| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10628 Registered: 05-2005 |
Daniel Clowes - Wilson | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2246 Registered: 10-2006 |
Tough Crowd – Graham Linehan Between the (entertaining and informative) first part and the (agonising) second part, GL, once a rock writer himself, recalls a nugget regarding the NME’s frankly weird 1986 idea of getting a funk/dance critic to review the GB’s Liberty Belle album and a rock/pop critic to review Prince’s Parade – the former of course self-confessed enormous admirers of the latter – and placing them in face to face conflict on opposing pages, thus procuring two highly negative reviews of two stupendous works. High five! | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 520 Registered: 02-2007 |
The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 521 Registered: 02-2007 |
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4889 Registered: 03-2005 |
Revolutionary Spirit - Paul Simpson "Sitting on the yellowed Formica shelf beneath the strip-lit mirror surround in the girls' toilets in Eric's . . . we're just talking about great new bands and what sessions Peelie played on his show last night when a submarine-deep voice with a cartoon Scouse accent thick as molasses enters the conversation. 'Way-o! Av yer seen the 'ed on that bouncer? It looks like it's made of soddin' granite. What a no-mark!' It takes a moment for my brain to translate this near gibberish to 'Hello all. Did any of you happen to notice the doorman's unique physiognomy? He's a loser." I'm staring into a pair of spectacle lenses so thick they magnify dust mites. At first I think they're being worn as some kind of punk affectation, like Pete's plastic lobster or the toilet seat he used to wear around his neck. 'Alright, Mac!' says Wylie. I'm agog. This! This is the legendary Ian McCulloch? The bloke everyone has been banging on about for weeks? No way could I ever be friends with this guy. I mean, check him out -- he's got the fashion sense of a halibut. I'm fascinated. Leaning in close enough to do retinal surgery on me, Mac assesses and judges me on the spot. 'Good cheekbones,' he deadpans. 'But you'll look like Peter Cushing when yer old.' I think I've passed his audition." I'm a big fan of early Wild Swans and get enough enjoyment out of the rest (even "Space Flower") and have always loved the Abba-esque camp of Care's "Flaming Sword". I'm only a third of the way into the book so far but it starts with a fraught account of the 2016 version of the Wild Swans (yes!) touring the Philippines (yes, again!) in the path of a couple typhoons. It then starts over with something I always lap up: a scattershot account of milestones growing up late baby-boomer Britain when you're from a somewhat fractured household. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2250 Registered: 10-2006 |
Entertaining reading. The Wild Swans flew right by me, unfortunately. Why are they sitting in the girls' loos? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4890 Registered: 03-2005 |
Punk clubs in Liverpool were apparently more relaxed about that sort of thing at the time. A quick musical intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdrLarbW EMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbzbpJGt VPM Their 2016 album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbaGkwUS HDE And for the sheer trashy pop joy, Simpson's collaboration with Ian Broudie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCmjyYE O2c | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 522 Registered: 02-2007 |
Black Spring - Henry Miller | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2058 Registered: 08-2006 |
You Dreamed of Empires – Álvaro Enrigue One of the more original and exciting novels I've read recently. Kind of a reimagining of the fateful meeting between Moctezuma and Cortez in what would become Mexico City. Enrigue obviously has a crazy amount of knowledge about the great Mayan city and its culture, but the way it's woven into the narrative, plus the inclusion of fictitious people and events, jettisons it outside what I'd call "historical fiction." Recommended to anyone who's a fan of the great Latin American novelists, Mexican history or just likes a book that's simultaneous a page-turner and a mind trip. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2254 Registered: 10-2006 |
Sounds good, Rob! As long as nobody levitates in it, I'll give it a try. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2255 Registered: 10-2006 |
As for the Wild Swans, well, there was no reason for me never to like them, that's for sure. The voice is always a deal-breaker for me, and Simpson's has just the kind of tender, slightly metallic warmth I like. Looking forward to more exploration. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 524 Registered: 02-2007 |
The Magician - Colm Tóibín | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4891 Registered: 03-2005 |
The Enrique book sounds really interesting Rob. I should be able to get it at my local bookstore. My knowledge of ancient American civilization is decidedly skimpy. Absorbing a bit of new information via a ripping good yarn written by somebody who knows what he's writing about sounds great. And, yes, I understand there are fictitious people and events but I'm a big picture/gestalt kind of guy rather than a details guy. If this novel can create the general sense of this massively important human collision it'll teach me a lot. And speaking of my not being a details guy I see that I wrote about a 2016 album and tour in my Wild Swans comments above. Ahem! It was a 2011 album and tour. Maybe I got my wires crossed with my own experience as I'm pretty sure I did not learn about that final Wild Swans album until after I moved to my current house in 2014. Maybe I got my copy in 2016. Who knows the workings of the enfeebling aging mind? I've become pretty tolerant of odd singing voices. I now consider them part of the individuality of an artist. What will make me immediately hit the "stop" button and discard the disc is if the voice has been subjected to digital tinkering such as auto-tune or vocorder effects. I will never want to hear a robot or machine sing. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2257 Registered: 10-2006 |
The autotune is the devil's work. Here in Italy, even talented singers resort to it because that's the expected sound for modern pop. Argh. The natural human voice is such an expressive instrument by itself, in all its varied forms, that tampering with it excessively always makes me shudder. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10643 Registered: 05-2005 |
Add me to the autotune hater’s list. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1548 Registered: 04-2005 |
And me too. Horrible noise. Personally I blame Peter Frampton and his vocoder on "Show Me The Way"  | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4892 Registered: 03-2005 |
I clean forgot about that Andrew! I guess he was a pioneer. My musical best friend and I used to make fun of that song for its rhymes. Back to the subject of books, I picked up a copy of "You Dreamed of Empires" at my local bookstore. It was in stock as I hoped, though I managed to overlook it the first time I went to the store for the purpose. The problem with the first attempt is that I went to look for the book several hours after reading Rob's recommendation and also a New York Times review. I hadn't bothered to refresh my recollection and only remembered that it has a yellow cover and the author's last name is Enriguez. I figured that was enough to find it, but it wasn't enough information to ask a clerk. So on that first visit I bought a copy of Patti Smith's "Just Kids" instead. Her era (and Robert Mapplethorpe's) in NYC is of great interest to me, before the city became a playground for the super wealthy and a hamster wheel for the stressed-out upper middle class. I have a lot of reading lined up! | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10652 Registered: 05-2005 |
American Scream - The Bill Hicks Story, by Cynthia True. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1550 Registered: 04-2005 |
Don Paterson - "Toy Fights: A Boyhood" Wonderful. The "London Magazine" says it better than I can about this book by Dundee poet and jazz guitarist. https://thelondonmagazine.org/review-toy -fights-a-boyhood-by-don-paterson/ His writing on music is opinionated and passionate and his description of Scottish tablet is hilarious. No wonder the nation has such bad teeth. My grandmother used to make it and you could almost sense your teeth dissolving in all that concentrated sweetness. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2261 Registered: 10-2006 |
Just had a quick flick through it, on the "still unread" shelves behind me. I think he grew up in part of Dundee I'd have been frightened to set foot in! (The same area also produced a very fine watercolour artist called Angus McEwan). Paterson's dad apparently worked in Draffens at one point, a department store with a basement record department where I bought some of my first LPs. Odd to see his granddad had four fingers on one hand, like my father! Will have to read the whole thing, one day. Oh god, tablet. Just the thought gives me nausea now, but as a lad it was a sweet slab of heaven. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4893 Registered: 03-2005 |
My dad used to make fudge and something called penoche that was unlike any candy I encountered anywhere else until he was under the cold ground and I visited a candy shop in Edinburgh. The shop was on the Royal Mile and obviously aimed at tourists so it didn't use the unfamiliar word "tablet" on the labels for the candy. I bought some out of curiosity and when I recognized the basic granular sugary texture with the underpinning of butter from my childhood I couldn't get enough. It was a very lucky thing my flight back to the States was the next day. Sometime later the Guardian ran an article on tablet. I hunted up a recipe and, by god, I managed to make an entirely successful batch. The problem is that I live alone. And I had already retired by then and thus had no office staff with whom I might share my achievement. Yes, I ate the entire flat of it. When Christmas rolled around I made another batch of tablet. Most of my friends couldn't deal with it. I guess they had to grow up in my family. But the guests at one of the Christmas dinners included a family with four sons spanning from teenage to young adult. It was fun to watch them sneaking up to the dish to snatch just one more piece as their parents were trying to get them out the door to go home. I definitely can't recommend it for a meal where you've had much wine though. It's quite a pitched battle that results in your stomach. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10653 Registered: 05-2005 |
Andrew, Stuart and Randy, I share your obvious sweet teeth and want some tablet. Next time I’m in Scotland I will seek it out. Are we morphing into a recipe swapping chat room in our autumn days? | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 780 Registered: 08-2005 |
I don't think my dentist, dental hygienist or my gum specialist dentist (sic) would be very impressed with tablet, which I'd never heard of and it doesn't do it for me... so my dental professionals can breathe a sigh of relief! (I've ongoing gum issues, hence the battery of people I see...) | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2262 Registered: 10-2006 |
I'll hold off on my fab leak quiche for the moment then... often the best part of tablet making was actually getting to scrape the condensed milk tin! Yum. Was a very Proustian moment when I went to work in Valencia and found they did a perfectly segregated espresso with condensed milk, called a "bon bon". Right, enough All our Scottish Yesterdays... back to the jangle! | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10655 Registered: 05-2005 |
What happened to Nina by Dervla McTiernan, a Perth-based Irish woman. That's Perth, WA, btw, not the original Perth in Scotland. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 525 Registered: 02-2007 |
Life Class - Pat Barker Toby's Room - Pat Barker | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2263 Registered: 10-2006 |
I thought she'd've exhausted her First World War inspiration with the Regeneration books, which I liked a lot, but it seems not. Good reading, David? I haven't been attracted by the Trojan stuff she's moved on to, but these sounds interesting. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 526 Registered: 02-2007 |
Another World, Border Crossing & Double Vision are also worth reading Stuart. These are not WW1 related. I agree the Regeneration series was quite remarkable and the two books I mentioned are in the same vein although the 2nd (Toby's Room) packs more of an emotional punch. Def worth reading. The usual war themes but this time the role of Art during war is explored. Some of the characters are Drawing students under the famous Surgeon/Artist Henry Tonks. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4894 Registered: 03-2005 |
An article in the New York Times about the art exhibit "Ladies Lounge" at the Museum of New and Old Art in Hobart. Men are not allowed to view the exhibit. Predictably a male has complained of discrimination. The exhibit was created by Kirsha Kaechele, an American it turns out. This passage caught my attention: "Ms. Kaechele, who is married to David Walsh, the founder of the museum, appeared at the hearing on Tuesday trailed by a phalanx of 25 women in pearls and navy suits, many of them also artists, who silently read feminist texts and posed, crossed their legs and applied lipstick in unison." How I would love to see that performance! And Lindy should be among those 25 women. Meanwhile the book I am slowly slogging my way through is the imaginatively-titled "Me" by Elton John. I'm not exactly an Elton John fan but someone handed the book off to me and I decided I might as well see what I might find that is interesting, especially from the early years. I think the only new thing I learned is that Long John Baldry was gay. Being the disciplined sort I am forcing myself to finish it. There's the usual drug-a-logue and tedious name-dropping of tedious famous friends and acquaintances but I'm hoping that by the time I'm done I'll have gotten something vaguely useful out of it aside from the tidbit about Baldry. I'm now at the phase where EJ meets his current partner David Furnish, with about a third of the volume to go. I suspect "Just Kids" will be far more interesting once I get to it. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10658 Registered: 05-2005 |
For those of you without an NYT log in, you can read my coverage of the story Randy mentioned here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article -13216533/Male-visitor-famous-art-museum -denied-entry-ladies-lounge-exhibition-t akes-venue-court.html?ico=authors_pagina tion_desktop | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10659 Registered: 05-2005 |
And there's a video of the ladies dancing here https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-20/m ona-ladies-lounge-legal-fight-men-exclud ed/103605236 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4895 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thank you for the links Pádraig. It's nice to see that even in comparatively small Tasmania people are making the citizenry stop and think about things we mostly take for granted. I believe TAS is one of the more conservative states and yet we see this terrific exhibit with a wonderful undercurrent of good humor. For all I know I may have to apply to Oz and flee to Tasmania myself if my house is invaded by a bunch of National Guard goons deputed from Texas and Arizona searching for nonexistent illegal aliens after the next Presidential inauguration, minus any undercurrent of good humor. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 527 Registered: 02-2007 |
Water - John Boyne Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 528 Registered: 02-2007 |
Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin I Am Mary Dunne - Brian Moore | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2269 Registered: 10-2006 |
Russian Roulette: the life and times of Graham Greene – Richard Greene A highly readable account of a highly readable life. Greene was a hurricane of a writer and personality, turning out meticulously crafted fiction on a diet of whisky, Benzedrine and opium while buzzing round global trouble spots, meeting and charming some of the most famous (and most dangerous) figures of his times in between brothel trips and the seduction of friends’ wives. Genius really does seem to have its own energy level. I’ve always felt his books come with a certain coldness to them, although the Power and the Glory knocked me sideways when I read it in my youth, but who am I to argue with those like Faulkner, Hemingway and Waugh who rated him up there with the very best. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 530 Registered: 02-2007 |
Completed the Pat Barker Life Class Trilogy with the final novel " Noonday" | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2270 Registered: 10-2006 |
Just bought vol. 1 when I was back in Edinburgh, David, in the excellent new Topping bookshop at the top of Leith Walk. So good to be in a bookshop again! Happy browsing for an hour or two. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4900 Registered: 03-2005 |
I've never read any Graham Greene, oddly enough. I finished "You Dreamed of Empires" a week or so ago. It did a great job of taking me into a world I'd never been, i.e., Aztec Mexico. It's shocking how ignorant I and most of my national contemporaries are about the pre-Columbian cultures in the Americas. I really enjoyed the mental pictures created of Tenoxtitlan and the way people may have lived there at the time of Cortez' visit. But the end of the short novel seemed so hurried and unsatisfying. Or maybe I just didn't get it. Now I'm reading a collection of Henry James tales. Yes, Stuart, Henry James again! I'm currently on a relatively short one called "The Pupil." From its longer more elaborate sentences I'm betting this was written during the later half of his career. I'm actually procrastinating about finishing this particular story, not because it's dull but rather because I'm afraid of what self-defeating things the narrator is going to do in its remaining pages. James is a brilliant psychological writer. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 531 Registered: 02-2007 |
Great Stuart, enjoy. Today I just finished Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy". His passing last week sadly made me finally reach for this book that had been sitting on my shelf for a while. Interesting & ambiguous stories. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2271 Registered: 10-2006 |
I have some Austers I’ve never read scattered around too, put off a little by a hazy idea of sophisticated, ironic vignettes of New York’s cultural elite. James I’ll get back to at some point, when I once again feel up to trying to bite into a spaghetti plate of smoke. But he is marvellously humanised in the Stevenson correspondence, a much loved guest and wonderful company, it seems. Greene’s Power and the Glory is, as I said, I think his out and out masterpiece and really worth a read. His batting average was pretty high, though, all in all. At the moment, I’m moving on with the complete Maigret saga, in sequence. Simenon’s average wasn’t bad either. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4901 Registered: 03-2005 |
I've never heard of either Barker or Austers so here are some possibilities for me to consider. I must correct my entry above. I should have written "the protagonist" where I wrote "the narrator." The story is written in the conventional third-person form. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 532 Registered: 02-2007 |
One of the stories is wonderfully written ("The Locked Room") Stuart, but I agree that this kind of self-referential postmodern style can come across as a tad pretentious. Today I just finished Colum McCann's novel "Zoli", a wonderfully written novel. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4902 Registered: 03-2005 |
Jeez, David, you must be a fast reader! What I've found for me is that the rhythm of the online experience has generally made it necessary for me to chop my reading sessions down to about 30 to 60 minutes. Plus I've always been a slow reader. (I basically read at the same speed I could read aloud.) As it is I ordered copies of the three books making up the Barker trilogy yesterday and have them steaming my way. Plus I also ordered a copy of "The Power and the Glory" since I've never read any Graham Greene. "Brideshead Revisited" being one of my favorite 20th Century British books, I'm guessing I'll enjoy Greene's exploration of the inner conflict between the sacred and the profane, or as an atheist like me might depict it: between the individual and the collective. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2272 Registered: 10-2006 |
Brideshead was Waugh’s finest novel, according to Greene, who was thought by Waugh himself to be the only person capable of turning out a decent screenplay of the book when a film was discussed (which was as far as it got at that time). Greene also said, “In the Mediterranean, you can see a pebble fifteen feet down. Waugh’s style was like that.” | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 533 Registered: 02-2007 |
Yeh Randy, now Ive almost fully retired i'm doing a lot of reading. 2 novels a week. Should start listening to music a bit more often. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4904 Registered: 03-2005 |
David, I've been retired for five and half years now. My days contain a mixture of listening to music, reading and other more physical stuff around the house and in the yard. While I'm never going to read as much as you are I've been enjoying the freedom to do so again. My parents got me hooked on reading when I was about 9 or 10 years old and it's been with me ever since. All credit to them for buying me a set of Readers Digest condensed classics at that time. Sure, condensed books are an abomination but they are a realistic way to get a very young kid interested in relatively heavy literature. I was reading proper full length novels soon enough and Dostoevsky and James Joyce by my high school years. Then I had the good fortune to room with another bookworm while in grad school at UCLA. From him I learned about the likes of E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh and Christopher Isherwood. During my working years I still read a lot of books but I did so much reading for my job that I just didn't have as much eyeball stamina for recreational reading once I got home. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 534 Registered: 02-2007 |
Randy, I remember reading some condensed novels as a teenager..Oliver Twist perhaps. Dickens can be a real challenge for the young reader. I read a great deal in my late teens and early 20s but work, family, life got in the way a bit and I got out of the habit. Music kinda filled the void, but I always would read poetry. About 5 years ago, I found myself living alone again, and rediscovered a love of reading. I usually alternate a literary work of some note with a crime novel. I am however reading some so called Classics this next coupla months. Reading Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones at the moment. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4905 Registered: 03-2005 |
David, our so-called prime years tend to crowd out reading. One of my important personal defects is that I've never had the serenity or whatever it is to be able to sit down and absorb poetry. I have friends who've written poetry off and on over the years and sadly it was pure pearls before swine with me. I've read Jones' "All Aunt Hagar's Children." I'll be interested in your impressions of "The Known World." I tend to overweight the "classics" in my reading, probably because those are predominantly what I read as a kid. It's good to see what you and Stuart and the others on this thread are reading so that I can at least occasionally branch out into the modern world and read something more current. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2273 Registered: 10-2006 |
Well, if you get round to Power & the Glory, then I’ll have managed to drag you up to 1940 at least! But classics are classics for a reason, and I often bless the name of the teacher who thrust a copy of Nicholas Nickelby into my paw and growled, “For god’s sake, Wilson, have a look and see what the 19th century had to offer…” What an eye-opener! Never expected a book written so long ago and so physically weighty to be so fresh and laugh-out-loud funny. I’m tremendously ignorant of most cutting-edge contemporary writers. I’ve loved everything Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written, but she seems to have stepped back from novels at the moment, unless she’s working on some monumental masterpiece, and she’s a very traditional sort of writer anyway. Probably no accident either that the most successful works by McEwan and Ishiguru lean so heavily on the 19th/early 20th century English country house novel. And when o when is dear old Vikram Seth going to finish the sequel to his own monumental good read A Suitable Boy? Meanwhile, on with the last volume of RLS's wonderful letters. What a wrench it will be to come to the end of them. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4907 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, as I will often do with old classics I ordered a secondhand copy of a fancy leatherbound edition from a seller on eBay. It's a childhood thing, my fetish for really nicely bound volumes. The price is usually no more than would be the case for a new ordinary cloth or cardboard hardcover copy. I received notice this morning that it should be delivered today. I've never gotten around to Nicholas Nickelby but I remember being astonished at the superb comic timing in The Pickwick Papers when I first read it, god knows how many years ago. Your recommendation of the Vikram Seth book was so right! It's a complete page-turner. I've tried to interest friends and family in it but they always balk at the 1400/1500 page length. Meanwhile, I'm slogging through the 150 pages of The Turn of the Screw. Famous as this is I don't think I've ever read it before and, so far still 45 pages from the finish, I find it overwrought and unconvincing. Maybe the end will save it, but right now I'm thinking "damn! his most famous work turns out to be a dud. No wonder people shrink from Henry James." In a way it makes me think of Notes from the Underground which I used to see college kids reading all the time. I've read The Brothers Karamozov and Crime and Punishment each 3 or 4 times, and I've read The Idiot and The Possessed once or twice but I didn't get around to the short little university chestnut until less than ten years ago. I found it virtually unreadable, infuriated that it wasn't half the length. As I normally do I forced myself to read it all the way through but decided that's why people have such a wary and often negative view of Dostoevsky as a writer. It seems that university literature profs force their students to slog through the worst offerings by authors. I suppose the theory is growth by hair shirt. So I'm finding 150 pages of The Turn of the Screw to be much more work than ten times as many pages of A Suitable Boy. Noting down Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I'm guessing she's an African writer. I haven't read an African author since I read The Gab Boys by Cameron Duodu probably 40 years ago. Meanwhile I have all three components of the Barker trilogy, bought from three different eBay sellers. It's like the crazy world of music. There's an inexhaustible supply. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 535 Registered: 02-2007 |
Stuart & Randy....I am really enjoying reading your threads. Fascinating stuff. I just finished "The Known World". It was a challenging & complex work, but I slowed my reading down, made a family tree to keep track of the huge cast of characters, and allowed the story & Jones' language time to work its magic. The story is about slavery and the way such an ugly institution (if that's the right word) destroyed lives & soured relationships. The moral complexities are highlighted by Jones focussing on a plantation actually run by black, freed ex-slaves who kept ownership of the slaves they inherited from previous white owners. Many minor characters are given a page or two of story by Jones which gave this an extra dimension perhaps. During the decade immediately before the Civil War, these characters find a way to survive, raise families, love, and live in this suffocating & threatening environment. To do so, many of these characters (especially the women) are extraordinarily powerful in facing (& transcending) the harsh realities of slavery. There are some unusual elements to the writing eg Jones often jumps ahead 50 yrs and tells us what happens to a particular character. I have read some Toni Morrison & quite a few Faulkner novels, and while I wouldn't put this up with some of these works (Beloved, Light In August, Absolom! etc) it is a fine book. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2274 Registered: 10-2006 |
Randy, you have to get round to NN and any other Dickens not yet read, remember, you need good basic forearm strength just to hold them up, especially if you like plush older volumes. The original illustrations are a must too. I’m sure Known World was on my to-buy list a year or so ago, just can’t remember if I actually got it or not. Have to scour the shelves. Glad you like Faulkner, David. What a writer! I’m half way through the very good Rollyson biography and looking forward to Michael Gorra’s The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War. Speaking of Gorra, he wrote one of my favourite recentish critical works on Henry J, Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece. Portrait of a Lady is kind of my stop-off place for HJ, with everything thereafter moving into hazier areas I find hard to navigate, and Gorra is an excellent, very physical presence guiding the reader through the book’s geographies. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 536 Registered: 02-2007 |
Jack Maggs - Peter Carey Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates The Secret History - Donna Tartt. Revolutionary Road was just simply one of the best books I have ever read. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4908 Registered: 03-2005 |
The Prophets - Robert Jones, Jr. This one owes a huge debt to Toni Morrison. You can do a lot worse for influences. Currently on Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory," just 60 pages in. I never knew anything about this phase in Mexico's history. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4910 Registered: 03-2005 |
A shout-out to Site Admin Jonathan who rescued my account which was suspended when I tried to change the email. That was the reason for my extended silence. I didn't feel like posting as a sad non-user. David, I'll read up on Revolutionary Road. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2276 Registered: 10-2006 |
Well, you’re certainly a satisfying person to recommend books to, Randy. People tell me about, or give me, books and it can take years before I get round to them. But I have two GBs board suggestions on my ever-mounting holiday reading pile, The Satsuma Complex and Life Class. Still several days of swithering to go before I decide what makes the final cut. My wife swore at me for a week or so as she laboured through P & the G, saying that it was too dark and made her feel ill and was there no good in the world etc etc though in the end she came round to the idea it was brilliant, if painful. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4912 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I do have a shelf of books waiting to be read that have sat there for several years. It's too obscure a location so they're out of sight and out of mind. Nowadays I tend to put my new acquisitions on the coffee table in several daunting stacks. That reminds of their presence and usually they'll be read within some sort of semi-reasonable time. Unfortunately I can't read at David's speed so I have to sometimes govern my urge to buy something. In the case of the Graham Greene I figured it was past due time for me to read something of his. But, yes, I have a bunch of other books still waiting to be read or--in the case of anthologies--waiting to be finished. For example I have a nice anthology of novels by William Maxwell that I've read to the extent of two of the included novels. He's a wonderfully understated and subtle mid-20th Century U.S. writer, but I generally want to switch from one writer to another once I've finished a novel. Consequently I will have to come back to this single volume repeatedly over time. I can see how The Power and The Glory might be hard going. It managed to insert itself into my dreams after my second sitting with it! The key for me is to follow books of this type with lighter fare. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2278 Registered: 10-2006 |
Enjoyable Sean O'Hagan (the other one) interview with the divine Francoise H from about 6 years ago. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/a pr/29/francoise-hardy-interview-personne -d-autre-album | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2059 Registered: 08-2006 |
I don't think it's been mentioned here, but big thumbs up for "James," by Percival Everett. It's not a retelling, exactly, of Huck Finn but more of a reposition of it through the experience of the title character (Jim, the slave, in Twain's original). If someone playing around with a literary classic sounds distasteful or gimmicky, this novel is really a unique work and a hell of an achievement. And, no, you don't need to have read Huck Finn, it just adds a bit of fun when he reframes a set piece from the original novel. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2279 Registered: 10-2006 |
Already in my holiday pile, Rob, and unlikely to be displaced! I rather like it when a writer has the guts to take on a classic, Kamel Daoud did a great job with The Meursault Investigation, Jo Baker turned out a good read with Longbourne (though I think she did even better with Beckett’s life in A country road, a tree). Huck Finn from Jim’s perspective seems long overdue, and I’m glad to see Percival Everett seems to have had a big hit with it. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10683 Registered: 05-2005 |
A very interesting article on pirated vinyl. I didn’t realise it was so prevalent. https://www.theguardian.com/music/articl e/2024/jun/15/vinyl-came-back-from-the-d ead-and-so-did-the-bootleggers-inside-th e-booming-business-of-knock-off-records | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2282 Registered: 10-2006 |
Two excellent Welshmen discuss the world. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/ if-its-not-grueling-its-not-worth-it-joh n-cale-in-conversation-with-michael-shee n?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR38tiXwz8Xtk hpl0I2EutRCKEYTi1CF61JbuN8OoYvW1l_Q-agEO 3l6hV0_aem_hjdvHT3vWvFSgQF604cy9w | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4920 Registered: 03-2005 |
Just checking in before I hit the road to visit family in the Bay Area of California. Stuart, I did read "The Power and the Glory." I suspect that I missed a lot of the book by not being a Catholic. That's a sense I also had when I read "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" some years back. I was struck, however, by the echo of "Crime and Punishment" in the relationship between the fugitive priest and his pursuing cop. And I'm guessing that there is a biblical analogue to the "half caste" character but it's lost on me, a heathen who has stayed so clear of religious texts my entire life. I found myself struggling with a nagging sense that Greene was over-egging the poverty and primitive conditions of Mexico at the time--this was the 1930s, not the 1830s--but I am utterly unqualified to dispute it because of my sheer ignorance of the history of the country just south of me. Currently I am working on the Pat Barker trilogy, in the first third of "Toby's Room" at the moment. Not surprisingly, it's a much easier read. I tend to read as if the book in question is a TV show I watch, devoting maybe 60 o 90 minutes to the book each day, so it's always slow-going. No comments about the books until I'm done. Pádraig, I never seriously considered counterfeit records and CDs as a significant thing until I started entering data about my own music collection into the Discogs database. I discovered that my copy of Raven Records' CD compilation of The Searchers' recordings at Dave Edmunds' Rockfield Studios is counterfeit by the rather amazingly simple process of actually reading the matrix/runout data on the disc. It's not something obvious like being a CDR rather than a proper glass-mastered CD. But its pathetic attempt to masquerade as a product of the Aussie CD manufacturer Regency was uncovered by the misspelling of Regency as "REGRNCY" in the matrix/runout. Jeez, such a tiny extra effort could have been made. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10689 Registered: 05-2005 |
Wow, so even small indie reissue labels are subjected to piracy. I just assumed it was only done to major releases where there would be scope for huge sales and resulting economies of scale. I recall about 20 years ago someone telling me about an Australian record shop being caught selling pirated U2 CDs that were made in Indonesia. The only giveaway was one wrong digit in the matrix. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 221 Registered: 05-2005 |
Uncut magazine August issue. Not much particularly interesting but there’s a letter from P Collins of Sydney. Mojo magazine has a decent article about The Chameleons’ upcoming 5th album. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 224 Registered: 05-2005 |
A new book about the Brisbane scene including essays from Robert and John Wilstead https://www.andalsobooks.com/#/nowhere-f ast-punk-and-postpunk-brisbane-19781982/ Rough Trade are selling it in the UK. I haven’t bought it yet. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2283 Registered: 10-2006 |
The Master – Colm Toibin Holiday reading highlight was definitely this, anyway, a highly relishable, unputdownable depiction of Henry James’s life through 5 crucially tense years. HJ was like a rock tossed into a garden pool, a desperately private, unmoving presence that manages to make waves throughout everything and everyone around him. Don’t know if you’ve already read it, Randy! | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4925 Registered: 03-2005 |
I have not, Stuart. I just finished "Noonday," the last of the Pat Barker trilogy. It's very interesting to me that these excellent books brought back the horrors of the two World Wars so eloquently prior to the Brexit vote, the advent of Donald Trump as a politician and the invasion of Ukraine. Obviously, not enough people have been reading books over the past decade. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2286 Registered: 10-2006 |
https://www.commentcertainsvivent.com/ne ws News about the new DomA double album to come out in October, a sort of career retrospective of songs redone with orchestra or as a trio. Well, ok. Doesn’t seem really necessary, the first example is very nice, but lushing up tunes with an orchestra rarely adds much unless the arranger is a genius of some kind and so often with this artist his voice is already quite lush enough with the barest of accompaniments. I’d rather he went back to a work like Remué and used that as a jumping off point. Still, it was good to let the algorithm ride and spend an hour with his music and a voice that is curiously soothing against the torrid heat. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10701 Registered: 05-2005 |
That’s a very accurate summation, Stuart. I would have sworn his songs were string laden anyway, but that’s probably, as you put it, his already lush voice lulling me into thinking that way. I haven’t listened to Dominique A in ages. He’s still one of the greatest musical introductions this site has given me, though. I doubt I would ever otherwise have checked him out and bought several albums without the imprimatur of the trusted sources here. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4928 Registered: 03-2005 |
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote I never considered reading this book until relatively recently. Capote's depiction of two aimless misfits, one from a severely broken family with an alcoholic mother and the other from an intact one with no obvious explanation for the son's clear personality defects, is worryingly echoed today in the likes of Donald Trump, Andrew Tate and other grossly insecure and maladjusted males attracting attention they do not merit. But Capote's subjects were poor in a much less grandiose era. Capote must rely upon the information he was given by the subjects themselves and by other witnesses including law enforcement. The virtue of this handicap is that it is up to you, dear reader, to make some sort of sense of it. The final part of the book pokes around the issue of the death penalty. It's an understandable choice but the book would be better art without it. Here's something I didn't know: Kansas abolished the death penalty in 1907. It was reinstated in 1935. The last executions happened in 1965, shortly after the two subjects of this book were executed. Capote's book probably played a role. After that I need a nice escape so I'll be reading the latest doorstop by David Kynaston about postwar Britain, "A Northern Wind." | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2287 Registered: 10-2006 |
Which ends, I see, with one of my first ever memories, Churchill's funeral on TV, though what that enormous, elaborate procession was all about I could hardly have understood. A very great man has died, I think my mum said. Probably I was irate because it was replacing Andy Pandy. Even better, checking out the Guardian review alerted me to the fact that there's a big new book about Auden coming out soon, always hard to resist. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10717 Registered: 05-2005 |
The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser. Australian outback noir. I got a review copy of his fourth book and bought his first three before I’d even finished it. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 537 Registered: 02-2007 |
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy. This is second in the Border Trilogy after All The Pretty Horses. Wonderful. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4930 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I've just finished the section of the Kynaston book covering the U.K.'s reaction to Kennedy's assassination. That was my childhood equivalent of your experience of Churchill's funeral. I was 7 years old and exasperated that all the TV stations were airing the procession of the caisson carrying his body. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4932 Registered: 03-2005 |
The Sparsholt Affair - Alan Hollinghurst A longtime friend handed this one to me. It's probably far too much a poofter epic for most people on here, but since I'm one that's not a problem. It's quite the page-turner. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 538 Registered: 02-2007 |
Randy, I read 50 pages of The Line Of Beauty a while back but I didn't persevere with it. Have you read it? If so, should I have another crack at it? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4934 Registered: 03-2005 |
David, I have not. Reading the synopsis on Wikipedia I wonder if I would be able to read it, simply because of the return to a very difficult time. I watched a lot of people succumb to the HIV epidemic between the mid 80s to the early 90s and only escaped it myself by a mixture of uptightness and some sheer dumb luck. Right now I'm reading Edna O'Brien's short story anthology A Fanatic Heart. Ireland is still very much a foreign country for me so this is interesting if also at times amazingly bleak. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 539 Registered: 02-2007 |
Ok thanks Randy. Just read Stenbeck's East Of Eden. A hugely ambitious work that explores the nature of free will. It references the Biblical story of the Fall from the Garden of Eden and the story of Cain & Abel. It's a huge family saga that encompasses all this and so much more. We also get wonderful descriptions of the Salinas Valley and I found myself caught up in the lives of these characters even though Steinbeck predominately uses them as symbols for his greater purpose. Epic in every way. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4937 Registered: 03-2005 |
David, I've never read East of Eden. I'll have to give that some consideration. I've only read a volume combining three of Steinbeck's novellas. I found Of Mice and Men to be a powerful parable about a character who would now be considered neurodivergent, was annoyed by the trite vignettes and dated racism of Tortilla Flat and sadly cannot sufficiently remember Cannery Row to say anything about it, though I know I liked it better than Tortilla Flat. My brain can be like an Etch-a-Sketch once I move on to another book. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 540 Registered: 02-2007 |
Last Night In Twisted River - John Irving. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 541 Registered: 02-2007 |
Machines Like Me - Ian McEwan | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2303 Registered: 10-2006 |
I’ve never read any Steinbeck, a shameful thing to admit. At least Grapes I’ll have to get round to. I loved the first few Irvings I read, Garp, Cider house, Amsterdam, but then his books seemed to start getting baggier and baggier and the prose wishier and washier and I gave up. I thought McEwan’s last, Lessons, was a real yawn after marvellous things like Berlin, Atonement and Chesil beach. Machines sounded a bit too Ishiguroish for my liking. Is it enjoyable? Just finished Penelope Fitzgerald’s Blue Flower, unwillingly pressed upon me by the wife’s reading group. It’s fantastic, very very funny, beautifully written, and heartbreaking. More PF soon. First, on to Faulkner’s last book, the Reivers: a bit of a ramble so far, quite a distance from the feverish brilliance of his middle period. We shall see. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2062 Registered: 08-2006 |
Stuart: "The Blue Flower" is a masterpiece. I recommend "Offshore" and "The Bookshop," and "The Beginning of Spring." She was a hell of a talent. As far as Faulkner, I did an independent study on him in college and read his entire body of work, some twice. I think I've read "Sound and the Fury" at least four times. The Reivers wasn't my fave. But, man, when he was good he was damn good. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2304 Registered: 10-2006 |
Rob, the Group is doing a "Deep Dive" into Fitzgerald, so the next two scheduled are Human Voices and Innocence! The latter is set in Italy, so it'll be interesting to see what the natives make of it. But I think I'll get round to all of her work eventually. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 542 Registered: 02-2007 |
World's Fair - E.L.Doctorow | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 543 Registered: 02-2007 |
Time's Arrow - Martin Amis |