Contemporary books
- Thread starter Corpsey
- Start date
forclosure
Well-known member
i've got a mix of stuff but honestly @Corpsey what it really comes down to is what kind of contemporary books you want to read, this anxiety is a classic one and it's to do with the feeling that you're not keeping up as far as whatever conversation is going on in the "zeitgeist" like you must throw whatever it is to one side to make sure that you're in on the goings on.
For me i've always been out the loop and tend to come to things when i feel like it and if it just so happens to line up right in the middle of the moment then so be it, some of it might be just that you need to check out smaller publishers or get more into looking into stuff that people are putting out online on blogs/tumblr and yes even fanfiction if need be
Have you ever thought about maybe reading more queer literature for instance? cause that might be something to look into or if you're talking non-fiction stuff or maybe fiction
but also one other thing that's worth mentioning is certain old book that have been out of print for decades get reissued so like slowly but surely Tor Books have been reissueing John M Ford's stuff which i've read 2 of them The Dragon Waiting (really good really smart) and The Scholars at Night (80s cold war thriller but the Christopher Marlowe stuff brings a unique slant) so there's always "new old stuff" coming out aswell
For me i've always been out the loop and tend to come to things when i feel like it and if it just so happens to line up right in the middle of the moment then so be it, some of it might be just that you need to check out smaller publishers or get more into looking into stuff that people are putting out online on blogs/tumblr and yes even fanfiction if need be
Have you ever thought about maybe reading more queer literature for instance? cause that might be something to look into or if you're talking non-fiction stuff or maybe fiction
but also one other thing that's worth mentioning is certain old book that have been out of print for decades get reissued so like slowly but surely Tor Books have been reissueing John M Ford's stuff which i've read 2 of them The Dragon Waiting (really good really smart) and The Scholars at Night (80s cold war thriller but the Christopher Marlowe stuff brings a unique slant) so there's always "new old stuff" coming out aswell
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
LIGHTS and POEMS are the best two 'contemporary' books I've read in years.
Granted, I haven't really read any others, but I'm fairly sure they're the best.
Granted, I haven't really read any others, but I'm fairly sure they're the best.
woops
is not like other people
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
forclosure
Well-known member
incidentaly i did start a Marlon James thread who is about as big name a contemporary black author you can get at this point,in part i started it because how the FUCK had nobody done one on here yet
luka
Well-known member
this is the only new thing ive read. i tried to read a new novel by some slovakian jungian but it was awful.
shakahislop
Well-known member
the other thing i notice a lot in the contemporary books i end up reading, which i guess you could call 'vaguely intellectual but that intellectual mainstream' as a genre, associated with what i was saying about how rich and fancy the characters are (and essentially as a result the kinds of experiences the books are trying to describe), is how much they talk about international travel. that patricia lockwood one that's mentioned in this thread has her popping all over the place. the rachel cusk books i talked about are the same. the david szalay one Turbulence too, although that's very directly about planes and travel. the thing they have in common isn't just that they talk about travel so much, its that they talk about travel like it's nothing, a piece of cake, easy peasy, just what you do
woops
is not like other people
Surely you enjoy that though
Cos it's what you do all the time
shakahislop
Well-known member
Yeah. I'm not necessarily saying that's something offputting. And it is interesting to triangulate that experience with other people. I find the class composition part offputting because it makes some of what they're describing hard to relate to. That is the thing with a lot of these books, so many of them are about people who basically don't need to work for a living.
One thing though that I notice in the Lockwood book, in Rachel Cusk, and in other books as well, is how detached they seem to be from the places they're going. It captures something I think, deliberately or not, about the limitations of that kind of travel. I'm interested in all of that obviously.
woops
is not like other people
Why they have the time to lounge around writing novels presumably
shakahislop
Well-known member
i guess its a mixture isn't it. obviously writing a book is a job and a difficult thing to do. but it is probably - i know this is an argument everyone has heard before - way easier to do something which has what i imagine as having such a slim chance of ever paying you enough to live off if you basically don't really need an income. i've never been around that world but i'm imagining that's how it works.
jenks
thread death
Mate, it’s books - no one… listens but you express an opinion on Japanese dubstep or something and it goes on for weeks.
jenks
thread death
Not much to disagree with here - I love finding out of favour older writers but also the best stuff over the past few years had come from small presses, especially work in translation - great stuff from former Yugoslavia from Istros, French women from Les Fugitives, Latin American from Charco, and other stories, plus good stuff in English from loads of small houses Influx, Bluemoose, Stinging Fly, Galley Beggar and obviously Fitzcarraldo. Think about them as being like independent record labels all with their specialities.
if you could be a bit more specific - you wouldn’t have made a similar complaint on the forum about contemporary music
woops
is not like other people
I'm going to smash your fucking face in
haven't read him for a long time but Ian McEwan is so London literary middle class it's painful. Protagonist in massive house in Primrose Hill etc.
And Corpsey, read some poetry. The most exciting new writing I've seen is there:
www.hempressbooks.com
www.brokensleepbooks.com
Thriving scene of this sort of stuff you can plug into on Twitter.
Just Meat Not God by JD Howse — Hem Press
A series of ekphrastic sonnets on the paintings of Francis Bacon, JD Howse’s Just Meat Not God revels in filth and ecstasy. Conceived as a hauntological reading of Bacon’s extraordinary career, this full-length collection further explores the paintings’ relationship to sickness, homosexuality, and w
www.hempressbooks.com
Briony Hughes - Dorothy | Broken Sleep Books
Briony Hughes’ Dorothy flows using a series of ‘via’ poems to explore the relationship of the River Thames to the politics of the female body and beyond. Dorothy is a secret history, or better, a reclaiming of history, salvaging centuries of silenced women from the tide; the patriarchal...
www.brokensleepbooks.com
Thriving scene of this sort of stuff you can plug into on Twitter.
Again to borrow Jenks record label analogy this is the repress division.