Books The BOOK thread

Finished The Red Tree by Caitlin R Kiernan (interesting one, nearly gave up at first bc the first chapter was sometimes crude and a bit boring (too many of the dreams)), The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges (I liked the short story that gave the name to the book, but got a mixed opinion of the rest), Que ta volonté soit faite by Maxime Chattam (really disappointed by it, the writing is pleasant but I don't think the bad guy was bad enough to merit a book, or maybe it was just the view of the narrator).

I started Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. I put it on my TBR more than one year ago and the first chapter failed to interest me.
 
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Everest Red said:
How long did it take to read it? I want to read it but I'm confident i'll abandon it it midway.
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Took me about a month and I was flagging a bit after about 100 pages. I just couldn't see where it was going. I'm glad I kept going though, the last 100 pages are excellent.

Have you read much McCarthy? If not, you might want to start with something like The Road or No Country. If you have, you'll know what to expect.
 
Archie Leach said:
I've re read the final paragraph so many times. It's that perfection that you occasionally hear in popular music where you have to rewind a certain part over and over again.
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Same here. I read it back about 3 times the moment I finished and went back to it after a week to see if my opinion had changed. I just couldn't get it out of my head. It completely validated the whole novel for me. It's superb.
 
Nickosaur said:
When I was younger I loved longer books. Think I read The Stand when I was about 14.

I think the 200-300 page mark is probably the ideal length now. I don't like to be stuck on one book for too long.
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In my favorite genre, it is almost impossible to find books that length. I like books to be around 500 pages or so, but many twats decide to make them 800-900 pages long, with half of it being pointless.
 
Currently reading Finnegan*s Wake. Joyce was taking the piss when he wrote this.

He wasn't even patient enough to use a possessive apostrophe in the title.*
 
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Love the Wallander books by Henning Mankell.

Detective stories are my favorite. Can pick a book off the library shelf and get through a couple hours reading with no interruption.

D.R. Mishani's books are also very good. Inspector Avraham is still quite a new character (2 books published, 3rd coming out) but already won crime novel awards.
 
Also, I remember reading The Man in the High Castle years ago and thinking that it was utterly shit. Anyone else have the same opinion? Felt like 1984 mixed with Catch-22 but a million times worse than either.
 
@Mciahel Goodman I thought The Man In The High Castle was great. Not Dick's best work, and it was a very different book to how I expected it to read - but yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.

Finished Cities Of The Plain/The Border Trilogy by McCarthy a few nights back. Weakest of the trilogy but still beautiful and tragic with prose I'll never get tired of.

Now moving onto 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I've heard good things; can't wait.
 
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A really excellent book that makes you reconsider your opinions. A theme, running throughout this history, is unnecessary and intrusive authoritarian (religious, political etc) interference into citizens' lives. Tremendous piece of work about the heroes of non-conformity.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Renegade-Hi...words=a+renegade+history+of+the+united+states
 
Nickosaur said:
@Mciahel Goodman I thought The Man In The High Castle was great. Not Dick's best work, and it was a very different book to how I expected it to read - but yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.

Finished Cities Of The Plain/The Border Trilogy by McCarthy a few nights back. Weakest of the trilogy but still beautiful and tragic with prose I'll never get tired of.

Now moving onto 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I've heard good things; can't wait.
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Maybe I'll reread it. All the hype about the TV show is what brought it to mind.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
Cheap though :lol: Those covers... yuck.

I don't discriminate though. I'll pick up Oxford, Penguin, or whatever seems better/most affordable.
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I buy books from thrift books/half.com or borrow from the public library (always hard bound). I don't really have a choice.
 
Everest Red said:
I buy books from thrift books/half.com or borrow from the public library (always hard bound). I don't really have a choice.
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Same. I got a good copy of Milton's Paradise Regained from a thrift shop -- about 150 years old. You can really get some gems in those shops.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
Same. I got a good copy of Milton's Paradise Regained from a thrift shop -- about 150 years old. You can really get some gems in those shops.
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I have a copy of White Teeth signed by Zadie Smith that I found at a thrift store. some other cool stuff. Stephen hero etc.
 
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Everest Red said:
I have a copy of White Teeth signed by Zadie Smith that I found on thrift store. some other cool stuff. Stephen hero etc.
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Wow, excellent. I think sometimes the people who run these shops aren't aware of the value of what they sell (especially if you get a temp student behind the till).
 
Finally finished the book after watching it sit on the shelf for about a year now, just tore through it in 2 days. The prose is gorgeous as always with lots of 'magic realism' and moving parts while David narrates it, and you immediately get sucked into the quaint little world he's created within Barcelona. The characters are well fleshed out (a lot of them make a reappearance from The Shadow of the Wind - for those who've read it), and if you're a fan of paranormal fiction - there's this tasty sense of impending doom you just can't shake off halfway into the book (about a third into Lux Aeterna). Would give it 4.5/5, but the ending left a lot of loose ends and I didn't like it that much (mainly because of Cristina - really bland character compared to Isabella, and Zafón reduced Pedro Vidal to a very minor character). So 4/5, wish I could read Spanish though, some narrative bits might've gotten lost in translation. Onto the Prisoner of Heaven now.
 
I was disappointed by Shirley. Quite straightforward concerning the romances so no real suspense there. Though I was confused by one scene since I was sure the characters already confessed their love though by not using directly the words "I love you".

I also read The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan. After an irritating first chapter, the rest of the story is more pleasant to read if I don't think too much about the plot.
 
I am about to embark on the last of Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels "At Last". It has become my favourite saga. Beautifully written (so much so that I can forgive the choice to adopt the comma splice), insightful, constantly engaging, at times funny, and for all its depth, it is never inaccessible because you get the feeling it's truth-telling for the author (which all great art is), unlike the pretentious approach of a Will Self.

Mciahel Goodman said:
Currently reading Finnegan*s Wake. Joyce was taking the piss when he wrote this.

He wasn't even patient enough to use a possessive apostrophe in the title.*
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I despise Joyce; I even despise the wordplay in the title of Finnegans Wake. The omission of the possessive apostrophe is a huge red flag that says, look how clever I am. Fin Again, get it?
 
Mutter Merkel said:
I despise Joyce; I even despise the wordplay in the title of Finnegans Wake. The omission of the possessive apostrophe is a huge red flag that says, look how clever I am. Fin Again, get it?
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I love Joyce -- just this one novel is torturous. Fin Again makes sense as word play (considering the continuing loop of the novel), had never thought of that before.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
I love Joyce -- just this one novel is torturous. Fin Again makes sense as word play (considering the continuing loop of the novel), had never thought of that before.
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Finnegans Wake seems to have been devised for those who like crosswords (I am not impartial to a good crossword), but I hate the idea of turning one into a novel.

He's just never appealed to me. I remember thinking I was reading the work of a madman when I was a boy stumbling through my grandmother's copy of Ulysses, and then my opinion was terminal when I listened to Evelyn Waugh calling him a dotty Irishman. That's a shame, because I am sure Dubliners is a great book; it certainly starts off excellently. I just can't now bring myself to read another word of Joyce after witnessing the catastrophe that was the attempt to recreate prose as a stream of consciousness. My reaction to it was one of absolute repulsion, and I've hated just about every single modernist since.
 
Mutter Merkel said:
Finnegans Wake seems to have been devised for those who like crosswords (I am not impartial to a good crossword), but I hate the idea of turning one into a novel.

He's just never appealed to me. I remember thinking I was reading the work of a madman when I was a boy stumbling through my grandmother's copy of Ulysses, and then my opinion was terminal when I listened to Evelyn Waugh calling him a dotty Irishman. That's a shame, because I am sure Dubliners is a great book; it certainly starts off excellently. I just can't now bring myself to read another word of Joyce after witnessing the catastrophe that was the attempt to recreate prose as a stream of consciousness. My reaction to it was one of absolute repulsion, and I've hated just about every single modernist since.
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I understand that.. try reading The Dead from The Dubliners. It's about as unJoycean as you can get.

The stream of consciousness thing was really just early 20th century experimentation... nothing really new about it. It's essentially a prolonged soliloquy in prose form. I wouldn't write off all modernists as a result of it. Likes of Madox Ford and Proust for example -- modernists, but both very different to Joyce.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
I understand that.. try reading The Dead from The Dubliners. It's about as unJoycean as you can get.

The stream of consciousness thing was really just early 20th century experimentation... nothing really new about it. It's essentially a prolonged soliloquy in prose form. I wouldn't write off all modernists as a result of it. Likes of Madox Ford and Proust for example -- modernists, but both very different to Joyce.
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Sure. I'll probably read Dubliners at some point, which seems remarkably ahead of its time in its economical sentences. There are many authors I should give a chance, but I am more of a writer than a reader; I am almost relieved if I hate a book, because then I don't have to read the rest by that author.

When I say modernists, I am thinking of some prominent ones like Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf. Their style for some reason evokes in me the image of a brown canvas with a dilapidated steelworks tucked away in the left corner, whereas someone like St Aubyn is like sunlight searching through cloud. One is disgusting to me; the other is lovely. That's the level at which I respond to authors, honestly. It's not an intellectual thing. I am sure there's merit in all of them.
 
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Mutter Merkel said:
Sure. I'll probably read Dubliners at some point, which seems remarkably ahead of its time in its economical sentences. There are many authors I should give a chance, but I am more of a writer than a reader; I am almost relieved if I hate a book, because then I don't have to read the rest by that author.

When I say modernists, I am thinking of some prominent ones like Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf. Their style for some reason evokes in me the image of a brown canvas with a dilapidated steelworks tucked away in the left corner, whereas someone like St Aubyn is like sunlight searching through cloud. One is disgusting to me; the other is lovely. That's the level at which I respond to authors, honestly. It's not an intellectual thing. I am sure there's merit in all of them.
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Have only read Wolf briefly. She sits on my shelf ready to be properly considered.

That's interesting, what kind of stuff do you write? Prose?
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
Have only read Wolf briefly. She sits on my shelf ready to be properly considered.

That's interesting, what kind of stuff do you write? Prose?
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I've been writing a novel for the last three years, but it's really the culmination of research and ideas over a decade.

I started writing poetry and short stories when I was a child, as I was never happier than when playing in my imagination. I've never tried to publish any of my poetry, but it's where I developed my voice as a teenager. I still occasionally write poetry when I get fed up with the inelegance of prose and want to condense story and themes.
 
Eckers99 said:
Just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and it was brilliant. The language and dialogue is arcane but there is a kind of black poetry to it. The story feels like it's just drifting for a long time and there's a senseless to it which, ultimately, forms part of the point of the book.

The last 50 pages were brilliant and The Judge is one of the most memorable characters I think I've ever come across. Not an easy read but hugely rewarding and will stay with you for a long time afterwards.
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This is easily the most horrifying book I've read. I loved it. So primal and dark. Judge Holden is one of the best unheralded literary characters ever.
 
Self-Christmas presents:

- A Room of One's Own (Woolf I love Woolf's SoC the most and she's my favorite modernist in general. )
-Mapping Ideology (Žižek)
-Mythologies (Barthes)
-The Power of Myth (Campbell)

But not sure I actually put in the order and I'm sure I also got another book. :mad:

Mciahel Goodman said:
I understand that.. try reading The Dead from The Dubliners. It's about as unJoycean as you can get.

The stream of consciousness thing was really just early 20th century experimentation... nothing really new about it. It's essentially a prolonged soliloquy in prose form. I wouldn't write off all modernists as a result of it. Likes of Madox Ford and Proust for example -- modernists, but both very different to Joyce.
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There is two versions of Three Sisters, one that appears in the Dubliners and an older version. It's worth reading both to see his the changes he made to the story. The changes he made are fascinating.
 
Everest Red said:
There is two versions of Three Sisters, one that appears in the Dubliners and an older version. It's worth reading both to see his the changes he made to the story. The changes he made are fascinating.
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Didn't know that. Will definitely look it up. Dubliners is Joyce's most readable novel imo. Portrait second, then Ulysses.. then Finnegans Wake, which is a nightmare.
 
Everest Red said:
Wolf!
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:lol::lol:

Seriously though, a lot of people don't consider it a novel, but when you look at the stories, you realise that they're all connected thematically and geographically (each story takes part in an area of Dublin, which, when you look at a map, forms a figure of eight).
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
:lol::lol:

Seriously though, a lot of people don't consider it a novel, but when you look at the stories, you realise that they're all connected thematically and geographically (each story takes part in an area of Dublin, which, when you look at a map, forms a figure of eight).
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They're just thematically connected stories. If we use your logic Munro wrote something bigger than 'In Search of Lost Time.'

Another fun fact: Joyce first published under Stephen Daedalus, and had to stop b/c the editor of the magazine got too many letters asking him to stop publishing JJ.
 
The late, great David Bowie's top 100 books. Some fascinating works in this list:

Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top by John Braine
On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
City Of Night by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
David Bomberg by Richard Cork
Blast by Wyndham Lewis
Passing by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodieby Muriel Spark
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
McTeague by Frank Norris
Money by Martin Amis
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
Strange People by Frank Edwards
English Journey by J.B. Priestley
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
Beano (comic, ’50s)
Raw (comic, ’80s)
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
The Street by Ann Petry
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Bridge by Hart Crane
All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Teenage by Jon Savage
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Viz (comic, early ’80s)
Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
 
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An excellent overview of the critical tradition regarding Heart of Darkness, full of insights and novel readings of the book. One particular critic's opinion stands out though: acclaimed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness ~

Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry, the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity it could say with faith and feeling: "There go I but for the grace of God..."

Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray - a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture has to be hidden away to safeguard the man's jeopardous integrity. Keep away from Africa, or else! Mr. Kurtz of Heart of Darkness should have heeded that warning and the prowling horror in his heart would have kept its place, chained to its lair. But he foolishly exposed himself to the wild irresistible allure of the jungle and lo! the darkness found him out.
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Defences of the novel, and of Conrad, can be made (I have a few myself, for what it's worth) but nevertheless I feel that Achebe is right. In fact, I'm tempted to think that Kurtz's experiences in Africa didn't 'ruin his mind', as the culture of Western civilisation had already done that...

The entire lecture is here ~

The Lecture Heard Around The World:
http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html
 
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