What Are You Reading??

If we are to castigate all authors who seem to be more than a little inspired by the works of others, we could be at it from now til Gabriel blows his horn. No-one made any references to the works of Diana Wynne Jones or Anthony Horowitz either, albeit they gave us a proto-version of Hogwarts long before Rowling put pen to paper. You should read Harold Bloom's "The Anxiety of Influence".

Just finished reading "Reprobates" by John Stubbs, really good book for those who want to know exactly how lewd Restoration poets were 

Quote from: old34 on October 19, 2013, 02:56:26 AM

Donna Tartt's "Secret History" was the "It" novel of the early 1990's. They pimped/pumped the hell out of it-the young and up-and-coming authoress.

It was actually not bad.

I guess they were capitalising on the stream of boom from Bret Easton Ellis' emergence, and associating her with the 'brat back' of writers whose associations were actually fairly tenuous. Oh, marketing.
The Secret History had a big affect on me, also I don't know why nobody ever talks about the stuff JK Rowling so obviously cribbed from that book, the descriptions of Dumbledore's office, and the characters of Crabbe and Goyle.

It's weird that you would mention JK Rowling, because the Guardian review of The Goldfinch likened the main character to Harry Potter. Anyway, the books out now, but it will have to wait because I have a wee bit of a backlog. Currently reading the latest Stephen King which it took me a while to warm to. I was planning to read the new Robert Harris afterwards.

The Secret History for the decade after Uni was perhaps my favourite novel, and tart by extension one of my favourite novelists; but then came 'The Little Friend' of which the kindest thing I can say is that it's unreadable. So, I'm in no particular hurry to read the new book as my expectations are somewhat low. I've avoided reviews, (I only skimmed the firs paragraph of the guardian review. I want to make up my own mind). Apparently it's quite long.

Charity shops in Britain all tend to have a hardback copy of 'The Little Friend'. Did anybody like it?

Apocalypse Cow - Michael Logan.

Zombeef.

Wolf Totem... great book! don't know why it took me so long to get it out of its shrink-wrap.

i should know better than to listen to critics.

"London" by Edward Rutherfurd. (yes, that is how his surname is spelled, even though my software insists on underlining it in red).  Published in 1997, so it's hardly a new release and some of you may have read it, but this is my first encounter with it.  I've always loved history but this book would have converted me to history even if I'd hated the subject. The epic story of half a dozen families over a period of 2,000 years, sometimes intermarrying, more often mutually hostile.  A wonderful read, especially recommended if, like me, you live in a backwater where the only works of English literature usually available are Winnie the Pooh, "All Men are Enemies" (Richard Aldington), "Gone with the Wind" and (groan!) Harry Potter.

"London" by Edward Rutherfurd.

I'll bet you get your money's worth. Audible does not have this one but it has "Paris", (38 hours); "New York", (36 hours); "Russka", (39 hours); and "Sarum: The Novel of England", (45 hours).  Was he in competition with James Michener for worst case of carpal tunnel?

Nolefan,

I read Wolf Totem while I was still in China. It's an interesting book, but overly detailed. Could easily be a few hundred pages shorter. Also found the narrator to be a bit annoying toward the end.

Anyway, I'm reading classics this year as I won't pay for books on Kindle. Finished Conrad's Heart of Darkness and now I'm on to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

Anyway, I'm reading classics this year as I won't pay for books on Kindle. Finished Conrad's Heart of Darkness and now I'm on to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

Pay for a book?! Do people still do that? 

Yes, they do...I am currently plowing through the collected Jackelian novels by Stephen Hunt. A Kindle is nice but a good, old hard-back is nicer. Amazon.cn are definitely happy with my patronage.

Serve The People - Yan Lianke

I did not fully understand. It's a feature of reading Chinese authors (in translation) for me that I do not fully understand. I get the sense of some other layer of communication going on that I do not grasp. Serve The People, for instance, is a satire. Intellectually, I can see it. But it's Cultural Revolution stuff, and maybe you had to be there. I don't quite know what was satirized.

The Machine - James Smythe.

Unusual book. It's been compared to Shelley's Frankenstein, but I wouldn't know since I haven't read that. The horror element however is done pretty well. The story is set in a future Britain where climate change has long since altered where people can live. This makes the days very hot and adds a kind of permanent temporariness to housing. (That's a neat trick by the author, it means he can move everyone into, basically, council flats.) There have been conventional wars too. And outlawed innovation in health products. The Machines in particular were made illegal. They were built to excise memory. And they did, but too well. Some early patients ended up bereft even of the ability to remember to breathe. The Machines were used on traumatized returned soldiers, and on Alzheimer's patients, and others. The story starts some ten years later when one wife, a high school teacher, acquires an early model Machine, one that with the aid of custom firmware built online by activist hackers, can replace memory. Her husband, a former soldier and now a Vacant, was one of the early candidates for the original treatment.

The writing classic--On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

I'm gearing up to start re-writing my nanowrimo novel in january, so this is just the book for me right now.

Finised reading Isaac Asimov short stories which the movie "I Robot" was very loosely based on. Great stuff. I especially liked the one about the robot who gets religion and finds it impossible to believe that an inferior creature, a human, could have made a robot. That story is going on the curriculum next term.

Now on to "The Meowmorphosis"....

Gave up on the Murakami 1Q84 as it was just getting more and more irritating and started Skullduggery Pleasant (thanks ETR)

Gave up on the Murakami 1Q84 as it was just getting more and more irritating and started Skullduggery Pleasant (thanks ETR)

I thought IQ84 could have been an amazing single book story....

I know that part of his style is going on long rambles about 'who am I? what does it all mean?' etc but the 2nd act where everyone is hiding and waiting is ridiculous, it's about a third of the book describing the fact that they are waiting for something to happen.
The beginning and end are pretty dense and fast paced as well.