New now reading

[KeithPratt]

And I'm studying Ovid now until May. It goes without saying that it is a work of utter genius.

[echolalia]

I have very high expectations for it – if it doesn’t go into my top ten favourite novels I’ll be disappointed. It’s notoriously difficult to get into though, and the “plain English” brigade will find much to get in a froth about. I’m only four pages in but there’s already been at least one spectacularly unusual sentence. Hopefully I’ll be back to rave about it in a week or two!


Also starting:



I bought a Mojo lately cause it had the Jam on the cover and inside was a review of this book.

I really enjoyed the introduction. It was a phenomenon first driven by a prurient, thrill-starved readership (office workers reading about juvenile delinquents as imagined by hacks) that later attracted insider writers (the “delinquents” themselves) and then branched out into various wacky subgenres (hippie detectives). I’m going to mine it for obscure authors.

There are lots of colour photos of the cover art, which is good. It’s very well laid out – it isn’t infested with sidebars and boxes and what have you – and equally easy to dip into or read in a linear fashion, which is what I’m going to do. It covers the USA, UK and Australia (I think the editors are Australian) in a series of themed chapters that each examine a few books in depth. The UK sections range from outrageous shite like Richard Allen to the excellent Laura del Rivo. It looks like a very good read indeed and I commend it to the BCB house!

[Darkness_Fish]

Bog standard crime fiction.

[mission]

I have very high expectations for it – if it doesn’t go into my top ten favourite novels I’ll be disappointed. It’s notoriously difficult to get into though, and the “plain English” brigade will find much to get in a froth about. I’m only four pages in but there’s already been at least one spectacularly unusual sentence. Hopefully I’ll be back to rave about it in a week or two!


Also starting:



I bought a Mojo lately cause it had the Jam on the cover and inside was a review of this book.

I really enjoyed the introduction. It was a phenomenon first driven by a prurient, thrill-starved readership (office workers reading about juvenile delinquents as imagined by hacks) that later attracted insider writers (the “delinquents” themselves) and then branched out into various wacky subgenres (hippie detectives). I’m going to mine it for obscure authors.

There are lots of colour photos of the cover art, which is good. It’s very well laid out – it isn’t infested with sidebars and boxes and what have you – and equally easy to dip into or read in a linear fashion, which is what I’m going to do. It covers the USA, UK and Australia (I think the editors are Australian) in a series of themed chapters that each examine a few books in depth. The UK sections range from outrageous shite like Richard Allen to the excellent Laura del Rivo. It looks like a very good read indeed and I commend it to the BCB house!

Lowry writes drunk. I mean, the prose style is alcoholic; it resembles the thought patterns of the alcoholic, it evokes the circular and the recursive of the permanently fucked.

It was hard to penetrate and, for a nondrinking alcoholic, a little difficult to bear.

[clive gash]

‘THE DAY OF THE DEAD’: PUTTING MALCOLM LOWRY TO JAZZ

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the ... ry_to_jazz

Try the audiobook.

[harvey k-tel]

Somehow read both of these this past week. I guess having a cold and it being a long weekend here didn't hurt.

The Lost Daughter was fairly easy going for a Ferrante novel, but Days of Abandonment was an incredibly harrowing read. It felt like being inside Gena Rowland's head in 'A Woman Under The Influence'.

Both highly recommended.

[Darkness_Fish]

[joklend]

Jean Genet - Funeral Rites

Set in wartime Paris, it sees the conflict through a mesh of homosexual lust.

[Snarfyguy]

Somehow read both of these this past week.

You and these intellectual books of yours, I swear.



Brimming with ideas, this is a fascinating read.




Good airplane/beach kind of stuff. Sort of like Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry except smarter.

[Darkness_Fish]

[KeithPratt]

An enjoyable overview of the "Viking" presence in Britain, carefully articulating that what a "Viking" was is difficult in itself to define.

[copehead]

An enjoyable overview of the "Viking" presence in Britain, carefully articulating that what a "Viking" was is difficult in itself to define.

Hope this helps

[KeithPratt]

There is no evidence of Vikings wearing horned helmets.

[Fonz]

There is no evidence of Vikings wearing horned helmets.

It doesn't mean they didn't

[hippopotamus]

These are two audiobooks I finished last week





They were harmless and entertaining.

The David Niven one, came of an interview I had seen of his, and some bizarre confluence of his name and his books being mentioned a strange many times until I felt like the universe wanted me to know something about it.

It's not ground breaking or Amazing. But he does have a nice voice, and he chokes up at his own emotional reminiscence. After having heard a little about the history of childhood and how hard it was for some around the turn of the century in the Bill Bryson book, David Niven's gives it's own little proof.

I've now started reading this in Physical form


So far it's absolutely wonderful.

[copehead]

There is no evidence of Vikings wearing horned helmets.

Indeed, that is more likely to have been Saxons.

Vikings wore domed helmets like the Normans because Normans were Vikings.

The rest of it is accurate though

[Jimbo]

From the guy who fronts my favorite alt-country band, Richmond Fontaine. I'm about a third of the way through and it's turning into a boxing story like Rocky or Requiem For a Heavyweight but so moving with warm loving characters and loads of heart. Set in the southwest with tumbleweed and sage and trailers, just great!

[KeithPratt]

An Orwellian attempt at undercover reportage in 21st century London. Judah spends time with Roma beggars, Afghani immigrants in Neasden, Ghanaian cleaners and Polish builders living in 5 to a room dosshouses in Beckton. Absolutely essential reading for anyone who lives in or has lived in London - a testament as to how mass immigration and the needs of a 21st century metropolis are transforming it.

[Insouciant Western People]

From the guy who fronts my favorite alt-country band, Richmond Fontaine. I'm about a third of the way through and it's turning into a boxing story like Rocky or Requiem For a Heavyweight but so moving with warm loving characters and loads of heart. Set in the southwest with tumbleweed and sage and trailers, just great!

We saw him do a gig based around this book a few weeks ago, in a terrific little venue in Manchester, a converted church. Just him and a very adept pedal steel player. They played a few RF favourites and some music from the soundtracks of this book and also Northline, he read a lengthy excerpt, and did a Q&A session.

I had a quick chat with him while getting my copy of the book signed, did the same thing at a Delines show a few years back, he came across as a lovely bloke on both occasions.

[mission]

I have reached an age where reading has become too difficult.

I saw it happen to my mum and thought it impossible but here I am.

Given how much of my identity is bound up in books I thought this aspect of ageing would be intolerable, but I don't actually give a fuck.

I am reading* The Last Samurai by Helen de Witt and it is by no means difficult - it's not fucking Gaddis or Gass or Pynchon or Barth or any of the postmodern tricksters I wasted my youth on - but I genuinely couldn't give a shit about the structural shenanigans and just want the story.

Just tell me a story.


*dipping into periodically before my lids drop and I loll insensibly into a dress rehearsal for death