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Freewheeling Andy

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Posts posted by Freewheeling Andy

  1. The Three Musketeers is remarkably undaunting to read. And - from what I can tell - you can easily ignore the sequels.

     

    I was going to mention Tolstoy, but I assume that you omitted him from the original list for a reason, given how obvious he is. But, just in case: War and Peace actually is a great book, and really covers the grand themes of how history works.

  2. Well, that took longer than expected, but good lord, the stuff in there is head-turning.

     

    Now I'm reading Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, which is very short, but might be even better than the magnificent film of it that's out at the moment.

     

    Also reading A Nuclear Family Vacation about a couple holidaying in lots of spots that are part of the nuclear military complex. Interesting, but not that well written.

  3. I'd think there are two different questions here:

     

    (1) Should we ban modern books that try to stoke up racism?

    (2) Should we ban books that are clearly racist, but were written a long time ago

     

    The second, for books like - for instance - Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, I think it's a no-brainer. Of course you shouldn't ban this stuff.

     

    The first, though, is a tougher one. My personal taste is that there should be no censorship of anything, but I can understand the argument.

     

    I suppose there's a third, peripheral question, specifically when it comes to childrens' books, and because of their influence on young minds. Should, say, the old Biggles books, or Little Black Sambo, or even Robinson Crusoe, be available to kids, or pushed on kids by parents and teachers. Often great books, but you have to wonder whether the concealed prejudices of the authors will come through too strong on the malleable young minds.

     

    My answer here is much more prevaricating: I think there should be some restriction, but I'd hate to see this stuff banned. And it's hard to know where to draw the lines.

  4. I don't mind, and often rather enjoy, sex - even gratuitous sex - in books. It's fine, in the same way that describing how a character is cooking dinner is. It provides a sensual texture, even if there is no direct plot-purpose to the sex. The only sex I don't like is bad sex (and that's true for sex in books, too).

     

    There is, though, an additional problem which I was going to bring up on the Cool Books thread. People were talking about looking over shoulders to see what others are reading, and sometimes on the tube I'm reading a fairly literary book, and suddenly I'll find myself reading something really rather kinky and weird which has sneaked in. And that's when it gets uncomfortable - thinking there's some doddery old granny, or gothy teenager, or severe jehova's witness woman, looking over my shoulder thinking "what a filthy perv! Reading that stuff in public." So, the book comes a bit closer to me and I lean further back into the chair as I try and make it harder for anyone to read over my shoulder. I always feel I look very weird at this point, and it's completely "obvious" that I'm a dirty old man.

  5. I certainly felt a fairly strong link between their work, although I find Self a bit less anonyingly smug, and also find Self's politics are more genuinely radical, whereas Amis feels like a reactionary trying to shock by being politically incorrect.

  6. I think Raskolnikov's description: Transgressive and filthy - is exactly how Self likes to think of himself, and is not far from the truth. He's arrogant and smug and self-satisfied with his own intellectualism, but I think quite a lot of that is deliberate persona creation. It means he comes across as quite an unpleasant character when on TV or the radio, and certainly not the kind of person I'd want to be stuck at the bar with in my pub; but I don't think that should dictate how you read his work. Which is also intellectual, but I often want that level of intellect when I'm reading, and I don't really when I'm having a chat with a bloke down the pub.

  7. Generally, I've enjoyed the Will Self stuff I've read. It's always intelligent, and generally very playful with ideas and language.

     

    I do have a bit of a problem, though - and this is true of his wider demeanour in articles and television as well as in books - and that is that he often feels like he is just trying to shock, a bit like Martin Amis once did. A "Oooh! Look at me! Look how naughty I'm being!" attitude.

  8. Finished Hard-Boiled Wonderland and absolutely loved it. It's not, really, that like other Murakami, I don't think. It's more SF and more fantasy, both at the same time. And is a more complete story, everything is explained more solidly. All the usual elements are there - the music and the food and the slightly cold sex and so on - but in a more novel-like foundation, I think, even though there are two parallel novels going on through the book.

     

    I have no idea what I'm going to read next.

  9. Hmm. Generally, I react pretty badly to books that have lots of hype. But there's different degrees of it, and different reactions - I wouldn't, generally, read frothy thrillers of the Brown ouevre, and I really have little time for almost all fantasy-ish or vampire-ish books, so the Harry Potter or Twilight stuff would not be stuff I'd read anyway. So it's probably unfair to say I'd avoid them because of the hype; I'd avoid them because they're not my kind of book.

     

    (Actually, I did read Dan Brown in the end, and that's because of the hype - and my prejudices were confirmed).

     

    My problem more lies where there's hype in the kinds of books I'd normally read, in what might be called modern literary fiction. I often do end up reading stuff that's hyped, but I hold off. And the hype creates false expectations a lot of the time - so I ended up really disliking, say, The Life of Pi, or Atonement. I'm very glad that I read David Mitchell and Murakami, and even The Time-Traveller's Wife, before I heard the hype - I think the hype was out there, but I'd just not heard it, so I came in and read without prejudice and enjoyed all of them. I think particularly the TTW I might have avoided completely if I'd heard the hype about it.

     

    So, I guess I'm saying that I quite often read fashionable books, but on the whole the hype ruins them for me by heightening expectation beyond what is reasonable.

  10. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that I'm really impressed by people reading intellectual non-fiction; and ideally looking a bit too old to be reading it for university so you know it's just for their personal edification. Chomsky is a very good suggestion for that kind of thing.

     

    I must try Gravity's Rainbow sometime. But Pynchon is hard. I've read two of his, and I think I need something like a 5 year break between them to let my brain relax. But, that said, I've never felt a need to discreetly cover up the fact I'm reading a Pynchon novel, so I guess that makes me think it's very cool.

  11. It's either got to be something famous but difficult, like Naruda, or maybe stuff by Jung or Nietsche.

     

    Or it's got to have the rebellious chic thing going on - Pynchon and Ballard are good calls, as is Hunter S Thompson. But you can't be reading the most mainstream of rebellious books, so not, for example, On The Road. If I saw someone reading Ballard's Concrete Island, or Pynchon's Mason&Dixon, or Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America, that would look very cool.

     

    But it has to be something that almost nobody knows, really - reading mainstream-alternative stuff looks like you're trying too hard.

  12. I've read a couple of others. Both nice travel writing, but neither as entertaining or as engaging or as funny or as memorable as Short Walk...

     

    Apparently the Italian ones are well worth reading.

     

    But I just love the spontaneity and the stupidity of what they do in this book. The ludicrous idea of training in Snowdonia to climb, and of trying to get to one of the most remote parts of one of the most hard-to-access countries on the planet, without really having a clue what they're doing.

     

    I absolutely love that they bump into Thesiger, with all his porters.

     

    It's all so random and inept, and that's really what I find great about it.

  13. Finished Breath. Very much enjoyed it. Good book, which didn't push its luck too far - it was obvious what was going to happen to Eva, but I'm glad Winton didn't make it happen too young and too in-your-face.

     

    Now reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Just started it, but the first two chapters are distinctly odd.

  14. Yeah, I've been working too hard, and travelling again, so it's been a while since I read much. I like the Tim Winton books I've read, and feel they're fairly universal in style so would be surprised if people didn't like them - maybe The Riders aside, which is very dark. But, that said, my experience is that if I don't like an author, usually when I go back I find I was right - no matter what trustworthy other people say. So I'd certainly not push you to going back. How are things with you?

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