Hi

Hello. Welcome. Since I posted in here first I got dibs on you. Fresh fish like in prison. You belong to me... but not really.

Enjoy the workshop!

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big S wrote:

Have a good one! I'd sing you happy birthday but the melody was written by a Sunday school teacher and i know how much you hate God so i won't sing to you. Have a good one though.

welcome to the cult. we're a clingy bunch, if you dont enjoy being his fish i'm sure you'll stick to someone else in no time; that, or start trailing your own tail of culties yourself.

i started posting around the cult before i made my proper introductions as well. sometimes you've got to dive in.

good to see that you're a writer i'm planning on submitting a piece shortly. what are your favorite books, and how did you find us?

hey, thess,

welcome to the cult! what authors do you love reading; and yeah, what brought you here? was it a search engine, or a friend. an e-address from a bookjacket?

anyway
have fun and i'll be seeing you around the shop

-kabol

..

I quite like the idea of being one of those parasite fish, just attach on to different people and leech my way across the ocean. mmmmmm.

Thanks for the warm welcome, all.

Off the top of my head authors I love:
Ian McEwan,
Kurt Vonnegut
Umberto Eco
Philip K. Dick
Irvine Welsh
Will Self (mostly)
Kazuo Ishiguro
EM Forster
Hanif Kureshi
Salman Rusdhie
Margaret Atwood
Haruki Murakami
Louis De Bernieres (especially the South American trilogy)
Flann O'Brien

I'm always open to new ideas for books and authors to try though.

I think I found this site because I was both looking up Pygmy and hunting for a good writing workshop. I’ve snooped for a couple of months before diving in and joining. Glad I did.

Thess

I like your tatse in authors.

Apart from The Cult favourites have you check out Ryu Murikhamis books. Apparently he is Haruki Murikamis favourite author and like a twisted second cousin of his, definitely worth checking out.

I was about to reply that I hadn't, when a glance at my (currently large due to a recent birthday) pile of books to be read I spotted 'Audition' by the guy. I'll read it next, thanks.

A very fruitful birthday. Better than toiletries.

Welcome! You should swing by General Discussion. It's a good time.

Also, I just read Oryx and Crake by Atwood and loved it. What else do you recommend by her?

I suggest you read The Beach by Alex Garland. It's one of my favorite books, and I was recently told, "If you like The Beach, you'd probably like Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood," so it'd probably work in reverse.

Hmm actually a tough one, as I think Oryx & Crake is her best book. However The Penelopiad is also great, especially if you like the Odyssey myth. Her other books are good, but you’d be disappointed after O&C.

I love the Beach! Especially the bit where he’s swimming in the tunnel and the shark swims past. Surprisingly horrific and really nicely written.

yeah. much better than Coma !

Yeah -I remember liking his second book - Tesseract, but wasn't that keen on Coma at all. I do however love Irvine Welshs book about being in a coma Marabou Stork Nightmares - worth a read if you haven't tried it.

I think I quite liked coma, but I don't remember it that well. I only remember it being very short. Marabou Stork Nightmares is good too, have you read Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami? That's pretty good.

Also, welcome!

Yup, I really liked it - the odd/even chapter device really worked well.
I think I've read all of his books now except his recent one about jogging. Has anyone read it? Although I've enjoyed his other non-fiction books, I wasn't sure about a book about jogging...

I thought Coma sucked. But The Beach is in my top 3 books of all time, and I love The Tesseract as well, so I guess it's an unfair comparison.

I hate when I read an author's best book first. Bleh.

Yeah it sucks if that happens. However that's only my opinion, Blind Assassin is highly rated by the world. And The Penelopiad is good, if with a bit of a feminist twist on the original story. Don't know you well enough to know if that's a bad thing or not.

Yeah I read that one, it's okay. The parts when he talks about writing are generally a lot more interesting than the running bits. Overall it's more about the aging process, and learning your limits.

The thing is I haven't read any of his other non-fiction stuff so I can't say how well it compares. I haven't read all of his short story collections either but I think I've read all of the novels that you can get here, there were some early ones (one called Pinball, I think) that aren't readily available.

Hmm true - all of the English translation ones. I am learning Japanese via my DS, but I'm a few centuries off reading a novel. You've made What I Talk about when I'm Running sound interesting, next time its on 3 for 2 in my local bookshop (I'm cheap) I'll try it. thanks.

There was some reason why I got Underground - about the Sarin attacks. Can't remember why now. But it's an interesting study of the cultural differences of Japan to the culture I know.

Underground sounds quite cool. Apparently there's a copy at my local library, unfortunately it's shut down for a few weeks while it moves to a new building. I might try to pick it up when it reopens (I'm very cheap).

You're lucky; my library pretty much has romance novels and SAS military books. I know they'll happily order me stuff, but it takes weeks, at which point I'll have wandered off down another avenue. Plus I love to re-read stuff, and I'm possibly genetically related to a squirrel.

yes. you're just reinforcing my theory that some people are related to rodents.

case in point:

I'm almost made the joke, damnit where'd you find my picture - but on a second look at her (I don't know who she is..?) I realise I don't want to associate myself.

The bottom picture is probably most accurate right now, as I stuff morning cereal. And store away more books for the winter months.

Yeah, I suppose my local library is a bit like that, I went in there last week because the computer system claimed they had a copy of Watchmen, LIES! I normally use the central library because it's close to where I work, they have a suprisingly good DVD collection as well.

Ahh but Watchmen is a classic example of why you need to buy books, if you can. It only gets better every time you re-read it.

I just think it's the part of England I live in. It's a pretty big library, but it's really quite sucky. To be fair though I've lived here a while so I have burned through the books I wanted to read.

im very in the dark about watchmen.

what is it? what's the fuss about? why is it so great?

See what I did? It worked!

Watchmen itself is just a 12 issue comic book with a deceptively simple artwork style about some people who wear costumes to fight crime. And one guy who through a classic comics-type lab accident has super powers.

The core story is that someone is killing off these masked guys and the heroes try to find out why. But as with the artwork, it's deceptively simple. There are loads of subplots, in the newspapers on peoples desks, in the flyers or posters on the wall, that all tie together to make up the main plot. There are prose stories or mini comics within the 12 issues that seem completely disconnected, but are entirely appropriate. You’ll start to spot symbols and meanings all over the place.

Without going on, because I would, it's just about the finest piece of writing I’ve seen in serialised form. It does make the most sense to comics fans, as it takes a good look at people who don costumes and an even harsher look at what would happen to a human who got godlike powers, but it still works for non-comic fans too.

What part are you from?

Yorkshire. Hence the books in the library being romance and SAS books.

The Full Monty made me proud of my city though.

Dont forget Emmerdale!!!

Thankfully, I don't watch TV. I hate to think what that crap says about Yorkshire people. Anyway, you're just picking on me for being English because you're from Ireland. Genetically I'm from half a world away, so I don't think of myself as that English.

Im not picking on you I was being nice.

Emmerdale isn't nice! But I shall take your word for it.

Sheffield? Yorkshire is good

So is Atwood. Did you not like The Handmaid's Tale? I love, love that one. Alias Grace is really good from an anaylytic point of view about the troubles of writing 'history'. I've read Lady Oracle and her Eating Fire collection of poems and I've currently got The Penlopaid but have yet to read it.

Yup, Sheffield it is - home of cutlery and crap football! Yorkshire is good, better than the south anyway, haha

I've read Handmaidens Tale, Cats Eye, The Blind Assassin, O&C & The Penelopiad. So not read Alias Grace or Lady oracle. I did enjoy them all, I just thought O&Crake her best that I'd read. Very different in tone and structure to her other books as well.

Just read wiki on Alias Grace, sounds like one I'd like. Thanks for the heads up.

Alias Grace is definitely worth reading. I'll have to get around to getting Oryx and Crake when I've got the time!

and yes its better than the south! I was going to say that but was avoiding it haha but if we can have the Ireland/England thing going on then why not North/South... Well, I think my problem is less of the south and more related to southern University students! haha

I bet you like it, it's very different from her other work but a beautiful book.

Well, I've got an Irish sister-in-law so I can't be too mean about them or she beats me up So I'll stick to picking on Southerners haha - they're easy! Sounds like you're a Yorkshireman too! Which bit?

Hey, up yours! At least we get decent books in our libraries!

Bah, good point. However, you sound funny when you swear. Swearing in a Northern accent sounds waaay better.

thegiggleloop wrote:

A Yorkshire lady Originally Hull, currently Leeds. So East/West Yorkshire for me!

Gosh two Yorkshire women - sounds like the start of a joke...

I work in Leeds at the minute! However, apart from the odd staggeringly drunk work night out, all I know of Leeds is the M1 to office door & back again.

Awh, Leeds is a good place. Though having said that, being a student, my knowledge of it is rather limited too plus I won't go to certain places like Oceana or that anyway *shudder*

haha so true!

I've never been but I hear Oceana mocked a lot by the guys at work. I do like Leeds, just work is a little bit too far to walk into town at lunchtimes so I don't get to see much of it. I did the Headingly pub crawl once... that I remember. Bits of it anyway.

that's it, i'm moving to england.

I just get dragged out by people from work. My side of the office, the tech team, take us to good pubs. The other side of the room, marketing, take us to posh pubs. Tends to be fun in general in Leeds though I've never been to a club yet.

If you like Hicks, did you get to see this bit on Letterman from last week?

Nice one Nate, I hadn't seen it, thanks a lot! I don't really watch TV so I miss things like this. About time Letterman showed that clip.

Haha there's some few good pubs. I'm mega picky about clubs though music-wise. I rarely go out anymore

Yeaah, I'll give you that. Not being an American, northerner or cockney means I really can't pull off swearing.