luka said:i read all of underworld then wondered why i bothered. its a badly written, poorly conceived, flabby, overreaching, portentous stinking piece of turd.
That was another one that I finished and didn't get anything out of, not because it went over my head but because it was plain shit."the god of small things."
I took my forum name from it, and I haven't...henry s said:Gravity's Rainbow (has anybody ever finished this?)
henry s said:Gravity's Rainbow (has anybody ever finished this?)
jenks said:it's something i often note when i pick up a book published in the states - the paperback binding seem better and there is a softness to the covers that Penguins and others lack over here - is this all a major projection or is there some basis in fact?
spackb0y said:As for the Magus, about halfway through I just got really pissed off with it, and thought "what's the point?". I just found it rather boring and the protagonist hard to like.
Any edition of the Third Policeman is a thing of beauty.OldRottenhat said:Btw Jenks, if you really are a closet book sniffer and fondler, I direct your attention to the Folio Society - their edition of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is a thing of beauty.
OldRottenhat said:No, this is absolutely on the money. The real supermarket blockbuster stuff is bound just as badly as it is in the UK but the more upmarket stuff is bound far more flexibly so that the book will actually sit open in your hands or on the table. It baffles me why the likes of Penguin and Picador can't match this in the UK - I'm reading the recent Verso edition of Minima Moralia right now and the binding is so stiff that it strains my hands to read it for an hour. I'm almost angry that pages are falling out of my copy of Rip It Up & Start Again - this is a book Faber prices at seventeen quid sterling and I'm going to have to start keeping it in a box like a mediaeval codex if I read it a couple more times. The older and crankier I get the more this annoys me, to the point where I will probably soon give up on buying paperbacks at all - if I can't find a book in hardback, I'll get it from the library.
Btw Jenks, if you really are a closet book sniffer and fondler, I direct your attention to the Folio Society - their edition of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is a thing of beauty.
I loved this. How do you mean that Magic Realism doesn't work? I wish more books had magic in them, it reminds me of the books that first got me interested in reading as a child."One Hundred Years of Solitude"/Marquez.
Not because it's difficult. Just because the first two hundred pages
are a drag, that this whole magic realism just doesn't work,
I haven't read the new translation but the one I read was pretty funny - in parts. By the end I just wanted it to finish. One of my friends is a lecturer in Spanish and he said something to the effect that you ought to skim read it but there is no point in reading the whole thing."another unfinished is Don Quixote - i notice this has recently come out in a new translation - worth trying again, any one?"
No way! I read it pretty quickly - maybe a slow start but it pulls you in... Volume 2 is great. The ending is also crucial imo.IdleRich said:haven't read the new translation but the one I read was pretty funny - in parts. By the end I just wanted it to finish. One of my friends is a lecturer in Spanish and he said something to the effect that you ought to skim read it but there is no point in reading the whole thing.
I read that quite recently and I can see why you say that you didn't finish it. I definitely found that there was something unengaging about it, I really wanted to like it, I liked the idea and the overall story but it was just so alien and repetitive that it was hard to get into properly. On the other hand it did have something and I think I would like to give his other books a go because there were some good ideas trying to get out."My name is red - orhan pamuk"
IdleRich said:I read that quite recently and I can see why you say that you didn't finish it. I definitely found that there was something unengaging about it, I really wanted to like it, I liked the idea and the overall story but it was just so alien and repetitive that it was hard to get into properly. On the other hand it did have something and I think I would like to give his other books a go because there were some good ideas trying to get out.