Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Paradise Lost

I enjoyed this. Two bits that made me laugh:

* the phrase "Access denied" when Satan can't get into Eden, like he's forgotten his login details, and

* Adam referring to Eve as "the wife" like a naff Cockney stand-up.
 

robin

Well-known member
Just finished the Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald, its unlike anything I've ever read, its a short, easy read but every sentence is perfect and there's a lot to think about - highly recommended.
 

droid

Well-known member
Ive been ranting about Laird Barron in the Lovecraft thread, but this guy really is incredible.

Just finished the last of his published books. 'The light is the darkness', and its a bit of a departure - obvious Lovecraft influences again, but via Palahnuik and Burroughs rather than Ballard this time. Semi sci-fi too - a cloned uber-centurion blundering around time and space pursuing his lost sister and various child eating ultra-bourgeois cultists.

Other than that, the short stories are all amazing. 'Imago' is probably the weakest, and that's saying something. 'Occultation' and 'beautiful thing' really build up the mythos with recurring themes, locations and characters and are genuinely creepy in places.

I think his other full length 'The Croning', though great by most standards, is the least satisfying as it perhaps tries a bit too hard to pull all the strands together (it refers to various short stories) and solidify the mythos. Still well worth a read, but Id do it after the short stories.

Tea - you have GOT to check this guy out.
 

you

Well-known member
I obvious Lovecraft influences again, but via Palahnuik and Burroughs rather than Ballard this time.
- SOLD!!!

Been reading more Bolano recently, Savage Detectives on Tea's recommendation that it has more sex. It has.

Ripped through Ellroy's Silent Terror the other day - awesome book, cold.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Been reading more Bolano recently, Savage Detectives on Tea's recommendation that it has more sex. It has.

I'm sure this isn't the first time I've been mistakenly credited with a recommendation of a book I haven't actually read! Although I do mean to read it, I thought 2666 was majestic but it's the only Bolano I've read so far. (Edit edit: AFAIR 2666 has plenty of sex in it, most of decidedly non-consensual...)

I started Jonathan Meades's Pompey last night (having had it signed by the author yesterday, fanboy that I am). From what I've read so far it promises to be as fucked-up as Filthy English, which is saying something. My girlfriend bought a copy of his new quasi-autobiog, so I'll probably read that afterwards.

I know Meades's TV shows get a lot of love here, anyone else a fan of his writing? Museum Without Walls was superb, I thought, despite including a lot of material I was familiar with from his programmes.

Edit: in case anyone was wondering, The Sleep Room had a great premise and a few genuinely spooky bits but ultimately was a bit disappointing, I thought. The love interest was largely superfluous, for one thing, and the narrator must be the only heterosexual man in the universe who, immediately upon having red-hot sex with a foxy blonde nurse, falls to fantasizing about setting up home with her in a lovely house in Hampstead complete with chintz sofas. Chintz sofas! :confused:
 
Last edited:

jenks

thread death
Tea - mad keen Meades fan and would recommend pretty much all of it - if you can get hold of his earlier journalism - Peter Knows What Dick Likes - it explains pretty much all of his obsessions and influences.
Pompey came out to great fanfares a rather long time ago now but then it kind of died a death, there was one further novel about a family of undertakers (title escapes me) and I'm guessing he went back to the drawing board and pursued the TV essay format on Nazis, architecture in Brum and other such delights, while being paid to eat incredible meals by The Times. I think Pomey is maybe a little in need of an editor but I wonder how you deal with this great sprawling imagination if you are an editor - part of its appeal is its messy excess - especially as it's subject matter is so messy and excessive.
Anyway, hope you enjoy it.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I've been intermittently reading 2666 as part of my ongoing campaign to keep my Spanish sharp and improve my more advanced vocabulary by reading Spanish-language novels, history, etc in the original. Only about 60 pages in but it seems pretty great. I've never looked at a translated version but I'd be curious how well it comes over. Probably decently, because although he seems like a master of labyrinthine plot construction, allusion and so forth his actual prose is relatively straightforward.

Right now I'm more actively reading Tres Tristes Tigres by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, which is kind of like - so they say - what Ulysses is to English, in it's bending and conscious non-standard spellings, grammar, slang etc of a language. That's a book I imagine being virtually impossible to translate accurately, to get the particular flavor and cadences right. It's probably still pretty good in English tho; I'd recommend it.

Other random things I see here: I was recently recommended certain V.S. Naipaul works as a staple of postcolonial fiction (though I know Said excoriated him as a neocolonial stooge, so go figure) along with Achebe, J.G. Farrell, etc.

Oh yeah and I read "Gentlemen of the Road", or most of it, by Chabon. Like everything else I've ever tried to read by the guy, it's great, wildly inventive ideas marred by a lack of execution. Still: it's basically the stock fantasy thief/barbarian duo, reimagined as a pair of dissimilar Jewish Han Solo types on the loose in 9th century Khazaria. Fucking cool, man.

A ton of non-fiction too but I won't even try to get into that.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
other random shit I been into lately: The Trial of Socrates by I.F. Stone (fucking great, especially if you have at least a decent grasp on Socrates/Plato/Aristotle), the Anabasis by Xenophon (Socrates's second most famous student), the book Robert Hardy wrote on longbows (super super cool), The Jewish Question by Abram Leon (reworking of Marx's infamous pamphlet, by a young Belgian Jewish Marxist who was shortly thereafter liquidated at Auschwitz, on the economic history of Jews in Europe; fascinating), a biography of Saigo Takamori, Foucault on Manet, other shit I can't remember
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I've been intermittently reading 2666 as part of my ongoing campaign to keep my Spanish sharp and improve my more advanced vocabulary by reading Spanish-language novels, history, etc in the original.

Would appreciate any recommendations for spanish novels, especially modern/contemporary stuff. Thought about taking on Bolano but I doubt I´m ready for it yet. Marquez is an obvious one, but tbh I´m not really a big fan. Borges is great but a bit challenging in the original (made it through a few short stories from ´El Aleph´).

My best find so far has been Juan Rulfo - ´El llano en llamas´ and ´Pedro Paramo´, both incredible. You read him yet?
 

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa (translated)
A swordsman’s journey as he discovers the way of the sword, zen, love and politics in 17th century Japan.

The First Law Trilogy – Joe Abercrombie
Lots of gory dark killing, nice easy read though I thought the end was a bit abrupt.
 

droid

Well-known member
The first law sequels are good. 'The heroes' in particular.

Vagabond is an excellent manga version of the Musashi tale. Can be found online.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Would appreciate any recommendations for spanish novels

Dunno man, I kind of just got into it. the first serious book I read all the way through in Spanish was Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a first-hand account of the conquest of the Aztecs, and that is a truly mind-blowing book. It has novelistic qualities but also reminds me of some of the Scandinavian sagas in its straightforwardness. I'd recommend it. that whole historical episode is mind-blowing, really.

Don't think Bolaño's super hard to read. The plots are vast and complicated but the actual prose is, again, pretty straightforward. Tres Tristes Tigres is cool but a really hard read. I'd like to reread La Muerte de Artemio Cruz which I read in English years ago. Alejo Carpentier, Reinaldo Arenas, José María Arguedas. Just got a copy of Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina by Galeano. I've also been reading history, a bunch of other conquistador primary documents, and this history of Chiapas I have. Oh yeah I have read some Borges stories too, again they're conceptually incredibly advanced but the prose itself isn't that hard to follow.

I've never read Juan Rulfo but he's definitely on my to-read list.
 
Last edited:

faustus

Well-known member
Would appreciate any recommendations for spanish novels, especially modern/contemporary stuff. Thought about taking on Bolano but I doubt I´m ready for it yet.

Hi Benny. Still in Spain then?

I don't think Bolaño is too hard - try the early stuff like La Pista de Hielo and El Tercer Reich. I read through his stuff in order and lost interest after slogging through Savage Detectives

Almudena Grandes is a great novelist, but her books are all really long. El Lector de Julio Verne might be a good one to start with. Rafael Chirbes is my favourite, but he is much harder than Bolaño or Márquez

Also, read El Jueves (la revista que sale los miércoles). That's the best way to improve Spanish
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Currently reading the new K-Punk book, Burroughs Reader, Burroughs Discography, Polanski Memoirs, film textbook, "Notes From The Underground", another book on film, others...

Finished up the LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka compiled fiction. His last novel was really good, but The System Of Dante's Hells is kind of shit to me... IDK. Also read other stuff. Once I kill a few more books I want to read Frankenstein and maybe Last Temptation of Christ.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Along with Meades and Ligotti (now *there's* a pairing!) I recently picked up Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red again after getting about 1/4 of the way through and then mislaying it about a year ago when I moved house. Which is never really the ideal way to get through a novel, but hey ho. Anyone familiar with it? It centres on a murder mystery among a community of illustrators who've been tasked with producing an impossibly lavish book for the Ottoman sultan in 16th century Istanbul. The narrative is kind of all over the place and it's full of little digressions and po-mo flourishes but it's beautifully written and you really get a great flavour of the culture and society of that place and time - rooted in the Islamic middle ages but on the cusp of early modernity and being influenced artistically by the European Renaissance, along with a conservative reaction against that influence, a hardline religious revival and so on and so on.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah, read a few Pamuk. I think I ultimately decided that he's too annoying to bother with really but there are always some interesting ideas in there.
 
Top