Just finished reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuck

It was so good I read it again.

Don't want to say too much about it - but if you liked the style, direction and the story of Fight Club then it really is a must.

If you haven't seen Fight Club (in true spaced style) "Whatchadoing?

If you have any spare time at all - read Survivor. When I finished it I read it again!!!!

This isn't really much of review, so I'm going to move it to Media as it may get a better responce there.

one of my favourite books ever. i thought it was quite a lot better than fight club, which seems to be most peoples' favourite palahniuk book. i must get round to reading it again.

edited for punctuation.

this is officially my favourite book on my profile until i change it (and has been for months)

I recently read 'Invisible Monsters' by Chuck and that was darned good too. Go and buy it. Now.

I'm a fan of Palahnuik's, but I still haven't got around to reading his full cannon. I hope his future books might develop a bit more weight to the characters and less blatant grinding commercial/social satire. I know that's kinda his thing, but I'd like a bit more variety-

wtf am i talking about. I think I've only read Survivor and watched Fight Club.

I've read quite a few of Palahniuk's books, and I think he's highly overrated. Fight Club was all right, and Invisible Monsters was worth a walk round the block, but he started to lose me with Survivor - and I thought Lullaby was a bit trite. I find it hard to connect or even care about the narrators of his stories as they all seem to speak in the same dull and monotonous drone even though they're supposed to be unique if marginalised individuals. I think it's got something to do with his minimalist style, his tendency to be a bit gimmicky and repeat his gags - and the fact that his characters get more and more marginalised with each book, to the point where you start to question whether or not people like this actually could exist, even in the hyper-reality he's written for them.

Then again, I haven't read Non-Fiction, so maybe I should withold final judgement until then. And I've been told that Choke's the best of all his books anyway. The thing is, whenever I'm tempted to buy one of the books I haven't read, I start to hear that same monotonous, droney style of prose and I'm immediately put off.
I also find the fact that his last book, Haunted, got more attention for the fact that a punter passed out at one of his readings from it, than anyone saying it was actually any good.

I'd agree with the point of view that Palahniuk is pretty much a one trick pony...however, I think it's a good trick. I've read everything of his except for Fugitives and Refugees. The characters are increasingly marginalised, occasionally almost to the point of some ridiculous caricature, and his writing style is very distinctive so if you don't like it then you just don't like it.

My favourites are Survivor, Choke and Invisible Monsters. Fight Club is one of the very few movies that I think is better than the book it's based on - but that might be because I saw the movie first. Lullaby is less good and Diary is the weakest and, frankly, a little lame. Haunted is odd. I enjoyed it, some bits more than others, and as for the 'passing out' thing, that's one of the stories in it, Guts. Take a look around his website and you can read extracts from . I've read Non-Fiction (Stranger than Fiction in the US). It's more a collection of essays than anything, they're not really stories as such, but they are interesting.

Good to hear... kind of. It's good that I wasn't being overly presumptious, but bad that another satirical (perhaps anti-commercial) author might pander so readily to their audience.





...okay, that's be the overly presumptious bit.

His latest book is called Haunted, about a bunch of freaks and misfits who join a writing course.

According to press reports, there have been mass nausea and faintings at public readings because it is so scary.

I keep forgetting to pick it up, but I will definitely make sure I do.