books (1 Viewer)

[mugwump]

can anybody suggest a good book to read...
i have just finished a mad one called Ghostwritten by David Mitchell which I can recommend (one of the best books I read in years, even). For those hairy gooter magician or whatever the fuck he's called fans out there...forget it, i'm not interested so don't even bother (but they're really good books..i was quiet suprised...seriously you should try reading the first one...it's not what you think...not for kids...yeah, yeah, yeah...fuck off)

 

[pete]

I read Mick Foley's "Foley is Good" on me holidays and it's good stuff, but you'd probably need to have read the other one (Have A Nice Day) to get the most out of it...

 

[Vinnie]

I'd heartily reccomend

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck,

Ubiq by Kurt Vonnegut

The Dead School by Patrick McCabe.

All stunning books.

 

[chickenham]

that is..
'ubik' by philip k. dick (also valis; the divine invasion; the man in the high castle; a scanner darkly)
anything by kurt vonnegut
anything by flann o'brien
knut hamsun: 'mysteries' or 'hunger'
patrick suskind: 'perfume'
celine: 'journey to the end of night'
lautreamont: 'maldoror'
keri hulme: 'the bone people'
.....a few of my faves

 

[Ex-User (250)]

I second the grapes of wrath and add:

cannery row & sweet thursday by steinbeck (one follows t'other)
siddhartha by hess
the shipping news by proulx
the fall by camus

they're books i want close to me at all times for ever. grand so.

 

[kitty]

chickenham (11 Jul, 2001 12:03 p.m.):
that is..
'ubik' by philip k. dick (also valis; the divine invasion; the man in the high castle; a scanner darkly)
anything by kurt vonnegut
anything by flann o'brien
knut hamsun: 'mysteries' or 'hunger'
patrick suskind: 'perfume'
celine: 'journey to the end of night'
lautreamont: 'maldoror'
keri hulme: 'the bone people'
.....a few of my faves

 

[kitty]

Do ya not think the Bone people was a bit too cliched?
like she lived in the tower and at the end she symbolically tore the tower down

it was a good book but hey i wouldn't have wanted to have been trapped in her tower
purrrrrrrrrrrrssssssss

 

[Lolo]

Martin Millar "The Good Fairies Of New York"

Extremely silly but readable stuff about 2 fairies (actual fairies I should add, not homosexual gentlemen) who get kicked out of Scotland (for, among other things, playing Ramones tunes on their faery fiddles) and yes, you've guessed it, go to New York. The ghost of Johnny Thunders wanders in and out of the story looking for his guitar. It rocks. I'm about to read it again before I go off on hols to NY, you can borrow it after me!

 

[cyclotron]

I've read "Ghostwritten" also and it's very enjoyable. Re-reading Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" - awesome. I'd recommend anything by Hesse and Dostoyevsky. Music wise - "Get in the Van" by Henry Rollins, "Space is the Place" (Sun Ra bio.) and "Papa John" (bio of John Phillips from the Mamas and Papas which is hilarious...)

 

[Vinnie]

Vinnie (11 Jul, 2001 11:56 a.m.):


Ubiq by Kurt Vonnegut

Arrrghh. The curse of replying too fast. I couldn't decide whther to put in a Vonnegut or a Phillip K Dick book and I inadvertently put both into the same book and even managed to spell the name wrong. I am an idiot.

Anyway, read Ubik (by Phillip K Dick). it's marvellous.

 

[Osimono]

Yeah Vinnie, youre such an idiot...so quick to look clever, but only ...
...looking like a fool....

...making love , is breaking all the rules.....


Has anyone read William Godwin's 'Caleb Williams'?

hey Mugwump, go grab yourself a copy of Beckett's Short Prose, or alternatively a copy of his short novel 'Mercier and Camier'. It dont really come much better than that.

 

[mugwump]

I know some of you out there will call me a blasphemer and all that...but I don't like Beckett. I just never got into it. I've tried and failed many times so I have just given up...but cheers for the tip.
I personally think that Flann O'Brien is the best of the Irish writers...he was a complete mentalist and wrote some of the funniest and strangest books...I wonder if anyone ever attempted to make a film based on any of his stories.

 

[Ex-User (250)]

it's crack lounge osimono, 'CRACK LOUNGE'. i'm up for vin on this one, i've been rumbled loads of times trying to impress people to quickly, usually leading to terrible discrepancies...

 

[egg_]

I like

anything by John Steinbeck
anything by Kurt Vonnegut
Sexus by Henry Miller
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
any of the Harry Potter books (esp 3rd and 4th)
Cancer Ward by Solzenitsyn
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (can't remember the author)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
etc. etc.

Have you read On The Road? Catch 22? Also deadly

Oh yeah also I read a collection of short stories by Jean Paul Sartre a while ago and one called 'The Wall' (I think) blew me away. I think the collection was called Intimacy

 

[paddington]

i recommend anything by John Fante especially Ask the Dust.

 

[anon]

IF YOU LIKE THE FILMS OF ALTMAN, SCORSESE, FREDKIN, COPPOLLA, CIMMINO ECT..... GET "EASY RIDERS , RAGING BULLS" BY PETER BISKIND. IT' S ABOUT THE NEW WAVE OF DIRECTORS THAT CAME TO HOLLYWOOD IN THE LATE 60'S AND THROUGH THE 1970'S
IT'S AN ABSOLUTE CLASSIC
FICTION, LOVE RAYMOND CHANDLER MYSELF

 

[leedy]

Anything by Cormac McCarthy, but particularly Blood Meridian (rotgut whiskey! scalping! gore! amazing language!), and Suttree (more rotgut whiskey, less gore, and possibly the most vivid description of a hangover I've ever read - it starts with the protagonist waking up under a car to find that someone's pissed on his head).

Also second the Flann O'Brien and Philip K. Dick recommendations.

 

[krystal]

EVERYONE needs to read I'm With The Band by top rock groupie Pamela Des Barres

 

[Monkey]

Try "The Great Gatsby" by that guy who's name escapes me F Scott Fitzgerald or something ? Or "The Hound of The Baskervilles" by Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle

 

[Cormy]

Anything by Raymond Chandler...

Anything by Nelson Algren, preferably short stories...

I'm really digging Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series right now...yes yes, I'm an unoriginal sci-fi nerd...

And of course, he who I suspect you refer to as "hairy gooter magician" (blasphemy!) -H.P. Lovecraft.