What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (1 Viewer)

[rettucs]

I'm reading this;

never read anything by him before. Just fancied something a little more easy going than some recent stuff I've been reading.

Its grand.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Did you finish it and realise its only bloody amazing?

No, I havent looked at it for weeks. I'm mad busy at the moment and I wasn't into it enough to drop everything else and finish it. Hopefully I'll remember what was going on when I get back to it. Last thing I recall was the maid getting it for killing the child. Unless there's a significant improvement then I'll have ro recommend Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss ahead of it. Now that was a deadly book. Dracula Unbound was also a bit of a hoot but not quite as good.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I'm reading this;

never read anything by him before. Just fancied something a little more easy going than some recent stuff I've been reading.

Its grand.

I loved his books when I was in school. They're mostly pure shite but some of them make great page turners. I don't believe I read that Midnight one. He has gazillions by the looks of his wikipedia bibliography page (including a series of five Frankenstein novels apparently). I recall enjoying The Face of Fear, Strangers and Dark Rivers of the Heart.

 

[rettucs]

I loved his books when I was in school. They're mostly pure shite but some of them make great page turners. I don't believe I read that Midnight one. He has gazillions by the looks of his wikipedia bibliography page (including a series of five Frankenstein novels apparently). I recall enjoying The Face of Fear, Strangers and Dark Rivers of the Heart.

I reckon I had a fair idea of what it'd be like and so far its exactly as expected. Its exactly the level I want right now. I have some Peter Straub and Stephen King lined up for after this.

 

[Richie]

I loved his books when I was in school. They're mostly pure shite but some of them make great page turners. I don't believe I read that Midnight one. He has gazillions by the looks of his wikipedia bibliography page (including a series of five Frankenstein novels apparently). I recall enjoying The Face of Fear, Strangers and Dark Rivers of the Heart.

Same here, read loads of them in school. They're only a shade or 2 above being total pulp genre stuff but he did have a few highlights alright. I remember enjoying the trilogy about the guy who had to live nocturnally because of a condition that meant sunlight would burn his skin.. Was set in this David Lynch-esque weird little town and eventually involved all kinds of X-Files stuff with underground military bases, human genetic experimentation and the like.

 

[jonah]

Favourite horror genre novels?

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Has anyone read Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books?

 

[magicbastarder]

just finishing up the old ways by robert macfarlane, and starting on survivors by richard fortey. the former is good, but slightly patchy.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

This is a really good horror novel. I read it this summer and it freaked the fuck out of me! I would like to read more of Ketchum's stuff.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Same here, read loads of them in school. They're only a shade or 2 above being total pulp genre stuff but he did have a few highlights alright. I remember enjoying the trilogy about the guy who had to live nocturnally because of a condition that meant sunlight would burn his skin.. Was set in this David Lynch-esque weird little town and eventually involved all kinds of X-Files stuff with underground military bases, human genetic experimentation and the like.

He was a great man for the conspiracies alright. Dark Rivers of the Heart had a little chapter added on to the end where talks about how easy it would really be for the US government to build lazers in space and use them to target innocent civilians who got in their way. I used to laugh at the anti-govt kick of a certain section of americans but now i don't.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Has anyone read Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books?

Afraid not.

 

[Nate Champion]

I read 40 stories a few years ago and convinced myself I liked it better than I truly did. My dad picked it up and flicked through it, shaking his head and saying - "you're a gas man Jim". I must try it again. Nice Cover.

Wait, your dad called you by your thumped name?

Forty Stories is meant to be far weaker than Sixty Stories - Raymond Carver's review savaged it. Carver seemed to suggest it reads like a pastiche of Barthelme, which seems like a strange comment. I haven't read it though. Just past the half-way point in Sixty Stories with 'A Manual for Sons' which I had read before in his novel The Dead Father, which is usual Barthelme blend of exasperation and titillation. Barthelme isn't much of a novel man. They are either messy or very slight (see: The King). Failure seems to be the big theme and a built-in part of his aesthetic - Beckett is his God after all, which isn't too surprising.
I think if you've got a working man's knowledge of the last few centuries of philosophy, 20th Century literary trends and can locate or contextualise him with his po-mo parlour room buddies like Barth, Pynchon and Gass, you'll get a lot more out of the work. It's hard to imagine anyone other than a particularly geeky English lit student who strains towards more masculine work, digging Barthelme. Yet, after saying that, I actually think he's quite a democratic writer - he invites you in. He builds hectic wordgames at times, but he works in an accessible, shorter form - and you don't have to like every story. For all his experimentation, he's the anti-T.S Eliot.
Dave Eggers' introductions in works of fiction really irks me these days. It's such a hollow move on the part of the publisher.

My dad used to be always telling me what a class writer Norman Mailer was in my teens. So, I ordered a rather expensive copy of Miami & the Siege of Chicago (16eu - dear for online buying anyway) following a recommendation of it by a college lecturer who implied that Mailer's fiction was a load of shite, but that Mailer used fictional devices to good use in his non-fiction work. Anyway, I'm almost finished the Nixon in Miami part. He's got some good descriptive moves, I'll give him that. He does a nice line in comic portraiture - yet I'm not quite sure I can get fully behind his hard-on for Nixon (he has a seasoned disdain for Nixon). It's probably too long (or overwritten in places), surprisingly dense - but I am enjoying it, despite not having much of a clue of American politics in the Sixties.

That Walser was a strange fish. He's like a feather-light Kafka. He's got all these unusual proto-Kafka ideas, yet they just seem to whisp away off the page on his peculiar, quaint style. Wrote a review of it to see if I could pin it down, but I just baffled myself even further.

Then I read this Stefan Zweig novella called Confusion, which was a tedious slog, despite, thankfully it's brevity. Neat premise, banally realised. Maybe it was the translation. If I had a cent for every time 'confusion' or 'confused' was written, I'd be a-jangling with a few euros anyway.

Now, I'm stumbling through Dennis Cooper's Closer which just confuses me. Aesthetic of transparency? Like a lot of queer-related stuff (Gregg Araki, etc) it seems to be all pristine surface. Yet, in Cooper's case, the surface isn't even all that pristine. I hadn't read him in years - I remember thinking A Loose Thread was savage, first-person fiction (loosely inspired by Columbine): the voice(s), cadence of the work seemed authentic. Closer is much earlier. Narrative seems to consist of bizarre gay sex, sexualizition of death and other such lovely things that I am finding quite tedious. Probably, of specialist interest and I am wasting my time.

Next up: John Hawkes' highly rated, but forgotten The Lime Twig, which Flannery O'Connor said "you suffer... like a dream." You can't ask for a better recommendation than that!

 

[Psycho Punk]

Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon.

Looks at the Cold War period, not just the science, history and politics; also how the trope was dealt with culturally so it also brings in SF books and films. Looks good so far.

http://www.peterdsmith.com/doomsday-men-the-real-dr-strangelove-and-the-dream-of-the-superweapon/

 

[hugh]

Most of the way through Nabokov's Pale Fire - unexpectedly hilarious

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Slowly making my way through-Islam after communism,religion and politics in central Asia.
Very academic as the title would suggest but still accessible enough.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Currently reading
Dashiell Hammett - Red Harvest
Wuthering Heights
And really want to read Life Of Pi before the film comes out.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

And really want to read Life Of Pi before the film comes out.

It's fucking shite

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

It's fucking shite

We shall see.

Just doing it for ecker mostly.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

We shall see.

Just doing it for ecker mostly.

what's ecker?

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

what's ecker?

Homework.