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Snippets of 'A House for Mr Biswas' still regularly come to mind for me, 40years after reading it.

I totally agree with you that it should be enjoyed, unsullied by what the author was like (I didn't know about that before this).
 
Thanks for this thoughtful and interesting post Sean. I have never read Naipaul, though I have long known I "ought" to have done, Biswas especially (I haven't avoided him deliberately. It's just that I haven't read him).

My own reading for the next year (or two) is well mapped. I received 15 vintage volumes of Graham Greene for Christmas and will be reading them in order of publication, though interspersed with other authors. Having read I one I am currently reading a Raymond Chandler - my first - Farewell, My Lovely. LA set, of course, for added current resonance.
 
Thanks for this thoughtful and interesting post Sean. I have never read Naipaul, though I have long known I "ought" to have done, Biswas especially (I haven't avoided him deliberately. It's just that I haven't read him).

My own reading for the next year (or two) is well mapped. I received 15 vintage volumes of Graham Greene for Christmas and will be reading them in order of publication, though interspersed with other authors. Having read I one I am currently reading a Raymond Chandler - my first - Farewell, My Lovely. LA set, of course, for added current resonance.

I’m very much an Indo-phile, for me it would be remiss not to have read Naipaul!

Chandler is great, and LA is a fabulous setting.
 
I think it's complicated. Sometimes monstrous people can create art which is real and true and deeply meaningful. Humans are complex like that.

And for some people, in some cases, they can separate their feelings about the art from their feelings about the artist, and for other people, in other cases, finding out that the artist did something horrific does irrevocably impair their ability to enjoy the art in the same way, and I don't think there's any "should" here. One option is not morally superior to the other.

Where the artist is still alive, you also get into the question of whether or not you feel okay with doing anything that gives them money (i.e. buying their latest book), but that's a different question from how you feel about the art itself.
 
Currently read: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-bone-ships-2
RJ BArker - The Bone Ships
Standard fantasy yarn but with a fairly strong background setting of a heavily nautical world. Lots of borderline endearing / annoying specific terminology, some interesting characters (especially the gullaime), decent overall tale, plenty of swashes to buckle etc. I do tend to like fantasy where the world-building is different to the norm, and this is kinda like that.
 
Re Naipaul, I got a lot out of a Bend in the River, possibly a good place tk start Andy. I haven't read Biswas but intend to at some point. Agree you have to be able to separate the art from the artist to a large extent. Another good example of this is Roald Dahl, who was both an appalling antisemite and a brilliant children's author.

I've just finished Cuddy by Benjamin Myers. I have a love hate relationship with Myers. I love his darker stuff, which is where I think he has done his best work (insert Will Hunt quip about me being addicted to violence here) Gallows Pole, Beastings and Pig Iron are all excellent. I absolutely hated the Offing, which seemed to me to go far away from what he is good at. So I approached Cuddy with slight apprehension. I've loved it and would go so far as to say it offers a good introduction to Myers if you don't feel able to commit to the relentless grimness of some of his other stuff. It's a really uplifting, lyrical tale about St Cuthbert and the North of England. There are flashes of darkness but hope is the overriding emotion at the end of it. Highly recommended.
 
Leviathan Awakes

Really enjoyed this sci-fi book set in a future where we have colonised Mars/ the kaiper belt… kind of part noir detective/part horror/part sci-fi.

Think it’s the first in a trilogy so keen to read the next ones!

Children of Time

About half through this and enjoying it a lot… another sci-fi about a terraforming project gone wrong and a future civilisation of man finding it after leaving a dying Earth… probs a bad read if you are an arachnophobe is all Ill say…

The year of the flood

Brilliant dystopia about a post viral world from Margaret Atwood. Enjoyed the Gardeners various beliefs and teachings which on one hand are a bit whack but also definitively hold a lot of wisdom… generally enjoyed this book a lot. Have bought Oryx and Crake which I think is set in the same world with the same characters but isn’t necessarily a prequel or sequel?
 
Re Naipaul, I got a lot out of a Bend in the River, possibly a good place tk start Andy. I haven't read Biswas but intend to at some point. Agree you have to be able to separate the art from the artist to a large extent. Another good example of this is Roald Dahl, who was both an appalling antisemite and a brilliant children's author.

I've just finished Cuddy by Benjamin Myers. I have a love hate relationship with Myers. I love his darker stuff, which is where I think he has done his best work (insert Will Hunt quip about me being addicted to violence here) Gallows Pole, Beastings and Pig Iron are all excellent. I absolutely hated the Offing, which seemed to me to go far away from what he is good at. So I approached Cuddy with slight apprehension. I've loved it and would go so far as to say it offers a good introduction to Myers if you don't feel able to commit to the relentless grimness of some of his other stuff. It's a really uplifting, lyrical tale about St Cuthbert and the North of England. There are flashes of darkness but hope is the overriding emotion at the end of it. Highly recommended.
I just so happened to have gone into Waterstones to spend the voucher I received for Christmas and came away with this (and also: Post Office by Bukowski after enjoying Ham on Rye earlier this month; Brighton Rock; Grief is the Thing with Feathers; and something called Rotherweird).
 
Leviathan Awakes

Really enjoyed this sci-fi book set in a future where we have colonised Mars/ the kaiper belt… kind of part noir detective/part horror/part sci-fi.

Think it’s the first in a trilogy so keen to read the next ones!

Yes I really liked it too - may make you happy to know that it's 9 novels and there's a decent Amazon TV series 'The Expanse' that follows it mostly faithfully.

Children of Time I liked when I read it but I later read Vernor Vinge's wonderfully named "A Deepness in the Sky" which was written in 1999. Adrian Tchaicovsky's 2015 take is more than a little derivative. As a sci-fi and fantasy reader I don't massively mind derivative but in this case I thought it reduced the value of Children of Time considerably.

Other things I have recently read:

The Lady in the Lake & other novels - Raymond Chandler. I personally absolutely love the hard-boiled detective genre and these didn't disappoint. I try to read only a few a year as I don't want to burn through the supply too quickly. As well as Chandler the others I like very much are the Lew Archer series by Ross Macdonald.

Revelation Space: The Inhibitor Trilogy - Alastair Reynolds. Had read the first of these a long time ago and thought it was good but forgot about. Picked up the second one and found it compulsive reading, third one slightly disappointing afterwards but still very, very good. High up the sci fi pantheon for me.

The Complete McAuslan - George MacDonald Fraser. Remember finding a collection of these stories hilarious many years ago and picked this up. Moments were very funny indeed but less universally amusing than I recalled. An interesting read in a sort of fin-de-siecle, end of Empire vibe.

Ivanhoe -Walter Scott. This was a re-read for me after many years and I enjoyed it again. Very much the prototype action-adventure historical novel. This lead me to read:

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood - Howard Pyle. This is a novel written in 1883 sort of compiling the known ballads of Robin Hood and packaging them up into the format we're more familiar with today. It's written in pseudo Olde English which is quite hard work but I read it all few in a week or so and enjoyed it. The 1920s film The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn (always my favourite Robin Hood film) actually is fairly true to the source material and the character portrayed of Robin Hood, even to the point of reusing dialogue which is interesting.
I'd love to read some really good Robin Hood historical novels if anyone has any recommendations?

Empireworld - Sathnam Sangera. I am struggling through this if I'm honest. My wife really enjoyed it. I think it suffers from the same flaws as Empireland its precursor where the author pursues his own personal lines of interest rather than giving an expert analysis of the Empire and its effects. Makes for interesting reading but at times it leaves me unconvinced of the validity of his analysis, which sort of erodes the validity of the project as a whole. I'll carry on reading it and see if my opinion changes as I get further on. Would also like to read further on this topic, as think my previous reading on it is rather stale by now.
 
The Satsuma Complex; a short, surreal novel with a bit of metafictional colour in that it features a book called the satsuma complex in it. Unfortunately, it doesn't really develop this idea, it just seems to be there as an amusing novelty. I found the novel endearing, but didn't really love it: Bob Mortimer's comic style is great for a half hour TV programme, but less so for 300 pages.

Close to Death Anthony Horowitz; I really enjoyed this. It looks like a standard murder mystery, but is significantly more interesting in that the author is a character within the book as it alternates between the story and the author engaged in actually writing it. I was sceptical at first, but I thought it worked really well and does have a point to it.
 

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