Busytown: Holiday reading lust
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And well, what's wrong with a bit of angst as long as there's some light at the end of the tunnel?
Oh, I like the angst. If I were forced to choose between comedy and angst, I'd pick angst. I'm still waiting for the novel to go with the Smith's first album. Nick Cave's new novel The Death of Bunny Munro looks good and angsty. Ok, not a word. Although it was apprently Inspired by Avril Lavigne and Kylie Minogue’s Hot Pants. What? Might skip that one.
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Nick Cave's new novel The Death of Bunny Munro looks good and angsty
It has momentum and lots of grubby sex but it could have done with a stern editorial hand.
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I have adored Hanif Kureishi since I was a teenager and he was the Next Big Thing.
My parents have recently become hugely enamoured with Haruki Murakami and gave me South of the Border, West of the Sun for my birthday. It's lovely and I'm looking froward to reading more of his.
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Warning: PTerry fans: there are large slabs of indigestibility in "Unseen Academicals" and not a huge amount of truly good pie material.
I m aware, as anyone, of Terry's condition. I think he is a stupendous hero for continuing to write.
Maybe now is the time to stop.
"The Graveyard Book" is perfect fuckinglybrillant.
In case anyone is going to venture, do NOT read "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell." I have read fantasy since I was 6 yrs old, and this is the worst let-down for a very-much touted book I have ever encountered.
Pedestrian/dull/lowkey/plonk. -
In case anyone is going to venture, do NOT read "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell."
Damn, I thought I liked it, but clearly I was mistaken. Perhaps I'll re-read it to see why in reality, I didn't. ;-)
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It has momentum and lots of grubby sex but it could have done with a stern editorial hand.
There was a very prissy review on Nine to Noon last year -- the reviewer, whose name escapes me, said that he and his wife were both big Nick Cave fans but were just appalled by all the grubby sex in this book. I thought: Really? So where were you during No Pussy Blues, Hard On for Love, Stagger Lee, etc etc?
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In case anyone is going to venture, do NOT read "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell." I have read fantasy since I was 6 yrs old, and this is the worst let-down for a very-much touted book I have ever encountered.
Pedestrian/dull/lowkey/plonk.:) I love that book like it's a fluffy bunny of fabulousness. It's actually one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've had. But then I'm not a fantasy fan at all (whilst I know Pterry is usually relegated to the fantasy section, I don't think he is at all, but it's the closest I'd get), so perhaps that's the difference.
I don't really know why JS&MN is put under fantasy either - sometimes it seems "Fantasy" is just "Other".
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:) I love that book like it's a fluffy bunny of fabulousness.
Rapid hand clapping motions and he says "Yeah! Fluffy bunnies!" Thanks, I can stick with my original opinion... ;-)
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On one level, as we follow idealistic Em and hedonistic Dex through the nineties and into the new millennium, this is a swift and funny Hornby-esque novel of manners. If you're roughly that age yourself, prepare to cringe and/or giggle in recognition at many points in the book. On another level, it's a meditation on love and life and what we want out of them. It rattles breezily along, and you gradually figure out where it’s going, by which point it’s too late not to care about the characters and where they’re headed.
...The novel is a light read, except for the bits when it very much isn’t. Don’t read it if you’re feeling the least bit emotional. Or perhaps don’t read it unless you want to feel emotional.Got One Day and, Jolisa, it was everything you said it was.
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Rapid hand clapping motions and he says "Yeah! Fluffy bunnies!" Thanks, I can stick with my original opinion... ;-)
I wish I knew how to put pictures in posts, but I don't so:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/06/06/funny-pictures-bwavo-clappity-clappity/Yayayays!
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Each to their own....I'll stick with JS&MrN is an exceedingly tedious book.
But I wuv little wabbits.
Stewed.
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Yayayays!
Perfect!
And Islander, having said all that, our Grandmother once made us 'Wabbit stew', and while we sat there staring at the plates forlornly she sang; 'Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got bunny in my tummy'.
Legend, my Grandmother.
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Nom nom nom wunnybabbits.
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It was the way they were laced with shotgun pellets which sticks in my mind.
"Leave it on the side of your plate!" we were told when we complained about our teeth hitting little lead pellets.
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We used (and use) a .22-
but I have had The Pellet Experience when a neighbour gave me a mallard he'd shot.
I havent eaten wild duck since.
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I can't help thinking that Jolisa might wonder what's happened here when she sees we have started talking about shooting and eating rabbits, and wild duck.
I was going to reference Beatrix Potter, but in the interest of artistic relevance, this South Park video seems more, well, apposite?
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Warning: PTerry fans: there are large slabs of indigestibility in "Unseen Academicals" and not a huge amount of truly good pie material.
I m aware, as anyone, of Terry's condition. I think he is a stupendous hero for continuing to write.
Maybe now is the time to stop.
The main problem with it, thinking back, was that there were several plotlines where I just didn't see the point - mostly Juliet's. What was Pterry trying to say about society/people/history? And his plots pretty much always do have something to say about those things, or at the least mirror/reimage pieces of them in interesting ways. That whole plot just went...nowhere. I didn't get it, and I want there to be something there I failed to get, and I'm horribly afraid there isn't.
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The main problem with it, thinking back, was that there were several plotlines where I just didn't see the point - mostly Juliet's. What was Pterry trying to say about society/people/history?
Juliet=Kate Moss, I think? The point being that beauty is still one fast ticket out of the Shambles? Failing that, brains and jolly good pie-making skills. But yes, the book felt more tangential than some of the big systems-analysis (police, banks, post office) that you get in other recent books. Although the university politics were quite satisfying.
I can't help thinking that Jolisa might wonder what's happened here when she sees we have started talking about shooting and eating rabbits,
My favourite fluffy bunny book of all time is of course Watership Down. Alas, I don't know if it would impress me today in the same way that it blew my animal-loving, human-fearing, proto-vegetarian 11 year old mind. I remember being deeply offended at the time by the story about the butcher shop that had the sign: "You've read the book, now eat the pie." Heh.
Rob, I'm glad you liked One Day. I think I'll re-read it, as soon as I'm finished with the new Martin Amis, which so far -- contrary to the author's own dire prophecies -- is not scandalising or infuriating me. Instead I find myself jotting "LOL" in the margin and exclaiming "awwww, how sweet!" So far, anyway.
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I don't really know why JS&MN is put under fantasy either - sometimes it seems "Fantasy" is just "Other".
Because The Ladies of Grace Adieu (v. good by the way) was included by Patrick Nielsen Hayden (a noted sf&f editor) in a sf&f anthology published by a noted sf&f publisher. And JS&MN is quite clearly fantasy by any definition of the genre.
I wasn't too taken with Militant Modernism -- if you've read the blog you know what's coming. If you haven't, it's too bloggy. Worth buying anyway, but. And the later Earthsea books Don't Exist, OK?
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And the later Earthsea books Don't Exist, OK?
Time Out called this afternoon to say my copy of the 'Quartet' is in, so I'll report whether Part Four is a fumigant* of my imagination or not.
*I'm developing a habit of accepting whatever the spell check throws up first. You can't spell figment? Yes, yes, typo, Ok?
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I've just finished my birthday present copy of Unseen Academicals.
I thought Juliet's role was simply to be a foil to Glenda. Her story is unformed and merely sketched in because beauty or not, she's a bit player. Inasmuch as book has main characters, they're Mr Nutt and Glenda. So I wasn't bothered.
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And JS&MN is quite clearly fantasy by any definition of the genre.
The only real definition the genre has is "we'll file this where we think it's most likely to sell." This is the reason why, for instance, Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt" was published in several editions, to appeal to both readers familiar with his sci-fi and readers who would never buy a sci-fi book in their lives. It's also why Margaret Atwood's work never gets classified as sci-fi, despite often fitting any content-based criteria (anyone want to argue that "Oryx and Crake" wasn't sci-fi? On any grounds other than "But it's Margaret Atwood and she's not one of those sci-fi authors!"?).
Personal bugbear of mine. I think a lot of people ignore excellent literature because it's tarred with the sci-fi/fantasy brush, and people often haven't really understood Sturgeon's Law.
Unfortunately, I'm about three Terry Pratchett books behind. Must get to a bookshop after I move house. I believe someone upthread mentioned a visit by Pratchett to NZ in the early 90s; this was probably related to DisContinuity, a convention up in Auckland in 92, which I attended as a callow youth specifically to meet the man in question. Ah, memories.
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this was probably related to DisContinuity, a convention up in Auckland in 92, which I attended as a callow youth specifically to meet the man in question. Ah, memories.
Hey! I saw Pratchett in 92 as well. I didn't know him, but a friend of mine was a fan, and I happened to be holidaying in Edinburgh when he was up for a book signing, so I grabbed a book and queued so I could get him to sign it for my friend and heard him read a few pages. That was magic.
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Shot an interview with him in 92, in Chch.
Book tours must be hell. He was a tad... waspish. Interviewers who haven't read your work can't be a lot of fun for anyone... -
The only real definition the genre has is "we'll file this where we think it's most likely to sell."
This is Gary Farber's definition, which while I hate to disagree with him is I think wrong; sf & f are in my opinion natural kinds, and sf&f may even be a natural kind.
Atwood's treated as sf these days by most anyone that isn't a clown, and I basically think sf has a depressing persecution complex where `ooh ooh nasty mainstream people' is used as a way of avoiding serious introspection about the fact that the genre's pretty fucking dead in the water at the moment.
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