here you go. i'm reading more these days.
O'BRIEN at swim-two-birds [b]9.5 [so many glorious set-pieces but the bit where he goes for a bathroom break my god]WILLIAMS stoner 7.5 [things that are boring but good amirite]SPARK the prime of miss jean brodie 9 [she's a vicious one ffs, and all without hardly raising a finger]GARNER the owl service 8 [the OG ancient-forces YA sensation]BOLTON low country: brexit on the essex coast [was enjoying this but have left unfinished so no score assigned]STANTON you're a bad man, mr gum 7.5 [kids' books are good books too!]CARRINGTON the hearing trumpet 9.5 [seriously, you write ONE GODDAMN NOVEL and it's this good, what the hell leonora, you lived to like 94 and wrote one novel and it was this good, the cauldron scene fucking hell, also why hasn't this been made into a film yet, maybe the reprint will bring that about]BOLANO 'the part about the critics' from 2666 [i give it 8 and promise to read 1 part a year henceforth]MILLS the maintenance of headway 8.5 [BUS TIMETABLES THE NOVEL, the guy has the best punchlines in the business]MILLS a cruel bird came to the nest and looked in 9.5 [might be his masterpiece, alongside restraint of beasts - a perfectly-imagined little comic realm with nothing extraneous and the most satisfyingly perplexing resolution]SPARK four short stories compilation 7 [she's awesome innit, need to read more SPARK]GUARESCHI don camillo's dilemma 8 [just the loveliest depictions of rural italian (dis)harmony; the devout traditionalists and godless commies as symbiotic frenemies; look it's hardly reinventing the wheel and at times a trifle retrograde but it's always wryly optimistic and i like that] HARRISON all among the barley 9 [something from the contemporary bestseller shelves that, far from making me cringe at the superficial writing style, draws me in, weaves a gloriously stilted evocation of the lies that bind this country, and pulls the rug completely at the end - truly at the anti-pastoral vanguard of the pastoral explosion. only gets 9[/b] because i think she can do something even more ambitious]COOPER the marbled swarm 8.5 [while gay s&m murder is the meat-stripped skeleton of this video nasty, there's something magical going on between the lines. not so much an unreliable narrator as one who's desperately trying to tell us what his truth really is, beyond all the transgression and the gore]JACOB a late lark singing 9 [more of this below]DARLING/BANERJEE weird maths 7 [a fine attempt to explain complex mathematics to laypeople and i love the tutor-with-student authorship, but a couple of things: it isn't for laypeople (i was able to understand most but certainly not all of it) and there's obviously more to say about all of its topics. a nice gateway]ROBINSON housekeeping [in progress; no score assigned. v good so far though - really picks up after the first couple of chapters once the main dynamic is established, although the preamble serves a clear purpose]
despite the three 9.5s bringing that sweet timeless surreal brilliance, gonna award book of the year to NAOMI JACOB, whose A LATE LARK SINGING is the sort of wondrous discovery you can only make at a railway station's pick'n'mix bookshelf (see also: the SPARK compilation and the COOPER). JACOB was a born in yorkshire in 1884, grew up under victorian cultural duress, lived as a relatively open lesbian and wrote 70 books, of which this is a late work. it is little-known, but it does a few things i don't think i've seen before; it's in the lineage of dickens insofar as it's a morality tale about the hardships of a young victorian woman with a cruel husband and what appears to be a gallant wealthy admirer, but published in 1952 by someone who knew the dialect and culture intimately. it's able therefore to be quite daring, occasionally horrifying and brutally confrontational in its depiction of poverty & cruelty and its undisguised embrace of socialism & social justice. plus it's excellently-written, consistently exciting, and builds to an almighty moral quandary that threatens to devastate its protagonist right up until she is saved from having to make a decision by an unfortunate final-chapter cop-out that prevents me from assigning a yet higher score. and there's a (male) character who's obviously (but completely unspokenly) gay, which is nice & not really something many victorians not named oscar were keen to allude to. obviously utterly out of print but she is definitely the kind of semi-forgotten author i'd recommend hunting for
― imago, Wednesday, 1 January 2020 16:08 (four years ago) link
Bruno Schulz - The Street of CrocodilesH. M. Hoover - Another Heaven, Another EarthLeigh Brackett - Sea-Kings of MarsLeigh Brackett - Queen of the Martian CatacombsDoris Piserchia - EarthchildDoris Piserchia - SpacelingDoris Piserchia - Earth in TwilightDoris Piserchia - DoomtimeDoris Piserchia - I, ZombieDoris Piserchia - Blood CountyWilliam Sleator - House of StairsWilliam Sleator - SingularityBarry Hughart - Bridge of BirdsBen Myers - The Gallows PoleDaisy Ashford - The Young VisitersAlan Dean Foster - MidworldAlan Dean Foster - Nor Crystal TearsCarsten Jensen - We, The DrownedBarbara Newhall Follett - The House Without WindowsRobert Seethaler - A Whole LifeHorace Kephart - Our Southern Highlanders
― nothing in the dialog (unregistered), Saturday, 4 January 2020 03:48 (four years ago) link
Joshi, John Dickson Carr: A Critical StudyKnight, SlimerLaing, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck Le Fanu, In a Glass DarklyMcDowell, BlackwaterMcDowell, The AmuletAccelerando, Charles StrossMammoth book of sf stories by women, variousSlow River, Nicola GriffithGalactic Derelict, Andre NortonHellspark, Janet KaganPinion, Elizabeth BearLeigh Brackett - Sea-Kings of MarsLeigh Brackett - Queen of the Martian CatacombsDoris Piserchia - EarthchildDoris Piserchia - SpacelingDoris Piserchia - Earth in TwilightDoris Piserchia - DoomtimeDoris Piserchia - I, ZombieDoris Piserchia - Blood CountyBarry Hughart - Bridge of BirdsAlan Dean Foster - Midworld
Opinions? I want to read some of these someday.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 4 January 2020 15:45 (four years ago) link
Joshi, John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study -- worth reading if you are already a fan of Carr, but I'd recommend Greene's biography more highly
Knight, Slimer -- fun trashy paperback-original horror, historically interesting for its introduction of genetic engineering tropes that have since been endlessly recycled; a novelized screenplay
Laing, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck -- 1930s pulp horror written in Golden Age mystery style; it has a few unusually gruesome elements, but I didn't find it memorable
Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly -- an untouchable classic; Le Fanu is well-known but imo underrated; at his best, more frightening than M.R. James, and a far more innovative influence on subsequent horror
McDowell, Blackwater -- an essential six-book horror soap opera, refreshing as Southern Gothic that never fakes the Southern details; extra points for powerful feminist/queer vibes; a few terrifying scenes, but overall more weird than scary
McDowell, The Amulet -- ultra-black horror comedy that's mainly a succession of imaginative kills; good stuff, but if you want to read one volume of McDowell, a better choice is The Elementals, which is more frightening and closer to Blackwater in its queer/matriarchal themes
― Brad C., Saturday, 4 January 2020 16:29 (four years ago) link
I was curious about the Carr study because Joshi can make baffling statements sometimes.
Gideon Wyck used to have a higher reputation but several recent readers have been disappointed, so I'm lowering its priority.
I love Le Fanu, he seems less formulaic and a better prose artist than James, but some say he has a higher percentage of dull stories. I'll see someday.
I wanted to start with McDowell's Elementals but somebody was championing Blackwater above all else recently.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 4 January 2020 17:00 (four years ago) link
Muriel Spark - The Driver's SeatMuriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean BrodieMuriel Spark - The Girls of Slender MeansAlbert Camus - L'ÉtrangerCharlotte Bronté - Jane EyreAnita Brookner - Hotel du LacDan Hancox - Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime
My favourites were Jane Eyre and The Girls of Slender Means.
― Graham Kendrick Lamar (cajunsunday), Saturday, 4 January 2020 17:11 (four years ago) link
Tao Te Ching - Laozi 2/10
I love this rating.
― jmm, Saturday, 4 January 2020 17:13 (four years ago) link
my goodreads review was "i don't get it."
― wasdnuos (abanana), Sunday, 5 January 2020 15:45 (four years ago) link
reminded taht I read the Jorma Kaukonen memoir Been So Long which I think must have been last year.Would like to read similar from the other members, think I've read at least one of Grace's already.
Augusto Boal Theatre of the Oppressed too.
― Stevolende, Sunday, 5 January 2020 18:14 (four years ago) link
Enormously late but:The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yuki Mishima Ulrich Haarburste's Novel of Roy Orbison Wrapped in Clingfilm - Ulrich HaarbursteOranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeanette WintersonMurmur - Will Eaves The Spy and the Traior - Ben MacIntyre White Jazz - James EllroyThe Little Disturbances of Man - Grace PaleyCromwell - CV WedgwoodThe Night Manager - John le CarréThe Bachelors - Muirel SparkMouthful of Birds - Samanta SchweblinThe Thirty Years War - CV WedgwoodAnd the Wind Sees All - Gudmundur Andri ThorssonI Think Therefore I Play - Andrea PirloMaybe This Time - Alois HotschingThe Tunnel - Ernesto SabatoChess - Stefan ZweigThe Continental Op - Dashiell HammettSPQR - Mary BeardReservoir 13 - Jon McGregorThe Line Becomes a River - Francisco Cantu
― calumerio, Tuesday, 25 February 2020 17:13 (four years ago) link