slim jenkins
El Hombre Invisible
The film was an admirable attempt at filming 'the unfilmable'. I've got a lot of time for Burroughs...always. Possibly my favourite writer...along with Jilly Cooper.
what are you reading now?
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I once leant it to a friend who'd never really read much outside of school. His response was along the lines of "holy fuck, why didn't someone tell me there were books like this?"
N
nomadologist
Guest
The Soft Machine is good, too. 
slim jenkins
El Hombre Invisible
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
It's really shit that a few badly-chosen books-studied-at-school can put people off like that. I had to wade through a few stinkers, but there were some good ones too. I remember liking The Handmaid's Tale and keep meaning to get round to some more Atwood, but laziness has thusfar hampered me.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
130 pages in to Jeff Chang's 'Can't stop won't stop' and I'm totally gripped. Its probably been discussed on this forum before (too lazy to do a search), but what a book! Loads of stuff I didn't know, and I really enjoyed reading about the Jamaican influence all over again. Hope the rest of the book is as good as this.
Also recently picked up a copy of 'Blissed out' which I hadn't read for five years since I was at uni. Back then I only sort of flicked through it, focussing on the Sonic Youth/MBV stuff, but it seems like I missed out on some interesting stuff. The Bliss-blogger was a lot more angry back then wasn't he?
Also recently picked up a copy of 'Blissed out' which I hadn't read for five years since I was at uni. Back then I only sort of flicked through it, focussing on the Sonic Youth/MBV stuff, but it seems like I missed out on some interesting stuff. The Bliss-blogger was a lot more angry back then wasn't he?
N
nomadologist
Guest
Robbe-Grillet is amazing, you should check out his films if you ever have a chance...and a lot of them aren't on DVD yet so it's tough to find a chance...
_MAUL_ by Tricia Sullivan. freaked-out highly sexed nanotech-laden sci-fi about gun wielding girl gangs in shopping mall rampages and a future where humans have learned that fashion was the engine of society in some twisted evo-biological way that led to gender-based plagues... I think?
I read her other book _Double Vision_ and so far I like that one slightly better, but this one is still quite a trip.
I read her other book _Double Vision_ and so far I like that one slightly better, but this one is still quite a trip.
STN
sou'wester
the bit where he gets searched is rather saucy. FWIW My Lady of the Flowers is a favourite of mine (and, sadly, of Pete Doherty).
satanmcnugget
Well-known member
im reading Day of Creation by JG Ballard
but i want to read that Thieve's Journal one now too
but i want to read that Thieve's Journal one now too
IdleRich
IdleRich
Looking forward to that bit... unless you mean the bit near the start where they find the vaseline in which case I've already enjoyed it.
The only problem is the edition I'm reading, it's terrible. They've obviously just copied someone else's words on to different sized pages without thinking it through properly so you get footnotes appearing in the middle of the page. There are loads of typos and quotation marks that never close as well.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I watched Genet's film yesterday Un Chant D'Amour. Twenty-five minutes of gaol-birds rubbing their cocks and dancing around. I like the soundtrack that had been added - although I'm not sure why it was deemed necessary.
At first I didn't care about that but having thought about it it is a bit grating. I can imagine him rolling up to an interview with it in his hand "What's what? Oh, this? Just a book by Genet I'm reading right now." Which is kind of annoying because when I'm reading something I tend to carry it in my coat pocket and I wouldn't want anyone to think I was emulating my idol like that.
STN
sou'wester
I never used to mind PD and felt rather sorry for him until I read this interview in which he said something like 'I was feeding ducks one day, it was a Saturday, I fancy, when I saw a bumped dinger hove into my vision' or something.
Oh well hoo-bloody-ray, you laudanam-addled romantic.
It reminded me of being 14 and trying to talk like the characters in Clockwork Orange until your mum tells you to stop being such a wally.
Oh well hoo-bloody-ray, you laudanam-addled romantic.
It reminded me of being 14 and trying to talk like the characters in Clockwork Orange until your mum tells you to stop being such a wally.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well, seen Marienbad but, like you say, a lot of his others don't seem to be readily available.
Started reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy yesterday. Very gripping indeed but I can't help thinking it's not quite as amazing as everyone says. The post-apocalyptic conceit is an old one of course, given a new spin by the relationship between the father and the child but... still not as new as all that. Of course the way he writes is excellent although different from the only other book I've read by him - Blood Meridian - it's as though he's scaled back and simplified his style and there is a real efficiency and economy to his short sentences that gets the message across brilliantly and makes it very taut. I am definitely enjoying it so maybe I'm being churlish.
Maybe the thing that's annoying me is the way it's so short. Or not that per se, it's just that it seems that the book looks big when you get it to justify costing £7.99 but the writing is huge and the gaps between the lines are massive and even though I only started reading it yesterday at about six o'clock and I barely had time to do any concentrated reading (I watched the footie and a film) I'm already almost half way through.
jenks
thread death
Idle - I just thought the writing carried me along into this ever more horrifying scenario. It felt more real and unforgivable than the usual apocolyptical tales - if Mad Max is told from the point of the heroic survivor then this is told by those who merely trudge to death in as nobly human way as possible.
It's a small book interms of length but it is pared down and lacks pomp and bloat - i know some have claimed it's good but not as brilliant as the raving reviewers make out but all i would say is, hand on heart, who, in the US, is producing anything as consistently good in the world of fiction?
I'm reading Thesiger's book on the Empty Quarter after reading his one on the Marsh Arabs, also a history of the Tour de France, trying to get on with Illuminations by Walter Benjamin, Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennet and Lord Jim by Conrad.
Sorry i never contributed to the Regeneration thread (been away a bit due to a serious bereavement). What's the chances of getting the book club up and running again by Christmas?
It's a small book interms of length but it is pared down and lacks pomp and bloat - i know some have claimed it's good but not as brilliant as the raving reviewers make out but all i would say is, hand on heart, who, in the US, is producing anything as consistently good in the world of fiction?
I'm reading Thesiger's book on the Empty Quarter after reading his one on the Marsh Arabs, also a history of the Tour de France, trying to get on with Illuminations by Walter Benjamin, Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennet and Lord Jim by Conrad.
Sorry i never contributed to the Regeneration thread (been away a bit due to a serious bereavement). What's the chances of getting the book club up and running again by Christmas?
IdleRich
IdleRich
I take your point, in most post-apocalyptic tales the survivors are heroes and the book becomes an action thriller, that is very much not the case here. It's far more similar to the Haneke film, Time of The Wolf, where a presumably pampered middle-class house-wife who is horrendously ill-equiped to deal with the situation desperately tries to keep herself and her two young children alive while making sense of what has happened (to them and everyone else). Not sure that there is much nobility in that film but any that there is attaches to her.
I agree about the pared down text I guess. He gives images in few words but they they are precisely selected words and they do work that most people couldn't achieve with more. I think that my main gripe is that I was expecting an epic and I just feel a little short-changed that I'm going to finish it in two days - perhaps I was letting that influence the rest of what I said about it.
The only other one of his I've read is Blood Meridian so I don't know about comparing the consistency of his output to that of other authors, but fair enough everyone seems to think that all his books are good.
Very sorry to hear about that. Hope that you are ok.
I would definitely be up for getting the idea up and running again. Maybe try posting in the sticky thread and see who replies?