FOT Forum
FOT Community => Links => Topic started by: bruce on December 26, 2007, 09:35:53 AM
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Since I actually cover books that people would enjoy reading. Not the type that you force your way through to seem like some high brow hipster.
Top Ten Books of 07 (http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/bullets-broads-blackmail-bombs-crime-time-in-07/)
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Now if only you'd put together a list of the kinds of books I like to read: fiction, humorous though not exclusively comical. Examples: Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, Neal Stephenson, Michael Malone's Handling Sin, John Irving at his best, David Lodge, (which he has not been for ages), Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Jonathan Ames . . . You get the gist.
To hell with depth; I just want to be entertained.
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I love Elmore Leonard and cover him when I can but they are mainly his older stuff. These picks were the ones that I received to review. In other words newer books buy the likes of Hiaasen and Leonard never come our way. I've only read one Kingsley Amis book and that was his James Bond one Colonel Sun. I do know he has a new book coming out later this year lets hope for a review copy coming my way.
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I know, Bruce. I just wish I liked the kinds of books you review so I could take advantage of your recommendations.
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Here are two for you Sarah
Donald Westlake - What's So Funny? (http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/mystery/whats-so-funny/)
Jack Getze - Big Numbers (http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/big-numbers/)
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I think you got the wrong Kingsley Amis there, Bruce. He's dead. I enjoyed his most famous book, Lucky Jim. And I didn't feel like a high brow hipster after I read it.
What's your take on Joseph Conrad? I'm currently reading The Secret Agent. I'm enjoying it even if it's slow-going at times. I'm not sure whether he would qualify as a high brow hipster writer. I just like it.
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Thanks for the suggestions, Bruce. I'll check 'em out.
B_B, Bruce knows his stuff: Kingsley Amis wrote Colonel Sun under the pseudonym Robert Markham. (I didn't know this off the top of my head; thank you, Wikipedia.) And you might like The Anti-Death League. I remember it fondly, anyway. But, hell, I'm reading the last Harry Potter at the moment; who am I to recommend anything?
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I think you got the wrong Kingsley Amis there, Bruce. He's dead. I enjoyed his most famous book, Lucky Jim. And I didn't feel like a high brow hipster after I read it.
No I've got the right one The Distilled Kingsley Amis (http://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Drinking-Distilled-Kingsley-Amis/dp/1596915285/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198699078&sr=1-1l). I never said it was something new by him just something new coming out.
I read Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent back in High School, did not much care for it. Since as you even stated slow going. Still its better then forcing myself through another LeCarre tome.
I do have Anti-Death League on my shelf Sarah keep meaning to read it.
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Yeah, I was unaware of that Bond book he wrote under a pseudonym, too. The mention of a new book threw me. I guess they're digging through his papers.
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Since I actually cover books that people would enjoy reading. Not the type that you force your way through to seem like some high brow hipster.
Top Ten Books of 07 (http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/bullets-broads-blackmail-bombs-crime-time-in-07/)
This is quite possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever read. Equating high-brow books with hipsterism in order to make a case for your own low-brow tastes being underground and cool is a fallacy and a hypocritical one at that. A reviewer should approach a book on individual merit not its genre or a notional association with the kids that got more action than you in college.
I can certainly understand the appeal of the pulp novel and its modern day emulators, but if any of the books you've chosen are as poorly written as your reviews then I doubt I'd make it past the first page.
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What I'm referring to are these books that get all this high praise and once you try and read them your like huh.
I mean how many folks ran out and read that new Dennis Johnson book. After reading both Already Dead and Jesus's Son I'll take a pass. I've spent many years reading books that in the end were nothing but long winded disappointments.
So I'll leave the Vollmans and the Wallaces to others out there to read.
BTW Thomas Hardy is one of my favorite writers
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You nerds read books? Pshaw! Books are for nerds. Which you are. Nerds.
(http://blogs.chron.com/blog9/ogre01.jpg)
Nerds!
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I mean how many folks ran out and read that new Dennis Johnson book.
Certainly not me. I asked Sonta Claus for it and he delivered. It's up next right after Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Dave Eggers'* What Is the What, all of which I'm reading solely to impress those chicks in the American Apparel ads.
*NOTE: I hated ...Staggering Genius, if that restores my credentials as a normal person.
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Certainly not me. I asked Sonta Claus for it and he delivered. It's up next right after Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Dave Eggers'* What Is the What, all of which I'm reading solely to impress those chicks in the American Apparel ads.
*NOTE: I hated ...Staggering Genius, if that restores my credentials as a normal person.
I read Genius and You Shall Know Our Velocity, I enjoyed only one of them and was still some what left disappointed.
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What I'm referring to are these books that get all this high praise and once you try and read them your like huh.
I remember having this experience a few years back with Don DeLillo's Underworld. After a great intro/first section it became one of the biggest reading chores ever.
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Oh, and I'm glad to see some Lawrence Block love on your list. I love pretty much everything he writes.
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Books are for queers.
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What I'm referring to are these books that get all this high praise and once you try and read them your like huh.
That's fair enough, but your original post had a broader scope.
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What I'm referring to are these books that get all this high praise and once you try and read them your like huh.
I remember having this experience a few years back with Don DeLillo's Underworld. After a great intro/first section it became one of the biggest reading chores ever.
Wow, I had the same feeling about Underworld. It was my first Don DeLillo read, and I can't say I enjoyed it. I thought there was something wrong with me, with the amount of critical acclaim that DeLillo has garnered. I think I can honestly say my reaction was one of being "like, huh?"
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Books are for queers.
Heh. I am gay, so I guess books are for me. Thanks!
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I don't know anyone who's managed to finish Underworld, but White Noise is pretty great. My top books of 2007 (no, I haven't read them all but I can't wait to):
The Best of LCD: The Art and Writing of WFMU, edited by Dave the Spazz
Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects of Unexpected Significance, edited by Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes
Reading Comics, by Douglas Wolk
The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein
The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
You Don't Love Me Yet, Jonathan Lethem
Novels in Three Lines, Felix Feneon (translated by Luc Sante)
Dream: Reimagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, Stephen Duncombe
The Red Men, Matthew de Abaitua
What of The Night and Letters From Cuba, Maria Irene Fornes
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I couldn't make it through White Noise either. The guy could give George Lucas a run in the "wooden dialogue" department.
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Someone mentioned the new reprint of Everyday Drinking by Kingsley Amis. Just came across this essay on Amis's writings on alcohol in the latest Bookforum: http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/014_05/2055
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The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
Read this a couple of months ago and enjoyed it immensely.
I also heeded Buffcoat's recommendation and read -- well, listened to in my car -- "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Great book. If nothing more, it slits the throat of The Bell Curve. Good riddance.
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The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
Read this a couple of months ago and enjoyed it immensely.
I also heeded Buffcoat's recommendation and read -- well, listened to in my car -- "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Great book. If nothing more, it slits the throat of The Bell Curve. Good riddance.
Good on ya, Rilke. And it does whack Charles Murray's embarrassing old racist garbage pretty good, even if that wasn't the primary reason for writing the book.
In fact, the whole subsection on how people interpret things to be knowable because that's what they want should give Mr. Murray a whole lot to think about. Not that he will.
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Ditto on the DeLillo. I'd enjoyed some of his stuff previously (though I think White Noise is overrated), but I slogged through half of Underworld before I gave up. It's been sitting on my shelf with a bookmark in it for 10 years.
Any Martin Amis fans here?
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I've read Money and Dead Babies years ago Octopus. I tried to read his dad book Anti Death league it has not aged well at all.