*What book are you reading ?

[Dubversion]

Dubversion re:Murakami - are you not at all bothered by so many references to the Beatles?

i'll cope. Douglas Coupland doesn't make it easy for me, either..

Seriously now, I don't understand why people like Murakami so much. I have read the Wind-up Bird but I didn't think it was anything exceptional.

well i didn't much care for that either, really. But Norwegian Wood - which i'm starting to think is actually very unlike most of his output - just killed me, so i feel i need to give him a good try

 

[5t3IIa]

i tried. God knows i tried. It is wonderfully written, but it's OVER-written. it was taking me so long to wade through all his wonderful descriptions. i... just.. kind.. of.. stopped.

Oh that's a shame. I liked it and felt it so much that I worried that I was skittering over it too much and not squeezing every morsel out of it.

A History of the Underground next for me

 

[Leica]

I tend not to trust authors who produce one huge novel per year (with the exception of writers who do journalistic work and really have something to say, like Steinbeck for example).

I don't want to sound too negative or argumentative though, so to counterbalance my comments on Murakami I recommend a different Japanese author, Tanizaki.

Edited to add:
The best part of the Wind-up Bird was the story of the zoo doctor in Manchuria. It was well-researched and showed a side of Japanese history not often discussed. The story is worth a book by itself. If only he had made a small novella out of that story and left the rest in his drawer.

 

[Orang Utan]

i tried. God knows i tried. It is wonderfully written, but it's OVER-written. it was taking me so long to wade through all his wonderful descriptions. i... just.. kind.. of.. stopped.

hehe - I did warn you.

Try As She Climbed Across The Table - that's short, simple and mind-blowing

 

[Orang Utan]

Re Murakami - a fella on another forum who has overdosed on Murakami made this very succinct observation that his books are all the same: "successful but lonely, whisky drinking, chainsmoking jazz buff meets etheral mysterious girl. girl has dark history or is imaginary or dead. a weird animal appears. something horrible happens. man ends up sad. the end"

 

[Dubversion]

bearing in mind that he was at university during the student riots and then opened a jazz club, his characters aren't much of a stretch either

 

[Leica]

He needs to think about the relationship between quantity and quality.

 

[omlette]

Read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go last week after I got it as a late Christmas present and was captivated by it, am trying to get into The Unconsoled now and finding it slightly hard going. It was the only other Ishiguro that was in stock at the library, but I have Remains of the Day on hold.

 

[chooch]

Finished 'Trawl' by BS Johnson, the second in the omnibus. It gets stronger, but hasn't got the invention of 'Albert Angelo'. I did want to slap him hard at several points.

Aye. See what you make of house mother normal. Toss up for me between that and albert angelo for what I've liked best of his stuff, with trawl bottom and the unfortunates and christy malry's somewhere in the middle- in that merely very good zone.

 

[Dubversion]

He needs to think about the relationship between quantity and quality.

i'm not sure i buy that - i mean, Norwegian Wood was about 1986 or so? and that's twenty years ago. i'm sure he's not written that prolifically since
bear in mind that i think a lot got translated and published here in a short period. doesn't mean that's when they were written.

(goes to check)

 

[Markyd]

just started Hey ho lets go Story of the Ramones.

Just finished Face Dean Koontz . I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

 

[Dubversion]

Hear the Wind Sing (1979)
Pinball, 1973 (1980)
A Wild Sheep Chase (1982)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)
wandārando)
Norwegian Wood (1987)
Dance, Dance, Dance (1988)
South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992)
The Elephant Vanishes (1993)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994/5)
Underground (1997/8)
Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)
After the quake (2000)
Kafka on the Shore (2002)
After Dark (2004) - English version to be released in 2010
Sleep (2004) - Short story which also appears in The Elephant Vanishes

it's not madly prolific, really.. less than 10 books really, in 20 years.

 

[Leica]

i'm not sure i buy that

I'm going to sound mean but he is about 50 years old and he's published about 10 very long novels. Compare this output to someone like Malcolm Lowry. What could he possibly have to say that takes thousands of pages to deliver?

 

[Dubversion]

I'm going to sound mean but he is about 50 years old and he's published about 10 very long novels. Compare this output to someone like Malcolm Lowry. What could he possibly have to say that takes thousands of pages to deliver?

you're verging very close to contradicting your stance on that Elvis thread, but i'll let it go

there's no virtue in being prolific OR unprolific. Every artist surely find his own way?

I mean, i adore Terence Malick, but making 4 films in 30 years doesn't automatically make his films 3 times as good as someone who made 12 films in 30 years.

 

[Dubversion]

and this is a bit of a weird discussion, because like you i actually didn't enjoy Wind Up Bird Chronicles

 

[Leica]

Perhaps it's because I didn't like his book then and its mammoth size. I think he talks too much. As I said, the zoo doctor story was really good, why did he have to write everything else around it? There's some prolific writers I enjoy reading, but he's not one of them.

I am a bit sensitive to Elvis yes, but I'm not sure I want to talk about it

 

[foo]

Angela Carter - Burning Your Boats

a collection of short stories by that wonderful woman - and i'm loving it.

 

[Dubversion]

having unpacked and shelved 25 big boxes of books last night, i was drawn towards one of the smallest i have - Fup by Jim Dodge. Loving it so far.

 

[Kameron]

Ovid: The Love Poems
Translated by A. D. Melville

I've been meaning to read Ovid for ages but with no real intention of actually doing so but everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service... I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up that river which snaked through the war like a main circuit cable and plugged straight into Kurts.

Except the war is British literature, Kurts is Chaucer and we aren't weeks and miles but centuries and hundreds of volumes away but then .... stretch any analogy and it'll break but claiming poetic licence at this point may be a bridge to far.

For the record I am really enjoying it as well

 

[Orang Utan]

Just bought:
Saturday - Ian McEwan - I'm hoping his writing will overcome the nausating feeling I get when reading about his insufferably overpriviledged characters.
Stuart - A Life Backwards - Alexander Masters
Collapse - Jared Diamond - I'm looking forward to this one the most. His Guns, Germs & Steel blew my mind.

 

[tastebud]

Just bought:
Saturday - Ian McEwan

You're gonna hate it.

 

[Orang Utan]

I read the first couple of pages last night and it seemed pretty compelling in the same way Enduring Love was. BUT it's about a rich squash-playing neurosurgeon. Hmmm.

 

[Klaatu]

Latest Read

"The Blood of the Lamb" by Peter de Vries. Highly recommended. Tragedy told with great humour. Short read, < 250 pp. De Vries is the source of "nostalgia ain't what it used to be," and "deep down, he's really shallow."

On to "Expelled from Eden--a William T. Vollman Reader," author of "Rising Up, Rising Down" (a history of violence). This guy's only 40-something, but has written a zillion books. Sometimes compared to Thomas Pynchon, but don't let that put you off! Of course, if you were able to get through Gravity's Rainbow....

 

[tastebud]

I read the first couple of pages last night and it seemed pretty compelling in the same way Enduring Love was. BUT it's about a rich squash-playing neurosurgeon. Hmmm.

yep and yep.

i still really enjoyed it though.

 

[Klaatu]

Review of Jared Diamond's "Collapse."

Orang Utan, I read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" also, and was interested in "Collapse" too, until I read this less-than-flattering review at bookslut.com:

Review of "Collapse"

Klaatu

 

[Cockles&Whelks]

Wolves Eat Dogs - Martin Cruz Smith.

4th in the Arkady Renko novels (the first being Gorky Park).

Murder investigation set around the Chernobyl reactor and it's surrounding village. Good slow burn stuff with some intresting facts about the incident and it's aftermath.

Review:- http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/crime/0,6121,1450283,00.html

 

[ViolentPanda]

"On Historical Materialism" by Franz Mehring
and
"Aleister Crowley: A Magick Life" by Martin Booth.

 

[Masseuse]

Meetings With Remarkable Men by Gurdjieff.

He treks around the East pissed on calvados, fending off kurdish sheepdogs and getting into fights with sailors whilst getting involved in innumerable scams whilst searching for enlightenment.

My kind of spiritual leader.

 

[jeff_leigh]

Rum Punch - Elmore Leonard

 

[Dubversion]

read Jim Dodge's wonderful 'Fup' in about 90 minutes and loved it. Skimmed through old favourite The Idler's Companion and i'm now getting into After The Plague, a collection of short stories by the totally underrated TC Boyle.