Any good books? (2 Viewers)

[Fansap.]

Just finished Desolation Angels and wanna get my hands on something different to read. Could anyone recommend a good book or author? I normally read Burroughs, Thompson, Kafka but want to try something different. Any help would be very appreciated.

 

[spiritualtramp]

If you like Thompson and Burroughs you may well enjoy reading Hubert Selby Jr's stuff. requiem fora dream and last exit to brooklyn are pretty damn good.

 

[Latex lizzie]

John pilger has been floating my boat recently "heros" and "the new rulers of the world" are supboirb.(politics)

 

[THRILLHO]

Currently rocking Foucault's Pendulum. It's like a better-written Da Vinci's Code.

 

[hop]

Currently rocking Foucault's Pendulum. It's like a better-written Da Vinci's Code.

yes tis very good - Baudolino is really good too, very funny. I've had a copy of Name of the Rose for years but haven't gotten around to reading it yet, anyone like/dislike it?

 

[Fansap.]

Currently rocking Foucault's Pendulum. It's like a better-written Da Vinci's Code.

Read the Da Vinci Code a few weeks ago. Good story- but it kinda reads like a movie script.

 

[sarah]

yes tis very good - Baudolino is really good too, very funny. I've had a copy of Name of the Rose for years but haven't gotten around to reading it yet, anyone like/dislike it?

Love that book can highly recommend it great story!

 

[avernus]

Read the Da Vinci Code a few weeks ago. Good story- but it kinda reads like a movie script.

yeah its good...but pretty cheesy - especially all the bits involving guns.
overall very enjoyable though.

Name of the Rose...ive only read a bit of it. must go back to it.

 

[hugh]

Currently rocking Foucault's Pendulum. It's like a better-written Da Vinci's Code.

I though Foucaults Pendulum was really boring. Gave it up after about 100 pages. I know Eco knows his stuff and so on but jesus how about a decent plot and some characters you might actually care about. Loved Name Of The Rose though ....

 

[THRILLHO]

I though Foucaults Pendulum was really boring. Gave it up after about 100 pages. I know Eco knows his stuff and so on but jesus how about a decent plot and some characters you might actually care about. Loved Name Of The Rose though ....

Yeah, what I failed to mention was that this is about my third time making a start on this book, and only the first time I've made it past the hundred-somethingth page, and now the story is opening up properly. It seems as though he stops his flurry of bullshit description at about page 120, and starts introducing some story elements. Which is nice.

Have yet to make it past page 50 of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, too.

 

[avernus]

Im reading 'Notes from a small island' - Bill Bryson. was on a plane last week, wedged in my a haep of business men...and I had tears pumping down my face as I snorted laughing.

no dignor.

 

[hop]

I though Foucaults Pendulum was really boring. Gave it up after about 100 pages. I know Eco knows his stuff and so on but jesus how about a decent plot and some characters you might actually care about. Loved Name Of The Rose though ....

what thrillho said - foucault really gets going after a while, to the point where it becomes a page turning thriller - completely different to how the book starts off

other books i've just read:
one flew over the cukoo's nest - loved the film, really liked the way the book takes on a surreal bent cos its the from chief's pov. Quite racist towards the black orderlies though
1984 - i'd never read it till about a fortnight ago - seriously disturbing book. Lots of chilling parallels with war in iraq/general u.s. govt bullshit
wasp factory & the crow road (iain banks) - wasp factory is totally warped and brilliant fun, amazing for a debut. Crow road is fuzzy nostalgia but a bloody good read. One of those books you wish wouldn't end.

name of the rose is definitely the next on my list

 

[sarah]

Just recently finished a book called 'Running with Scissors' , Augusten Burroughs
it's insane and very funny plus a true story of your mans life from age 14-19
his mother is insane he ends up living with her psychiatrist who hands out drugs
like candies and who's house is an absolute pigsty with some of the patients also sharing it. Just a bizarre book.
I highly recommend people to check out Damon Runyan as well who used to be a sportswriter in the 30s in america, all his characters are criminals and bookies and
hang out in speakeasy's with pretty dolls, very funny short stories.

 

[Fansap.]

Am half way through the sound and the fury by Faulkner. Has anyone else tried to read it? Bit of an intense first chapter but am kinda getting the hang of it. Recently finished A Hundred Years of Solitude. Amazing book.

 

[sarah]

Am half way through the sound and the fury by Faulkner. Has anyone else tried to read it? Bit of an intense first chapter but am kinda getting the hang of it. Recently finished A Hundred Years of Solitude. Amazing book.

Never saw what the fuss was about with A hundred years of solitude,
Thought it was over fussy and drawn out from what I recall of it.
I liked 'Love in the Time of Cholera' though.

 

[egg_]

I know Eco knows his stuff and so on but jesus how about a decent plot and some characters you might actually care about

Yeah Umberto! Stop trying to fucking show off and tell the fucking story!!
Sorry. Umberto Eco annoys me with his deliberate cleverness. What was the point of the whole magnet-points-north scene in The Name of the Rose? I like a lot of the book but that bit was just dumb. Liked parts of Foucault's Pendulum but overall it was a let down - the guy is badly in need of good editor (FP would have been much better if it was half the length) and ego surgery

 

[hop]

Yeah Umberto! Stop trying to fucking show off and tell the fucking story!!
Sorry. Umberto Eco annoys me with his deliberate cleverness. What was the point of the whole magnet-points-north scene in The Name of the Rose? I like a lot of the book but that bit was just dumb. Liked parts of Foucault's Pendulum but overall it was a let down - the guy is badly in need of good editor (FP would have been much better if it was half the length) and ego surgery

i don't get what you mean egg, i don't think an editor cutting out bits would make it a better read - his writing style is less plot/story driven than a lot of stuff i've read, and he has a tendency to go off on tangents that don't appear (initially) to have anything to do with the story as such, but for some editor to cut all that out would be completely missing the point no? as in, the theme of FP deals with how all the many multi-layered theories and falsehoods all become truth in the telling (& believing) because any core truth is lost in the sheer volume of information - its like a sort of self-referential pisstake that it rambles at times

 

[Catwoman]

Im reading 'Notes from a small island' - Bill Bryson. was on a plane last week, wedged in my a haep of business men...and I had tears pumping down my face as I snorted laughing.

I love Bryson. Notes From a Big Country is pretty good too. I haven't read a book of his I haven't liked, even the one on language, Mother Tongue I think it was.

Just read Post Office by Charles Bukowski. Semi-autobiographical story of a drunk postman. Quite funny, and sad at the same time.

 

[egg_]

for some editor to cut all that out would be completely missing the point no?

I don't think so.

its like a sort of self-referential pisstake

That's exactly my problem with it. I think FP has some really (for me) eye-opening ideas, and there's some real humanity in it too but it's submerged under mountains of bollocks. If the bollocks is the point then Eco is just a bullshit-artist, but I think rather that the ideas and the humanity are the points and his writing style just gets in the way.

 

[hop]

That's exactly my problem with it. I think FP has some really (for me) eye-opening ideas, and there's some real humanity in it too but it's submerged under mountains of bollocks. If the bollocks is the point then Eco is just a bullshit-artist, but I think rather that the ideas and the humanity are the points and his writing style just gets in the way.

i see what you mean - i don't think the bollocks is the sole point, rather that its a style of writing which, for me anyway, reflects the main theme of the book. it doesn't get in the way of the story but i see how it could (i actually find the bollocks really interesting in a nerdlinger kind of way)