books, books, books

idle hands · Post by **idle hands** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 11:03 pm

Although I enjoyed some books by Garcia Marquez when I was younger - Cien años de soledad is obligatory reading at 16 - many people here got a little bit tired of the Realismo Mágico, which became a cliche actually..that's why I couldn't finish my Isabel Allende book.
In the mid nineties we had some new writers, and Garcia Marquez's Macondo became "McOndo", meaning that the themes were actually much more urban and more USA influenced. Some of these writers are Alberto Fuguet (Chile), Rodrigo Fresán (Arg), Edmundo Paz Soldan (Bolivia), etc, etc.

I strongly recommend Fuguet's Tinta Roja, and anything by Fresán.
Fuguet has recently started a career as a movie director, his first one move was released just a week ago, "Se arrienda" (For Rent), and I quite really liked it.

There's this chilean writer, who sadly died a couple of years ago at his early 50's in Spain, that you guys should seriously consider: Roberto Bolaño. Try "Detectives Salvajes", which has become the new "Rayuela" BTW, I think I've read Rayuela for like 10 times... The chapter where Horacio walks Berthe Trépat home it kind of happened to me for real once, not with a pianist tho, but with some old crazy lady.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 4:08 am

Some great recommendations. Would love to go back to reading in Spanish. I used to in Spain, but haven't in years. Great way to stay connected with the language. Haven't heard of any of these newer S. Am writers, and it's curious given the marketability of GGM and Isabel A that piublishers here havemn't sought to capitalise on this, but I think there is less and less promotion of translated books here now. In the 80s and 90s it was pretty standard to be reading Kundera, Allende, Musil whatever. Now it's Paulo Coelho and that's about it.

Can I share my Allende story? (Apologies if I've already mentioned this.) 14 years ago in Madrid I did an English-teaching course, and on the very last day of it, we were discussing fate. Fellow student Paula Frias said she never believed in it until a fortune teller that three things would happen in her life, one of which included becoming famous. All three came to pass. When I asked who the mother was, it transpired that Paula's second surname was Allende. I shovelled my jaw back up and tried to continue the conversation. She was about to head off to Mexico with her husband to teach English. My jaw dropped open again when several years later I read that Allende had a new book coming out called Paula, all about how her daughter had fallen into a coma due to some very rare enzyme deficiency just before she was due to move to Mexico, and Allende had spent a year at her bedside before she died. She was a very sweet and gentle person, very different in personality to her mother, it would seem. Poor thing.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 11:39 am

Thanks for all the suggestions, kids. Will try to follow through on them...

selfmademug · Post by **selfmademug** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 2:27 pm

Alexv, thanks-- I've read it and liked it a lot as well.

No comments for me 'bout the Vargas Llosa book then? Does this mean I will have to trust my own impressions?!

Extreme Honey · Post by **Extreme Honey** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 3:47 pm

I'm almost done To Kill A Mockingbird. It isn't THAT great. I don't know why people place such high value to 50's and 60's american lierature (like Inherit the Wind). However, National Geographic magazines i what it's all about, now there's good american literature!

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 4:04 pm

To Kill A Mockingbird. It isn't THAT great.

somebody told Harper Lee that EXACT! SAME! THING! and she never wrote again...

Post by **BlueChair** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 4:08 pm

To me, one of the great things about 20th century American literature is that a lot of it is timeless. So I'm not sure people place so much value on 50s and 60s literature as opposed to the fact that the stuff we still read today we still read today for a reason.

I was shocked after reading The Great Gatsby (one of my favourite novels of all-time) to discover it was originally published in the 1920s. Nothing about it is really dated, and maybe that's why it stands up so well even today.

johnfoyle · Post by **johnfoyle** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 4:08 pm

I've just finished John Banville's The Sea and Michael Dibden's Back To Bologna. Both were engaging reads, the former an all too real depiction of grief and it's consequences. Michael Connelly's The Closers and Molly McCloskey's Protection are next up .

alexv · Post by **alexv** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 11:33 pm

Masso: have you heard of Saul Bellow (Blue, I know he's canadian, but his literature is american), john updike, philop roth, carson mccullers, john cheever, james baldwin, ralph ellison, norman mailer, bernard malamud, kurt vonnegut, eudora welty, thomas pynchon, henry roth, SOMEBODY STOP ME!!)? To Kill a Mockingbird was a high school book in my time? Has it risen in the last 30 years to the top of American literature?

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:53 am

johnfoyle wrote:I've just finished John Banville's The Sea and Michael Dibden's Back To Bologna. Both were engaging reads, the former an all too real depiction of grief and it's consequences. Michael Connelly's The Closers and Molly McCloskey's Protection are next up .

John Banville's The Sea got the Booker Prize a couple of days ago, didn't it ? Is it that good ? I mean there are plenty of awards given out every year, but this one I've always held in high esteem.

Post by **BlueChair** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:21 am

The only Banville I've read is Birchwood, which I really enjoyed.

idle hands · Post by **idle hands** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:07 pm

selfmademug wrote: No comments for me 'bout the Vargas Llosa book then? Does this mean I will have to trust my own impressions?!

For the time being, yes, cause I haven't read it... sorry, I'll put on my list.

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 5:28 pm

Reading Matthew Pearl's "The Dante Club".
Not bad at all. Plenty of references to American literature of 19th century, certain figures of which, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell, I'd never heard about.
And it definitely makes me want to read Dante's "The Divine Comedy".

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 3:15 pm

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving - A book that I couldn't put down, yet one that I don't think I liked all that much. I was never really invested in Owen Meany or the narrator, John even though both characters were well drawn. Irving can write as well as any modern or classic novelist and he sets up the story in a way that hooked me. I was interested in how he was going to bring things together. There were two big questions that needed to be answered and I was willing to stick around for the payoffs. One worked really well (who the narrator's father was). However an integral character that entered the story late was poorly fleshed out and subsequently let down the other big payoff. Plus the theme of the book had to do with god and faith and I just didn't buy into it. The upside for me was that the entire book took place in locations I was very familiar with and were written about impeccably.

Keeping the Flame - Steve Brookes - This was a short one, barely 100 pages with pictures. An account of the early days of the Jam (roughly 1971-1975) by the guy who quit them just before they got big. Weller writes a blurb on one of the inside pages, so he can't be too upset that Brookes reveals his adolescent pimple popping rituals. This, again, was especially fun for me to read because I'd actually been to places were the action happens - Lighwater, Egham, Aldershot, Upper Hale and, of course, Woking. Even the funky picture on the cover was taken inside the Winning Post - a pub/events hall near Twickenham that I pass on the way into London. For fans only probably - but you can't go wrong for £2.99

Stoned - Andrew Loog Oldham - Not the book that the Brian Jones movie of the same title is based. Rather this is an egomaniacal autobiography (that may be redundant) by the Rolling Stones manager. The Stones don't actually enter the picture until about page 172. The early stuff is fascinating though - Soho in the late 50's, the selling of rock n' roll to the youth of Britain. Lots of guys I've heard of but never heard - Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Jet Harris - the influence of Expresso Bongo...the Chelsea fashion scene in the early sixties...and soon Oldham catches the Stones in Richmond and starts the selling - first order of business; kicking Ian Stewart out of the band. Really interesting stuff, not a lot of likeable folks - though Keef comes off quite well.

The Plot Against America - Phillip Roth - An alternative history novel. This one was chilling. I hadn't read Roth since high school ("Portnoy's Complaint", "Goodbye Colombus", "When She was Good") and I'd forgotten what a great writer he is. Set in Newark in the and early 40's and told from the voice of a young Jewish boy....and it's bad new for the Jews as Charles Lindbergh beats FDR in the 1940 Presidential Election. Lindbergh negotiates an understanding with Hitler and things start taking chilling turns. Roth makes Walter Winchell a hero - brilliant stuff - highly recommended.

True Grit - Charles Portis - The novel that the John Wayne film is based on. A friend recommended that I check this out as it is supposed to be a cult classic. And it is some good shit - a simple revenge story - fourteen year old girl's dad is gunned down by a piece of trash would be cowboy and fourteen year old girl hires the outlaw/marshall Rooster Cogburn to track the son of a bitch down. Like I said - good shit and really one for the whole family.

The Rotters' Club - Jonathan Coe - Maybe the best of this whole bunch. It takes place in Birmingham, England in the mid 70's - labour versus management / IRA / The advent of Punk Rock / Love and betrayal ....probably a dozen great characters. It started to get worrisome towards the end when I started to realize that a lot of the loose ends would not be tied up and then I get to the end and " There will be a sequel to the Rotters' Club......" bastard! .... This book really shouldn't have worked as the scope was too ambitious, but Coe pulled it off.... I'll confess to having a tear in my eye once or twice. I'll have to check out his other stuff.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 6:43 pm

So that's why you never come here anymore! Am genuinely jealous. Am very keen to read the Rotters' Club. I've only read What A Carve Up, but loved that. Great fun and very smart. House of Sleep is meant to be well good too.

alexv · Post by **alexv** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 1:01 am

BWAP, glad you enjoyed the new Roth. He's a favorite of mine, and a very strange case. He's now probably close to 70 and until a few years ago had become sort of repetitive (good but predictable), and then out of nowhere, and I think without precedent in recent American literature for a writer of his age, he puts out, one after another, a series of novels that are as good as anything he had written before (arguably better): Sabbath's Theater, Operation Shylock, American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and Human Stain are all fantastic and fun books. Pastoral, I Married, and Human Stain (forget the awful movie) form a trilogy of modern American themes that if put together (and they can be) capture post WWII America better than any non-fiction book can. I recommend the books to one and all. Despite Roth's reputation for heavyness, the books are great fun. Roth, by the way, has joined the now-deceased Bellow as the only American writers to get their works put out in the prestigious Library of America series while still alive.

alexv · Post by **alexv** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 1:23 am

The Journals of James Boswell: Mid to late 18th Century England and Scotland viewed from the eyes of a sex-a-holic sycophantic phony, whose main accomplishments in life were: (1) sucking up to and attaching himself to a prodigious bore; (2) showing up at Rousseau's doorstep while on vacation and refusing to leave unitl the great man admitted that Boswell was "worthy"; and (3) using Rousseau's introduction (given by Rousseau in an attempt to rid himself of the intruder) to get close to a Corsican revolutionary, who assumed (incorrectly) that Boswell was important; (4) writing a book about his Corsican experience which the English book reading public (incorrectly) assumed was based on deep knowledge of the place and people; and (5) collecting every word uttered by the pontificating bore and writing his "biography" which the English public (incorrectly) assumed was important because it dealt with the life of a great man (and not a titanic bore). Oh, and through most of this period, the stuck-up twit managed to get by without doing a single honest day's work. Lots of wenching, harassing of theater performers, instructions on cures for various forms of the clap, and aimless walks around London. Could not put the book down.

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 2:28 am

BWAP -- Since you dug "True Grit", you might also dug another film that became a late period John Wayne film...only this film was a really good one and I loved the book as a young guy, too. It's "The Shootist" by Glendon Swarthout. It's weird because I don't remember reading it more than once and I was probably a young teen -- but I still have very vivid memories of it. (Reinforced by the movie, I guess.) It was also the first place that I encountered e.e. cummings (in the epigram) and the first book I read to imply oral sex. (Which you don't forget, at that age.)

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 3:16 pm

alexv - Thanks for that - I was probably going to read I Married a Communist next because I like the title - I much prefer reading things in order.

Otis - I've been traveling a lot this fall, plenty of time for reading on airplanes - not a lot of time for hanging out here - You would love The Rotters' Club

bobster - The Shootist is a favorite film of mine too - I'm keeping my eyes open for the book - thanks!

Invisible Pole - I picked up the Dante Club a several months ago and only got through about 30 pages....is it worth going back to?

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:44 pm

Boy With A Problem wrote:Otis - I've been traveling a lot this fall

Good fish tally?

verena · Post by **verena** » Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:50 pm

"Fourty signs of rain" (Kim Stanley Robinson).

Easy read, and the main character is interesting (guy working from home raising a baby).
Not the kind of book I would normally buy, but it was on the shelf closest to the coffee shop entrance and I liked the title.

Mr. Misery · Post by **Mr. Misery** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 6:57 am

Herzog by Saul Bellow. Lively and learned as one would expect but I was disappointed by the denouement. The cuckold character is based on a painful autobiographical story that took great courage to address in print, but Herzog's confrontation with his ex-wife is unsatisfactory and he never gets to face his Quilty.

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 11:54 am

Boy With A Problem wrote: Invisible Pole - I picked up the Dante Club a several months ago and only got through about 30 pages....is it worth going back to?

BWAP, I don't read too much thriller/crime books, but I enjoyed this one a lot. It had well-written characters and enough suspense to not want to put it aside. And I could feel that the writer is a devoted admirer of Dante and his Divine Comedy, around which the whole plot is built.
All in all - yes, give it another try.

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 11:58 am

In the wake of 25th anniversary of John's death, I started reading "The Beatles - Anthology".
I got it as a Christmas gift last year (or was it two years ago?) but I only got round to reading it now. Great and rare pics, for a start.

VonOfterdingen · Post by **VonOfterdingen** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 4:28 am

I just got "The Stanley Kubrick Archives"

Certainly not for toilet-reading