Didn't include it but: that feeling when.
Peter's Pence is a 1974 novel[1] from Australian author Jon Cleary about an IRA plot to steal treasure from the Vatican with the help of an Irish-American journalist. They wind up kidnapping the Pope instead.[2][3]
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 10:22 (two years ago) link
Lots of good stuff here, tempted to vote Tinker, Tailor as I am re-watching the equally excellent TV series at the moment
― Neil S, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 10:23 (two years ago) link
Have read about 10 of these for a change. Went for Leonora Carrington over Priest, Le Guin, Dick and, er, Herbert. Fiction needs more narrators in their 90s, especially when they can only hear with the aid of the titular trumpet, hear things they shouldn't and are thus sent to live in a surrealist care home.
― Best regards, HM Revenue & Customs (Matt #2), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 10:35 (two years ago) link
The Rats was THE horror novel for British teenage boys to read in the 1980s btw, going by personal experience of everyone I know around my age having read it back then.
― Best regards, HM Revenue & Customs (Matt #2), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 10:37 (two years ago) link
I learned about it from We Are The Mutants. Good article:
https://wearethemutants.com/2020/12/01/eaten-alive-james-herberts-rats-trilogy/
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 10:51 (two years ago) link
So glad GR and The Hearing Trumpet weren't in the same year. Would have been like choosing between my brothers
― imago, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 11:22 (two years ago) link
THT is always very comic, but like, say, The Third Policeman, it becomes jawdroppingly intense in the latter half as well
― imago, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 11:23 (two years ago) link
History by Elsa MoranteI, The Supreme by Augusto Roa BastosFlow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. DickDhalgren by Samuel R. DelanyAlphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
Dhalgren Vs my favourite Dick novel. Hmm..
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 12:16 (two years ago) link
Dhalgren, Dispossessed, Something Happened, Centauri Device, Inverted World, Tinker Tailor, The Hearing Trumpet. Out of those, The Dispossessed, it's not my favourite Le Guin but I've only read it once, something I mean to remedy.
― I was born anxious, here's how to do it. (ledge), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 12:34 (two years ago) link
Dhalgren by Samuel R. DelanyThe Disposessed by Ursula K Le Guin
haha damn my two favorite books right in a row
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 12:41 (two years ago) link
Dispossessed easily
― wasdnuos (abanana), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 13:01 (two years ago) link
I got 50 pages into Dhalgren once and stalled, must try again some year
― Best regards, HM Revenue & Customs (Matt #2), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 13:10 (two years ago) link
Voting Dhalgren, though I haven't quite gotten to the end. The last chapter requires some effort.
― jmm, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 13:24 (two years ago) link
i re-read all of these last night to make sure i was informed enough to vote in this poll. will be submitting my response later today.
― treeship., Tuesday, 8 June 2021 13:42 (two years ago) link
Holy shit, way to leave the best until last. This is very easily The Hearing Trumpet for me, such a dream of a book. I also really rate Memoirs of a Survivor, which probably would've won for me if I hadn't spotted the Carrington. Will probably get to the Le Guin reasonably soon as I'm reading her a fair bit at the moment but not done so yet...
I got really confused by Alphabetical Africa being here as I was convinced it was decades upon decades earlier, and have now realised that I have consistently mixed it up with Raymond Roussel's Impressions of Africa and don't know which is which. Also feeling a bit dodge about European colonialism in Africa even if it is represented by awesome experimental writing.
― Best regards, HM Revenue & Customs (Matt #2)
Also 12 yr old emil.ys going through a major horror phase in the '90s. \m/
― emil.y, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 14:27 (two years ago) link
Lots of interesting stuff that I haven't read on this list. I do have Dhalgren on my bookshelves, even started it once. Need to try it again someday.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 14:54 (two years ago) link
Dog Soldiers. Part of the roots of Denis Johnson.
― Chris L, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 15:00 (two years ago) link
Also one of David Berman's favorites, iirc.
― Chris L, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 15:02 (two years ago) link
― treeship., Tuesday, 8 June 2021 bookmarkflaglink
*Jerk off motion*
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 15:51 (two years ago) link
Will be very happy if Hearing Trumpet wins as the early returns suggest it may. I'm about due for a reread, actually....
― Mark E. Smith died this year. Or, maybe last year. (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 16:19 (two years ago) link
Dhalgren for me. Totally changed me when I first read it.
― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 18:50 (two years ago) link
Tough year, but going w Dog Soldiers (helps to have read it in the 70s)--wiki sez it well:California has moved on from the Summer of Love to post-Manson paranoia. Converse, a once-promising writer now unable to do more than observe, waits for artistic inspiration as a war correspondent in Vietnam. Symbolic of his moral corruption is his decision to traffic in heroin, which the 1960s counterculture never embraced as they did marijuana and LSD. Also a thing in Easy Rider, and real life, often enough: Stone lifted from all over, but he wasn't wrong, social commentary-wise or in art and entertainment.
Converse involves a former friend, Ray Hicks, in the smuggling deal. Hicks will hide the heroin on the Merchant Marine vessel he works on when he ships from Vietnam to Oakland, California and deliver the dope to Converse's wife Marge in Berkeley, California. The novel's primary complication unfolds when Hicks arrives in the States and realizes that he was discovered before he arrived and is being aggressively followed. Unsure whether Converse was double-crossed by his suppliers or Converse himself betrayed him, Hicks elects to go on the run with the heroin, taking Marge as insurance. The novel's action follows Hicks and Marge's evasion of Converse and his suppliers, and Hicks's attempts to sell the dope, south through California to the desert.
Once an all-American marine, now a lone wolf, Hicks is a survivalist and an autodidact trying to apply in himself Zen Buddhism, martial arts and the philosophy of Nietzsche. Marge is a painkiller junkie and guilt-ridden mother who takes tickets at a porn theater because it is ironic; she presents herself as an advocate of freedom, both sexual and of speech. She had agreed with Converse to do the heroin deal. Their pursuer may intend to arrest them and keep the drugs off of the street, or allow his associates to kill them and keep the swag for himself, but no one can tell for sure. His thugs may be merely well-informed drug thieves or legitimately on the fringe of the law enforcement world.InspirationStone acknowledges having borrowed heavily[citation needed] from his experiences among the Merry Prankster milieu led by novelist Ken Kesey, with whom Stone became acquainted while he was a student in the graduate creative writing workshops at Stanford University. According to Gregory Stephenson, author of a number of Beat studies, the character of Ray Hicks was inspired by Beat Generation icon and Merry Prankster Neal Cassady — Hicks is "an idealized Cassady figure".[5] Numerous details from the novel are based on Cassady and his exploits[citation needed] and the environs of Ken Kesey's home in La Honda, California, an informal commune depicted in the writings of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Allen Ginsberg.
― dow, Tuesday, 8 June 2021 20:22 (two years ago) link
Look at the Harlequins, said the Marathon Man
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 20:26 (two years ago) link
Lol
― AP Chemirocha (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 22:16 (two years ago) link
i love these polls lately bc i end up buying 2-3 books during every single one of them .....lol
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 8 June 2021 22:20 (two years ago) link
def picking up dog soldiers and hearing trumpet
an idealized Cassady figure" To me, more of a streamlined Cassady figure, with some elements dropped (incl.the bi ones), others played up: a hyper-Cassady, not that the original wasn't plenty hyper.
― dow, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 04:40 (two years ago) link
Carrie is still a good read, longtime SK favorite Dog Soldiers is a trip, and Wanderers is great lots of good shit here
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 9 June 2021 05:27 (two years ago) link
the hearing trumpet without a moment's hesitation
― no lime tangier, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 07:13 (two years ago) link
This is another one where realisation of who's a contemporary really hits: imagine a world with Stephen King, Leonora Carrington, Ishmael Reed, Vladimir Nabokov and John Le Carré co-existing.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 10:02 (two years ago) link
Yeah--and Ballard and Delany and Le Guin and Highsmith and---
― dow, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 18:22 (two years ago) link
Another favourite from this year: Butcher's Moon by Richard Stark, the epic and bloody finale of the original Parker series.
― jmm, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 18:26 (two years ago) link
This is maybe the strongest year yet (personally speaking)? No idea what to go for. Potentially: Baldwin, Dick, King, Ballard, Le Guin, Herbert...
I've always meant to read the Carrington. These threads are costing me a fortune.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 9 June 2021 18:27 (two years ago) link
just realised this list is missing The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, tsk.
― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 9 June 2021 18:28 (two years ago) link
Butcher's Moon by Richard Stark, the epic and bloody finale of the original Parker series. Yeah--- and he did come back, in Comeback(1997), and I recently read the last one, Dirty Money(2008), my first. What an asshole, but a number of striking (not always literally) moments, and he gets more interesting as he comes back into my head---oh and now I see John D. MacDonald is on here too--tough year.
― dow, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 21:00 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Thursday, 10 June 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Happy to see at least two other people itt have read "Alphabetical Africa"!
― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Thursday, 10 June 2021 07:59 (two years ago) link
I read it just recently - I enjoyed it enough to want to read more abish but emil.y is otm about the colonialist aspect (& some other stuff that is a bit iffy)This should prob be dhalgren just over carrington & le carré but voting for the last days of Louisiana red as I haven’t voted for Reed yet, it’s as good as mumbo jumbo & I read it first
― The 💨 that shook the barlow (wins), Thursday, 10 June 2021 09:37 (two years ago) link
Dog Soldiers is a cracking read
― Saxophone Of Futility (Michael B), Thursday, 10 June 2021 13:25 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Friday, 11 June 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
HI FIVE whoever else voted for Inverted World
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 11 June 2021 00:35 (two years ago) link
Can I honestly say it is as good a novel as The Dispossessed? I cannot. But it's so weird and individual and I'm so glad it exists!
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 11 June 2021 00:36 (two years ago) link
Wait Carrie shutout, are you kidding me??? That's a grave injustice.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 11 June 2021 00:37 (two years ago) link
Ditto The Forever War, pretty major year for SF though
― I gave it my all and my all wasn't enough (Matt #2), Friday, 11 June 2021 09:10 (two years ago) link
Would watch a 1974 in lit doc or book like they do with years in music.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 11 June 2021 09:43 (two years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1975
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 11 June 2021 10:27 (two years ago) link
Damn, I had a suspicion that Dhalgren would win this despite more talk about Carrington. Maybe I'll get round to reading it sometime, then.
― emil.y, Friday, 11 June 2021 15:03 (two years ago) link