading and well written. Highly recommend.
Completely different, but Stoner by Williams is also brilliant.
Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion
Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion
I read it and I thought it was Okay. It's very much doing a lot of by the numbers space opera stuff and I felt like it apes but was nowhere near as good as some other works.
Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.I have read it and I have a different opinion!! I enjoyed it and thought it was pretty cool, snappy sci-fi of that style. I can't remember anything about it now though. It might not be an idea choice for people who don't read much sci-fi, maybe??
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion
Of what I've read recently these are what I'd recommend:A Fiend pro-tip as it happens!
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Easily the best thing I've read in ages. Fantasy. Piranesi lives in the House, a seemingly infinite labyrinth of vast stone halls lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of unique statues. As he explores, we discover what the House is and who its inhabitants are. A short book, it packs in a lot of beauty and a good story. For those of us who have ever felt the urge to know a place, to get under its skin and understand every inch of it (that's you, crag developers and scrittle scrubbers), I think you'll love this.
Okay this is a nice one:Nice to hear of someone else enjoying it.
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/piranesi
Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
Well summed up on the synopsis above, a sort of mellow Banksian "unreal fiction" tale of a substrata universe. 5 pages in the writing Style and excessive Capitalisation was getting my tits so much I didn't want to continue, 5 pages from the end I enjoyed it so much that I didn't want it to be over (it's quite short, in a sort of "doesn't want to outstay it's welcome" way). Charming and intriguing, but I did find the evolution from the earlier bewilderment into a more gentle and normal ending slightly disappointing.
Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion
I read it and I thought it was Okay. It's very much doing a lot of by the numbers space opera stuff and I felt like it apes but was nowhere near as good as some other works.
So far I'd completely agree with that. It really wants to be a Culture novel, but isn't as good.
I've just finished Peter Gatrell's The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present; as the title suggests, a history of migration to and within Europe from 1945 to 2019, when the book was written. This is an excellent piece of work, a very nuanced and humane history of an immensely complex and often contentious topic. I recommend it to any interested in the subject. Caveat, I guess, Gatrell is very firmly on the side of the migrant and the refugee.
Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.I have read it and I have a different opinion!! I enjoyed it and thought it was pretty cool, snappy sci-fi of that style. I can't remember anything about it now though. It might not be an idea choice for people who don't read much sci-fi, maybe??
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion
The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
Maybe not everybody's cup of tea, but I think everybody who can read should read this.
Unraveled, Katie Brown's memoir, is absolutely brutal. I was climbing around her heyday, but apart from the results was only vaguely aware that she was a bit skinny and seemed to burn out and leave the sport. Had no idea how religion, her relationship with her mother, and a really serious eating disorder had combined in such a toxic mix.Just finished listening to her being interviewed on the Runout and have previously heard her speak on the Enormocast, so was aware of the basics but keen to read it at some point. I’m a similar generation and remember the impact she had when she came on to the scene, particularly as I used to buy Climbing every so often and saw a few articles about her. Unsurprisingly at the time, none of the bad stuff was being shared.
Unraveled, Katie Brown's memoir, is absolutely brutal. I was climbing around her heyday, but apart from the results was only vaguely aware that she was a bit skinny and seemed to burn out and leave the sport. Had no idea how religion, her relationship with her mother, and a really serious eating disorder had combined in such a toxic mix.
Amongst all the trauma I did think there were some genuinely uplifting moments though.
Oh god, I love that book so much. I read it at an impressionable age, having found his books via the SFF as a young geek, and it might have been one of the things that piled up inside me and resulted in me starting climbing many years later.
Have you seen this photo of Harrison on Time For Tea Original?
https://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/a-loving-relationship/
Also read Leo's book Closer to the Edge. With a Bear Grylls quote on the cover and a gushing foreword by Steve Backshall, I suspect a lot of climbers will pass this over as too mainstream. This would be a mistake. Although there is limited hold-by-hold accounts this is unapologetically a climbing book and lay readers would require heavy use of the glossary. The formative stuff, as you'd expect, is more interesting/ less 'normal' than I'd realised and is illuminating. Leo struck out on his own early and quickly the sheer volume of hard and big routes becomes staggering, to the point where whole expeditions are either left out or passed over in a paragraph. And the audacity of the objectives keeps ramping up; I think more detail on the difficulty of funding and preparing for the Antarctica trips could have been included but you get a picture. As Jim Perrin pointed out in Fawcett on Rock, it's one thing to compete with your peers but quite another to keep pushing when you've left them so far behind. The pacing is excellent and the writing is generally better than you might expect, especially given the limited editorial input he received. The ego is mostly in check although a couple of chapters do start by quoting himself, and the punctuation I found odd. But I think most climbers will enjoy it.
hates closure, hates having to be the one who is supposed to provide it
Hadn't seen that before, amazing! And to have Fawcett and Pollitt on belay and photography duty, wow!
how did we get from being animal to (modern) human
It's the 100th anniversary of Proust's death. Bravo Marcel!
Can anyone think of any particularly funny books they’ve read recently - I’m thinking stuff that’s come out in the last ten years, possibly amusing genre stuff (I assume the recent Richard Osman things are gently amusing - I’ve not read any of them), but really more general “this is meant to be a funny book” vs “this is a xxx book that’s also quite funny”.
Anything from extremely low brow fiction written with the intention of luring men away from SAS memoirs at Luton airport Waterstones to more literary dark humour / satire…
Bob Mortimer’s The Satsuma Complex is the obvious current example.
I realise this is slightly asking people to spill the beans about their guilty pleasures* but seeing as pretty much everyone here has already detailed so much highbrow / scholarly material that I don’t think anyone (not least me) is going to be in any way judgemental!
(* I know an evolutionary biologist and author whose idea of idea of lightweight guilty pleasure is Patrick O’Brian.)
Found out today that Robert Louis Stephenson wrote an essay on Fontainebleau in the 19th century, can you believe it?!
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30990/30990-h/30990-h.htm#page215
Incredible!
I just finished reading Dominion by Tom Holland, which is an understandably lengthy 'history of the making of the Western mind'. I'd highly recommend it if you are interested in the history of Christianity and/ or much of modern culture. It covers everything from pre biblical history to the Beatles, the lord of the rings and #metoo. He argues that despite the generally secular nature of much of European or American culture, the concept of secularism itself is rooted in Christian values; and that the same is true of humanism. That's only a small part of the book , but I found, one of the best.
I just finished reading Dominion by Tom Holland, which is an understandably lengthy 'history of the making of the Western mind'. I'd highly recommend it if you are interested in the history of Christianity and/ or much of modern culture. It covers everything from pre biblical history to the Beatles, the lord of the rings and #metoo. He argues that despite the generally secular nature of much of European or American culture, the concept of secularism itself is rooted in Christian values; and that the same is true of humanism. That's only a small part of the book , but I found, one of the best.
I listen a to The Rest Is History quite a lot, and do like Tom Holland - but he does seem to hold Christianity in high regard so I wonder how well argued that book is?
I really struggle with Tom Holland’s thesis that much of what we think of as secular liberalism having its roots in Christianity. I’d like to know how he deals with two things, firstly that early modern thinkers had to specifically struggle against Church and a broader Christian ethos. I’m sure he’ll claim they were simply trying to get the church to follow its own gospels but that strikes me as underplaying secular philosophy and political thought. Secondly, both Buddhism and Islam have a good claim to creating a similarly universalist approach (I don’t know enough about Judaism to say whether it does, and I don’t think Hinduism does at all) so to say these ideas are purely western, as opposed to most fully expressed in western societies, seems a little parochial to me.
Having said that, I’ve not read the book so he probably deals with these objections.
Cheers! Duma, Kobos seem pretty rare, and although mine has been glitchy and annoying at times, I've read a lot on it.
If you like Arkady Martine's work, maybe worth checking out Ann Leckie too? More distantly, Yoon Ha Lee or Tamsyn Muir.
Cheers! Duma, Kobos seem pretty rare, and although mine has been glitchy and annoying at times, I've read a lot on it.
book_happy, I've read Ann Leckie, I think I was discussing her books further up with TobyD and others who were underwhelmed.
Just looked up Tamsyn Muir and I believe that is the same "lesbian necromancers in space" series you recommended before?? It still doesn't grab me tbh...
If you like Arkady Martine's work, maybe worth checking out Ann Leckie too? More distantly, Yoon Ha Lee or Tamsyn Muir.
was it Ann Leckies book that was discussed in one of the Very Bad Wizards podcasts?
I'm reading MJH's Light at the moment, really struggling to enjoy it tbh
Just doesn't grab me. I'm not generally a fan of, err, the more flamboyant, semi-humourous type sci-fi / fantasy stuff.
I read of mince and men, and it was good but it left me wanting.
At the start of lockdown we built a small book exhnage / free library in our communal garden.
One day, fairly early on I spotted The Grapes of Wrath in mint condition so grabbed it. It's been on the "to-read-sometime" pile for ages. Well... Nearly halfway and what a read.
I read of mince and men, and it was good but it left me wanting. So far GoW just has much more scale and breadth. So much has gone into each scene, each character.
Sitting on my own in the Laggangarbh hut, after not getting any skiing in today due to the wind, but I couldn't be happier. Climbing tomorrow, with a refreshed outlook.
Climbing tomorrow, with a refreshed outlook.
On a slightly (very) different level I have just read Dead Men’s Trousers by Irvine Welsh - it’s the fourth/final book following the characters from Trainspotting and I thought it was absolutely brilliant! Funny, dark, sad.
Tbh all the books are great - Skagboys, Trainspotting, P0rno, and then this. P0rno is potentially the best of the lot actually but haven’t read it for years.
Also in the current top20 i am currently inserting Hemmingway, Bukowski & Murakami
Maybe I need to give Steinbeck another try. I had a go with Grapes of Wrath years ago and just couldn't get into it. DNF.
Finished MJH's Light. Wish I'd never read it tbh. Felt like such a waste.
On a slightly (very) different level I have just read Dead Men’s Trousers by Irvine Welsh - it’s the fourth/final book following the characters from Trainspotting and I thought it was absolutely brilliant! Funny, dark, sad.
Tbh all the books are great - Skagboys, Trainspotting, P0rno, and then this. P0rno is potentially the best of the lot actually but haven’t read it for years.
Excellent, wasn't aware of it, will look it out. I only read pr0no recently. I thought Skagboys was the best of the lot, leads well to the hero's tragic demise. Felt like pr0no tried a bit too hard to be a more wild ride. All good though. I really liked bedroom Secrets of the Masterchefs, worth reading if you haven't. Don't let the title mislead you.
Big Country vs The Mission, tough call :)
East of Eden is far superior to Grapes of Wrath I think. Amazed it hasn't been made into a big HBO series.
Finished MJH's Light. Wish I'd never read it tbh. Felt like such a waste.
I'm kind of with you on this, but Harrison's prose is so good I really want to try and salvage something from that book. There's a lot of nonsense and I think he is writing for a very mature sci-fi audience. I honestly couldn't tell if it was satire or not, but it certainly reads better if you think of it as genre parody (IMO).
Finished MJH's Light. Wish I'd never read it tbh. Felt like such a waste.
I'm kind of with you on this, but Harrison's prose is so good I really want to try and salvage something from that book. There's a lot of nonsense and I think he is writing for a very mature sci-fi audience. I honestly couldn't tell if it was satire or not, but it certainly reads better if you think of it as genre parody (IMO).
Finished MJH's Light. Wish I'd never read it tbh. Felt like such a waste.
I'm kind of with you on this, but Harrison's prose is so good I really want to try and salvage something from that book. There's a lot of nonsense and I think he is writing for a very mature sci-fi audience. I honestly couldn't tell if it was satire or not, but it certainly reads better if you think of it as genre parody (IMO).
The prose is good but wasted, as is a lot of the conceptual stuff re. the setting and technology, all of which is beautifully described. The technobabble for the K-ships was very evocative and cool. Its just that 2/3 characters were just totally unlikeable cunts and the 3rd was merely "fine." The plot was pretty meandering to non existent and there wasn't much going on that I cared about. If its a satire of the genre then I'd say that it should have been ten pages long not hundreds and that the best satire is quality in of its own sake. I'm sure MJH would defend all their creative decisions and I've enjoyed their other work but there's not many books I've read where I finished it in a vaguely cross mood at having been subjected to it's content.
Shrander. Dr Haends. Sandra Shen.
Shrander. Dr Haends. Sandra Shen.This took me embarassingly long to realise.
Read Klara and the Sun just recently, it's a remarkable but strange and unsettling book. It's not quite what I thought it might be, given that it was given the Nobel prize for literature.
Read Klara and the Sun just recently, it's a remarkable but strange and unsettling book. It's not quite what I thought it might be, given that it was given the Nobel prize for literature.Errr no it wasn't? The author was (years before this was published).
Read Klara and the Sun just recently, it's a remarkable but strange and unsettling book. It's not quite what I thought it might be, given that it was given the Nobel prize for literature. Saying that I'm not really sure what I expected either, but it was certainly a worthwhile read.I thought Klara and the Sun was excellent. It always amazes me the breadth and depth of subject matter Ishiguro has written about.I think I've read everything he's done and each book has made an impression. From the study of English class systems and 'duty' in The Remains of the Day (which I found remarkable given the author 's nationality) the creeping sense of foreboding in Never Let Me Go and the sad aura of dislocation in Klara all are very different.Never Let Me Go really got under my skin and left me both physically and mentally drained for days afterwards.His lesser known works all possess an other worldliness to them and are well worth investigating, A Pale View of Hills especially.
Interested to know if anyone else has read it, and what they thought.
Artist of the Floating World is especially good I thought.I thought I'd read them all! Don't know how I missed that, bought now so thanks for that. :2thumbsup:
Currently rereading Moby Dick (okay, listening this time round, courtesy of https://www.mobydickbigread.com/ ) in order to follow along with everyone I know who's doing Whale Weekly ( https://whaleweekly.substack.com/ ).I've read the first 100 pages of Moby Dick about 5 times now. Must try harder.
For anyone who doesn't know, it is the WEIRDEST fucking book, which has been done a terrible disservice by the attempt to squash it into the Great American Novel box; I'm not sure it's even a novel per se, but it is sure as hell an Experience.
Currently rereading Moby Dick (okay, listening this time round, courtesy of https://www.mobydickbigread.com/ ) in order to follow along with everyone I know who's doing Whale Weekly ( https://whaleweekly.substack.com/ ).I've read the first 100 pages of Moby Dick about 5 times now. Must try harder.
For anyone who doesn't know, it is the WEIRDEST fucking book, which has been done a terrible disservice by the attempt to squash it into the Great American Novel box; I'm not sure it's even a novel per se, but it is sure as hell an Experience.
Ace that you’re enjoying Moby Dick slab_happy. It is WEIRD and amazing.
Once you’ve finished (and for others who have already read it) I can highly recommend the poet Charles Olson’s “Call me Ishmael”, a critical essay he wrote on MB in 1947. It’s a full-blast terrific piece of writing.
A good review of it here https://granta.com/best-book-of-1947-call-me-ishmael-by-charles-olson/ (https://granta.com/best-book-of-1947-call-me-ishmael-by-charles-olson/)
You can find pdfs of it on line or it’s also included in Olson’s Collected Prose.
Once you’ve finished
Sherlock, yeah that was me. It’s so good isn’t it? Funnily enough it was MJH who recommended it. I haven’t heard of either of those two so will track them down. Thanks!
Whilst we’re on MJH, his (anti)memoir Wish I Was Here is out in May.
I have to say, Moby Dick is my least favourite book of all time. I can't understand how it's hailed as an essential classic. I found it a very long traipse through a lot of dull whaling trivia and an interminable plot.
Obviously horses for courses and perhaps it's a brilliant and profound read that went over my head, but for me it was a boring slog that I got to the end of and wished I hadn't bothered.
Currently rereading Moby Dick (okay, listening this time round, courtesy of https://www.mobydickbigread.com/ ) in order to follow along with everyone I know who's doing Whale Weekly ( https://whaleweekly.substack.com/ ).
For anyone who doesn't know, it is the WEIRDEST fucking book, which has been done a terrible disservice by the attempt to squash it into the Great American Novel box; I'm not sure it's even a novel per se, but it is sure as hell an Experience.
While we're on whales (and I agree Moby Dick is magnificent) how about this from Charlotte Brontë's Shirley;
"And what will become of that inexpressible weight you said you had on your mind?' 'I will try to forget it in speculation on the sway of the whole Great Deep above a herd of whales rushing through the livid and liquid thunder down from the frozen zone:'"
My god. That is so good.
I have to say, Moby Dick is my least favourite book of all time. I can't understand how it's hailed as an essential classic. I found it a very long traipse through a lot of dull whaling trivia and an interminable plot.
Obviously horses for courses and perhaps it's a brilliant and profound read that went over my head, but for me it was a boring slog that I got to the end of and wished I hadn't bothered.
It's a famously divisive book. For me, it's best of all time, without a shadow of a doubt. He messes with syntax like Shakespeare does. I also love the philosophical musings. Sure, Ishmael uses 1,000 words when 10 could do, but that's the point.
I guess I'll never know if Closer to the Edge is any good or not - got a free ticket to the Tiso book singing / Berghaus advertorial thing in Glasgow tonight and it confirmed that............I wouldn't be interested....even though they were being handed out free.
Think I need to read again it was some time ago, I remember really enjoying the loquaciousness!
Not on my list, impressive as what he's done is, I find the way he "pitches" himself quite irritating.
It's a famously divisive book. For me, it's best of all time, without a shadow of a doubt. He messes with syntax like Shakespeare does. I also love the philosophical musings. Sure, Ishmael uses 1,000 words when 10 could do, but that's the point.
Think I need to read again it was some time ago, I remember really enjoying the loquaciousness!
I have to say, Moby Dick is my least favourite book of all time. I can't understand how it's hailed as an essential classic. I found it a very long traipse through a lot of dull whaling trivia and an interminable plot.
Obviously horses for courses and perhaps it's a brilliant and profound read that went over my head, but for me it was a boring slog that I got to the end of and wished I hadn't bothered.
You’re a better man than I! I’ve no interest in reading it whatsoever. Life’s too short.
Talking of demented quests for giant sea-creatures...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scar_(novel)
I have to say, Moby Dick is my least favourite book of all time. I can't understand how it's hailed as an essential classic. I found it a very long traipse through a lot of dull whaling trivia and an interminable plot.
Obviously horses for courses and perhaps it's a brilliant and profound read that went over my head, but for me it was a boring slog that I got to the end of and wished I hadn't bothered.
You’re a better man than I! I’ve no interest in reading it whatsoever. Life’s too short.
If you get to page 50 and don’t enjoy reading it, ditch it. That said, Moby Dick is full of C19 romanticism, madness and the struggle between man vs nature. I don’t get how you can’t love it, but we’re all different.
Tie between Perdido Street Station and The City & The City for me. The Scar a solid 3rd place tho.
Moby Dick is full of C19 romanticism, madness and the struggle between man vs nature. I don’t get how you can’t love it, but we’re all different.
Just finished Neal Stevenson's "Anathem" was bloody brilliant tbh, so inventive and complex, I loved it. Was definitely for niche tastes though
Just finished Neal Stevenson's "Anathem" was bloody brilliant tbh, so inventive and complex, I loved it. Was definitely for niche tastes though
It is probably the Stephenson novel I've liked best, of those I've read.
The only thing that I found irritating was that the intellectuals who were separated from society believed in the absolute garbage pseudo-science of eugenics. I realise that is likely because Neal Stephenson do so himself, but it was jarring to read the narrator explain to the reader that the avout were not allowed to have kids because it would create a race of übermench—no one with good biology fundamentals would believe such utter nonsense, and the protagonists seemed good at plant breeding.
(Stephenson's Seveneves was much more problematic on this point, and I had to put it down after having screamed "the only way to fix inherent traits is by inbreeding you stupid fucking moron" to the page more than once)
Just finished Neal Stevenson's "Anathem" was bloody brilliant tbh, so inventive and complex, I loved it. Was definitely for niche tastes though
It is probably the Stephenson novel I've liked best, of those I've read.
The only thing that I found irritating was that the intellectuals who were separated from society believed in the absolute garbage pseudo-science of eugenics. I realise that is likely because Neal Stephenson do so himself, but it was jarring to read the narrator explain to the reader that the avout were not allowed to have kids because it would create a race of übermench—no one with good biology fundamentals would believe such utter nonsense, and the protagonists seemed good at plant breeding.
Perdido Street Station.Other ereaders are available - my Kobo does this too
I'd recommend reading on a Kindle because China Mieville uses a very good thesaurus throughout and it's useful to be able to long-press a word and get a quick definition.
Perdido Street Station.Other ereaders are available - my Kobo does this too
I'd recommend reading on a Kindle because China Mieville uses a very good thesaurus throughout and it's useful to be able to long-press a word and get a quick definition.
Finally got around to reading Alasdair Reynolds' Revelation Space
Really really good. If you like sci-fi I'd say it's 100% worth a read, and if you don't it's good enough to give a crack at.
Hello can someone please recommend me some new-ish interesting sci-fi / fantasy / unreal stuff, available on Kobo??
Last things I've enjoyed: The Anomaly Quartet, The Teixcalaan Duology, Piranesi. I like stuff that's a bit more quirky and creative than the usual cliches, and preferably with clear crisp writing. Ta!
Hello can someone please recommend me some new-ish interesting sci-fi / fantasy / unreal stuff, available on Kobo??
Last things I've enjoyed: The Anomaly Quartet, The Teixcalaan Duology, Piranesi. I like stuff that's a bit more quirky and creative than the usual cliches, and preferably with clear crisp writing. Ta!
Perdido Street Station. No idea if that's on Kobo.
The way the day breaks, David Roberts (https://weatherglassbooks.com/shop/the-way-the-day-breaks).
Dave is a ukb member, previously best known for an amusing attempt on Quent's dyno. This is his first novel, following a west yorkshire family in the 1980's through various perspectives, particularly that of the youngest son. I hesitate to add too much to the already enthusiastic mainstream reviews - 'Brilliant' - Literary review (https://literaryreview.co.uk/suspicious-minds) , 'Very funny' - TLS (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-way-the-day-breaks-david-roberts-book-review-sean-obrien/), but this is wonderful book that will stay with you. I'm not a big fiction reader, especially not 'experimental' which this veers towards, but I really enjoyed it and will be rereading soon. Highly recommended.
Hello can someone please recommend me some new-ish interesting sci-fi / fantasy / unreal stuff, available on Kobo??
Last things I've enjoyed: The Anomaly Quartet, The Teixcalaan Duology, Piranesi. I like stuff that's a bit more quirky and creative than the usual cliches, and preferably with clear crisp writing. Ta!
Dave is a ukb member, previously best known for an amusing attempt on Quent's dyno.
Hello can someone please recommend me some new-ish interesting sci-fi / fantasy / unreal stuff, available on Kobo??
Last things I've enjoyed: The Anomaly Quartet, The Teixcalaan Duology, Piranesi. I like stuff that's a bit more quirky and creative than the usual cliches, and preferably with clear crisp writing. Ta!
It's from a few years back, but Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit (and sequels)? Twisty dark maths-is-magic space opera about empire and consensus reality.
Also, because I was thinking of mentioning this anyway: might be worth taking a second look at the Locked Tomb Series (Gideon the Ninth etc.) -- as the series has continued, there's a lot of deeper and more complicated and unexpected stuff that turns out to be going on under the gonzo, terminally-online, "everyone talks like they're on Tumblr in 2010" surface.
(For starters, there's a reason why everyone in what you initially assume is the very far future talks in language derived from the contemporary internet.)
Tamsyn Muir's part of the same cluster of young writers as Arkady Martine, so if Teixcalaan worked for you, could be worth considering.
Perdido Street Station - yes was great when I read it whilst travelling in New Zealand in 2002, so much so it actually distracted me from climbing at Payne's Ford!
Quantum Thief - yup read that and the sequels, good stuff.
Becky Chambers - I've read and enjoyed her Wayfarer series. Not really into novellas but might check out Rose/House
Beyond The Burn Line - will check that out.
Ninefox Gambit - yup read that and the sequels, good stuff.
The lesbian space vampires thing.....jeeez.....the synopsis still makes me itchy with distaste for the style BUT maybe I will try it :blink:
I'm also finally - finally! - getting round to reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, obviously a must for anyone suffering a prolonged, doomed passion for Peak gritstone.
I'm also finally - finally! - getting round to reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, obviously a must for anyone suffering a prolonged, doomed passion for Peak gritstone.
I read this a long time ago but thought it was brilliant and very emotional.
I've meant for ages to read some William Dalrymple, but only very recently got round it, picking The Anarchy about the rise of the East India Company - met all my expectations in terms of very high quality popular history writing. I suspect it will appeal to quite a few posters and comes strongly recommended.
I'm also finally - finally! - getting round to reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, obviously a must for anyone suffering a prolonged, doomed passion for Peak gritstone.
I've meant for ages to read some William Dalrymple, but only very recently got round it, picking The Anarchy about the rise of the East India Company - met all my expectations in terms of very high quality popular history writing. I suspect it will appeal to quite a few posters and comes strongly recommended.
Rhodes's books are bloated and unfocused IMO. Making of the atomic bomb had about 400% too much material in it. He also isn't very good at stringing together a narrative. Much better to read a biography of Oppenheimer.
Yeah, I read the Kobo preview of a Chambers book and bounced off it hard, so that's my literary Marmite.
The galaxy.... Is the weakest of the series imo, tbh after the first 2 you wouldn't miss out by sacking it off.
On the contrary, I think Chigurh and the Judge are expressions of the worst of human nature, but that ultimately, they are human like the rest of us.
I read some of the introduction via Google books and they say exactly the same thing!
More broadly, this vein of criticism of modern economics falls into the pattern of all descriptions of bogeymen or scapegoats. The bogeyman is at once weak and despicable (useless at forecasting recessions, makes obvious misunderstandings of human nature etc) and at the same time frightening in its destructive power (“it [neoclassical economics’ concept of scarcity] has fostered a world in which the economy and nature are on a collision course” to quote this book). Intellectuals are as prone to seeking scapegoats as everyone else but they’re probably better at kidding themselves that they’re being objective.
Which economic models do you feel don’t work and why?
but trying to blame a particular intellectual tradition seems to sidestep the awkward truth that consumption is pretty popular across society.
Sure, of course the Laffer Curve is a boring and obvious example (sorry about that), but that's because it had very real real-world consequences. Boring doesn't mean unimportant. Same with EMH, I would say. I don't think they can/should be dismissed for being boring/obvious.
That’s just blatantly moving the goalposts. We’re only allowed to consider the well thought out economic theories? Laffer might be junk but we can’t just pretend it has nothing to do with “real” economics.
has anyone in the world read the unbearable lightness of being since the turn of the century...?
has anyone in the world read the unbearable lightness of being since the turn of the century...?
I read it in about 2005 and it was my favourite novel for a while. My other half read it a few years ago on my recommendation and said she thought it was much more a book for men that women. She says that about most stuff I recommend to her though :lol:
Currently reading Project Hail Mary, which I'm finding very enjoyable. It's categorized as science fiction, and it certainly is. I don't know if it's been written with a movie in mind (the author also wrote The Martian, which has obviously been made into a movie), but I'd welcome one (assuming the rest of the book pans out well).
I finished Blood Meridian last night and now I am haunted by The Judge. For the first third of it I couldn't get on with the book and wondered whether McCarthy just wasn't for me. All the Pretty Horses left no impression on me and I was wishing that someone would show McCarthy where the comma was on his keyboard. The violence was just senseless and disgusting - why, I thought?
As the character of The Judge develops I was pulled in, and in the end there's so much going on. I need to reread it at some point.On the contrary, I think Chigurh and the Judge are expressions of the worst of human nature, but that ultimately, they are human like the rest of us.
Naaah, The Judge is something supernatural, isn't he? The simplest explanation is that he is the/a devil, or is he god?NSFW spoilers:
Currently reading Project Hail Mary, which I'm finding very enjoyable. It's categorized as science fiction, and it certainly is. I don't know if it's been written with a movie in mind (the author also wrote The Martian, which has obviously been made into a movie), but I'd welcome one (assuming the rest of the book pans out well).Conclusion: It bloody well did. Great book. Go read it if you like that sort of thing: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Project-Hail-Mary-Andy-Weir/dp/0593135202
One disclaimer is that the prose / conversing is quite flippant / casual, just about tolerably so, but I'd prefer if it was a bit more down to earth and less "quippy". That aside it's a really good read so far, I don't know where it's going (which is nice), the interactions are attention-grabbing, and the back and forth with the timeline (something that often distracts me) is done well and un-intrusively.
David Keenan, Monument Maker ...Not everyone’s cup of tea by any means but I loved it.
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These. A brilliant short novella set in 1985 in Ireland that revolves around Bill Furlough, a family man who runs a small coal and fuel delivery business. He grew up adopted, has three young children of his own and the book takes place on the run up to Christmas. Bill delivers logs to the convent which is also a Magdalene Laundry for ‘troubled’ teenage girls where he encounters the cruelty of the sisters first-hand. I won’t give any more away as I don’t want to reveal the plot. I found it absolutely gripping and it’s so beautifully written.
Thanks Andy, great post & they all sound great, especially the Mailer.
Has anyone read any Jon Fosse? I’ve never heard of him until yesterday.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/05/where-to-start-with-jon-fosse (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/05/where-to-start-with-jon-fosse)
David Keenan, Monument Maker ...Not everyone’s cup of tea by any means but I loved it.
Yeah, ok, you gave fair warning! I got a chapter in and ran a mile :lol:Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These. A brilliant short novella set in 1985 in Ireland that revolves around Bill Furlough, a family man who runs a small coal and fuel delivery business. He grew up adopted, has three young children of his own and the book takes place on the run up to Christmas. Bill delivers logs to the convent which is also a Magdalene Laundry for ‘troubled’ teenage girls where he encounters the cruelty of the sisters first-hand. I won’t give any more away as I don’t want to reveal the plot. I found it absolutely gripping and it’s so beautifully written.
Loved this. Incredible to be able to write something so short but to have it all so well formed. Needed it badly after finishing Beastings by Benjamin Myers which has a similar theme but which makes Cormac McCarthy look like Willy Wonka.
A quick google seems to indicate that it is a travelogue of legendary status in Africa and France, with many editions and re-editions.
Same, looks greatAgree with that. Apart from the French lessons...
As for a recommendation, it is a known classic but Donna Tartt's The Secret History is bloody brilliant. 100% worth a read. Made me get off my arse and organise starting French Lessons next year as well
Same, looks greatAgree with that. Apart from the French lessons...
As for a recommendation, it is a known classic but Donna Tartt's The Secret History is bloody brilliant. 100% worth a read. Made me get off my arse and organise starting French Lessons next year as well
The Goldfinch and My Little Friend by the same author are also excellent I thought.
.
The Goldfinch
Loved The Secret History, sadly got about halfway through Goldfinch and gave up. Not enough going on..
I'm pretty impressed by how far you managed to get to in the Goldfinch-nonsense. I got like three pages in before putting it down.That's my Nobel Prize sorted then..... killer 3 pages then shite for 46 then a great page 47 then garbage again for the rest. Or am I missing something?
(My method is usually to read the first two-three pages, and if it is great I check page 47 to see if that is good as well, then I soldier on. I learned this simple trick from a guy that chaired the committee that decides the Nobel Prize in Literature. He grew up in a neighbouring village)
(My method is usually to read the first two-three pages, and if it is great I check page 47 to see if that is good as well, then I soldier on. I learned this simple trick from a guy that chaired the committee that decides the Nobel Prize in Literature. He grew up in a neighbouring village)
I'm pretty impressed by how far you managed to get to in the Goldfinch-nonsense. I got like three pages in before putting it down.
(My method is usually to read the first two-three pages, and if it is great I check page 47 to see if that is good as well, then I soldier on. I learned this simple trick from a guy that chaired the committee that decides the Nobel Prize in Literature. He grew up in a neighbouring village)
When I get a new book, I read the last page first. That way, if I die before I finish I know how it comes out. That, my friend, is a dark side
That's my Nobel Prize sorted then..... killer 3 pages then shite for 46 then a great page 47 then garbage again for the rest. Or am I missing something?
I've just finished a book I think a lot of people here might enjoy (indeed, might have read already). In 1950s Togo, a young boy has a nearly deadly encounter with a snake, recovering he reads a book about Greenland and becomes obsessed with travelling there. In 1958, aged 16, he ran away from home and spent the next eight years working his way through Africa and Europe before eventually reaching Greenland in 1964. In Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland Tété-Michel Kpomassie tells the remarkable (true) story of that journey and, in particular, the eighteen months he spent living among the inidigenous Greenlanders, by whom he seems to have been welcomed without question. It is a rich, vivid, and humane portrayal both of the author as a young man and of a culture even then coming under immense pressure (Denmark does not come out of this particularly well). A highly unusual and very worthwhile piece of travel writing. First published in English in 1981, Penguin reissued it last year.https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bmmvjx
If you want something exquisitely written and much, much gentler then I can really recommend The Offing. A coming of age novel set around Robin Hoods Bay.
That's interesting, I really didn't get on with the Offing. Just found it irritating from start to finish. I loved the grittiness of his other stuff and wanted more!
I've just finished a book I think a lot of people here might enjoy (indeed, might have read already). In 1950s Togo, a young boy has a nearly deadly encounter with a snake, recovering he reads a book about Greenland and becomes obsessed with travelling there. In 1958, aged 16, he ran away from home and spent the next eight years working his way through Africa and Europe before eventually reaching Greenland in 1964. In Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland Tété-Michel Kpomassie tells the remarkable (true) story of that journey and, in particular, the eighteen months he spent living among the inidigenous Greenlanders, by whom he seems to have been welcomed without question. It is a rich, vivid, and humane portrayal both of the author as a young man and of a culture even then coming under immense pressure (Denmark does not come out of this particularly well). A highly unusual and very worthwhile piece of travel writing. First published in English in 1981, Penguin reissued it last year.
we are bellingcat Elliott Higgins: fascinating insight into open source investigation and a positive example of someone with good ideas and technical expertise who hasn't decided to do something mercenary with their talent like work for Facebook or cambridge analytica.
the devotion of suspect x: although I'm only part way through this, I think I'd probably recommend it- Japanese crime thriller with a distinctly interesting edge to it. It's certainly highly enjoyable so far.
Finished Chasm City, great read! Brilliant stuffCorrect! Quite a lot more where that came from.
This one? if so thats on my list too. Based on the excellent podcast from a few years back, Our Man in the Middle East, which is also well worth a listen.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Modern-Middle-East-Personal/dp/1509890890
Incidentally just finished Kuang's "Babel" and thought it was very good
Me too. Sounds great Will.
I’m just nearing the end of James Ellroy’s The Enchanters. This is a much better Freddie Otash novel than the messy Widespread Panic. Marylin Monroe has just died. Otash is spying on her to dig up dirt on her relations with the Kennedy brothers for Jimmy Hoffa. Otash is persuaded to switch allegiances to LAPD chief Bill Parker working on behalf of Bobby K. Rapid fire dialogue, rogues, actresses, policemen, pimps and shrinks. I’m a fan of Ellroy and have enjoyed this one.
Damascus Station is a brilliant spy novel.
I received Any Human Heart (William Boyd) for Christmas and, judging by appearances, was not enthused. The cover, title, and blurb conjured a 500-page image of an effete aristocrat mooning over poetry and having a string of languorous affairs with glamorously disinterested prostitutes.
I trepidatiously made a start and was instantly hooked and remained enthralled to the very end.
Logan Mountstuart tells the story of his life through a series of intermittent journal entries spanning his final days of public school in the 1920s to his death in the final decade of the century. Along the way there are triumphs and there are tragedies. The mix of the incredible and the banal, combining in an always-compelling arc, are a testament to Boyd's skill.
Damascus Station is a brilliant spy novel.
I very rarely (basically never) read spy/thriller novels but just really enjoyed Eric Ambler's class The Mask of Dimitrios, almost more of a shaggy dog story than a spy novel (but maybe all spy stories are also shaggy dog stories, to some extent?).
I received Any Human Heart (William Boyd) for Christmas and, judging by appearances, was not enthused. The cover, title, and blurb conjured a 500-page image of an effete aristocrat mooning over poetry and having a string of languorous affairs with glamorously disinterested prostitutes.I have read a lot of Boyd's novels and they have all been brilliant, although not that one yet, I'm looking forward to it now. .
I trepidatiously made a start and was instantly hooked and remained enthralled to the very end.
Logan Mountstuart tells the story of his life through a series of intermittent journal entries spanning his final days of public school in the 1920s to his death in the final decade of the century. Along the way there are triumphs and there are tragedies. The mix of the incredible and the banal, combining in an always-compelling arc, are a testament to Boyd's skill.
I received Any Human Heart (William Boyd) for Christmas and, judging by appearances, was not enthused. The cover, title, and blurb conjured a 500-page image of an effete aristocrat mooning over poetry and having a string of languorous affairs with glamorously disinterested prostitutes.I have read a lot of Boyd's novels and they have all been brilliant, although not that one yet, I'm looking forward to it now. .
I trepidatiously made a start and was instantly hooked and remained enthralled to the very end.
Logan Mountstuart tells the story of his life through a series of intermittent journal entries spanning his final days of public school in the 1920s to his death in the final decade of the century. Along the way there are triumphs and there are tragedies. The mix of the incredible and the banal, combining in an always-compelling arc, are a testament to Boyd's skill.
This was my first. Will definitely be back for more.
Anyone read Prophet Song by Paul Lynch yet? Flippin 'eck.
I have ordered a copy (off Amazon, sorry) for my 9 year old who is an avid reader... Will let you know what he thinks (probably in a couple of days once he has devoured it!)
Hi folks,Just ordered a copy for my 9 year old grandson, sounds good. 👍
Hope you don't mind me promoting myself here.
I have just self-published my first book. A 200 page adventure novel for children set in Northwest Scotland called The Flitspace.
Here is the short blurb:
Ru-um and his younger brother Cali, on holiday in Northwest Scotland, go missing while on a walk to an ancient, ruined broch. Last seen with the mysterious girl, Amelia, they are eventually found several days later, unharmed, but with Cali now inexplicably older than Ru-um.
The story follows the boys and Amelia as they venture deep under the broch and through The Flitspace into another version of Scotland very different from the one they're familiar with.
It's listed on amazon for readers 9-11 but is a fine adventure story for any reader 8 and up (some great reviews from adult readers too). Of particular interest to anyone that has ever visited that beautiful coastline, and will certainly inspire those that haven't to do so. It even features a short climbing scene!
It can be ordered from Waterstones, Amazon etc but I would really appreciate it if anyone that did want a copy ordered from the publisher Troubador direct as then i can recover my costs a bit quicker. Thanks folks!
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/young-children/the-flitspace
(and for the record I agree about Babel)
(https://www.troubador.co.uk/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.troubador.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fbooks%2F9781805142898.jpg&w=1920&q=75)