Current Reading - Books best thread

[Satchmo Distel]

Add Salman Rushdie to that pair?

[ad hoc]

I still like Salman Rushdie. There have been some mediocre, bordering on rubbish, books, but he can still do it for me

[imp]

I was also getting into Amis - and his contemporary Ian McEwan - at about that age. I loved their late 70s and 80s novels, as well as Time's Arrow and Black Dogs from the early 90s. Since then, the only thing I've found bearable by either was Atonement. It just occurs to me that I couldn't think of anyone to fit that 'bands you used to love but now can't stand' thread in the music forum, but these two would be my answer if there was a similar category for authors. Actually, Saturday by McEwan has to be one of the stupidest, most annoying, just downright worst novels of the 21st century.

My review of 'Saturday' is still one of the most popular posts on my old US house-dad blog - without shame, I post the link here again for your delight and information. Like you, I loved the first McEwan short stories and novels, they seemed very fresh in the early 80s. I was perplexed not just at how bad 'Saturday' was, but at how many glowing, obsequious reviews it received from the adoring literati.

[jameswba]

My review of 'Saturday' is still one of the most popular posts on my old US house-dad blog - without shame, I post the link here again for your delight and information. Like you, I loved the first McEwan short stories and novels, they seemed very fresh in the early 80s. I was perplexed not just at how bad 'Saturday' was, but at how many glowing, obsequious reviews it received from the adoring literati.

Thanks for linking that, I enjoyed it. I just hope I won't get caught out lifting bits of it unacknowledged, here or anywhere else.... . And yes, the reviews. I suppose, the critics do form a sort of self-perpetuating clique a lot of the time. As I recall from the time, Christopher Hitchens (whom you quoted) was coming out with the same sort of shite as Amis and McEwan about 9/11, Iraq etc. I also remember some reviewers spouting rubbish about how the novel 'perfectly captured our collective post-9/11 angst' or some such.

As for Salman Rushdie, I know he sometimes gets bracketed with that pair, but the only novel of his I've ever read is Midnight's Children. I liked it a lot, yet it hasn't compelled me to read any more by him.

[ad hoc]

Thanks Ian, I enjoyed that

[Sam]

As for Salman Rushdie, I know he sometimes gets bracketed with that pair, but the only novel of his I've ever read is Midnight's Children. I liked it a lot, yet it hasn't compelled me to read any more by him.

Yes, same. I liked Midnight's Children so much that my girlfriend is currently learning about the history of India by reading it because I gave it to her for Christmas last year, and I might re-read it at some point when she's done with it. I might try and look up something else by him at some point.

[ad hoc]

The Satanic Verses is brilliant. Shame is good too. I think my favourite (marginally) is The Ground Beneath Her Feet

[Amor de Cosmos]

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is still (I think) AdeC jr's favourite book, he reads it ever year so he tells me.

[jameswba]

Thanks Ad Hoc and AdeC for those recommendations. Like Sam, I could imagine reading Midnight's Children again. I still have it on the shelf here.

[jameswba]

Speaking of rereading, the last book I finished was D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. The colleague I lent The Bell Jar to gave me a copy. Not a present as such ; the company she ordered it from had somehow duplicated her order and told her not to send the extra copy back, which was nice of them.

I had two long-standing memories linked to this book. The first was my A' level English teacher saying, during a discussion on which classics we should / shouldn't read, that he found Lawrence unreadable. The second was actually reading the book and finding the first half (everything before Paul's starts seeking romantic relationships) much more compelling than the second, to the extent that years later I could remember whole passages from the first half by heart while barely recalling what happens in the second half.

Reading it again hasn't really changed that impression, though it is a great novel. Its portrayal (in the first-half) of domestic violence must be one of the greatest in all literature, certainly up to the time it was written, though passages by Ann Bronte in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall run it pretty close.

[Jon]

though passages by Ann Bronte in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall run it pretty close.

How good is that novel! I read it over 20 years ago and parts of it still stick with me. Conversely, I read Wuthering Heights at about the same time which I remember very little about.

[jameswba]

How good is that novel! I read it over 20 years ago and parts of it still stick with me. Conversely, I read Wuthering Heights at about the same time which I remember very little about.

I only read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall two years ago and yes, it's brilliant. It never deserved to be less well-regarded than Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I love Wuthering Heights too, though I had to read it three times to feel I understood it.

[RobW]

Finished The Curious History of Sex which was very good, and back onto fiction for my holiday so will read The Nickel Boys.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Finished Blood and Guts in High School this morning, the last 30 page were a slog and a half. God knows how many mentions of "c*nt" were in that book. I was hoping Acker would be a more readable version of William Burroughs, I was wrong. I'm going to chill out now and read the second half of Stephen King's IT, which I started at the beginning of the year. After that, I've got Alex Chilton's biography to read.

On the subject of The Bell Jar, I thought it was a superb book, good call by james on the humour included in it of New York life for a young girl trying to get started in employment, reminiscent in part to Colm Toibin's Brooklyn. However, the part were she is swimming further away from the shore will always stay with me and is the best attempt to describe subconscious suicidal tendencies I have come across (if not the only).

[Nefertiti2]

I also love Rebecca, and just about everything else by Daphne du Maurier. It wasn't long ago that I read one of her short story collections, the one where The Birds is the title story. All the stories in it are superb, with Kiss Me Again, Stranger perhaps the best of all.

"Don't Look Now" is also from a Du Maurier short story

[ale]

Landslide-Michael Wolff. First of his trilogy on Trump have read. Doesnt pull punches but left with impression there a grudging respect for the failure of anybody in US political system to actually nail his hopes of resurrection. Guiliani for example gets a far harder unsympathetic hearing. There is a lot of repetition about the bunker mentality that permeated the White House following the election result but it still seems incredible that for almost 2 months there was a complete vacuum in the way the country was being run-or rather not being run. Maybe this not unusual to US posters. Overall entertaining read for somebody not familiar with Washington events-Biden is absent throughout and author seems to place more faith in Pence & McConnell.

[ale]

Cold Water-Gwendoline Riley. Been wanting to catch up on this author for a while & have started with her debut novel. Slight at 160 pages the narrative follows a 20 year old Carmel during her 'wilderness years' in Manchester. Working behind bar at a night club its her journey through the underbelly of the city life-as such its about characters rather than plot. The city is changing-the book was written 2002 although not being familiar with Manchester its not clear whether the changes are contemporary to this era-but Carmel isnt despite her dreams of get away. It could be that this story has an autobiographical slant and it does offer the promise of an author who will develop in future novels.

[Sam]

I first read that as 'a 20 year old Camel', which is definitely a book I could get on board with.

Might give this a go though, as it was written a year before I moved to Manchester .

[Philip Marlow]

My review of 'Saturday' is still one of the most popular posts on my old US house-dad blog - without shame, I post the link here again for your delight and information. Like you, I loved the first McEwan short stories and novels, they seemed very fresh in the early 80s. I was perplexed not just at how bad 'Saturday' was, but at how many glowing, obsequious reviews it received from the adoring literati.

I was volunteering at one of those Oxfam books and music shops when someone bought a copy to the counter and asked me if I'd read it (I had) and what I thought of it. I suspect my expression conveyed the intensity of my feelings better than words. Amongst the pro reviewers I recall John Banville pissing all over it from a great height.

As for Plath and Hughes, the American poet John Dolan wrote a lengthy essay on his time studying at Berkeley and the fact that Hughes was, then, verboten. The Monster Who Killed Sylvia. I've no idea how he's regarded these days, or whether the quality lit game has managed to assess the work of either without the marriage as a constant reference point (like I'm referring to it now).

[Sam]

Finished Stories of Your Life and Others on Thursday night. A little uneven, perhaps, but the notes on the stories at the end of the book and the list of where and when they were first published makes clearer that (although they are apparently the first eight stories Chiang had published) they span a period of eleven years, so that's less surprising really. I especially liked 'Tower of Babylon' and 'Seventy-Two Letters'.

The title story is very interesting, but differs from the book. Don't want to post why because I can't get spoiler tags to work.

I have now started Sway by Pragya Agarwal, which is about unconscious bias. I attended a Zoom seminar she ran about researching for non-fiction projects a few months back (maybe late last year? Maybe early this year? I really can't remember) and it was great.

[Balderdasha]

I'm reading "Nation" by Terry Pratchett. It's one of the few remaining books of his that I haven't yet read. It's theoretically a book for young adults, but quietly powerful and exactly the tonic I need right now. I occasionally mourn the fact that there will never again be any more new Terry Pratchett books, and more importantly that he himself no longer lives, but then I remember that it's taken me nearly 30 years so far to read all the ones I've read, and I can just start again at the beginning whenever I want to. His is a phenomenal body of work and I love him deeply. His sense of justice and inclusion and empathy for so many of his varied characters has been a very strong influence on my world view. I think I first read Carpet People when I was about 8 or 9. When I moved to a new school aged 11, it took me a year or two to establish a good set of friends and in the meantime there was a library in a portakabin with one long seam of Terry Pratchett books and one long seam of Agatha Christie murder mysteries, and I alternated between them to keep myself company.

[Sam]

He's been discussed a fair bit on books Twitter recently in the context of the debate around certain other authors being massive transphobes and trying to co-opt him as one of their team. Not only was he obviously not, given, y'know, his books (various of which make his progressive views on lots of issues, including gender, very clear indeed) but his daughter replied to one or two the other day to tell them to stop it because he'd be horrified if he were still around to see them suggesting he'd be on their side.

I demolished every Discworld novel that was published before about my 19th birthday, and I've a mind to get a few of them in ebook form now to re-read them 20-odd years on.

[Balderdasha]

I know. Anyone who tries to co-opt Terry Pratchett as a transphobe has clearly never read a single one of his books. I'm enjoying Nation more and more and a female character has been introduced who has some sort of post-partum depression or possibly even post-partum psychosis who is being given the gentlest possible description and treatment. It's very healing. I can't actually think of a male author who writes female characters better than Terry Pratchett.

[Levin]

I really enjoyed rereading a good chunk of Pratchett during lockdown last year. I used to be less keen on the later books compared to the first dozen or so but I've changed my mind.

I've just finished re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo in the 1994 english translation. It's a fantastic book and just builds up a head of steam and charges towards the finish. Not that it starts slowly, or weakly mind you.

[ale]

Town Called Solace-Mary Lawson. Strange one this. Longlisted for 2021 Booker and while engaging it not engrossing. Plenty of reason to read easy if undemanding literature so works on that level. Setting is 1972 Canada remote Ontario hinging on events of history of early 1940s. The main characters are written with empathy-though a little too wholesome- even when subjects cross over to child neglect ,abduction and at end abuse & rape-though the latter is introduced rather than addressed as a late coda to the narrative.