Grade the last book you read.

[wkw]

thanks, I'll check one out.

Wow I'm surprised at how many classic works of literature Pasolini has adapted. (Oedipus the King, Medea, Orestia, Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights)

[mixed]

Down and out in Paris and London - George Orwell.

An entertaining and insightful memoir of living in poverty. I enjoyed the first half more about the squalor and life as a plongeur (wash up in a hotel basically) living in France while the parts about London were still of some merit. Its really well written and you can vividly picture the hot and bustling kitchens and all that type of thing.
Good read 9/10

[wkw]

El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (aka Don Quixote)- Miguel de Cervantes

I finished Part I of this mammoth of a book. (two parts at over 900 pages) It's probably the greatest spoof ever. It tells the story of an old man who spent so much time reading books of chivalry that he goes mad and decides to become a knight himself. With the help of his loyal and brave squire, Sancho Panza, he seeks out countless fearsome adventures to earn honor for his beloved lady Dulcinea of Tolboso. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are both hilarious and somewhat pitiful characters. I've read the beginning of the 2nd part, which is much weirder than the 1st because Don Quixote becomes aware of the existance of the 1st part of the book and seeks to change a false edition of the 2nd part. It's similar to the recursive nature of 8 1/2.

[criterionmaster]

Hitchcock/Truffaut 10/10



Hitchcock is a fucking genius, if you don't believe me, read this book. I have never read a book so fast in my life (3 days, not even reading it non-stop, just reading it a little here and there), I was that interested. I will post more thoughts on this book, and Hitchcock, in the Hitchcock thread. Let's just say that this was the best book on film I have ever even picked up.

[captainofbeef]

I reread Dark Tower VII by Stephen King which is a 9/10. A good ending to the series, but I felt King cheaped out a little. Took the easy way out with the ending if you will.

I also read Brother Odd by Dean Koontz which was a 10/10. Reminds me of the brilliance and wit of the first book.

And I read the Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo, which was pure rubbish, 2/10. A thinly veiled novel of the authors self-help philosophy. I really don't see why it is considered a classic.

[sacrilegend]

Okay, guys. I want to discuss three life-altering books.
I'll post pictures of the covers, and some reviews that are to be found on them. And my rating, of course. I'll do them one a day.

The Famished Road
Ben Okri
Winner of Booker Prize
A brilliant read, unlike anything you have ever read before... the message is universal The Times


(The one I have)

Ben Okri's beautifully written and moving novel combines fantasy and the vision of a child, the supernatural and the here-and-now to convey Nigerian peasent life in a changing world. It is the most ambitious as well as one of the most fully realised of this year's novels. It brings a distinctively black African way of writing and seeing things into the mainstream of European fiction Jeremy Treglowan

This is a book to generate apostles. People will be moved and, stars in their eyes, will pass on the word Robert Yates (my justification, guys!)

Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence. As one startling image follows the next, The Famished Road begins to read like an epic poem that happens to touch down this side of prose. Linda Grant

Dazzling, hypnotic... The Famished Road weaves the humblest detail with the most extravagant flight of fancy to create an astonishing fictional tapestry.. it is a true feast for the word-hungry San Francisco Examiner

A stunning work, suspenseful and haunting, the product of one of the lushest imaginations on record The Plain Dealer

Azaro says his is a "spiritchild nation, one that keeps being reborn and after each birth comes blood and betrayal". There's a glory in that, and Azaro's scary, awesome hallucinated childhood is a piece of sustained invention that turns out to be glorious in its own right, too Angela Carter

10/10 plus fifty for just plain amazingness. Read this book and change the way you look at the world.

[sacrilegend]

And The Ass Saw The Angel
Nick Cave
"...the second-best story ever told." Elle (Yeah, what the hell? Elle?)



"Nick Cave’s first foray into the world of fiction, his 1989 novel And The Ass Saw The Angel reads like a logical extension of the dark world his music has already created. Unencumbered by the limitations of the six-minute rock song format, Cave is finally off his leash. Thoroughly exploring the histories and damaged psyches of his characters, he spins a rich, highly nuanced tale of small-minded religious hypocrisy coming into violent confrontation with one man’s rapidly spiraling insanity – the results of a catastrophic plan indeed.
A chronicle of thirty-odd years in the Southern town of Ukulore Valley, most of the novel is told through the eyes of a crazed hillbilly named Euchrid Euchrow, who spends the course of the book slowly sinking to his death in a pit of quickmud. Euchrid is a cast-off, a human being with no rights, no respect, no love, and – quite literally – no voice. It’s a hard, uncharitable world he lives in, and no one is kind to anyone, least of all to the “hill trash” living in shacks on the edge of town. Mute from birth, Euchrid narrates his tale through a highly personal language, a mixture of old-fashioned country vernacular and formal Bible-speak. Or, as Cave explains, a “kind of a hyper-poetic thought-speak, not meant to be spoken – a mongrel language that was part-Biblical, part-Deep South dialect, part-gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene.”

Despite the religious fervor of the townsfolk, the character who has the closest relationship to God is Euchrid. Throughout the novel, Euchrid maintains a enigmatic correspondence with God which may or may not be the result of his steadily unraveling sense of reality; he sees angels, and thinks the voices in his head are “His Holy choir – His chanters.” Usually, of course, His Holy choir is telling Euchrid to do something strange or violent: he builds an enormous, viciously booby-trapped wall of furniture and scrap metal around his house, and he begins training an “army” of mutilated dogs from his father’s traps. As far as his demented mission goes, this is only the tip of the iceberg; but in the context of the cruel universe which Euchrid occupies, it doesn’t seem all that different from the way the town’s religious zealots warp their Biblical beliefs to support their increasingly aggressive behavior.
And I suppose that’s Cave’s main point. In a world of crazy and dangerous zealotry, where church groups can turn a baptism into a lynching at the drop of a hat, your run-of-the-mill psychopath isn’t all that different from your typical witch-hunting Baptist. Once that playing ground is leveled, it’s really a matter of might over right.
If this insight was the only thing going to recommend And the Ass Saw the Angel, it would likely be shelved up there with half a dozen other half-baked, rock-star-cum-writer offerings with lofty aspirations and flawed executions. But it’s not, and Cave delivers his colorful story with such brilliance, with such compelling conviction, that its internal logic grows disturbingly appealing: Why, of course it makes sense to have the exhumed skeleton of your infant twin brother for company in your swamp grotto. And of course you need to dig a snake pit in the floor of your house. And the Ass Saw the Angel presents an image of the world so distorted it seems to operate on a different moral plane; but like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, the illusion only subverts what’s already there. Whether or not one accepts the moral in Cave’s haunting tale of microscopic cogs and catastrophic plans, it’s hard not to be carried away by the terrible beauty of its telling." LJ Lindhurst, www.themodernword.com

"Southern gothic: bitter tale of insularity, resignation, occasionally of redemption; mastered by the likes of noted Southerners William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor. Attempted here by-- an Australian?

Nick Cave, frontman and lyricist for the alternative rock band The Bad Seeds, paints a portrait of the American South as dark and disturbing as any I've seen. And the Ass Saw the Angel, Cave's first novel, is an hypnotically poetic tale of pain and madness, Vonnegutian in its early black humor and its barely-there plot.

And the Ass Saw the Angel tells the story of Euchrid Eucrow, a mute born to a viciously abusive drunken mother and a father obsessed with cruel traps and animal torture. An outcast in a valley of rigidly conservative religious sectarians, Euchrid bears silently his mother's beatings, his father's inturned indifference, and the hatred and loathing of an entire town. But while Euchrid's tongue may be silent, his increasingly fractured mind teems with words and his own horrible angelic visions. Raised to inevitable madness in this closed-off little world of inbreeding, moonshine and fanaticism, Euchrid will exact his terrible vengeance on the people who have made his life one of nearly unrelenting pain.

Cave's style is quite obviously that of a songwriter, full of rhythms and refrains that are the echoes of a young cripple's madness. And the Ass Saw the Angel is blackly beautiful, powerful and sharp. That isn't to say that it's without flaws. Occasionally words from a more British dialect jar the reader out of the story's South -- "torch" for flashlight, "bonnet" for a car's hood, "lorry" for truck. Still, the writing compels. The very dark humor in the book's early half becomes ever darker, until by the book's end you laugh seldom, and then only as a defensive measure, to keep up some thin barrier between yourself and Euchrid's lonely rage and pain. If you read this, you might want to have something a little lighter waiting on your bookshelf to balance the black. And the Ass Saw the Angel, not for the faint of heart, is troubling, powerful and well worth the read." www.curledup.com

"This novel, penned by musician Nick Cave, is a descent into a very dark and twisted place, chock full of allegorical references and gruesome details. It has a fairy tale quality about it of the most disturbing kind; it flows right in with his music.

Euchrid’s world is painted as an evil and ugly place, yet Euchrid believes that he is on a mission from God. His life grows steadily more twisted and sinister as the book progresses through its five distinct segments.

And The Ass Saw The Angel truly has a car-wreck personality; the imagery is so raw and brutal yet I was completely engrossed and couldn’t put it down. This is definitely not for the faint of heart, and if you’re not already a fan of Nick Cave’s, you have been warned." Mistress McCutchan, www.morbidoutlook.com

I think I'll stop trying to give grades, for these are my favourite, favourite, favourite books ever and I feel that smacking a mere 10/10 on them is degrading.

[mixed]

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

I implore, each and every one of you, if you haven't already, to seek out and read this book. The characters are beautifully realised and diverse and the plot has many real moments mixed in with the fantastical happenings of the eventually extraordinary characters. Its a hugely fun, warm and even sexy read. Get it now!

10/10

[criterionmaster]

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Peter Biskind) 10/10

Holy Jesus, I was really sad and depressed when I finished this book, not because it wasn’t good, but because I wish I could read it forever, because I feel uncomfortable not being able to open it and read when I am bored. It was just so fucking entertaining, and probably the longest book I have ever finished, I know, it was only 440 pages, but still. This is such an interesting and entertaining set of years. Anyone interested in film, or likes any of the films from the late 60’s-1980, please check this out. You won’t regret it. Probably my favorite book I have ever read. It talks about so many great films, and also makes me realize how bad new films are. They mention that they were terrible in the 80’s, then got kinda decent in the 90’s again, but now they are terrible again. I love just reading about all these guys.

Beed, or anyone else, have you ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? I am thinking of making it the next book I read.

[captainofbeef]

I've read it. Its excellent, much better than the film. Read it, its essential.

[criterionmaster]

captainofbeef said:

I've read it. Its excellent, much better than the film. Read it, its essential.

Wow, better than the film?! I will definitely check it out, then. I also need to re-watch the film sometime.

[captainofbeef]

Well, the film is based on the book. Harper Lee even said she didn't like the film. I can't remember if she reneged on that statement or not, however.

[criterionmaster]

captainofbeef said:

Well, the film is based on the book. Harper Lee even said she didn't like the film. I can't remember if she reneged on that statement or not, however.

Yeah, I know, but since the film was one of the best I have ever seen, it seems crazy that this could be better. I don't see how someone could not like the film, but maybe I will if I read the book, although I doubt I could ever not like the film.

[sacrilegend]

I haven't seen the film, since I started reading good books WAY before I started watching good films.

I loved the book, it's amazing.

[mixed]

The Long Walk - Stephen King

An eventually brilliant, depressing, heartrending novel. 100 people have to walk, simple. If their pace drops below 4mph they get a warning. Three warnings and they're shot dead.
King weaves a fascinating narrative. Friendships are forged and enemies. Some go crazy walking and some simply give up. The tension is knotted and the novel drives at a superb pace. For such a simple thing, its a well fleshed out and thoughful piece of writing. The story wormed into my dreams and everyday life whilst I was reading it. Its a very depressing and scary novel that I don't see myself forgetting soon. Or reading again.

9/10

[captainofbeef]

I loved that book. The Bachman novels are some of King's best work.

[mixed]

I agree completely. Its hard to believe this is King at such a young age.

[kiddo]

Musikk fra en blå brønn (Torborg Nedreeas)
I don't know the title of this in english, but directly translated it's "Music from a blue well". This is a classic in norwegian literature, first published in 1960. It's an overwhelmingly vivid exploration of a young mind, diving into well-known themes, belonging to the "innocent" childhood, like imagination, acceptance and growth. The protagonist, Herdis, is a colourful being, and we get a great insight in both her physical and mental state; I thought the novel was most interesting when it exclusively focused on Herdis, letting you get many gleams of her (often ambiguous) actions and thoughts. As far as I can see (and that aint that far - I haven't read too many books), this is a masterpiece. If you seek books focusing on the interior of the human body, you should certainly give this a chance. In some ways, the novel remidns me of the film Spirit of the Beehive.

(I don't wanna rate it. Is it ok?)

[Nomansvally]

kiddo said:

Musikk fra en blå brønn (Torborg Nedreeas)
I don't know the title of this in english, but directly translated it's "Music from a blue well". This is a classic in norwegian literature, first published in 1960. It's an overwhelmingly vivid exploration of a young mind, diving into well-known themes, belonging to the "innocent" childhood, like imagination, acceptance and growth. The protagonist, Herdis, is a colourful being, and we get a great insight in both her physical and mental state; I thought the novel was most interesting when it exclusively focused on Herdis, letting you get many gleams of her (often ambiguous) actions and thoughts. As far as I can see (and that aint that far - I haven't read too many books), this is a masterpiece. If you seek books focusing on the interior of the human body, you should certainly give this a chance. In some ways, the novel remidns me of the film Spirit of the Beehive.

(I don't wanna rate it. Is it ok?)

I've never heard about the title nor the author of this book, but it seems interesting and especially since it gave you notions of Spirit of the Beehive. Hmmm, might have to check it out. Did you read it for fun or at school?

[kiddo]

It was in connection with school. But wow, I'm gonna start reading alot more now... This and Sult (Hamsun) have seriously sparkled some interest in me.

[captainofbeef]

The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
4/10
Obviously Rubenfeld is an extremely talented author technically. But he burdens his book down with too much information and background, ultimately killing the thriller held inside. The bits of historical information on Sigmund Freud are very interesting but he is restricted to a bit player and he disappears by the four hundredth page. Disappointing read.

[sacrilegend]

kiddo said:

It was in connection with school. But wow, I'm gonna start reading alot more now... This and Sult (Hamsun) have seriously sparkled some interest in me.

Reading is the absolute best thing to do, in the world. I don't do it as much as I used to, that sucks.

[BarrSnacks]

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow(both re-reads)

10/10's for both. I love these books so much. He has stated himself that Ender's Game was a little rough, but I love it.

[captainofbeef]

Lisey's Story by Stephen King
7/10
It was an entertaining read for sure. It definitely passed the time in the airport and on the plane. But I really feel it is one of King's worst books. It felt like this was a story that he HAD to write for himself. It deals with a woman trying to cope with her husband's death, her husband is coincidentally a famous writer. Sound familiar? The novel clearly is written to his wife and less to the public. The book is WAY too long, 600 pages with half of them containing back story. Overall, fans of King will dig. But if you are not a fan of King, steer clear...

[mixed]

I'm a fan of King but Liseys story I found to be very dull for the most part. I gave up, somewhat reluctantly about midway through. I wanted to find out what happened but the story just dragged and it felt more of a chore than a pleasure reading it. I couldn't get into Cell either, which some people raved about. I thought it was poor and fell into that trap that some other King books falls into. Something cool happens then the whole rest of the story goes slack and is about characters travelling from one place to another, well, this is also where in my view the Stand failed too.

[captainofbeef]

^I like the traveling part in Cell and The Stand. It is necessary seeing as the circumstances of the story. But whatever floats your boat...

[criterionmaster]

holy christ, i just finished "to kill a mockingbird" and it was seriously the best book i have ever read, and one of the best anything i have ever done in my life. i don't know what i am feeling, but i definitely am overwhelmed by how good it was, and i am super sad i finished it. does anyone else get sad when they finish a good book, or is it just me?

i will post more thoughts, maybe, i am also planning on re-watching the film.

edit: obviously it was a 10/10, lol.

[sacrilegend]

I'm so, so, so, so glad you read that! See, I have good taste! Now go read Shantaram and The Famished Road and And the Ass Saw the Angel (you'd particularly enjoy this) and we'll talk again.

Anyway, we did TKAM two years ago in school and I loved it to bits, too.

[mixed]

captainofbeef said:

^I like the traveling part in Cell and The Stand. It is necessary seeing as the circumstances of the story. But whatever floats your boat...

Some of the travelling parts I like, in the Stand. But more and more were chapters about characters I didn't like to much and because of the book length, these were long 'chapters' of 130 pages at times.

[captainofbeef]

^I can see where you are coming from. It is a big book with many characters, its really tough to get into for some. Its personally probably my favorite book ever, the characters are just so interesting to me.