jenks

thread death
I spent a year just reading things i bought in charity shops - i liked the randomness of it all - picking up all kinds of odd stuff for just a few quid. A bit like the Paul Young No Parlez meme there books that always seemed to be on the shelves - celeb biogs and 50 Shades but also Ian McEwan and Wilbur Smith. I think i got all of my Muriel Sparks from places like MenCap and Sense - the great thing is they often have far more interesting covers than modern reprints.
 

luka

Well-known member
i saw a thing on twitter contrasting old covers with new and the decline makes you agree with spengler decline of the west
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I bought this cheap (new) copy of A Clockwork Orange a few years ago, just because I didn't have a copy and wanted one - or maybe it was even free with a weekend paper, can't remember - and the image on the front is a photo of a glass of milk.

Like, wow, I wonder what lurid delights lurk within this slender volume!
 

luka

Well-known member
not on the same level as the deliberate digitial vandalism of that dark is rising cover though
 

jenks

thread death
not on the same level as the deliberate digitial vandalism of that dark is rising cover though
True enough. If you can be bothered to Google 1984 covers you’ll see some truly abysmal ones. I’m all for the Fitzcarraldo approach - plain blue for fiction and white for non fiction. Job done.
 

jenks

thread death
Just started Muriel Spark - The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Interesting so far - in itself as a book, and also because I find books about Britain, England, London and so on from that period incredibly jarring. Peckham in the 50s instantly seems more alien to me than Cuba or Japan or wherever I've travelled in countless other books - I suppose it's that uncanny valley thing again.
I remember listening to this during lockdown - I am a bit of a sucker for the grand dame delivery - Carmen Callil is another I could happily listen to for hours
 

borzoi

Well-known member
i just suffered thru isaac asimov's foundation and holy shit the man could not write. it's like reading wet cardboard. even for pulp sci fi how do you write this badly.

(describing life on a planet under a big metal dome where the sun never shines):

The meal of which he had just partaken had been labelled luncheon, but there were many planets which lived a standard timescale that took no account of the perhaps inconvenient alternation of day and night. The rate of planetary turnings differed, and he did not know that of Trantor.
 

borzoi

Well-known member
i can't imagine a 9 or 10 year old being into them given that every scene is two men smoking cigars in a room discussing trade disputes.
 
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