Speaking of bad writing, we should have a Balloon Juice version of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Let’s see who can make up the worst opening line to a novel, ever.
The Bulwer-Lytton people set the bar pretty high, though. Here’s the 2010 winner (which still hasn’t been topped by subsequent entries, in my opinion):
For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.
Surely with the abundance of caustic wit and verbal acrobatics displayed daily, y’all are up to the task.
Now, speaking of good writing, have you read any decent books lately? Sadly, I have not. And unless you help me locate something worthwhile, I’ll be reading crap all week because I’m on vacation.
First, let me define “good” in this context: entertaining fiction. I’m currently reading Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, but so far I’m not liking it. I thought The Poisonwood Bible was brilliant, but everything else I’ve read by her disappoints me. Hopefully it’ll pick up.
Anyhoo, bad sentences and recommendations! Or whatever.
According2Robyn
I guess the worst opening line I’ve ever read comes from the reboot of Moby Dick, which begins,
WereBear
LOL! I don’t think anyone has topped “It was a dark and stormy night,” but it is context-sensitive.
Bad writing is akin to peak-wingnut… there’s always a turtle farther down.
Stella B.
I had not read Michael Shaara’s “Killer Angels” until last week. It was wonderful, but at times it was so intense, I had to put it down.
BethanyAnne
“Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” by Jenny Lawson is the best thing I’ve read this year. Drop-book-and-laugh hilarious. Right now I’m reading “Ismael” by Daniel Quinn. Pretty good so far.
Todd
“Senators Craig and Vitter moved together and embraced with a savage passion, a passion almost entirely like an MMA championship bout conducted in an abandoned Soviet spent nuclear material storage facility if it was a fight to the death.”
Yatsuno
That’s disappointing. Kingslover has written several fantastic books. I guess no one can bat a thousand.
burnspbesq
What the hell is up with this?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/illinois-illegally-seizes-bees-resistant-to-monsantos-roundup-kills-remaining-queens/5336210
Something about this seems bass-ackwards to me. I would think Monsanto would welcome the existence of Roundup-resistant bees.
I’m not yet a member of the Monsanto Is The Eebilest Corporation Evah!!! Club, but I am moving in that direction.
Steved
Anything by Michael Connelly. And Stephen King’s 11/22/63 is next to impossible to put down.
quannlace
I always thought that was a pretty good opening sentence. Even Snoopy co-opted it.
It was the rest of Bulwer-Lytton’s books that were the problem.
gussie
Re-read Gaudy Night.
Guy named Etgar Keret has a new book of short stories, some of which are awesome.
Have you read Egan’s Visit from the Goon Squad, yet?
People are liking Z, the Zelda Fitzgerald novel, though I found it unreadable.
debbie
I’ve been reading my way through Glenn Duncan: The Last Werewolf, Tallulah Rising, Death of an Ordinary Gentleman and now I, Lucifer. I’m usually not much of a reader of these kinds of books, but there’s something irresistible about a world-weary werewolf.
Svensker
For lovers of wretched writing, you might want to pre-order this — using John’s Amazon link, of course!
BethanyAnne
I should say that Jenny bills her book as a “mostly true memoir”, so it might not be what you asked for, but damn, it’s good. I’ve also been reading “The Last Ringbearer” by Kirill Yeskov at lunches this week. It’s a retelling of the Lord of The Rings from the other side. Rec’d by a commenter here, and I’m really enjoying it.
BethanyAnne
@Todd: lol-eww. This could be like a Tom Friedman / David Brooks slash fanfic paragraph contest.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
That story is badly garbled; somebody misunderstood something, but I can’t tell exactly who from the article. The key thing is that Roundup is a herbicide, not an insecticide, so it should have nothing to with bees. Either the beekeeper is a kook or the author of the article got Roundup and neonicotonid insecticides backward.
Betty Cracker
@gussie: I read “Goon Squad” awhile back and thought it was okay but didn’t love it. Mostly I liked the punk rock youth nostalgia since I can relate to that.
Bill E Pilgrim
“As he gazed at Veronique he not only undressed her with his eyes, but proposed with his inner voice, carried her across the threshold with his imagination, and spent years of wedded bliss with his cerebral cortex until the spell was rudely broken when he realized that she had left the room some time ago.”
Yatsuno
@burnspbesq: Something along that chain of events doesn’t add up. Why did the state initiate the seizure when there was a hearing already scheduled? And why the false premise of foulbrood contamination? I could see Monsanto not wanting bees that are resistant to Roundup to be common knowledge since it undermines their insistence that Roundup is harmless. But still it seems like there are pieces missing in this puzzle.
@Roger Moore: Or wot you said.
Todd
@Steved:
I liked aspects of the story a lot, but it took him way too long to get to the money shot on the socio-political disasters his protagonist’s changes wrought, I didn’t like the earthquakes and I never did get the point of the watchers.
Had he simply stuck with the “changes have unforeseen social consequences” theme, it would have been a stronger book.
maya
” riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Also, too:
” Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo”. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
You get the idea. Now try Ulysses on for size.
PaulW
Intentionally writing a bad opening sentence is hard: the urge to veer into silly camp too high, the need for honest intent too low.
Betty Cracker
@BethanyAnne: “Let’s Pretend” sounds good. Thanks!
WereBear
@PaulW: Yes, after the world endured Ulysses AND “Big Two Hearted River,” satire was breathing hard and needing an IV…
Todd
@BethanyAnne:
“David giggled and wriggled at the tickle of Tom’s neatly kept bristles and how there was a seeming intuitive movement to bringing forth such pleasure. As he began to gasp, David mentally proclaimed “Tom is TRULY the Mustache of Understanding”.
Robert
Bella knew she was in trouble when the bottle of black ink bloomed blobs of nightshade shadows on the immaculate manuscript of Headmistress Meyer.
Damn, now I want to write that actual story and troll Twilight fans with the absolutely true story of the creation of their beloved franchise.
Dee Loralei
@gussie: She’s a very distant relative of mine. From the crazy southern side of the family. I may have to read the book.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Betty Cracker: I felt the same way about Goon Squad – kind of a ‘meh’ response. I just finished two terrific books, Canada, by Richard Ford and The Round House, by Louise Erdrich.
PsiFighter37
@Todd: Okay, I think you win. That’s a hilariously disturbing mental image.
Also, too, the rest of that site is great. I wish I had discovered this sooner.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@debbie: Loved I, Lucifer – such fun.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@debbie: Loved I, Lucifer – such fun.
Robert
It’s a rare Stephen King novel written under his own name that doesn’t bore me to tears. 11/22/63 is one of them. I’m a dystopia/utopia-obsessive and the batshit crazy results of time travel in that book had me howling. I loved it for all the wrong reasons.
And call me a nut if you must, but I think King is at his best when he does short fiction. He has time enough to explore his idea but not enough time to run it into the ground and start desecrating the corpse. Carrie, The Long Walk, and Rage are some of his shorter novels and they don’t overstay their welcome.
King’s horror criticism is brilliant and should be used as a model for anyone writing about genre entertainment as art. I wish he had time to do more of it. I’ve burned through three copies of Danse Macabre and might just bite the bullet and get a digital copy to use as reference material.
MikeJ
MM defiantly V’ed on Lets Pretend This Never Happened. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way, never got past page 20. It really looked like it wanted to be gut bustingly funny and I only found it mildly amusing. Maybe I was just in a bad mood that day.
Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls is at the top of my stack.
Tom Q
On the Recommended side:
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Word for word the best book I’ve read in some time. All takes place in the Dallas football stadium on Thanksgiving Day, but it’s incredibly insightful (and very funny) about Iraq and the gap between those who made the war happen and those who ended up fighting it.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I was given Fin by James Delingpole and started reading it. The protagonist is a writer. He’s working on a novel and trying to decide how to reconfigure the protagonist to not look like him. He hates his best frenemy for having success with his own novel, a thinly veiled autobiography.
I’m done reading this. If it’s Meta, it’s inexcusably sloppy. If it’s not it’s a depressing waste of ink.
Tonal (visible) Crow
As Brooks approached the table, he saw that he had been assigned a seat between Speaker Pelosi and Senator BullGOP. Cringing, he took his place, and almost immediately Sen. BullGOP whipped his hand onto Brooks’s inner thigh, teasing at his disobediently hardening peckerwood. Simultaneously, Pelosi said in her most supercilious tone, “Oh, hi Day-vid! Nice to see you and Sen. BullGOP to-gether again for a little fili-BUST-ering! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know.”
Ultraviolet Thunder
I recently read Redshirts and Your Hate Mail Will be Graded by John Scalzi. I like this guy.
Most recently I read The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and (coauthor?). It’s an interesting pitch for M-Theory as the much sought after Theory of Everything. Pretty interesting read.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Robert: Totally agree with you about King’s short fiction, and enjoyed 11/22/63 as well. Still, I think the best thing he’s ever written, ironically enough, was his book on writing.
Todd
@PsiFighter37:
It works best if, as you read the line about Mustache of Understanding, you mentally deliver it in the manner and tone of the little Bene Gesserit witch from that first awful Dune movie saying “he IS the Kweisatz Haderach!”
WereBear
@Robert: It is to our everlasting detriment that the novella is at a low ebb: I believe that is Mr. King’s natural metier and we are the poorer for it.
MattF
Just finished a non-fiction doorstop tome, “The Sleepwalkers” by Christopher Clark. It’s yet another book about the events leading up to the start of WWi– Clark goes against the conventional historical wisdom that German militarism was the main culprit. He points out that there was a governing War Party in each of the Great Powers at that time and that the structure of alliances that led to (Serbia causing Anti-Austrian incident) -> (European War) was set up by Russia and France. And lots of lying in post-war memoirs. Gives one some perspective, at least, about the American ‘War is good for you’ party.
Todd
@Robert:
This. He gets bogged down in a long story in a way that is opposite from somebody like McCammon, who can hew to a much tighter, better paced novel plot.
MikeJ
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Scalzi has a new book too, I think. Haven’t picked it up yet but I know I will.
Betty, if you’re still around can you dig out a link from an earlier thread? One of our authors is giving away his guitar books for free on Amazon this weekend. Perhaps you could link him up there in the story and send him some traffic.
Scott S.
I always try to recommend Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next series — kinda a combination of police procedural, science fiction, fantasy, whackaloon. The first novel is called “The Eyre Affair” and involves a plot to kidnap Jane Eyre out of the novel itself.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@MikeJ:
He must have. I follow his blog and he’s on a long author tour.
I need a weighty new book to read. Gonna do a lot of traveling next month. Airplane time is my reading time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
John McCain felt an anger only few men in history could understand. It was the rage of patriotism thwarted, of character confounded, of courage– to borrow the salty language of brave and bawdy junior officers fighting Godless communist tyranny in the steaming jungles of deepest Orient– of courage cockblocked. The Cincinnatus of Sedona thought of his ancestors, the Admirals McCain who had sailed forth in stormy seas, literally and metaphorically, to help Uncle Sam save freedom from the Kaiser and the Ottoman Turk, from Hitler and Hirohito, from Marx, Stalin and Chernyenko. What would those great men have thought of a country where a voter-media conspiracy had conspired to place Barack “Barry Soetero” Obama, the cosmopolitan metrosexual intellectual, his origins as mysterious as Lindsey Graham’s girlfriend in the Canadian Senate, in the chair of Washington and Reagan? Fickle fate and dark destiny had cast their unholy spell on The Shining CIty on the Hill, but John McCain would not give up. John McCain would not stand down. John McCain knew that there was Evil in this world, John McCain knew that Evil must be fought. John McCain was born to be a Warrior. Let the hippies and draft-dodgers and the book-readers call him a War Monger: If the Storm Clouds of tyranny darkened the Sky of Liberty, War would John McCain mong. Evil now thrived in the mitigating cowardice of talking points, in the mincing equivocation that called Terrorism an “Act of Terror”. While John McCain lived, this would not stand. Like Crusaders of old straddling their steeds to wield lance and cross against the Saracen menace, John McCain closed his eyes as the NBC make-up artist powdered a face worn by filibusters and Senate committee hearings, John McCain girded his mental loins and prepared to enter the modern arena, the den of festering liberalism and appeasement known as: Meet The Press.
Tonal (visible) Crow
@BethanyAnne:
Brooks slash ought to be an official genre.
YellowJournalism
“Marilyn Jane Chambers was an introverted soul, hiding her feelings behind a cool facade from her long-time crush, Baldwin ‘Barry’ Lowenstein, much like Eve once hide her naughty bits with a fig leaf from the ogling eyes of Adam.”
Tonal (visible) Crow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well done! You owe me a new keyboard!
Alison
If you like YA lit – or even if you don’t think you do – The Fault In Our Stars by John Green is as good as everyone says. Not so much “YA lit” as just “a book about young people”. Funny, realistic, gutting, really really liked it.
Also enjoyed In The Woods by Tana French and looking forward to reading more of hers.
Amir Khalid
There’s a novel I’ve been meaning to read for some time now — Maggie’s Tree, written by Julie Walters in between stints playing Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. Has anyone here come across it?
Joshua James
Creatures of Appetite by Todd Travis is a really good read:
http://www.amazon.com/Creatures-of-Appetite-ebook/dp/B00BC2BCI4/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_i
Remfin
“It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.”
The book then goes on to tell about the clandestine exploits of our former President, including his heroic stint as a secret member of SEAL Team Six.
I disagree with @WereBear that they are “akin”…peak-wingnut is in fact a sub-genre of bad writing.
Robert
@WereBear: I love novellas. Here’s hoping that something about digital publishing makes them viable in America again. Japan is still seeing a lot of success with the “cellphone novel” genre that is really just trendy novellas.
I do write fiction but I struggle to get it published. I work best in flash fiction and novella forms and there aren’t many pro-rate markets that accept them. I’m past the point of working for token pay and only submit to free anthologies if I’m a fan of the editor. It doesn’t help that I write slipstream and modern gothic. Again, another market that’s fallen out of favor.
MikeJ
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Thank god for ebooks. I used to go out for months at a time and all the books I accumulated along the way weighed a ton.
Now I can have Mary Roach’s Gulp and William Friedkin’s The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir and not have to schlep around dead trees.
Speaking of Friedkin, I rewatched To Live and Die in LA last night. It’s amazing how much blue and orange there is in that movie and it was made 20 years before total color correction made it ubiquitous.
MattF
@MattF: And I should say, it’s a terrific, well written book. But… long.
Hob
I just started The Rainy Season by James Blaylock— a Southern California ghost story, very good so far. Blaylock is a really unusual writer, the closest thing I’ve seen to a modern version of the eccentric, contemplative, kinda Christian and kinda pagan horror-fantasy that Charles Williams wrote in the ’30s, but with a strongly California flavor; my favorite one of his that I’ve read so far was The Paper Grail, which is about more or less what it sounds like but also involves Mendocino County hippie-rednecks gluing stuff onto art cars.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
“Sarah Palin realized she could see the Death Eaters’ secret hideout from her house. They were having Karaoke Night, and and Sarah desperately tried to copy down the lyrics on her hand.”
Ultraviolet Thunder
@MikeJ:
I’m not sold on ebooks. For tech I have a heavy duty work laptop, an iPhone and nothing in-between. I still like paper books for a variety of reasons. My trips are rarely more than 2 weeks, often 2 days. If I finish one book I can park it in the suitcase and hit up a B&N for a new one for the airplane carryon.
Ditto music. I carry no digital audio media at all. I like to listen to records and I’d rather wait until I get home to my turntable.
That said, I’m designing a new headphone amplifier that could change my mind about portable audio. We’ll see.
Ridnik Chrome
@Robert: The problem with Stephen King is that after he became Million-Selling-Author-Stephen-King his publishers stopped editing his books. Read the original version of “The Stand” (i.e. the one published in 1978) and then try reading the “Complete and Uncut” edition that was published later, and note the difference. The first, though an epic novel, is well-paced and a quick read. The second drags on and on and on. That’s because whoever edited the original manuscript back in the Seventies knew what to leave out, but King didn’t, and still doesn’t. Only now that he’s the 800-pound gorilla of American fiction, he gets his way on what gets cut and what stays.
Dee Loralei
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That was brilliant! I think you should win the prize!
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
I just finished reading a dark comedy called “The Knitting Circle Rap ist Annihilation Squad” by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan. The rapes took place offstage, the violence we see is all cartoonish, and the book is much funnier than it has a right to be. There’s even an homage to the Indiana Jones “bring a gun to a knife fight” scene. Can’t remember who recommended the book to me – might have been someone here.
On the more conventional side, I loved David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas,” though I haven’t seen the movie yet.
Bob
Anything by James Lee Burke. If already mentioned, sorry.
JoyceH
@Robert:
What’s the struggle anymore? Just publish the stuff. That’s what I did. That’s what a lot of people are doing. Doesn’t cost a dime, and the readers will either buy it or not.
Ken
@Roger Moore:
Assuming this guy has managed to breed bees that are resistant to neonicotinoid insecticides, then my guess is that Monsanto is thrilled and wants them so that they can figure out what he did, develop it into a commercially scalable GM process, preferably one that requires breeders to buy their colonies from Monsanto every year, and patent them.
Summer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Truly awe-inspiring.
I just read “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter and loved it. Also “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell. Loved “The Keep” but not so much “Goon Squad.”
schrodinger's cat
I have just begun Middlemarch. I am part of a classics book club, we have already read David Copperfield and To the Lighthouse.
Betty Cracker@top
For a fun read on the beach you can’t go wrong with P G Wodehouse or a good murder mystery by Agatha Christie, like for example The Body in the Library.
Todd
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Nice. Along the same genre:
“The warrior’s eyes adjusted to the gloom of the seemingly lonely spot that he descended to, knowing it would soon be a battle space. In his 40 years on earth, he’d been there many times, tested and hardened. A fire-like gleam came to his eyes as he approached the place at which the combat would be most intense. Hands outstretched toward that space, he relished the visceral, primal things that would be done, the intensity nearly sensual. As he reached his position heard heard a voice call out from above – “Son, it is almost noon and you just got up. Stay off the goddamn Internet, because your father and I need you to clean your room and go out to look for a job instead of playing with your friends on RedState and posting as Brick Oven Bill on Balloon-Juice.”
Betty Cracker
@MikeJ: I’m on my mobile at the moment but I’ll try to link it at some point. Would tomorrow be too late? (In another post, obvs.)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: LMAO! “War would John McCain mong” — genius!
BethanyAnne
@Tonal (visible) Crow: Aaaaa, run away!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dee Loralei: Thanks, I tried to imagine a collaboration between Jon Karl and Peggy Noonan, but I missed the whole single sentence thing, and as @Remfin: points out, no matter how silly you get, you can’t keep up with real wingers.
Ridnik Chrome
I was very impressed by the first two books of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy (read them out of order, just finished the first one), even though I’m generally not much of a reader of historical fiction. Also, even though they made a pretty terrible movie out of it, David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” is a pretty awesome book…
Trinity
I am reading ‘Skinny Legs and All’ by Tom Robbins. I am in love with his vocabulary and insights. Here is my entry:
Pausing briefly at the window she looked out to see a hundred birds flying upward into the sunlight where at that exact moment a blinding burst of fire exploded directly above her and unbelievably caught the clueless flock in its midst and dropped them to the ground like thousands of half baked, and obviously under-seasoned, hens.
Todd
@Tonal (visible) Crow:
There would be a lot of frightened, yet feverish looks of anticipation back at Paul Ryan in that category.
MomSense
I’m going to go with two books by Maine writer Kate Braestrup. Here If You Need Me: A True Story and Marriage and Other Acts of Charity.
She is a great writer and if you ever get the chance to hear her preach–do it!
Todd
@Trinity:
This was the verbal surplusage which made your entry prefect.
MikeJ
@Betty Cracker: I think he said it was all weekend.
Perhaps the authors on this very thread who mentioned stuff could send you deets on where to find their stuff and you could pimp all of them.
BethanyAnne
And, on ebooks, I’m finally sold. I have one of the physical Kindles, and it’s my favorite way to read now. I also have the software on my iPad, and that’s great for reading at lunch. When the 07 recession hit, I had to sell my books and move. I sold about 750 books, and I’m so happy I never have to move them again.
BethanyAnne
@Trinity: That’s my favorite Robbins book. :)
kwAwk
All things considered, it was better than that time he shat his pants in math class after lifting a cheek to let out what he thought was a fart, and certainly better than that time he tripped on his own feet while staring at the beautiful Jessica Saunders an embedding his front teeth into Mrs. Furgeson’s classroom door and worlds better than when his aunt Deloris caught him masterbating to the AARP magazine, but Jeffrey couldn’t help but feeling that the universe had gotten one over on him again and this ruined his ability to enjoy the moment.
Todd
@kwAwk:
“And then he resolved in his mind, in a strong way, much like the Hulk, or like those Hercules movies where Hercules pulls down a tree that he will do something important in his life, and that when he is Speaker of the House people will fear and respect him! Reaching into his bag, he pulled out the name change papers that would give him a better name – John. John Boehner”
Mike in NC
Halfway through the excellent “The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945”, the final installment of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson.
Betty Cracker
@BethanyAnne: Should I give “Fierce Invalids” another shot? I gave up halfway through. I find Robbins wildly inconsistent. When he’s good, he’s awesome (Skinny Legs), but when he’s off, he’s unbearably tedious.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I write, but only as a secondary activity. I invent projects for electronics hobbyists and write instructions. Looking at the differences between what I produce and what the editor turns it into convinced me that i am not a writer. Also, decades of COBOL destroyed any instincts for punctuation that I may ever have had.
Maude
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I have a Nook. By the third day it was part of my life. I no longer lug books around and I can get a book any time I want one.
You can read any epub books and are not limited to buying books at Amazon.
You can carry a lot of books on it. A couple of hundred if you wish.
ETA Charles Todd, Ian Rutledge series
I read crime fiction primarily.
The writers I do like a lot:
Robert Crais, the Elvis Cole, Joe Pike series
Stuart MacBride, series is set in Aberdeen Scotland.
Karin Slaughter, the Will Trent series.
Laura Lippman, not all mystery, she does stand alones that are very good.
Donna Leone
Reginald Hill, UK
Peter Temple, Aussie
That’s all I can think of now.
I used to think ebooks were not for me. I hadn’t tried an ereader. Elink is the screen that is easier on the eyes than ink on paper. Tablets don’t have this screen.
Try it and see.
It is very windy here and our heat has been on since yesterday afternoon.
Betty Cracker
@MikeJ: I’d be happy to…might find something to read for myself if nothing else.
sal
“Like most mornings, Ann woke up with the taste of stale wine in her mouth and the smell of clove cigarettes in her thinning hair, ruefully reflecting on how most people thought it serendipitous her initials stood for Alcoholics Anonymous.”
Hungry Joe
Finally got around to Donna Tartt’s “The Little Friend” and pretty much loved it. Found the first book in Philip Kerr’s “Berlin Noir” trilogy not nearly as interesting as the concept (detective in pre-WWII Berlin); the mediocre prose and so-what? plot didn’t help, and I gave up. Currently reading David Eagleman’s “Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlives” as slowly as possible — just a couple of the 3-to-4-page stories per night — because they’re so smart and funny and so damned much fun. Also reading “1Q84,” my first Murakami. I’m about 1/5 of the way into it; was fascinated at first, but I’m not sure I’ll ride it all the way home.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@BethanyAnne: I came across “Another Roadside Attraction” when I was living in Colorado. I loved it. I read all of his other books but that one is still my favorite. : )
MikeJ
@Maude:
The battery life is much better too. Of course you’re giving up having a full blown computer like a Nexus, but it’s a fair tradeoff.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Maude:
Being able to carry many books is one of the reasons I don’t have an e-reader. That’s rather contrary to most people’s motivations. If I had many books with me I would rarely finish one. I find that having a single book in my bag on a plane or in a hotel room forces me to follow through. At home I always have several half-finished things that I intended to get through but put down when something else caught my attention. I never finish reading anything unless it’s the only thing I have to read.
Maude
@MattF:
I went through a phase where I read about before WWI and WWI.
It was always pointed out that it was part of the times. The arrogance of countries was to blame. Germany was bellicose and did play a major part in mobilization.
Because of the hatred of Germans after the war in the US, Bruno Hauptman didn’t stand a chance at trial of the Lindbergh child kidnapping. Christopher was 18 months old.
People are still making money from writing books about it.
Hunter Gathers
I was mingling my way through an IRS tea party rally when I saw Her: a pasty vision in grey. She rode her scooter like a woman possessed, she would take no guff from the Kenyan Muslim Usurper. She was everything I desired – a splotchy complexion brought on by years of a diet high in salt and processed meats, her thinning hair an unkempt mass of silver, her grey sweatpants and sweatshirt did little to hide her beer gut, and the Hoveround. Oh that Hoveround. She commanded the small battery powered conveyance like Patton on horseback. All of that whet my appetite. But it was the misspelled sign that stirred my loins. She would be easy prey. The condoms and roofies I kept in my fanny pack would not be needed.
Steeplejack
“Call me a schlemiel.”
Maude
@MikeJ:
I forgot to mention that. I charge my device before the battery dies down.
I have a laptop and only wanted a reader. It has a glowlight which is excellent and that surprised me.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Today I bought The Book of Levon: The Trials and Triumphs of Levon Helm for my wife. She’s a colossal fan of Levon and of The Band. The writer, Jamie Malanowski is a contributor to The Washington Monthly.
gene108
Willard M. Romney had it all figured out – he could see the future and it was his to own – he did everything right, all the time; he was a rich and successful businessman, he ate his vegetables, he had names for his sons no other man could think of, he didn’t drink the twin devil brews of alcohol, coffee and tea, and he knew he’d hashed out a plan to steal his Democratic opponents thunder: Universal healthcare; but little did poor Romney know righteousness was about to take a dive off the deepest cliff into the deepest oceanic trench, to be subducted into the bowels of the Earth to be reborn as a hot, passionate, directionless, mindless molten force that will scourge his passage into the future he knew was his to own.
BethanyAnne
@Betty Cracker: Heh. I don’t know, I gave up on it about 2 chapters in…
MikeJ
@Ultraviolet Thunder: For technical books alone it’s nice to have a full library with you. Of course you’re mainly working on stuff your company makes, IIRC, so there probably aren’t thousand of books out there on the actual nuts and bolts of laser wielding robots.
Maude
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
You can put one book on it. It is very slim and light to carry. Much easier than a paper book.
Until you try it, it’s hard to to explain why people love them.
I don’t always finish book, but that’s because they get boring. I won’t slog through to the end.
I do sometimes , okay, every day, jump from book to book and then settle on one.
You can read how you want to. There’s nothing wrong with not finishing a book.
Todd
@sal:
“Cursing as she stubbed her toe on the bedpost, she realized that she was already 10 minutes late to her third (and last) class of the day, having missed her first two opportunities to instruct eager student lawyers and thus earn her bloated paycheck. ‘Fuck’ she muttered as she ran her claws through her tangled mat of hair. ‘That goddamn liberal dean is going to try and oppress me for my conservatism again'”.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@MikeJ:
We have a colossal tech library on a server in Germany. I can find anything I need, but it requires a laptop, cell modem, Verizon signal a VPN and a certain amount of translation.
Of course that also allows me to kibitz on BJ from a catwalk above an assembly line in another country.
boctaoe
Recently I discovered Nicci French. The books are called psychological thrillers which means you can’t put them down because you half to know how they end. Both books I have read so far were dillys.
JPL
This is a headline at the NYTimes..
As Boozy Invaders Hit Beach, Hamptons Sound Snooki Alert
Oh No.. what will become of the snooti residents.
PIGL
@Alison: me, i prefer YA YA lit, IYKWIMAITTYD._
NA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
An embarrassment of riches! A team of rivals!
Calming Influence
Barney
We have a game we play at family reunions, which we hold in youth hostels (you can book a whole hostel for a weekend in the off season). It requires a small supply of trashy novels, such as those left behind in hostels. You each (maybe 5 or 6 of you) pick one, and read out just the title, author and the blurb on the back or inside cover. Everyone else must then write an opening sentence for the book, and the person who chose it writes down the real one, and then reads them all out, and all the others have to pick one as the true opening sentence. You get a point for each person who picks your false sentence, and one for correctly guessing the true one. Everyone reads out one opening sentence.
As a writer, you can go for comedy, or you can go for believability. If the books are chosen well, you can go for both at the same time. A good game should reduce more than one reader to tears of helpless laughter, though that does give a bit of a clue. We’ve all been drinking for some hours by that stage, so maybe that helps too.
It can also let you know that some writers are over-rated. We found Alexander McCall Smith’s “The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency” , which the media had been raving about, but none of us had read. We all rejected the real opening sentence as far too cliched to come from a successful novel. We could write better ones while drunk.
Steeplejack
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
For that kind of meta, you can’t beat Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds (1939). Very funny. Wikipedia: “[. . .] works entirely with borrowed (and stolen) characters from other fiction and legend, on the grounds that there are already far too many existing fictional characters.” And they interact contentiously with their “author.”
Jay S
@Todd:DB/TF needs more thigh grabbing the under the table.
Jay S
@Todd:DB/TF needs more thigh grabbing the under the table.
Steeplejack
@MikeJ:
Done and done.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Steeplejack:
I’m not going to finish Delingpole’s book Fin. Not fond of Meta in novel form. Don’t dance around telling me a story about telling a story. If you’ve got one, tell the damn story.
Steeplejack
@MikeJ:
Oh, hell, might as well put ’em in here. Links for Heywood J.’s books (free Kindled downloads this weekend):
Practice Power: Secrets to Practicing and Playing Amazing Guitar.
Climbing the K2: Kreutzer Etude No. 2.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Good fiction: Anything by Alan Furst. The Polish Officer is one of my favorites.
Vintage fiction: Eric Ambler. Try Epitaph for a Spy.
Non-fiction: 1493, about the Columbian Exchange. Prior to that, Africans were in Africa, Europeans were in Europe, Asians were in Asia. Afterwards, everyone is everywhere. Interesting tidbits in the book: Mexico City as the first “21st Century” multi-ethnic city. The population of the US at the time of the Constitution was majority African and Indian. Deal with THAT, immigration whiners!
Dan M
Bulwer-Lytton should give a special prize to John Barth and then permanently retire the contest. Nobody will ever top the first sentence of “The Sotweed Factor”.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Oh, and last week I read Up in Honey’s Room, by Elmore Leonard. Set in Detroit at the end of WWII. A hot blonde, Nazis, cops, spies and lotsa local color. Pretty entertaining read.
JoyfulA
I love anything by Ross Thomas, and I found one I hadn’t read, “Yellow Dog Contract.” It’s crime fiction, sort of a caper, and at times funny. Written and set in the 1970s, it’s about GOP ratfucking and dirty tricks, sort of the beginning of the vast right-wing conspiracy. A former political consultant is paid to look into the disappearance of the national head of the public employees’ union.
cleek
It was a sunny day in early spring, and the first butterflies of the year flapped and caromed around the yard, stopping here and there for no reason before springing off again on random tangents, like a bus load of retarded kids let loose on a playground after a long morning of learning about manners.
(yes, i know it’s offensive. that’s the point.)
JoyfulA
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I read “Up in Honey’s Room” a couple of years ago. It isn’t Elmore Leonard’s typical book, but it was good.
Barney
Inspired by the current Newsmax headlines.
JoyfulA
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: “The Polish Officer” is my favorite Furst, too. All his books I’ve read were worthwhile, and Eric Ambler is great, especially “A Coffin for Dimitrios.”
cleek
@Trinity:
bravo!
Ultraviolet Thunder
@JoyfulA:
I haven’t read any of his other books. You mean they don’t all feature psychopathic cross-dressing Ukrainian spies?
White Trash Liberal
Speaker Boehner, gingerly holding the Speaker’s Gavel, stood poised to announce the day’s Congressional business when he was suddenly seized as if by a red, white and blue coated anaconda with the realization that he was beset at every angle by the vicissitudes of the very authority he felt himself acutely entitled.
MikeJ
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Jim Thompson’s books all feature insane women, and they tend to be cracking good reads.
JD Rhoades
If you like tough-talking hard-boiled fiction, I heartily recommend The Hard Bounce by Todd Robinson.
My review at Amazon and Goodreads:
And no, this is not a review for a friend. I’ve never met the guy, although I’ve long been a fan of Thuglit, the online magazine he founded.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@JoyfulA: I think I still have all of Ross Thomas’s books in a box in the attic somewhere. Chinaman’s Chance was my favorite. A good conman caper story. First sentence is :
“It was while jogging along the beach just east of the Paradise Cove pier that Artie Wu tripped over a dead pelican, fell, and met the man with six greyhounds.”
JD Rhoades
@Dan M:
I love that book.
Steeplejack
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I still recommend O’Brien. Both At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman are very good.
Riilism
“He told himself he should have had the espresso instead of the latte. The latte made his penis wiggle and his ear hairs tingle. But no amount of timid tumescence or follicle follies would prepare him for what happened next…”
Riilism
Moderation, seriously?…
different-church-lady
Fixed.
Maude
@Steeplejack:
I’ll browse O’Brien next time I’m at B&N.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Steeplejack:
Thanks. I like Flann O’Brien and haven’t read those. I’ll order one or both today before I forget.
WereBear
No matter what, Elmore Leonard delivers the story. Nicely wrapped, and a bow on top.
Steeplejack
@JoyfulA:
I used to love Ross Thomas, but I haven’t read anything by him in years. I wonder if they’re available on Kindle or Nook? Hmm, will have to check.
. . . Yeah, looks like they are. Cool.
James E. Powell
Recently read Austen’s first three novels, straight through in three weeks. I had never read any Austen but became convinced it was a gap, mostly because Virginia Woolf, whose work I adore, says so. I have the remaining novels, but I need a break to absorb and reflect.
I read, but I am not educated on literature. So I can’t figure out exactly why these novels are so highly regarded.
James E. Powell
Recently read Austen’s first three novels, straight through in three weeks. I had never read any Austen but became convinced it was a gap, mostly because Virginia Woolf, whose work I adore, says so. I have the remaining novels, but I need a break to absorb and reflect.
I read, but I am not educated on literature. So I can’t figure out exactly why these novels are so highly regarded.
Maude
@cleek:
You could be on the NYT Bestsellers List before the week is out.
Crusty Dem
I’ve travelled from midtown Manhattan, across the Serengeti, over the peaks Himalayas, visited factories from Bangladesh to Chengzhou to Soweto, met with corporate leaders, heads of state, and academics, read books in libraries from Boston to Auckland, and attended workshops from Davos to Aspen, but the greatest piece of wisdom I’ve ever learned was from a one-eyed cab driver taking me from the airport in Omaha, Nebraska to Warren Buffet’s house, a man who’d never attended school or ventured past Lincoln, but assured me that the world is, indeed, flat.
Steeplejack
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Elmore Leonard is an excellent writer. He does dialogue and the low-rent criminal demimonde like nobody. He switched from writing low-rent Western novels to low-rent crime novels in about 1970 and rapidly got better and better. Try Get Shorty or Out of Sight (both made into excellent movies).
I really liked the run he had in the early ’80s: Split Images, Cat Chaser, Stick, LaBrava (Edgar Award for that last one).
The Other Chuck
I started reading Infinite Jest, and about halfway through I stopped reading the end notes. I don’t mind a book that challenges me mentally, but I do mind one that’s actually a pain in the ass to read. DFW should have stuck to short stories.
Birthmarker
@Hungry Joe: Hey Joe! For about the fifth time I am trying to catch you to tell how much I enjoyed your book Anyway*. Really a great read!
One of you hookers recommended Wonder by R C Palacio which is really good too. Both books are YA lit.
I have figured out how to download ebooks from the libary to my
Ipad and it has changed my life!
WereBear
Part of it is the fact that for thirty years before and after, there was nothing like it.
I’ll never forget running across a comment on a music board: “That Led Zeppelin ain’t no big deal, just another stadium band.”
The person did not get that Led Zep invented the stadium rock genre…
JoyfulA
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: I’ve decided to reread them all because it’s been so long, and I’d forgotten (or didn’t notice) how well they were written. And then here and there I find one I never read.
You know he wrote as Oliver Bleeck, too?
Patty K
For a great read, Emily Croy Barker’s “The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic” coming from Viking in August. Disclosure: It’s true I am her mother but really it is a page turner
Patty K
Birthmarker
@Birthmarker: Sorry. R J Palacio
Minor complaint-the new design is a bit of a pain for this lefty on the Ipad. You can’t scroll with your left hand while resting your hand on the edge of the tablet.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Steeplejack:
Elmore is local and I’ve actually run into him a couple of times. But I haven’t read much of his work. I’ll look for more since I enjoyed Up in Honey’s Room so much.
Randinho
One of my favorite Elmore Leonard lines from Out of Sight:
He delivers lines like that with aplomb.
Cacti
It was a crisp November evening in Anchorage, and the city was abuzz with talk of the 1987 Great Alaska Shootout. In a poorly lit Super 8 Motel room, a young sports anchor named Sarah Heath squawked in the voice of a dying gooney bird “Ya know, some day I might get inta paaaalitics.” Star Michigan forward, Glen Rice, whispered “Shhhh,” as he gently pushed her head down below his waist and a noisy sucking sound ensued.
But this woman wasn’t just any sucker. One day she would be the Governor of Alaska and a candidate for Vice President of the United States.
hitchhiker
@Barney:
Can I be in your family?
cckids
@Alison: Loved In the Woods. Try “The Likeness”, which has some of the same characters; it is wonderful.
Haydnseek
@Todd: Speaking of McCammon, did you read “The Five?” Best thing I’ve read in quite awhile, and I read a lot.
Randy P
At this moment I’m actually in the process of transferring Flight Behavior (read by the author) onto iTunes for a trip I’m about to take. We’re Kingsolver fans in our house; went to hear her give a lecture about the year that resulted in the non-fiction book Animal, Mineral, Vegetable. The lecture was pretty good, actually.
After I saw the first trailers for the Gatsby movie I went back and re-read The Great Gatsby (I read it in high school but had no memory of it whatsoever) and some Fitzgerald stories. I enjoyed them, but I still don’t get why this is the Great American Novel.
I’ve read some lesser-known Mark Twain recently. I have a book I picked up in a used-book store a few weeks ago that includes two late Tom Sawyer stories I never knew existed, Tom Sawyer Abroad (an adventure in a sci-fi superfast hot-air balloon which is inspired by a Jules Verne story) and Tom Sawyer, Detective. Last year I read The Innocents Abroad, which is his more-or-less truthful account of a world tour on what I believe was the first organized leisure cruise. I never get tired of Twain.
Haydnseek
I thought Michael Chabon’s latest, “Telegraph Avenue,” was extremely good.
Hungry Joe
@Birthmarker: Thank you! It’s a middle-grade novel, but adults (mostly parents) seem to like it, too. (FYI, “Anyway*” came out in paperback on May 7.)
Kathleen
I enjoyed “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynne. I don’t read many novels (actually I don’t read enough books), but after a slow start I was sucked in and couldn’t put it down. I tend to read biographies and “current events” books. If you like baseball, I would recommend Mickey Mantle: The Last Boy by Jane Levy, who paints a fascinating portrait of Mantle’s Oklahoma home town in the 30’s/40’s (including graphic descriptions of the effect of the mines on the town’s physical and emotional topology), and the glamorous world of the New York Yankees in 1950’s/60’s New York City. And since I’m a Kingston Trio freak, I’m devouring “Greenback Dollar” by Bill Bush, which also provides insight into the group but its impact on the music business and pop culture in the late 50’s/early 60’s.
hitchhiker
Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto or The Magician’s Assistant are both good, but I didn’t like her most recent effort.
Also The YIddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
Also Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
I listen to books I’ve already read more than I do new ones — it’s enjoyable in a different way from reading them, and it’s okay if I get distracted for a minute because I already know the story well.
James E. Powell
@WereBear:
But apart from historical context, the development of novel as a form, and the like, what is it that makes Woolf say, “of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness”? S&S is a short fun read, a character book. P&P has some great lines. Mansfield Park is a slog, but has its moments. What do I need to do to catch Austen in the act of greatness?
Shana
@BethanyAnne: Someone on this site, perhaps you, nominated her post entitled “and that’s why you should learn to pick your battles” as best blog post of the year a couple (?) of years ago. I laughed until I had tears running down my cheeks. I’m forever grateful to that person. The book is prettty funny too.
Robert
@JoyceH: I do self-publish. The various horror and sci-fi/fantasy associations I’ve dreamed of joining since I was a young child all require X amount of words published at pro-rate in markets that meet their professional standards. Self-published works don’t count for that. So, I run through the various markets that match the story and meet the groups’ standards and then self-publish after the last rejection letter comes in.
Shana
@schrodinger’s cat: An enthusiastic YES to P.G. Wodehouse. And if anyone’s interested in that sort of thing, The Wodehouse Society is having it’s biannual convention in Chicago this year in October. Lots of fun, but unfortunately we lo longer do bread roll throwing at the banquet.
Haydnseek
I truly envy anyone who has yet to read “Evening’s Empire” by Bill Flanagan. Betty, if you’re still here…..
Steeplejack
I think (hope) that one of the legacies of e-books will be that nothing will ever go “out of print” again. If a book doesn’t succeed immediately, or if it goes out of fashion, there is no inventory cluttering up expensive space and no incentive to shred the remainders. The e-book can sit on a server somewhere and wait for readers to find it. And who knows when a book will find an audience?
The mention of Ross Thomas above reminded me of a number of good crime novels that I read in the ’70s and ’80s, by writers like Andrew Garve, Lionel Davidson and Nicolas Freeling. Penguin had a huge series of paperbacks (many of them reprints), and I went through them like candy. Most of them were disposable junk food (although of good quality), but there were some gems that haunt the memory. Matthew Head’s The Congo Venus (1950), set in Africa during World War II (or at the end of the war), has a really interesting prescience about what the postcolonial world might look like. All of Freeling’s ten Inspector Van der Valk novels are good, but Gun Before Butter (1963; a.k.a. Question of Loyalty) is an excellent novel that transcends the genre.
In the non-genre zone, I thought Rachel Ingalls’s hilarious feminist novel Mrs. Caliban (1982) would be out of print, but I see that Amazon has a few copies left.
Shorter: I would love to have a lot of those books back, but not taking up space. E-books would be perfect.
Bryan Rasmussen
It was a dark and stormy night, but then it started to clear up later in the night, and then it was actually mildly pleasant for a while with a nice gentle breeze, until of course the wind shifted and the storm came back – and that’s really how it went all night, sometimes dark and stormy sometimes dark and pleasant, until finally it started being not so dark and the sun came up as it is wont to do.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@JoyfulA: Yes, I’ve read the Oliver Bleecks, too. Glad to see he’s being reprinted. I was bummed when his stuff went out of print in the 90s because it was better than 75% (at least) of what’s out there.
Bryan Rasmussen
His legs were the first things you remarked upon when he came in the room; looking like two penii stuffed into Trojan brand condoms one size too small:
‘nice legs,’ you said politely.
Shana
There are a few things I always recommend:
The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope. A series of 6 novels set in the Victorian English political arena. I’m stunned by how many parallels there are to modern politics, and the characters and plotting are masterful.
“Domesday Book” by Connie Willis. Always labeled as science fiction, but not the space travel and aliens kind. More what I’d call historical science fiction. It’s set a few hundred years in the future when they’ve figured out time travel but you can’t take anything to the past that’s not made like things were then and you can’t bring anything forward from the past so it’s used by historians to better study their areas of expertise. A grad student working on her disertation goes back to the mid 1300s but there’s a miscalculation and things don’t go as planned. It’s a long book but absolutely riveting and you’ll plow through it.
Bryan Rasmussen
It was the best of times, no really, it was fucking awesome!
Baud
“Amid the ruin, the broken dreams, the shattered lives, the stench of hopelessness and despair, one lingering truth remained — the blame belonged to Obama alone.”
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Ultraviolet Thunder: The think I liked most about “Get Shorty” was that you could see he’d had to deal with Hollywood and he stuck it back to them. Basically, Leonard makes the case that the skillset needed to be a successful loan shark is the same as it takes to be a successful executive producer.
JWL
His face once more burned bright red and salty sweat streaked down his face as he squatted in yet another desperate struggle to evacuate his bowels.
WereBear
@James E. Powell: Austen put a macro lens on her society, with all its hypocrisy, petty tyranny, and overwhelming emphasis on the wrong things placed in a lace-trimmed frame.
Women were given only one power; the power to accept a marriage proposal, and from that fragile pivot all of their lives would unfold, or not. She really must be understood in context; happily, western life has moved on to the extent that many modern readers find it difficult to understand how she “writes from a prison cell.”
Someone like Virginia Woolf, who battled for the recognition her male peers took for granted, finds the notes she struck exquisite, and thus her work, profound.
WereBear
This is a huge advantage, and one I seldom see pointed out. Over the last few decades the publishing industry has shrugged off the mid-list, thus dooming any writer who is not an overwhelming success to poverty, and their fans to frustration.
I feel for those crushed in Publishing’s freefall, but it is overwhelmingly its own fault. By ignoring promising writers, not supporting the writers they did have, and chasing celebrity memoirs not as dessert, but as the main course; they helped crater their own importance.
Bryan Rasmussen
His face once more burned bright red and salty sweat streaked down his face as he yelled “Make a single file, no shoving, every one down there needs to cooperate if you want to get out of there alive!” in a desperate struggle to evacuate his bowels
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
Well said.
Tonal (visible) Crow
@Riilism: You know damn well that p***s is a forbidden word here. What I can’t figure out is why I seem to be the only poster forbidden to spell “sockialism” correctly.
RSA
A few recommendations for authors, with the warning that my main reading these days is genre fiction:
Michael Marshall has written some good thrillers, some with supernatural overtones, including Bad Things.
Thomas Perry’s Jane Whitefield series, starting with Vanishing Act, is about a woman who runs something like a witness protection program, helping people get away from bad guys.
I recently came across John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and enjoyed it quite a bit, as a look back on golden age science fiction.
I found John Dies at the End pretty funny, a mishmash of Hunter Thompson, Lovecraft, and… maybe Douglas Coupland.
And if you’ve ever read Jack Vance, one of the grand masters of science fiction, he has a worthy heir in Matt Hughes’s novels.
Steeplejack
@RSA:
I like Thomas Perry. I’ve been meaning to check out the most recent Jane Whitefield books. (There was a long gap between 1999 and 2009). His Butcher’s Boy trilogy is good too. And lately he has written some good one-offs, e.g., Nightlife, Fidelity and Strip.
Steeplejack
This thread is reminding me of so many books. Another good series from the ’70s (well, started in the ’70s) is Joseph Hansen’s set featuring Dave Brandstetter, a gay insurance investigator in California. Groundbreaking for their time, but also well written in a style that reminds me of Ross Macdonald.
. . . And available on Kindle and Nook! The first one is Fadeout (1970).
PaulW
You want bad writing? Try mine!
…what, we’re not allowed to shamelessly shill?
(gets pummeled)
Okay, I guess not. But I am getting published in a humor-horror anthology this August so…
PaulW
@Baud: Oh dear God, there’s about 100 self-epublished books that start that way. /headdesk And people are apparently buying them… /double headdesk
Smiling Mortician
Jeebus, y’all. I just blew about a whole year’s book budget. But my summer reading list is shaping up nicely.
debbie
@WereBear:
In publishing celebrity memoirs and other instant books, publishers were meeting the demands of the chain bookstores. That’s where the money was and that’s what the chains wanted. That, plus the stupid business model that allowed booksellers to return books if they didn’t sell.
Bump on a Log
Rick Yancey’s Monstrumologist books, which are, for some reason that escapes me, classified as YA–this is heavy-duty horror.
Lately I have been enjoying Joe Hill [Stephen King Jr]. I don’t know if his dad helps him write the books or not and really don’t care; they’re entertaining.
If you read Blackgate.com, every so often an author will offer a free e-book for a day or two; I have a couple in my electronic stack. Don’t know how good they’ll be, but the price is right!
NickT
“Every night Cole would fuck her with the intensity of Thomas Friedman interrogating a newly encountered taxi driver on the flyover into Shanghai, circling round and round and pounding, pounding away as the keys on his virtual laptop clattered and rattled like Peggy Noonan hammering into David Brooks with a Reagan-shaped strap-on over the Applebee’s salad-bar grinding and groaning forward in the general direction of Moscow like a particularly incompetent late-Soviet period road-grader with a post-Stalin hangover and an aversion to straight lines.”
Tonal (visible) Crow
Steeplejack
@Bump on a Log:
I liked Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box pretty well. I haven’t read any of his other stuff.
patrick II
a sweetness at the bottom of pie : A Flavia de Luce mystery by Alan Braddey is a mystery book that is fun to read about a Victorian era young girl with a talent for solving mysteries.
gogol's wife
@James E. Powell:
If you think Mansfield Park is a slog, then you probably will never understand Austen’s greatness.
gogol's wife
@Kathleen:
I just finished “Gone Girl” (it was my gift to myself after finishing grades). I enjoyed it, and certainly couldn’t wait to pick it up every night, but I wish it had been a bit better written. The conceit is brilliant, but didn’t you find that it was a little too drawn out?
RSA
@Steeplejack: I liked the Butcher’s Boy too. Of the others you mention I’ve only read Strip, which seemed to me like the result of a bet that Perry couldn’t write a Carl Hiaasen novel. It’s not quite that, but close, and I liked it.
Peter
@maya: Both of those are actually quite excellent opening lines. Unconventional and almost completely impenetrable, of course, but both participate in and introduce the text’s central thematic concerns in a formal way: The baby Tuckoo passage reflecting the development of language and thinking through imitation of what we see in society with a garbled children’s story told in a low level of language, and the first sentence of Finnegans Wake is the ending of the last sentence of the novel, suggesting a cyclicality which reflects the cyclical nature of history.
Chickamin Slam
There John stood peering over the psychedelic counter at the peeling laminate floor, wondering just where that overweight paperweight was, the one that would gently nudge him during the night, maybe lick his face lovingly, or perhaps trip him on the stairs sending his bbq bacon burger flying, the love and hate relationship of owning pets.
Shakezula
@Todd: I don’t like you.
Peter
@gogol’s wife: Mansfield Park absolutely is a slog. The first book is unreadably boring, with none of Austen’s trademark wit. It picks up after that but the damage is done by then.
gogol's wife
@Peter:
Mansfield Park is one of the glories of the English language.
Shakezula
@NickT: You’re also a horrible person.
Brain bleach! Where is the brain bleach!?
gogol's wife
@Shakezula:
That one was SO BAD!
NickT
@Shakezula:
Ah, but you should see the second sentence of the novel.
lojasmo
@Steved:
Came to say this. Also, Into Darkness was FUCKING AWESOME!
greenergood
Just finished Bring Up the Bodies, 2nd in a trilogy (1st is Wolf Hall) by Hilary Mantel, has won loads of prizes here in UK, fiction based on Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s consigliore, but told in such a way that once I’d figured out the extensive cast of characters, I had to slow down reading it because I didn’t want it to be over – her writing is so good.
Chickamin Slam
The two lovers gave into temptation, throwing caution and their clothes into the wind, and proceed to make out under the stars of a neon sign that flicked and sputtered, trying to spell out Big Bubba’s Burgers, and failing and failing again, she remembered the meat was overcooked, sitting perhaps too long under the heat lamp, while he remembered the crinkle cut fries needed more seasoning, while in the 1990 Dodge Dynasty next to them a man sat writing a letter to Mitch McConnell, occasionally yelling to them, “Keep it down I’m trying to be serious here!”
Persia
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I tend to hit Project Gutenberg for the classics I’ve put off for that kind of thing. The Count of Monte Cristo has a good translation there, I know.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Persia:
I’m descended from Dumas. Ripping yarns!
I have a few public domain classics from Gutenberg on my Palm Pilot*
*I know…
Cowgirl in the sand
While visiting recently in Arches National Park, I picked up a copy of Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and it was fabulous! Lyrical, beautiful descriptions of the desert, incredible rants against the government and the park system administrators – Wow! I couldn’t believe they had it in the NP gift store or that it was written in the 60’s! Subversive and sensational!
Birthmarker
@Hungry Joe: Well! Congrats on the paperback edition! I thought it was very accessible, and very relatable for young people. And the dog didn’t die! (I am a retired school librarian, so I have read a few books!!)
Birthmarker
@WereBear: I think of the current celebrity memoirs as 15 minutes of fame books. The people don’t have real accomplishments, they just happened to grab the media attention. The titles and subtitles sum up the entire contents.
BethanyAnne
@Shana: I don’t know if I recommended that or not, but I love her. Just thinking about her book makes me happy. “Wearing a deer” lol
PIGL
@gogol’s wife: and it mentions rears and vices. tee hee.
I love Mansfield Park. The main character is a bit of a cream puff, but who among us of the brainless male persuasion has not been, if only once and briefly, an Edward, dashing his future on the rocky shoals of a cold hearted manipulative bitch may she rot in hell.
Origuy
I’m reading Scalzi’s latest The Human Division. It’s in his Old Man’s War series; you don’t have to have read the previous books, but I think that would help, and they’re very good. I’m also reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (in translation.) Soviet-era absurdist fiction; a Russian friend recommended it and I thought it would give me insights into the Russian character.
Hawes
As Roger Ailes looked at the frenetic frantic folderol unspooling before him on election night, he worried what might become of Jeb!’s campaign if exposed to this glistening innumerate he saw before him, and while perhaps he had made a mistake in hiring him, a Turdblossom in the hand was better than two Bushes.
JoyfulA
@Steeplejack: I’ve got Perry’s “Fidelity” here, ready to read next. Yes, I like his books too.
Denali
Yes, I too didn’t finish Flight Behavior – maybe because I’m a former hillbilly.
I did like State of the Union by Douglas Kennedy. Wolf Hall was so well written. and I couldn’t put down Gone Girl.
James E. Powell
@gogol’s wife:
Well, thank you for pointing out that my failure to understand is without remedy. Without your kind help, I might have continued trying. I feel like such a fool.
gogol's wife
@James E. Powell:
I guess I mean that some people just don’t like Jane Austen. I didn’t mean to be mean. Mansfield Park is probably her greatest work, so if you didn’t like it, you probably won’t like her no matter how hard you try.
gogol's wife
@James E. Powell:
Try reading it for her sentences (their structure, and the structure of thought they represent) rather than the plots.
Beatrice
@James E. Powell: My personal favorite is “Emma.” I just found it delightful. I would hate for you to approach Austen as an assignment.
Beatrice
A book we recently read in my book club was “The House on Salt Hay Road” by Carin Clevidence. Some others in the group thought it was a bit contrived but I really liked it. I think it helps if you have childhood memories of salt marshes. She does a lovely job of evoking the sights and smells.
Tom Jackson
What in the fuck has happened to this website?????
Tehanu
I know I’m repeating myself, but Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet — A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War, and The Price of Spring — is the best set of fantasy novels I’ve read since Ursula K. LeGuin. Can’t recommend them highly enough. They’re standalones but they do tell one continuous story of a complete life.
James E. Powell
@Beatrice:
Why would you think I was approaching Austen as an assignment?
gogol's wife
@James E. Powell:
Upthread, you asked for advice about how to understand Austen’s greatness. One commenter was engaging with you quite seriously about that. Then I got exasperated by your statement that you had read three (that is, half) of her novels without detecting any greatness, and I made the suggestion that maybe it was a lost cause. Not everyone likes Jane Austen. Then I felt bad that you had taken offense at my suggestion, and I tried to offer another way of approaching her, not through the plots but through the beautifully crafted language and the way it represents thought (especially moral reasoning, in the case of Mansfield Park). I believe that Beatrice only read the end of the thread, and that her comment was a swipe at me, not you, for treating Austen as an assignment.
barbara
I normally hate historical novels, but Gore Vidal’s “Burr” is amazing — very funny and thought-provoking. It’s worth it just for the viciously witty disemboweling of Jefferson. Wow, that man could write.
Kathleen
@gogol’s wife: Well, as I said, I had a hard time getting into it. Other than that, I didn’t think it was too drawn out. Did you like the ending? My friends who read it did not. I thought it was perfect.
Hunter
Entertaining fiction: I don’t know what your knee-jerk reaction is to heroic fantasy, but read anything by Glen Cook. Start with The Black Company. Superb storyteller, masterful wordsmith, mordant take on the world — heroic fantasy with the attitude of the Vietnam era. I think you’d find a kindred spirit.
Likewise, Steven Erickson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen. How many writers can you think of who can come out with a 1200-page novel you don’t want to put down? (Warning — it’s a ten volume series, with the same kind of dark edge that Cook manages.)
In a lighter vein, Steven Brust’s Taltos Cycle (Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin in a fantasy universe, but be warned — Brust has projected it as 17 volumes, of whicih I believe he’s published 11 or 12) or The Khaavren Romances (starts with a take-off on Dumas and Sabatini, satirical, engaging, and sometimes hysterically funny).
Hemingway’s Under Kilimanjaro, and Pynchon’s Against the Day are the best mainstream things I’ve read recently. Anything by Pynchon, actually.
Had enough?
gogol's wife
@Kathleen:
I’m not sure I got it! My visceral reaction was disappointment, but I think it’s probably a book you have to read twice.
Groucho48
Kind of late to this thread. A few of my favorite books that haven’t been mentioned.
Rumors of Peace by Ella Leffland. Bit of a To Kill A Mockingbird feel to it. Young girl growing up in California during WW2. Just wonderful stuff. Heartwarming, uplifting, all that kind of thing.
All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. Almost meant to be read aloud.
A progenitor of the Dave Robicheaux series mentioned upthread.
The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. Speculative S-F at its best.
Catch 22. It seems to have faded from view a bit, over the years, but, it still resonates.
Larkspur
Some of my recent and now recommended reading:
After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It’s YA, but it works for me. YA often does.
Zoo Station by David Downing. It’s the first in a series of historical fiction/mystery set in 1930s Berlin.
Dog On It by Spencer Quinn. Chet and Bernie have a detective agency in southern California. Chet narrates. He’s a dog. First in a series.
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach, who is always brilliant.
One that I loathed: The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. It’s a Man Booker longlister, and won the 2012 Arthur C. Clark award. I hated everything about it: the premise, the characters, the beginning, the middle, and the end. But lots of people liked it.
Nanzee
Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko novels.
Kathleen
@gogol’s wife: I thought it was perfect because it showed that while they were both “miserable” their need to engage in self loathing and self destructing behaviors trumped the need to make different choices. The ending made perfect sense to me. I’m not sure what that says about me (LOL). And I agree, it’s worth a second read.
JR in WV
All right, there’s still a glimmer of activity today, so I’m coming late to add some authors that I regard highly.
Iain M Banks – esp the Culture books. I recently learned he has inoperable cancer and is working hard to finish his current projects. A great loss. Don’t start with Feersum Endjinn – it’s written in a phonetical style that’s hard to read at first.
Iain Banks is also good, same guy, different style, non-SF.
Emma Bull – urban fantasy, Greek gods in a Chicago park and such. Very skillful.
Stephen Baxter – well known Sci-Fi writer, worked with Sir Clarke on several of Clarke’s l;asgt books. Also writes non-fiction, wife just handed me a volume “ages in chaos” about the discovery of deep geollogical time back when the Earth was believed by “good Christians” to be ab out 6000 years old.
John McPhee – an essayist published most often in the New Yorker. He wrote a series of books finally combined into a giant work about the geological history of North America, and the development of tectonic geology. He writes about everything in an interesting and informative way, from cooking to theoretical science.
Stephan J Gould – a recently deceased evolutionary theorist, biologist, professor and writer about geology, paleontology, biology, he was a curator of fossils at the Harvard Museum and wrote a monthly column for Nature magazine, which were collected into fascinating books every year or two. He was a polymath, learned new languages to read famous scientific works in the original. Also an expert analyst of baseball, who believed that no one would ever hit .400 opr better ever again.
I like science and science fiction, and can recommend other authors if anyone is interested. John Scalzi who has been mentioned above is very good. Cory Doctorow is too, and for military SciFi David Weber and John Ringo are both good.
Eric Flint is writing and managing the work of others on a large series wherein a small mining town in W Va is transposed to what will become Germany in the year 1631. There are 6 or 8 novels and a like number of volumes of short stories about the cultural, political and technological clashes between “up-timers” from 1999 and down-timers from 1631.
I hope someone interested sees this contribution. I seem to always be a dollar late on these interesting threads.
Steeplejack
@JR in WV:
Pretty much agree on Iain M. Banks, although I thought The Hydrogen Sonata was a pretty big letdown.
JoyfulA
@Nanzee: Yes, Smith’s other books are good, but the Renko books I don’t miss.
Jebediah
@Hawes:
Horrible and brilliant.
Birthmarker
@JR in WV: I am going to add a couple of the geology oriented ones to my list. Thanks!!