Heading off to Spain in a few weeks to lounge about by the pool; looking for a few book recommendations to pass the time.
This time last year, I did a fuck up and took The Magus by John Fowles (alongside 4 other books, but they all lay untouched in my suitcase as I ploughed through 800 pages of wannabe highbrow word-slurry), which completely ruined my holiday, and my year, and came close to destroying my relationship when I leant it to Octavia, and almost sabotaged my 12 year friendship with VP when she borrowed it off my bookshelf.
So. I'm keen to avoid a similar debacle this time round, and am looking for recommendations for a Good Holiday Read, preferably something that can be demolished in a day or two so that - in the event of a bad recommendation - it hasn't taken up too much time. Another caveat is no turd. A lot of ostensibly intelligent posters have recommended books made of near pure turd in the past, such as Generation X, Boxy an Star and a few others. So to clarify: I don't like turd. Also - I have followed up most of the regular 'recommend me a book' book recommendations, so there's no need to point up The New York Trilogy, Confederacy of C*nts etc.
Also, I'm not really into - you know - other cultures and 'shit' so there's no point in recommending me something about a young boy growing up in Afghanistan in the 60s and taking part in the local kite flying tournament in order to provide a metaphor for his relationship with his father, and certainly no point in anything that has things the words "complex tapestry", "moving", "poignant" or "uplifting" in the blurb on the back. If you recommend me that, I won't buy it, and if I do I'll just sit there trying to read it, but rolling my eyes, sighing, and wishing I'd just plumped for Essential Incredible Hulk Vol.2. I mean, I've been here long enough that people know what I might like. Think retarded. Think Thorn.
Anyway, other than that it's all gravy. I'd especially like somethign funny. I haven't read a laugh out loud funny book in about 10 years, so that would be welcome. And I will follow up on recommendations, so don't think I'll just sneer at the suggestions and go and read something completely different instead.
[ 22.05.2006, 09:36: Message edited by: Thorn Davis ]
Posted by Dr. Benway (Member # 20) on :
If you haven't read it already, and don't think that Stephen Fry is too faux-whimsical to be a tolerable writer, read his first novel The Liar. It is quite funny.
Posted by Abby (Member # 582) on :
My standard recommendation is anything by Michael Marshall Smith (Spares, Only Forwards, One of Us). They are sort of cyberpunk, but not really. They have a really dry sense of humour which made me lol on several occasions...Spares was optioned as a film script, and bears an uncanny resemblance to recently released* film The Island. Except in the Island they make it shit.
They do seem to be hard to buy at the moment as I have been in 5 bookshops looking for a copy of Only Forwards to replace the one that jumped out of my bag while I was running for the bus...
*by the same studio that have the rights to Spares apparently. Coincidence!
Posted by Abby (Member # 582) on :
quote: If you haven't read it already, and don't think that Stephen Fry is too faux-whimsical to be a tolerable writer, read his first novel The Liar. It is quite funny.
Or 'All the stars tennis balls' which starts off irritatingly whimsical with public school boys, and jolly holidays etc...then it all goes to shit and goes really dark.
Posted by Dr. Benway (Member # 20) on :
thorn, why not have a crack at Infinite Jest? That'll keep you going.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
Have you ever read any Ben Elton? His books are really funny.
Posted by H1ppychick (Member # 529) on :
Also, have you ever heard of a writer called Terry Pratchett? He's a bit indie and niche and his books are hard to come by, but you never know, you might be able to track one down if you scour a few second-hand shops.
Posted by Boy Racer (Member # 498) on :
Death and the Penguin and The Case of the General's Thumb by Andrey Kurkov are both easy reads and no knowledge of post-Soviet life is necessary to enjoy the faintly ridiculous plots.
I know you're not really into "other cultures and shit" but I suspect that the idea of a journalist who gets hired as an advance obits writer only to find that his subjects are dying hours after he files copy, might appeal to you.
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
Don't read Sebastian Faulks' Human Traces. It's about three times too long, and reads like a series of essays on SF's favourite subjects - early psychoanalysis, constructing cable cars, the origin of species - strung together with bits of plot and two-dimensional characters. And most of the dialogue is just an excuse for him to show off, reading like an educational video.
Prof A: So, you mean that by examining the footprints we'll be able to ascertain the humanoids family grouping?
Prof B: Indeed, and not only that, my friend, we can see how much they weighed.
Prof A: Capital.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
Yes, it's the one book of his that I wasn't able to finish. In fact I was surprised he was able to write it.
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
And to make matters worse, it's the hardback version, so reading it is both physically and mentally arduous. But I feel it's sinful not to finish a book, for some reason.
Shame - I loved Birdsong and On Green Dolphin Street. (Recommendations for Thron, though kind of 'old hat')
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
His triple biography "Three Eccentric Englishmen" - or something like that - is a good read for Faulks fans looking for less well-known stuff.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
A good, light-hearted, slightly-sexy-but-funny-cos-it-involves-a-sweaty-fat-bloke recent re-read that I enjoyed was William Boyd's A Good Man In Africa.
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
On a William Boyd tip, I loved Any Human Heart, but I've said that before.
Posted by dang65 (Member # 102) on :
Does anyone know what 'The Time Traveller's Wife' is like? I picked up a copy at the weekend, having something of a weakness for time-travel stories, but I haven't started it yet.
Did anyone watch 'The Flip Side of Dominick Hide' on Friday? I hadn't seen it since it was first on in about 1980 and I'd always remembered it as brilliant back then but obviously it wouldn't still be brilliant after all these years, but it was. Made me shockingly nostalgic actually. And it includes one of my favourite slapstick scenes ever.
So I was kind of on the look out for more time travel value on Saturday and ended up with that one.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
My wife loved it. And even Kovacks liked it, I think. You can't say fairer than that.
The time travel one, that is.
[ 22.05.2006, 11:08: Message edited by: mart ]
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
I did a weird thing with that book, the TTW. I bought a copy in an airport to read on holiday, then when I started it realised I'd started it before. When I got home there was a copy of it already on my shelf. Wormhole in the time-space continuum, or early dementia? You decide.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
quote:Originally posted by herbs: Shame - I loved Birdsong and On Green Dolphin Street. (Recommendations for Thron, though kind of 'old hat')
I think I tried to read Birdsong when I was a teenager, but didn't like it. Is that that one where they find a body in the river, and there's a long description of the narrator fingering his teenage girlfriend in the twat? (Ed Note: You're thinking of Waterland by Graham Swift you cretin)
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
It's the one about trenches and tunnels in WWI. And, I suppose, about the trenches and tunnels of a woman. Sort of.
Oh how poignant.
Posted by Ringo (Member # 47) on :
Have you considered The Bible?
It’s not a bad read, although the writing style can be a little taxing. Not the best book I’ve read but there’s some pretty cool stuff about plagues and damnation and stuff at the beginning. Unfortunately I think the author must have left it a while before writing the second half as it seems to wander off a little after that point, and can be a bit preachy at times. There’s this really obvious plot twist at the end which kinda ruins it a bit.
Anyway, to summarise – good start, disappointing ending. It’d probably make a pretty good film if they left out a few of the characters. Especially one called ‘Jesus’ who I found a little bit unbelievable.
[edit] Actually I reckon the Jesus character would be ok if they got a good actor who could flesh him out a bit. Maybe if he were played by Samuel Jackson he might have a bit more charisma.
Do they speak Aramaic in What, motherfucker?
[ 22.05.2006, 11:33: Message edited by: Ringo ]
Posted by ralph (Member # 773) on :
*** spoiler ***
Satan did it.
Posted by dang65 (Member # 102) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ringo: Have you considered The Bible?
Is that the prequel to The Da Vinci Code? I don't think they had any room for it on the shelves in Ottakar's, what with 'Angels & Demons', 'The Search For The Grail', 'The Last Crusader', 'The Last Crusader's Mum', 'The Illustrated Da Vinci Code', 'The Da Vinci Code From The Air', 'A Da Vinci Code Companion', 'Shouldn't It Be "The Leonardo Code"? Da Vinci just means "from Vinci"', 'The Da Vinci Sudoko Solver' and 'I'm Jesus's Bastard Descendant So Fuck The Lot Of Yers'.
Posted by Ringo (Member # 47) on :
I think you can still get a version in the children's section with cut-out-and-keep commandments and colour-by-numbers Jesus action pictures. Which would probably pass the time on holiday.
Posted by Darryn.R (Member # 1) on :
quote:Originally posted by dang65: Does anyone know what 'The Time Traveller's Wife' is like?
I've just remembered I bought that a year ago Queensday 2005 and I've still not read it, I shall read that this week and let you know.
Posted by dance margarita (Member # 848) on :
thorn i think you might like the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay if you havent already read it. i was going to include a link to its entry on amazon but i refrained because the reviews are unusually wanky even for amazon; one 'ghandibob' from swansea uses the phrase 'joy [is] distilled into its pages like a fructious liqueur' and when i read that i thought, oops, throns going to think 'dance margarita must think im some sort of flapjack if im going to read a book that has joy ditilled into its pages like a fructious cunting liqueur, i disdain her recommendations entirely'. yeah anyway its about comic book writers, it has a golem in it, most importantly its written by a man, what more do you want really.
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
I'm going to Spain soon too - Seville. Though no doubt I'll be too busy being wowed by Moorish architecture and swooning in the heat to read any books. Though I thought I might actually read the Da V Code, just so I can see what all the sneering's about.
Posted by Dr. Benway (Member # 20) on :
I've had my annual holiday. Spent yesterday hanging around Oriental City in Colindale. Played a bit of Outrun 2006 (finished it twice), ate some dim sum, bought some jasmine tea. Hopefully it'll be nicer weather next year
[ 22.05.2006, 12:07: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
Herbs! Read "The Seville Communion" by Arturo Perez Reverte instead. You'll love it, and it's all about Seville. There's a Vatican computer scandal, a priest detective and the lovely backdrop of Seville itself. Trust me. It's ace. Sexy, fun, a thriller, architecture, the lot.
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
Sounds just the ticket! Will it be especially fitting for reading in the shade of an orange tree? Does the priest do any of the sex? That would be good.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
And you can even buy one of MY books in the airport. Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
quote:Originally posted by herbs: Will it be especially fitting for reading in the shade of an orange tree?
It would indeed be good for that sort of thing.
[ 22.05.2006, 12:21: Message edited by: mart ]
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
What's YOUR book?
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
Oh, most airports and souvenir shops in southern Spain sell recipe books and tourist guides that I have translated. My name is on the inside back cover.
You may see:
The Best Spanish and Mediterranean Cuisine
Classic Tapas
One about recipes using olive oil
A green hardback tourist guide called Spain / Andalusia / Seville, something like that, I forget
Easy Guide to Seville (no longer credits me) (quite good to flick through)
Er, some others, I forget which. If it's by Edara Ediciones or Ediciones Ilustres, it's mine.
Don't buy them, they're not very good.
[ 22.05.2006, 12:34: Message edited by: mart ]
Posted by Physic (Member # 195) on :
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.
Posted by Good Fairy (Member # 479) on :
I think you'll love you know you want it Posted by Jack Vincennes (Member # 814) on :
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.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
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.
Posted by Benny the Ball (Member # 694) on :
Thorn - it's alright. My (new!) wife got it for me a couple of years ago, it gives a nice feel to the golden age of comics.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
'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.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
Whereabouts in Spain are you going, Thorn?
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
Aleurhin El Grande. It's Spanish for Aleurhin is Grand. Possibly. We went there last year and it was well good.
Posted by Black Mask (Member # 185) on :
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.
Posted by Black Mask (Member # 185) on :
Actually, I think this is the one I read last. Very funny. Get them all.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
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.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
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.
Posted by Dr. Benway (Member # 20) on :
I've read 1/3 of a book this year, thanks to my DS.
Posted by ben (Member # 13) on :
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.
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
quote:Originally posted by ben: people who aren't dribbling fuckbags
That's beautiful, man.
Posted by Dr. Benway (Member # 20) on :
[ 23.05.2006, 07:46: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
Posted by mart (Member # 32) on :
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.
Posted by Black Mask (Member # 185) on :
Anyone got any information on this? Posted by Black Mask (Member # 185) on :
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.
Posted by ben (Member # 13) on :
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.
[ 23.05.2006, 10:49: Message edited by: ben ]
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
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.
Posted by jnhoj (Member # 286) on :
grand theft auto on the psp is really good fun.
Posted by Benny the Ball (Member # 694) on :
I thought Kovacs was the Rachel Papers character?
Posted by Jack Vincennes (Member # 814) on :
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.
[ 24.05.2006, 14:10: Message edited by: Jack Vincennes ]
Posted by Benny the Ball (Member # 694) on :
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.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
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.
Posted by Darryn.R (Member # 1) on :
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
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