What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (2 Viewers)

[Jim Daniels]

i've had a lot of those lately, including the goldfinch and the secret history, also a couple each of margaret atwoods and jonathan coes

I used to be constantly disappointed/ infuriated by the endings of novels. I just had to get over it and accept that it must be the most difficult thing for authors to get right. What I find more disappointing is when the decline begins within the final third or quarter of a book.

Years ago, every month or so I had to dodge Paul Auster novels, which upon completion, were hurled across the room in anger by my sister. She broke her favourite lamp once. The one that looked like a tree.

 

[sleepy]

i've had a lot of those lately, including the goldfinch and the secret history, also a couple each of margaret atwoods and jonathan coes

Just after buying the Goldfinch today. And the Secret History's still sitting unread at home. Hope to get to them soon.

I remember feeling the same way about White Teeth. Really well written and really enjoyable all the way through and then let down at the end

 

[sleepy]

I used to be constantly disappointed/ infuriated by the endings of novels. I just had to get over it and accept that it must be the most difficult thing for authors to get right. What I find more disappointing is when the decline begins within the final third or quarter of a book.

Years ago, every month or so I had to dodge Paul Auster novels, which upon completion, were hurled across the room in anger by my sister. She broke her favourite lamp once. The one that looked like a tree.

Yeah, it seems to be near impossible alright. Never read any of his stuff.

I actually had the opposite scenario with the Corrections where I really hated all the characters all the way through and found reading it pretty hard going but then loved the end.

 

[Jim Daniels]

Just after buying the Goldfinch today. And the Secret History's still sitting unread at home. Hope to get to them soon.

I remember feeling the same way about White Teeth. Really well written and really enjoyable all the way through and then let down at the end

I'd suggest reading The Secret History first. I think you would be more inclined to read The Goldfinch then afterwards, but perhaps not visa-versa.

 

[Jim Daniels]

Yeah, it seems to be near impossible alright. Never read any of his stuff.

I actually had the opposite scenario with the Corrections where I really hated all the characters all the way through and found reading it pretty hard going but then loved the end.

Paul Auster's early novels were really interesting, with the main protagonist finding himself in intriguing situations. But more often than not, they just ended up with him getting into his car and driving off, leaving the rest to the reader's imagination. Still pretty good though!

I must read The Corrections again. One of my ageing problems - having no powers of recall anymore!

 

[sleepy]

Paul Auster's early novels were really interesting, with the main protagonist finding himself in intriguing situations. But more often than not, they just ended up with him getting into his car and driving off, leaving the rest to the reader's imagination. Still pretty good though!

I must read The Corrections again. One of my ageing problems - having no powers of recall anymore!

Sure I'll give one of them a go at some stage.

The Corrections is pretty depressing novel about a family of assholes who turn out ok in the end from what I remember

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I started The Great Fire Of London by Jacques Roubaud this evening. I bought the trilogy in chapters a couple of months ago and I've been expecting it to be the best thing ever but it looks like it might be even worse than that Knobgård lads book. Very disappointing. Pity I didn't find out anything about it before I started

Quasi-autobiographical antinovel with an infinity of self- reflexive notes for a never-written novel that doesn't get written here either; by a French professor of mathematics. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch (rearrange the chapters in any order) and Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler (a repetition of false starts upon false starts) are masterpieces of straightforward storytelling set beside this heavy goo of lapidary intellectualismo. For 20 years, the anguished narrator has wanted to write the nonnovel we are now reading--it was once called Project, as Finnegans Wake was once called Work in Progress. He begins by writing the first sentence and then about how the first sentence looks on the page, the fall of light from his desk lamp on the sentence, the breaking darkness outdoors slowly wiping out the yellow lampglow on his desk, and so on, all with the intention of giving us a story that, as it goes along, self-destructs sentence by sentence. Can this be authorial suicide? Whatever artistic impulse gave birth to this aberration has been overtaken by the death of the narrator's young wife Alix and a depression that all but obliterates his first great pain and leaves this fearful mountain of artifice. Roubaud cannot follow a straight line but must forever split any thought into a forking thought that demands an interpolation (and leaves the reader forked). ``Whatever else it may be, the system I've planned is sufficiently unobtrusive and practical not to preclude a priori that my book would be read by no more than a few dozen or so crazy Oulipians.'' Oulipians apparently are fellow nonlinearists. Epistemocritical digressions that probably even the dead would not read with enjoyment. Maximum narcolepsy.

 

[sleepy]

I'd suggest reading The Secret History first. I think you would be more inclined to read The Goldfinch then afterwards, but perhaps not visa-versa.

Turns out my wife had already bought me the Goldfinch for my birthday. What are the odds?

 

[jonah]

Years ago, every month or so I had to dodge Paul Auster novels, which upon completion, were hurled across the room in anger by my sister. She broke her favourite lamp once. The one that looked like a tree.

I will spend the rest of my life dodging his terrible writing

 

[nooleen]

haha!
i only read one of his books and it was one of those novels about the tragic travails of a sad middle-aged author

i'll try some of his other books some time though, that seemed to be a bit of a departure from the themes of his others

 

[Jim Daniels]

I will spend the rest of my life dodging his terrible writing

haha!
i only read one of his books and it was one of those novels about the tragic travails of a sad middle-aged author. I'll try some of his other books some time though, that seemed to be a bit of a departure from the themes of his others

I wouldn't say he's a terrible writer, but he frequently leads you up the garden path.

I always liked Timbuktu - the narrator is a dog.

 

[sleepy]

haha!
i only read one of his books and it was one of those novels about the tragic travails of a sad middle-aged author

i'll try some of his other books some time though, that seemed to be a bit of a departure from the themes of his others

I read the Rum Diaries by Hunter S. Thompson a little while back. It's about the tragic travails of being an approaching middle age journalist. I enjoyed it. They were dicks to women though

 

[nooleen]

I wouldn't say he's a terrible writer, but he frequently leads you up the garden path.

I always liked Timbuktu - the narrator is a dog.

now that i can get into

 

[jonah]

I know @St. Fechin; was a bit of a Paul Aster fanboy, anyway, but nooo. Just no.

 

[Jim Daniels]

I know @St. Fechin; was a bit of a Paul Aster fanboy, anyway, but nooo. Just no.

Ha! What have you read by him?

 

[St. Fechin]

I will spend the rest of my life dodging his terrible writing

"One by one, working with great speed and precision, he stabs out the boy's eyes."

amirite?

 

[Jill Hives]

Yeah, it seems to be near impossible alright. Never read any of his stuff.

I actually had the opposite scenario with the Corrections where I really hated all the characters all the way through and found reading it pretty hard going but then loved the end.

I never got to the end because I hated it so much.

 

[sleepy]

I never got to the end because I hated it so much.

I can never leave a book unfinished. I'll keep going out of sheer obstinance. But yeah, this one was a struggle. I'm not sure whether it was just that the characters were all really terrible people or he just had a knack for focusing on their shittiest qualities.

 

[Jill Hives]

I can never leave a book unfinished. I'll keep going out of sheer obstinance. But yeah, this one was a struggle. I'm not sure whether it was just that the characters were all really terrible people or he just had a knack for focusing on their shittiest qualities.

It made me really dislike myself and everyone around me too. So, for that, it's well done. It's rare I don't finish something I start but I just couldn't with this one.

 

[sleepy]

It made me really dislike myself and everyone around me too. So, for that, it's well done. It's rare I don't finish something I start but I just couldn't with this one.

Kind of had that effect on me too a bit.