Currently Reading? (contd......)

Quote:

Now reading The Easter Parade by the wonderful Richard Yates. Not his best book by any stretch, but it's still excellent.

Just finished this. Really, really good second half. There were a couple of scenes in there that took my by surprise and were really powerful. Emily is certainly an odd character in a lot of ways, but, as with all of his creations, she's brilliantly rendered. I think I've only got one more of his left before I've read the lot. Can't stress what a great, great writer this guy is. He's kinda like a much less salacious Updike, I think, although Updike is much the better writer. Sounds odd to say that when I'm meant to be praising the other guy, but Updike was just an undisputed master and I can't think of many other writers who are anywhere near the same league.

Read them both if you can. Aimz, have you read Revolutionary Road? Got a feeling you might like that one. If you can't be arsed there's a film of it with DiCaprio and Kate Winslett. Can't speak for it cos I've not seen it but the book is excellent. Horribe ending though

Redemption Song.

Peerless biography of Joe Strummer that somehow manages the staggering feat of showing him, warts and all, but without making him any less appealing. I always wanted to meet Strummer but it never came to be,

Just caned through The Sunset Limited - a novel in dramatic form by Cormac McCarthy, in which the pre-eminent exponent of Faulknerian Southern Gothic shows that he can also write an existential dialectic that stands up with the best work of Samuel Beckett. An outstanding bit of writing. Will be a travesty if he never wins the Nobel Prize.

Keeper of the Light – Dianne Chamberlain

The Fame Factor - Polly Courtney

Just to add, she is an author we have published previously who got picked up by Harper Collins. Thought I'd give her a go

Finished that Bolano collection and gotta say I can't see the fuss. Not often me and Nickolarse disagree on literary matters but I think we're going to on this one. There are the odd few lovely lines in there but otherwise it's somewhat too detached for my liking, and a little samey as well. Hmmmm.

Just done in 1977, the second one of them David Peace books. Nastiest sh*t I've read in ages and I'm absolutely hooked on it. Can't wait to read the other two.

Next up, Careless Love, the second part of Peter Guralnik's definitive account of the life of Elvis.

Quote: the doc, May 2012

Quote:

Next up, Careless Love, the second part of Peter Guralnik's definitive account of the life of Elvis.

Totally majestic, this. F*cking sad though. Guralnik also done a book about Sam Cooke and I got that on me desk at work, reckon I might launch straight into it after I'm done with this one. It's a big f*cker though, still a couple of hundred pages to go.....

Love Guralnik on Elvis. You get such a sense of a man lost.

My favourite recent reads have been

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America - Christopher Hitchens
The Origin of Satan - Elaine Pagels
Who Wrote the Bible - Richard Friedman
Faustus - Marlowe

And I'm currently re-doing Ackroyd on Shakespeare.

Am now one with Guralnick's book on Sam Cooke. It's another huge f*cker but it's really good. He writes music-as-social-history and he does it brilliantly.

Quote: the doc, May 2012

Am now one with Guralnick's book on Sam Cooke. It's another huge f*cker but it's really good. He writes music-as-social-history and he does it brilliantly.

Done. Excellent.

Am doing As I Lay Dying with the readers' group at work soon so going to re-read that next.

They're going to hate it, because they're retarded.

I recently read Christie Malry's Own Double Entry by B S Johnson and it was absolutely wonderful. Very clever, totally irreverent, subversive as hell and absolutely f*cking hilarious to boot. Great stuff.

Just finished reading Was a really epic story with so many twists and turns. Just about to start reading the sequel.

I'm reading Call of Cthulu and Other Weird Tales by HP Lovecraft. Nowhere near as impenetrable as his reputation would suggest.

I found a book token somebody had got me for Christmas as I was moving house, so today I picked up

Alexander the Great - Philip Freeman
&
Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson.

Diary Of A Bad Year by J M Coetzee.

Been meaning to read some of his stuff for a long, long time and this was f*cking brilliant.

[quote="curly_cow|curly_cow|1317484588|857315|1346409509"]Quote: the doc, Aug 2012

Quote: curly_cow, Aug 2012

Quote: the doc, Aug 2012

Diary Of A Bad Year by J M Coetzee.

Been meaning to read some of his stuff for a long, long time and this was f*cking brilliant.

Read his Foe, brilliant!

Is that the one that's a skit on Robinson Crusoe?

Yes! And it's all about authorship and the process of writing itself, which makes it very interesting.

Nice one Sabinha (sp? ). I'll see if I can get it from work when I get back.

I've got three books to read on the plane (it's an eleven hour flight and I can't sleep on planes), namely Tortilla Flat, If Beale Street Could Talk and Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

Read Tortilla Flat before and love it to bits, but reading it to get me in the mood for Monterey (would have taken Cannery Row but some f*cker has filched my copy again - lost count of how many of those I've been through now. Maybe I should get a really rare first edition then I'd never have to lend it to anyone again) and Steinbeck's always a glorious read regardless.

If Beale Street Could Talk is by James Baldwin, ergo there is a zero percent chance of it being anything less than brilliant. And the other one, yeah, dunno how many times I've read it but it's still not enough. Be entertaining to compare and contrast it with my trip to the city anyway. It's a fair bet that mine will contain less mescaline, although you never know your luck I guess, and it is a city of sin.....

[quote="the_doc|the doc|1317484588|857319|1346428388"]Quote: curly_cow, Aug 2012

Quote: the doc, Aug 2012

Quote: curly_cow, Aug 2012

Quote: the doc, Aug 2012

Diary Of A Bad Year by J M Coetzee.

Been meaning to read some of his stuff for a long, long time and this was f*cking brilliant.

Read his Foe, brilliant!

Is that the one that's a skit on Robinson Crusoe?

Yes! And it's all about authorship and the process of writing itself, which makes it very interesting.

Nice one Sabinha (sp? ). I'll see if I can get it from work when I get back.

I've got three books to read on the plane (it's an eleven hour flight and I can't sleep on planes), namely Tortilla Flat, If Beale Street Could Talk and Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

Read Tortilla Flat before and love it to bits, but reading it to get me in the mood for Monterey (would have taken Cannery Row but some f*cker has filched my copy again - lost count of how many of those I've been through now. Maybe I should get a really rare first edition then I'd never have to lend it to anyone again) and Steinbeck's always a glorious read regardless.

If Beale Street Could Talk is by James Baldwin, ergo there is a zero percent chance of it being anything less than brilliant. And the other one, yeah, dunno how many times I've read it but it's still not enough. Be entertaining to compare and contrast it with my trip to the city anyway. It's a fair bet that mine will contain less mescaline, although you never know your luck I guess, and it is a city of sin.....

Curly's real name is Sabiya.

That Don Carpenter one was great, hard-as-f*ck Dotoyevskian tale about a Portland sh*tkicker getting rinsed through the American penal system in the 1960s. Not sure about the ending, but much of it was magnificent.

Now reading Martin Eden by Jack London.

Martin Eden turned out to be a bit of a letdown. He's a great writer, but it's another one of those struggling-writer-in-poverty-trying-to-make-good books about a sailor who decides he wants to educate himself and hang out with posh folks cos they're the fount of all civilisation. Even though this is an early example of the genre, I'm f*cking sick of reading them now and it takes a really, really great book (like Ask the Dust or Peter Camerzind or anything by Bukowksi, (obviously)) to get me interested these days. Absolutely love the last line though.

Now on with Just Above My Head by James Baldwin. Am usually highly wary of people who use pretentious words like "astonishing" and "breathtaking" in relation to writers, musicians etc, but this guy really is the sh*t. Read quite a bit by him now and every single line of it has been genuinely brilliant.

Did in that James Baldwin book - all six hundred pages of it - in two days. Magnificent.

I needed something lighter after the Marwood book, which was really good btw.