faustus

Well-known member
Nah not really, I was asking you this same question last year remember? Loved Sin noticias de Gurb btw, took me a while to read it because my Spanish isn't all that great and I was annotating the book as I went, but it was really funny. I plan to read it again sometime soon, should be much easier and flow better this time. I think I got all the Mendozas in that torrent so I might try another of his next, you read anything else by him?

I think Gurb might be the only novel i've read in Spanish by an actual Spanish author. Someone got me the paperback of Carlos Ruis Zafon's 'La sombra del viento' for my birthday but still only 50 pages in and I got tired of hefting that huge book around town on the way to work, went back to the kindle...

Sounds like the Kindle is the answer to your book mountain problem. Like You, I was a sceptic but I've not looked back since I got one.

Funny you should mention it, my girlfriend bought Mendoza's new novel in FNAC about four hours ago. I haven't read any others but she says the trilogy that starts with El misterio de la cripta embrujada is brilliant, a bonkers spoof-detective story

she also just chipped in to say that Ruiz Zafon is shit, I've no idea about that

anyway, glad you liked Gurb. I occasionally visit the Churreria on Calle Petrixol that he can't stay away from
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
hmmm, the Zafon did seem a little bit... Dan Brown-y from what i read (not that I've ever actually read Dan Brown haha)

just checked my HD and I've got El misterio de la cripta embrujada so i will probably give that a go next, cheers for the tip. Just hope its not too difficult for me, though I'm definitely up for a challenge.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
various-"personal space: electronic soul 1974-84"

some odd low-fi shit, other tracks are better than this one. hauntological soul?

http://www.chocolateindustries.com/blog/2012/02/personal-space/

Yes, a mixed bag, but a few goodies on there. Not easy reading, though. ;)
http://includemeout2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/personal-space-electronic-soul-1974.html

Just finished Scamp by Roland Camberton - worth it for descriptions of London life circa 1950...bohemia, bums, lunatics & literary aspirations, all tinged with tragedy.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
I'm obsessed with Ursula le Guin books at the mo. The Dispossessed is amazing, one of the best fiction book I've read in last couple of years..
 

blacktulip

Pregnant with mandrakes
Loved The Left Hand of Darkness. Could definitely read some more of hers at some point.

Right now stuck into Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas thing. I am not a big fan of his on paper, but somehow reading him gives me a warm, nostalgic feeling. Maybe because his longer novels have been holiday reading for me in the last few years.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
After loving The Third Policeman last year, I've picked up At Swim-Two-Birds. Only just started it but enjoying it already - the language is just so great, so mannered and somehow extremely Irish to the point of being almost impossible to read without it actually sounding Irish in your head.

The barman in the pub near my flat asked me what I was reading and I tried to explain - he hadn't heard of Flan O'Brien but it turns out he'd studied Joyce as part of a literature course. I gather Finnegan's Wake is difficult enough for native English speakers, never mind second-languagers. Should probably have a crack at that at some point, my girlfriend has a copy and raves about it.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Loved The Left Hand of Darkness. Could definitely read some more of hers at some point.

Right now stuck into Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas thing. I am not a big fan of his on paper, but somehow reading him gives me a warm, nostalgic feeling. Maybe because his longer novels have been holiday reading for me in the last few years.

I just finished the Left Hand of Darkness and IMO Dispossessed is definitely better. Some of the same themes but more subtly developed etc.

The arctic trek in LHOD was amazing though. Got 'The Word for World is Forest' in the post for next..!
 

blacktulip

Pregnant with mandrakes
Got 'The Word for World is Forest' in the post for next..!

One edition of this has one of the worst piece-of-shit-PB covers ever!

262rv6g.jpg
 

blacktulip

Pregnant with mandrakes
And while looking for it on the google I found one of the best! Total done-by-a-talented-14-year-old glory.

THE+SLEEPING+SORCERESS.jpg
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
One edition of this has one of the worst piece-of-shit-PB covers ever!

262rv6g.jpg

Oh my god! Why are so many sci fi covers so fucking terrible!

My other half keeps looking at what I'm reading and giving me pitying looks cos there's so terrible 80s spaceship on the cover and I'm like, 'no it's an amazing honest'.

The order ULG wrote them in is not the order the books are set in - nor are they that directly linked I don't think. These ones all take place in the Hainish universe I think. I think Dispossessed in first in the history of the universe - the technology is at the most basic, but I say yeah go for it, super book.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Just finished Alfred Bester's 'The demolished man' - brilliant freudian take on sci-fi/detective fiction, a moral tale but not too heavy-handed I thought. Only just discovered it came out in 1953 and was the very first Hugo award winner, very impressive for the time.

That Moorcock cover above is great. Never read any of his stuff, anyone got any recommendations? I've heard he's pretty patchy.
 
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grizzleb

Well-known member
Recently read Georges Perec - W or a tale of childhood, thought it was one of the better bits of fiction I've read in the last while. Really elegaic without ever pushing that feeling too obviously, all the sadness was in what wasn't said. The structure of it was so weird too and yet it gelled together so nicely into a whole.
 

blacktulip

Pregnant with mandrakes
Just finished Alfred Bester's 'The demolished man' - brilliant freudian take on sci-fi/detective fiction, a moral tale but not too heavy-handed I thought. Only just discovered it came out in 1953 and was the very first Hugo award winner, very impressive for the time.

That Moorcock cover above is great. Never read any of his stuff, anyone got any recommendations? I've heard he's pretty patchy.

I like Bester - The Stars My Destination was very good. As for Moorcock, I recommend the Pyat Quartet at least. No experience with any of the many others.
 

jenks

thread death
Recently read Georges Perec - W or a tale of childhood, thought it was one of the better bits of fiction I've read in the last while. Really elegaic without ever pushing that feeling too obviously, all the sadness was in what wasn't said. The structure of it was so weird too and yet it gelled together so nicely into a whole.

I think Perec does that particular elegiac thing so well without ever dropping over into mawkish. He is also able to have quite rigid pomo structural devices which bend and yield and feel 'natural' - I recently re-read Life:A User's manual and was struck by how compelling it was despite being created using such a complex set of rules and regs - the structure seemingly liberating the story teller rather than being an academic straitjacket creating a dry and worthy tale.
W is particularly poignant, especially when you start reading into Perec's past - the Bellos biog, if you can track it down is worth a read on its own.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Just read The White Hotel by DM Thomas - very enjoyable mixture of dreams, psychoanalysis and the holocaust. Powerful stuff I thought - thanks for the loan Bangpuss. Then I started reading Mason Dixon by Pynchon, really enjoyed the first seventy odd pages but then somehow, despite it being a huge book of seven hundred pages or so, I managed to lose it. So I'm reading Tender is the Night instead, racing through that and really enjoying it, also deals with psychoanalysis in the second part so goes well with The White Hotel. Totally unexpected after being all jazz age kinda stuff in the first part. It's great so far... after that finally gonna go for Swann's Way by Proust which I just picked up in a charity shop.
 
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