Freewheeling Andy

So, I've been wondering whether it's coincidence, or whether it's publishers jumping on bandwagons, but I've seen lots of comment on these pages over the last few months about three different books: The Abortionist's Daughter The Memory Keeper's Daughter The Historian's Daughter Now, apart from me being a bit simple minded and always forgetting which one people are talking about, and from what I can tell, them not being part of a series, what is it that has bought these three to public attention at the same time?

Ah. It's a great book (and my favourite modern author). I don't actually remember that line but it seems like he's referring to his dad's reaction to him when he was a baby in the hospital. Thinking the child's cute, but mostly that the child is his.

I've read 29 of these, astonishingly. It is quite an American-centric list, I think. It is definitely a "masculine" selection of books, though. All the Rider Haggard and Lonesome Dove and Raymond Chandler and Kerouac are all very blokey, I think. I think there's an astonishing amount of emotional shallowness across these books, too (perhaps Gatsby excluded). It's all pride, anger, ambition, and no little tenderness. But they're also all pretty entertaining, I'd say.

Ah! Hello! Lots of my favourite books are here. I've never read the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but loved The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man In Full, so I should probably make time.

London's a great setting because it's a great city. It's sufficiently diverse that you can believe all kinds of things can happen here. And the diversity from the very poor and criminal to the exceedingly rich always helps drive plot, too.

If I was stuck on a desert island and allowed to have, say, Mason&Dixon by Thomas Pynchon and War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy, it would take me 10 times as long to read those two books as to read 50 formulaic crime thrillers, say. And I would get far more from them. But then I'd rather read one formulaic crime thriller that I enjoyed than 20 long, deep, serious novels by Henry James or Thomas Mann.

Numbers Schmumbers, that's what I say. It's better to read two brilliant books than to read 50 mundane ones. Edit: Not that, necessarily, anyone has been reading mundane books. But the idea that the number of books you've read is important just seems a bit weird to me.

All my favourite books fall into this category. I wouldn't know where to start. Although I suppose it'll be, as always with: The Master And Margerita by Mikhail Bulgakov The Bridge Over The Drina by Ivo Andric Catch-22 by Jospeh Heller The Good Soldier Shweijk by Jaroslav Hasek etc, etc...

I've not read a lot this year, but what I've read has generally been excellent, whether it's The Kite Runner or a history of St Pancras station. I'm taking a long time, it's no surprise, to read Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. But, although it's completely and utterly barking mad, like a Californian Murukami after too much strong dope, it is brilliant.

As before, it depends what you're after. Do you like the idea of alternate histories - an equivalent of Roth's Plot Against America? If so. Philip Dick's The Man In The High Castle might be the thing Are you after fractured identities clattering around increasingly insane fractured society? Then perhaps any of JG Ballard, particularly the mid-70s stuff like Concrete Island could be a place to go. If your thing is going to be Matrix-like cyberpunk, then it's William Gibson and Cryptonomicron you're probably after. And if you want a modern take on folks flying spaceships and blasting aliens, then perhaps Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card? And then there's the "traditional" stuff. But a lot of that seems a little tired and wet these days.

Long Way Down was terrible self indulgent TV, and I doubt the book's better. Ian McEwan was always a bit dull, and has been getting worse as time has gone on. Given the descriptions of On Chesil Beach, I fear it will be even worse than Atonement. JK Rowling is, well, very rich. So perhaps that's an outstanding achievement. Not much literary quality there, though. Russel Brand is one of the most self-important, unamusing tools I've ever had the misfortune to hear or watch, and I can't imagine his book (particularly with that astonishingly goonish name) is any better. It's a pretty ropey looking list, or a very, very bad year for books.

My TBR pile is small. Very small. But that's partly because I've been very good in the shops recently, and partly because I read all the easy stuff when it comes in. The problem is that although there are probably only 7 or 8 books in the pile, those 7 or 8 books have been there for years. And even if I read nothing else it would probably be 6 or 9 months before the pile is reduced. Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, which I've just started, has been sitting there since 2000, I think. The last Pynchon I read took me 4 months. Also in the pile is Peter Ackroyd's London: A Biography, which is 1000 densely packed pages. I read the first 400 over the course of, again, 3 or 4 months, but then came to a juddering halt. Independent People by Laxness is sitting there, and that's long, and apparently fairly slow and bleak, although atmospheric, and I fear will take me until the end of the decade. There's The Travels Of Marco Polo, as in, in his words, which I really should read but will be terribly turgid. There's an Iain Banks, the only vague hint of lightness sitting there, I think. A book on the recording of Kind of Blue, which I have no real interest in reading at all but which my mum gave me. I'm sure there are a couple of other things, too, but I forget what.

I read this a month or so ago. I really enjoyed it. I've never been a teenage girl so perhaps I'm not in the best position to comment, but I thought Jones got the perspective of a 13 year old teenager very, very well. I was expecting the fact that I've never read Great Expectations to be a real problem, but it wasn't at all.

Hah! I didn't say the story was any good. I just like it as a way of telling a story. But then, I am a map geek.

I've never read Calvino, although he's another who's come fairly highly recommended.

I really enjoyed Galapagos, although other people I know don't rate it so highly. It plays with ideas that I'm fond of and fascinated by. What I normally read? Modern literary fiction, I guess. I've just started on Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. I do like the stuff that plays with the edges of SF (but isn't SF), like David Mitchell or Haruki Murukami or JG Ballard; and which Vonnegut sort of falls into.

It's a long time since I read any Vonnegut, but it doesn't seem familiar.

This is odd. I know I've read another 10 or so of these recently, and my list now shows 114. What is weird is that way back on about page 3 of this thread I claim to have read 114. I think I must have lost some in the mix somewhere. - Ah, I've just done a check through and it had lost some from that list on P 3, and I'm up to 120.

http://wetellstories.co.uk/stories/week1/ I'm not sure that the story is any good, but the concept is fantastic for those of us who are map geeks. And there are more of these to come (I don't know if they use the same techniques).

Finished The Kite Runner. Good book, but perhaps not as great as is sometimes suggested. Just started, god help me, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. I'll see you in six months.

Oh, it's absolutely not terrible. I actually like the playing with ideas. Although it definitely makes reading his books a bit more like reading Isaac Asimov or Philip Dick than reading, say Tolstoy or JM Coetzee. I have more of a problem with the "Me Me Me Look At Me" stuff that comes from trying to shock.

Well, yes. But The Master & Margarita is the best book ever written, probably. And in my version that cat is called Begemot.

I enjoy reading his journalism, but when I read My Idea Of Fun, and a collection of short stories whose name I forget, it felt a bit too much like he was deliberately trying to shock, as a toadying acolyte of Marint Amis and Irving Welsh and Brett Easton Ellis. Which was frustrating, as the writing was good and the ideas fascinating, if a bit unpleasant. It all felt a bit like reading SF, though. It was all about the idea, and not about the characters. It's setting entire novels on the basis of cleverness, rather than being about people.

Yeah. There's a difference between hard-to-read because it's boring and rubbish, and hard to read because it's full of complex ideas and dense writing, but very good. That's why I was praising Pynchon and Flann O'Brien (and Borges). They're interesting (and in the first two cases I've loved reading them), but full of ideas and requiring lots of thought.

The funny thing is that having read War and Peace last year, chunks of it (about Natasha) are very much like Chick-Lit. And, really, it's remarkably easy to read. And it felt like Tolstoy was using coincidence quite a lot as a plot device, too. Particularly out on the battlefield where Pierre keeps meeting up with top ranking military and then accidentally with Andrei, and so on. (And apologies for being picky).