Freewheeling Andy

Bah! I like double posting. I do it deliberately. It makes posts not seem so long and overbearing, and also gives a track of my disjointed train of thought.

I found it dark, but not really that depressing. It's famed as being depressing, but I don't think that's quite the right description.

I've finished reading my very dry history of Persia and the Persians. All Achaemenids and Sassanians, Ctesiphon and Xerxes. Interesting stuff, but a badly written book. Now, finally, I'm reading The Kite Runner. It's pretty good, so far.

Read them all about 15 years ago, maybe more. People took the proverbial out of me for reading The Trial in the bath. Metamorphosis might be the best short story ever. The Trial is marvellous. Amerika a bit underwhelming.

If you want really, painfully complex and difficult, James Joyce is probably your man. Particularly Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake. Legendarily brilliant, so it's probably worth your while; but I've never made it past page 3 of Ulysses nor past the first two paragraph's of Finnegan's Wake (but I wasn't feeling particularly stubborn at the time). Otherwise, Jorge Borges too is very heavy on idea and complexity, and his short stories in Labyrinths could be a good place to look. Also in the heavy complexity and depth stuff, you could look at Thomas Pynchon. I've only ever read (the very wonderful) Mason & Dixon, but it took several months and was very chewy. Without wanting to be silly, I think a lot of the stuff mentioned up-thread is actually fairly easy to read, stuff you'd use to access fiction rather than to really give your brain an intense work-out. Ah. And on the Irish thing like Joyce, I'd also recommend one of my favourite books of all time - At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien. It's incredibly funny, but it's spectacularly complex in the structure, as it's about an author who's writing a book in which the author is writing a book and the characters from that book come to life in the (second-tier) authors book. The third-tier characters are also story-tellers, so you sometimes end up with a story within a story within a story within a story.

You do know there's a genre of womens' erotica that is called... No, you're right. I won't go there. Although I have seen the term used, more than once.

Hahaha!

Ah. The difference between Bloke-Lit and Lad-Lit, or something.There are two different genres. One is friendly and new-mannish, and seems to be the Tony Parsons, Nick Hornby. It's like a male version of the normal chick-lit, but perhaps a little more introspective and less blatant about "I want the right handsome man with the right job and lots of money to come and be lovely to me". They obsess about lost lovers more than about potential future lovers, I think. The other genre is all about guns and planes and cars and chases and man things. I'm not sure which is lad-lit, and which is bloke-lit. Traditionally, the Hornby stuff is called Lad Lit, but Lad, as a term, seems more applied to the Zoo and Nuts, football and cars and fake burberry generation; and blokes, to me are more harmless. So I'd like to think of Hornby as being Bloke Lit and McNabb as being Lad Lit.

I'm using trashy in the sense that I would with pop music. Music with no real substance or depth but which is still fun to listen to. I feel that chick-lit, like lots of SF or action thriller stuff, doesn't have a lot of literary merit but is still enjoyable to read.

And, by the way, I used to love the Bridget Jones column in the Independent, long before it became a book or film. But that was about the amount of real chicky chick-lit I could take. Not surprising as it's hardly aimed at me.

Well, initially it was purely the sub-Bridget Jones genre, creating the slightly humdrum normal life and building on the fantasies that lots of 20-something women had/have; but lots of the "chicks" who were reading that have grown up a bit and have slightly different real and fantasy worlds involving families and children. But the principle seems to be the same. A bit of humdrum every day, a bit of comedy-lite that has lots of familiar reference points, a little harmless drama, and some romance. It's really, to me, just a recent sub-genre of the old romantic Mills & Boon stuff, but with a bit of a modern edge and a hint of humour. Obviously there's overlap with serious fiction (Jane Austen often referenced on this stuff), and anything with a romantic central theme and female main character can be pointed at as chick-lit. But I think that's missing the point. People have been writing good literature with romance in it for a very long time. Chick-lit is, almost by definition, not particularly literary or intellectual. It's just light-weight, throwaway, trashy entertainment. Which, by the way, is not a criticism - trashy, lightweight fun has its own merit, in the same way that bubblegum pop does.

I've not read it. But my guess is that, knowing Martin Amis, he's just deliberately trying to be shocking and controversial. I imagine his next book will talk about Window-licking spackers or something similarly unimaginitive but slightly un-PC, as a way of attempting to provoke outrage the way he used to when he could still write decent books.

Um, maybe not Big Brother contestants but, you know, the other part of that, well, er, about 48% of the population have been raised that way since, well, a very long time ago indeed. *cough*

I guess it depends a lot on the timeframe you're thinking of, and whether you're wanting the political build up, the military build up, or the effect of the build-up on the normal citizen. In describing the insane chaos of how wars come about through bizarre aliances and stupid decisions and coincidence, the beginning of Adam Zamoyski's "1812" is an excellent summation of a bunch of weird nonsense that eventually caused the French campaign in Russia (and is also a very useful bedfellow of War and Peace itself, which might not be a bad thing to read, either). It's particularly interesting that the Napoleon really didn't want a war with Russia but eventually circumstances and arrogance forced him into it. On a different tack, Gen Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands With The Devil, gives a fascinating insight into the work he and about 300 UN troops with no mandate did to try and prevent the Rwandan genocide and the wars that followed, and really focusses on the build up and how it got out of control.

It's an interesting debate, isn't it? I'm generally in the "No Sequels" camp. That if a book ends right then it's good to not know what happens afterwards, and you're left having to think and imagine for yourself. At the very least, I think you have to trust an author's discretion - if they didn't write a sequel it's probably because they want to leave the future as a blank sheet for the reader to imagine; and for each reader to imagine differently for themselves.

It could be almost any style, fiction or non; first or third person; SF or present day; action or slow paced. The key is to have some sympathy and empathy for the characters in the book; for it to have a plot (or plots, or "narrative" in the non-fiction) that keeps me hooked in. But most of all it has to be written well. Not particularly ornate and complex sentences; but the structure has to not annoy me, the sentences have to flow, it shouldn't be unnecessarily pretentious - all flourishes should have a purpose. The writing is the key, in the end.

Probably The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov although it might be If This Is A Man by Primo Levi The Bridge Over The Drina by Ivo Andric Scoop by Evelyn Waugh At-Swim-Two-Bird by Flann O'Brien The Good Soldier Schweijk by Jaroslav Hasek Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Classic/Deceased: I'm not a great fan of anything pre-20th century. 20th century classics, perhaps Kafka, or Evelyn Waugh. Adult Modern: David Mitchell (probably, although Murukami and Kadare and Philip Roth and JG Ballard are all in with shouts) Childrens Modern: I don't think I know any childrens modern, really. Author of your favourite book: Changes daily, but today it's Mikhail Bulgakov

I really struggled with Borges despite loving the ideas. My favourite is probably "I have no mouth but I must scream" by Harlan Ellison; almost all of my short story reading has been SF, though, so my outlook is skewed.

And then I read Richard Powers' The Echo Maker, which I don't really know what to make of. The blathering about the Cranes and the eco-******** were a bit tiresome. The long-winded pieces showing off how much the author knew of neuroscience and psychology were a bit pointless. But on the other hand, the descriptions and feeling of psychological disconnect are fabulous, and the plotline about the note, the whodunnit element, is interesting with lots of possible people who may have been bringing someone back; and lots of possible people they may have been bringing back; all good right up to the pay-off which was frustrating because it just wasn't flagged up. Still, I think a worthwhile, if not brilliant, book. It may be one of those I change my mind on as time goes by, though. I may love it in a month or hate it in 2.

Bum. It just ate my post! Anyway, as I was saying, to myself mostly, I finished St Pancras. Fascinating and well written and I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting. Architectural history isn't really my thing, but there was enough of the social history tied to both the railways and the gothic revival to make it an excellent little book.

I loved Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I'd normally recommend David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas to anyone, but given it's slightly dystopian nature, it might not be your thing; also the non-linearity could grate. If not Cloud Atlas, then the much more conventional Black Swan Green. Sticking with the slightly more conventional by slightly odd authors, John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbour is fantastic - and much more "normal" than his other great novel, The Debt To Pleasure. I've just finished Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which I thought was excellent. I'm trying to recommend relatively modern fiction as that seems to be your cup of tea.

I haven't read this since my O-levels (and the very fact they were O-levels and not GCSEs tells you how long that was), but I quite often wonder if this is one of the books that had the strongest influences on the way I think. I almost don't want to ever go back to it because I have an idealised picture of the way it pushes the case for the disenfranchised and outsiders and contrarians against the popular and populist mob. It's also probably the only book I ever read as a school book that I still cared about despite spending time studying it. I always found that forced study killed books. To Kill A Mocking Bird was powerful enough and well enough written to push through that with its brightness still intact.

Oh, and 2 more things, not in my Spoilered post: (1) What a great book. Well worth reading. Interestingly different yet easy to read. I quite often think people will struggle with some books I like, and advise them away. I don't think there's anyone who should be afraid of this (2) The other Lloyd Jones book I read, Biografi, was also great.

I agree with all of that (except the amount of time it took me to read the book), Janet. [i don't know how much of this needs spoiler tags, but just in case...]