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I daresay you London types have polished off at least a couple of this year's Booker nominees, during your interminable journeys (via tin cattle wagon) from concrete sleep-hutch to concrete work-hutch and back, so I was wondering if anyone could be reassuringly dismissive of this youngster:
quote:Then her hair is down around her shoulders and she looks suddenly less street-wise, more like her first author photo, taken when she was 27 (she is now 30).
Having read the review, her book comes across not so much Angela Carter as Poppy Z Brite - could anyone confirm this?
Alternatively, has anyone read the shortlisted novels?
The most recent Booker nominee I read was Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor which is exactly like a cross between The Quiet American and Disgrace and therefore, surely, pointless?
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Coincidentally, I bought Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell on my way home yesterday. Unfortunately, after reading the opening paragraph three times, I decided that my brain couldn't cope with starting a new book, so I settled for the Evening Standard instead.
Based entirely on it's review in the Observer a couple of weeks ago, I didn't really fancy Sarah Hall's book, it looks a bit bollocks.
Will give you my verdict on Mitchell when I've knuckled down to it.
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I tried to read Cloud Atlas too! What was with the Heart of Darkness parody? What was he trying to say? It was too difficult to work out, so I moved on to the next section but it was boring so I moved on to the next section and it was boringer so I shut the book and picked up something else.
The only other thing I have to say on the matter of the Booker Prize is that if Hollinghurst wins I am going to assassinate him.
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Have you generally found it worth reading Booker nominees and winners?
I've not finished any from a list later than, er, um, 1993: Paddy Clarke and Under the Frog, which I read around that time. Remember both as being obviously good, but not inspiring.
Have also ignored serious modern fiction for a few years. Not 11 though - just hadn't been interested in most of the Booker choices. For a long time I felt I should read them but as novels they didn't sound that interesting.
Started God of Small Things but wasn't keen. Rather parochially tend not to like books set in India. And own unread copies of Notes On A Scandal, England England - actually want to read those - and Moor's Last Sigh (have had that for 9 yrs, tut tut).
And when I looked at this list of all the nominees ever (it's from the US and some titles are different, couldn't find British version) among the older 70s lists especially, there are quite a few books that - I get the impression - aren't really read much now, and are perhaps not the best works of some good authors.
S'pose what I'm getting at is, whether to read them because: a) can talk about them with people and appreciate media coverage; b) they may become Great Books; c) only if you like the sound of an individual novel, with the above being secondary.
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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As a point of principle I refuse to read Booker Winners, as I have loathed every single Booker Winner I have read to date. With the rule-proving exception of Amsterdam, which was good, but hardly on a par with Enduring Love or Atonement. I can appreciate the technical skill of Anita Brookner and think nice try about Life of Pi but on the whole I have found there's something breathtakingly dull and worthy about most Booker winners. I prefer things that have been nominated for the Orange Prize. Rarely a despairing moment with those.
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I would have thought Disgrace - which leaves the reader enervated and heartsick - would be right up your alley, Louche.
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was the true history of ned kelly a booker winner? if so, thats the only one i've done read. its expletive great.
plus. i done read american psycho yesterday. i felt wrong and sick in the head afterwards. it took me to a dark space in my head.
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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I haven't read Disgrace; presumably it came after I'd instituted my fairly arbitrary Booker And Self embargo. I probably should read it, just from that review, but I am getting much more satisfaction at the moment from the light, lovely and whimsical world of Ali Smith. And as such owe Fionnula the Ceaseless Promoter of Her Cause a sizeable debt of gratitude, which I will attempt to render by smiling at him a lot.
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You're welcome, Louche! She was in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago hearting Coupland's new book to death but can you i) forgive her? and ii) tell me what 'deromanticises loneliness to politicise presence' means?
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Gosh, the gay novel has won. I thought Mitchell was a done deal -- and so did everyone selling his book on Ebay as "BOOKER WINNER" with the price accordingly, pre-emptively hoiked up.
I am, grudgingly, realising I like Number9Dream very much, so Cloud Atlas seems worth a shot.
posted
I didn't realise it was the same Mitchell that wrote Ghostwritten; I've been banging on about that book for years.
Did anyone watch the televised event? Can't imagine footage of a bunch of novelists sitting round drinking and complimenting each other was that thrilling. Luckily there was a programme about giant anacondas and a CSI double bill on C5.
-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Did anyone watch the televised event?
I saw a bit of it. I realise that, to a struggling writer, a Booker nomination must mean a huge increase in sales, like from fifty before nomination to fifty thousand after or something, but the way they go along dressed in dinner jackets and bow ties doesn't compute with my image of a novelist. They should be chain smoking, grubby, bearded slobs with patches on the arms of their old jackets and wearing desert boots and odd socks. They should cringe at any sort of praise, grunt "ta" into the microphone and then get straight down to Threshers for a two month supply of scotch.
quote:Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, had been the hottest favourite with the bookmakers in the prize's 36-year history. Mitchell, 35, a former sales assistant at Waterstone's, has been hailed as the finest young English author to emerge since Martin Amis.
Oh excellent. I suppose this will encourage sales assistants in Waterstones to act even more like puffed-up little twats than they do already.
I picked up Hollinghurst's Swimming Pool Library second-hand yesterday so should be able to provide a helpful (?) opinion within the next couple of weeks.
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Cloud Atlas has a character that is a clone in a hyper-branded dystopian future who has to dance all day in order to advertise what sounds like a thinly-disguised famous burger chain. Then the clone outlives its sell-by date and is killed! Surely by any stretch of the imagination this is an embarrassingly shit idea. Although I haven't seen how it is executed so probably shouldn't comment.
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I've just been in London for a couple of days and found street after street marred by posters advertising Alfie 2004. I find it impossible to conceive what sort of a person would possibly want to see this film - especially given the soft-focus, twinkle-eyed images of Law, who appears to be taking his cue from the poster art of numerous sentimental Robin Williams comedies of the 1990s.
As an aside, I caught instead the deft and exciting South Korean thriller Oldboy at the Curzon, Soho - and can recommend it highly. Don't read any of the reviews, though - they give away much too much detail and a lot of the pleasure is in the twists.
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What do you mean 'cut' - the scene was there when I watched it? fwiw I did find it a bit gratuitous in terms of it not seeming to really gel with much that preceded or follow it.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: I've just been in London for a couple of days and found street after street marred by posters advertising Alfie 2004. I find it impossible to conceive what sort of a person would possibly want to see this film - especially given the soft-focus, twinkle-eyed images of Law, who appears to be taking his cue from the poster art of numerous sentimental Robin Williams comedies of the 1990s.
Lol I brisked over this as "poster art of sentimental Robbie Williams..." and thought yes! by God, Ben does manage to absolutely hit it on the nail.
quote:Originally posted by ben: What do you mean 'cut' - the scene was there when I watched it?
Raz is lying, right to your face. He reminds me of the little sad kids at school that used to claim that Batman had been cut, including a scene where he nobs Vicki Vale and another where he shoots Robin in the head, and then they'd say "But I've seen it!" and then recount these fictions in explicit detail.
The BBFC website is a useful resource for discovering the truth about what's been cut out of films in the UK. You type in the title of the film, and it comes up with it and the amount of footage that was cut. If it's a high profile release it tells you why it was cut. For Oldboy it says "Cut - No", meaning no cuts were made, throwing stark light on Raz's terrible, twisted lie. I don't know why he saw fit to try and deceive the forum in this manner, but there can be few of us who aren't questioning whether he really has a future at TMO.
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: I brisked over this as "poster art of sentimental Robbie Williams..."
Yeah, me too. It's better this way.
I like the posters because they make it look like Jude is giving me the eye.
I think his face is lovely, but you wouldn't want to go out with someone prettier than you.
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I should perhaps submit future posts through Kovacs, who could act as my editor/collaborator. Apologies to anyone here who's ever felt disappointed upon giving a closer reading of my contributions. Posts: 8657
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Oh. Well theysaid they were going to cut the bit with the octopus-eating, as they also said they were going to cut out the live frog-skinning, bird-drowning and fish-mutilating from this film. Perhaps the BBFC have decided that gratuitous animal torture is 'OK'!! Oh good!!!
And oh l@@k! Unsurprisingly the director, just like those Canadian mongs who tortured the cat on film, is justifying it by saying 'yes but people eat meat don't they!!! no one cares about cows do they!!!!!' and UNSURPRISINGLY the smug prick seems unable to recognise that slaughter houses generally don't include systematic torture directly for pleasure.
Wait. Wait. Is 'earthy' Ben going to correct me here? "Ac-tulleh Raz I worked in an abbatoir in 1994 - HERE IN THE UK the standard way of killing cows for meat is with a machine called a desicsilator which pulls out the cows' eyes then stabs it with a pin until it's dead - this takes THREE DAYS. And for the cows that they use for McDonalds meat they kick the cow in the tits for four hours first, and fistrape it with a glove covered in barbed hooks and all the other abbatoir workers watch and laugh and wank YOU'D ALREADY KNOW THIS IF YOU WEREN'T AN IGNORANT SMUG LONDON QUEER PRICK RAZ THINK ABOUT THIS THE NEXT TIME YOU EAT A BIGMAC"
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Well far be it for me to criticise you Ben, but your chances of winning the Fucker Prize are greatly diminished if you misplace your VIM. Perhaps you need to start posting on the Combat 18 messageboards or summat.
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Sad to report, Number9Dream wimped out and sagged off towards the end, culminating in something like the transcript of a Vikram hallucination about Fionnula the Cooler's unwritten novel.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
AAAK!
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