What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (9 Viewers)

I'm on a book (reading) tour of late, like they're going out of fashion. It seems a shame with the weather being so sunny and bright but I'm only now getting to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. Its a page turner alright but its as you would imagine very hard to read. Fights against the Nazis for his beloved Russia, gets thrown into a Gulag for no apparent reason by his not so loving Russia. If you need any further proof that Communism is and was one of the most vile ideologies ever, read no further than this book dear reader.

That book coming right off the back of John F Lucy's, The devil in the drum. An Irishman setting off to join the British army in 1912 and not knowing what was coming down the road to him and his younger brother. One of the best books I've ever read not just history books I've ever read. Why these books aren't compulsory readings in our schools, I just don't know.
 
I haven't posted a book I've read since July. About to amend that, strap in.

The Nod by Adrian Barnes
Everyone stops being able to sleep apart from a few people. Or maybe it was just the narrator (who is also into etymology). Cue one dreadful story that is by numbers post-apocalyptic fiction and also a history of words (that is incorrect in a couple of places). Avoid.
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Selected Poems by A.E. (George Russell)
Poems by mystic Irish polymath (who is also a character in Ulysses). They're melancholy and loaded with symbolism, just what I look for in my poetry. It's nice to see his work in print, I've been lucky enough to get one volume of his poetry for cheap second hand but otherwise it's impossible to find his stuff without dropping more money than I'm comfortable with on a book.
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Walden by Henry David Thoreau
This is one I've been meaning to read for a long time. It's a strange book, some absolutely wonderful passages sandwiched between an awful lot of banal information about living on your own in the forest.
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The Stone Man by Luke Smitherd
As bad as The Nod was, this is in another circle of literary hell entirely. It was a random holiday purchase on Amazon. I didn't realise it was a self-published endeavour and it was terrible. The plot is crap and the writing is absolutely bottom of the barrel stuff. The author uses every cliché possible (out of nowhere, the narrator suddenly announces that they have autism in a really clunky way, in order to explain why they have no close friends as that would make the plot difficult otherwise). I struggled through it and hate that I bothered to read all the way through.
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Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch
Some musings on creativity and Transcendental Meditation by Lynch. It's a nice, easy read with some interesting tidbits and thought-provoking ideas about creative work (transferable to any field).
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Time Burial by Howard Wandrei
Anthology of stories from various pulp magazines, most of them are very much dated but some gems in there (par for the course for a lot of these single-author anthologies, even the big names wrote a lot of dreck). Annoyingly, there was a printing error and about 100 pages are repeated instead of the 100 pages that should be there. I keep meaning to follow up with the publisher to get a replacement.
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Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories by Sheridan Le Fanu
Budget collection of Le Fanu's minor supernatural works, mainly published in newspapers and magazines in his lifetime. Like the Wandrei collection, some of these are of their time but Le Fanu is leagues above in terms of writing quality. Given that this was less than a fiver, it was a no-brainer for me to pick it up.
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Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier by Mark Frost
A tidy-up exercise following the new Twin Peaks series, this isn't as good as the first book from before the series aired and, like all the literary tie-ins with Twin Peaks, it only adds a little to the overall Twin Peaks experience. I was worried that it would dispel too much of the mystery and the impressionist vibes around the series but it didn't.
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Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt
Round-up of psychological and neuroscientific literature around affection and parenting. Unsurprisingly, being a nurturing and attentive parent is better than being a dick. However, the overall argument is made especially strong by the huge amount of data and evidence backing it. Really great book, especially for anyone with small kids.
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The Hashish Man and Other Stories by Lord Dunsany
Small but excellent collection of Dunsany's more atmospheric and uncanny tales. Even when the stories don't quite deliver, they work as prose poems as Dunsany is such a precise and lyrical writer. I've only really scratched the surface with him (aside from this, I have read a few of his stories in ghost story anthologies) but after this I'm dying to dig deeper.
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The Devil's Hoof by Jonathan Barry
Modern attempt at a gothic horror novel set in Dublin in the 19th century, all based around the Hellfire Club and the Dublin mountains. I enjoyed it because of the local flavour but overall I wouldn't be quick to recommend this nor do I think I'll ever revisit it. I couldn't tell if it was trying to be an homage or a pastiche of gothic fiction, it felt like an Irish version of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow but less charm.
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Don't Dream by Donald Wandrei
Donald is the brother of Howard Wandrei (see above) and was one of the first people to publish HP Lovecraft as part of Arkham House. His own fiction was a bit disappointing, I expected more as he was meant to be the more accomplished writer of the two Wandrei brothers but I preferred Howard's more eccentric and pulpy approach.
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Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
Given how fucking great Tarkovsky's film Stalker is, I thought I should really give the original novel a go. It's grand but Tarkovsky did something alchemical with the material. I'm actually struggling to remember anything in the book despite having scenes from the movie etched into my brain. That said, I'm going to give Hard to Be a God a go soon.
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The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton (duh!)
This is absolutely fantastic. Very idiosyncratic, frequently funny, and full of weird ambience throughout. This was another cheapo anthology by Wordsworth, always worth taking a punt with them.
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The Little One: A Meditation by Quentin S. Crisp
An essay about the books of Dare Wright, photo-based stories for children from the 50s/60s. Her book The Lonely Doll is the launch pad for Crisp to discuss aesthetics, memory, literary theory, and biography in a really sweeping and engaging way. I actually thought that the essay was a work of metafiction and that Wright was made up but nope, it all is suitably weird and creepy to make me want to find the original books!
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Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
Popular neuroscience book about development of the brain in adolescence. I was already familiar with a lot of the material as I have seen Blakemore speak at conferences but this was a joy to read. Highly recommended.
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House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
I'm in two minds about this. On one hand, it is a hugely impressive piece of work (a combination of a found book about a film that might not exist, an existential breakdown played out in the footnotes, and a plethora of additional material to blur the lines between fiction and reality). On the other hand, the end result from a narrative point of view is a bit of a let down. On the whole, I'd recommend it but can understand why someone would find it frustrating.
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The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
One of my favourite novels, an absolute mindblowing piece of work that is decades ahead of its time. Set in the west of Ireland, this starts off as something between a haunted house/monster in the dark type tale and ends up being a psychedelic cosmic headfuck that could only be explained by LSD use but was written 30 years prior to the synthesis of acid. This is an expensive reprinting (think it worked out at around €50) but it comes with a CD of music inspired by the book by Jon Mueller (who I like) and has a nice introduction by Alan Moore.
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Repeal the 8th by Una Mullally
Essential reading. Grab a copy over the next couple of days. Read it now.
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I have had a period of unfulfilling reading of late; last good book i read was Last Exit to Brooklyn, which was terrific.
Current reading is The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig in advance of a trip to Vienna next week. Also on the pile I have Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler; Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut is based on this novella; I might watch the film again as well!
 
I have had a period of unfulfilling reading of late;

me too.

The last two books I read were from the man booker international shortlist and I was very disappointed by both

Vernon subutex one by virgine despentes. The first 40 pages were quite excellent, I really enjoyed it but it really went down hill from there, i was struggling to finish it. There was numerous characters in it for no reason, like one I can only make out that despentes had them as an attack on people that are transgender.

The other was the world goes on, this was just very boring read. I fell asleep during lunch at work reading it.

I had also before this read the white book by han kang. It is a nice contemplative meditative read for a rainy morning but there isn't much to it. I don't think it is a deservanr winner from the list but I also don't think the other 2 should win either.
 
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I'm struggling through Wuthering Heights because I promised my daughter I'd read it when she finished it. It's not doing much for me. Alternating wit Poetics Of Space by Garston Bachelard which is enjoyable but I'm not quite sure what the point is. Read Kindred by Octavia Butler which was way more YA than I expected : very woke and quite brutal YA though. What else? A collection of Joan Didions essays. She's great. Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders (I think?). Recent award winner. Only read it because my sister in law gave it to me. She didn't like it. It didn't do much for me either. Now debating whether I really have to read the book about Gary Kadparov that my father in law gave me.
 
I'm struggling through Wuthering Heights because I promised my daughter I'd read it when she finished it. It's not doing much for me. Alternating wit Poetics Of Space by Garston Bachelard which is enjoyable but I'm not quite sure what the point is. Read Kindred by Octavia Butler which was way more YA than I expected : very woke and quite brutal YA though. What else? A collection of Joan Didions essays. She's great. Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders (I think?). Recent award winner. Only read it because my sister in law gave it to me. She didn't like it. It didn't do much for me either. Now debating whether I really have to read the book about Gary Kadparov that my father in law gave me.
I like Wuthering Heights but it peaks pretty early with Cathy at the window. That bit is proper spooky.
 
Has anyone read The Plague by Albert Camus? I'm 30 pages in and finding it a bit of a drag - I might forget just about it and read something else

I read the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood recently, it was very good although I can see how it could make a better TV series (I never watched it)
 
Has anyone read The Plague by Albert Camus? I'm 30 pages in and finding it a bit of a drag - I might forget just about it and read something else
I read it about 20 years ago and I remember liking it. It is slow though and it maintains that pace throughout - it is an existential novel so it's about the indifference and futility of reality so take that as you will. I did prefer The Outsider (which also had the bonus of making me appreciate The Cure even more) but haven't delved any further into Camus.
 
The Plague is great but yeah, it's more or less the same for 300 odd pages. Living in a quarantined city doesn't sound amazing.

I think Camus suffers in translation, my understanding is that The Fall is written in the highest of high French while the Outsider is incredibly matter of fact. You can pick up on this in the translations but it's not really that obvious, i'd say we miss a lot.

Mind you, at least Camus tends to write fully realised novels - most of what i've read of Sartre's fiction is really painful. I haven't even got to his latter period stuff where he refused to do any rewrites because drafting is a bourgeoisie concept.
 
Even the title of The Outsider misses out on the multiple meanings of the original French title L'Étranger, which as well as meaning "the stranger" and "the outsider" (the two most commonly used English translations for the title), it also means "the foreigner" which is as integral to the novel as the social isolation. One of my goals is to try and read either of the two Camus I've read in English in French, I've read one whole book in French in my life (a biography of Keiji Haino) and feel like I can do it if I really try (and have google translate open at all times).
 
Yeah, I figured the translation might be a bit off. I don't mind slow, it's the laborious descriptions that are bugging me. It might have been a bit more unobtrusive originally.

One of my biggest regrets is spending a year in France and leaving with fairly shite French. Like, I never even tried to read a newspaper article, not to mind a novel. What a foolish and callow young man I was.
 
It’s never too late to learn. Alliance Francais has some good conversational French classes. And a belting cafe/restaurant.
Nah, these days I can't be bothered with anything French apart from coffee and pastries. I'm trying to learn Persian and i don't really even have enough time for that. I did go to conversation lessons on Alliance Francais 6 or 7 years ago but it wa full of old people who only wanted to rabbit on in English about their holidays in the south of France.
 
Just finished the new Can book. It's well written and researched, and basically good but I'm a bit disappointed. It's long, florid album descriptions threaded together with the Can story. It's not one of the really great rock biographies. While there are plenty of interesting nuggets, it's a bit too respectful of its subject. There's no real digging into the psychological stuff, or really what makes the participants tick, or the real chemistry between them, which is what I wanted some insights into. Wider context is sketchy. And the post-Can work is also dealt with far too lightly in such a massive book...Jaki and Holger in particular went on to make work that stands up really well against Can's best work. The interview section at the end is pretty good. Mark E. Smith's one is particularly insightful, mostly of Smith himself.
 
Just finished the new Can book. It's well written and researched, and basically good but I'm a bit disappointed. It's long, florid album descriptions threaded together with the Can story. It's not one of the really great rock biographies. While there are plenty of interesting nuggets, it's a bit too respectful of its subject. There's no real digging into the psychological stuff, or really what makes the participants tick, or the real chemistry between them, which is what I wanted some insights into. Wider context is sketchy. And the post-Can work is also dealt with far too lightly in such a massive book...Jaki and Holger in particular went on to make work that stands up really well against Can's best work. The interview section at the end is pretty good. Mark E. Smith's one is particularly insightful, mostly of Smith himself.
I was going to pick this up today but I’ve been hemming and hawing about it, do I really need another book about Krautrock?
 

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