Martin, that is a quality list! It's not often you see Marie Kondo (which I also liked) next to Mick Norman! I used to have one of the Chopper books when I was at school which was kinda mind blowing. Had lots of earnest 11 year old conversation about whether it was really racist or not (the cardinal sin) with my Indian mates. We all liked the book so much we didn't want to acknowledge our hero was in fact a fucking nazi.
what are you reading now?
Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis.
IdleRich
IdleRich
What is the significance of the ones in bold?
I read The Ballad of Peckham Rye this year too, what did you make of it?
Boris Vian - so massive in the rest of the world but little read in the UK for some reason (though probably more so on Dissensus). Saw a production of Foam of the Daze (or whatever you want to call it) in Oxford a few... actually probably twelve years or so ago now which got me interested. There is also at least one film of it but it's a bit cutesy.
luka
Well-known member
Eden instituted this convention.
I didn't really see any racism* in 'Angels From Hell', though that's the only one of his I've read. Whereas Richard Allen's skinhead books are full of whinging about immigrants and lefties, and usually have at least one "watch your backs, lads" moment. Norman's writing's a lot better and more gritty; I think he had legit connections to the underground (there's a joke early on with a news report about J. Cornelius going missing on his yacht 'Stormbringer') - whereas Allen just comes across as some sozzled old fart, basing his knowledge of youth cults on whatever he read in the Daily Mail that morning.
I like the bit in the Marie Kondo book where she reveals she regularly throws her husband's clothes away, to declutter the wardrobe - and when he goes "Have you see my...uh..." three months later, she reckons that just proves her point. I haven't actually thanked my socks yet, though - let me know if it works?
(*There's an odd, out of place chapter in The Rats too where the protagonist and his fiance go for a weekend break to escape the London rat attacks, and he suddenly goes into some rant about tourists and foreign accents destroying the atmosphere. Dunno if there's some covert 'invasion' subtext going on...)
I'M MORE BRITISH THAN YOU ARE, FUCK-FACE!
Feels like Trump rambled into a dictaphone and whoever he paid to edit it just transcribed it verbatim.
Keep cool, don't let your emotions interfere with negotiations, always keep your word, I'm not in it for the money, never forgot my friends, it's a rough old business, gave a zillion to charity, etc etc. Not too much insight on how it's gonna go down on 6th January.
I got a bit obsessed with "...Peckham Rye" and ended up having to look at Google Maps, the area must have been so different in the '50s (I get the same disconnect when she writes about Kensington, immediately post-WW2). I really liked it, she does this seamless flipping between past/present/future thing so well, and it's interesting seeing her lampoon the uselessness of HR and office management before it became an industry in itself.
I was starting to get a bit irked with the Vian one and thought it was going to stay cutesy throughout. And then it smacked me over the head...
(yeah, just copying John's/Danny's bolds for the standouts).
IdleRich
IdleRich
It was interesting, I actually read something about someone trying to do a pub crawl based on the places in the book but it was useless cos most of the pubs were totally fictional and of those that were either real or at least based on a real place ninety percent of them had gone.
Oh yeah, the book is not (entirely) cutesy but the film with the girl from Amelie (I think) kinda was. Probably you read I Spit On Your Graves which is not cute AT ALL.
jenks
thread death
Re/Reading 2020
Essays – Lydia Davies
Pages from the Goncourt Journals – Bros Goncourt
Insurrecto – Gina Apostol
La Bas – Huysmans
Vertigo and Ghost – Fiona Benson
Will and Testament – Vigdis Hjorth
In the Land of Pain – Alphonse Daudet
The Peregrine – J A Baker
The Proust Screenplay – Harold Pinter
The Penguin Book of Oulipo ed Phillip Terry
I Remember – Georges Perec
Endland – Tim Etchells
Proleterka – Fleur Jaeggy
Night Thoughts ed Simon Winder
A Misalliance – Anita Brookner
David – Anita Brookner
The Quarry – Ben Halls
We Are Made of Diamond Stuff – Isabel Waidner
The Lime Tree – Cesar Aira
Sloot – Ian Macpherson
Leonard and Hungry Paul – Ronan Hession
Anathemata – David Jones
Love – Hanne Ostravik
Broken Jaw – Minioli Salgado
Animalia – Jean Baptiste Del Amo
The Mirror and the Light – Hilary Mantel
Northern Alchemy – Christine De Luca
Portrait of a Man – Georges Perec
An Apartment on Uranus – Paul B Preciado
A Girl’s Story – Annie Ernaux
Love’s work – Gillian Rose
Jakob von Gunten – Robert Walser
The Soul of Kindness – Elisabeth Taylor
How Pale the Winter has Made Us – Adam Scovell
Closing the Reading Gap – Alex Quigley
The Sight of Death – T J Clark
In Night’s City – Dorothy Nelson
Lady with the Lapdog and Other Stories – Checkhov
Travels with a Writing Brush Classical Japanese Writing
Jolts – Fernando Sdrigotti
Charlieunclenorfolktango – Tony White
The Earliest English Poetry ed Alexander
First Love – Turgenev
A Friend from England – Anita Brookner
I’m Afraid That’s all We’ve Got Time For – Jen Callej
The Scarlet and Black – Stendhal
Clothes for a Summer Hotel – Tennessee Williams
Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh: Tennessee Williams – John Lahr
Jerusalem – Jez Butterworth
The Pitman Painters – Lee hall
Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads – Roy Williams
Quiet Flows the Una – Faruk Sehic
The Christmas Books Vol 1 – Charles Dickens
The Five – Hallie Rubenhold
Latecomers – Anita Brookner
Chaucer – Turner
Making Kids Cleverer – David Didau
The Romance of American Communism – Vivian Gornick
In Her Room – James Cook
The Perpetual Orgy – Mario Vargas LLosa
Dubliners – James Joyce
Absolom, Absolom! - William Faulkner
Myths and Memories – Gilbert Adair
Exterminate All the Brutes – Sven Lindqvist
Mr Beethoven – Paul Griffiths
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Terror and Wonder: The Gpthic Imagination
Square Haunting – Francesca Wade
Vernon Subutex III – Virginie Despentes
Little Dancer aged Fourteen – Camille Laurens
Paris – Hope Mirrlees
The Liar’s Dictionary – Eley Williams
The Sound Mirror – Heidi James
Plainspeak – Astrid Alben
The Journal of Disappointed Man – W N P Barbellion
Anquetil, alone – Paul Fournel
Egress – Matt Colquhoun
Lewis Percy – Anita Brookner
Becoming Dickens – Douglas-Fairhurst
Little Eyes – Samantha Schweblin
Where There’s a Will – Emily Chappell
Jacob’s Advice – Jude Cook
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Need For the Bike – Paul Fournel
Normal People – Sally Rooney
The Appointment – Katharina Volkmer
King Kong Theory – Virginie Despentes
Index Cards – Moyra Davey
Licorice – Bridget Penney
Not Far From The Junction – Will Ashon
Mordew – Alex Pheby
I am not Sidney Poitier – Percival Everett
The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem
Gironimo – Tim Moore
Country – Michael Hughes
On Michael Jackson – Margo Jefferson
A Musical Offering – Luis Sagasti
Suppose a Sentence – Brian Dillon
New passengers – Tine Hoeg
Mystery Train – Greil Marcus
The Hitler Conspiracies – Richard j Evans
The Leopard – Lampedusa
Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon – Simon Okotie
The Beast, Emperor and The Milkman – Harry Pearson
Citizen – Claudia Rankine
A Man’s Place – Annie Ernaux
Essex Girls – Sarah Perry
Intimations – Zadie Smith
The Invisibles – Grant Morrison
Xstabeth – David Keenan
Autumn – Ali Smith
Psychic Self Defence – Dion Fortune
The Middle of a sentence -ed the Common Breath
Propositions – Amy McAuley
Ficciones – Borges
Broken Consort – Will Eaves
Spring Journal – Jonathan Gibbs
This Paradise – Ruby Cowling
Thoughts of Sorts – Georges Perec
The Ballad of Syd and Morgan - Haydn Middleton
Land of Second Chances – Tim Lewis
The Nacullians – Craig Jordan-Baker
Poor – Caleb Femi
Death Sweat of the Cluster - Znore
Essays – Lydia Davies
Pages from the Goncourt Journals – Bros Goncourt
Insurrecto – Gina Apostol
La Bas – Huysmans
Vertigo and Ghost – Fiona Benson
Will and Testament – Vigdis Hjorth
In the Land of Pain – Alphonse Daudet
The Peregrine – J A Baker
The Proust Screenplay – Harold Pinter
The Penguin Book of Oulipo ed Phillip Terry
I Remember – Georges Perec
Endland – Tim Etchells
Proleterka – Fleur Jaeggy
Night Thoughts ed Simon Winder
A Misalliance – Anita Brookner
David – Anita Brookner
The Quarry – Ben Halls
We Are Made of Diamond Stuff – Isabel Waidner
The Lime Tree – Cesar Aira
Sloot – Ian Macpherson
Leonard and Hungry Paul – Ronan Hession
Anathemata – David Jones
Love – Hanne Ostravik
Broken Jaw – Minioli Salgado
Animalia – Jean Baptiste Del Amo
The Mirror and the Light – Hilary Mantel
Northern Alchemy – Christine De Luca
Portrait of a Man – Georges Perec
An Apartment on Uranus – Paul B Preciado
A Girl’s Story – Annie Ernaux
Love’s work – Gillian Rose
Jakob von Gunten – Robert Walser
The Soul of Kindness – Elisabeth Taylor
How Pale the Winter has Made Us – Adam Scovell
Closing the Reading Gap – Alex Quigley
The Sight of Death – T J Clark
In Night’s City – Dorothy Nelson
Lady with the Lapdog and Other Stories – Checkhov
Travels with a Writing Brush Classical Japanese Writing
Jolts – Fernando Sdrigotti
Charlieunclenorfolktango – Tony White
The Earliest English Poetry ed Alexander
First Love – Turgenev
A Friend from England – Anita Brookner
I’m Afraid That’s all We’ve Got Time For – Jen Callej
The Scarlet and Black – Stendhal
Clothes for a Summer Hotel – Tennessee Williams
Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh: Tennessee Williams – John Lahr
Jerusalem – Jez Butterworth
The Pitman Painters – Lee hall
Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads – Roy Williams
Quiet Flows the Una – Faruk Sehic
The Christmas Books Vol 1 – Charles Dickens
The Five – Hallie Rubenhold
Latecomers – Anita Brookner
Chaucer – Turner
Making Kids Cleverer – David Didau
The Romance of American Communism – Vivian Gornick
In Her Room – James Cook
The Perpetual Orgy – Mario Vargas LLosa
Dubliners – James Joyce
Absolom, Absolom! - William Faulkner
Myths and Memories – Gilbert Adair
Exterminate All the Brutes – Sven Lindqvist
Mr Beethoven – Paul Griffiths
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Terror and Wonder: The Gpthic Imagination
Square Haunting – Francesca Wade
Vernon Subutex III – Virginie Despentes
Little Dancer aged Fourteen – Camille Laurens
Paris – Hope Mirrlees
The Liar’s Dictionary – Eley Williams
The Sound Mirror – Heidi James
Plainspeak – Astrid Alben
The Journal of Disappointed Man – W N P Barbellion
Anquetil, alone – Paul Fournel
Egress – Matt Colquhoun
Lewis Percy – Anita Brookner
Becoming Dickens – Douglas-Fairhurst
Little Eyes – Samantha Schweblin
Where There’s a Will – Emily Chappell
Jacob’s Advice – Jude Cook
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Need For the Bike – Paul Fournel
Normal People – Sally Rooney
The Appointment – Katharina Volkmer
King Kong Theory – Virginie Despentes
Index Cards – Moyra Davey
Licorice – Bridget Penney
Not Far From The Junction – Will Ashon
Mordew – Alex Pheby
I am not Sidney Poitier – Percival Everett
The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem
Gironimo – Tim Moore
Country – Michael Hughes
On Michael Jackson – Margo Jefferson
A Musical Offering – Luis Sagasti
Suppose a Sentence – Brian Dillon
New passengers – Tine Hoeg
Mystery Train – Greil Marcus
The Hitler Conspiracies – Richard j Evans
The Leopard – Lampedusa
Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon – Simon Okotie
The Beast, Emperor and The Milkman – Harry Pearson
Citizen – Claudia Rankine
A Man’s Place – Annie Ernaux
Essex Girls – Sarah Perry
Intimations – Zadie Smith
The Invisibles – Grant Morrison
Xstabeth – David Keenan
Autumn – Ali Smith
Psychic Self Defence – Dion Fortune
The Middle of a sentence -ed the Common Breath
Propositions – Amy McAuley
Ficciones – Borges
Broken Consort – Will Eaves
Spring Journal – Jonathan Gibbs
This Paradise – Ruby Cowling
Thoughts of Sorts – Georges Perec
The Ballad of Syd and Morgan - Haydn Middleton
Land of Second Chances – Tim Lewis
The Nacullians – Craig Jordan-Baker
Poor – Caleb Femi
Death Sweat of the Cluster - Znore
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh just fuck off already.