@Lemex yeah, you should. If you haven't read anything form him, I think you should start with The Great Gatsby. It's hard for me to be objective, beacuse he's my favourite writer so far. @Dante Dases , Tender is the night is not that good, dull at times,I agree with you. But Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, are fantastic. This Side of Paradise is on third place of my favourite books list. What's maybe problem with him is that he doesn't have that much of a story. I think his strongest points are descriptions of situations, places, people... and dialogues. From his shorts I read only The Diamond as big as The Ritz and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button thus far, and I liked both.
Treat yourself to a copy of MR James, if you like horror. Trust me on this, you can pick up one of those Wordsworth classics copies for £3, and they are really well written. If you are in the right mood, you'll fall in love. I also recommended after reading each story, listening to the dedicated podcast entry, Podcast to the Curious. It's done by two very likeable guys, and is a lot of fun to listen to. Right, thanks for the break down here. I feel I can trust your tastes.
The Invisible Man is a good read. Quite predictible sometimes but all in all a nice probe into what it's like to be invisible.
By the times you guys post here finished titles I guess I'm the floppiest of readers. I'm reading The Long Good Bye by Chandler. Decent hard-boiler of the old school.
I'm actually not reading a fiction at the moment (first for me). I'm in the middle of How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Associates. Seem shamelessly self-serving, but what they heck. Why not?!
These works, though interesting and enlightening in nature, are also quite despicable if you think about the measure in which they exploit peoples' nature. You read too much of them and you get disgusted at virtually any step to see ads and the omnipresent, subtle mind-wash. We're so accustomed to it it does not seem novel to use that we're being influenced. The saddest thing is that we're actually living all those distopias they wrote about. The public naively concludes that because they describe the future, it does not apply to present day. The public is wrong.
@Lemex Not only MR James, but Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. Though if you really like psychological horror jump forward a number of years to Shirley Jackson's brilliant The Haunting of Hill House.
Give it a listen. Its a podcast done by two guys, and they go through James's ghost stories, going into really impressive depth, and they have great chemistry too! Well worth checking out.
"Trust me, I am lying" by Ryan Holiday. it's about online manipulations and reasons why we should not trust anything we read online. quite interesting!
I've just started reading Frankie Boyles, my life so far. It's missing a word, but I'm too new to be offending people. If you're a fan of Frankie Boyle I definitely recommend it. If anybody else has an autobiography they recommend, please let me know!
Milan Kundera-The Joke (I am half way through and so far I have been fascinated by the story) In the last couple of weeks I have read also "Aura" by Carlos Fuentes; short, kind of creepy, but powerful story, I really loved it when I was reading it.
I picked this up this week: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them By Francine Prose With a name like Prose, well, you know! It's sending me back to school. I'm loving the study. Also: The Oxford Book of American Short Stories Ed. Joyce Carol Oates To put my study in to practice.
Finished the first two in the trilogy, starting on Dreams of Gods and Monsters. Do I have a false memory that someone here said they read this trilogy? I can't find the post now. Maybe it was a different trilogy. Anyway, these books are good, the writer, Laini Taylor, is excellent. The only thing negative is there's a tad too much introspection when you want the story to move along. But the concepts and imagination are fantastic and she definitely brings the characters to life.
That's a good collection. It's worth getting the penguin collection of American short stories too, it's about 400 pages, and between them they are a great place to start with American short fiction. And of course, with it being Joyce Carol Oates, H.P. Lovecraft and David Foster Wallace are going to be in it - so you are getting a verity there. I'm reading this: Reading about this sexy, sexy man. And this:
@Lemex Is there an English publisher like America's Library of America? http://www.loa.org An all in one publisher of beautiful volumes, publishing the best of the country's authors??
I own the Lovecraft collection, it's not worth the price tag. Just get the Barns and Noble copy, it's £15 and has more in it. That's not to say that Library of America books are not good - the Lovecraft one is just not that good. Why pay £25 on that when you can get a larger collection for even £5 if you shop around? I don't know of any British equivalent to Library of America. We just don't have one I guess. If you really want one, Everyman Library does nice hardbacks, and have published most of the well known British writers.
Oh god, I've just had the nightmare image of a depressed future, where Scotland and Wales are independent, there is one eternal conservative government, and Everyman Library has published the complete set of Harry Potter. I think I'm going to be sick.
Yes and no, the folio society are only interested in making beautiful books. The scholarship in them is pretty superficial, when it's there at all. They sometimes have an introduction to the book, and are are often alright. Library of America books have fantastic annotations.
