July 2010- Why wont this rain stop and I am reading...

The Likeness by Tana French. It's great! Hardboiled Irish noir kind thing. A potboiler?

She was a judge in the Amazon book contest this year! Let me know if it's worth looking into...

I just finished The Good Guy by Dean Koontz and will now be starting Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. I'm excited.

Finished The Postman Always Rings Twice in one lovely gulp today and will likely begin Chandler's The Big Sleep tonight. I'm on a bit of a pulpy noir kick.

Let us know if the Irish noir is tasty, Mirka.

I'm about 100 pages through The Delivery Man and loving it so far.

You can see the influence of Ellis in the writing and LTZ with the format.

When I first started reading it, I was annoyed with the comparison. I felt like he was trying to ride Ellis's coattails. I guess McGinnis's dad was Ellis's mentor - I think I read that some where.

After I really got into the story (which really didn't take long), I started really liking it. It flows well and it's pretty fast paced.

I think so. It's a psychological thriller and kind of literary. I enjoyed the hell out of it, so much that I went and got another book by her on my lunch break as back-up for when I finished it. Which was a good plan because I finished it in the car before I could bring myself to drive home!

I hope that answers your question too, Matt.

And where is Derek? He has been remiss in telling me about this author! She mentions Galway a couple of times!

lovely. Thanks, Mirka. I think I'm going to check her out.

Maybe Derek is sexist? Although I find that hard to believe. Derek, if you're listening, please make an Irish reading and writers thread. Please.

I should bump my Aussie reading thread. I've read some beautiful Australian books lately.

I loved it, Pete. I thought it was just a perfectly told story. I'm not sure that I liked the way it turned into the whole written confession/memoir in the last chapter. But besides that, it was such a well told story. Simple. Subtle imagery. Great foreshadowing.

One thing I noticed, and I'll be interested to see if anyone else thought this, is that Cora reminded me of Baer's Jude a lot in the first couple of chapters. It may have been te wu she was nasty, but sexy, but also very vague. Not sure. I wonder if Baer had her in mind at all. I'm sure Cain was an influence of his.

And yeah, I was meant to post in that thread. I'll just post over there as well.

King Death by Toby Litt.

Transubstantiate by Richard Thomas.

I am currently reading A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace and The Acid House By Irvine Welsh. Am eagerily awaiting on American Psycho and Invisible Monsters to arrive via mail.

The Acid House was the only Welsh I wasn't really crazy about. What'd you think?

I just finished Dermaphoria again, but I read it as kind of a text book on noir structure and enjoyed it on a whole new level.

Tonight I re-read Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard, although I think I'd much rather read Get Shorty again but I've lost my copy. Any other Leonard suggestions?

I can see Cain influencing Baer - that makes sense. I didn't think Cora was like Jude though.

I really liked the tight style. I'm going to be reading more Cain for sure.

I've been a huge fan of Welsh for years. I've read TAH before, though it's been awhile. It's been good for reading at work-as I await new reading material. I've been too lazy to drive to the library. I find some of the stories to be brilliant (The Granton Star Cause), while others are mediocre at best.

What did you not like about it?

^ that. I'm a huge fan of his, just thought there was a lot of mediocrity that I hadn't experienced from him until Acid House.

HA! Im probably the worst person to ask about Irish authors. Apart from John Connolly and Ken Bruen I don't read any. I live here, I'm from here but I just want to read about other things. I find the themes they bring up are the same shit you can hear about in the pub so I dont bother.

By the way, not one John Connolly book is based in Ireland!

Ohh. I loved his book Hospital. Let me know how this one is!

Really enjoying Exile in Guyville by Dave White.

When I started it, I was looking for the similarities. I expected it to basically be the same story as Less Than Zero but in the 00's. Kind of like how they remade Psycho and had all the camera angles the same.

Dog Blood by David Moody.

Just finished it. Holy shit, what an ending. The whole thing is pretty much hot shit, but this guy is a closer. I can't wait for his next one.

Next: Richard Yates by Tao Lin (galley copy), and my expectations are unreasonably high for this one with the $2,000 per share stunt he pulled and having just read The Delivery Man.

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk.

i've already read this, but it was kick ass...lol

Finished The Brain That  Changes Itself  by Norman Doidge yesterday and recommend it to anyone that's even slightly interested in neuroscience.

I'm starting The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford now. Thanks, for the rec, Pete!

If you don't like it, I'm going to make it into a project of mine to find you the perfect book that will blow your bra off. And then I will be redeemed.

High Life my Mathew Stokoe.

PGoutis01 wrote:

mirka wrote:

Finished The Brain That  Changes Itself  by Norman Doidge yesterday and recommend it to anyone that's even slightly interested in neuroscience.

 

I'm starting The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford now. Thanks, for the rec, Pete!

I hope you like this since I struck out with the last one

If you don't like it, I'm going to make it into a project of mine to find you the perfect book that will blow your bra off. And then I will be redeemed.

haha, I may lie just to get you on that hunt!

I don't know...I just didn't like Raw Shark though I thought I would. I didn't finish it.

Im taking a break from High Life by Mathew Stokoe and reading Ashes by Kenzo Kitakata.

Democracy by Joan Didion sort of disappointed me. I love her writing usually, but this one just didn't do it for me.

Started Ravens by George Dawes Green last night.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

"The Death of Bunny Munro" by Nick Cave

Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It's for uni.

That's a really great book, gives a pretty interesting insight on a different culture.

I can't commit to a book lately. I've started and put down maybe five books in the past two weeks, which is very unusual for me. Right now I'm still trying to read The Brothers Karamazov, and I like it, but I can't find the rhythm of it.

I bought about a dozen new books while out of town, but I'm too intimidated to start any of them.

Why intimidated? And what did you get?

I'm reading 'The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression' by Andrew Solomon and 'The White Lioness' by Henning Mankell (A Swedish murder mystery because I'm still jonesing for more Steig Larsson.)

I got:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera
The Fragile Absolute by Zizek
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson
Doctor Faustus by Mann
Interpreter of Maladies by Lahiri

A few more. I can't remember. Intimidated because they're all going to be excellent books and I'm worried about starting one of them and not having the wherewithall to finish it, which would be a mini-tragedy.

Very impressive! I'm really into nonfiction and mysteries right now. I don't feel like reading anything profound, maybe because it's Summer, maybe because I've been let down so much recently. I really haven't been profoundly affected by a book in months.

Oh, I forgot that I read 'Little Bee' by Chris Cleave on Thursday. Obviously, it's a very quick read, but pretty interesting. I liked it, but it didn't impress me as much as I thought it would. It seemed a little too neat, especially the ending.

Indignation - Roth

Irina and Phil:

I loved Heart of Darkness. I bought the norton edition and it's got about 400 pages worth of extra critical essays and whatnot as well as the novella. I think I'll probably read it a couple more times before next week when we discuss it, so I can get hardcore into the discussion and be a mad teacher's pet.

I'm so obsessed with small books, short novels and the like, at the moment. Anything under 300 pages really. But not just short novels, they're novels that boil it down to the point where every single sentence and word carries this overwhelming weight. I think it's partly because I'm writing a storey now that is going to be between 40 and 50k, which is around the 130-170 page mark. And after reading books like Franny & Zooey and the novel I am currently reading (which was a recommendation from Jack, and a bloody brilliant one at that) The Sound of my Voice by Ron Butlin, I just hope that in a couple of years my novel resembles something a fraction as powerful and beautiful. The differenc between a writer and a brilliant writer is revision, after all.

But yeah, what I'm reading now, The Sound of my Voice is such a stunning book. It's about an alcoholic and the imagery is simply beautiful but also so extremely heartbreaking. It's told in second person perspective and i can't say enough good things about the book. It's overwhelmingly emotional and the way he uses the second person somehow makes it more intimate but also isolated at te same time. For me, it's one of those books like Franny & Zooey that makes me slow down when I'm reading. So although it's a small book it really demands my time and makes me appreciate the weight of everything that is happening. Ahh, loving this one.

Rust and Bone

I've only read the first story so far. It's okay, but the way this guy transitions is a little abrupt. The rhythm is off. It would be like me telling you something, and right before I'm about to make my point, I switch topics to something completely unrelated. Hopefully, that's a problem with the first story and not with all of them.

Great descriptions, though. There's this bit where he's talking about having to punch through ice that made me cringe.

Jesus. At little light reading? Did they not have any Prost or something?!

I think i'm going to read Stoner by John Williams.. too many books to choose from

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I'm not really into light reading. Books are my only method of edification right now, so why waste my time with bullshit?

Hasn't anybody here read Shantaram? I'm only close to halfway, but I'm loving it a lot.