*What book are you reading ?

[ChrisC]

Flux by Stephen Baxter, just started it. Finished Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds great book. Looking forward to getting hold of Redemption Ark.

 

[Dubversion]

Just started The Gospel Singer by Harry Crews, his first novel. Brilliant so far...

this is just STUNNING. the most Southern Gothic book ever. I'm only a few dozen pages in and already there's a twisted southern baptist gospel singer, a freakshow featuring a midget with the world's biggest foot, mutant hillbillies, a rape and murder and an imminent hanging.

 

[sojourner]

this is just STUNNING. the most Southern Gothic book ever. I'm only a few dozen pages in and already there's a twisted southern baptist gospel singer, a freakshow featuring a midget with the world's biggest foot, mutant hillbillies, a rape and murder and an imminent hanging.

It'll just tail off disappointingly, probably

 

[Dirty Martini]

Not read Crews, but have you read any Barry Hannah? His Yonder Stands Your Orphan is great, and out-Southern-gothics most anything I've read.

 

[chooch]

[Ryszard Kapuscinski.

In a hitherto seemingly unlikely coup, I've just got one of his from the shoddy bookshop here. So now reading Another Day of Life.

 

[yardbird]

I'm going to read Robert Sabbag's Snowblind again, to set me up for Smokescreen.
All in one paperbook.

 

[Dirty Martini]

In a hitherto seemingly unlikely coup, I've just got one of his from the shoddy bookshop here. So now reading Another Day of Life.

Coup

Is that the Angola one? I'm loving Shadow of the Sun, which is about post-independence Africa. He's like a better-behaved Hunter S Thompson. Polish gonzo.

 

[chooch]

Coup
Is that the Angola one?

Aye.
Can't remember the last time I used coup.
Also got James Salter The Hunters. Looks pretty good. 'It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today'. Apparently.

 

[Wilf]

The one I'm actually reading is Flan O'Brien's The Third Policeman. I'm also, half heartedly plodding through a book on the New Age, though will finish it. Then I've got a few more that i'm halfway through and can't quite admit i've abandoned - Erewhon by Samuel Butler, London 1945 (about London in the blitz) and a freebie I got from AK Press - Other Lands Have Dreams (peace activists in iraq n'stuff). Wish i could finish one book before starting another

 

[Dirty Martini]

Also got James Salter The Hunters. Looks pretty good. 'It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today'. Apparently.

Never heard of him until the recent press coverage. It's amazing how much American stuff doesn't make it to the UK for years and years.

 

[Dubversion]

It'll just tail off disappointingly, probably

apparently not.

 

[tufty79]

fierce dancing - stories from the underground by j c stone.


it's fucking amazing.

 

[Dubversion]

fierce dancing - stories from the underground by j c stone.


it's fucking amazing.

hmm. it read it and enjoyed it, but he's very far from well-liked. Didn't you notice he spent a lot of time around people that he's quite dismissive of? that he used, to some extent?

there are people on these boards who were good to him, i believe, who then got fairly short shrift in his book

 

[tufty79]

i'm about a third of the way through at the moment.. i shall give a considered opinion when i'm finished, and when my brain is working again (be prepared to wait some time).

 

[May Kasahara]

Finally finished Regeneration last night - absolutely wonderful, it has quite restored my faith in mainstream literature.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Finally finished Regeneration last night - absolutely wonderful, it has quite restored my faith in mainstream literature.

So it's been regenerated?

 

[Roadkill]

Roy Porter - Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine. Fascinating and disgusting in equal measure.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

hmm. it read it and enjoyed it, but he's very far from well-liked. Didn't you notice he spent a lot of time around people that he's quite dismissive of? that he used, to some extent?

there are people on these boards who were good to him, i believe, who then got fairly short shrift in his book

I wasn't aware of this (not that i'm doubting what you say, merely that i didn't know that he'd slipped in peoples' estimation of him). I know he used to knock around with the tvc crew who are also in Whitstable and i used to see the lad who did the drawings in his books regular when he came to parties that we did (fierce dancing and the other one, um, last of the hippies iirc).

But i did wonder about whether some of the, shall we say, rather graphic and revealing descriptions of people close to him would go down terribly well when i read both of these a couple of years back. [/derail]

Amongst others, I'm currently ploughing my way through Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie which is laugh out loud funny in parts, a good look at the North and all its delights.

 

[Dubversion]

i think there was this notion that he spends the whole book involved in a scene that he's very dismissive / sarcastic about, but very much depends on the open-ness and kindness of people in that scene both to get by and to get material.

i found myself reading about him in another tea tent at another festival thinking, "well if it's all so bloody awful, go somewhere else then"

 

[Orang Utan]

He likes Surgeon!

 

[Dubversion]

He likes Surgeon!

that's no barometer of decency. So do I

 

[cyberfairy]

I wasn't aware of this (not that i'm doubting what you say, merely that i didn't know that he'd slipped in peoples' estimation of him). I know he used to knock around with the tvc crew who are also in Whitstable and i used to see the lad who did the drawings in his books regular when he came to parties that we did (fierce dancing and the other one, um, last of the hippies iirc).

But i did wonder about whether some of the, shall we say, rather graphic and revealing descriptions of people close to him would go down terribly well when i read both of these a couple of years back. [/derail]

Amongst others, I'm currently ploughing my way through Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie which is laugh out loud funny in parts, a good look at the North and all its delights.

As a Southerner moved to the North, really enjoyed Pies And Prejudice especially after all the horror from friends and family in Bath when telling them I was moving. The sun does actually shine up here!
Loved CJ Stone's books also-intrigued about the whole 'Wally' thing

 

[Orang Utan]

that's no barometer of decency. So do I

I only know him from newspaper columns and have always thought of him a smug self-obsessed hippy cunt with nothing to say

 

[Dubversion]

Loved CJ Stone's books also-intrigued about the whole 'Wally' thing

Crass had a lot of involvement with Wally, indeed his treatment by the authorities played a big part in their coming into being

read all about it here

 

[cyberfairy]

Crass had a lot of involvement with Wally, indeed his treatment by the authorities played a big part in their coming into being

read all about it here

Cheers-what a fascinating and tragic story

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

Crass had a lot of involvement with Wally, indeed his treatment by the authorities played a big part in their coming into being

read all about it here

Crikey, that takes me back, that's more or less the text from the free book in Christ The Album (in fact following the link indicates that it is the same text).

Funnily enough, i saw Penny Rimbaud walking past my local the other evening, rucksack slung over his shoulder and grey hair blowing in the wind.

 

[Dubversion]

Crikey, that takes me back, that's more or less the text from the free book in Christ The Album (in fact following the link indicates that it is the same text).

yeh, it got expanded for bits of Penny's book and the like..

 

[bodach]

The Woods. Harlan Coben

 

[Stig]

I wasn't aware of this (not that i'm doubting what you say, merely that i didn't know that he'd slipped in peoples' estimation of him). I know he used to knock around with the tvc crew who are also in Whitstable and i used to see the lad who did the drawings in his books regular when he came to parties that we did (fierce dancing and the other one, um, last of the hippies iirc).

But i did wonder about whether some of the, shall we say, rather graphic and revealing descriptions of people close to him would go down terribly well when i read both of these a couple of years back. [/derail]

Amongst others, I'm currently ploughing my way through Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie which is laugh out loud funny in parts, a good look at the North and all its delights.

Yup, I remember at the Thanet way bypass protest he used to sit around the firepit with us night after night, and made some really good (they thought) friends, and when they read the newspaper articles later they were absolutely fucking furious, that's not even to mention the books.

 

[Pieface]

Just finished The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.

It was technically amazing, the way he wove all the stories together but it didn't grab like some of his other work has. It was very cold. Reminded me of a fairytale in its structure - hero needs to rescue heroine and is helped along the way by a series of random encounters and individuals. Lots of gifts and symbols and weirdness and dreams.

He has an incredible imagination that man.....