New now reading
- Carl's Son
- Grade A Shitpipe
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Re: New now reading
He definately did have another novel out but I'm not sure if it did too well.
I can just about handle you driving like a pissed up crackhead and treating women like beanbags but I'm gonna say this once and once only Gene, stay out of Camberwick Green!
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- funky_nomad
- paranoid
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Re: New now reading
I read My Friend Leonard as a novel, rather than a memoir, and I found it startlingly well-written and very affecting.
Just a penitent man
- Magilla
- Otago Mago
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Re: New now reading
funky_nomad wrote:No, it is definitely Grandmother. Trust me.
Anyway, you must be the only person I know to defend Whit - it's possibly his worst book. In fact, anything post-Complicity of his mainstream stuff is pretty dispensable, particularly when compared against his early stuff. The Iain M Banks stuff is untouchable, though.
Bloody hell, you're right. I think Whit is much better than the mediocre A Song Of Stone and The Business.
I'm not a sci-fi fan as such, so don't hold his sci-fi stuff in the same high regard as you do. I enjoy it as a change once in a blue moon, but overall I just don't find it as rewarding as his prime non sci-fi stuff.
"U2 routinely spent a year in the studio...I have a theory: if you put four monkeys in the studio for a year with Lanois and Eno and Lillywhite, they would make a pretty good record, too."
Re: New now reading
corporate whore wrote:Forgot to mention....
I bought this in a clearence book shop years ago, and it just sat on my 'to be read' bookshelf.
Anyway, I pulled it down because I fancied something light, and its hilarious. I would never have guessed he was a scouser.
Recomended.
I'd also recommend his very short novel "The Boy Who Kicked Pigs".
- Spec
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Re: New now reading
Clint Planet wrote:
Eloquent, absorbing and at times rather heartbreaking. Warning: very low putdownable rating.
It is a very haunting book.
- Penk!
- Midnight to Six Man
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Re: New now reading
pnek wrote:
Bolaño won masses of (posthumous) critical acclaim, but I remember a few people on here being unconvinced. I thought The Savage Detectives was excellent, however, so it's about time to have a go at this, supposedly his masterpiece. About thirty or forty pages in and I'm not sure if I like it so far, though.
Just finished it. It was pretty hard going; and that's without knowing until I read online just now that the events depicted in book four (The Part about the Crimes) are based on reality.
But I think I liked it a lot. I certainly got a lot out of it, but it'll take a while longer to decide what I really think about it.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.
- helsabot
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Re: New now reading
I've always heard people go on and on about this book, so I'm seeing what it's all about. Having read about three chapters so far, it's not bad, but I don't have an awful lot to judge by.
Discos don't look pretty from an anthropological perspective.
- Leg of lamb
- Jane Austen enthusiast
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Re: New now reading
I'm still reading Germinal by Zola. I have this rather daft habit of persevering with books regardless of whether I'm enjoying them, and this might be one of those. I am interested in the story by now (400 pages in!) but I still find the writing (or the translation) to be very turgid.
Breaking it up with Orwell essays. On his long examination of Dickens currently - just so crisp, perceptive and dryly funny, even if some of the class politics show their age.
Breaking it up with Orwell essays. On his long examination of Dickens currently - just so crisp, perceptive and dryly funny, even if some of the class politics show their age.
Brother Spoon wrote:I would probably enjoy this record more if it came to me in a brown paper bag filled with manure, instead of this richly illustrated disgrace to my eyes.
- BARON CORNY DOG
- Diamond Geezer
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Re: New now reading
pnek wrote:pnek wrote:
Bolaño won masses of (posthumous) critical acclaim, but I remember a few people on here being unconvinced. I thought The Savage Detectives was excellent, however, so it's about time to have a go at this, supposedly his masterpiece. About thirty or forty pages in and I'm not sure if I like it so far, though.
Just finished it. It was pretty hard going; and that's without knowing until I read online just now that the events depicted in book four (The Part about the Crimes) are based on reality.
But I think I liked it a lot. I certainly got a lot out of it, but it'll take a while longer to decide what I really think about it.
This is the one that involves a bunch of dead women on the Mexican border? My brother is a fan of Bolano, but he's waiting awhile to dive into this one.
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.
- Penk!
- Midnight to Six Man
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Re: New now reading
Yeah, that's the one. I'd read The Savage Detectives before reading this, and it was sitting on the shelf for a good few months before I decided to take it on.
It's perhaps one of those situations where one work - 2666 - is clearly the masterpiece, the more complex, intelligent, deep and consummately created, but the other - The Savage Detectives - is the more likable.
A Godfather situation, maybe.
It's perhaps one of those situations where one work - 2666 - is clearly the masterpiece, the more complex, intelligent, deep and consummately created, but the other - The Savage Detectives - is the more likable.
A Godfather situation, maybe.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.
- Magilla
- Otago Mago
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Re: New now reading
helsabot wrote:
I've always heard people go on and on about this book, so I'm seeing what it's all about. Having read about three chapters so far, it's not bad, but I don't have an awful lot to judge by.
I tried giving it a go about 20 years ago for much the same reason. I got about 20 pages in and thought it was insufferable twaddle. It's the only book I've ever not bothered to finish.
"U2 routinely spent a year in the studio...I have a theory: if you put four monkeys in the studio for a year with Lanois and Eno and Lillywhite, they would make a pretty good record, too."
- Django
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Re: New now reading
Magilla wrote:helsabot wrote:
I've always heard people go on and on about this book, so I'm seeing what it's all about. Having read about three chapters so far, it's not bad, but I don't have an awful lot to judge by.
I tried giving it a go about 20 years ago for much the same reason. I got about 20 pages in and thought it was insufferable twaddle. It's the only book I've ever not bothered to finish.
I've read it twice, once when I was 20 and again just last year (when I was 33). Both times I thought it was massively overrated, occasionally interesting but very tiresome. I hope I never read it again.
- Django
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Re: New now reading
specbebop wrote:Django wrote:
Next novel on the pile:
That was my [fiction] book of the year last year so I'll be interested to see what you think of it.
Sorry, Spec, that's not for me. I've abandoned it after 120 pages. Have you read "Illywhacker" by Peter Carey? For me, this was a lesser version of that, with more jokes but less depth.
Now reading:
- Spec
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Re: New now reading
Django wrote:specbebop wrote:Django wrote:
Next novel on the pile:
That was my [fiction] book of the year last year so I'll be interested to see what you think of it.
Sorry, Spec, that's not for me. I've abandoned it after 120 pages. Have you read "Illywhacker" by Peter Carey? For me, this was a lesser version of that, with more jokes but less depth.
Ah, sorry (I always feel bad when I recommend something and it doesn't work for others). I have read the Carey but a long time ago and so don't remember it very well.
Django wrote:Now reading:
I've not read that. I recently read, and greatly enjoyed, Kavalier and Clay. And Wonder Boys is a modern classic.
- savoirefaire
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Re: New now reading
Django wrote:Magilla wrote:helsabot wrote:
I've always heard people go on and on about this book, so I'm seeing what it's all about. Having read about three chapters so far, it's not bad, but I don't have an awful lot to judge by.
I tried giving it a go about 20 years ago for much the same reason. I got about 20 pages in and thought it was insufferable twaddle. It's the only book I've ever not bothered to finish.
I've read it twice, once when I was 20 and again just last year (when I was 33). Both times I thought it was massively overrated, occasionally interesting but very tiresome. I hope I never read it again.
I asked for that book for my birthday last year and I gave up after about four and a half chapters in. I didn't even get to the interesting twists the blurb claimed the book had and I didn't care for the philosophical overtones either. It had been a book I had wanted to read for a very long time but upon discussing with a friend that life is too short to try to read a book I just can't be bothered to finish, I gave my copy away.
Kid P wrote:*Deleted*
Should have quoted SF
Sneelock wrote:I'm never bored. I'm boring. I think of it as a lifestyle choice!
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- Snarfyguy
- Dominated by the Obscure
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Re: New now reading
I'm glad to see Zen and the Art...'s reputation in tatters. I read it as an adolescent, back when it was enjoying cult-y success and I thought it was terrible, just new-age self-help gobbledygook.
Meanwhile,
First novel by esteemed travel writer Pico Iyer. I've never been to Cuba, but this seems like a fine evocation of it.
Meanwhile,
First novel by esteemed travel writer Pico Iyer. I've never been to Cuba, but this seems like a fine evocation of it.
GoogaMooga wrote: The further away from home you go, the greater the risk of getting stuck there.
- Velvis
- Mellowed down easy
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Re: New now reading
Snarfyguy wrote:I'm glad to see Zen and the Art...'s reputation in tatters. I read it as an adolescent, back when it was enjoying cult-y success and I thought it was terrible, just new-age self-help gobbledygook.
Hear hear!
a gibbon running freely
- Penk!
- Midnight to Six Man
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Re: New now reading
So I finally started this, and I'm not sure about it. I've read 80 or so pages and while the main story - about the house - is intriguing, I find the footnotes, which make up about half the text, pretty tedious and at times annoying. I don't think I'm likely to have the patience to wade back through them in search of clues or revelations afterwards.
I started this, too:
This one I am enjoying a lot, fascinating and insightful despite its brevity.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.
- Count Machuki
- BCB Cup Champion 2013
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Re: New now reading
Infinite Jest continues on my commute (500 pages, holding strong), but I've got this cooking at home:
Let U be the set of all united sets, K be the set of the kids and D be the set of things divided.
Then it follows that ∀ k ∈ K: K ∈ U ⇒ k ∉ D
Then it follows that ∀ k ∈ K: K ∈ U ⇒ k ∉ D
- Nolamike
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Re: New now reading
Count Machuki wrote:Infinite Jest continues on my commute (500 pages, holding strong).
Eh. I read the thing, but by the end, it was more of a "screw you for sucking up so much of my reading time; I'll finish this thing to prove a point!" The thing had some great moments, and some hilarious moments, but also had several hundred pages of stuff that bored me to tears. I did love his essays, though, and about a third of his short stories.
Sir John Coan wrote:Nolamike is speaking nothing but sense here.
Loki wrote:Mike is Hookfinger's shill.