*What book are you reading ?
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J.T.Leroy
I don't think I can say I loved it but I found that book great.
There's a gift in the writing: everytime you feel that the story is too much , so that you stop feeling sorry for the kid (that's what happened to me reading) and you think you'll throw the book out of the window, the art of the author comes to save you. That's what I mean for a great book, not a great story, but a wonderful gift in telling it.
"Coal" is for sure my favourite tale: I was enchanted, I felt I wanted to have written that!
sojourner said:The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - JT LeRoy
Watched the film last week, and although I liked it, thought the book would be better. I'm pleased to report it is
I don't think I can say I loved it but I found that book great.
There's a gift in the writing: everytime you feel that the story is too much , so that you stop feeling sorry for the kid (that's what happened to me reading) and you think you'll throw the book out of the window, the art of the author comes to save you. That's what I mean for a great book, not a great story, but a wonderful gift in telling it.
"Coal" is for sure my favourite tale: I was enchanted, I felt I wanted to have written that!
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
The Killer Inside Me -- Jim Thompson
I really thought I was going to enjoy this. Thompson's rep is really high in the crime-writing world and he'd been on my list for ages. But it was, by and large, crap. Plodding, confusing, terrible dialogue, no atmosphere, and all attempts at humour went flat. I think I'll have forgotten what it was all about in a couple of weeks.
Any Thompson fans on here? Have I picked a duff one, or should I stick to Chandler?
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Now, The New York Trilogy, a last stab at Auster. This better be good
I really thought I was going to enjoy this. Thompson's rep is really high in the crime-writing world and he'd been on my list for ages. But it was, by and large, crap. Plodding, confusing, terrible dialogue, no atmosphere, and all attempts at humour went flat. I think I'll have forgotten what it was all about in a couple of weeks.
Any Thompson fans on here? Have I picked a duff one, or should I stick to Chandler?
---
Now, The New York Trilogy, a last stab at Auster. This better be good
Orang Utan
They cannot crucify you if your hand is in a fist
You picked a winner there.
suzee blue cheese
Well-Known Member
Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkener. There's an excellent tale in there hidden among the adjectives and the longest sentences in literature...
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
Orang Utan said:
The Auster? Yeh, this one passed me by when it came out, though a lot of friends read it and liked it. I've read Moon Palace, which was OK, and Brooklyn Follies, which wasn't. He's on a final warning
New York Trilogy is brilliant. I don't think you'll be disappointedDirty Martini said:
I'm reading Stuart: A Life Backwards - read it straight through most of yesterday and today. Stunned. Gutted. Fascinating, and even funny in places. Alexander Masters is a right cunt at times, like he's trying too hard not to come over all patronising. It is a particularly poignant book for me at the moment. Some of it has been like reading about myself.
I couldn't sleep last night and so I read all of One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed my Melissa P. Interesting and though I felt sympathy for her I also thought she was a bit of an idiot...
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
SubZeroCat said:
You got the nasty paperback edition? I'm quoted on the inside cover
(under the name of the people I was reviewing for, not my real name unfortunately).I'm reading Weiland by Charles Brockden Brown. Written in the 18th century - one of the first American novels. Also one of the first attempts at gothic fiction too. Someone died from spontaneous combustion in chapter 2
I really like it - it's a bit spooky.Also reading The Whole Equation by David Thomson, a history of Hollywood. Not far in yet, but looks like it might shape up to be good - it's got a lot of fabbo reviews anyway.
I have just borrowed a copy of Final Cut too about the 'Heaven's Gate' film fiasco - and a copy of the film
Not entirely sure when I'll get chance to read/watch them, but it should be good.I finished Susan Stedman Jones 'Durkheim Reconsidered' on Sunday. Aaargh what an annoying book! Her aim was to rescue Durkheim from the various misinterpretations he's accumulated over the years and in this she was successful. My mind about him has been changed in light of the evidence she marshalled. But I don't think she could have gone about her business in a more annoying way. Instead of offering her reinterpretation of Durkheim upfront she dives straight into the misconceptions, refutes them, and the spends the rest of the book setting out her stall. That's alright if you're a mad Durkheim afficianado but I'm not (I haven't bothered with his work since I was a sociology undergrad), and neither will be most of the readership. But that said it may have annoyed me but at least now I know Durkheim and his sociology is far more radical than most of what passes in sociology these days.
Now I'm starting Pierre Bourdieu's 'In Other Words' - a collection of interviews, short papers and the like. And I've also finished off HG Wells 'Shape of Things to Come'. My bus reading is now Audrey Niffenegger's 'The Time Traveller's Wife'.
Now I'm starting Pierre Bourdieu's 'In Other Words' - a collection of interviews, short papers and the like. And I've also finished off HG Wells 'Shape of Things to Come'. My bus reading is now Audrey Niffenegger's 'The Time Traveller's Wife'.
jugularvein
extra
i'm reading Corpsing, by Toby Litt
it started really well and i was pretty gripped, the writing is superb but it starts being let down around half way by a few weaknesses in the story and some seconday characters who come in and aren't very plausible.
it started really well and i was pretty gripped, the writing is superb but it starts being let down around half way by a few weaknesses in the story and some seconday characters who come in and aren't very plausible.
finished Change Is Gonna Come. mostly a great book until about the last quarter, where the writer starts banging on about Bruce Springsteen and pissweak soul like Maxwell. A few factual errors crept in as well, i guess the more recent stuff just isn't his territory. But his writing on black music in the 60s and 70s and how it related to the cultural and political times was excellent.
For a bit of light relief, i'm now starting j-Pod by Douglas Coupland
For a bit of light relief, i'm now starting j-Pod by Douglas Coupland
Sarah, by JT LeRoy, got it as a double from Amazon together with The Heart is Deceitful, and so far, I'm really enjoying it. The way that child prostitution is being normalised is scary, but I think it really helps the reader to understand the perspective of a person living that life.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
“In Your Garden Again” (1953) by Vita Sackville-West....it's interesting to see how she changed the face of horticultural columns...some of it comes over as very snobbish and dated, but it's an interesting read all the same.....
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
sojourner said:New York Trilogy is brilliant. I don't think you'll be disappointed
I enjoyed this a lot, particularly the first story. I think the third got a bit wearying towards the end, but the whole thing is great fun. Probably repays a second reading
I still don't think he's the great (anti-)metaphysical novelist that people have claimed him to be -- he skates across the surface of some pretty complex ideas, and mostly nothing more -- but he tells a good story, and he believes in love.
Glad you enjoyed itDirty Martini said:I enjoyed this a lot, particularly the first story. I think the third got a bit wearying towards the end, but the whole thing is great fun. Probably repays a second reading
I still don't think he's the great (anti-)metaphysical novelist that people have claimed him to be -- he skates across the surface of some pretty complex ideas, and mostly nothing more -- but he tells a good story, and he believes in love.
Yeh, it does kinda slip a bit by the end, but what he does with genre and narrative is fascinating. I've just lent this to a bloke in work actually, cos he wanted some ideas of different stuff to read. Yeh, you might see it as skating across the surface... but that is more to do with you as a reader - which makes it one of the most perfect earlier postmodernist texts
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
sojourner said:Yeh, you might see it as skating across the surface... but that is more to do with you as a reader - which makes it one of the most perfect earlier postmodernist texts
I like the reader stuff, I've done my time with the theory and the fiction, but I get the feeling with Auster that he's more enamoured with the vocabulary of postmodernism -- reader, story, text, fact -- than he is with the ideas, such as they are.
As for accepting that skating across the surface proves the postmodernist point, that's just the laziness and "taking things on trust" that they set out to demolish.
If you want the ultimate in sly postmodern intelligence, read How German Is it by Walter Abish.
In the end, for me, Auster tells a very good story, but the theoretical background to his work is not something even he's digested properly. It can come out a bit halfbaked.
But they're three cracking stories and I had a lot of fun reading them
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
Now it's Farewell, My Lovely.
'He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck'
A genius writer.
'He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck'
A genius writer.
Nice postDirty Martini said:I like the reader stuff, I've done my time with the theory and the fiction, but I get the feeling with Auster that he's more enamoured with the vocabulary of postmodernism -- reader, story, text, fact -- than he is with the ideas, such as they are.
As for accepting that skating across the surface proves the postmodernist point, that's just the laziness and "taking things on trust" that they set out to demolish.
If you want the ultimate in sly postmodern intelligence, read How German Is it by Walter Abish.
In the end, for me, Auster tells a very good story, but the theoretical background to his work is not something even he's digested properly. It can come out a bit halfbaked.
But they're three cracking stories and I had a lot of fun reading them
And I'd have to agree about the 'he's more enamoured with the vocabulary of postmodernism -- reader, story, text, fact -- than he is with the ideas, such as they are', although I think he's topped in that respect by Don Delillo They are 3 great stories though in the Trilogy, glad you enjoyed emOoo, I shall get the recommendation thank you.
Paris Garters
Apparently back.
Just re-read The long dark teatime of the soul by Douglas Adams in an effort to avoid Land of green plums by Herta Muller - it's about Ceaucescu's Romania, bleak as fuck but almost hypnotically poetic. Theres rather a lot of suicide 
. Will persevere though.
Also on Epicurus in the bog and Updike on the bus (penguin 60's), and keep nicking Brecht's Life of Galileo (play) at mr. G's whenever he puts it down.
. Will persevere though.Also on Epicurus in the bog and Updike on the bus (penguin 60's), and keep nicking Brecht's Life of Galileo (play) at mr. G's whenever he puts it down.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
Animals In Translation by Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson. I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in or owns an animal and also anyone with an interest in Autism.
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