posted
okay team. I've just finished Dorian Gray (aptly, considering the BEE thing last night), and I'm going to wander down to Boke's Etc. this afternoon to buy another thing. Mini-meat? I'll be at the one on Victoria street between 1.45 and 2. C U there! Anyway, I know that people here read, like, tonnes, and I was hoping for a recomendation. For guidance, here is a loose preferential framework:
I like making money, which is why I do like:
Knowing post-modern self-referential wank
Violence, esp. towards women, children.
pop culture
funny
interwoven strands of angst
Paranoia
But I'm no gambler, so I don't like
Fantasy, esp swords, magic, made up languages.
over wrought 'beautiful' prose.
historical fiction
meaningless navel gazing
'comedy'
puppies
Any ideas?
---* OR *---
What have you been reading?
[ 11.10.2005, 06:27: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
posted
I know its been recommended 10 gazillion times on here, but The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson fulfils most of your 'I Like' criteria, as does 'Money' by Martin Amis. Actually - Money is kind of like a gooder American Psycho (and I liked American Psycho, so that's a proper compliment). I reckon you'd get a kick out of 'Thinks' by David Lodge, too, but that might be a bit light-hearted for you. Oh! Actually you could try Legion of the Damned, by Sven Hassel, which is post-modern, unremittingly bleak and kind of funny in that laughter in the dark kind of way. I don't know if you've read Murphy by Samuel Beckett? That might be the last straw, actually. Best steer clear of that unless you're feeling quite mentally robust. I take an awful lot of book recommendations from this site, so it's hard to think of something that hasn't been mentioned a few times before. What about some Graham Greene? Our Man in Havana is kind of self-referential, funny, gripping, and paranoid.
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Does nobody read my posts? I've been wanking on about NYT for years, and I read, and reviewed The Killer Inside Me a couple of years ago. FYI motherfuckers, I've also read Confederacy of Dunces, Murakami, Coupland, and DeLillo, so think harder, people.
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I didn't read the review of Killer Inside Me, I'm afraid, but there are about 7 other recommendations in that post you blind c**t.
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Amis seems like he could be insufferably smug. Is this not the case? And, I enjoyed Brighton Rock and the one mentioned in Donnie Darko - the book of short stories, so maybe Havana could be the one. Is it long?
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Benway have you ever read On The Road by Jack Kerouac ? It's one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, marking a turning point in US culture and leaving a significant influence on modern fiction ever since.
The story follows Sal Paradise (a thinly veiled Jack Kerouac) as he takes various road trips around the United States and Mexico with, or in pursuit of, his crazy friend and hero Dean Moriarty, based entirely on Kerouac's friend and fellow writer Neal Cassady.
The book was originally written as a stream of consciousness, where Kerouac taped 120 feet of paper together as a roll so he never had to stop typing. There was little punctuation, and he used everyone's real names
-------------------- my own brother a god dam shit sucking vampire!!! you wait till mum finds out buddy!
quote:Originally posted by Darryn.R: Benway have you ever read On The Road by Jack Kerouac ? It's one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, marking a turning point in US culture and leaving a significant influence on modern fiction ever since.
The story follows Sal Paradise (a thinly veiled Jack Kerouac) as he takes various road trips around the United States and Mexico with, or in pursuit of, his crazy friend and hero Dean Moriarty, based entirely on Kerouac's friend and fellow writer Neal Cassady.
The book was originally written as a stream of consciousness, where Kerouac taped 120 feet of paper together as a roll so he never had to stop typing. There was little punctuation, and he used everyone's real names
yeah, I read that as light relief from Burroughs, and I thought it was kind of boring. They seemed like a bunch of twats. The kind of guys who sit by a fire all night playing the guitar and handing out weed, but only so they can bone your girlfriend when you've passed out in the woods.
Martin Amis can be a bit smug, but Money isn't. It's really brilliant, in fact. If you haven't read it that's the one to go for I reckon. Our Man in Havana is quite short, by the way. It might not take more than a day or two to read.
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I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan and Ghostwritten by David Mitchell.
One's got your violence towards women and children, paranoia, humour and modern culture. The other has your strands of angst and is just beautiful to read.
-------------------- Call that a contribution? Posts: 1162
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Darryn.R: [qb] . They seemed like a bunch of twats. The kind of guys who sit by a fire all night playing the guitar and handing out weed, but only so they can bone your girlfriend when you've passed out in the woods.
LOL..
Benway, BTW did you ask about buying Itunes music from Itunes Japan or did I imagine it ? If you did try here: http://www.jlist.com/
quote:Originally posted by saltrock: I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan and Ghostwritten by David Mitchell.
One's got your violence towards women and children, paranoia, humour and modern culture. The other has your strands of angst and is just beautiful to read.
posted
They are both completely different and it would depend totally on what mood you were in when you read them I guess. Of the two, I can imagine I, Lucifer being the more popular with people, but I personally prefer Ghostwritten. Go to the library and get both out?
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I have been reading two of these a day. They last about an hour each, ie. my two trains to work and two back, and for that period they give you an intense dose of a distinctive literary voice: Woolf, Kafka, Levi, Updike, Camus, Wodehouse. You also feel you've had quite a worthy taster of a great author whom you might otherwise not have read, and you can follow that up by buying a full novel.
PLUS it builds up into a gorgeous colourspan spine-display. I have about thirty now: fewer, when this photo was taken.
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I've seen those little books. They look really small though. I was going to get The Trial the other day, but it was about £8, and I balked. I physically balked, right in the shop.
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Yes - Kovacs must be a wealthy man to afford any number of those blighters. Rather than The Trial, which is gruelling and fairly godawful - if, tediously, unquestionably "great" - I would recommend a collection of the short stories of Kafka. The short form suited his fevered visions far better than the novel did and there are few more violent and upsetting C20 masterpieces than In Teh Penal Colony. You'd probably also like Report to the Academy and The Hunger Artist.
Also: Richard Matheson's I Am Legend which, though it ostensibly features vampires, is really the birth of the modern zombie in literature.
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They're about 55 pages each, cost £1.50 (come on man! that's less than a latte in most places) and take me, a quick reader, an hour to get through.
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After five days that's fifteen quid you've already spent - the price of two or three full length books! Survive for a week on hors d'ouevres - possible, perhaps, but why would you want to?
Thing is: you're already fairly erudite, Kovacs, but someone wanting to broaden their reading and horizons would be barking up the wrong tree with this - from what I can make out - fairly conventional selection of 6th-former texts. Where's the adventure?
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You're right about the type of literature on offer, I think, but perhaps there's not so much wrong with that traditional 6th form syllabus. As a sixth-former I read some of this stuff, but certainly not all of it. I've read Exile and the Kingdom, The Outsider, Orlando and The Waves, but not for years. And I wouldn't have bought another Camus or Woolf novel with the money I saved from not buying the Penguin 70s. That would have been too much commitment and challenge, I'm afraid. A flighty, feeble mind like mine needs lit in short bursts, as if it was on telly.
I hadn't read any P G Wodehouse or any Primo Levi beforehand, and I am very much inclined to read more of them now. Perhaps these samplers aren't for everyone, I admit. I think they've done me good though.
If you like these things you might think you will enjoy Scarlett Thomas' PopCo. However, this will almost certainly not be the case. It starts of being good, and funny, and clever, and then around page 300 there's this horrible shift in the narrative and it turns into the kind of ani-globalisation tract you might have written in your sixth form. And it DOESN'T HAVE A PROPER ENDING.
If you've not read it already, I'd recommend Nabokov's Pale Fire, which is pretty much the daddy of point 1 and contains lots of 5 and 6.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: the price of two or three full length books!
Actually, for the forty pounds you've admitted to spending so far on this crazy exercise you could buy most of C18 English literature from charity shops! Benway could get the works of Swift, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding and Smollett and still have change for a glass of port to get him in the mood.
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The Sandman by Miles Gibson is sick, gory, tense and funny as fuck. I haven't read it for a few years and I lent my copy out for it never to return. It made me giddy and queasy and chuckle (all at the same time) in places.
I have been reading Irvine Welsh 'Glue' which is funny and a bit tragic. Although you have to be quite comfortable reading 'weedgie', which I know some people dont have the patience for!
I am also trying but failing to read A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and struggling. Can anyone tell me if I should perservere?
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Like Herbs I'm going to say Paul Auster. I've just finished reading Oracle Night (it's the only thing of his I've read).
I can confirm that there's definitely a lot of:
knowing self-referentialness going on (narrator is a writer, copious footnotes),
unease and menace leading to violence
humour, if you like wincing at one man's paranoia
interwoven strands of angst, oh yes, it's positively multilayered.
And it's also a good story. There's some narrative drive, a mystery possibly lurking in all that menace. It's set in a dark and paranoid New York, which is what passes for pop culture these days isn't it?
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- Hunger by Knut Hamsun - Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell - The Rum Diaries by Hunter Thompson - The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
The Fermata is quite, quite filthy, in a ver knowingly modern way. And is funny. No violence though, unless you count a very bizarre and virtually victimless kind of sexual assault.
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posted
okay team, I'm afraid that Books etc. doesn't stock these books. Not even Our Man In Havannah! Imagine. So, I freaked out and grabbed the first book I could see that I wouldn't hate.
Glamorama
sorry, everybody. I did look, but I couldn't see them.
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