@Bukowski I guess now is a good time to let you know my top 10 novels of all time, that I have read so far. (in no particular order)
Gravity's Rainbow, Heart Of Darkness, Frankenstein, Mrs Dalloway, The Trial, Crime and Punishment, Love In The Time Of Cholera, Nineteen Eighty Four, Ulysses, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (started reading Proust and not read Tolstoy or Melville yet, i know i know...)
@Bukowski also Lolita, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Outsider, The Hobbit, Lanark, Ubik, Disgrace, The Big Sleep, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, woudl be the next 10.
@d0minic
In no particular order:-
James Joyce - 'Ulysses'
Dostoevsky - 'Crime and Punishment'
Thomas Mann - 'Doctor Faustus'
Aldous Huxley - 'Brave New World'
Franz Kafka - 'The Trial'
Charles Dickens - 'Bleak House'
Tolstoy - 'Anna Karenina'
Hermann Hesse - 'Steppenwolf'
Andre Gide - 'Strait Is The Gate'
Gunter Grass - 'The Tin Drum'
@d0minic
Gabriel García Marquez - 'Love in the Time of Cholera'
Martin Amis - 'London Fields'
Joseph Conrad - 'Heart of Darkness
Lewis Carroll - 'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland'
Elizabeth Gaskell - 'Mary Barton'
George Orwell - '1984'
Emily Bronte - 'Wuthering Heights'
Albert Camus - 'The Outsider'
Marcel Proust - 'Remembrance of Things Past'
William S. Burroughs - 'Naked Lunch'
oh yes @Bukowski well, I sort of figured that from our jams. I'm making a note of Andre Gide and Mary Barton by the way and I still think I should have The Great Gatsby in there somewhere...
@Bukowski If you've not read it, I'd recommend you read 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon, although 'Vineland' is probably a better entry point into his oeuvre.
@d0minic Yes indeed. That is the novel I don't know, will investigate, thanks for the recommendation. Thomas Mann is my favourite fiction writer; 'Doctor Faustus' is very loosely based on the life of Schoenberg.
@d0minic It certainly is. 'The Buddenbrooks' (as it should be written given that it is the surname of the family in question) is gorgeous, but I'm very biased.
Love this! Favourite novels: George Orwell- 1984, Charles Dickens- Great Expectations, Sylvia Plath- The Bell Jar, Iain Banks- The Wasp Factory, Women in Love- DH Lawrence, Graham Greene; The End of the Affair, Thomas Hardy- The Mayor of Casterbridge, Andre Gide- Strait is The Gate, Milan Kundera- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Emily Bronte- Wuthering Heights, Iris Murdoch- Under the Net, George Eliot- Mill on the Floss, Anthony Burgess- Abba Abba, Aldous Huxley- Brave New World.
@abigail.deeks a fantastic varied selection you got there. Di you see that BBC4 documentary about writers in the Blitz? I came away from it wanting to read 'The Heat Of The Day' by Elizabeth Bowen.
@d0minic Andre Gide's The Immoralist is fabulous too if you haven't read it. I didn't see the BBC4 documentary. Is it on iplayer? Sounds just my cup of tea.
Ooh, I've missed all this again, haven't I? I must go away and have a think. I have to confess, my all-time favourite book simply because it's timeless and makes me laugh even in the delpths of despair, is George & Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody. Even the illustrations are wonderful. And the names - like stuff out of Toast of London: Lupin Pooter, Daisy Mutlar, Cummings and Gowings... glorious.
New Grub Street (George Gissing) is also up there, and William Golding's Pincher Martin...
@Bukowski@d0minic Also Vanity Fair, Anna Karenina, The House of Mirth (Wharton), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers), Let it Come Down (Paul Bowles), anything by Flannery O'Connor (whose book Wise Blood means I bookjammed ages ago with Wise Blood's 'Rat' - a fave of the lovely @natyblooming)...
What are you doing here, Clem Fandango?
I was thinking about this only the other day: Philip Roth "American Pastoral" and Nemesis"; John Irving "A Prayer for Owen Meaney"; Jonathan Franzen "Freedom"; Charles Bukowski "Ham on Rye" and "Post Office"; David Mitchell "Black Swan Green"; Will Self "The Book of Dave"; Geoff Dyer "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi"; Dave Eggers "What is the What"; Ken Kesey "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"; and Graham Greene "The Power and the Glory"
@d0minic oh i am getting some good book recommendations here...and i am also being reminded of personal favorites...c.c. @abigail.deeks@Bukowski and @tomdwillyv loving your bookjams... My recommendations are on my www.goodreads.com (another place I spend a lot of time in)
You step away from the computer for a moment and a book fight breaks out? @d0minic@Bukowski I bought Vineland within three days of my first trip to California and it served me as an alternative tour guide of sorts, staying with me even during the years I lived there.
@thisismymistake I read 'Mason and Dixon' whilst living in Maryland which added to the experience. Now if someone wants to pay me to read Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa that would be nice.
@thisismymistake ha! yes, pop along and check out our view of the Campsies from over the top of your book. You'll have an entire catalogued library of 4,000 novels to choose from when you get bored. I must insist, seeing as we're near Glasgow, that you read at least one James Kelman, though...
@AlicejustMay For me, the best book written in and about Glasgow is 'Lanark: A Life In 4 Books' which my girlfriend introduced to me about 20 years ago. An epic dark magical read.
@AlicejustMay It's pretty extraordinary, no doubt about it. Read The End of the Affair immediately afterwards and it just didn't hold a candle to it. @natyblooming A pleasure as always. I use Good Reads too although just realised that not been on in a few months. Better change that.
Great Expectations. Most things by John Irving. Everything by T Coraghessan Boyle. Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. Lord of the Rings. Most things by Angela Carter. RLS. The Regeneration trilogy.The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Atonement. Titus Groan. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. Oh and countless others I've temporarily forgotten.
@simonp I could easily have listed anything by George Orwell and anything by Iain Banks. Lawrence and Hardy were a big influence on me in my early teens. My black polo neck and red lipstick wearing didn't arrive until I was 17 which was about the time that I read this and Gide and lots of Satre and Nietzsche :)
The Bridge is my favourite Iain Banks novel @abigail.deeks coming back to the Blitz. 'Wars Of The Heart' Culture Show is no longer available but there is a clip on the webpage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03hcdr7
@simonp Saw Fugitive Pieces in a charity shop last week and was thinking of picking it up but put it back. So it's that good then? Also, fully agreed on Oscar and Lucinda - great book.
@abigail.deeks@d0minic has to be The Crow Road for me. A beautiful hymn to youth and family. Did you ever see the BBC Scotland adaptation? Very good (that citizen of Gallifrey played Uncle Rory).
@simonp Just looked it up. New citizen of Gallifrey not Mr Tennant then, shame :) I have to say Canal Dreams is my runner up after Wasp Factory. Wasp Factory I love just because it was my first Iain Banks I think.
@d0minic Must say that The Glass Room is probably the best book i've read in the last couple of years. Beautifully told. Plus for an architecture geek like me, it's pure catnip. I must get to the Czech Republic and see the real thing.
@AlicejustMay Couldn't agree more about 'Diary of a Nobody'. Cumming and Gowing and poor Mr Pooter in the bath!...The trouble with book lists is there are often books that you admire, and those you read for pleasure...plus they run to hundreds. Ian Banks is probably better as Iain M Banks with the later books. But Snow country, The Remains Of The Day, The Long Goodbye, Beyond Black, Vilette and Breathing Lessons also recommended...Agree about 1984, Bleak House, and Heart of Darkness....
@simonp yes I love the wilful punkishness of their early music (long before they became a navel gazing goth parody) and it's influence can be felt in so many recent bands. Bloc Party springs to mind / @tomdwilly speaking of Geoff Dyer have you read 'Zona' his meditation on the Tarkovsky film 'Stalker'?
@AlicejustMay@abigail.deeks@simonp@d0minic
If you would like some 'fun and frolics' reading philosophy:-
May I recommend:-
Deleuze - 'Difference and Repetition'
Spinoza - 'Ethics'
Kant - 'Critique of Pure Reason'
Leibniz - Philosophical Writings'
Quine - 'Word and Object'
Wittgenstein - 'Philosophical Investigations'
Merleau-Ponty - 'Visible and Invisible'
Kierkegaard - 'Either / Or'
Nietzsche - 'Daybreak'
My five cents: I couldn't finish (nor get half way through) Gravity's Rainbow, though i DO appreciate it, i much prefer One Hundred Years of Solitude to Love in the time of Cholera, i hate Crime and Punishment - though that might have to do with it being compulsory reading at high school. Books that come to mind as stunning: Akira Yoshimura's Shipwrecks, Emillio Lussu "Sardinian Brigade", "For whom the bell tolls", "Slaughterhouse 5", "Dispatches", "Brave New World", Dellilo's "White Noise"...
@Matan yes I loved 'Slaughterhouse 5' and 'White Noise' especially The Airborne Toxic Event section of the novel. Not heard of Lussu or Yoshimura so will have to check them out. Thanks for your thoughts :)
Lussu's book is an Italian contemporary of Remarque's All quiet on the Western Front (which is good too), though more accurate and real in my opinion. From reading your taste here , i dare say you'll probably really love Shipwrecks (Yoshimura's On Parole is really wothwhile too, but read Shipwrecks first)...
Enjoying these lists! My own top 10, in no particular order, would be: Anna Karenina (Tolstoy); Crime and punishment (Dostoyevsky); Labyrinths (Borges); Mysteries (Hamsun); Germinal (Zola); Darkness at Noon (Koestler); Invisible man (Ellison); Blindness (Saramago); Twenty thousand streets under the sky (Hamilton); Night work (Glavanic); The house of the spirits (Allende). But I always think I should go back and re-read these. Sometimes a book is ‘right’ because it finds you at the right time :-)
Apart from the obvious ones, Orwell, Sartre, Camus etc. I tend towards crime fiction these days - some of these are - some are not - impossible task etc. Froth on The Daydream by Boris Vian. Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. Laidlaw by William McIlvaney. GB84 by David Peace. If on a winter's night a traveller by Italo Calvino. Fatherland by Robert Harris. Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. Black and Blue by Ian Rankin. The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler.
@natyblooming One of my favourite reads of recent years has been 'The Complete Cosmicomics' by Italo Calvino a collection of short stories based around his imaginings of all things astronomical. Well worth reading.
111 Comments (since 14 Nov 2013)
d0minic
Great sweaty close at quarters live version of the tune.
philipnareike
I'm scrambling my brains trying to come up with an EggBookJam but nothing's hatched
d0minic
good luck with that! @philipnareike This is the last BookJam, I've got a Chicken Jam coming next...
philipnareike
@d0minic By the way..we've established that the EggJam came before the ChickenJam...I think..in fact... wasn't the Big Bang a giant egg exploding?
Bukowski
One of my favourite novels. It sits next to 'The Trial', 'Crime and Punishment' and 'Nausea'on my bookshelf; oh happy times.
simonp
@Bukowski I went through a similar existential black polo neck phase in my early 20s. Pretentious git.
simonp
@philipnareike there must be something to do with Humpty Dumpty surely
d0minic
@simonp i went for all the black clothing look, mostly from the army supplies store and I smoked 20 Gauloises a day for 6 months.
d0minic
@Bukowski I guess now is a good time to let you know my top 10 novels of all time, that I have read so far. (in no particular order) Gravity's Rainbow, Heart Of Darkness, Frankenstein, Mrs Dalloway, The Trial, Crime and Punishment, Love In The Time Of Cholera, Nineteen Eighty Four, Ulysses, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (started reading Proust and not read Tolstoy or Melville yet, i know i know...)
d0minic
@Bukowski also Lolita, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Outsider, The Hobbit, Lanark, Ubik, Disgrace, The Big Sleep, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, woudl be the next 10.
simonp
@d0minic and you're still around to tell the tale!
simonp
@d0minic that's some impressive reading. But not a lot of laughs in there!
d0minic
@simonp no i guess not, the opening of Love In The Time of Cholera was very funny.
Bukowski
@d0minic In no particular order:- James Joyce - 'Ulysses' Dostoevsky - 'Crime and Punishment' Thomas Mann - 'Doctor Faustus' Aldous Huxley - 'Brave New World' Franz Kafka - 'The Trial' Charles Dickens - 'Bleak House' Tolstoy - 'Anna Karenina' Hermann Hesse - 'Steppenwolf' Andre Gide - 'Strait Is The Gate' Gunter Grass - 'The Tin Drum'
Bukowski
@d0minic Gabriel García Marquez - 'Love in the Time of Cholera' Martin Amis - 'London Fields' Joseph Conrad - 'Heart of Darkness Lewis Carroll - 'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland' Elizabeth Gaskell - 'Mary Barton' George Orwell - '1984' Emily Bronte - 'Wuthering Heights' Albert Camus - 'The Outsider' Marcel Proust - 'Remembrance of Things Past' William S. Burroughs - 'Naked Lunch'
Bukowski
@d0minic You and I are going to get on just dandy, very similar tastes.
d0minic
oh yes @Bukowski well, I sort of figured that from our jams. I'm making a note of Andre Gide and Mary Barton by the way and I still think I should have The Great Gatsby in there somewhere...
d0minic
I would love to know any other 'MUST READ THIS' fellow Jammers have out there!
d0minic
@Bukowski If you've not read it, I'd recommend you read 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon, although 'Vineland' is probably a better entry point into his oeuvre.
Bukowski
@d0minic In my humble opinion 'The Great Gatsby' is the most overrated novel ever published.
Bukowski
@d0minic Yes indeed. That is the novel I don't know, will investigate, thanks for the recommendation. Thomas Mann is my favourite fiction writer; 'Doctor Faustus' is very loosely based on the life of Schoenberg.
d0minic
@Bukowski I loved 'The Magic Mountain' but not read anything else. Will definitely give 'Doctor Faustus' a go. Is 'Buddenbrooks' worth reading too?
Bukowski
@d0minic It certainly is. 'The Buddenbrooks' (as it should be written given that it is the surname of the family in question) is gorgeous, but I'm very biased.
abigail.deeks
Love this! Favourite novels: George Orwell- 1984, Charles Dickens- Great Expectations, Sylvia Plath- The Bell Jar, Iain Banks- The Wasp Factory, Women in Love- DH Lawrence, Graham Greene; The End of the Affair, Thomas Hardy- The Mayor of Casterbridge, Andre Gide- Strait is The Gate, Milan Kundera- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Emily Bronte- Wuthering Heights, Iris Murdoch- Under the Net, George Eliot- Mill on the Floss, Anthony Burgess- Abba Abba, Aldous Huxley- Brave New World.
d0minic
@abigail.deeks a fantastic varied selection you got there. Di you see that BBC4 documentary about writers in the Blitz? I came away from it wanting to read 'The Heat Of The Day' by Elizabeth Bowen.
abigail.deeks
@d0minic Andre Gide's The Immoralist is fabulous too if you haven't read it. I didn't see the BBC4 documentary. Is it on iplayer? Sounds just my cup of tea.
AlicejustMay
Ooh, I've missed all this again, haven't I? I must go away and have a think. I have to confess, my all-time favourite book simply because it's timeless and makes me laugh even in the delpths of despair, is George & Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody. Even the illustrations are wonderful. And the names - like stuff out of Toast of London: Lupin Pooter, Daisy Mutlar, Cummings and Gowings... glorious. New Grub Street (George Gissing) is also up there, and William Golding's Pincher Martin...
d0minic
@AlicejustMay I'm changing my name to Clem Fandango
AlicejustMay
@Bukowski @d0minic Also Vanity Fair, Anna Karenina, The House of Mirth (Wharton), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers), Let it Come Down (Paul Bowles), anything by Flannery O'Connor (whose book Wise Blood means I bookjammed ages ago with Wise Blood's 'Rat' - a fave of the lovely @natyblooming)... What are you doing here, Clem Fandango?
AlicejustMay
Just be careful you don't end up like Derek Sibling.
d0minic
@AlicejustMay or Ray Purchase for that matter
d0minic
@AlicejustMay Gravity's Rainbow is full of great crazy names too: Tyrone Slothrop, Pirate Prentice , Myron Grunton, Pig Bodine, Roger Mexico...
AlicejustMay
Roger Mexico! Could be Charlie Tango's long lost cousin.
AlicejustMay
Can't get on with Pynchon, though.
AlicejustMay
Jemima Gina is possibly my favourite.
d0minic
@AlicejustMay It was your Wise Blood jam that inspired me to do the BookJams by the way so thank you! :-D
tomdwilly
I was thinking about this only the other day: Philip Roth "American Pastoral" and Nemesis"; John Irving "A Prayer for Owen Meaney"; Jonathan Franzen "Freedom"; Charles Bukowski "Ham on Rye" and "Post Office"; David Mitchell "Black Swan Green"; Will Self "The Book of Dave"; Geoff Dyer "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi"; Dave Eggers "What is the What"; Ken Kesey "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"; and Graham Greene "The Power and the Glory"
AlicejustMay
@d0minic Good grief! Really? I'm well chuffed, as they say in literary circles!
AlicejustMay
@tomdwilly Oh - yes! The Power and the Glory has to be up there on my list too. Wonderful, wonderful, astonishing book.
Bukowski
@AlicejustMay Wonderful stuff and some for me to investigate. Many thanks. xx
natyblooming
@AlicejustMay oh "the heart is a lonely hunter" <3
natyblooming
@philipnareikei green eggs and ham???
natyblooming
@d0minic oh i am getting some good book recommendations here...and i am also being reminded of personal favorites...c.c. @abigail.deeks @Bukowski and @tomdwillyv loving your bookjams... My recommendations are on my www.goodreads.com (another place I spend a lot of time in)
natyblooming
Sorry, meant @tomdwilly ;)
Bukowski
@natyblooming Thank you for the website recommendation.
thisismymistake
You step away from the computer for a moment and a book fight breaks out? @d0minic @Bukowski I bought Vineland within three days of my first trip to California and it served me as an alternative tour guide of sorts, staying with me even during the years I lived there.
natyblooming
@philipnareike green eggs and ham...humpty dumpty?
d0minic
@thisismymistake I read 'Mason and Dixon' whilst living in Maryland which added to the experience. Now if someone wants to pay me to read Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa that would be nice.
thisismymistake
@d0minic I'd be content if someone invited me to Scotland (hint hint @simonp @AlicejustMay) to follow in David Balfour's footsteps...
simonp
that's more along my lines @abigail.deeks
AlicejustMay
@thisismymistake ha! yes, pop along and check out our view of the Campsies from over the top of your book. You'll have an entire catalogued library of 4,000 novels to choose from when you get bored. I must insist, seeing as we're near Glasgow, that you read at least one James Kelman, though...
d0minic
@AlicejustMay For me, the best book written in and about Glasgow is 'Lanark: A Life In 4 Books' which my girlfriend introduced to me about 20 years ago. An epic dark magical read.
tomdwilly
@AlicejustMay It's pretty extraordinary, no doubt about it. Read The End of the Affair immediately afterwards and it just didn't hold a candle to it. @natyblooming A pleasure as always. I use Good Reads too although just realised that not been on in a few months. Better change that.
natyblooming
@tomdwilly under this same user name? I like the trivia game!!!
simonp
Great Expectations. Most things by John Irving. Everything by T Coraghessan Boyle. Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. Lord of the Rings. Most things by Angela Carter. RLS. The Regeneration trilogy.The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Atonement. Titus Groan. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. Oh and countless others I've temporarily forgotten.
simonp
Oh and yes from re-reading the lists above. Brave New World. Unbearable Lightness. Oh and The Princess Bride. That's a few more than ten isn't it
simonp
Oscar and Lucinda goddamit
abigail.deeks
@simonp I could easily have listed anything by George Orwell and anything by Iain Banks. Lawrence and Hardy were a big influence on me in my early teens. My black polo neck and red lipstick wearing didn't arrive until I was 17 which was about the time that I read this and Gide and lots of Satre and Nietzsche :)
abigail.deeks
@simonp Oh I love Oscar and Lucinda!!
simonp
@abigail.deeks that book almost makes me giddy with pleasure
abigail.deeks
@simonp Can't bring myself to watch the film in case it spoils it for me!
simonp
@abigail.deeks me neither!
d0minic
The Bridge is my favourite Iain Banks novel @abigail.deeks coming back to the Blitz. 'Wars Of The Heart' Culture Show is no longer available but there is a clip on the webpage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03hcdr7
tomdwilly
@natyblooming If you search under Tom Williamson, I'm the one making a camp face whilst holding a margarita. I really need to change that picture...
simonp
anytime @thisismymistake. The scenery for Kidnapped would be just beautiful and for contrast I could take you on a tour of Irvine Welsh's Leith...
d0minic
@natyblooming @tomdwilly perhaps a Pina Colada is a better one for the camp face?
tomdwilly
@simonp Saw Fugitive Pieces in a charity shop last week and was thinking of picking it up but put it back. So it's that good then? Also, fully agreed on Oscar and Lucinda - great book.
natyblooming
@tomdwilly jajajaja ok...i am leaving but will send a request this afternoon (your evening) ;)
simonp
@tomdwilly it's a very moving, profound book. Jewel-like. Reads more like poetry than prose.
d0minic
@tomdwilly Fugitive Pieces is brilliant, go pick it up, you won't be disappointed.
natyblooming
@d0minic jajajaja
tomdwilly
@d0minic @natyblooming If you like pina coladas and walking in the rain...
tomdwilly
@d0minic @simonp You've convinced me!
d0minic
@tomdwilly the believe the correct response to that comment would involve rolling round the floor in a state of great merriment
simonp
@tomdwilly hurrah!
simonp
@abigail.deeks @d0minic has to be The Crow Road for me. A beautiful hymn to youth and family. Did you ever see the BBC Scotland adaptation? Very good (that citizen of Gallifrey played Uncle Rory).
d0minic
Adding Andre Gide - Strait To The Gate @abigail.deeks @Bukowski & @simonp I'm adding The Glass Room to my Christmas wish list too! :)
abigail.deeks
@simonp Just looked it up. New citizen of Gallifrey not Mr Tennant then, shame :) I have to say Canal Dreams is my runner up after Wasp Factory. Wasp Factory I love just because it was my first Iain Banks I think.
abigail.deeks
@d0minic :)
simonp
@d0minic Must say that The Glass Room is probably the best book i've read in the last couple of years. Beautifully told. Plus for an architecture geek like me, it's pure catnip. I must get to the Czech Republic and see the real thing.
simonp
@abigail.deeks oh, sorry to get your hopes up. There have been too many Gallifreyans with a Scottish accent!
alisonsghost
@AlicejustMay Couldn't agree more about 'Diary of a Nobody'. Cumming and Gowing and poor Mr Pooter in the bath!...The trouble with book lists is there are often books that you admire, and those you read for pleasure...plus they run to hundreds. Ian Banks is probably better as Iain M Banks with the later books. But Snow country, The Remains Of The Day, The Long Goodbye, Beyond Black, Vilette and Breathing Lessons also recommended...Agree about 1984, Bleak House, and Heart of Darkness....
alisonsghost
...and whoops haven't listened to the jam yet!!
d0minic
deary me... @alisonsghost I loved 'Remains OF The Day' as well. Have you read 'Never Let Me Go'?
alisonsghost
@d0minic No, but it was recommended to me and I've got the book, so I will do. Is it as brilliant as ROTD?
alisonsghost
@d0minic Loved the jam. Especially the vaguely Eastern sound to the guitar.
simonp
And to get back to the music, God you forget just how good The Cure could be. This is just thrilling.
d0minic
@simonp yes I love the wilful punkishness of their early music (long before they became a navel gazing goth parody) and it's influence can be felt in so many recent bands. Bloc Party springs to mind / @tomdwilly speaking of Geoff Dyer have you read 'Zona' his meditation on the Tarkovsky film 'Stalker'?
d0minic
@alisonsghost yes I can't think of any other bands at the time that so artfully brought Middle Eastern sounds into a post punk sound
d0minic
@alisonsghost No, not as brilliant as ROTD but well worth reading, the best literary sci-fi novel I've read in a long while.
alisonsghost
@d0minic. SF not mentioned in the synopsis on my copy. More intrigued now. So who wrote the Glass Room, then? Getting confused!
d0minic
@alisonsghost For the Glass Room I must refer you to the right honourable jammer > @simonp :)
simonp
@alisonsghost @d0minic Simon Mower wrote The Glass Room http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/24/simon-mawer-the-glass-room
alisonsghost
@simonp Big thanks.
rosspepperell
The Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell - The Hero with a Thousand Faces.. could have saved myself 10 yrs with £6..lol
Bukowski
@AlicejustMay @abigail.deeks @simonp @d0minic If you would like some 'fun and frolics' reading philosophy:- May I recommend:- Deleuze - 'Difference and Repetition' Spinoza - 'Ethics' Kant - 'Critique of Pure Reason' Leibniz - Philosophical Writings' Quine - 'Word and Object' Wittgenstein - 'Philosophical Investigations' Merleau-Ponty - 'Visible and Invisible' Kierkegaard - 'Either / Or' Nietzsche - 'Daybreak'
d0minic
@Bukowski oh yeah Kierkegaard is a laugh a minute ;)
d0minic
@rosspepperell I downloaded some lectures by Alan Watts on the history of Buddhism. Fascinating stuff
simonp
@Bukowski and, philosophically speaking, would you be truly enlightened or simply confused if you read them all?
Bukowski
@d0minic @simonp For goodness sake; don't read them all! You'll end up being as insane as me. Just dive in and swim around for awhile.
Matan
My five cents: I couldn't finish (nor get half way through) Gravity's Rainbow, though i DO appreciate it, i much prefer One Hundred Years of Solitude to Love in the time of Cholera, i hate Crime and Punishment - though that might have to do with it being compulsory reading at high school. Books that come to mind as stunning: Akira Yoshimura's Shipwrecks, Emillio Lussu "Sardinian Brigade", "For whom the bell tolls", "Slaughterhouse 5", "Dispatches", "Brave New World", Dellilo's "White Noise"...
d0minic
@Matan yes I loved 'Slaughterhouse 5' and 'White Noise' especially The Airborne Toxic Event section of the novel. Not heard of Lussu or Yoshimura so will have to check them out. Thanks for your thoughts :)
d0minic
@Matan oh and any book one is forced to read at school is always tainted by that experience, for me it would be 'Pride And Prejudice'
Matan
Lussu's book is an Italian contemporary of Remarque's All quiet on the Western Front (which is good too), though more accurate and real in my opinion. From reading your taste here , i dare say you'll probably really love Shipwrecks (Yoshimura's On Parole is really wothwhile too, but read Shipwrecks first)...
parafoxa
I'm with you on the Pride and Prejudice, although it was worth all the read-aloud sputtering teenage amusement...
sophiethings
Enjoying these lists! My own top 10, in no particular order, would be: Anna Karenina (Tolstoy); Crime and punishment (Dostoyevsky); Labyrinths (Borges); Mysteries (Hamsun); Germinal (Zola); Darkness at Noon (Koestler); Invisible man (Ellison); Blindness (Saramago); Twenty thousand streets under the sky (Hamilton); Night work (Glavanic); The house of the spirits (Allende). But I always think I should go back and re-read these. Sometimes a book is ‘right’ because it finds you at the right time :-)
sophiethings
Oops, that was 11, I think - can't count, I'm tired, etc, etc...
Axol
Apart from the obvious ones, Orwell, Sartre, Camus etc. I tend towards crime fiction these days - some of these are - some are not - impossible task etc. Froth on The Daydream by Boris Vian. Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. Laidlaw by William McIlvaney. GB84 by David Peace. If on a winter's night a traveller by Italo Calvino. Fatherland by Robert Harris. Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. Black and Blue by Ian Rankin. The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler.
natyblooming
@Axol Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. If on a winter's night a traveller by Italo Calvino. :)
neolix
@Bukowski no Charles Bukowski? one of my favorites
d0minic
@natyblooming One of my favourite reads of recent years has been 'The Complete Cosmicomics' by Italo Calvino a collection of short stories based around his imaginings of all things astronomical. Well worth reading.