IdleRich
IdleRich
I’m selling off a load more books to make space on my shelves. Unless otherwise stated they are two pounds each. Also, I’ve checked and postage is gonna be three pounds to the UK unless they are bigger in which case I will mention it in the description. They’re all read by me and well-loved but none of them are falling apart and they are all in a readable condition.
If you want something let me know and I’ll hold it. You can paypal me the money and state if you want me to post it or if you prefer me to just give it to you when you see me next. At the end of two weeks I will post everything off.
Some great books on this list for some lucky people.
Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin
Great book of short stories set in Berlin between the wars that was part of the inspiration for the Cabaret film. Similar in feel to something like Tropic of Cancer or Bukowski - in that it deals with a poor writer existing from one meal to the next and scraping by in the seamier part of town - but slightly more gentle and for my money better – and of course there is the sinister rise of Nazism in the background.
Primo Levi – The Mirror Maker
Collection of journalism from the great writer and concentration camp survivor. No overarching theme but he brings his formidable intellect to bear on any topic that catches his eye – or anything that he feels like making up.
Tom McCarthy – C
Remainder was one of the best books of recent years. This, the Booker nominated follow up, is not quite as good I fear but still it’s interesting. Starting with experiments in radio, then through WW1 and heroin addiction and into the London underworld between the wars. I think there was a point to this book that went slightly over my head – but perhaps it won’t go over yours.
Kazuo Ishiguro – Nocturnes
Five melancholic short stories that deal with sadness and music. Ishiguro is adept at always in dealing with these themes.
Ann Quin – Berg
Ann Quin was part of a group of experimental writers in Britain in the seventies. Sadly she killed herself in 1973 leaving behind a few books of which Berg is the most famous. A man goes to Brighton to kill his father and ends up dragging a ventriloquist’s dummy around the town instead. I think. Influences such as William Burroughs and especially Alain Robbe-Grillet are clear.
Irvine Welsh – Porno
Here you find out what happened to the characters from Trainspotting a few years down the line. Basically they are all a bit older, a bit nastier and now things are a bit more serious.
Patrick Hamilton – Hangover Square
Playwright (Rope, Gaslight) and author (and drinker) Patrick Hamilton’s most highly regarded novel, which deals with a group of hard drinkers in Earl’s Court. For me it powerfully summons up a London just before the second world war in which an unpleasant individuals hang around waiting for pubs to open and argue with each other, while unknown to the rest of them the narrator struggles with an undiagnosed, dissociative mental illness.
Mark Gatiss – The Vesuvius Club
Enjoyable nonsense from the League of Gentlemen guy about an Edwardian James Bond type character who is trying hard not to get murdered while at the same time solving a world-threatening mystery that has something to do with volcanos.
Knut Hamsun – The Hunger
One of the early uses of the unreliable narrator technique along with interior monologues and streams of consciousness, this is a classic of modernist fiction which painstakingly details the descent into starvation induced madness of a homeless man in Oslo.
M John Harrison – Viriconium
Experimental sci-fi here, set in and around the fictional capital of Viriconium. The first long story is relatively normal excepting Harrison’s somewhat dense and descriptive literary style – however the later books get weirder and strange contradictions arise between the books with the same characters occurring again and again but in different situations and on different sides. What exactly is true (if anything) is never quite clear.
Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Ducasse) – Maldoror
This one definitely “slightly foxed” but nonetheless a fantastic and mad story which was a huge influence on the surrealists – something which will be no surprise to you when you read it. The dreamlike tale of the immoral monster Maldoror who is opposed to God and demonstrates this by doing as many evil things as possible (and having sex with a shark I seem to remember). A big book this one so postage is four pounds I’m afraid.
Wilkie Collins – The Woman In White
Yet another classic here, this time in the sensation style. Also can be seen as an early detective novel. Who is the mysterious woman in white and why is she confined to a lunatic asylum?
John Irving – A Prayer For Owen Meany
Two friends grow up together, their bond strengthened rather than weakened by the fact that one killed the other’s mother the only time he managed to actually hit the ball playing baseball. Fans of Pynchon or David Foster Wallace will enjoy this. The back cover has come off unfortunately so only one pound but it’s a big book so it will cost four pound to post meaning the total is £5 same as the others if you want me to post it.
Flann O’Brian – At Swim-Two-Birds
Insane experimental genius from Flann O’Brian, newspaper columnist and writer who counted James Joyce among his admirers. It’s often said that he proved post-modernism can be fun and with this (and the equally fantastic Third Policeman) it’s hard to argue. Here stories exist within stories and characters from one bleed into another and indeed into real life, the inspiration often coming from Irish folk tales.
Angela Carter – Wise Children
The last novel by the master (mistress?) of feminist fairy-tales. This one is about two sisters whose lives are intertwined with the theatre due to their strange family and its friends. An atmosphere of carnival pervades throughout and the story is full of twists and surprises. When I read it I didn’t realise that she knew she was dying but I think that reading it with that knowledge will add a poignant spin to a lot of what is said.
If you want something let me know and I’ll hold it. You can paypal me the money and state if you want me to post it or if you prefer me to just give it to you when you see me next. At the end of two weeks I will post everything off.
Some great books on this list for some lucky people.
Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin
Great book of short stories set in Berlin between the wars that was part of the inspiration for the Cabaret film. Similar in feel to something like Tropic of Cancer or Bukowski - in that it deals with a poor writer existing from one meal to the next and scraping by in the seamier part of town - but slightly more gentle and for my money better – and of course there is the sinister rise of Nazism in the background.
Primo Levi – The Mirror Maker
Collection of journalism from the great writer and concentration camp survivor. No overarching theme but he brings his formidable intellect to bear on any topic that catches his eye – or anything that he feels like making up.
Tom McCarthy – C
Remainder was one of the best books of recent years. This, the Booker nominated follow up, is not quite as good I fear but still it’s interesting. Starting with experiments in radio, then through WW1 and heroin addiction and into the London underworld between the wars. I think there was a point to this book that went slightly over my head – but perhaps it won’t go over yours.
Kazuo Ishiguro – Nocturnes
Five melancholic short stories that deal with sadness and music. Ishiguro is adept at always in dealing with these themes.
Ann Quin – Berg
Ann Quin was part of a group of experimental writers in Britain in the seventies. Sadly she killed herself in 1973 leaving behind a few books of which Berg is the most famous. A man goes to Brighton to kill his father and ends up dragging a ventriloquist’s dummy around the town instead. I think. Influences such as William Burroughs and especially Alain Robbe-Grillet are clear.
Irvine Welsh – Porno
Here you find out what happened to the characters from Trainspotting a few years down the line. Basically they are all a bit older, a bit nastier and now things are a bit more serious.
Patrick Hamilton – Hangover Square
Playwright (Rope, Gaslight) and author (and drinker) Patrick Hamilton’s most highly regarded novel, which deals with a group of hard drinkers in Earl’s Court. For me it powerfully summons up a London just before the second world war in which an unpleasant individuals hang around waiting for pubs to open and argue with each other, while unknown to the rest of them the narrator struggles with an undiagnosed, dissociative mental illness.
Mark Gatiss – The Vesuvius Club
Enjoyable nonsense from the League of Gentlemen guy about an Edwardian James Bond type character who is trying hard not to get murdered while at the same time solving a world-threatening mystery that has something to do with volcanos.
Knut Hamsun – The Hunger
One of the early uses of the unreliable narrator technique along with interior monologues and streams of consciousness, this is a classic of modernist fiction which painstakingly details the descent into starvation induced madness of a homeless man in Oslo.
M John Harrison – Viriconium
Experimental sci-fi here, set in and around the fictional capital of Viriconium. The first long story is relatively normal excepting Harrison’s somewhat dense and descriptive literary style – however the later books get weirder and strange contradictions arise between the books with the same characters occurring again and again but in different situations and on different sides. What exactly is true (if anything) is never quite clear.
Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Ducasse) – Maldoror
This one definitely “slightly foxed” but nonetheless a fantastic and mad story which was a huge influence on the surrealists – something which will be no surprise to you when you read it. The dreamlike tale of the immoral monster Maldoror who is opposed to God and demonstrates this by doing as many evil things as possible (and having sex with a shark I seem to remember). A big book this one so postage is four pounds I’m afraid.
Wilkie Collins – The Woman In White
Yet another classic here, this time in the sensation style. Also can be seen as an early detective novel. Who is the mysterious woman in white and why is she confined to a lunatic asylum?
John Irving – A Prayer For Owen Meany
Two friends grow up together, their bond strengthened rather than weakened by the fact that one killed the other’s mother the only time he managed to actually hit the ball playing baseball. Fans of Pynchon or David Foster Wallace will enjoy this. The back cover has come off unfortunately so only one pound but it’s a big book so it will cost four pound to post meaning the total is £5 same as the others if you want me to post it.
Flann O’Brian – At Swim-Two-Birds
Insane experimental genius from Flann O’Brian, newspaper columnist and writer who counted James Joyce among his admirers. It’s often said that he proved post-modernism can be fun and with this (and the equally fantastic Third Policeman) it’s hard to argue. Here stories exist within stories and characters from one bleed into another and indeed into real life, the inspiration often coming from Irish folk tales.
Angela Carter – Wise Children
The last novel by the master (mistress?) of feminist fairy-tales. This one is about two sisters whose lives are intertwined with the theatre due to their strange family and its friends. An atmosphere of carnival pervades throughout and the story is full of twists and surprises. When I read it I didn’t realise that she knew she was dying but I think that reading it with that knowledge will add a poignant spin to a lot of what is said.
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