The Line Of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
often makes you wonder if it was worth writing any new sentences in english after its publication
― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 16:30 (two years ago) link
The Line Of Beauty , alas. I reread it in 2018 terrified I'd overrated it.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 16:38 (two years ago) link
The Plot Against America has aged well. Gilead tainted only slightly by the superiority of the sequel. The Finishing School is startling for revealing how Spark showed no waning of her powers.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 16:40 (two years ago) link
I’ve read two of these, and went with the one written by an author I quickly soured on that was made into a film.
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 16:45 (two years ago) link
Oh fuck I just realized that I’ve read three of them
If I’d been more observant I’d have seen “Seeing” and voted for it
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 16:46 (two years ago) link
I haven’t reread it in a while, but purchased a used copy recently.
Blindness got made into a movie and seemed to be the one most readers went mad for but it was … I don’t know, it left me cold.
Seeing was more of a slow burn delayed slap in the face, those last few pages stay with me and come to mind surprisingly often.
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 16:56 (two years ago) link
My actual vote was for Cloud Atlas, which was gimmicky and icky and the far future section narration creeps me the hell out just to think about, but ….
There are moments that hit very, very emotionally for me, particularly when the heroes of one section are scared for or inspired by characters in other sections.
I’ve tried to read other books by the author and just couldn’t get into those, though.
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 16:59 (two years ago) link
I’ve posted too much in this thread, but one more: this seems to have been the era when I started engaging with contemporary fiction, in part because people were paying me to review books (see “After Dark,” which I adore and would’ve voted for it the other two weren’t on the list). Up til then most of my time was spent reading magazines and newspapers.
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 17:04 (two years ago) link
2666
The fourth and fifth sections of this book are as good as anything I've read, especially the depiction of the desolate Eastern Front. Feels like you are standing over a bomb that just went off and you are somehow still alive.
― Hannibal Lecture (PBKR), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 17:27 (two years ago) link
2666. Almost nothing ever published prepares you for part four of this book and I doubt I will get quite that feeling again from a book.
Read Senselessness and it's too much like a copy of Thomas Bernhard to me.
Otherwise interested in Lianke and his whole project.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 26 October 2021 21:06 (two years ago) link
2666 was a difficult book for me to read because it is so bleak in so many ways, but it is a true masterpiece and, as I remember it, its artifice never descends into falsity.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 22:29 (two years ago) link
The noir elements of Part 3 and Part 4 (the investigator) are terrifying. Such dark paranoia.
― Hannibal Lecture (PBKR), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 23:48 (two years ago) link
I love 2666 too. I can imagine the burden of writing those crime reports.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 23:56 (two years ago) link
I worked at a first-hand bookshop for the only time for most of 2004. My only recollection is selling a lot of the Da Vinci Code (which was still only available in hardback), Small Island, Lemony Snicket and Ian Rankin books. ZZ Packer's book had a lovely paperback cover that we kept shelved, but no one bought. I remember Rose Tremain's new book came in, and the bookstore owner looked at me and said "I can guarantee that not a single person will buy this book."
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 27 October 2021 14:13 (two years ago) link
Oh and Carol Shields. A LOT of Carol Shields. It was a bookstore for old people in Toronto, so QED.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 27 October 2021 14:43 (two years ago) link
Hey I remember liking Carol Shields!
Of these... Johnathan Strange is here somewhere and I must have read it but don't have a clear memory of it. I am pretty sure I got through the Updike but didn't find anything noteworthy in it.
― that of a giant Slor (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 27 October 2021 14:47 (two years ago) link
I think I'm the only person on ILB who just despises Marilynne Robinson.
Line of Beauty over 2666, if only because the story felt closer to mine own.
― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Wednesday, 27 October 2021 20:53 (two years ago) link
Jonathan Strange is one of those magicke olde England books that I can't stand. e.g. Harry Potter
― adam t. (abanana), Wednesday, 27 October 2021 21:27 (two years ago) link
I neither love Marilynne Robinson nor despise her. I looked back at my ILB comments after reading Housekeeping and found:
Mainly it speaks about absence and transcience in a strange otherworldy tone that I've never seen matched elsewhere. I can't say I always agreed with the many ex cathedra statements about how the world works, but the book carries such conviction and consistency of view that it is hard to get mad about the perfect, unblemished certainty of these pronouncements.
fwiw, I found Gilead to be just dreary and colorless and didn't finish it.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, 27 October 2021 21:48 (two years ago) link
It probably won't get a vote, but The Finishing School is easily the best of Sparks's final half dozen novels. She's in top form.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, 27 October 2021 22:07 (two years ago) link
table, I mentioned Robinson's essays a couple weeks ago: she's an austere, often beautiful essayist. Her natural form, I think.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 27 October 2021 22:10 (two years ago) link
really liked piranesi, struggled with jonathan strange and quit. it did at least seem memorable in how much i wanted to quit it
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 27 October 2021 22:19 (two years ago) link
ZZ Packer's book had a lovely paperback cover that we kept shelved, but no one bought. I would have! To give to a friend: the hardback edition is one of my favorite short story collections ever, and has a good cover---what does the paperback look like?What essays did you read by her, Alfred? I only know the Gilead series (no prob w the first one's xtian poetic prairie reveries, and I'm a stone cold Southern Gothic atheist, or close to it).
― dow, Wednesday, 27 October 2021 23:22 (two years ago) link
i voted for Gilead. as some of you may know, i am a former Christian and sometimes get a little angry about it. Gilead's characters remind me of what I saw in it in the first place
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 27 October 2021 23:28 (two years ago) link
Yeah, and also an improvement on what I saw in it! Not being the most sensitive candidate.
― dow, Wednesday, 27 October 2021 23:44 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Thursday, 28 October 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
I am one of those awful fundamentalist atheists and I have less than zero interest in Robinson's Calvinist project but thought Gilead was a wonderful demonstration of the comfort and efficacy of prayer - obviously not as a way of having a deity fix things for you, but as a way of meditating on difficult questions.
― namaste darkness my old friend (ledge), Thursday, 28 October 2021 08:02 (two years ago) link
I love 2666 too. I can imagine the burden of writing those crime reports.― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 26, 2021 11:56 PM (two days ago)
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 26, 2021 11:56 PM (two days ago)
― Nature's promise vs. Simple truth (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 October 2021 13:58 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Friday, 29 October 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2005
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 29 October 2021 14:12 (two years ago) link