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At the risk (read near certainty) of once again being derided for my taste in literature, my recommendations for Thorn would be this which I read years ago and absolutely loved, very funny and easy to relate to as I recall.
Also anything by Robert Rankin, but particularly the Brentford Trilogy or The Fandom Of The Operator.
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quote:Originally posted by dance margarita: thorn i think you might like the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay if you havent already read it.
Or Wonder Boys, which is shorter and very, very funny -although my best friend cried when she finished it. However you are unlikely to do that on holiday or, I should imagine, at all.
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The last time I cried because of a book was when I found out Ben Elton had written a first world war novel.
Nonetheless, I followed up on Dance Margerita's (and now Jack Vincennes's) suggestion and bought this book on the way home. Reading the blurb it does look a bit Jew-y but JV's username suggests she has taste and, as DM points out, at least it was written by a man so it's not all grim.
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'Alright's' not a very strong recommendation, though. I don't know. With the state of modern novels being what it is, I reckon I should have just bought a PSP.
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The Stephen Potter books are good holiday entertainment, this one in particular. They're easy to read, funny and very English, which is nice to grip onto when you're cast adrift among the dagoes.
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It is likely to mean "Garden of Allah the Great", you will no doubt be fascinated to learn. Maybe you should take the Koran rather than the Bible. Or get the PSP version.
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Let's face it, though, no-one really enjoys reading. Whenever you're on a train/ coach/ whatever and everyone busts out their novels these days there's at least one person who unsheaths a games console or portable DVD player like a glorious Excalibur, and you can tell everyone stuck with stupid print wishes they were doing that instead. There maybe a few eye-rolls, a few exchanged glances that say "some people eh?" but you just know they'd rather be doing something, anything else. Sure they may tilt the cover of the book to better inform people they're reading Will Self, or some other piece of pretend-intellectualism and they may even have an internal monologue running suggesting to themselves that this is a more noble way to spend time, but really it's just an absolute fucking chore. So often you hear people defending certain books for being 'easy to read', which is fair enough. It's a grim undertaking as it is - you may as well plump for something that makes it as painless as possible.
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Well, you know, I've apologised for The Magus and all - maybe the break I took in Corfu in 2001 saw me impair my critical faculties through overindulgence in forty-bottles of Maheu beer - I still reckon it's a better book than Cloud Atlas or Vernon God Little or some of the other shite that gets recommended on here.
Anyway. You may or may not like to try WG Sebald: he's kind of a writer/memoirist/historian/poet whose melancholy books on travel, destruction and time are potent and addictive. Widely-praised as it was, The Emmigrants is a bit dense as a starting place - check out The Rings of Saturn or maybe Vertigo instead: at first you might think the thing's a bit formless, but gradually the mood takes hold of you and actually alters the way you experience things as a tourist.
This piece, published shortly before Sebald's death, at 57, in a car crash might whet your appetite.
Alternatively Happly Like Murderers - by Gordon Burn: pretentious but haunting true-crime account of the Wests and 25 Cromwell St.
The Names - Don DeLillo. Mediterranean-set espionage/secret cult opus that's tangled on plot but big on mood; sort of a DaVinci Code for people who aren't dribbling fuckbags who oughtn't to be taught to read, let alone permitted books.
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For the more genteel reader, I can recommend MIss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. A middle-aged Cinderalla of the 1930s, with cocaine, snogging and lots of dry sherry.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: 'Alright's' not a very strong recommendation, though. I don't know. With the state of modern novels being what it is, I reckon I should have just bought a PSP.
Exactly. I enjoyed it, but wasn't blown away by it to the point that I'd recommend it to anyone.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Sure they may tilt the cover of the book to better inform people they're reading Will Self, or some other piece of pretend-intellectualism and they may even have an internal monologue running suggesting to themselves that this is a more noble way to spend time, but really it's just an absolute fucking chore.
Pwned! As fate would have it I was reading Will Self on a train journey yesterday (Dr Mukti and other tales of woe). It was fairly diverting but way below his career-best of Grey Area and Great Apes.
fwiw, for most of the journey my internal monologue revolved around what might reasonably constitute a casual glance or two at (as opposed to repeated ogling of)the astonishing legs of the statuesque jolie-laide sitting across the aisle from me.
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At the moment I'm reading Martin Amis's The Rachel Papers and hating every word of it. As an experience it's been made even more grisly by the number of people over the last decade who've told me I remind them of main character, Charles Highway, which I now realise was a bitterly crueld (and IMO undeserved) insult.
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quote:Originally posted by Benny the Ball: Exactly. I enjoyed it, but wasn't blown away by it to the point that I'd recommend it to anyone.
Did you prefer Carter Beats The Devil? Remember we both read both books at about the same time, I enjoyed Carter more while I was reading it but now that I think about them both I might be more likely to re-read K&C.
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Yeah, that sounds about right. Carter is good for a one off read, and K&C has some beautiful moments that may lend themselves to the re-read. It was only really the last few chapters that let me down on K&C, they weren't bad, they just led themseleves up an alley that suggested a little more than they delivered.
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quote:Originally posted by dance margarita: thorn i think you might like the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay
Many thanks to Dunce Margerita for the recommendation - I really did enjoy this book and since finishing it I've been recommending it to my friends as though it was something I discovered on my own.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: made even more grisly by the number of people over the last decade who've told me I remind them of main character, Charles Highway, which I now realise was a bitterly crueld (and IMO undeserved) insult.
Or maybe it's just because you look like Dexter Fletcher who played him in the movie along side Ione Skye
-------------------- my own brother a god dam shit sucking vampire!!! you wait till mum finds out buddy!
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