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Yeah Dorian is great.

QQQ, get all the short story books, My Idea of Fun and Great Apes. That should get you started.

  On 1/3/2016 at 3:48 PM, doublename said:

The only Will Self I've read is Dorian. I thought was p good, but it depends on your interest in coked out 80s/90s decadence.

  On 1/3/2016 at 11:04 AM, tec said:

 

  On 1/3/2016 at 3:33 AM, Bechuga said:

 

  On 1/3/2016 at 2:56 AM, StephenG said:

 

  On 1/3/2016 at 2:50 AM, Bechuga said:

Finished Umbrella by Will Self, very good book once you get past the whole endless sentence business. Moving onto The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood.

I've got "My Idea of Fun" here by Self, haven't finished it yet.

 

It also has some rather long running sentences.

 

 

At the beginning it felt unwieldy but by the end I was completely absorbed in the style, to the point I felt that it might ruin my reading of other books.

No paragraphs, no chapter headings, rare punctuation and switches from character to character and time period to time period without notice or warning.

But I loved it, and will definitely get Shark, which I hear is written in a similar style.

 

 

Have you read any Hubert Selby JR? Sounds similar to his style.

 

I got partway through Last Exit to Brooklyn and gave up, perhaps one of two books I never finished. Both the style and the content did not appeal to me, but I did note the comparisons between the two. The difference is that Self spells correctly for the most part and told stories with characters I cared about, but Brooklyn I honestly didn't give a shit about any of the characters. If anything, it felt as though written to shock and nothing else which is something I had assumed that Self did and I am finding out to be wrong.

I loved the film of Requiem for a Dream but could not get past the lack of punctuation, paragraphs and so on in the book, which I did not mind in Umbrella, as it seemed to be a choice rather than the laziness of the author (and I had read that Selby 'couldn't be bothered' to reach for punctuation marks so it is laziness). Requiem felt as though it had been proofread by Delet.

recently finished Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, it's never taken me so long to read a book before in my life - around a year, constantly had to take breaks and read a load of other books while I was reading it (mostly non-fiction). It's terribly written at times, really hard to get into a flow reading it, yet I still found it strangely rewarding - it's fascinating subject matter to me I guess. Hopefully the next two in the trilogy are better written.

Just about finished Ready Player One, which took me under a week to read, which was nice and refreshing after Quicksilver. Entertaining plot but nothing amazing, some nice techno-collapse inventions - liked the idea of the corporate indentured debt-slaves, will be interesting to see what Spielberg does with it.

Just ordered Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano (who did Gomorrah), looks interesting, about the global cocaine trade, cartels, violence and political corruption.

Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

Not sure which of you chaps wrote Inexact Shadows but I am reading it finally despite having bought it ages ago.

I'm liking it so far: at first I thought it wouldn't be my kind of book but it's hooking me in.

33% in and the characters & plot are coming together nicely, the mystery still thick enough to hide a rainforest.

The 5th Horseman - Patterson.

Keep meaning to read something other than Patterson but here we go again. Can't seem to leave a series once started.

I've never read any of Patterson's stuff but it's shameful the amount of books he releases with his name on them, and I blame him and Dan Brown for the growing trend of a chapter being a page and a half long, it's pathetic. Sorry.

Just read The Man in the High Castle. PKD has some really interesting concepts and ideas, but the dude just can't write believable characters and situations. A character who is otherwise a normal person like you and me would get shot in the knee where it hurts most and go "Oh. I've been shot in the knee, Adam. Most likely a fatal wound. It seems like this is the end of the road for me" while he's bleeding profusely and the world is disintegrating into a psychedelic meltdown

I feel like Michael Crichton is the real culprit re: super short chapters. Haven't read him since I was a kid, but I kind of remember his novels being kind where there are 100+ chapters in ~350 pages.

  On 12/16/2015 at 4:37 PM, Muflontillah said:

Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief

Need to read it again. I feel like it might work differently than the first time, which I really liked. But first need to finish a re-read of Schismatrix.

I want to re-read the Bridge Trilogy plus Neuromancer because I was so hyped about it that I finished it too fast.

Finished Atwood's The Heart Goes Last. Great read, nice ending.

Starting on Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. Definitely easier to read than Gravity's Rainbow, thank god!

To begin with it is yeah....

  On 1/8/2016 at 11:34 AM, tec said:

I've never read any of Patterson's stuff but it's shameful the amount of books he releases with his name on them, and I blame him and Dan Brown for the growing trend of a chapter being a page and a half long, it's pathetic. Sorry.

I dunno, I sort of like the small chapters, allowing me to stop within a couple of minutes notice (couldn't ever put a book down mid-chapter), but I'm so used to it now. Going on to most other books will make a chapter seem like War & Piece.

I will definitely give him a rest after this one, just not sure what to try next????

R.D. Laing - The Divided Self.

Published in 1960, a brilliant psychologist delves into the why's and how's of schizophrenic patients offering existential analysis. Very good read if you're into that.

  On 1/9/2016 at 6:55 PM, hello spiral said:

To begin with it is yeah....

just finished herman hesse - the glass bead game; still resonating in my head, which is a good start

also just started ayoade on ayoade, right up my street it is

Just started reading Anti Fragile by Nicholas Taleb, has started off in the same all over the place style as Black Swan, but seems have settled down into a more readable and coherent style by chapter 4. Where black swan was all about pointing out flaws in the system, this one is more about solutions. Good stuff so far, and less belabouring the point and repetition (and more diverse examples).

civil disobedience

almost done with Leviathan Wakes. Sci-fi action stuff, it's a lot of fun although I'm a bit tired of characters saying that stuff will "crack like an egg".

Kolymsky Heights... Top read!

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

Still reading Brothers Karamazov, but I'm amazed at how good it is here and there

Finished Vineland, was a crazy old Pynchon read: paranoid anti-government themes, ridiculous puns and buildings stomped by what appears to be Godzilla. Good shit!