Books you've read recently and would unreservedly recommend

[bruno]

Kobo Abe, based on the two books I've read from him, is fantastic. "Woman In The Dunes" was beautifully done...never thought anybody could make the motion of sand so evocative. And "The Ark Sakura" is hilarious...all about a rather large man who builds an underground ark to last out the nuclear war, the main component of which is an enormous toilet that can flush away anything. He also throws in a group of geriatric, ex-army street cleaners in cahoots with his abusive father, the first three co-occupants of the ark (two con men and an alluring young lady) that bring everything crashing down around them, and all kinds of intricate traps that he's built against invaders. Great stuff, I'll have to check out "Box Man"immediately.

secret rendezvous is the one i like the most. very funny, claustrophobic and obscene in a clinical, seventies sort of way. and, surprise surprise, it takes place in a hospital. box man is also good but i never quite connected with it. maybe that's the point?

 

[jed_]

I'm quite surprised no one, so far, has mentioned George Saunders - perhaps the most "dissensian" writer there is (apart from Ballard maybe). i'm reading "In Persuasion Nation" now (being sold in the UK as an add on to the not-so-good "The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phi" in an odd/bad packaging strategy by bloomsbury). The short stories here are very ambitious, compasionate and funny, if you like them check out the (possibly even better) "Pastoralia" and "Civilwarland in bad decline", his previous collections. the bulk of both of those are set in a bizarre futurestate USA dominated by theme parks.

check out Michel Faber's Revie of IPN here (i think he gets saunders quite wrong but the review gives a good idea of what you have in store for you).

<i>Then there are the allegories. "Adams", which follows the deranged strategies of a concerned father to safeguard his children from a paedophile neighbour, and "The Red Bow", a chilling tale of rabies in an emotionally febrile community, are more insightful, and ultimately more useful, than any number of political tomes analysing the war on terror. Saunders has processed landfill sites full of newspaper journalism and extracted the elusive essence of the conflict. And, as in all his best work, he achieves this magic distillation with cruel frankness, deep seriousness, wild humour and disarming tenderness - simultaneously. The flaws and misfires in this omnibus may be bothersome, but its achievements are extraordinary. Saunders is a frightening talent.</i>

http://books.guardian.co.uk/hay2006/story/0,,1784130,00.html

and if that whets your appetite read this excellent piece by sunders on the art of writing a sentence:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1440257,00.html

it would make me wildy happy if this post made just one person read any of his books.

 

[Grievous Angel]

David Mitchell rocks

I just read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. There's a thread about it here from a year ago. Rather than revive that I thought I'd just make a note here.

It's an absolutely fucking amazing book. I don't like many modern novels but this one absolutely blew me away. Totally gripping narrative, fantastic characters, lots of interesting themes that don't get over-done (the will to power, the collapse of civilisations, the meaning of transcendence). Superb command of voice and different registers too.

Literary civilians like myself shouldn't be put off by the somewhat caustic criticism in the thread - it's a great, thought-provoking read and I recommend it to anyone. I'm looking forward to reading more of his stuff.

 

[jenks]

I just read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. There's a thread about it here from a year ago. Rather than revive that I thought I'd just make a note here.

It's an absolutely fucking amazing book. I don't like many modern novels but this one absolutely blew me away. Totally gripping narrative, fantastic characters, lots of interesting themes that don't get over-done (the will to power, the collapse of civilisations, the meaning of transcendence). Superb command of voice and different registers too.

Literary civilians like myself shouldn't be put off by the somewhat caustic criticism in the thread - it's a great, thought-provoking read and I recommend it to anyone. I'm looking forward to reading more of his stuff.

Ghostwritten should be next on your list - maybe even better than Cloud Atlas

(Just re-read most of that old Mitchell thread, how odd to read your own words back from over a year ago - also i hadn't realised how rotten a typist i am!)

 

[matt b]

I just read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. There's a thread about it here from a year ago. Rather than revive that I thought I'd just make a note here.

It's an absolutely fucking amazing book.

seconded (thanks for the initial heads up jenks)- read 3 of his books over the summer and finishing ghostwritten. cloud atlas is my favourite so far- after the first 10 pages of the 'journal' my thoughts went from 'mmmmmm, maybe a little clever' to 'woah!' and stayed like that until the end.

black swan green is excellent (a character from cloud atlas pops up)- much less knowing, almost mark haddon-esque.

no9dream was cool, but the clever quotiant was ratcheted up a bit high for me (mainly in the bit where the main charater was reading the (shite) short stories. maybe a little insubstantial.

ghost written good so far, but there are a lot of similarities between it and the next two he wrote.

 

[IdleRich]

I found No 9 Dream a little disappointing but I completely agree on Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten - just excellent. Looking forward to reading the new-ish one when I get a minute.

 

[Rambler]

At the start of the thread I mentioned Andrzej Stasiuk's White Raven (winter's coming back soon: read it then). I returned to his Tales of Galicia recently, which first time round passed me by - it's quite short, all viewed from the corner of the eye, and knocks you off course by transmuting from a collection of shorts into a full-blown novel - but well worth rereading. It's a ghost story thing set in a tiny village on the Slovak/Polish border in the early 90s. Really beautifully told.

Looked up some of Stasiuk's contemporaries on the back of this - Pawel Huelle's Mercedes Benz is a novella set in Gdansk about flash cars, driving lessons, and life under German and Communist rule. The opening 20 pages about a road accident exploited as part of a 3-way propaganda war are hilarious, absolutely superb.

Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night is also recommended - again, a village life portrait thing, but told in small fragments interspersed with miscellanea from the net and recipe books. She builds a real cumulative feel from all these disparate bits - including a werewolf, a transexual medieval saint, a man possessed by a bird, etc, and a lot of it's like a kind of Central European magic realism.

 

[Dial]

'Camera Lucida', by Barthes. A chapter a day, which, being so short, only amounts to a page or two, then a few notes on what read. All up about 10-15 mins worth. Best part of the day by far. Like a fucking spring in the desert. And there's something totally apposite about the scant but intent time I have to give and Barthes penetrating ludic pathos. perfect. ha.

 

[you]

Yeah, I posted in the other books thread too, but so many books are talked about in this one that I loved that I thought maybe I should post.

Ive often thought about starting a thread of "Book Pairs" - like Ray Bradburys "Fahrenheit 451" and Orwells "1984".... or Joseph Hellers "catch22" with Vonneguts "slaughterhouse 5"... what do you guys think? Anymore Pairs you can think of??

Guys were talking about Dostoevsky on the first page. Ive recently read 3 of his books (, "notes from....", "the double" and "the gambler" ) hes pretty damn readable! Much more than Tolstoy i think, ive read 3 or 4 tolstoys and I reckon Dostoevsky is much more accessable initially. This may have something to do with the translation... Maude & Maude have done most of the tolstoy ive read but all the Dostoevsky books ive read have done by Peavar and Volokhonsky.... who are widely regarded very highly.... at least im getting that impression, id certainly agree from my experience as a casual english only speaking reader! There is a dostoevsky forum which is pretty interesting.

Any Hubert Selby Jr fans? I loved "the room", "last exit.." and "the demon" im also quite a big Bret Easton Ellis fan, Ive read all but "the informers" and "rules of attraction"..... I dont know which would be his best book, "american psycho" or "less than zero".... both kinda similar in the nihilism but ones capitalist saturation induced apathy for emotion / people and the one more damaged isolated youth from oppulence (sp?) and cultural saturation/ non-culture...... I know there are more themes but yeah....any thoughts??

Im drifting into Cyberpunkism so Gibson is next on my list along with some Pynchon and Burroughs "soft machine" will be some Dick and Asimov, is JG Ballard aligned with any of this??? What about his earlyer novels likes "cannes" or "cocaine nights"? Ive only really read his last two.....

 

[IdleRich]

"Anymore Pairs you can think of??"

I remember thinking how similar The Story of My Life (I think it was called) by Jay McInery was to Less Than Zero, both in subject matter and approach to it - not as good though.

JG Ballard aligned with any of this??? What about his earlyer novels likes "cannes" or "cocaine nights"?

Have a butcher's here (and probably several other places as well)

http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=6183

 

[Kate Mossad]

Barbican, Penthouse Over the City by David Heathcote. Architectural porn.
The Goodbye People by Gavin Lambert. Vignettes of late sixties Southern Californian ennui and decadence written by someone who was there. Features a charismatic hippy guru and frustrated musician called "Godson". Geddit

 

[mistersloane]

The Day The Country Died - a history of UK anarcho-punk 1980-84 by Ian Glasper which was fab and had made me go euuuuuuurgh fuck the system!! all over again, again.

Chapel of Extreme Experience - A short history of stroboscopic light and the dream machine by John Geiger which is a great little book about flicker images and their history in 20th century art, lotsa trippy fun.

 

[adruu]

www.brownejohns.org

"Often sought, scarcely found..."

Just found that someone archived these old zines I used to pick up in 2001 - 2002. Heavy political writing, but clear, and unexpectedly funny. Anonymous also. It stopped appearing on my block after an issue on Iraq in 2002 with the lede "More than your congressman knows" Check it out and spread the good word. Whoever printed these is my hero.

Quick excerpt

"We have found that it is currently unfashionable to have an opinion, or to be too well informed. It is even a point of pride to discuss - over sugary liquor and micro-brewed lager - the impressive breadth of one's ignorance. Among today's young, handsome, most promising specimens, there is no shame in not knowing, for example, the boiling point of water at sea level, the location of Wisconsin or the name of its capital, or the name of one's own congressional representative, as long as this ignorance is admitted with a smirk, a flourish, and a fragment of sarcastic wit. This elaborate conceit to intellectual midgetry is loosely known as post-modernism, to perpetrators in the graduate school set, and it is, astonishingly, not only socially acceptable, but even admired.
THREE WEEKS shall change this fashion, or else have our opinions in spite of it, and tell them to you without provocation. "
- Henry William Brownejohns, from the Introduction to "Three Weeks" Issue 1

 

[swears]

 

[simon silverdollar]

john fante- 'the road to los angeles'

the story of an 18 year old kid who works in fish cannery and is convinced that he's the greatest writer since Dante. it mainly an internal monologue, with painfully honest takes on adolescent frustrations, wild delusions of grandeur and plain cruelty. it's also very funny.

bukowski was very heavily influenced by john fante, so if you like the former, check the latter (and, iguess, vice versa).

 

[petergunn]

Any Hubert Selby Jr fans? I loved "the room", "last exit.." and "the demon"

"last exit in brooklyn" blew me away when i read it, but it hasn't stayed w/ me like i thought it would... i need to reread it... i just got "the demon' for a dollar at a thrift shop yesterday and i'm looking forward...

john fante- 'the road to los angeles'

the story of an 18 year old kid who works in fish cannery and is convinced that he's the greatest writer since Dante. it mainly an internal monologue, with painfully honest takes on adolescent frustrations, wild delusions of grandeur and plain cruelty. it's also very funny.

bukowski was very heavily influenced by john fante, so if you like the former, check the latter (and, iguess, vice versa).

john fante is awesome... you can def tell he is a big influence on bukoswki's prose work... i've only read "ask the dust", i will def check for "road to LA"...

 

[you]

please post your thoughts on the demon when your through with it!
Ive also been tempted by fante mainly because of bukowski though.
I thought another couplet of books could be Ellis's "less than zero" and Salingers "Catcher in he rye"
Recently read the latter and would only recommend it for its significance. I also read "the road" by McCarthy, its alright, goes down like lohan, kinda painless, I found it optimistic, good beach book, id like to look into his trilogy ( for some reason im finding myself only watching and reading trilogys ).. its worth reading seeing as everyman and his dog has read it, an above average page turner.

Im currently on Flauberts "Bouvard & Pecuchet" I think its supergood!

 

[Dial]

Bouvard and Pecuchet yes indeed, great book.

Myself its:

'The Shia Revival' by Vali Nasr. A most fascinating primer on the Sunni/Shia divide that runs through Islam. The Shia's I have to say sound the more attractive with their emphasis on heart rather than legalism. (I simplify grossly). This book and the current thread on travel to Instanbul are making me pine a little for the Middle East/'Arab' world.


'Feelings Above Sea Level' Prose poems of Shang Qin. A contemporary, though aging, Taiwanese poet. Initially its a little hard to know how to take these poems. Influences are Max Jacob, Ponge, surrealist French poetry generally, as well as Lu Xun a Chinese poet published in the 20s, who some believe was inspired by reading the Sunday comics in the foreign newspapers of Shanghai then available.

Here's a taste...

Border Zone

They say that war is raging in a distant land....

And so, on a certain avenue in the wee hours of the night a watchman on his rounds suddenly found his forward motion checked at a place where there was nothing in his way. But then this 'boundary' or whatever it was, was gone. And when the watchman recovered his wits, he continued his rounds, his head lowered in thought, his hands clasped behind him, and his steps now sculpted by his growing determination to discover what and where this boundary was.

As fate would have it though, a stray dog was the first to find this border zone and ascertain that it was made from the empty stares of those who wash and gargle when they rise interlarded with their lingering awareness of the persistance of the previous night's dream logic coupled with the echoes that reverberate from the shards of broken glass with which we crown our residential walls.

 

[Helen]

<i>People in Glass Houses - An Insider's Story of a Life in and out of Hillsong</i> by Tanya Levin. It's about the Pentecostal Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia, which has grown into a multi-million dollar, tax-free ('not for profit') enterprise.

 

[Jonesy]

'The Secret History' by Donna Tartt. If I was a writer I'd have given up after reading this. Luckily I'm not and can carry on being a teacher.

I still can't fathom why this hasn't been made into a film. The strength of the material is a gift. I'm not sure if anyone could do it cinematic justice though.