finley wrote:Finley, gotta agree with you about the dragon tattoo books.
It occurred to me after I finished it that he didn't write it with publication in mind. It was some sort of personal catharsis, and he hid it in his desk for the same reason you hide a diary in a desk - you don't want people to read it. He'd probably be mortified to discover people have been reading his private scribblings.
My understanding was that he did actually send them to a publisher, then couldn't be bothered to get together for editing. The first one was apparently heavily edited (and therefore slightly better written) but then people were in an uproar over editing the work of the dead, so the 10 page narration of what the main character bought in Ikea stayed firmly in place in book 2. Yikes!
The Lisbeth character was interesting, but the main dude was clearly a super-heroized version of the author himself. I guess all writers do that to some degree
finley wrote:Being in a Jerome K Jerome phase at the moment, I can recommend Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow which is a collection of (mostly very well-written) essays. It's free if you've got a Kindle. If you haven't, get one: there a lot of short-story anthologies on Amazon for just a couple of $. You're sure to find something you like, and if you don't, you haven't wasted much.
I downloaded Jerome, look forward to reading it!
GuyInTaiwan wrote:Non: Yeah, I am a little suspicious of any modern writer being held in so high regard. It's all too recent. On the other hand, I often wonder if I'm missing something when I read writers from previous ages and wonder what all the fuss is about. There's a fine line between being a philistine and thinking the emperor has wonderful clothes.
Well put. I find myself treading that fine line often. Generally I think I err on the side of philistine though
guy wrote:Can't recommend any proper short stories off the top of my head. However, there is plenty of sci-fi that is fairly short/quick that's good. I really liked The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin, and also Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. Actually, I just thought of Jorge Luis Borges. His short stories are good. At times, I had no idea what he was talking about, but they were still good. His stories are dreamlike: very weird, but the imagery is amazing.
I just read The Road this weekend. That was an extremely quick read and I literally couldn't put it down. It was certainly very good, but I think I liked Blood Meridian more, even though I understood it less. I'm now working on The Hobbit, not having touched it since I was twelve. I vaguely remember hearing that it was written for kids and LoTR was written in a darker, more mature fashion, but it's actually really noticeable now. The tone is really different.
I should note that my reading choices are usually based upon what I can get for free online or borrow from friends, so they're a bit over the place.
I'm in the same boat with books- I don't have a credit card so can't buy for my kindle, and paper books are so damned expensive. Reading this thread doesn't help, I now want to read every book mentioned. I did get ahold of a copy of the master and marguerite, hoping that one will be good.
