My Will Self pick would be Great Apes without hesitation but How the Dead Live's pretty fine too.
― Stobby Buld (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 18:36 (fifteen years ago) link
i have Great Apes on the shelf but haven't gotten to it yet
― meh (jjjusten), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 18:38 (fifteen years ago) link
DO IT DO IT it's fantastic altho don't know how well some of the Britishes interest gags will translate.
― Stobby Buld (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 18:39 (fifteen years ago) link
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Q3D0TTNHL._SL500_AA240_.jpgthse look like contenders for best/worst. has anyone here read them?
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 18:42 (fifteen years ago) link
if salinger's franny & zooey and seymour:an introduction/raise high the roofbeam, carpenters then i'll add both those to my list, as well
― where we turn sweet dreams into remarkable realities (just1n3), Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:53 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark
Yeah, if they count, I add them too.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 18:49 (fifteen years ago) link
I would for Raise Hight the Roofbeams except Seymour an introduction is a pile of ass.
― ❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉Plaxico❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉ (I know, right?), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 19:54 (fifteen years ago) link
this is a dumb point to raise, but there's something characteristic of list-building - moreso with films, i think - whereby the only criterion i can use to assemble them is how much i liked them straight upon impact, without thought for their longevity or reverberation. if someone asks about favourite films, the ones that come to mind are those that i finished watching and thought that was my favourite film ever, a godard and a few documentaries, a lot of recent stuff. and then there is the fear of my earlier judgements, all the trash that i thought was good 5+ years ago because it had enough excitement to keep me excited, rather than enough maudlin shit to fuel and sate melancholia. anyway, i say all this because so many of the ones that are popping up - like particularly white noise, which always comes to mind despite a feeling that i enjoyed with some kind of detachment (the opposite of above, a feeling of it being good without a feeling of it being the best) (and enjoyed less than americana), it totally skews my perception.
seymour is probably salinger's writing at its most enjoyable, i think - like there are occasions when it's almost too much (the part when SG thinks the top-hatted man might reach for his hand while walking down the street jumps to mind), comic in a way that the story arcs and wider breadth of the other stories didn't allow, satisfying in the same way as shorts like the heart of a broken story that allowed for some indulgence. it's maybe his exile on main street, not full of hits but the most entertaining, minute-to-minute.
― the heart is a lonely hamster (schlump), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 20:13 (fifteen years ago) link
you mean Roofbeams, right, not Seymour
― nabisco, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 20:17 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah top hatted man, drinking Tom Collins=Roof Beams
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 20:18 (fifteen years ago) link
xp uh no wth?
― ❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉Plaxico❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉ (I know, right?), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 21:44 (fifteen years ago) link
I thought seymour was the one where this toddler is a reincarnated spirit warrior who can pre-cog his own death on a cruise ship?
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 21:48 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm really terrible at listing my favourite of any sort of thing but some favourites include:
La Ciudad y los perros (translated to English under the name "The Time of the Hero" ) by Mario Vargas Llosa.Love in the Time of Cholera by Gab Garc Marq.The Fall by Albert Camus.War and peace by Leo Tolstoy.2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
― suggestzybandias (jim), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 22:03 (fifteen years ago) link
what do you denis johnson ppl think of angels?
― Gravel Puzzleworth, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 22:07 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm not sure abt my inclusion of Ask The Dust, because it's definitely sort of... ridiculous, but as far as explorations of juvenile obsessions go...
― ian, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:24 PM (21 hours ago) Bookmark
This is def in my top 5 too
― I wish I was the royal trux (sunny successor), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 22:40 (fifteen years ago) link
― ❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉Plaxico❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉ (I know, right?), Wednesday, June 24, 2009 2:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
You can bite the piles on my ass. It's the best thing he published.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 23:16 (fifteen years ago) link
xpost. I loved Ask the Dust a lot and empathised with Arturo Bandini at the time - i think i was still a teenager when i read it. Have sort of consigned it into the dustbin of books better forgotten because i associate it with Bukowski who I've pretty much rejected as slightly shameful youthful taste but I think I should give it another shot.
― suggestzybandias (jim), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 23:27 (fifteen years ago) link
nunez: seymour cruisin' is teddy outta nine stories. but not seymour. just some other precocious child.
and oops!, yeah, i guess i meant roofbeams. will have to look up seymour now. then come back and stand up for it.
― the heart is a lonely hamster (schlump), Thursday, 25 June 2009 01:28 (fifteen years ago) link
i like dan for being the only one to have the TRUCK NUTZ to put stephen king on his list. the rest of u camus readin niggas siccen me.....
― (╬ ಠ益ಠ) (cankles), Thursday, 25 June 2009 01:48 (fifteen years ago) link
i've only counted one camus readin nigga
― Fred Durst. Wat heb ik gewonnen? (Matt P), Thursday, 25 June 2009 01:53 (fifteen years ago) link
tbf
― Fred Durst. Wat heb ik gewonnen? (Matt P), Thursday, 25 June 2009 01:54 (fifteen years ago) link
That's weird because there are at least seven.
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Thursday, 25 June 2009 01:56 (fifteen years ago) link
Skipping 262 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.
durr
― Fred Durst. Wat heb ik gewonnen? (Matt P), Thursday, 25 June 2009 01:57 (fifteen years ago) link
if you want to read a book by a women read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
― elan, Thursday, 25 June 2009 02:05 (fifteen years ago) link
actually, it only took one woman to write Gilead afaik
― elan, Thursday, 25 June 2009 02:06 (fifteen years ago) link
i associate it with Bukowski who I've pretty much rejected as slightly shameful youthful taste
this makes me sad. bukowski has so much depth and humour in his work.
― where we turn sweet dreams into remarkable realities (just1n3), Thursday, 25 June 2009 02:09 (fifteen years ago) link
if you want to read a book, buy a women
― still lolling, 'still lolling theme' (haitch), Thursday, 25 June 2009 02:09 (fifteen years ago) link
bukowski's one of those things that gets misrepresented when he gets claimed as some group's own spokesman. like the big lebowski = a stoner film. it's great. bukowski's poetry especially's beautiful.
― the heart is a lonely hamster (schlump), Thursday, 25 June 2009 02:12 (fifteen years ago) link
I generally think of Bukowski as a comedy writer. This is not at all a slight. Dude was fucking hilarious.
― HE LEFT BEHIND A WHITE HAT WITH AN ALIEN ON IT. ALSO A GLASS THING. (Pillbox), Thursday, 25 June 2009 04:41 (fifteen years ago) link
there's also of lot of really intense emotion too - the scene in post office (? maybe it's factotum, i sometimes confuse the 2) when jan is in the hospital dying of alcohol poisoning and he washes her and combs her hair - the way it's related to the reader is just so incredibly poignant.
― where we turn sweet dreams into remarkable realities (just1n3), Thursday, 25 June 2009 05:04 (fifteen years ago) link
The Master and Margarita - BulgakovThe Crying of Lot 49 - PynchonThe Summer Book - Jansson (could be Moominland Midwinter too)Cruddy - Lynda BarryThe Circus of Dr. Lao - Charles G. FinneyThe Good Soldier - FordThe Plague - CamusJourney to the End of the Night - CelineThe Third Policeman - O'BrienKim - Kipling
Props to deej for listing Borgel. Lizard Music would probably be my Pinkwater pick.
― clotpoll, Thursday, 25 June 2009 06:59 (fifteen years ago) link
Alice books, CarrollLolita, NabokovRainbow Stories, VollmannSword of Honour, WaughJR, GaddisThe Portrait of a Lady, JamesGravity's Rainbow, PynchonGreat Expectations, Dickens1982, Janine, GraySomething by Bernhard
― Niles Caulder, Thursday, 25 June 2009 09:42 (fifteen years ago) link
Had completely forgotten about one my favorite books until someone mentioned it to me this morning:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/West_lonelyhearts.JPG
So good. Am going to have to read again soon.
― Pancakes are one of my favorite ways to party. (ENBB), Friday, 24 July 2009 16:47 (fourteen years ago) link
Also, I really love that cover which is apparently from the first UK edition in 1949.
― Pancakes are one of my favorite ways to party. (ENBB), Friday, 24 July 2009 16:48 (fourteen years ago) link
otm
― velko, Friday, 24 July 2009 16:54 (fourteen years ago) link
God I want to read this right now and figure out a way to get a poster sized print of that cover for my living room.
― Pancakes are one of my favorite ways to party. (ENBB), Friday, 24 July 2009 16:57 (fourteen years ago) link
this thread needs more pinefox
― crazy ass between (askance johnson), Tuesday, 2 February 2010 18:31 (fourteen years ago) link
In no order: Robert Musil - The Man Without QualitiesThomas Mann - The Magic MountainAndré Gide - The ImmoralistW. Somerset Maugham - Of Human BondageMarcel Proust - In Search of Lost TimeHermann Broch - The SleepwalkersItalo Svevo - Zeno's ConscienceElias Canetti - Auto-da-feJames Joyce - UlyssesLouis-Ferdinand Céline - Journey to the End of the Night
― vittorio de sickofitall (Daruton), Tuesday, 2 February 2010 19:00 (fourteen years ago) link
I stepped across this as I wanted to read a few opinions on George Eliot.
Would never really do anything like this but I guess the poster above is (scarily) close to my tastes in terms of the Germanic-Franco tradition: so yes to Musil, Proust, Celine and Broch. These would permanently have a place although I prefer Celine's Death on Credit and perhaps would go for The Death of Virgil over Sleepwalkers.
I'd need to have at least a Russian in there: Andrei Platonov or Shamalov (whose short stories add up to something else). Fave American would be Hubert Selby Jr.
Dislike the Gide and could never quite get on with Svevo: probably switch to Conversation in Sicily by Elio Vittorini or Genet's cycle of novels from the 40s (who all count as one thing, to me). Probably like Henry Green more than Joyce these days, as an English writer writing in the same period. All even before the 19th century.
But there are so many non-novel thingies that would be 'all time favourites'. Tales of Boccaccio, Pessoa's fragments as collected in The Book of disquiet, Sciascia's novellas...
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 5 June 2010 10:46 (fourteen years ago) link
Aargh, and the South Americans and Japanese novels! No Mishima no cred!
I hate lists...
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 5 June 2010 10:55 (fourteen years ago) link
shocked that nobody, including me (ha), included Sentimental Education!
― No disre but maryanne hobbs is peng trust me (jim in glasgow), Saturday, 5 June 2010 10:57 (fourteen years ago) link
i was just reading it and got too bored halfway through :(
― harbl, Saturday, 5 June 2010 11:01 (fourteen years ago) link
Oh and arrgh again Joyce is Irish, meant writer writing in English..
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 5 June 2010 11:03 (fourteen years ago) link
xp. ridiculous awesome shit that harbl dislikes
― No disre but maryanne hobbs is peng trust me (jim in glasgow), Saturday, 5 June 2010 11:03 (fourteen years ago) link
i wanted to like it, but it's no madame bovary. i guess i should just pick it up again.
― harbl, Saturday, 5 June 2010 11:04 (fourteen years ago) link
list of old sentimental favorites and stuff im feeling at the moment
as for me and my house -- sinclair rossheartbreaks along the road - roch carrierthe atlas -- william t vollmanna jest of god -- margaret laurencea dictionary of maqiao - han shaogongoutlaws of the marsh -- shi naian or whoever the fuck wrote it (i like the sidney shapiro translation)dragons of autumn twilight - margaret weis and tracy hickmanthe fermata -- nicholson bakerrabbit is rich -- john updikeabandoned capital -- jia pingwa (one of the greatest still-yet-untranslated-into-english novels of all time)notes of a desolate man - zhu tianwen (trans howard goldblatt is the most prolific chinese-engl trans and i have my problems with him but this is an okay translation of a fucking great book)
― dylannn, Saturday, 5 June 2010 11:45 (fourteen years ago) link
this is one of my favorite threads. people talking about stuff they love, and cankles.
― computer champion (harbl), Sunday, 1 March 2015 00:27 (nine years ago) link
Is that an exclusive "and"?
― I am not BLECCH (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 1 March 2015 00:38 (nine years ago) link
i didn't put enough effort into writing that
― computer champion (harbl), Sunday, 1 March 2015 00:49 (nine years ago) link
my favourite novel is the complete works of william shakespeare
― one negged single mother (wins), Sunday, 1 March 2015 00:50 (nine years ago) link
jk