Boards
Book reccomendations?
I need some good books to read, currently reading A Short History of Almost Everything and just bought Catch 22.
Anybody?
I need some good books to read, currently reading A Short History of Almost Everything and just bought Catch 22.
Anybody?
Melmoth the
Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin. Best book ever.
AMAZING BOOK!!!!
Every book thread recently
I've mentioned Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow. It's a verse novel about werewolves in LA. Kind of Palahniuk-esque. It's fucking amazing. Please can someone else read this...
here you go...
`This free-verse novel about the lusts and longings and furies of
a group of lycanthropes in Southern California may just turn out to be one
of the literary highlights of the decade. It's odd, intriguing, absorbing,
at times beautiful and always unique. At last a writer has appeared who is
unafraid to do something new with an old form. I wolfed it down.'
Oh yeah
I read this on your recommendation and it was great :)
Hurrah!
I'm glad that somebody took some notice. Thank you.
I like the sound of this
it's now on the wish list.
Cheers.
My recommendation:
Stoner by John Williams
As one of the amazon reviewers put it; "quiet, somber, compact and gracefully written".
Couldn't agree more.
coupland is good
but don't read the two most recent works ( jpod and gum thief) try microserfs.
A Prayer For Owen Meany
by John Irving.
How does this compare to
World According To Garp?
I've not read Garp
but it's next on the list. Owen Meany is one of the best books I've read in bloody ages, so I'd guess that it compares quite nicely.
Garp is excellent
Also one of the best books I've read in the past few years.
Enjoy :)
As always
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, which is a stunning satire on academic debate set against the backdrop of a surreal english village where bicycles are objects of lust and the protaganist has conversations with his soul.
If you're looking for a book which is complex, effortlessly imaginative, hilarious and uniquely written then this is for you!
The Damned United
Bamos was very, very right about this one.
i am reading
the last party by John Harris.
i expect you have read it already. Failing that, the new naomi klein book.
If you like Catch 22, but Heller's other books too
*buy
Hard Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
Count of Monte Cristo
my Murakami book relates more to music
and mentions Talking Heads alot.
(more appropriate for a music forum)
If you're looking for a music-related Murakami novel
You'd probably be best with Norwegian Wood.
Yeah, but everyone says go for that one
especially Waterstones staff
"We recommend"
if i wanted your recommendations i'd ask like TheShapeOfPunkToCome has.
Dance, Dance, Dance is under-rated. And his relationship with the young girl who listens to talking heads is electric. And i mention it because i'm thinking of reading it again this week. I read Wild Sheep Chase again a month ago and it put me in the mood.
typo
i like his schoolfriend. Great character. And the sheepman
norwegian wood isn't really about music
music and music taste is usually just incidental to Murakami novels and their characters. Reiko plays a guitar as therapy, the kid likes the beatles. There's always some classical music in their somewhere. 'I lay on the bed listening to brahms' It's the one thing that seems a bit stilted in his work. It never really has anything to do with the plot.
A Forest In Norway
The title of the book in Japan is "A Forest In Norway"
this was due to a mis-translation of the title of the Beatles song on japanese versions of Rubber Soul in the 60s. But we got the regular title re-translated back..
When Noako talks about being alone in a forest, thats why she imagines it. Because of the title.
Music plays an extremely important role in Murakamis life and his novels. There is no way you can dismiss the music. Even if you dont see the point of it being mentioned. Even if it is just pop culture.
Murakami was looked down on his peers for many years as a POP novelist. Full of triviality. But it is the warm heart of his writing, and the rhythmn is perhaps the most important element of his prose.
you sound like a textbook
what's your opinion or did you just think that post through more than i'm used to seeing on here??
Music may be important to the author but you'd never say it was central to Norwegian wood. Nostalgia seems to be a bigger feature than music in a few murakami novels.
The music is always incidental and i meant literal music not the prose style which isn't very rhythmic anyway. On the road could be classed as rhythmic but not really murakami's work. It's just often poetic prose that flows brilliantly.
It's use is as i've said often to give a character more of a personality, a character who is depicted as liking brahms or classical music is often older, set in his ways whereas the youth seem to always like talking heads or the beatles. As the plots of his stories go i just don't think that's what the reader is asked to dwell on. I never see music in his work as more than evoking a mood in a character or a memory but not a big symbol or catalyst to any of the action.
I started a thread the other day
http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/2763949
Anything by.....
John Irving (in particular A Prayer for Owen Meany) and Hunter Thompson & John Fante!
I've just read
'On Chesil Beach' by Ian McEwan in two days flat. It was excellent, much preferred it to that fart in a bottle 'Atonement'.
I can back up the recommendation of 'The Damned United' wholeheartedly and will add 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen as my own ten pence. My fave book ever, tough but worth sticking with!
Does he do a cop out ending in that one?
Is it all a dream at the end?
Or is it all real in the end?
Or is it all a story at the end?
DUNE
or lolita.
yeah I read when I was travelling....
its takes a bit of getting use to but it is a really good book once you tune in. A rollicking good yarn some might say!
Yes
powerfullll stuff. Are you reading it for Uni?
Yes.
And it was brilliant. Read The Iliad too, that's fantastic.
oh yes
I loved it, but not as much as The Iliad. The images from both will probably stay with me forever
read
Ali Smith - Boy Meets Girl
Donna Tartt - The Secret History...
I'm currently in a Thomas Hardy phase and wishing I lived in Wessex...
also
is it harsh to recommend a dictionary?
Bonjour Tristesse
The Great Gatsby
Lolita
The Rachel Papers
motley crue
the dirt
I highly recommend
'Naive. Super' by Erland Loe. It is by far one of the best books I have ever read.
after the first three
dune starts to get a bit silly.
that 'proper' trilogy is immense.
I second the Tom Robbins recommendation
.
Cheers for all these people, think it will take me about 10 years or so to read all of them though!
Last 3 books I've read have been amazing
Of Mice and Men
Lolita
The Outsider
Of Mice And Men takes like, an hour to finish
the outsider
is my second favourite book ever!
whoever recommended 'the third policeman'
is damned right, one of the greatest books ever written. it's totally bizarre and has a fantastically chilling conclusion.
any murakami is awesome too - my favourites of his are probably the dance dance dance/wild sheep chase double bill mentioned above. murakami is one of those special authors who makes every detail, charachter and sensation you feel whilst reading stay with you forever ....
fear & loathing on the campaign trail
by hunter s.thompson
my favourite hst book, well written plus it's nice and topical this year.
bruce campbell if chins could kill. very entertaining if you're interested at all in cult horror or independent cinema.
stephen fry the hippopotamus. i keep recommending fry's novels because no one i know believes me that they're well written funny books with good plots and all that. well they are, and this one is probably the best.
A Dictionary...
.
*Ahem* recommendations
-
Minor thread hijack but is Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs worth buying?
Loved catch 22
soo much
good choice
enjoy
Slaughterhouse 5
by Kurt Vonnegut. Lovely.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The devil visits Moscow with a giant talking cat and begins to systematically execute all the leading lights of the arts, before granting Pontius Pilate redemption from a neverending nightmare and throwing a great ball for all the worst people in history. The best book I've ever read.
It's just titled Popular Music
I read it a couple of years ago and I remember it being good.
What's the film supposed to be like?
I can't imagine it's anywhere near as good as the book.
wow
Shit, that's scarey how similar our lists would be. And I don't even know you (or anyone whose read The Russian Debutantes handbooks)
Heartily recommend all Roth, Auster and DeLillo
Less Than Zero
The book behind 'Song For Clay (Dissapear Here)' by Bloc Party
Books
Miss Wyoming - Coupland
The Dharma Bums - Kerouac
Are you experience - William Sutcliffe
Oscar Wilde
Nick Horby - a long way down
the moon is down - steinbeck
keep the aspidistra flying - orwell
bob dylan - chronicles
Murakami Again
There's been a few recommendations for him so far (with good reason), but my favourite is 'Kafka on the Shore'. There's a few musical references in there too...
^i've just reserved this at the library
.
...
The Sound and The Fury - Faulkner
Sister Carrie - Dreiser
another one for Notes from the UG - Dostoevsky
Nausea - Sartre
The Gay Science - Nietzsche...lots of lovely aphorisms and short lyrics. Its his most readable work I think and its no disservice to read him in a purely literary way, but its even better if you want to take something more from it