Snuff - Chuck Palahniuk at his best. Maybe not as good as Rant. But surely one of the best books I've ever read.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Huraki Murakami

A heartwarming tale of the romantic pursuits of a young Welshman.

Or:

Typical Murakami fare, albeit carried out with less finesse than much of his later work. The plot revolves around many of his favourite topics and, even so early on in his career, a lot of the tropes that would characterise his more famous work are present and correct; dreams, sex, apathy, social malaise and overtones of Japan's military past all converge around a suitably loose narrative about a young man who is hired to find a sheep that may or may not be related to a prominent right-wing figure.

This was Murakami's third novel (published in 1978) and even though a lot of the themes that he would explore in his subsequent work are present, his language is not quite as flowing and poetic as it would become. It's still beautiful at times, but it just doesn't have the same flow that I have become used to from the rest of his work.

I really enjoyed it, even if it was not as fulfilling as much of Murakami's work, but I was annoyed to find out afterwards that it was the final book in a trilogy, the first two parts of which are near impossible to get hold of in the West. I get the feeling that, even if the books were not good, as Murakami seems to think, I would have got a lot more out of the story if I had prior knowledge of the characters.

do audio books count?

if so, then 'born standing up', written and read by steve martin is a very good listen...

I finished The Angel's Game on Friday and I absolutely loved it. I'll have to order The Shadow of the Wind now.

Finished Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls on holiday this week, it was absolutely superb. The entire book would be shit if the final 70 or so pages were a letdown, but they were as expertly constructed as anything I've read. Robert Jordan is a wonderful protagonist (who has some of Hemingway's own traits, I thought) and the final chapter was an authorial masterclass. There's a reason Hemingway's so widely adored, and this is a big part of it. One of the finest novels I've yet read. I need to get onto some more EH now, that's only the 2nd of his novels I've read. I think A Farewell to Arms may well be the next of his for me.

I'm currently about halfway through Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood after buying in the airport, having heard so many good things about it from the forum. So far, I'm enjoying it. Imaginative and creates a lovely atmosphere, drew me in within about 20 pages. Looking forward to finishing it so I can move on to my Cormac McCarthy double whammy of All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian.

Which other one have you read? I thought 'The Old Man And The Sea' was excellent. I should really read that copy of 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' that's been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years.



I'd recommend reading Blood Meridian first. That's not an indicator of quality, I just think that All The Pretty Horses would make for a much nicer comedown of the far, far harsher Blood Meridian.

Most recently I finished Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, which was a delightfully vicious farce that nicely undercut the pomposity and absurdity of journalism. Waugh's criticisms of the profession still hold up today, even if his references do ground the story in a very specific time and place.

Now I've moved onto Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami, which (so far) is much more grounded in reality than the rest of his work and maintains the sort of literate melancholy that is hallmark of his best work. He may very well be my favourite living author.

Just finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, it's the first book of his I've read and I really enjoyed it. Nice mix of memoir, sci fi and war novel. I will read more.

Currently reading The Parrot's Lament and Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity by Eugene Linden. The writing isn't the greatest, but the true life animal tales within are absolutely amazing.

I recommend.

Interesting. I haven't read too much of his earlier work. I'm currently re-reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as I found it whilst looking in the loft for something else. I now remember how much I liked it.



I liked Sputnik Sweetheart but I don't think it's one of my favourites. I don't think it brings much more to the table than what can be found in his other books, and although it has the typical Murakami narrative and imagery and is very thought-provoking, I think it is a little too simply resolved and 'safe', somehow, in comparison to some of his other work. Be interesting to hear what you think.

I think I have to agree with you on that one. I finished earlier and, whilst I did enjoy it a lot, it did not have quite the ring of profundity and aching beauty that a lot of his work does. I was going along with it and really liked where it was going until Sumuire disappeared. I liked how normal the book had been up til that point, as if his decision to ground the story in a more pysical plane made K.'s emotions all the more powerful. The shift towards a more overtly Murakami story hurt the book as a whole, I thought. The ending also annoyed me a bit. I really wanted Sumire to return, and was actively willing her to, but thought that it was going to have an open ending, and prepared myself for that. When she did return, I felt a strange sensation and relief and dissatisfaction. By making it more resolved and 'safe', as you put it, the book seemed to lose something.

It's still a good book, but I did not like as much as I like most of his other stuff.

Yes. I'd definitely agree with you there. Re-reading this book at the moment is making me want to pick up some of ones I haven't read. Might have to get onto Amazon.

Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane
This is the second Kenzie/Gennaro novel and it's shaping up to be a nice series. I'm not entirely sure I like the way the relationship between the two main characters is heading but I'll carry on reading the rest of the series. Kenzie and Gennaro are private detectives called in to look into threatening photos and phonecalls a psychiatrist has received about her son, in the process of investigating it they end up dealing with the local mafia and people from their past and the neighbourhood they grew up in. Along with the main crime storyline a lot of backstory about the main characters is filled in, but totally in keeping with the plot of the book. I'm looking forward to getting to the fourth book in the series Gone, Baby, Gone as I'll be interested to see how faithful the film was to the book. On a side note I've decided Dominic West would have made a better Kenzie than Casey Affleck did.

Just spent a few days at my parents in Devon and came across what I believe is a first Penguin edition of John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes in the local Oxfam - could be a bit of a bargain at £1.99! (though it's not in A1 condition!).

Purchases today

Handling The Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Black Butterfly by Mark Gatiss - the third in his Lucifer Box series
Mystery Man by Colin Bateman - he may have gone through some over the top rebranding (he is now just "Bateman" - no mention of his Christian name anywhere anymore, even in the biog and press snippets) and since he changed publisher his last book, and possibly this one, had some ridiculous censorship (he seems to be light on expletives now, or when they do a appear it's now, for example, "d***head" or "bull****"!), but when it comes to odd crime thrillers with a few giggles, he does fill the gaps between Carl Hiassen novels.

Not sure which to read first, though it will be a while I think before I have to make that decision. Getting through the England's Dreaming Tapes is a slow, albeit entertaining, process.

Oh, I hadn't heard of either of these. I'll have to make them my next purchases come payday.

Are the Lucifer Box novels any good?

I've seen them, and have been tempted, but I've not got round to reading any of them . . .

The first one is great. Really fun, witty and exciting. The second one is not as good, but it's still a lot of fun.

I bought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it better be as amusing as the title suggests.

It isn't...at all.

That's a shame. I'll still read it out of sheer curiosity.

I concur. Isn't there a third one too?

Yeah, Black Butterfly. Sostie mentioned it on the previous page, prompting this little discussion.

That'll teach me not to read backwards (well not backwards that'd be silly, you know what I mean, I hope)!

About halfway through How the dead live by Will Self.

It's almost a bit too wordy at times and not a lot is happening to keep me interested, but there are some nice moments of black humour in there. Not bad...

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood

Brilliant but very disquieting.

after the quake by Haruki Murakami

A collection of six short stories all of which are tangentially linked to the 1995 Kobe Earthquake. A selection of typically Murakami character types (literate, disaffected people who seem at odds with the society around them) are affected by the earthquake in different ways. The stories are not so much about the physical effects of the Earthquake since none of the stories are set in Kobe, but about the modern Japanese psyche, one of Murakami's favourite themes.

The stories themselves are perfectly formed pieces that veer from the realistic (a man's unrequited love for one of his best friends) to the surreal (a giant Frog must fight a giant Worm to prevent Tokyo being destroyed by an earthquake). The only think wrong with them would be that they are too short and, in the style of Raymond Carver, they end seemingly just before the character is about to have a real revelation, so in each instance I wanted the story to continue.

I'm halfway through the Vesuvius Club and am really enjoying it.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.

I really enjoyed it, even though I did have issues with Welsh's way of marking speech. That took some getting used to.

Anyone who knows me, will know I'm a fan. But the Box novels are enormous fun - like if Ian Fleming wrote a gay episode of Dr Who.

Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore

Christopher Moore's second novel and, much like his first, Practical Demonkeeping, I seemed to have a difficulty getting into it initially that has been completely absent when I have read his later work. Maybe he's become more elegant in his ability to set up his story and characters over the years since once I got over that first hump I found myself in yet another deliciously absurd yet touchingly human story.

The everyman this time is Sam Hunter, a yuppie salesman who seems to have it all. However, he wasn't always Sam Hunter, he used to be Samson Hunts Alone, a Crow Indian who ran away from home at the age of 16 following a tragic event. His past catches up with him with a vengeance, though, when Old Man Coyote, the great spirit of his people, starts following him around, getting him romantically entangled with a free-spirited woman, putting him at odds with bikers and generally causing him all sorts of grief.

Like Moore's best work, Coyote Blue combines a love of the absurd with a grounded and empathic humanism. It earns its moments of real human emotion through its terrific jokes and inventive combination of mythology with early 90s culture. That last point may be the only problem I had with the book as a whole, aside from my initial misgivings, since characters like a stoned surfer really place it as a book written in the early 90's, which I found a little bit distracting.

edit: I also opened up Different Seasons by Stephen King. This time last year I read Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption, this year I read Apt Pupil. I have vague memories of seeing the film version a few years ago and being a bit ambivalent towards it, which is a shame since the novella is brilliant. It's a dark and genuinely disturbing tale of the parasitic relationship that develops between a young boy and a former Nazi Concentration Camp commandante. It features some of King's most psychologically complex characters and the story is deeply unsettling. The narrative is a bit clunky, one development in particular was horribly clunky, but otherwise it's a fine piece of work.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Absolutely fantastic. I kept trying to only read a little at a time so I could make it last longer, but I couldn't help picking it up again a few minutes later because I was dying to know what happened next.

The Accidental by Ali Smith

Just not worth it. Not much of a story, I think the lack of punctuation in the writing was an attempt to be quirky but it just annoyed me.

Just now I'm reading Trudi Canavan's "Age of the Five" trilogy consisting of Priestess of the White, Last of the Wilds and Voice of the Gods.

I've finished reading Raymond E Feists latest.

I've been a long time reader of Raymond E Feist's material, and while I'm under no illusions that his books are particularly original I've usually found them enjoyable schlock if nothing else with some decent characters. The best though were the co-creations with Janny Wurts showing the Tsurani society on Kelewan.

However, the decay started for me after the Serpentwar series. Up till then, the majority of the books centred round the Kingdom of the Isles, and Pug, while an important character to me always seemed secondary after Magician, the first book. I'm more interested in characters like Prince Arutha, Jimmy the Hand, Eric von Darkmoor, Rupert Avery etc.

Come the end of Serpentwar and we're introduced to Prince Patrick, an annoying wart that should have been dropped on his head from 20,000 feet and this brings in Pugs break with the Kingdom and the introduction of the Conclave of Shadows. The next few books with Talwin Hawkins and Kaspar of Olasko are still decent but after that with Flight of the Night Hawks onwards things degrade severely. Feist seems to be increasingly writing his magic users as a bunch of self superior, self righteous assholes to be honest. Pug is increasingly up his own ass, but his feelings are partially understandable after what happened in the Serpentwar with basically a large part of his family being wiped out. Miranda however is really annoying.

In Rides a Dread Legion, the newest book we get yet another lost Elven tribe, the Taradhel, "The Star Elves", who seem to be arrogance personified even for the stereotypical Elves, but these guys are a bit different being about 7 to 8 feet tall, city dwellers and lookind down on their woodland cousins, but honestly how many lost Elven tribes can there be on Midkemia.

My critisicms of this book might be harsh because when reading it I was laid up in hospital for about a week with rudimentary net access due to heart problems. I've been tearing through books to pass the time and finished this latest one in just under a day. Even by the standards of Feists later work its very cookie cutter and uninspired. I find I miss the Kingdom setting with the more mundane characters instead of loads of super powered beings chucking magic around all the time. Feist also needs a good proof reader as at one point the book says this is set 100 years after the Riftwar (Magician era), and another time it says 100 years after the Serpentwar. Both series have a significant time gap between them as Prince Arutha is a young man in Magician and has just died at the beginning of Serpentwar. It's further confused that prior to this being mentioned there is a character called "James Dasher Jamieson" mentioned, and there's a character with the same name in Serpentwar. It's obvious later on this is not the same character but we're not told this at first as the points of reference in the timeline are pretty poor.

Rant over. Anyone else read this, or read others in the Feist series with their own thoughts?

Disappointing come the end I'm afraid.

Now reading Blood River by Tim Butcher. Basically he's a Telegraph journalist trying to retrace the steps of Stanley (the journalist/explorer) in the Congo. Riveting and thoroughly interesting.

Last night's Guardian Book Club, with David Peace talking about The Damned United, was even better than last month's. Things got rather heated over the whole fiction/faction (horrible word) debate, there were even a couple of shouts of "ludicrous" and "what an arsehole" (at a book club attendee not at Peace).

It was a really interesting dynamic of mainly men, some of which admitted to this being the first novel they'd read - a very different crowd from 'Possession' last month.

He's a very charismatic, thoughful, self-assured man; but also surprisingly humble, contained and young. I thought he acquitted himself beautifully, although a few comments on people's interpretations of his Clough clearly shook him. I'd very much recommend listening to the podcast when it comes out - if you're a fan of the book.

I also really recommend coming to Book Club, it's £8, you get a glass of wine, you get to argue about books with the author actually in the room and you can get your copy signed afterwards and chat briefly one to one if you're so inclined.

He's only seen the film on his laptop, so refused to comment on it, but he loved the Red Riding Trilogy on C4. He said he might be suffering from a bit of Clough style paranoia, but he felt the film makers were trying to distance themselves from him and the novel the closer the film got to release.

One of the lovely things about moving to London is having ready access to things like this.

Anyone else lined up?

It sounds like an interesting evening.
Did he make reference to the repetition used in The Damned United? For me, it was a device which started to get on my nerves after a short time of reading.

It's not been announced yet, but I overheard it will be Roddy Doyle, talking about 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha'. Should be the 26th of August.



He did. I can't remember the exact response, but it was something about the nature of thought being repetitive and those repetitions being part of building a consistent internal character. I'll post here when the podcast is released.

Thank you.

I didn't go beyond The Barrytown Trilogy. Now A M Homes or Murakami and I'm there.
I shall keep an eye out for any future events. Thanks.

Zoe, do you get entry fee commission or something? LOL.

In other news, I'm coming towards the end of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Fantastic novel, just as good as The Road which is the only other novel I've read by him, if not better. Incredibly brutal, and one of very few books I've ever read where I want everyone to get killed. This doesn't mean it's a bad book, far from it, because McCarthy states things so matter-of-factly it's like a documentary. The prose is sensationally good aswell, he's really got a way with words although his run-on sentences do sometimes require a bit of re-reading to get their meaning as if analysing a fossil or ruin of some ancient civilization now alien to all evolved humanity the remnants of which provide much intrigue despite their patent difficulty of comprehension to any not well-schooled in the classics or the study of records of a time before time really existed on any formal scale.

See what I did there?

I wish!

Though I did offer the organiser free KP concert tickets last night, so maybe she'll reciprocate...

It's a terrific book. I did find myself putting it down and walking away every so often when anything incredibly violent happened. Specifically, when one of the men swings two babies around and smashes their heads on the ground.Fucked. Up.

Yeah that was a bad one. It's all the implied violence that shocks me more probably, sentences like 'the screams of women could be heard from across the river'. He doesn't have to say what's going on, you just know. In a way, making you envision it yourself is always worse than having it explained to you.

Just finished (sort of, I have 1 page left to go but just couldn't keep my eyes open) Bad Science last night which is a bit of a slog as its rather heavy and sciencey as the name suggests, but I really feel as if my eyes have been opened.

Already I have heard a number of news stories which just reek of bullshit which I'm not sure is necessarily a good thing. Yes, I now understand exactly why the "news" story is bullshit but its still out there and the majority of people will still read it and take it as fact.

It was like a book version of Newswipe. Very interesting and quite amusing but ultimately depressing as you realise that things are probably going to get a lot worse as time goes on.

Bloodsucking Fiends

Continuing to fill in the gaps in my Christopher Moore reading, I thoroughly enjoyed his tale of a woman who is turned into a vampire, the man who falls in love with her and turkey bowling. It's quite fascinating in its depiction of San Francisco in the mid-to-late 90's, I was quite surprised by his frankness in mentioning AIDS and even using it at some points as a plot device. As ever, I tore through it and found myself quite breathless when reading the last 40 or 50 pages, so skillful is he at bringing all the threads together for a satisfying conclusion.

I'm now onto Island of the Sequined Love Nun, which is great fun so far.

I've just finished Faust Eric (which I loved, especially all the stuff about what Lord Astfgl does to Hell ) and am now onto Interesting Times.

Finished Don DeLillo's White Noise the other day. Not sure what to make of it, was funny and quite poignant but felt a little cold at times, didn't connect that much with the main players. Still, extremely well-written although I definitely prefer the excellent Falling Man to this.

Now starting a William Faulkner double whammy with The Sound and the Fury. Hard to get into it, the fractured narratives are confusing me at the moment, but we'll see how it develops.

I'm getting on well with my own Discworld reading. I'm half-way through Night Watch at the moment, after reading The Fifth Elephant and Jingo over the past few weeks.

Just finished A Dirty Job.

Think it was my favourite Moore so far.

It's between that and Lamb for me. Though I have yet to read a book of his that I didn't love.