Recent purchases

[Lucoid]

Anyone acquired anything good (or bad) lately in the way opf books, films or music?

I finally bought both the Best of Bowie double album that was released in 2002 and Led Zeppelin 4 at the weekend, and am very pleased with my purchases. One to sing along to and one to play very loud indeed.

As far as more recent releases are concerned, my boyfriend introduced albums by Jet and The Raveonettes to our collection - both sound pretty good, though he wasn't happy when I told him I thought Jet had resonances of Bon Jovi in them. The Raveonettes impressed me on first listen, though I didn't have time to get through the whole album - full of [early] 60s influences, and probably good to dance to.

* Edited slightly after a second listen. 17-9-03

[ono no komachi]

I recently picked up the Special Edition DVD of 'Fargo' for £8.99, and decided it was every bit as good as I remembered from watching it in the cinema. Not that I'm a great fan of Special Editions - I don't tend to be beguiled by commentaries, featurettes etc.
And 'By The Way' by the Chilli Peppers - when I got it I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about but after I few listens I was hooked.

[amner]

Fargo's a great film, love it to bits. Probably my fave Coen brothers movie in fact, although Millers Crossing comes mighty close.
.

[Colyngbourne]

My husband bought the latest Tracy Chevalier while he was waiting for my delayed flight to arrive in Manchester, and both he and I can confirm it as rubbish. Teeth-gritting bad sex scenes ( a mention of 'ploughing' comes to mind :oops: ) and a re-tread of her style and themes in 'Girl...'

[amner]

Not read it, but the Amazon reviews (and I am not at all surprised by this) are astonishingly flowery about it:

Wow! I'm not sure that words alone will be enough to express just how amazing this book is!

Everyone now puts 5 stars in their Amazon reviews as standard, it's very annoying.
.

[Pak_43]

I just picked up "Carter Beats the Devil" which is an excellent read IMHO....

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, indeed - I just finished Good Omens yesterday and am quite frankly disappointed by both it and the overweening "this is hysterical and the best book ever reviews on Amazon. And despite all the contrary bumph about a closely woven unseparable collaboration, the Pratchetty bits stood out a mile from the Gaiman.

[Lucoid]

I remember quite enjoying it when I was in the closest I've ever had to a Pratchett phase a few years ago, but I wouldn't say it was either hysterical or the best book ever.

[Wavid]

I haven't bought much in a while. I am in the middle of a self inflicted CD purchase embargo - much to my chagrin as the rather spiffing new Thea Gilmore album is out now - and I'm not much of a film buff. Also, my book buying tends to be in large numbers (usually on payday) which I then work my way through during the month.

So, my last shopping haul included Berlin Noir, which I have finished; the appallingly titled Three Great Novels (there seem to be a lot of these about) omnbius by George Pelencanos, which I finished last night and enjoyed immensely; The Lady in the Lake and Other Novels by Raymond Chandler, which I started today.

Not a bad lot, really, given that there's nine novels in there and they cost a tenner each.

[amner]

Well we'll have a review of the Pelecanos then, please Wavid. And Berlin Noir, if you'd be so kind.

Colyngbourne, just noticed my review of American Gods (essentially, heck, exactly the one I posted here) has finally turned up on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0747263744/customer-reviews/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/202-4047842-9535831). Proof positive that not all reviews these days go for the screamingly affirmative 8)
.

[Colyngbourne]

Now why aren't there more reviews like that on Amazon!

Much appreciated 8)

[amner]

Thanks ... I've just been told (and checked, it's true) that there are almost four and a half thousand reviews for Harry Potter V on the Amazon.com site. Four and a half thousand!

None of them are as funny as the 760 contributions for the Best of David Hasselhof (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000070S1/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/102-0224863-5373767?v=glance&s=music&n=507846&vi=customer-reviews). I'm not kidding.

Don't forget, the song Hot Shot City is particularly good.
.

[Lucoid]

And did you notice that the first two Hasselhoff reviews have been found helpful by 100% of the people who bothered to vote on them?

My faith in mankind is quickly diminishing.

[amner]

Even better, 22 of 24 people found this review helpful:
Like a jukebox rolled in body hair, David Hasselhoff is a versatile, astounding performer whose range of songs cannot be denied. Each time he picks up a microphone, people everywhere groan with dread, because they all know too well that they are witnessing the finest musical experience of their lives and are ill-prepared to soak it in before that moment's gone forever. It's not surprising that many have compared hearing David Hasselhoff singing to having a death in the family.

And sure, he is showmanship. He is glitz. But even beyond that, he has substance. His songs have each been put on a stick and dipped in rich meaning. One should savor each song for a while, sucking on them until the nougat of their essence, the essence of their nougat, flow out.

Now I'm not exactly what you'd call a religious man. I have my background rooted in the cold, hard realities of science. But after witnessing David Hasselhoff throat out these 18 songs at a concert he held for flood victims in Switzerland with a voice that can be compared to a hippo stuck in a rusty beartrap, I do believe that a Hell exists.

The song Hot Shot City is particularly good.

I am definitely in agreement about the song Hot Shot City, as it is particularly good.
.

[Wavid]

it beggars belief that two people actually took the time to read the review and decide that it wasn't very helpful.

Should Amazon print their names and email addresses, in order to shame them? I think so.

[amner]

It's almost like reading six books and not writing a review of any of them for the Book, Film and Music website you claim to administer.
.

[Wavid]

Bastard. Look, I am so busy administering that I don't have the time to produce epic reviews like you do. Besides, my reviews are rubbish!

[amner]

:o

I'm shocked.
.

[Lucoid]

Come on Wavid, make an effort!

[Colyngbourne]

Mine are rubbish too, but I still put them up (occasionally).
*nudges Wavid for a review, any review*

[John Self]

Returning to the Hasselhoff reviews, it is a curiosity that most people when clicking the Yes or No box after an Amazon review, mistake the question Did you find this review helpful? for Do you agree with this review? This is why I am sinking down the rankings after daring to diss Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Personally I almost always find reviews helpful. "Did you find this review helpful?" "Why yes - it helped me discover that the person who posted it is a cunt."

[idioteque]

Not bought a lot of anything recently. Did get the Darkness album, 'Permission to Land'. I reckon it's great fun; take it in that vain and in a good-time mood and it's good. Not my usual sort of listen but enjoyable in the sort of way that the Cult would have been if they hadn't taken themselves so seriously.

And as swearing seems to be the thing to do in this thread, Knob.

:shock:

[John Self]

Sorry :oops:

Hm, the Darkness. I can't help wondering if the joke will wear a bit thin after a while. Can we look forward to future masterpieces called Lick My Love Pump or a "new direction" such as, say, Jazz Odyssey?

One thing's for certain - if lead singer Justin Hawkins really is 28 as he claims to be, then he's had a damn hard life. Either that or he's of the Tim Westwood school of age-related-maths-phobia.

[Wavid]

In lieu of any reviews from me so far, here's a couple of first class Chandlerisms I have come across so far in The High Window:

From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.

and

He had a sort of dry musty smell, like a fairly clean Chinaman.

Great stuff.

[Lucoid]

Back to The Darkness - love the album, but don't reckon they have another one in them. We tried to get tickets for the forthcoming tour but they sold out far too quickly. All that glam, screaming and insanity is just fantastic!

[wshaw]

[back after a very long absense...]
On the original question ... i've just finished Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex. A really wonderful read, spoiled only by the sense that Eugenides is so bloody clever it hurts, and the way an apparently sprawling novel ties together a little too neatly.

[Colyngbourne]

Belated review of Middlesex appreciated - this is definitely on my list of To Buy. Luckily I have a birthday coming up (though Nocturama and the second Abarat by Clive Barker are top of the list).

[John Self]

Snap. I too have just finished Middlesex.

I liked his first novel The Virgin Suicides, although not as much as some people who seem to have built it into an almost Gatsby-size cult over the last decade. That difficult second novel Middlesex is one of the fat ones I refused to buy in hardback last year (along with Donna Slutt's The Little Friend, which from friends' responses is looking like a wise move on my part), so I just read it in paperback this week.

Like wshaw I thought it was a grand achievement, a vigorous and full-flavoured epic. Eugenides said in an interview that "when I was writing Middlesex, my wife told me that people would think I was a hermaphrodite. I told her she was crazy, but in fact I get letters now from people thanking me for the book and for telling my story." And who can blame them, since the narrator of the book is Greek-American man born in the same year as Eugenides, now living in Berlin, whose very physical description matches our author to a (goa)T(ee)? Except that Cal is not really a man, having been born a girl, Calliope; only to discover at the age of 14 that she wasn't really a girl either.

Hermaphroditism is a pretty rare topic in literature so far as I know, so Eugenides scores points immediately for tackling an original subject. And he does it well too: the style is quite deliberately filmic, with plenty of traditional techniques like flashback and scene linking, but also tricksier but equally pleasing stuff like the prose version of a fast-reverse to bring the story back to an earlier era:

And so now, having been born, I'm going to rewind the film, so that my pink blanket flies off, my crib scoots across the floor as my umbilical cord reattaches, and I cry out as I'm sucked back between my mother's legs. She gets really fat again. Then back some more as the spoon stops swinging and a thermometer goes back into its velvet case. Sputnik chases its rocket trail back to the launching pad and polio stalks the land. There's a quick shot of my father as a twenty-year-old clarinetist, playing an Artie Shaw number into the phone, and then he's in church, age eight, being scandalised by the price of candles; and next my grandfather is untaping his first U.S. dollar bill over a cash register in 1931.

And he does cover all this and further back in the story, dealing with three generations altogether from 1922 to the present day, and the incest, inbreeding and coincidence which led to the surfacing in Callie of one gene deficiency historically established in the family to make her what she is and isn't. Oddly, I found the chapters dealing with Callie's grandparents and parents the most vivid, and Callie's own trials and errors seemed oddly pale and non-urgent in comparison (though as far as the details of hermaphroditism goes, Eugenides has clearly done his homework). Compare it with John Irving's The Cider House Rules, which also deals with three generations over several decades, all coming beautifully to life with matching force, and Middlesex suffers. But Eugenides is a better stylist than Irving, and the prose is dense and lush but not too difficult to keep a hold of. I did think though that it lacked some of the emotional oomph - even tragedy - that we might expect in a tale of a sexual misfit, and the one bit of proper drama which ends the backstory narrative seems a bit tacked on.

All in all it's a good read though, and can only enhance Eugenides' fandom to Tartt-like proportions. But - Jeffrey! what were you thinking! - the atrociously punning title will never be forgiven.

[Colyngbourne]

John Self wrote
[it] can only enhance Eugenides' fandom to Tartt-like proportions

I hope not, since The Secret History was a terrible disappointment. New way of living? What new way? Pretty boring and predicatble campus novel, yes.

[Lucoid]

I've never heard of Eugenides, though I had of course heard of The Virgin Suicides (assuming the film of the same name, which I've not seen, was adapted from it). Anyone care to fill me in on why I should read him?

[John Self]

I liked The Secret History, although - again, my familiar get-out clause - not as much as some friends. Did it promise a new way of living? I can't remember. I thought it was well-written though, and some scenes, like Richard almost dying in the disused building over winter, stick in my mind ten years on which can't be bad.

[wshaw]

Anyone care to fill me in on why I should read him?

It's an enormously satisfying book because it's entertaining and funny and yet also a pretty intellectual look at the issue of gender. It's a serious book that bears itself very lightly.

He's also an astonishing technician. He's so in charge of his craft it it's sometimes too slick. Bastard.

[/i]

[Shoppers]

Recently bought and watched Jacobs Ladder having watched it many years ago when I was too young to appreciate it. Watching it in the cold light of a wednesday afternoon I found it a very powerful film thanks, as always, to Tim Robbins.

Also bought and watched Blue Velvet after many years and although the direction and acting are great I still don't rate it as one of the best films ever.

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, that scene in The Secret History is one of the more graphic ones that sticks in your head.
I had just gathered that this classics group were pursuing something that had never been tried before, a whole philosophy of life that impacted on everything, but all it amounted to was a totally mad session in the woods. I wanted Julian to be more of a guru than he was. It was so inevitable that the group would end up imploding. Having done classics to death, I wasn't much impressed by the supposedly 'in-depth' coverage. I'd have been more impressed if they'd kept on doing the scenes in the woods, or kept trying to re-capture what it was that had taken them out of themselves.

(Shoppers, I love Jacob's Ladder too - it's been undervalued for a long time.)

[Wavid]

I've never heard of Eugenides, though I had of course heard of The Virgin Suicides (assuming the film of the same name, which I've not seen, was adapted from it). Anyone care to fill me in on why I should read him?

you mean John's wise words aren't enough?! :wink:

Here's a review from the Observer:

Geraldine Bedell
Sunday October 6, 2002
The Observer

Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Bloomsbury £16.99, pp544

Jeffrey Eugenides has spent nine years writing Middlesex, a comic epic concerning the transmission of a gene from a village in Asia Minor through twentieth-century Detroit to contemporary Berlin. Nine years is a lot of time for someone who had only published one previous, much slimmer novel, even taking into account the success of The Virgin Suicides. But worth it: Middlesex, which is much bigger in every sense, has just appeared in America to breathtakingly good reviews.

I met Jeffrey Eugenides in Café Einstein in Berlin, the city in which he has lived for the past three years with his wife, an artist, and their four-year-old daughter. (He was awarded a grant to write in Berlin for a year and they haven't yet got round to leaving.) The café makes a fleeting appearance in Middlesex, whose hero, like Eugenides, is a Greek-American raised in Detroit and now living in Berlin. So it seems appropriate to begin by asking how much of the novel is autobiographical.

'The story I am telling is very far from my own experience, so the only way I felt I could make it credible for me was to borrow from a certain amount of history and personal fact. It's autobiographical at the level of family detail or almost insignificant fact. I didn't set out to write about the Greek-American experience or originally to write a family saga at all. The idea was to write a fictional book about a hermaphrodite, and I wanted it to be medically accurate - to be a story of a real hermaphrodite, rather than a fanciful creature like Tiresias or Orlando who could shift in a paragraph; to avail myself of the mythological connections without making the character a myth.'

Middlesex is the story of Calliope Helen Stephanides, born with a mutation on her fifth chromosome which makes her appear at birth to be a girl, although she is, in fact, biologically and hormonally a boy. A charming, untroubled child, Callie is plunged into psychological and emotional chaos at adolescence when she starts sprouting facial hair, speaking in a deep voice, and falling in love with a girl in her Latin class.

5-alpha-reductase deficiency, the particular mutation that afflicts Callie, invariably occurs in inbred communities. 'That started me thinking about my Greek heritage and the village my grandparents came from and I realised I could tell a much larger story, the transmission of the gene, told by the final carrier of the gene,' says Eugenides.

In the process, he confronts the possibility that genetic determinism has revived ancient beliefs in destiny, disrupting our post-Freudian assumptions that character is overwhelmingly a product of experience. Fate may be down to evolutionary biology now, rather than the gods, but it is still in a fight to the death with free will.

The triumph of the novel - and the reason it took so long to write - is its voice. Calliope was the muse of epic poetry and, in the first half of the book, Eugenides's Callie recounts the odyssey of her grandparents' emigration from what is now Turkey to America. Desdemona and Lefty Stephanides flee the Turks attacking their Greek village only to find themselves caught up in the sacking of Smyrna. They make their way to Detroit, where they have a cousin, the only person left in the world who knows that they are not only husband and wife and third cousins, but also brother and sister.

'The first few years, I had a lot of difficulty with the voice. I had to get into the grandparents' heads, and it was a while before I gave myself permission to allow Callie that licence, to give her perhaps a little extra omniscience or allow her to create the story for the reader. The voice had to be capable of telling epic events in the third person and psychosexual events in the first person. It had to render the experience of a teenage girl and an adult man, or an adult male-identified hermaphrodite.'

As this suggests, Middlesex is, in a sense, two books in one, just as Callie is two sexes in one. The book is both family saga and coming-of-age novel, told from the outside and the inside. 'Since I was writing about the transmission of a genetic mutation, it seemed to me sensible and also incumbent on me to reiterate the transition in terms of the literary form. I hope the book quietly and not fist-poundingly moves from a more epic narration towards a more psychological novel.'

Dramatic public events - the burning of Smyrna, the race riots that drive the Stephanides family from downtown Detroit to the suburbs - are framed by the 41-year-old Cal, now an employee of the State Department. He flips backwards and forwards between omniscient storytelling and knowing, compromised interjection, in a triumph of structure and of engaging, wry wit.

Some aspects of the social history of Detroit (and so America) that are played out through the novel's rich texture are less successful than others. Fully two members of the Stephanides family get caught up in the beginnings of the Nation of Islam, in a section that stretched my credulity; and I didn't get the joke on Callie's brother's name, Chapter 11. I still didn't really get it when Eugenides explained that he goes bankrupt at the end (ie files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US). And on the subject of names, both Eugenides and Callie grew up on Middlesex Boulevard, and the title is also, of course, a fine description of her predicament, so it is slightly unfortunate that, in Britain, the book sounds as if it is about a part of Greater London.

In The Virgin Suicides and again, in Middlesex, Eugenides says he has tried 'not to make something mundane strange, but rather, something that is somewhat freaky more normal'. Plotlines that concern five sisters who kill themselves or hermaphrodites may sound bizarre, but they are the stuff of our earliest and most potent stories. 'Latin literature, Ovid and Virgil, was the first writing I studied line by line. These were epics, sometimes epics of transformation, and when I look at my work I realise that influenced me enormously. Going down into the underworld, transformations: it seems to me that was what I was taught to think literature was. And when you think about what fiction can do that non-fiction can't: it is chart out the territory beyond realism to a certain extent.'

There is a nice postscript to the writing of Middlesex. Callie calls the girl with whom she falls in love the Obscure Object, after Buñuel. Both the Obscure Object's character and the events surrounding her are entirely invented, Eugenides says, but the term is from life. When he was an undergraduate at Brown University he and Rick Moody found the same girl attractive, and would say to each other, for example: 'Oh, I saw the Obscure Object today.' On the day he finished the manuscript of Middlesex, he says, he went to have dinner at the American Academy in Berlin. There was a woman there he vaguely recognised. Sure enough, she was the Obscure Object. Makes you wonder about fate.

[Wavid]

One last Chandlerism, I promise this will be it. And it's a cracker:

I called him from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest.

[NottyImp]

Chandler - good isn't he? And to think a well-educated American friend of mine doesn't even know who he is...

[Wavid]

I love it, really entertaining stuff, but beautifully written. Not only are the books stuffed full of wisecracks like those above, but some of the descriptive writing is top-drawer, and the pacing is superb.

[skanky]

As far as more recent releases are concerned, my boyfriend introduced albums by Jet and The Raveonettes to our collection - both sound pretty good, though he wasn't happy when I told him I thought Jet had resonances of Bon Jovi in them. The Raveonettes impressed me on first listen, though I didn't have time to get through the whole album - full of [early] 60s influences, and probably good to dance to.

* Edited slightly after a second listen. 17-9-03

Try and catch the Raveonettes live if you can. I saw them at the Monarch in Camden and it was a lot of fun.

[skanky]

Fargo's a great film, love it to bits. Probably my fave Coen brothers movie in fact, although Millers Crossing comes mighty close.
.

Recently bought the soundtrack to "O' Brother Where Art Thou" for my girlfriend after seeing the film again on a plane journey. I could really get into that sort of music, despite that fact that it's popular and easy to slag off.

At the same time I bought the (latest) Stephen Malkmus album which was good but not up to expectations (it may grow on me but I've just packed it in preparation for my impending move).

Books: two Fergal Keane ones (Letters Home and A Letter To daniel), which are both very good; "This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland" (http://makeashorterlink.com/?E266248F5
) which I've not yet read; "A Matter of Degrees" (http://makeashorterlink.com/?O3F5128F5) which is pretty good (so far), though I have a problem with him using fahrenheit as his standard unit (the drawback of buying an American book, I suppose); and "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families" (http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2C7628F5), again unread.

I recently went on holiday and did less reading in two weeks there than in two days normally. However, I am a little worries that my train journey will shortly only be 30 minutes a day instead of an hour and a half.

[amner]

O, and - sorry to interrupt the flow there Skanks (welcome back to the Green side, btw) - have just bought Middlesex to echo an earlier part of this thread. Any book that has a chapter within it titled The Oracular Vulva must be worth a look, surely?

Anyone fancy choosing it for the Book Group?
.

[Colyngbourne]

It seems to be my turn next and I've already chosen October's read, though if I hadn't, I would've opted for Eugenides.

[amner]

Hands up ... it was you I was making an oblique appeal to :oops:

It looks very enticing, I have to say, but my next three are definitely 1983 (started), TGoST (http://palimpsest.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=243) (for the Book Group) and then Bleak House. So it will have to wait about a month.
.

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, sorry to disappoint you on the book choice. Which said, I just discovered today that we don't have TGoST on our shelves and I have to acquire and read it in the next eight days. I'd just got into Robertson Davies' The Rebel Angels which a friend loaned me. Anyone got any opinions on the old Canadian? This is my first foray into The Cornish Trilogy.

[John Self]

Anyone got any opinions on the old Canadian?

Yes: his beard was absolutely enormous.

[Colyngbourne]

By heck, so it was.

http://mysite.freeserve.com/AtNorvicum/images/2-picture1.jpg?0.5563326538074697

[NottyImp]

Fancying a bit of severely-retro Golden Age Sci-Fi (as you do), I picked up Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles; partly becaise I like pretty much anything to do with Mars (it's the astronpmer in me coming out), and partly because it was a huge over-sight of mine not to have read any Bradbury.

In parts, it has dated horribly, but in others it is still strangley fresh and even poetic. He reminds me a lot of Phillip K. Dick, and that's a fine compliment for a Sci-Fi fan.

[Colyngbourne]

The last time I read these was when The Martian Chronicles was serialised on TV in 1980 or thereabouts but I thoroughly enjoyed the book and have held onto it since. I read Fahrenheit 451 about the same time and got throughly depressed.

[NottyImp]

Farenheit 451:That's another one on my to-read list. Nothing wrong with a good dose of dystopia to stir the social conscience. :D

[soapington]

Testing 123

[Wavid]

Your test was clearly successful! Welcome to Palimpsest!

My monthly shopping trip got me the following:

Money - Martin Amis
Going Gently - David Nobbs
Fatherland - Robert Harris
The Long Firm - Jake Arnott
And an Omnibus of Walter Mosley's first 3 novels.

Good haul, what?

[Colyngbourne]

wot, no Dorian? :(

I'm buying Clive Barker's second book of the Abarat which is released tomorrow - a rare treat to buy a hardback book but worth it for the illustrations.

[Wavid]

Ah yes, well. Amner pointed that out to me as we left the bookshop.

Lets hope Cambridgeshire's libraries come up with the goods!

[amner]

I've ordered it off me book club, mate. You can have a lend once I'm done.
.

[Lucoid]

Let me know what you think of Fatherland, Wavid - it's a possible future read for me, too.

[Colyngbourne]

Just returned from the day off and purchasing my own copy of The Rebel Angels (Robertson Davies) which I will definitely read again and recommend to my husband. I also bought Middlesex. The Clive Barker isn't available until tomorrow :evil:

[Winston99]

For those of you who mentioned Ray Bradbury, try Dandelion Wine. Not really science fiction: it is about the summer of a 12-year old boy in 1920's rural Illinois. What at first seems to be strange things going on turns out to be the boy's mental reaction to events. (Or at least that was my interpretation). Is "charming" too old-fashioned a word to describe a novel?

[youjustmightlikeit]

Well i finally got to the end of one of the interminable Vampire Chronicle books by Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat if you could give a stuff). And through a couple of mentions on here i've just gone and picked up Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. He's one i've been meaning to read for ages, just like Capote.

Oh yes, and i picked up Bridges of Madison County, because it is short (a merciful change from the Vampire books), and i felt temporarily in touch with my feminine side.

The real reason i got it, is because i'm on the lookout for books that have some sort of take on affairs, in particular the woman's take on it. I'm sure there are hundreds out there, but apart from Madame Bovary i have no idea what they are....HELP please people.

[youjustmightlikeit]

Ah, i just remembered Lady Chatterly's Lover, but i've already read that, so any suggestions would be welcome.......

[Colyngbourne]

:wink: I give a stuff about The Vampire Lestat since it's one of my favourite ten books - not necessarily because it's superior literature, because it's not, but because I have a long-standing interest in vamp. literature and TVL is the most ground-breaking and abidingly popular of this genre.

I'm busy with Jan Mark's latest - Stratford Boys - a pre-Shakespeare in Love look at the young (pre-marriage) Will endeavouring to write and put on his very first play for Corpus Christi. Done well for teenagers but an interesting look at how the early themes of his plays might have arisen and been explored.

[John Self]

Women's take on affairs? How about the glorious Asylum by Patrick McGrath, which I think was in my top ten elsewhere on the board. It's a wicked masterpiece of passion and illogic, describing an affair between a psychiatrist's wife and one of the patients in an asylum in 1950s England, bristling to the brim with Dickensianly apt names - Max & Stella Raphael (the wealthy professionals), Edgar Stark (the murderous inmate) and Peter Cleave (the dual-minded narrator - cleave = adhere together/tear apart, geddit?...) - and related by Cleave as explained to him by Stella. The opening line is the hilariously well-mannered and deceptive "The catastrophic love affair characterised by sexual obsession has been a professional interest of mine for many years now." I press it upon you.

Care to detail the background to your interest in this topic, yjmli? You can tell us, it won't appear on search engines or anything...

As a Vonnegut lover I would offer a small word of advice about Slaughterhouse Five - if you don't like it, don't write him off. I've never been able to get on with it but I love his other (early) stuff: Player Piano, Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle etc.

[youjustmightlikeit]

The thing about TVL is that she does go on a bit. Wasn't it Voltaire that said that the best way to become a bore was to say everything? Knock 200 pages off it and it could have been a rollicking good read.

[Winston99]

If you will accept the recommendation of a male, for a woman's take on things, try The Country Life, by Rachel Rusk. I cannot attest to the authenticity, but can promise you humor.

[Winston99]

The author of The Country Life is Rachel Cusk, not Rusk. These stubby fingers.

[John Self]

You can edit your own posts, winston, by clicking the "edit" button up there at the top right between "quote" and "x." Then nobody will ever know how stubby your fingers are...

[youjustmightlikeit]

Cheers lads.

I'll give them a go. Don't worry John, i never write someone off after one book, i'll always have another go. (I'm about 30 pages in, and i'm warming to him already). And i'm keeping schtum.

What about you ladies? Any recommendations from you?

[amner]

Affairs y'say, youjustmightlikeit? Have you tried Thereze Raquin? Scintillating stuff.
.

[m.]

Yesterday I went to the Barnes & Noble and saw Don Quixote: A New Translation with a sticker “signed by author”. I opened the book, and you know what, they didn’t mean Miguel at all… Anyway, I’m actually writing to tell you that I joined the train and bought Middlesex. It may take some time before I start reading this but with all this heavy snow around I feel it’s a good idea to store up some books. :)

[bakunin_the_cat]

I'd have been tempted to get the Don Quixote anyway. Even if it's not real, the idea appeals to me. maybe I'd leave around at work and see how many people check to see if it has Cervantes' signature.

oh to be in Connecticut. Heavy snow, a couple of weeks before Xmas. A snug little house. A warm fire. A good book. Here in London, it's grey, dark and wet, so the end result of me staying in and reading, is probably about the same, but I still think your version sounds a little more homely.

[m.]

Don Quixote is worth getting anyway, true. But I’m not sure if the sticker would do the trick, after all. Even allowing for declining education standards, I don’t think many people could really expect Cervantes’s signature. And the majority just mentally translates “signed by author” to “signed by translator” and moves on. It’s only freaks like me who find it funny and have to check.

oh to be in Connecticut.

For me it’s actually Europe: The Final Countdown. I’m going home for Christmas. (I’m Polish - your call for a Slavic sister has been answered) :wink:

[bakunin_the_cat]

Cool,
Czezsh, sister! Welcome to the family!

I think you'd be surprised how many people would check. Even in our nine to five, no surprises world, or maybe precisely because of it, people like the chance of a little magick. Either that or they're just curious.

[niloc]

I have just bought The Water Clock by Jim Kelly.

It is set in and around Ely, (Cambs, UK)

[John Self]

Nice cathedral. (Damn I can't make that sound like a double entendre however hard* I try.)

*he said "hard" - fnar fnar!

[m.]

Belated 'czesc', bakunin. :) Of course, there should be some central eastern European diacritics in it but it takes forever to figure them out. Western are easy: á é ä ü... and so on.

[bakunin_the_cat]

I bow to your superior wisdom.

To be honest my knowledge of Polish more or less starts and ends with
those five letters in that sequence (is 'Nas droviye' Polish as well or just Russki?). A few Poles I've known have attempted
to teach me more advanced stuff like Mery Christmas and thank you, all to no avail. Even if I manage to make a vague approximation of the sounds they make after a couple of minutes, it has evaporated from my memory like frosty breath on a cold night in Krakow. After a few nights like this, people understandably get frustrated and we tacitly agree just to speak in English.

[m.]

'Na zdrowie' is Polish too. And as a person who after singing several times 'happy birthday' in Portuguese still doesn't remember the words, I know what you mean. Evaporates like... caipirinha from the glass? Oh frosty breath on cold nights... I like my country warts and all, but if someone took it and dumped somewhere in the Mediterranean, I wouldn't protest.

[bakunin_the_cat]

Same here. Even if Britain doesn't do deep-freeze impressions quite so well as Poland, I don't think there'd be many complaints if a freak geological event pushed Britain to a slightly sunnier location.

Sometimes when I was younger I used to think after three or four days of constant grey rain that it would never be sunny again. We'd had our lot and weren't going to get any more ever.

Thankfully, I have since learned that it generally does come back eventually, though a small piece of my previous self remains. What's that line in The Lion, the witch and THe Wardrobe? Always Winter but never Christmas.

[amner]

But Eugenides is a better stylist than Irving, and the prose is dense and lush but not too difficult to keep a hold of.

Further praise for Middlesex, whilst having a surf of the site; just remembered this snippet, which I keep turning back to:

I hadn't gotten old enough yet to realise that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it's only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you're time-travelling. In this life we grow backwards.

Isn't that terrific?

[amner]

But Eugenides is a better stylist than Irving, and the prose is dense and lush but not too difficult to keep a hold of.

Further praise for Middlesex; whilst having a surf of the site, just remembered this snippet, which I keep turning back to:

I hadn't gotten old enough yet to realise that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it's only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you're time-travelling. In this life we grow backwards.

Isn't that terrific?

[Colyngbourne]

It didn't take much (less than zero resistance actually) but I caved in and bought the first Patrick O'Brien this morning.

[amner]

Returning to the Hasselhoff reviews...

Yes, just to do that for a moment, here's a fact about the great man (http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_860540.html?menu=news.latestheadlines) you might otherwise never have appreciated.

Talent and humility.
.

[John Self]

A class act all the way. I tried not to let my eye be drawn to the link below the story

Related stories:
Robbie Williams' fans complain about his fake penis

but without success.

[Colyngbourne]

Dragging this to the top of the pile...

Managed to wangle a few purchases the other day - O'Brian #2 Post-Captain, and if no-one speaks of remarkable things - Jon McGregor (any opinions?), and a YA novel The Speed of the Dark - Alex Shearer. Plenty to keep busy with (and the James Lee Burke arrived today), and 900% better than the flimsy-mimsy Woman's Own pathetic-ness of Philippa Gregory's Bread and Chocolate short stories that I was duty-bound to read this month. (Thankfully I was loaned a copy of this, which might turn out to be my dire read of 2004.)

[jim]

I didn't like If nobody speaks of remarkable things at all. For a start the title is ridiculously grandiose. The characterisation is poor; I'm afraid I'm struggling to be more specific as I read it a year or so ago, but I do remember being very confused about where the author was going with the narrator and her admirer/his brother. Also the narrative structure, all in flashback letting a little more information about of the main incident out at a time, became merely irritating. By the time the incident itself was finally recounted I was so annoyed I didn't find it even remotely sad or tragic, I was just happy that he had at last spat it out. Overall a big fat waste of valuable reading time. Enjoy!

[Colyngbourne]

Thanks :roll: I'm leaving that particular one a couple of weeks until I've finished the James Lee Burke (excellent so far), and I'm also engrossed in The English Patient which I never had the patience to read the first time around. It has sat on my shelves for 12 years until this week, having just watched the film for the first time the other Friday.

[Wavid]

Just been down to Waterstones, where there is a pretty good 3 fer 2 on at the moment - even in Kingo!

Here's my three:

Essays - George Orwell. Have always wanted a compendium of Orwell's, er, Essays and this Penguin Modern Classic will do nicely. It has 'Shooting an Elephant', 'Decline of the English Murder' and 'Dickens' - and what more could you want?

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole. Craig Brown kept raving about this in an interview I read ages ago, so I thought I'd give it a go.

The Rabbit Omnibus - John Updike. The mammoth Penguin one, which crams the first few Rabbit books into as few (marvellously thin) pages as poss. Only trouble being that there are about 30,000 words on each page.

Still, a cracking haul and no mistake.

[John Self]

A Confederacy of Dunces is indeed excellent, Wavid. As, in parts, is Craig Brown's own collection of pieces, This is Craig Brown, which I have been flicking through this week. A bit too much of fake columnists Bel Littlejohn and Wallace Arnold for my liking though.

I saw scrawled on a lamppost earlier this week the words KINGO IS GAY. Can this be true??

[Wavid]

A Confederacy of Dunces is indeed excellent, Wavid. As, in parts, is Craig Brown's own collection of pieces, This is Craig Brown, which I have been flicking through this week. A bit too much of fake columnists Bel Littlejohn and Wallace Arnold for my liking though.

I have seen TICB and regularly pick it up, but what has put me off buying it is the lack of any kind of acknowledgments as to when and where the various pieces were published. That kind of detail is pretty vital to understanding topical satire, I would have thought. As for the columnists, I would think that in a weekly column there would be a lot of recycling of material, which would be much more evident in the book rather than the paper.

I saw scrawled on a lamppost earlier this week the words KINGO IS GAY. Can this be true??

Well, this week, the area surrounding the KFC has been almost totally gay, with further outbreaks of gayness spotted as far away as Terrington St. Clement. On the whole, though, it's being contained.

This reminds me a little of the skit on The Day Today, where Patrick Marber manned the 'Gay Desk'.

[John Self]

what has put me off buying it is the lack of any kind of acknowledgments as to when and where the various pieces were published

Couldn't agree more, as this has been my main complaint as I read it bit by bit. In addition, often there is not even any indication of whose 'voice' a piece is supposed to be written in, so you're left wondering if it's Craig Brown or a parody.

The Day Today is released on DVD shortly. Goody.

[Wavid]

It was a brilliant series. More accessible than Brass Eye and everyone on it was at the top of their game. The best bit for me was when the Morris/Paxman character abused the jam lady ("I HATE Sebastian Coe!" - Colynbourne would approve), then when she is in tears, turns to the camera, smarm personified.

[NottyImp]

And as a football fan, who can forget an early TV incarnation of Alan Partridge shouting "Eat my goal!", followed by the equally expressive "Shit!".

[Colyngbourne]

Thanks for the reminder of my bete noire, Wavid 8)

[Colyngbourne]

Caved in - it was 3 for 2 day at Ottakar's and bought The Curious Incident...(Whitbread Prize overall) and The Fire-Eaters by David Almond (Whitbread Children's Prize) and the latest Alex Rider Scorpio by Antony Horowitz. There was no Sean Wright unfortunately - it's been sold or withdrawn.

[wshaw]

I trust you asked at the counter, Colynbourne?

[Colyngbourne]

Erm... :roll:

Oh yes, the other half also bought The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. No idea about that one. It sounded a bit The Secret History-ish.

[wshaw]

Any mathematicians read The Curious Incident? I want to know if there's a secret significance to the appendix.

(Which is really what you want to hear before you've read it, Coly).

[John Self]

I don't think so. But then as a Curious Incident conscientious objector, I would say there's no secret significance to anything in the book, heheh...

[rick green]

I think that everyone who regularly checks these boards must suffer to some degree from bibliophilia. To my mind, there are two conditions involved in this nervous complex: love of the book as object and love of the book as experience. Oftentimes, these two are at odds, and the bibliophile is hard put to reconcile their differences. I love a crisp, new book with a sleek, stylish cover, acid-free pages and a beguiling typeface, a book that gives pleasure as a mere object. The problem is that reading such a book feels like defacing a relic. The scribbling of notes, marking of pages, underlining of dictionary words, all indispensable to my happy experience of reading, acquire a criminal dimension when inflicted on pure, white pages, fresh from the publishers. So recently, I’ve employed a new tactic. Comb the junk stores, the library toss outs, the thrift shops. Buy stacks of paperbacks for spare change (only the good ones of course, without a pair of lovers of a cowboy on the front.) Tape up the bad spines, wipe the grime off the covers, get out your ballpoint and enjoy a guiltless romp through the browning pages. That’s what I’ve done recently in lieu of getting books from the library or first run retailers. Of course the strategy breaks down if it’s new books you’re after. I feel like I have a lot of literary catching up to do though, so the older books suit me fine. By this method, I’ve saddled myself with months, maybe years of reading material in a few days. Actually, I can’t afford to keep it up. If I don’t pause for a while I’m sure to lapse into bibliomania—the malignant form of our common, and relatively benign affliction.

Censor’s Note: In professional circles, it is generally agreed that bibliomania differs from bibliophilia primarily in the heightened incidence of obsessive behavior such as prowling used book shops, spending inordinate amounts of time fussing over books with scissors & tape, and chatting about the trivial minutiae of books and reading on literary message boards—as if one had nothing better to do!

[amner]

Colyngbourne, just noticed my review of American Gods (essentially, heck, exactly the one I posted here) has finally turned up on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0747263744/customer-reviews/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/202-4047842-9535831). Proof positive that not all reviews these days go for the screamingly affirmative 8)
.

I put almost exactly the same review up on the .com Amazon, too and yesterday someone viciously attacked me with:
Ahem, April 20, 2004
Reviewer: A reader from Everett, Washington United States
I would just like to say that (my review (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380789035/qid=1082563303/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/002-2460581-3272034)) is the most inane piece of tripe I have ever read. That is all.
That's told me, huh?
8)
.

[gil]

Dear Amner,

I have just read your review, and have to agree with a reader from Everett, Washington United States, but for a different reason. In my opinion, you accord far too much respect to this long-winded rag-bag of ill-thought-out flim-flam. You give far too little weight to the fact that the plot is as full of holes as a string vest, and you exaggerate when you describe the characterisation as one-dimensional. And to describe the Deus ex Machina ending as "pat" is flattery indeed.

Regards.

A reader from the land where a comic book plot does not constitute a novel.

[EDIT] insert Smiley here :D

[amner]

I was way too easy on him, it's true. 'Umble apologies.

I'll take the gloves off next time, cheers gil :wink:
.

[John Self]

There's no such thing as bad publicity, lad. I mean in relation to his comments on your review ... not your review itself. ...Damn.

[amner]

's alright, I knew what you meant. No joy on your J2G2 Amazon review yet, I notice John.
.

[John Self]

No, neither here nor across t'Pond. Bastards.

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, I keep checking too. Perhaps it's due to an Anti-Negative Review filter that Iggywig the 7th found in his pocket along with the Chameleon sweets.

[wshaw]

Chamelon sweets? Let me guess. You eat one, your tongue grows by a foot and you can exist on a diet of flies? Or maybe when you suck one your left eye can move independently from the right?

[John Self]

Sadly they just make you invisible (because chameleons are well known for being invisible of course). Except of course at one point in the book where he needed them not to work, so the user "could still be seen by the crystal ball somehow." Love that lazy shameless somehow. A class act.

[ono no komachi]

I was kind of hoping they'd be sweets for chameleons - you know, like cat treats.

[wshaw]

Sadly they just make you invisible.

As I feared.

[Colyngbourne]

I'm at this moment collating a few random notes from my oldest offspring on the J2G2 experience.

[amner]

No, neither here nor across t'Pond. Bastards.

Oh yes it is (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0954437403/qid=1082645569/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/102-3727677-1384944?v=glance&s=books).
.

[John Self]

Wahay! Vote 'helpful' in your droves please.

I am experiencing a tiny amount of post-hatchet-job tristesse. It will pass.

[amner]

Has it gone yet?

[John Self]

Nnn... - yes.

[Colyngbourne]

I liked the courtesy touch of The Golden Compass, rather than Northern Lights, but as I'm in the process of assembling my own review of J2G2, I have to take issue with your comment that there is nothing particularly wrong with the opening scenes of the book, where Jesse is suffering a hundred torments at the hands of her wicked stepmother and ugly sisters
I'm finding those two chapters alone quite a mindbending challenge (pluperfect reminiscences turn into current reportage and Jesse has two evening meals on the same day and suddenly finds an ironing board in her room, and is asked to hoover when she's already hoovered a paragraph or two earlier - and no, it isn't just meanness/blindness on the stepmother's part but just one of zilllions of continuity errors on the author's).

[John Self]

Thanks for the memories, Col! Fortunately Amazon US allows you to edit your review after it's appeared so that sole concession should disappear quite soon, to be replaced by...

I haven't read the Harry Potter books but I understand that each one begins with Harry at home with his dismal adoptive family - and so too does Jesse Jameson. This sets the tone in fine fashion, with continuity errors aplenty, tense-slippage and word-bloat, and - as Jesse suffers a hundred torments at the hands of her wicked stepmother and ugly sisters - no fairytale cliché left unturned.

[Colyngbourne]

tense-slippage and word-bloat

Perfectly put.

[bakunin_the_cat]

Got my vote.

On the other hand, it seems a little worrying for the human race that we can put so much effort into hating something. I know I shouldn't be surprised and it is J2G2, on all accounts one of the worst books ever written, but still. When did we ever talk about a book we liked for 15 pages. Next week we'll be buying the Daily Mail or writing 'angry' letters to the BBC.

[NottyImp]

We all like a good moan - that's why I go to football.

[amner]

It concerns me, of course, that we've spent such a lot of effort on the J2G2 farrago, but I think there are a couple things that have made it necessary. Firstly, the whole ugly self-promotional mess of it all: it stinks (although it's been fun uncovering it) and needs showing up. I imagine there's even more of it out there* than we've seen, too, God help us.

Secondly, let's be honest, when Wrighto first kicked off the thread Palimpsest was a tad becalmed. On the odd quiet day it's allowed us to galvanise the moribund (are you listening, Philip Parsons in the Times?).

Oh, and yeah, it is part of the human condition to point and sneer, I'll give you that. That said, I hardly think Paul Dacre and his evil cronies will be taking lessons from us on how to be snide and superior!
.
*just put one of the famous phrases into Google (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22The+changeling+idea+is+different%22&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=), for instance, and see what you come up with.
.

[John Self]

You mean Philip Parsons from 'Behind' The Times!!

[Wavid]

Going back to the original thread here (how does Wrighto infest everything? I've heard of viral marketing, but jeez!) I have just visited the Waterstone's 3 fer 2 myself.

Two Self-ish choices: You Shall Know Our Velocity and Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered.

And an Amnerian one: The Clerkenwell Tales.

Let's hope they're good, eh, folks?

[Colyngbourne]

Couldn't resist and browsed the 2nd hand stores in town, yielding for £6

a) Emil and the Detectives - Erich Kastner
b) The Secret Garden - F. H. Burnett
c) Rumblefish - S. E. Hinton
d) Danny Fox at the Palace - David Thomson (which I've only been looking for for the last 20+ years :D )
e) The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
f) The Lying Stones of Marrakech - Stephen Jay Gould (bit of a Gould fan, and a rare find, I think - lots of lovely non-Neo-Darwinist stuff)
g) The Magic Pudding - Norman Lindsay (another 'wow' find for 50p - this was Philip Pullman's fave book as a youngster, and my copy is dated 1957)

[youjustmightlikeit]

I've done a second hand bookshop visit myself, which threw up purchases of a collection of essays by Freud on sex - can't remember the exact title (did you know the female foot is supposedly the penis substitute - hence foot fetishes! - no, neither did I); and an anthology of aphorisms - quite good from what i've read.

[Colyngbourne]

I've no idea about the Freudian analysis of the foot, but I recall Marina Warner in From the Beast to the Blonde discusses the female foot as a signifier for something higher up (with lots of discussion of the Queen of Sheba for reasons I can't remember - oh yes, she had a cloven hoof for one foot reputedly).

[rick green]

Oh, the second hand shops, the thrift stores, the paperback binges. I've been plucking their choice fruit for weeks now. It's surprising, the great quantity of palatable book mass I've accumulated here in the backwoods. Even in the wilds of Florida, where Wal-Mart is the apex of civilization, there must be considerable numbers of discriminating readers. My latest foray was to the Leesburg Library booksale where I picked books by Churchill, Faulkner, Gide, Balzac, Fielding, (pause, catch breath) Kipling, Steinbeck, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy & Mark Twain and all for $16. Fair Styngia, the patch-mantled goddess of thrift, smiles upon me! :) And some time ago I bought Freud's introductory lectures at the Goodwill. What serendipity that this very day, when I resolved to finally read them, the author sets foot in the Republic of Palimpsest. Anyway, as I was going over my recent purchases today, I realized that I have more than enough reading to last me a year or more. So I must resist the call of the thrift shops for now. I just can't wait until those e-book readers that look like real paper come out. My hoarder's instict, always operating in the background, really clicks into gear at Project Gutenberg. But somehow, the whole experience of reading is diminished when done on the laptop.

[bakunin_the_cat]

To be honest, I can't remember the last time I bought a new book for myself. It's not just the financial aspect. I like the feeling that you don't know what treasure you're going to find. Ian Rankin or Ian Banks. Doystoevsky or Charles Bukowski. And sometimes you find something that you've been looking for, for ages and although you could just walk into any major bookshop and get it straight away, there's a perverse pleasure in finding it with the just fickle fingers of fate. Bookcrossing, the Romanian Charity shop in Holborn, the 1 pound boxes on Charing Cross Road, the South Bank Book Market, the 2nd hand bookshops in Old Stokey. These are my haunts, my lobster pots. If there's nothing there one day then come back next week, next month, pull up the chain and you'll find more than you can carry.

[gil]

the female foot is supposedly the penis substitute

Hence the immortal snatch of conversation overheard in a darkened room:
"Get your foot out of my pocket!"
"That's not my foot."
"That's not my pocket."

[Colyngbourne]

Done it again - Oxfam selling books on the cheap - so for 60p I got

i) extra copy of Franny and Zooey (one of my offspring is bound to love it and is not nicking my copy)
ii) extra copy of A Wizard of Earthsea (ditto, and with an American Indian-type Ged on the front, suiting Le Guin's description of him)
iii) casebook series of essays on King Lear, edited by Frank Kermode
iv) Alan Hollinghurst - The Swimming Pool Library
v) A selection of John Clare's poems for children, with a foreword by Edmund Blunden
vi) a Philip Ridley kids' book

[John Self]

I have Alan Hollinghurst's newie on order from bol.com, so will be interested to know what you think of The Swimming-Pool Library, Col. I've read all (three) of his books so may do a little digest of them when the new one arrives. Not that I am holding my breath - I ordered it (The Line of Beauty) from bol.com (http://www.uk.bol.com) on 8 April along with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety. Bol.com has become a subsidiary of those QPD/Book Club people so you have to be careful when ordering stuff because most of it is horrible book-club-paperback editions. However they do occasionally do the normal hardbacks - which all three of mine are - and as they sell them at 60% off, it's too tempting to resist. Plus if you order three or more books, P&P is free (it's £1 for one book and £2 for two books). So the three would have cost me £51 'in the shops' but I got them for a few pence under £20. The drawback as I have intimated is that you shouldn't order from them if you want delivery the same week or indeed month. I am told mine were dispatched on 30 April but they still have not arrived - five weeks after I placed my order.

I also have Patrick McGrath's new novel Port Mungo on order from tesco.com (who are very fast and have free delivery on all books for the next couple of weeks, and were the only online store who had it in stock). They tell me it was dispatched yesterday, hurrah.

[Wavid]

Is it the price that determines which online bookshop you use, then John?

I'm just wondering, because once we get the Amazon deal in place, I am sure it will tie us in to them, and not allow other bookshops to feature on Palimpsest.

[John Self]

It depends on whether it's a book I would definitely buy anyway. The three I ordered from bol.com are not books I would have bought full price in hardback (or with the usual 30% or whatever on Amazon), so I bought them there purely because of the price. But I would definitely have bought Patrick McGrath's anyway (cracking review in today's Independent by the way: "When I had finished reading Port Mungo, I felt queasy, haunted, polluted, disoriented and defiled by a work of utter brilliance"), and the discounts are all much the same, so I went for Tesco because I wanted it right now and they were the only ones who had it in stock, or more accurately who weren't primly adhering to the official publication date (which is next Monday), like Amazon. Amazon is still my default choice though.

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, I read that excellent review of Port Mungo too. I dunno, :( too many good books to buy and not enough time to read them.

I've read one other of the Hollinghurst books; it's downstairs somewhere, The Folding Star (if that's the one about the tutor to the young lad in Belgium). There was another one about a son and his partner going to the Cotswolds to visit his father and his partner and everyone falling for the wrong partner, which seemed a bit cack-handed to say the least - was that a Hollinghurst, anyone? Anyway a hardback copy of TS-PL for 10p was a bargain, even if I've read it before and can't remember.

[John Self]

Yes, that was The Spell and I agree it was a poor relation to his earlier books. As a result I probably wouldn't have bothered with The Line of Beauty if it hadn't got such unanimously over-excited reviews.

[pandop]

I've no idea about the Freudian analysis of the foot, but I recall Marina Warner in From the Beast to the Blonde discusses the female foot as a signifier for something higher up (with lots of discussion of the Queen of Sheba for reasons I can't remember - oh yes, she had a cloven hoof for one foot reputedly).

And I can't help - as I only have the other one (No Go the Bogeyman) on my bookshelf :roll:

I seem to recall that bit of From the Beast to the Blonde as well - must get myself a copy sometime, it is something I would dip into a lot

Hazel

[Colyngbourne]

Found Dr. Haggard's Disease in Ottakar's today - purchased on the (incredible) strength of Asylum and John's brief overview of McGrath's writing.

Also bought another Diana Wynne Jones - Deep Secret
and Linda Newbury The Shell House, both 'Young Adult' books.

I'm told there is a copy of Bleak House in our house somewhere but I can't find it yet.

[John Self]

Hope you enjoy Dr Haggard's Disease, Col - and don't read the last page first!! Otherwise the stomach-turningly grotesque dénouement will be spoiled...

Anyway, bargains galore at my local WHSmith, where what I suppose must be "slow moving stock" has been reduced by ... 90%! So even though I am just beginning David Mitchell's whopping Cloud Atlas, and have Dickens's Double Whopper (with a distinct risk, this being Dickens, of extra cheese) of Bleak House in the pile, I couldn't resist the following:


A.S. Byatt, The Biographer's Tale for 69p : couldn't get on with Possession at all but she is respected by so many people whose opinions I respect that I felt I had to give her another go, only at much shorter length please
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World for 69p: "his first major novel" it says here. I've only read Concrete Island of his before but he keeps being praised by Will Self and Martin Amis - that lot - so how could I resist?
Evelyn Waugh's lesser-spotted Helena for 89p (but because the other books were 69p the assistant rang this one at 69p too - keep an eye on those pre-tax profits next year, shareholders): his completely uncharacteristic novelised life of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. Whatever...
Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor for 69p: well everyone else is reading it...


So £2.76 for books that would have cost me £30.96 at full price - though I would never have bought them in that case, of course...

[Colyngbourne]

Does this mean you're going to join the ranks of the bookgroup, John?

Now, J.G.Ballard, I can't work out whether I like his stuff or not. I have an excellent book of short stories from the late sixties/seventies, which spook me out a bit with their sinister and somewhat crushing view of the future. And once upon a time I read Crash, though as a screenplay or as a novel, I can't be sure and I don't remember owing a copy - I would have surely kept it because it was intriguing and not half so grotesque as I would have imagined.

Then I picked up Rushing to Paradise (I think that's the name) for 20p, an annoying little eco-piece about an island some previously intelligent passionate student is provoked into defending from nuclear testing, and the affair/or not, that he has with the older-woman leader of the eco-movement. It made me cringe and the dynamic was quite cold and unrealised.

Still haven't found Bleak House in the house. Still, I read the Linda Newbery this morning - an exploration of faith and love and self-discovery - pretty dissatisfying unfortunately, especially with the bumping stop of the ending and no explanation given. Aidan Chambers did a similar thing far better in Now I Know.

[John Self]

No I shall not be hassling the Book Group for the time being - the chances of my reading Hawksmoor in the next year let alone the next month are slim. Or fat.

[Colyngbourne]

Succumbed once again to 3 for 2 offers - The Colour by Rose Tremain (which I'm really keen to read), Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, and to make up the third, the latest book by Julie Myerson - not because we've read any others but because she used to be winsome and pleasant as a columnist on the Indy some years back.

Nearly finished Narziss and Goldmund, and half way through Cloister, so I'll try the Atwood first.

[m.]

I didnt see John's entry when it was posted, but I read Helena about a month ago. I planned to review it but I've gotten tired - finally - of all the Church & nation related topics. So I'll probably take a break from it, 'unless spirit takes me and we are in for a great day', as someone said. :wink:

[jim]

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World for 69p: "his first major novel" it says here. I've only read Concrete Island of his before but he keeps being praised by Will Self and Martin Amis - that lot - so how could I resist?


On the subject of JG Ballard can I just do my evangelical bit and suggest you try The Empire of the Sun which is my all time favourite book.

[Wavid]

My monthly trip to Waterstones netted me the following in a 3 fer 2 stylee:

Yellow Dog - Not sure if anyone has heard of this, it's Martin Amis' new paperback. I bought the black covered one.

Lend Me Your Ears - Boris Johnson's best-of out in paperback at last. One for dipping in and out of, I should imagine.

Catch 22 - I read this during my well documented random reading experience when I was about 17. I've always thought it deserved a re-read, and it'll be good preparation for Something Happened, which is winging its way from Amazon as we speak.

[gil]

I'm currently reading
o English Passengers Matthew Kneale; Jolly good
o The Mammoth Book of Naval Battles (eyewitness accounts); Jolly interesting
o Fox Evil Minette Walters; Fairly good
o The Avignon Quintet Lawrence Durrell Hard going. I like his writing but he takes such a time to get anywhere sometimes.

I'll review them all here when I'm finished.

[ono no komachi]

I've just finished Lolita and, coincidentally, Vernon God Little.

I currently have Geisha by Liza Dalby in progress (which I'm finding basically interesting, but slightly patronising) and a re-read of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Next read will probably be Middlesex, mainly because of praise it's received here.

[amner]

Shadowmancer - :shock:

[John Self]

Lol - is that your review, amner!

[amner]

It may as well be ... I am stifled by the damn thing, but having seen him on the telly and knowing he's now got his oodles of cash I feel duty bound to finish it and post my honest assesment.

So, probably Christmas the way things are going.

[jim]

I've just finished Money and am now into Cloud Atlas.

I am still not sure what I think about Money. Certainly it's an interesting social satire and the writing is consistently brilliant. Its also darkly comic (although never really funny as is sometimes claimed - I think I probably snorted out loud about twice). However there is something unlikeable about the authorial voice. A smug knowingness which seeps through. Certainly I found the Martin Amis character odd. Or maybe its all part of the author's skill so that despite John Self's irredeemable vileness you actually sympathise with him.

Anyway, very interesting and a lot more satisfying than London Fields. One thing's for sure, I will remember this book every time I go for a "rug rethink".

[Colyngbourne]

Couldn't avoid the '4 for £10' in Ottakars and bought

The Go-Between - LP Hartley
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Perfume - Patrick Susskind
I'm the King of the Castle - Susan Hill

There was also a 3 for 2 on kids' books, so I also came away with

Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
The Recruit - Robert Muchamore
Frank & the Flames of Truth - Livi Michael

and Eva Ibbotson's The Secret of Platform 13 for 99p.

[Colyngbourne]

I couldn't possibly list 53 books here, which was the cull from various second hand book shops roughly between Berwick and Hull.

Bargains found were:

Bleak House
Martha Peake - Patrick McGrath
Headlong - Michael Frayn (we had this and someone borrowed it and didn't return it and I hadn't yet read it)
Her Name Was Lola - Russell Hoban
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Money - Martin Amis

I also picked up the entire St. Clare's and Malory Towers sequences, eight Diana Wynne Jones books, two Anne Fines, two junior Russell Hobans, a rare find of both a John Chrisopher book from the Prince in Waiting trilogy, and a Peter Dickinson from the Changes trilogy, a classy old copy of The Otterbury Incident (to duplicate one we've already got), and Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt (because a junior Colyngbourne really got cute on the actor who playing him in the film).

Oh, and 1066 and All That.
Oh, and a few others for the kids.

[rick green]

I've been restraining myself for a while now, but yesterday I broke down and checked out the local thrift store. I came out with four books for the price of a dollar and seven cents. From a fiscal standpoint, that's darn near unbeatable. The books:

1. Lafcadio's Adventures aka Les Caves du Vatican by Andre Gide
--It looked fun. Has anyone read Gide? I've not.

2. A collection of all the works published by Kafka in his lifetime. Includes The Penal Colony which I look forward to as it should jibe with my other reading of late.

3. A double shot of Evelyn Waugh. Two books in one cover, I think a Handful of Dust & Decline & Fall. I hope to enjoy these as much as The Loved One.

4. A small book on Wilhelm Reich, one of the real fascinating characters of modern medicine/science/quackery. I think I'll build myself an orgone accumulator.

Oh, and I'm eagerly awaiting that Lives & Loves of a Prematurely Bald Man. Have you posted it yet amner? I'm sure you're all dying for a review. :wink:

[pandop]

Well I have now spent my book tokens:

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

Empire - Niall Ferguson

Courtesans - Katie Hickman

Hazel

[bakunin_the_cat]

2. A collection of all the works published by Kafka in his lifetime. Includes The Penal Colony which I look forward to as it should jibe with my other reading of late.

To my shame, I bought the complete works of K. about 6 years ago after reading The Trial (which I liked) and The Castle (which was ok). Since then it has only moved from shelf to box and back again when I moved house, and within a few days of a relocation, manages to find its allotted place and stay there. I should really either read the damn thing, or set it free and let it go to a good home where it will be more appreciated. But I can't. It's one of those 'should-reads' much discussed on the Palimpsest of old, and I feel like a literary lightweight if I don't even give it a go. On the other hand, I always manage to have something else that seems more appealing, and if I don't, somehow I just 'happen to be passing' a certain charity shop and have to take the opportunity to check out the books. Invariably there are one or two choice examples it would be almost criminal to leave behind, and old K. slips back down the list, again.

[rick green]

Allright! I got The Gulag Archipelago Two in the mail today. I was planning on reading the library's copy, but I decided that I'd want to mark the sections I liked. So, I plugged into the BookCrossing network instead. In exchange, I bartered Letters to a Young Novelist. That's why I recently reviewed that book--to take the bits I want to remember and put them in a safe place.

[John Self]

Having knocked off twenty of my books-waiting-to-be-read, I felt I was entitled to break my new-books embargo. Yesterday I bought Gordon Burn's Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son: The Story of Peter Sutcliffe, and today I picked up a copy of Colm Tóibín's Booker-shortlisted The Master in Bargain Books for a fiver! And as three seemed like a rounder number for the weekend, I topped them off with The Stories of Tobias Wolff, which I've resisted buying for the last few years until they give it a nicer cover:

http://www.bloomsbury.com/Images/Books/Batch1/0747531536.JPG

...so I confidently expect them to do so within a matter of weeks now I've bought it.

[Jerkass]

Oh dear, after a trip to Cambridge last week, my Recent Purchase/Books to Be Read list has expanded, it seems, exponentially. I must remember, the next time I start reading again after a decade-long abstention, to either not buy so many books so early in the process, or to resist the urge to read a couple of 900-page Victorian monstrosities so early in the process.

In any case, during my two-day book buying spree, I took advantage of a 3-for-2 sale at Waterstone's, and I was extremely disappointed that Sean Wright's 'The Twisted Root of Jaarfindor' was nowhere to be found...otherwise, of course, I would have bought six or nine copies of it.

I suppose Waterstone's were hoping to clear all of the other titles out of the way first, so as to devote their entire 3-for-2 selling space to Sean Wright for the upcoming Christmas season.

[m.]

An hour ago I spotted Ackroyd's The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde and bought it. I've read it twice or three times already - I'm not sure- but I always borrowed it from the library. Besides, my books from the States seem to have arrived - that is I kind of got a message from the post office that they were going to bring them in the afternoon, but which afternoon? I thought last Friday's but nope. Perhaps today.

Funny thing is I used to be for years more of a library-borrowing than buying type. Perhaps it's aging. :?

[Jerkass]

I've always been a buyer, M...the books look so nice lying about on shelves, fireplace mantels, etc.

They don't look so sharp lying about in box after box up in the attic...but the obvious solution is a bigger house and/or lots of lovely antique bookcases!

I can see this reading thingy becoming fairly dangerous, and soon. Especially now that I've given in and started using eBay. As Amner can attest--with four books making their way to him as an alternate shipping address for purchases I make from UK vendors--I might be getting carried away here.

[Colyngbourne]

I have recently had heart pangs at the notion that one of my dearest books - Jan Mark's Aquarius (out-of-print)has gone missing (one of those, 'I wonder where it is? It should be here, or here, or here....agh! :shock: :cry: ). After feeling depressed and oppressed for less than a week (and without scouring the entire house) I have merrily ordered myself a second hand copy from Amazon, to console myself because I can't cope without a copy in my possession - this is a major temptation with Amazon.

Jerkass, I think you'll find your 6-9 copies of Jaaarfindor might be available at the end of October, unless they've all sold out.

[m.]

Well Chris, I think that's it. I don't have much space to keep books, so with every new buy there's a problem of storage. Actually my buying strategy is very simple - reference books I might need anytime and books I know I could have difficulty obtaining from library. And I'm a member of 4, mind, and that's the lowest number in years - I haven't renewed some memberships yet. I would prefer to buy books and actually I do (the second category is very flexible you know, and also favourites, and also bargains) but it just contributes to further cluttering the space which in turn only makes me long for Japanese style minimalism... (But would I really like it when finally achieved? That's a question too.) BTW I've read lately an article saying that borrowing books instead of buying, no matter, from library or friends, is immoral, because it's like burning the CDs or downloading, intellectual property theft etc. Reading is not a necessity but luxury, if you can't afford it, well sorry. <shrug>

[Colyngbourne]

Wouldn't borrowing a book be more like borrowing a friend's CD than burning a copy? If you photocopied the book, it would be copyright theft. Borrowing or loaning a book can sometimes reap its rewards by getting the converted reader to buy a copy for themselves.

[m.]

I totally agree, Col.

[pandop]

Besides, authors get royalties from libraries

Hazel

[Colyngbourne]

That said, when I was ten years old, I copied out long-hand the whole text of a book from the school library about Greek gods and goddesses, because I loved it so much. It took me forever :oops: And I still have it in the desk drawer right next to me... http://www.bdshost.com/shark/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/blush.gif

[m.]

But that's nice. So medieval. 8)

[Colyngbourne]

It arrived :D Exceeding joy! I have a superior copy of Aquarius in my hands (and a lost copy still lurking somewhere in the house).

[John Self]

In London for a few days this week, I restricted myself to, ahum, just the nine new books. None of them is particularly rare or special, just not available in my two local (small) Waterstone'ses:

John Wyndham, Trouble with Lichen (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140019863/palimpsest-21): as recommended by amner (http://palimpsest.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=637)
John Wyndham, Consider Her Ways and others (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140022317/palimpsest-21): his story collection
Simon Armitage, CloudCuckooLand: in honour of National Poetry Day (http://palimpsest.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=281) today. The only of his Faber collections I didn't have and which I bought as it's now been reissued in their nice 'blank' cover style.
Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul: in nice new Vintage Classic edition for "the Greene Centenary" (it says here). Always one of my favourite Greenes but I only had it in an old second hand scrappy edition which I can't even put my hands on now
Graham Greene, The Comedians: One of the few Greenes I haven't read, also now reissued in new-style Vintage Classics edition:
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0099478374.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Truman Capote, Music for Chameleons: I'm a big fan of In Cold Blood but it's a struggle to find anything by him after that, mainly because he never finished anything full-length again. This is a late collection of stories, essays and a mini-In Cold Blood called Handcarved Coffins: A True Account of an American Crime.
Truman Capote, Answered Prayers: his unfinished last novel, which lost him most of his society friends when extracts were published as a work in progress.
P.G. Wodehouse, Laughing Gas: in the nice Everyman hardback edition. Apparently one of his darker novels (which probably isn't saying much), I see from the blurb ("A Hollywood child star and an English aristocrat exchange souls while under ether at the dentist") that it's a shocking instance of Plum Does Speculative Fiction! Judging from the expression of the assistant when I bought it (to quote Lisa Simpson: "when did you lose your passion for this job?"), the shop was glad to be shot of it.
Anthony Burgess, The Complete Enderby: I was drawn to this by the fact that I want to read some Burgess that isn't Clockwork Orange but not enough to attempt his epic Booker-loser Earthly Powers. The benefit here is that although the book is about the same length as EP, it contains four novels, each less than 200 pages long. Plus there's a quote from Gore Vidal claiming that "the Enderby series are even finer comedies than those by Evelyn Waugh." High praise, but even so I can't help feeling that this is an early contender among the nine books for Least Likely Ever To Be Read.

[Wavid]

I picked up a couple yesterday:

The new hardback James Ellroy compendium, Destination Morgue!, of one novella and a few articles, one of which is the gloriously titled exposition of his creative process, "Where I Get my Weird Shit".

T'other was the Francis Wheen How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World which I was sorely tempted by in hardback, but the paperback was released this week.

[Colyngbourne]

I am now the proud owner of a copy of Cloud Atlas, and Philip Reeve's Predator's Gold :D :D :D

And Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is playing! 8) (And there's even 70% chocolate too...)

An excellent Friday in all!

[Wavid]

Happy birthday Col!! :D

Did you make yourself a cake?

[Colyngbourne]

Thank you! Yes, I'm afraid I am, but partly as a commiseration present for the youngest Col who was only a runner-up in the Ottakar's poetry comp, so we are decorating it with the fruit from her poem (http://palimpsest.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=281&start=30).

Having tripped out to a nearby town, I have returned with another few second hand books - a Will Self, a Robert Cormier and Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie.

[John Self]

Many happy returns Col! Hope you have better luck with Master Georgie than I did... Which Self is it?

[Colyngbourne]

Cock and Bull - should be interesting, hm :? :shock:

[John Self]

That was the first Self I read, and I am looking at what Sean Wright would call a first edition/first printing as I type. It contains two novellas, Cock (about a woman who finds her clitoris growing to become a penis) and Bull (about a man, rather tenuously named Bull, who wakes one morning, Gregor Samsa-like, to find he has developed a vagina at the back of one of his knees). I do seem to remember that it's the most accessible of his books so if you haven't read any before it's a good place to start.

[Colyngbourne]

Well, I've read and enjoyed Dorian (http://palimpsest.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=273) so far, and I'm quite prepared to enjoy any other books of his. 8)

[rick green]

Bought 5 books today at the library booksale:
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Pickwick Papers by Boz
Critical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller
The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi
The Complete Novels & Selected Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
all for $3.50.
And my parents are coming to visit in a couple of weeks. They usually bring books for me. So I'm on a new book embargo J.S. style for a while.

[bakunin_the_cat]

Went into town today on the bus and got some of the books that I didn't want to carry home on my bike on Sunday. Unfortunately, Gordon Burn ,who I have only seen appear once in the shop, had disappeared. Some brazen harlot or impudent scamp must have been waiting for me to leave the shop for a while and then crept and whisked it away with their grubby paws. I don't know. The nerve of some people. Buying a book I want before I have the chance to exercise the volunteer's priviledge of nabbing all the best stuff for myself!

Anyway, Burn-ing disappointment aside I did get my mitts on the following well-known if eclectic selection.

Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
Don't know much about this but the name was so familiar I thought I'd give it a go.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle.
My favourite Irish author. The man who got us all saying ya big Eedjiot and bollix long before Father Ted. A great feeling for real people.

Ariel - Sylvia Plath.
Been looking for something by her for a long time, but not desperately enough to pay more than 99p for the priviledge. If it turns out to be whiny, self-pitying shite I'm still only half a pint down on the whole affair.

Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard
A purchase not wholly uninfluenced by the often voiced opinions of certain Palimpcitizens. I wanted to read something of his sometime anyway but you just gave me the final push I needed.

A Room with a View - E. M. Forster
Again such a well-known book that in some ways you have to have read it sometime. The trials and tribulations of upper middle class life - the canape's were simply disastrous, darling - are hardly my usual fare but again at 99p I thought I could take a chance.

[Jerkass]

The Pickwick Papers by Boz

Rick--this doesn't happen to be an oldish looking thing that looks like it might have been bound together (looking carefully at the binding) from various sections from a journal, does it?

[gil]

Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson .If it's anything like the movie, it's self-indulgent mawkish tripe.
Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard.Yes. Quite a good one. I find Leonard's style extremely easy to read. The vast majority of the story is conveyed in dialogue, somehow.

[rick green]

Rick--this doesn't happen to be an oldish looking thing... does it?

Nope, it's just a standard Signet classic. Am I missing something here? A sly allusive joke perhaps? Will it all come clear when I actually read The Pickwick Papers?

[Jerkass]

Interesting that they'd call it 'by Boz' rather than by Dickens.

Just curious--the proper first editions of several of Dickens's books, I'm learning, were bindings of the various serialised journal copies in book form. Then there will be a first published edition, too.

It seems to me that the serialised edition was written under the name of 'Boz,' but later published editions used Dickens's proper name. I could have that wrong. So, when you mentioned "Pickwick Papers by Boz," I thought you might have stumbled upon a proper first edition. I did something very similar with a first published edition of the Christmas Stories in one volume, about a year ago, for $3 or so.

So...er...never mind!

[rick green]

Sorry, the book does have the author down as "Charles Dickens". I just wrote Boz coz it's cooler. 8)

[Colyngbourne]

Squandered some (okay, most) of my birthday money on teenage/YA fiction yesterday.

Tithe - Holly Black, who has a jolly LiveJournal

Abarat 2 - Clive Barker (not necessarily great writing, but great story and characters. Only problem, as with Harry P, that your kids are grown up before the last of the quartet is published in 2008)

The Sterkarm Kiss - Susan Price (full-blooded Border reiver feud stuff, with two completely unconventional leads, and time-travel done in a realistic way.

[Lucoid]

I'm feeling envious of everyone's recent purchases as the partner is fed up with my ever-growing collection and guilt-tripped me into reactivating myself (to misquote the library assistant) at the library. Though I have temporarily abandoned the pleasure of book shops, I am very excited about the reopening of my library-visiting world. So far I've made use of Kingo's non-fiction section, a bit of a novelty for me as I usually go for fiction, and read a fascinating if repetitive book on Asperger's Syndrome, am part-way through a book on owning a kitten (in preparation for the impending arrival of our household's newest member) and have started David Starkey's Elizabeth. Much joy to be had amongst the hallowed shelves, though I am very much looking forward to my next book purchase, which will be made all the sweeter by abstinence.

[John Self]

You too live in Kingo, Lucoid! Why did we not know this already??

[Wavid]

I must leap to her defence. Lucoid lives in a little town about 10 or so miles from Kingo, but just inside the Lincolnshire border.

[Lucoid]

Thanks for the rescue Wavid!

[Jerkass]

Quick--someone grab Lucoid before she disappears again for months on end!

[Colyngbourne]

Back today to a nearby Oxfam, which yielded Philip Pullman's The Broken Bridge, Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, Salman Rushdie's (hardback) Haroun & The Sea of Stories and a back-up copy of Beverley Nichols' The Stream That Stood Still - for under £6.

[Wavid]

I had a look round the Kingo branch of 'The Works' (which the carrier bag claims has the website http://www.theworks.gb.com) today. They seem to stock mainly remaindered stuff, but I got an Ian Rankine three novel omnibus for £4.99 and a volume of 2 Carl Hiaasen novels for £1.99. I bought the latter having had my interest grabbed by this (http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1332707,00.html) in the Guardian recently.

[amarie]

I read Sick Puppy last year and really enjoyed it.

[Wavid]

Sick Puppy is one of the ones I have! Goody. The other is Skin Tight.

[Jerkass]

Quick--someone grab Lucoid before she disappears again for months on end!

Doesn't look like any of you were quick enough, by the way.

[John Self]

Picked up Tolkien's Gown (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184119929X/qid%3D1100864419/026-4149611-3860435)by Rick Gekoski (that's a lot of Ks in one name) when I was in town just now, subtitled "...& other stories of great authors and rare books." Based, it says here, on the Radio 4 series Rare Books, Rare People. I'm not sure where the rare books element comes in as they are all well known books - Lolita, Lord of the Flies, The Satanic Verses, Ulysses, and sixteen others - but they seemed like interesting little pieces on the publication and furore surrounding these occasionally controversial books on their first publication. It's a beautifully cloth-bound little hardback.

It's hard to know where this book would be stocked normally, as our city's one remaining post-blaze Waterstone's doesn't seem to have a Literary Criticism section. I found it on the Fountain Street Recommends shelves, where one of our local booksellers had plumped it for promotion. (Am I the only one, by the way, who feels they slightly know their local W's booksellers from their recommendations? Ronan and John - whoever you are - I trust your judgement, lads.) At the till, I was just fumbling over my chip-and-pin when my assistant's colleague said to him, "I'm just really excited that someone's bought Tolkien's Gown." When I looked up he was twinkling at me. "Are you the one who recommended it?" I asked. "Yes." "Good, then I'll know who to blame if it's crap." What a charmer I can be. But I assure you I was twinkling very slightly back.

I've just noticed that the author photograph of Rick Gekoski on the inside back flap is a photograph of him and Dame Edna Everage, signed by the Dame herself: "For Rick, my favourite Bookworm, love Edna x." I am not sure what to make of this.

[amner]

Is this a retitling/repackaging of Nabokov's Butterfly (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786714522/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1/026-0673412-1174862) (also 'And Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books') or a completely new read?

[John Self]

Must be the same book - the first piece in it is about a copy of Lolita inscribed by Nabbers to Graham Greene with a hand-drawn illustration of a butterfly and a quote from the book written in by Nabokov - who was very much the Sean Wright of his day. Hence Nabokov's Butterfly, I guess. From the pricing information that looks like the American edition, which they must have named differently for some reason.

[John Self]

I see that Gekoski also, rather bizarrely for an American academic, has also written a fly-on-the-wall account of Coventry City's 1997/98 season (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316647608/qid=1100875915/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_11_10/026-4149611-3860435).

[Jerkass]

Just purchased Bleak House as a gift from Amazon, along with three for me: Trollope's The Way We Live Now, Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, and Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills, all on recommendations from trusted sources (with the Ishiguro order prompted by a Palimpsest review...well done, Mr. Self).

And I've just now remembered that I really should place my Amazon orders through the Palimpsest link. Sorry, Palimpsest.

[John Self]

Yeah I keep forgetting to do that too. Sorry guys.

[kumquat]

what's the thing with ordering via palimp? i won't cos i get a juicy staff discount at work but i'm interested.

[rick green]

Hey Jerkass, can you order from Amazon US via the palimplink?

[Jerkass]

I don't know, Rick...since I keep forgetting to try. One of us will have to try in the near future, or perhaps The Wavuncular One can clear it up for us.

[John Self]

kumquat, we're just talking about going to Amazon via the link on the Palimpsest front page - if you do that then Palimpsest earns 5% on your purchases which helps with the hosting costs...

[amner]

Or, if we can be faffed, you can reach it when we do something like this:
.
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0571162835.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0571162835/palimpsest-21)
Just click on the pic. It mainlines into our account and we get the dosh (but you pay no extra).

[Wavid]

I will have to have a look into the US issue. My initial thoughts is that we can't, unless I open an account with Amazon.com as well.

Will report back.

[pandop]

kumquat, we're just talking about going to Amazon via the link on the Palimpsest front page - if you do that then Palimpsest earns 5% on your purchases which helps with the hosting costs...

I tried to get my mum to do this, but she can't open the palimp home page (well it behaves when I am there, but as she was buying my pressies ...)

Hazel

[John Self]

Hokay, as though I didn't have enough on my plate with my Xmas books (currently on Jon Ronson's mesmerising The Men Who Stare at Goats and still have The Shadow of the Wind awaiting), and my Boxing Day bargains (Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons and Richard Holloway's Looking in the Distance; I read Keith Barret's Making Divorce Work very speedily on New Year's Eve; some good jokes there but not worth buying), I couldn't resist a 3-for-2 in Waterstone's today: the first time, indeed, I have been tempted by any of their multibuys in ages and ages.

Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude - he has toyed with genre before - I enjoyed his detective-with-Tourette's novel Motherless Brooklyn - and this is his big literary epic, 500 pages of 1970s New York.
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveller's Wife - like the Lethem, this is one I was interested in when it first came out but have manfully held out for the properback. An enticing premise that lies somewhere between brilliant and laughable - a love story between a woman and her husband, who suffers from a disorder that makes him flit back and forth through time randomly - it's been subject to a few reviews which found it sentimental but I reckoned it worth a go - and I'm a sentimental old fool myself at heart.
Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages - my 'free' choice, if I'm honest. Title says it all. Could be interesting.


I also picked up Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn, the collection of his scabrously funny and frequently scatological TV columns for the Guardian Guide. Essential toilet reading.

[Lucoid]

Christmas books were hideously sparse for me - got a guide on how to tell if your cat's gay (he's not showing any of the signs yet but he is just a kitten, so who knows?) and a reference book on cats (dull dull dull but Grandma was being topical, with a kitten calendar to match).

[Wavid]

Waterstone's in Kingo have a 3 fer 2 on Graham Greene paperbacks, which is worth looking into as they are usually rather expensive. Any recommendations on which of his I should get?

[wshaw]

For my money...

Our Man In Havana because it's funny.
The End Of The Affair because it's disturbing and supposedly revealing of the "real" Greene.
And then either The Heart Of The Matter or The Quiet American because they show how brilliant he was at understanding ex-patriates and they way they cock things up when abroad.

I'd steer clear of Brighton Rock and The Ministry of Fear because they creak a little more than he usually does.

[John Self]

If it's the charming new ones (cover half creamy-white, half photograph) then I'd snap 'em all up frankly. Otherwise The Honorary Consul, The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter would do - in descending order of grimness. The Power and the Glory is probably his best but I don't think it's available in the spanky new covers yet.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0099478420.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0099478390.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

EDIT: wshaw's post appeared as I was doing mine. Agreed.

[Wavid]

Thanks chaps.

I already have The Power and the Glory in a Penguin Classic (old school - the turquoise spine). Will take your recommendations with me and get the ones I can, though I had a copy of Our Man in Havanna a few years ago, and thought it funny.

In terms of covers, they are half and half the new ones and the old brighter ones. Will probably go for the new ones if I can...

[amner]

Can't disagree with those. Had you not already got TP&TG I'd suggest that because it's brilliant, and makes me shake my head in wonder every time I think of it.

I'll go and check out Cambridge Waterstone's now...

[wshaw]

Did you see the movie of The Quiet American (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258068/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxzZz0xfGxtPTIwMHx0dD1vbnxwbj 0wfHE9cXVpZXQgYW1lcmljYW58aHRtbD0xfG5tPW9u;fc=1;ft =3;fm=1) with Michael Caine? I thought it was pretty good, and obviously doubly creepy as it had so many resonances with the present.

[kumquat]

I have ten of the lovely old orange spine Graham Greene's. I think he's fantastic. I got hooked in by Travels with my Aunt when I was in my teens. I think my most enjoyable GG read was Monsignor Quixote.

[rick green]

I thought the movie was very good. I can't compare it to the book--haven't read it. But I liked the film a lot. Michael Caine was excellent, and Brendan Frasier wasn't half-bad either.
I also like The End of the Affair. It has a perfect epigraph. (Is that the term? I mean a quotation in the begining of the book with some thematic relevance.) It's something about the need to suffer in order to know the dimensions of the heart. (I wish I could remember the exact words.) Anyway, when I read it in the begining, I thought, "What the heck does that mean?". I didn't understand it at all. When I finished the book I read it again, and it was as if that sentence contained a world. It was a beautiful feeling. At that moment I really came to appreciate Graham Greene's artistry.

[John Self]

"Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering in order that they may have existence."

- Léon Bloy

(who also, I believe, was the source of one of the epigraphs to John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany: "Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig.")

[rick green]

Yes! That's it John Self. Thank you very much! It makes perfect sense now, but I was completely mystified when I first read it. It's rather an abstract way of putting things. (Although, much comlier than my ungainly attempt to reconstruct it.)

[Wavid]

Visited the new 3 for 2 at Waterstones this afternoon:

Status Anxiety - Alain de Botton

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Spoken Here - Mark Abley

[kumquat]

As soon as I get paid I'm going to buy some more Murakami from work. He's book of the month - as i'm sure you know Wav! I've been drooling over a signed boxed numbered edition of his Kafka book but reckoning I could buy 5 paperbacks at the price. What's a Quat to do??

[Wavid]

Sick Puppy is one of the ones I have! Goody. The other is Skin Tight.

Started this last night. Straight away, I can't really see why his stuff is put in the crime section. It reminds me of a more obviously political Tom Sharpe.

One big laugh so far. A young man is sent on an anger-management course and they are set the task of writing an essay about what makes them angry. The instructor then asks him to read his out.

Twilly stood up and said: "I'm not done with my assignment."

"You may finish it later."

"It's a question of focus, sir. I'm in the middle of a sentence."

Dr. Boston paused..."All right, let's compromise. You go ahead and finish the sentence, and then you can address the class."

"Twilly sat down and ended the passage with the words ankle-deep in the blood of fools!

:lol:

[amarie]

Sick Puppy is absolutely fantastic. In fact I'm going to go to the library and borrow it again - right now, in fact!

[bakunin_the_cat]

As soon as I get paid I'm going to buy some more Murakami from work. He's book of the month - as i'm sure you know Wav! I've been drooling over a signed boxed numbered edition of his Kafka book but reckoning I could buy 5 paperbacks at the price. What's a Quat to do??

Personally I'd take the Marukami. I read the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle last year and thought it was really good. A strange mixture of plot and philosophy and a natural unforced quirkiness that's a pleasure to read. A book in a world where everything is X meets Y that just stands out on its own.

[Colyngbourne]

Having declared I would buy no more books until I'd read a few, I succumbed to Waterstones 3-for-2 at the weekend and bought:

Shadow of the Wind

Small Island

A Short History of Nearly Everything

But I have been doing rather well at reading lately (nearly finished Cloud Atlas) and am considering tackling the immensity of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell over next week's half term when I'm away, though the dense footnotes might swamp me utterly.

[Jerkass]

Just picked up The Power and the Glory and the big four-book compilation of Updike's Rabbit books (a snip at $18 in hardcover...or about 34p in pounds sterling at today's exchange rates) from Amazon, after glowing Palimp recommendations on TP&TG and despite a not-so-glowing Palimp recommendation on the Updike (but a recommendation from someone else).

This also broke my self-enforced book-buying ban.

[John Self]

The same Updike hardback omnibus is eyeing me smugly as I write this - propping up my webcam. When it's not on my bookshelves it's so easy to omit it from the list of Books Waiting to be Read...

Of my own purchases, the Tom Robbins recommended by RC arrived today - Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - as well as a couple of Russell Hoban's backlist - The Medusa Frequency and Fremder. His recent books have been a bit samey but I'm interested to see what his earlier stuff was like.

[Colyngbourne]

I've read The Medusa Frequency and ought to again, for its Orpheic connections, but I can't recall anything about it, except that I liked it. I also liked Angelica's Grotto, and have all his older volumes downstairs as well as Her Name Was Lola (on the waiting-to-be read pile). I recall liking Pilgermann and Kleinzeit the best of the early books. (And The Mouse and His Child of course.)

[John Self]

A couple of eagerly-awaited purchases arrived today, both advance proof copies and both from eBay: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (the US advance edition, from a seller in Japan!) and Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom. So although I had begun the first couple of chapters of Russell Hoban's The Medusa Frequency last night, it has to go to one side pending these two otherwise I would just have raced through it without paying attention.

Also arrived, from Amazon: a Nick Hornby book published in America only, entitled The Polysyllabic Spree - it's a collection of his columns from The Believer (http://www.believermag.com)magazine, detailing the books he has bought each month and the ones he has actually read...

[Colyngbourne]

And again, after reading in today's Indy about the great worth of Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy (I have the middle volume), I went out and found the first book in a second hand store. And also Martin Amis - London Fields, and another Diana Wynne Jones - The Time of the Ghost.

[NottyImp]

And again, after reading in today's Indy about the great worth of Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy (I have the middle volume),

I've read the first two, and very good they are too.

[Maggie]

Coly,
Was one of the books in Renault's trilogy titled "Fire From Heaven" ?

I remember reading this some time ago, and I think it was about Alexander.


Maggie

[Colyngbourne]

Yes, this is the first one which I bought today. The second is called The Persian Boy and the last, something to do with funeral games.

[Maggie]

I read "Fire From Heaven" but I guess I didn't realize it was a trilogy. I liked the book. I may just have to check out the rest of the series.

Maggie

[HP]

Today, I treated myself to Saturday, Ian McEwan's latest. Immediately sneaked off to bijou coffee shop three doors along and took a dip - noooo - not in the cappuccino :roll: - and bliss! Had it not been for a parking ticket due to expire within ten minutes, would be there still - if I could. McEwan's writing in Atonement soared to an altogether finer level (remember Emily lying in the darkened room listening to the house? Magic!) However, it looks like he has not only managed to equal that achievement, but surpass it. Racing back to the car I wanted to laugh and punch the air - just knowing I had this to look forward to .... (after finishing the Mitchell, that is - and the Zafon - and the Levy and the Updike ......) But never mind: just knowing it's there, waiting, winking at me from the bedroom bookshelf is good enough right now ....

[kumquat]

i got 'Saturday' today. (got a tenner in a birthday card!) can't read it til i've finished this pile of kids books for work though. grr.

[rick green]

Picked up some light reading today.
1. Marx, Das Kapital v1
2. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
After all, I've got a reputation to live up to. :wink:

[NottyImp]

1. Marx, Das Kapital v1

Good luck - I had a go once but didn't get very far.

[Colyngbourne]

I resisted the brand new Diana Wynne Jones' Conrad's Fate yesterday and much it pained me (refraining from reading the Chrestomanci mentions, the teenage Christopher Chant in the cast) but I did buy other books on holiday (still to be unpacked so I can't remember what they are), and I read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - review to follow.

[bakunin_the_cat]

1. Marx, Das Kapital v1

Good luck - I had a go once but didn't get very far.

Good luck from me too. I think even you might need it. Despite its undoubted importance and influence it is by all accounts not the easiest of reading. Hundreds of pages of stodgy tracts on capital and giving the workers control over the means of production make it tough going for even the most dedicated. Compared to this War and Peace and The Gulag Archipelago are going to feel like a little light reading.

I know it wouldn't do much for your kudos but personally I'd get hold of the communist manifesto which is far shorter, punchier and manageable, and then Marxism for Beginners or similar, which would give you the gist of Das Kapital without you having to spend the next three months chewing leather.

That said I'm talking to the man who actually read Don Quixote so maybe I'm underestimating your determination and/or bloodymindedness. If anyone here was going to do it, it would be you. So go for it. Just don't say we didn't warn you!

[Oryx]

I third or fourth that good luck wish, RC! I have not one, but two full sets of Das Capital lying around my house, as not only was I a raving communist in my youth, but I married one as well. We both devotedly and righteously dragged these with us on every move, display them prominently; we bought used copies due to penury and to make it look like we read the volumes. We haven't!

Of course, Ive tried to read them, have managed smallish sections from each, but in the end, relied on critiques of the volumes to glean the meaning.

Oryx

[Colyngbourne]

Unpacked, I seem to have bought The Cider House Rules and The Remains of the Day, besides Spider.

[rick green]

I'm talking to the man who actually read Don Quixote...
:oops: Um, actually, I haven't. Yet. I decided to take the poll result as a friendly suggestion rather than a mandate. But it shall be honored--just not right away.
I bought Das Kapital & The Anatomy of Melancholy to support an independent bookseller who is good friends with my parents. These were two of the biggest (therefore costliest) tomes that I thought I might read at some point. He's run a bookstore (http://www.brazosbookstore.com/) in Houston since the mid seventies. What with the big franchises & Amazon crowding the little guys out of the market, he needs all the support he can get. That's one reason why my parents' house is packed with books in every room. I lugged a back-pack full home with me from my recent visit.
If you're ever in Houston, be sure to check out Brazos. :wink:

[Oryx]

Sorry, Rick, I mistakenly called you RC.

Oryx

[rick green]

It was taken as a compliment, I assure assure you. :wink:

[John Self]

I had decided not to buy Ian McEwan's Saturday until paperback, despite the fact that I found his last novel Atonement to be a conquering masterpiece. Then I saw it today in Tesco of all places, for £9.97 - only a couple of pounds more than it will be in paperback. And it has such a nice cover.

While there I succumbed to the weaker temptation of Feel by Chris Heath, his book on Robbie Williams. I am not a Robbie Williams fan; I don't have any of his albums but thought I liked most of his singles until I got his greatest hits at Xmas and found that they're all pretty bland and unimpressive in retrospect, with a few exceptions (like Kids, with Kylie Minogue). I bought it hopeful of the truth of the quote on the front from Lynn Barber: "far too good to be confined to Robbie Williams fans. It is one of the great documentaries of our time." Sure enough Chris Heath has form in producing great documentaries of ephemeral cultural phenomena: he wrote two excellent books in the late 80s/early 90s on Pet Shop Boys, of whom I used to be a big fan while they were still any good (ie up to and including Very in 1993; their albums since have been pretty 50/50). If Feel is as good as those two books (or at least as good as I remember them being ten years ago), then it'll have been £3.73 well spent...

[Wavid]

Got a brilliant 3 for 2 in Ottaker's yesterday:

Any Human Heart
Middlesex
The Cider House Rules

Excellent!

[John Self]

Wow - and they're all fatties!

Sadly AHH and CHR will make Middlesex look crap.

[Wavid]

Maybe read that one first then, eh?

[Colyngbourne]

I've just decided to read the last one, seeing as I bought it a couple of weeks ago.