Benny Bunter

Well-known member
@Padraig

thanks, will look into these suggestions. maybe i will give bolaño a go at some point.

@faustus

yeah, still here and with a baby on the way so i guess i´m here for good!

not heard of any of your suggestions, will investigate thanks
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Ford Madox Ford's "Parade's End". Got a hundred pages or so left, hope to finish that off within a week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade's_End
John N. Gray calls it the "the greatest 20th-century novel in English". The writing is in parts sublime. People who hate semicolons and commas will hate it, not that much happens externally - there are long trains of thought from the main characters.

Anthony Burgess: "The best novel by a British writer ... It is also the finest novel about the First World War. It is also the finest novel about the nature of British society" according to blurb on Amazon.

I was set on buying this as an ebook for my non-Amazon ereader as it's 800 pages+, but after reading the reviews I ended up on the reissued Penguin Modern Classics edition in paperback.

---

Then maybe read The Book of Disquiet (Pessoa), there was a Norwegian guy on telly a few months ago - he spent one week of his leave from work to open a bookstore selling just that one title so that piqued my interest.
http://www.nd.no/2014/03/pop-bokhandel-en-uke-med-en-bok-fernando-pessoa-erobrer-thereses-gate/
Or maybe Bolano's "2666" seeing as it's listed above - been sitting on the shelf for ages (I buy books in bulk and but just manage to read half of them).
 
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connect_icut

Well-known member
Those who (like me) are too thick/busy to tackle the full 800+ pages of Parades End are directed to the phenomenal BBC adaptation, written by Tom Stoppard and starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Truly one of the most extraordinary things I've seen on TV in years.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Karl Ove Knausgaard - 'My Struggle pt. 1' (Been really bigged up but I'm not bowled over thus far. What's been called 'searing honesty' just comes across as pretty boring and not particularly well-written thus far, I'll try and keep going though.)

I think you are right. KOK is not an elegant writer. I've read his debut novel 'Out of this world' (in my native Norwegian) and it's not well written at all. And he bored the hell out of me, but there were passages in it which showed promise. I have hard time believing he can keep up that small promise over 3500 pages. So I've simply decided that life is too short (and his second book got panned in the UK, before the US-hypewave rolled into these shores).
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood

This. Finished it earlier this year (not that the book is long at 330 pages or so). Marvellous.

Naipul, Ford Madox Ford - well I also read what might be classified as pulp. Between I read the first two Jack Reacher books by Lee Childs (just wanted to know how it was - "effective hero/anti-hero stuff" I guess the words would be, don't waste your time unless you want to just relax - just watch that Tom Cruise film instead) and Bill S Ballinger's crime novel "The Longest Second" (a short, but well-constructed tale. It starts with the hero waking up with his throat slit, not knowing who he is or who tried to kill him).

Also - anyone read "The Flamethrowers" by Rachel Kushner?
I read the (good) reviews when the book came out and decided that it was something to have a look at.
Just over 3 stars average though on amz uk.
Powerful motorcycles [I've got a licence, but there is no way I dare ride a bike or motorbike in London]
with the art of Siri Hustvedt's "What I Loved" is what I'm hoping for.
 
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Timewriter

Active member
In A Lonely Place - Dorothy B. Hughes (as filmed a few years later featuring Bogart and Gloria Grahame). A good read. Not as hardboiled as Thompson re the inside-the-mind-of-a-killer angle but fine all the same.

That K-punk book. The Joy Division chapter's very good.
 

benw

Well-known member
black mischief by evelyn waugh.

hes fucking funny waugh. think i was put off by his name when i was younger. scoop, decline and fall, handful of dust - all v funny.
 

luka

Well-known member
julian cope's novel which is gormless and written like how a teen grebo who hates townies would write if they had never read a book before or had contact with written english.
 

you

Well-known member
I get the impression it's a bit like a very British poor man's Pynchon, like Alan Partridge does Pynchon or something.



Currently reading The Savage Detectives; so far, so good.

I'm still on it but sat in the sun today and remembered how easy it is to read Bolano...

I read Ligotti's new book, The Spectral Link, today - very good, he's definitely becoming more allegorical and philosophical imo
 
Loved Lispector's 'The Passion According to G.H.', and also - obviously different, but not a million miles away in spirit - Helena Parente Cunha's 'Woman Between Mirrors'.
 

you

Well-known member
Loved Lispector's 'The Passion According to G.H.', and also - obviously different, but not a million miles away in spirit - Helena Parente Cunha's 'Woman Between Mirrors'.

I was obsessed with 'The Passion...', I started a hangout to discuss all the references to continental philosophy and Lacan and stuff. Loads of excellent gender comments in the book too. I can add you to the hangout if you wish.
 

faustus

Well-known member
@faustus

yeah, still here and with a baby on the way so i guess i´m here for good!

not heard of any of your suggestions, will investigate thanks

¡Enhorabuena!

Another one that springs to mind - Lo mejor que le puede pasar a un cruasan by Pablo Tusset (name might be misspelled) - slacker comedy, spoof noir

I think a few years ago I recommended you Sin noticias de Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza - anything else by that author is worth reading, especially his detective stuff (it's a four or five part series, the first one has stupid name something like The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt but is honestly really good and very funny
 
I was obsessed with 'The Passion...', I started a hangout to discuss all the references to continental philosophy and Lacan and stuff. Loads of excellent gender comments in the book too. I can add you to the hangout if you wish.

Thanks, but what were all the references to Lacan and continental philosophy? I don't remember there being any in the book. That lot are like stalkers who think their prey are sending them secret messages, so I've become pretty arm's length about that stuff (saves time).

There's a lot about religion and the anatomy of cockroaches in there, and I guess psychology, but her approach to that last one strikes me as being pretty individual and not much steered by any particular school of thought.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Finished "Parades End" and read a little bit about Ford Madox Ford. Turns out he co-wrote books (the first one a "quasi-science fiction" - http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/14/joseph-conrad-science-fiction) with Joseph Conrad early on in his career -
http://www.noumenal.com/marc/jcfmf/index2.html
"For that reason, the collaborative texts have a documentary, evidentiary, archeological claim on all serious scholars of modernist literature, and particularly on those scholars who, like me, believe that Ford and Conrad, at their best, are the best of the twentieth century."
I won't be reading these co-op books, but it's interesting to know that they worked together.


and I'm almost finished with "Canada" by Richard Ford. Around 500 carefully (20 years in writing according to Wikipedia) written pages about the effects of two crimes (but it's not a crime novel).
Quite slow and majestic like a Low-track ("Canada"?)
Just over 3 stars on Amz, but I think it's brilliant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_(novel)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-19266275
 
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luka

Well-known member
i have just finished a superb book entitled TAFFIN by the author Lyndon Mallet. it is about a hard ,an, a debt collector with principles who takes on property developers when they try to move the allotments which have been in the village for generations; it has very good cover too-
 

luka

Well-known member
there are three. i found the first two in a 2nd hand bookshop. the third is proving to be very elusive. i like them very much. the third is called ASK TAFFIN NICELY. let me know if you find a copy.
 
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