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‘A Book For Her’ by Bridget Christie
I bloody love Bridget Christie and am pleased that she is now the comedian ambassador for all women. This book is great, but I’d already heard a lot of it from her Fringe show over the last few years. She has important things to say, though, and can do this in a very accessible way. Her chapters on FGM are particularly harrowing for being in a book found in the comedy section.

‘The Little Friend’ by Donna Tartt
Ughhh... I previously tried to read this book twice and just couldn’t get into it. I was a little more patient this time around and tackled it but it still took about 350 pages before I properly started being interested in it. The blurb says it’s about a 12 year old girl trying to find out who killed her older brother when she was just a year old and I guess that’s the catalyst for the rest of the book, but it gets pushed to the background a little to make way for a history of some shady locals. It’s bleak and unsettling and I won’t be in a rush to read it again. Sorry, Donna Tartt. I loved the Secret History, though, and am looking forward to reading the Goldfinch.

‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl’ by Wendy Jones
A biography of Grayson Perry’s childhood, as told to one of his best friends. Not very gripping, although he did have a very eventful upbringing. It stops pretty abruptly. I think it would have been better had it focused more on his time at art school, rather than his childhood, but I guess that’s where the cross-dressing thing started and more people are probably most interested in.

‘Please Kill Me’ by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
I know most of you punx will have already read it and I think I’ve already spoken of my love of it in this thread, but here’s some more:  this is my favourite non-fiction book ever and the only one I ever re-read. I bloody love oral history books, especially when they're about music. Every time I read it, I find bits I missed or didn’t pay attention to the times before and I end up loving a new musician each time. Last time it cemented my love of David Johansen, but this time it was Dee-Dee Ramone. The punk scene in the late 60s-early 70s just seems hilarious, when people were just Chuckle Brother slapstick drug addicts and before everybody started dying from heroin overdoses.  Thoroughly recommended.

‘The Dylanologists’ by David Kinney
I don't know much about Bob Dylan, but was recommended this book as an overview of his most loyal and/or obsessive fans. It tells the story of fans whose enthusiasm comes in many different forms: either by spending significant amounts of money on buying old Dylan artefacts and property with links to him, following him on tour and queuing to get to the front of shows from 4am, chronicling every tiny instance where he has plagiarised someone else, etc. Every obsession seems to be covered. It's really really fascinating and was a nice way to learn a little more about Dylan as the timeline of fan activity was often given context of what he was also up to at the time. It could be a psychological study, just great.

'Brooklyn Noir'  edited (poorly) by Tim McLoughlin
I bought this collection of short stories set in Brooklyn to read in preparation for a holiday to New York, but Christ, I couldn't wait for it to end! As it's just short stories, I figured it'd be best to persevere with it in case a good one would eventually present itself to me, but that didn't happen often. The majority of these are so poorly written that it's as if a fifteen year old who has just learned about plot twists came up with about 90% of them. Predictable, unmemorable shite. No stars.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Blasted through The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh which was excellent entertainment and also read Blood, Sweat and Chalk about some of the historic tactical innovations in American Football. If you like the sport, it's well worth a look. Very similar in style to Chris B. Brown's Art of Football books and blog. Now reading a rubbish book on coaching hoping for some nuggets of wisdom.

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On 01/04/2016 at 1:36 PM, Lemonade said:

I'm taking it pretty slow this year. Currently reading "Duma Key" by Stephen King. I think it's only #8 for me this  year. 

This was good. One of his better offerings. He's become a much better writer as he's gotten older. I'm now reading the much maligned "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King, which is the book of his that everyone, even die hard fans, hates. I've started it a few times and never got as far as I have this time, so it bodes well for finishing it at least. The first few chapters were a struggle but it's levelled off. 

This will be by my count the 38th King book I've read. I guess I'm one of those die-hard fans eh. 

Edited by Lemonade
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I've worked my way through the first three and currently reading the last of Arthur Clarke's Odyssey series. Pretty good reads but I think I'll go back to Asimov for a while after this.

I also read The Old Man and the Sea yesterday. A really swell novella about some old codger who goes out fishing and afterwards goes to his bed for a kip.

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I read The Old Man and the Sea last year and I really enjoyed it but it did make me wonder about how authors and specific books come to be so highly regarded. It's a lovely story and well described but is it much lovelier and much more well described than other books about fishermen? Like all art, I struggle to tell what differentiates it.

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That's quite a tricky question considering how many revered books are just complete pish.

Who decides newly published books are good or not is beyond me - I guess it's just the literary critics of the day and the amount of influence they have. The real test is if people are still reading the book decades, even centuries, after being published.

Personal preference I guess...

 

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I'd hazard that for any one "classic", one can actually find loads of people who think it's shit - e.g. I read Madame Bovary ("an almost perfect novel", says that headteacher in The Sopranos, who gives a copy to Carmella) last year and thought it pretty meritless; while (e.g.) I'd say that The Old Man and the Sea is indeed one of the best English-language pieces ever published.

I'd think that the acquisition of "classic" status probably involves acquiring a following of some combination of writers, critics and buyers and maintaining it over time: there's that notorious quote (to which Google is refusing to swiftly give me the person who said it, so maybe it's apocryphal, I dunno), “A classic is any book that stays in print [over say 50-100 years or more]”. That's maybe just parroting what's above; but I'd also say that best-seller and/or critics' darling status isn't essential. Dickens, say, (OK fact check this one) was hugely popular with readers/buyers but not by critics; and conversely, A Confederacy of Dunces, say, wasn't even deemed worthy of publication until well after the author died. (Probably loads of similar examples - e.g. Bach and Shakespeare supposedly not being even celebrities, let alone regarded as the-bestest-evah until after they died).

With something like The Old Man and the Sea (and, e.g. Kafka, Carter) there's also the influence they've had, and been able to have in way that others might not. Like Hemmingway's style is stripped down and probably involved keeping it simple and cutting things out. So someone can actively imitate that, keeping it simple and reducing the amount of ink spilt, in his own writing. And contrast that with, say, Martin Amis, or Tom Wolfe, who are virtuoso prose stylists (in terms of wit and so on), and write big tomes which capture the zeitgeist of huge cities (London and New York) from multiple angles and characters (the literary version of The Wire, as think of it) and that's probably a lot harder to incorporate as an influence. Eh, Amis and Wolfe have also written modern classics, but I think the pared-down stylists probably had it easier in terms of attracting followers and imitators. And thus classic status.

As you were....

Edited by scottyboy
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City of Darkness was a fascinating read. I took my sweet time over it, not had much spare time recently. Really great though. Wonderful photographs and the accounts of the people who lived there were quite jarring. Those Triads really did quite like to literally chop people up into pieces.

 

Just starting the NOFX book. It's pretty disgusting so far.

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On 4/13/2016 at 4:06 PM, Lemonade said:

This was good. One of his better offerings. He's become a much better writer as he's gotten older. I'm now reading the much maligned "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King, which is the book of his that everyone, even die hard fans, hates. I've started it a few times and never got as far as I have this time, so it bodes well for finishing it at least. The first few chapters were a struggle but it's levelled off. 

This will be by my count the 38th King book I've read. I guess I'm one of those die-hard fans eh. 

Taking a break at the 50% mark. Tough read. Shit book. Reading "Billy" by Pamela Stephenson to cleanse my pallet. It's a biography of Billy Connolly written by his wife who's also a psychologist. It's surprisingly dark.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Read American Psycho which was bizarre and reckless! Quite a long read too, but not too bad. Now dabbling between some non-fiction ones that I'd started but not finished. A parenting one, one about mindfulness/meditation and one about Perfect Practice

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22 minutes ago, Spoonie said:

Read American Psycho which was bizarre and reckless! Quite a long read too, but not too bad. Now dabbling between some non-fiction ones that I'd started but not finished. A parenting one, one about mindfulness/meditation and one about Perfect Practice

That was my favourite book for a long time. I haven't read it in years. Much gorier than the film. The bit where he puts a starved rat into a womans vagina and lets it try to scratch and bite its way out, then cuts her in half with a chainsaw, or when he nail-guns a woman's hands to the bed, drills her teeth out with an electric drill, then puts his dick in her mouth, chops her head off and walks around the room with her severed head on his dick. Good luck getting that in to a film. Funny as hell though. "All it comes down to is this: I feel like shit but look great."

How did you interpret the ending?

Edited by Lemonade
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Yeah, absolutely savagery and it just gets worse and worse as the book progresses. The kid at the zoo is awful.

It's very hard to tell re: the ending because everyone constantly confuses who everyone else is. The fact that his lawyer didn't realise he was Patrick Bateman makes it possible that he hasn't had lunch with Paul Owen at all, as it could easily have been someone else, so he might actually have done the things that he claims.

The bit where he goes to visit Owen's apartment was very odd, and suggested that the woman showing the apartment knew something about him, but it didn't suggest that she knew about the murders, because surely she'd have taken some sort of legal action if she did. He definitely unravels as the book goes on tho, so I wouldn't be surprised to find it was all imagined.

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26 minutes ago, Spoonie said:

Yeah, absolutely savagery and it just gets worse and worse as the book progresses. The kid at the zoo is awful.

It's very hard to tell re: the ending because everyone constantly confuses who everyone else is. The fact that his lawyer didn't realise he was Patrick Bateman makes it possible that he hasn't had lunch with Paul Owen at all, as it could easily have been someone else, so he might actually have done the things that he claims.

The bit where he goes to visit Owen's apartment was very odd, and suggested that the woman showing the apartment knew something about him, but it didn't suggest that she knew about the murders, because surely she'd have taken some sort of legal action if she did. He definitely unravels as the book goes on tho, so I wouldn't be surprised to find it was all imagined.

There's are a few different schools of thought on it:

 

 

 

1 - He was just nuts and imagined it all.

2 - As you mentioned, ecause they all had similar looks and personalities they were interchangable and nobody really knew who anyone was.

3 - Everyone was lying to cover their own indiscretions. The lawyer claimed he had lunch with Paul, using the absent Paul as an alibi because he was up to something himself. The woman showing the apartment covered it up because she wouldn't be able to let the house where there had been a murder etc. 

 

 

I like the third one.

Edited by Lemonade
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I've read American Psycho a few times, though not for more than a decade. The first time I was 15, maybe 16, and while I basically got the humour and the point, I didn't really enjoy it - a bit too deadpan over the whole novel and some of the writing (more the sex scenes where no one dies, weirdly) made me legit quesy.

I had a flatmate at uni who was a huge fan of the film version and in my last year I read it a couple more times for my dissertation and liked it a lot more - I also just spent a lot of time just picking passages at random and getting lost in them. That passage above in which he's parading around with a severed head on his cock made it in to my undergrad dissertation; can't remember what I said about it...

Regards the end: it's pretty much impossible to tell between 1 and 2 (in those spoiler tags). I tend to prefer 2. I don't think 1 even occured to me until the guy I mentioned above pointed it out as the obvious one (in the film version it's a lot more strongly implied that 1 is what's going on, IIRC).

Maybe try and check out Glamorama and Imperial Bedrooms if you enjoyed American Psycho. Easton Ellis ended up being one of my favourite writers back in the day, on the strength of American Psycho and Glamorama (which I read just the once, can barely recall at all; but I do remember liking first time and more than American Psycho, initally at least). Imperial Bedrooms is more recent, and short and sweet (or dark and disturbing, but readable). His first couple (less than zero and The Rules of Attraction) I didn't care for.

Edited by scottyboy
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Bale cast as Bateman was perfect.

The film is annoying - and I'm very glad I read the book before watching the film because I may have avoided the book after seeing the film. I see the book as quite funny, satire on a specific generation of NYC yuppies. The film is just about an American dude who is a psycho.

My call on the ending is number 1 above, which is also a little annoying but the best fit for me/my interpretation of the book.

I'm no expert on literature, but I think it's all the layering and the fact it IS open to interpretation on various levels of the layers that makes it so good to read/accessible despite the horrific actual words.

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