DannyL

Wild Horses
I've just finished reading Phil Baker's new book on Austin Osman Spare, which is absolutely bloody brilliant. Spare's been an interest on and off for the best part of 20 years, and the material one gets is pretty much all from an occult perspective. Number one culprit here is Kenneth Grant who has created this image of Spare as a dark and mysterious South London sorcerer (this has it's own appeal - the mixture of ration books, bomb sites and arcane magic in musty old basements, sigils scrawled on fag packets and cigarette papers, rings my bell). This book paints a much more humane, but richer picture. He brings an art history perspective to Spare's work and has all kinds of insights into Spare's motivations which are absent from those who stuck in the occult ghetto.

Not sure what I should read next. I suppose I should finish Blake Morrison's "As If" - about the Jamie Bulger killng - but his prose style is getting on my wick.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
About to finish True Grit, written in the 60's by American novelist Charles Portis. Now I want to see the film, and read a bit more Wild West fiction.

On a Wayne/Lit/cinema theme - try The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout - better than 'True Grit' for me. I wrote a little piece about it here.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Still very much on a Gothic-decadent-romantic-horror tip, I'm really digging Arthur Machen right now. Just read The Great God Pan, a nice punchy novella laced with sexual obsession and cosmic fear, and am now on the much longer The Hill Of Dreams, which is more sedate and dwells mainly on lyrical beauty and themes of artistic angst and escapist nostalgia. Although to be honest, the main character is a sensitive-suffering-aesthete-adrift-in-a-world-of-uncouth-philistines to the point of being an insufferable pussyhole at times, to say nothing of a horrific snob. Still, it's gorgeously written.

Probably going to pick up Huysman's Against Nature next - got the complete Wilde sitting unread on my bookshelf, too...
 
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faustus

Well-known member
I recently read "Such is This World @ sars.com" by Hu Fayun, the story of a city in China (Wuhan) being overrun by the SARS outbreak. It's also more generally about internet freedom and what people can and can't talk about. There's a long review here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/china-famine-oslo/ (starts on page 2)

Unfortunately it's published by a tiny American publisher (Ragged Banner) so it was quite expensive to have shipped, but I still recommend it highly.


Now am reading Crematorio by Rafael Chirbes and at the same time watching the TV adaptation on Canal+, which desperately wants to be a Spanish version of The Wire, as you can see from the titles:
 
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grizzleb

Well-known member
Fernando Pessoa's - The Book of Disquiet. Prose piece by a Portuguese poet, it's utterly fantastic. All the stuff about dissolving the subject and the like is blowing my mind. One of those books that makes you annoyed you didn't try to refine all those half-thoughts and commit them to paper over the years.

Also reading 'Dubliners' by Joyce. I'd only previously read the first 100 pages of Ulysses (I gave up because I was in the middle of my exams and wanted to give it adequate attention) so I'm pretty new to his stuff, but that he's a superb writer is clear. The economy of language and the simple yet cutting way he describes the characters and scene etc is something to behold... Looking forward to working through his later, more difficult works once I've finished this.

Does anyone think it's worthwhile reading the 'Odyssey' before I attempt Ulysses?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Probably going to pick up Huysman's Against Nature next -

I love this guy. A Rebours is a very funny novel and a brilliant aesthetic statement. I don't know if it's meant to be as funny as it is -- Huysmans was not a well-known mirth-maker, although the earlier naturalist novels have a deadpan, self-satirising strain -- or if it reads funnier translated into English. I like the Durtal cycle very much -- he starts off attending a black mass and ends up an Oblate of St Benedict, with a detour in a Trappist monastry and a holiday at Chartres hanging out in the cathdral, discussing the Catholic symbolism of vegetables. En Route is particularly good, especially if you are interested, as I am, in early music and the grotesque behaviour of the more extreme saints in the Catholic canon -- nutters like Emmerich and Angela of Foligno.

I used to be a bit of an expert on French fin de siecle poetry and pornography. I probably still am, if I put my mind to it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I used to be a bit of an expert on French fin de siecle poetry and pornography. I probably still am, if I put my mind to it.

I don't doubt it!

I read La-bas a few years ago, which was great. Mme Chantelouve is clearly a total hotty.

Dunno much about mediaeval music but wacky saints (and their often ultra-gruesome demise) is always good reading...
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
That's cool, I have a copy sat waiting for me, any particular highlights I ought to check out first????

I put it on hold - was just going through it chronologically, and really not understanding much at all, which is good! - but got distracted by Ronald Huttton's 'The Triumph of The Moon - A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft',


which I can't recommmend more highly. It really should be required reading for everyone, it debunks so many myths. DannyL, if you just read the Spare thing you may wanna check it out.
 

Gregor XIII

Well-known member
Does anyone think it's worthwhile reading the 'Odyssey' before I attempt Ulysses?
Dunno about Odyssey, but I'd definitely recomend reading Portrait of the Artist before Ulysses. And Dubliners, but you've covered that. That way, you know quite a bit about some of the most important characters, that really helps a lot.

I was reading Barth's Giles Goat Boy and Belys Petersburg, but yeah, exams... Hope I'll finish them afterwards, they are both brilliant.
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
Still very much on a Gothic-decadent-romantic-horror tip, I'm really digging Arthur Machen right now. Just read The Great God Pan, a nice punchy novella laced with sexual obsession and cosmic fear, and am now on the much longer The Hill Of Dreams, which is more sedate and dwells mainly on lyrical beauty and themes of artistic angst and escapist nostalgia. Although to be honest, the main character is a sensitive-suffering-aesthete-adrift-in-a-world-of-uncouth-philistines to the point of being an insufferable pussyhole at times, to say nothing of a horrific snob. Still, it's gorgeously written.

Probably going to pick up Huysman's Against Nature next - got the complete Wilde sitting unread on my bookshelf, too...

Will second the Against Nature recommendation (even though I haven't finished it) - much better than Wilde IMO. And I agree that I have been finding AN very funny. It's mainly just so cool though - super-italicised cool.


I've been struggling through The Piano Teacher atm - has made me feel quite ill at times. (Razor blade phobia)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I was reading Barth's Giles Goat Boy and Belys Petersburg, but yeah, exams... Hope I'll finish them afterwards, they are both brilliant."
I read Giles Goat Boy a couple of years back and, after a really interesting start, it grew gradually more wearing and then slowly began to piss me off and finally to actively annoy me. The joke isn't really enough to sustain seven hundred pages or however many it is.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Just started The Great Gatsby. Been meaning to read it for a while. Heard good things.

I found this quite a frustrating book but then I read it for my Eng Lit GCSE, which isn't necessarily the best way to read a book for enjoyment. Maybe I'd get more out of it reading it again. I remember Sick Boy (I think) waxing lyrical about it on here a while back.
 

bandshell

Grand High Witch
I found this quite a frustrating book but then I read it for my Eng Lit GCSE, which isn't necessarily the best way to read a book for enjoyment. Maybe I'd get more out of it reading it again. I remember Sick Boy (I think) waxing lyrical about it on here a while back.

Fair enough. English courses destroy books.

I had to read Hard Times, To Kill A Mockingbird and Romeo & Juliet for mine. I did enjoy them but I'd have got a hell of a lot more out of them if I wasn't reading them with exams in mind.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
I found 'The Great Gatsby' an utterly amazing book when I did it for my highers a couple of years back. I think it was a confluence of my total readiness to eat up any work put in front of me and my emergent enjoyment of 'real' literature that lead to my massive enjoyment of it. It's such a strange book in that it's filled with obvious subtext, theme, allusion etc (if these things can be obvious) as well as being just a brilliantly written and lovely to read novel. Great book. And it's ridiculously critical glance at high-society really chimed with me too. I can see why you might find it annoying if you aren't really in that mode but I loved it when I did it. It's also almost too clean and well constructed. To the point that it almost doesn't read like a novel anymore. I think I'll read it again soon at some point.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I found this quite a frustrating book but then I read it for my Eng Lit GCSE, which isn't necessarily the best way to read a book for enjoyment. Maybe I'd get more out of it reading it again. I remember Sick Boy (I think) waxing lyrical about it on here a while back.

haha I saw his post and went to wax lyrical about it, then saw this. Makes sense. It's probably my favourite book.
 

jenks

thread death
Mine too but I can understand why people might not like it. It is ripe and sentimental. There are some characterisation problems and, in the end, it is about a bunch of rich people.

However, it is also extremely well crafted (that in itself will raise hackles here) and tells a great story. It is also a critique of decadence whilst being half in love with it as well. Amongst many other things.

I'm barely rational about the book - I am lucky enough to teach it every couple of years and invariably the pupils love it too. However, this year the discussion did descend into whether 'Gatters' was hotter than Tom. Not obviously the high minded criticism we get over here but the sound of pupils engaged with a book nonetheless.

It's a meaty book wrapped up in poetic langauge and polished beyond belief - 170 pages of american myth, farctured narrative, crime and a whole bunch of other stuff.

And it's only 170 pages long
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
They may be rich but they're also insecure, superficial and ultimately unhappy. So that's OK then. :D
 
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