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Mobiesque wrote:Infinite Jest ~ David Foster Wallace
I won't say much except this is now my all time favourite book. Hilarious and such playful use of English.

I read a whole bunch of John Barth's stuff before reading this, so I wasn't nearly as impressed with his wordplay as I would've been if I'd read Wallace before Barth.

Check out John Barth's Coming Soon!!! He does a spot-on Wallace imitation. Which he's allowed to do, y'see, because he was writing language-trickery novels and stories when DFW was shitting his pants.

Will do.

I love his usage in the way I love Donald Barthelme or Eckhard Gerdes or Flann O'Brien. To a much less 'playful' extent, some other po-mos like DeLillo or Carver. Or why I haven't been able to stand Palahniuk since I was 17.

Just picked up Jon Krakauer's new one: "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman"

Dude could write about cardboard boxes and I'd read it.

i was just given a copy of this...











do you think it's a hint?

and...
i feel very odd hitting the "submit" button on this now.

Campaigning With Grant ~ Peter Minack

Very chuffed I managed to find a copy of this on abebooks from a New Zealand book store for $9 (they'd entered the author as 'Minach'), cos if they'd checked against the others on there, it generally goes for $60 as it only had one short print run and I doubt it will ever get another.'Tis a novel written by the man better known as Ron 'Hitler' Barassi of TISM! Basically, it's the ghost of John A. Rawlins telling the story of his life and times and his friendship with Ulysses S. Grant, it's set in current times so it gives him pleanty of opportunity to move between the thick, stoic (and rather beautiful) formal language of the day and mix it with modern parlance. In one scene he's describing the brewing of a bar-fight between two Mexican War veterans and comparing it to watching two Tinnitus Riddled Lead Guitarists in a pub arguing over the lyrics to Lust For Life. A truly hilarious read.


A Nest of Occasionals ~ Tony Martin (the comedian one)

A follow-up and in very much the same vane as his first book, Lolly Scramble, the book is basically anecdotes from the mundane non-events from his life. Very entertaining and easy to follow narrative style and it's chock-full of wonderful similes and quirky observations. Loved it.


And in the last week (between books if you will) I've read the first three Sookie Stackhouse books (the basis for HBO's True Blood). Absolutely atrocious but addictive as smack. Convention wise and in overall style they're a cross between Babysitters Club and Letters to Penthouse. The interesting part is noting what has been changed / lost / added in the adaptation - there is no sub-plot or story arc to speak of, but the character of 'Eric' (Alexander Skaarsgard in the show) is much more prevalent and humorous as a character in the book - which is a crying shame cos Skaarsgard is the best thing about the show.

Reading and enjoying

posnanski is my new favorite sportswriter and its not close

i am still plugging away on For Whom the Bell Tolls
that and a bunch of neuropsych studies

Just finished The Great Shark Hunt which I found surpiringly excellent. I'm halfway through Koestler's Darkness At Noon and the thing has me hooked. This book has crippling tension. I loved Arrival And Departure but so far this exceeds its greatness. I'm also halfway through Conrad's Secret Agent but can't seem to find where I've put it. With these memory lapses and me falling on ice and feeling like I could have died, I suddenly feel a bit old. I've already purged my microwave for fear of cooking my slippers and then visiting Tescos naked and pissing myself in the post office.

I really got a kick out of Thomas Pynchon's newest, Inherent Vice, though it lacks much of the OOMPH of his larger works. Sort of like if Pynchon wrote "The Big Lebowski"

Still Life with Woodpecker wasn't anything to write home about. I'm wondering if I've grown out of Tom Robbins, or if it's not his best work.

It may very well be both. Theres a certain 'twee'ness about him that I no longer find adorable, though Another Roadside Attraction was still enjoyable last I read it.

Tom Robbins - what I have read- Get's kind of so-so when you're in your 30's

I've said before that Koestler's Arrival and Departure was one of the best books I've read. I was aware that Darkness at Noon was considered his best book. I picked this up and I have to agree. Fantastic political dissertation right there.

Just read The Great Shark Hunt by Thompson and loved it.

I bought three books in the Borders liquidation. Rum Diaries by Thompson, Crime and Punishment by good old Fido (who knew that dogs could be this clever...must have been one of Pavlovs russian spaniels) and I got me some Kafka.

Santa brought me Hells Angels by Thompson and I'm looking forward to that.

Hells Angels is a great book
You'll love it

Rum Diaries is also good, very Hemingway.

stripperm(0)(o)m wrote:Hells Angels is a great book
You'll love it

I just finished this and it was spoiled by two or three key chapters which were included in The Great Shark Hunt. I really loved it all the same though.

erutlucorgga wrote:Rum Diaries is also good, very Hemingway.

Yes, this comes through quite a lot of his writing, which isn't too surprising. I've just started this book now and have belly laughed at my desk a few times already. My workmates already think I'm strange because I choose to read, and nopw I'm giggling like a schoolgirl at my desk.

Eviltoastman wrote:

erutlucorgga wrote:very Hemingway.

Yes, this comes through quite a lot of his writing

How much Miller theft can one man accomplish in such a short book. I'm glad he stopped this blatant theivery and started to writ his own shit.

Been on a Cormac McCarthy binge since I spent new years eve in bed reading.

The Road
Child of God
All The Pretty Horses
The Crossing
Cities of the Plain

Love the man. Wonderfully descriptive prose. I especially enjoyed the Border Trilogy due to its absolute bleakness without the full on horror of all of the others I've read (Blood Meridian especially). Will be doing the lot in a binge.

Also while waiting for more to arrive in le post I read The Hell of it All by Charlie Brooker. Another collection of his Guardian articles. Had read pretty much all of them but by gum the man is funny.

Next up just to break up the indifferent Tejas landscape I'll be reading My Shit Life So Far by good ol' Frankie Boyle.

Will Self: The Book of Dave.
Excellent stuff, very funny and gripping

The only thing I'd like to read remotely related to Wil Self would be his obituary.

hey toast:

Promotional materials were sent out recently for Highlight of the Night, Chris Jericho's next book. It is set for release on September 16 in Canada and February 12 2011 in the UK. A synopsis for the book was sent with the material, which is below:

A Lion's Tale documented Chris Jericho's journey from small-time dreamer to big-time superstar, from Winnipeg, Canada, to undisputed WWE heavyweight champion of the world. Having achieved his wildest dreams in A Lion's Tale, Chris Jericho's sequel kicks off just as the fantasy begins to unravel. Faced with endless internal politics on his rise to the top of the WWE company ladder, Jericho has to draw on the super-human resources that got him there in the first place. There are bruising encounters aplenty both inside and outside the ring. He reveals why he temporarily left WWE, includes the inside story of his time in Hollywood, and opens the can of worms that is life on the road with Fozzy. He also re-visits the premature birth of his twins and the pain of his mother's death, as well as the shock of Eddy Guerrero's and the Benoit family deaths. As upfront and outspoken as A Lion's Tale, the sequel is outspoken and direct as the man himself.

I'll be buying that. The first book was pretty funny. I can't wait to read his take on the fight between him and Goldberg where he apparently held Goldberg in a sitdown headlock for 25 minutes until WWE oficials pulled Jericho off him.

2/3 through "Flashforward", which I bought months ago, but saved for theTV series ending (cancelled on a cliffhanger, thanks American TV ).

Average sci-fi plodder, easy read. Less complex and dramatic than the TV version, which is related only in concept and a few minor suggestions from this book.

Just devoured The Year of the Flood by Margret Atwood. It's a sequel (occurring concurrently) to Oryx and Crake. Absolutely adored the first and this fleshed out the story and showed it from the perspective of a different group of characters. As far as post-apocalyptic speculative fiction goes, it's the bees knees. More horrible than The Road but not in the same way at all. Five stars. Read both. They're tops. That is all.