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[Sam]

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Haha, I can't see any of my story in this novel yet, either. It would be a bit weird if I could, given that my story was about a taxi ride through Buenos Aires and this novel is about a fishing expedition to the Arctic circle. That story was published, actually. I'd link to it if I could remember what the magazine was called.

[imp]

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Sam wrote: It's enough to make me want to start writing again...

Why did you ever stop? Start again!

[Sam]

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imp wrote:

It's enough to make me want to start writing again...

Why did you ever stop? Start again!

Because I'm really lazy. And I can't get past the opening of the first chapter of the novel I've been sketching out in my head (and a bit on my computer) for over a year now.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Just finished Andrew Smith's Moondust, about the guys who walked on the moon and how it affected them, plus lots of wider reflections on the Apollo programme, its wider context and its meaning for us all. Superb book.

[San Bernardhinault]

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Yeah. I loved Moondust (which I only knew about thanks to OTF's recommendations).

[Incandenza]

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I saw The Motorcycle Diaries in one of those Little Library bookcases that some people have on their front lawns, so I picked that up. Yeesh. If that was written by anyone other than Che Guevara, there is no way that it would still be read today. I'd say about 20% of it was interesting. Then again, he didn't write it to be published widely, so I can't really be angry at him.

I'm now reading Underground Airlines, by Ben Winters. I'm not normally one for counterfactual historical novels, but this is pretty interesting so far. The premise is that the US Civil War never happened, and the Constitution was amended in the 1860s to add compromise amendments that outlawed slavery in the North, but allowed it in the South. It's now the 21st Century, and there are four remaining slave states, and the US is an international pariah, depending on international trade with states like Pakistan and South Africa (presumably still under apartheid...I'm not sure, I'm not too far in yet), and people still listen to cassette tapes because CD technology hasn't reached the country yet. Anyway, the story is about a black man who works undercover for a federal agency that tracks down runaway slaves, who is secretly an escaped slave himself. It's written as a thriller, and it's been pretty good so far.

[Sam]

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I read a couple of Che Guevara's diaries when I was a teenager - the African Diaries was one - and it must be said he's not the most gripping narrator. An awful lot of it is descriptions of sitting around the jungle teaching people how to engage in guerrilla warfare.

[Incandenza]

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The Motorcycle Diaries is an ironic title--I'd say that they're only on the motorcycle for about 1/3 of the book, then it breaks down and the rest of the time they hitchhike. Most of the entries consist of waiting for a ride, hoping that people will give them a hot meal, or trying to find some water and place to make a fire so they can brew some mata. The movie was a lot more entertaining.

[Sam]

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Just finished The North Water, which didn't disappoint one bit - it swings from adventure to whodunnit and back to adventure again - and which I highly recommend.

I'm now about to start The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe by Rick Wilson. It's a book I must have bought ages ago and have had sitting on my Kindle since, about the life of Alexander Selkirk.

[Crusoe]

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I finished Nabokov's Favourite Word is Mauve. It's quite entertaining, a bit short, a sort of Freakonomics analysis lite on word and grammar usage and elements of literary style.

[Sam]

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Heh, I start reading a book about Alexander Selkirk, and the next person to post on the thread is Crusoe. Nice.

It's all right this book. I'm 26% in (Kindle books without page numbers...) and have learnt something I didn't know - namely that the common Bristolian belief that Selkirk met Daniel Defoe in the Llandoger Trow pub is almost definitely bollocks, concocted by a couple of brothers who owned the pub in the mid-twentieth century and had a good eye for a publicity opportunity. I'd grown up thinking it was true. They did almost definitely meet at least once in Bristol (in spite of Defoe denying they ever met at all), but probably in a different pub which is no longer standing.

It's got some slightly jarring bits where the author writes what he thinks Selkirk might have written after being rescued from his isolation, though. Actually it's not so much the prose that jars - I think it's quite good, by and large, though it's not a patch for period feel on what I've just read from my old teacher - but the fact he feels the need to introduce it each time by reminding you he's imagining it. I think separating it out into a separate short chapter each time he does it would seem a bit more natural. But I'm enjoying it all the same.

I'm moved to comment here though by the fact that the chapter I'm currently on reads as if the local tourist board of Selkirk's home village (which I'm not going to name here just because of this fact) have paid the author to talk about it at length, though. It's a bit odd.

[Lang Spoon]

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Jesus. [Redacted] is alright, functional and not falling apart or 60's redeveloped, but not worth going to visit. The gush must have been through some cooncil jolly money. It's better than nearby East German flavoured Leven/Methil or my biggish toun old manor, but a few miles up the road the East Neuk proper starts and you've tidy wee 16th-18th Cent Scots Vernacular/Dutch pastiche crow stepped fishing villages built around small harbours. Amazing chippies, lobster from a hut at the dock, full of folky fuckers, ex Beta Banders, artists and Embra second home Torygraph types. [Redacted] just has the Torygraph types and local Fife as Fuck wideos, and golf. Golf golf golf.

Selkirk was apparently some prick as well.

[Lang Spoon]

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Incandenza wrote: The Motorcycle Diaries is an ironic title--I'd say that they're only on the motorcycle for about 1/3 of the book, then it breaks down and the rest of the time they hitchhike. Most of the entries consist of waiting for a ride, hoping that people will give them a hot meal, or trying to find some water and place to make a fire so they can brew some mata. The movie was a lot more entertaining.

A med student friend in the way back got really angry about that book. I think Che's assumptions prejudices and behaviours (even when he's trying to help the poor and not just scrounge) reminded her of the more entitled (more than) half of her fellow Glasgow med students. I can't remember anything about the book other than the dull ache of boredom. It really is up there with Kerouac.

[Anton Gramscescu]

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Incandenza wrote:
Just finished The Sellout. Fucking loved it. I think I enjoyed it even more because of the references to Los Angeles places and street names, some of which make sense and are geographically accurate, some of which aren't where they are in real life where they are in the book, and some of which are slightly changed from real life. There's a Hawaiian Gardens in Southern California, but it's Polynesian Gardens in the book. Airdrome and Sawyer are real street names (near where I used to live!), but they aren't where he describes in the book. And Dickens is a stand-in for a part of Compton and some unincorporated land which really does have farmland.

OK, so I read the Sellout late last year an my main question was: how do Blacks react to this book? I have not seen any black reviewers' take on this. Because there are parts of it that to me read like what a back person's imaginary white person's idea of what a black iconoclast would be. I found a lot of it was trying fairly hard to imitate the cadence of a Dennis Miller monologue. Weird and not actually all that enjoyable. To me, anyway.

[Sam]

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Lang Spoon wrote: Jesus. [Redacted] is alright, functional and not falling apart or 60's redeveloped, but not worth going to visit. The gush must have been through some cooncil jolly money. It's better than nearby East German flavoured Leven/Methil or my biggish toun old manor, but a few miles up the road the East Neuk proper starts and you've tidy wee 16th-18th Cent Scots Vernacular/Dutch pastiche crow stepped fishing villages built around small harbours. Amazing chippies, lobster from a hut at the dock, full of folky fuckers, ex Beta Banders, artists and Embra second home Torygraph types. [Redacted] just has the Torygraph types and local Fife as Fuck wideos, and golf. Golf golf golf.

Selkirk was apparently some prick as well.

Haha. He doesn't gush as such, there's just a really odd amount of detail throughout, like the names of local shops and pubs and hotels, and of a local artist whose work is available from his shop, and so on. Stuff that, when you're reading the book, just makes you think, 'Oh come on, get on with it please, I don't care how much a main course at the hotel restaurant costs or whether it's any good.'

And yes, a central point of the book is that Selkirk was, to judge from virtually everything that anyone who met him has left on record, a monumental bellend. That's one thing the author is more than happy to remind us of (to his credit, I'd say, given that the entire book is about Selkirk and therefore one might expect it to be a bit of a whitewashing exercise).

[Lang Spoon]

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Sam wrote:
Haha. He doesn't gush as such, there's just a really odd amount of detail throughout, like the names of local shops and pubs and hotels, and of a local artist whose work is available from his shop, and so on. Stuff that, when you're reading the book, just makes you think, 'Oh come on, get on with it please, I don't care how much a main course at the hotel restaurant costs or whether it's any good.'

And yes, a central point of the book is that Selkirk was, to judge from virtually everything that anyone who met him has left on record, a monumental bellend. That's one thing the author is more than happy to remind us of (to his credit, I'd say, given that the entire book is about Selkirk and therefore one might expect it to be a bit of a whitewashing exercise).

Heh, Fifer is a Middle Scots synonym for thrawn, contrary, mean, brooding, unsociable, awkward, quick to take offence. No resemblance to moany cunts like me, Gordon Brown Textured Like Sun or Mr Selkirk at all at all.

[Sam]

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Got through the last couple of chapters last night. Selkirk ended up returning to his home village, meeting a pretty girl and quickly growing bored of the place, and talking her into eloping with him to London. He found another sailing job - going off down the west coast of Africa on a ship charged with basically acting as a bodyguard for British merchant vessels against pirate attacks - and before getting on it he drew up a will leaving most of his stuff to this girl (and then to his family after her death). But the practice bit of the voyage, down to Cornwall, got waylaid and he ended up holed up in Portsmouth for a year or two, where he decided to marry a pub landlady and made another will leaving his stuff to her. There are suggestions that she wasn't that interested in him and was just trying to see what she could get out of him, and didn't have a clue he was really as fabulously wealthy as he claimed until the first girl piped up following his death of (probably) yellow fever off the coast of Ghana, at which point she started fighting tooth and nail for everything, and the girl who'd gone down to London with him - Sophia Bruce - probably died destitute.

A fascinating man, and a complete and total cunt. You can't help but get the sense that if he hadn't insisted on being left on Juan Fernández himself (he was convinced the ship was going to sink, and it promptly did a couple of months after he was marooned), some other captain would have left him on a different island at some point anyway.

Anyway, this afternoon I had a small amount of work to do, so I've got the luxury of a chance to look through and think about what I want to read next a little later.

[Sam]

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I (re)started Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl, today. I've been thinking a lot lately about the books I read when I was a kid, and after being surprised to hear that my girlfriend's never read any of Dahl's children's books (she has a few of his non-kids books, in English, at her dad's place), we compared Amazon US to Amazon UK prices and I ended up buying an anthology of five of his books for my Kindle (this, plus Great Glass Elevator, Danny the Champion of the World, George's Marvellous Medicine (which now I think about, I might not have read before), The BFG and The Twits. So I thought I'd start one of them.

I'd forgotten how much I love Roald Dahl. *SPOILER ALERT* When I reached the point where Charlie finds the golden ticket, I was once again filled with the same sense of excitement and wonder and joy that I felt when I first read this book, when I was about 8. It's fantastic.

[San Bernardhinault]

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Incandenza wrote: I gave Barbarian Days about 125 pages before I gave up out of lack of interest. It's very well written, but good lord I found it very boring after a while. The opening chapters were very good, about moving between Southern California and Hawaii as a kid and the racial and social dynamics at his school in Oahu, but chapters predominantly about different types of waves and how they formed and broke without any real introduction, a lot of this being unfamiliar if you don't know how surfing works, really wore on my patience and I decided it wasn't for me.

I'm just a couple of chapters from the end, and I have to say that I differ from you on this.

I have really enjoyed it. The stuff on the types of waves - is something a point break or a beach break; or does it break left or right - really isn't that interesting, but as far as I can tell it also doesn't matter. It's just a framing, really. The really strong section is when he's a feckless young man who just travels and travels looking for good waves, and it turns into more like normal travel writing - with just the hook of the surfing - than a book about surfing, per se.

[WOM]

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I pass a homeless guy outside Union Station in Toronto each morning who sells two self-published books. He was written up in the Toronto Star recently so I thought I'd take a flyer on his first work 'Crackilton'. It's a very thinly-disguised work of fiction about his days as a crack addict in Hamilton, ON and on his time as a drug dealer's driver.

And, as echoed by his Goodreads and Amazon reviews, it's fantastic. It's rough, gritty and surprisingly well written. Best of all, it's compelling. I could barely put it down. The honesty and insight into a side of life most of us will never experience is fascinating.

His second work is Squeegie Kid - which I'll happily buy from him on Monday - and there's apparently a third coming about his 25 years travelling the small towns of Canada as a parking-lot carnival operator.

[WOM]

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So, I bought Squeegie Kid off him this morning, and as soon as he saw me he said "You reviewed my book on Amazon this weekend, didn't you? I knew it was you!" He said his first book has now sold out, and more people than ever are stopping since reading The Star's article. Good for him.

[Sam]

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You might have earned him another sale soon too WOM, as I see Crackilton is available for Kindle from Amazon UK. Lots of very good reviews on it, too.

I've now started The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, which I've had for absolutely ages - it was one of the first things I downloaded from Project Gutenberg when I first got the Kindle. The Woman in White is fucking brilliant, and this one's started strongly.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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A couple of years or so back someone here (possibly Lucia Lanigan — who’s greatly missed BTW) asked if I’d read any Haruki Murakami. I hadn’t and was then told I should because I’d like him. Certainty about another’s taste is unusual, possibly even presumptuous, but in this case it proved to be spot-on. It turned out La Signora had brought The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and South of the Border, West of the Sun to our shared bookshelves. I enjoyed both immensely without quite being able to explain why. I’m not a huge fan of Magic Realism which is where, if there’s a need to categorise, is where Murakami’s books tend to end up. I think, in fact, I was attracted to their mundanity more than their weirdness, though each quality is required to make the other work.

Today I finished his “magnum opus,” the 1000pp+ 1Q84. I’ve rarely been as emotionally affected by the finale of a modern novel as I was by this. I confess to weeping through the concluding pages. Not with relief — as the cynic might say, nor with sadness — that just isn’t there. Happiness then? Not exactly that either. More joy infused with tenderness I think. At bottom this is a love story, but one of the most convoluted ones you’re ever likely to read. A story full of recognisable Murakami characters and tropes. Mysterious young women, who suddenly disappear for unexplained reasons. Rather stunned male protagonists who spend a good deal of time making sandwiches, the contents and assembly of which are described in great detail. It’s all slightly off kilter but hangs together somehow, because, in spite of the book’s length, he’s an exceptionally clear and concise writer. There are no wasted words here. No fabulosity, no over-written fantasy bollocks. Every line is there for a reason, less obvious is what the reason might be. Food for thoughts and dreams later.

I’ve heard that Murakami’s works aren’t so much liked in Japan. A Japanese friend of La Signora reckons “he must have a very good English translator.” He’s apparently viewed by some as “too European” in his prose style. I can’t speak to that, I can only recommend this book as the most compelling, and emotionally engaging work of fiction I’ve read this year so far.

[imp]

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Sam wrote: I've now started The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, which I've had for absolutely ages - it was one of the first things I downloaded from Project Gutenberg when I first got the Kindle. The Woman in White is fucking brilliant, and this one's started strongly.

I did that at A level - magnificent novel, and just as tense and beautifully constructed as The Woman in White.

@AmordeC: 1Q84 was one Murakami too far for me - it took me months to get through it, all the while abandoning it for other books before coming back to it a few pages at a time. All the things you say are true - that mundane, almost monotonous descriptions of his lonely male characters making dinner always appeal to me, because you always have this sense of something darker happening just outside the door in that other-world of weirdness beyond. South of the Border... and Hard-Boiled Wonderland... are two of my favourite novels ever. But in 1Q84 I began to wonder far too often, "Is this really any good?" Or, without a great deal of literary insight, I admit, "Couldn't this have been at least half the length?" But I'm glad you got so much out of it. My daughter, who's a huge Murakami fan, loved it too.

[WOM]

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Sam wrote: You might have earned him another sale soon too WOM, as I see Crackilton is available for Kindle from Amazon UK. Lots of very good reviews on it, too.

I finished Squeegee Kid on the train in this morning. In many ways same but different. Also excellent, though. About his life on the streets in Toronto, washing car windows, selling weed, and generally running low-level scams to get by. Fascinating and candid. I'll be reviewing it on Amazon too, as it seems he quite appreciates it.