This week I will be mainly reading (Alliance book club)

[will-c]

After feeling awkward about posting about books to read or not, in a seperate topic, it was agreed a new thread covering reading pulp would best serve us book worms. 

I am still trying to finish the Ian Rankin book I started last week , Hide and Seek. Its my maiden voyage into Rankin world and I can't say its been that gripping. In fact; its been like trudging through a river of treacle with no appetite for sweetness. I am determined to finish it, which can't come soon enough, about 50 more pages to go, before I get to start my next adventure into a new author...

Whats other peoples book reviews



 

[Ursula]

I'm currently reading Marge Piercy's Gone to Soldiers, which is great for feeding babies to because it's divided into short chapters about a large cast of characters so I rarely have to break off mid-chapter to do something else.  The only downside is the size of it - it's three inches thick and my wrist gives out if I'm there for more than ten minutes.  I'm enjoying it hugely so far.
 
Next on the list is a book of short stories by China Mieville.

[bp]

John Connolly's 'Every Dead Thing'.. I love his detective Charlie Parker, and the atmosphere of Louisiana, its people and its swamps. I've always had had a thing about swamps ever since the Hound of the Baskerville and Grimpen Mire, which if not a real swamtp is definitely 'swampy'.

B

[mcdermott]

The only thing I've ever read by Marge Piercy was Vida, which was a kind of retrospective look at the radical 60's and a revolutionary group based on something like Barack Obama's mates in the Weather Underground. (OK, so Barack wasn't born then. Never mind, I'm a maverick!)

I'm currently reading two books at once. The new Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey's Room, which is about German spies/activists in the US during World War II, and the first in David Peace's Tokyo Trilogy, Tokyo Year Zero, which is set in Tokyo in the days just following the end of WWII.

I read the first in Peace's Red Riding Quartet, and didn't especially enjoy it, despite the good reviews. I'm liking Toyko Year Zero a lot more, because I've just finished watching The Yakuza Papers: Battles without honour or humanity, Kinto Fukasawa's five movie series about the rise of the Yakuza, which also really began in that period at the end of WWII, when Japan was literally brought to its knees and the Yakuza controlled the black markets which were often the only source of food.

These are like the Japanese equivalent of the Godfather and well worth a watch.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070246/

[mcdermott]

I loved the early Connolly's, but the last couple I read seemed to be abandoning orthodox crime fic and going over to some weird gothic fantasy horror.

I run hot and cold on Rankin. Some of them are great. Others are, as you say, a bit like wading through treacle.

[Ursula]

If you want Louisiana crime, James Lee Burke's your man.
 
McD's mention of crime and fantasy reminds me to recommend The Yiddish Policemen's Union.  Michael Chabon has a good shot at a pulp noir detective story in an alternate history where Alaska has ended up being a temporary Jewish homeland.  The man can write and the conceit's a lovely one.

[bp]

Yes, I've read Pegasus Descending. And now for something completely different, I'm reading Partick Suskind's Perfume  for about the fourth time; it's my comfort blanket.

B

[simon]

Wlbur Smith has always been my favourite author and I learned so much about history from him.

[mcdermott]

I've got The Yiddish Policeman's Union -- in fact, I bought it in US hardback I was so excited by the idea and the reviews but mostly because the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and the other one that they made a movie from -- in which Michael Douglas plays a pot-smoking professor, the name of which escapes me for the moment (ed. Wonder Boys) -- are both completely awesome. But I just haven't been able to get into the Yiddish Policeman's Union at all.

Kavalier and Klay was unquestionably the best book I read the year it came out though. It's about two Jewish comic creators in the Golden Age of Comics, and their struggle to make it as second generation immigrant jews in the New World. Which may not sound awesome, but it was. So much so that it won the Pulitzer that year.

And given that I seem to recall that Ursula is a comics person, I should also mention that on my bookshelf for reading in the very near future is Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones -- a real history of the Golden Age of Comics, as opposed to the fictional treatment Chabon offers us in Kavalier and Klay. Haven't started it yet, but it looks fantastic.

http://www.amazon.com/Men-Tomorrow-Geeks-Gangsters-Birth/dp/0465036562

[Ursula]

BP, I'm a wee bit alarmed that Perfume can be anyone's comfort blanket - I found it an extraordinarily uncomfortable and uncomforting read myself.  Brilliant and skillfully done, but it got under my skin and disturbed me in a way that only Highsmith's Ripley books usually do.
 
McD, it's worth giving TYPU another shot.  It's a very different book to Kavalier and Clay (I haven't read Wonder Boys yet but rather enjoyed the film), but the man's a genius and it's a pleasure to read for the quality of the writing alone.  And that history looks really fascinating - let me know whether it lives up to the promise of the subject matter. 
 
I'm still enjoying the Marge Piercy but I do wonder whether she ever writes a main character who isn't having some sort of sexual awakening.  Product of her times, I suppose.  I really do like her writing and her plots in general though (Vida was the first of hers I read and it was fascinating).  Woman on the Edge of Time is well worth a look if you like your sci-fi on the less technology-driven side of the genre.

[will-c]

I finally finished the Ian Rankin book, last night...Yeah. The twists and turns in the last chapter cetrainly didnt make up for the trudge uphill to get there, reminded me, of the Stephen King books which relied ultimately on the last chapter to bring them all together.

I have been threatening to buy one of them Yiddish policemans ball books for a while now, keep picking them off the shelf, almost on a weekly basis.

I read Perfume years ago, I enjoyed it. I found the film a bit strange in comparison.

The book I have re-read over the past ten years, as a comfort novel has been The Passion by jennette Winterstone, a bit soppy but when it comes to magic realism, the one for me....
 

[mcdermott]

I've never read any Wilbur Smith. I don't really do those historical adventures. My wife does though. She's all about the Sharp series, and that Master and Commander guy. I just can't relate. I like the Lee Child stories though. Kind of a modern James Bond type hero, an ex-military policeman turned drifter who gets calls to save the day from old friends and acquaintances. Complete bollocks, but the male equivalent of Barbara Cartland or some such.

I recently bought a book by Ken Follett, another of those adventure story writers that I've never read before, titled 'Pillars of the Earth' because it gets such phenomenal word of mouth. It's a dynastic saga about cathedral builders in the 12th C, and everyone says its fantastic. Check out the Amazon reviews sometime. It's on the shelf for the future. I could never buy another book for the next three or four years, and still not run out of reading material.

Everyone raves about Perfume, but I've never read it and I found the film pretty unwatchable.

I tend to avoid anything that falls into the category of Literary Fiction as it's often just a way of saying 'boring'. But if I do read it, as with my crime fiction I tend to prefer the Americans to the Europeans. However, one guy I've read a lot of lately is someone who has made the leap from lit fic to crime fic with his wonderful series about a Thai detective, John Burdett. His early books are pretty good too, but the Bangkok books are really enjoyable.

Also, a writer who really deserves a place in my top ten favourites is Nick Tosches. An American journalist, he writes about sex, drugs, rock and roll, gangsters, celebrities and gambling. His biography of Jerry Lee Lewis is the best on the subject by far -- and one of the best rock biographies of all. Haven't read The Last Opium Den yet -- I'm pretty sure it started its life as a long article for the NewYorker or Vanity Fair, but I'll have to dig it up. The last one of his that I read was King of the Jews, a biography of gambler/gangster Arnold Rothstein (the man who fixed the World Series of Baseball.) That one was a little disappointing, as I'm deeply interested in Rothstein but this seemed very speculative. His earlier books are all great though.

Along with Tosches, I should also give a nod to Nicholas 'Goodfellas' Pillegi, and Nic Coen. All three are journalists working in the USA whose journalism is so good it tends to get made into movies. Coen's last book, Trickster, was a fascinating account of a man in his 50's (ie, him) setting up as a New Orleans-based hip-hop record producer. No previous experience whatsoever. Working out of the ghetto, and fucking with people's dreams.

I loved the idea of Jonathen Lethem's crime novel about a kid with Tourettes, Motherless Brooklyn. The actual book didn't live up to its promise, so I was sceptical about the next one, Fortress of Solitude, about a kid growing up in NY who becomes a rock critic. I ended up buying it when I was on holiday and my choices were limited. Surprisingly, it was absolutely awesome. Two thumbs way, way up.

[will-c]

I was wondering what book to read next, out of the three I bought last week. When I opened a drawer at work to find a book someone had left behind. Lisa Gardner The Third Victim, Started reading it yesterday and feel like I have been drawn into a vortex of page turning. Brilliant. Love surprise finds...

[will-c]

I stumbled into Waterstones at the weekend, just cant seem to stop myself.... Bought two new books, Charles Bukowski Ham on Rye, oddly. I read one of his books a few weeks ago PULP and didnt enjoy it that much but I did like Woman, Factonum and Post office and its the same character Henry Chaninski so thought, I would give it a whirl.

The other book I got was a surprise, Michael Connelly's The Brass Verdict, a collaboration between Harry Bosch and Micky Haller, since I have read all the rest of his books I just gotta to read this one, actually tell a lie; I have still to read Chasing the dime, which I got out of a charity shop a few months ago.

I only have 50 more pages of The Third Victim left to devour, brilliant book...
 

[mcdermott]

Half price hardback on the new Connolly, Will?

I've read almost all of them, except one or two, and what happens is, I can never remember which ones I haven't read, so I end up buying them twice. You get home, all excited, and then about ten pages in you realize -- oh shit, I've read this one.