Tell me what to read

I recommend to anyone who will listen Richard Powers' Plowing the Dark. Also I am currently rereading Moby Dick and wondering why it is not generally recognized as the pinnacle of the American Experimental Novel--I mean, it's like Barth and Vollman rolled into one with WHALES. So read Moby Dick.

you might like Edward Whittemore

Like Punk Never Happened by Dave Rimmer, if you can find it. Trust me.

which Tolstoy? I loved Anna Karenina. Also, no reading of Russian lit is complete without a collection of Gogol's short stories. I like "The Nose", "Diary of a Madman", and "The Overcoat". If you have ever liked, or think you may like, American lit from the 20s (ie Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc), try Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. It never seems to get the mentions it deserves.

Based on Murakami and Delany, my top recommendation is the brilliant Steve Erickson. Try Arc d'X.

'Slaughterhouse 5' by Kurt Vonnegut.
If asked, I usually name this as my favourite book ever. I'm not sure I really have a favourite book ever, but this is definitely my favourite book to recommend to people.

Read 'War With The Newts' by Karel Capek.

if you've never read pg wodehouse,i can't imagine that you wouldn't enjoy the jeeves books

also,i can't recommend it properly cause i've only read the first twenty pages (several times,i'm always starting it in other people's house's and not finishing it for some reason)but the first chapter or two of murphy by beckett is incredibly funny,i've finally got a copy of it so i get to read the rest of it now

england is mine by michael bracewell is an interesting attempt to tie various strands of english pop music/culture together,i'd say all freakytrigger/ilm/etcetc readers would at least find it interesting

The rest of Murphy is great too!

oh i'd imagine so,i just can't say for sure!

read thomas kuhn before all of that and contribute to frank's thread.

So which Kuhn book am i supposed to read first again?

For others - it might help if I say which books I've really enjoyed over the past year or so:

Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse
Patrick White - The Twyborn Affair
Ian McEwan - Atonement
Andre Gide - The Immoralist
Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed
J. G. Ballard - Crash

Martin, could you tell me more about Steve Erikson?

I wonder if you'd like Mervyn Peake?...

That Erickson book is mad out of print (in the US at least). I snagged a copy at a used book store on Martin's recommendation but have yet to read it.

''So which Kuhn book am i supposed to read first again?''

the strcuture of scientific revolutions I think but he has published many. i got a book of collected essays called 'the essential tension' and I should get to that by next week.

I am reading erickson's 'rubicon beach' and its wonderful so far.

Hurray! Amazon's second hard booksellers have just sent me a copy of Arc D'X! Or so they say.

All of Erickson's books should be available as remaindered copies if you have a good bookstore that stocks such things (or, try www.bookfinder.com). I second the Arc d'X recommendation, my favorite of his along with the first one (Days b/w Stations). Similarly (stylistically), Scott Bradfield's "History of Luminous Motion" was wonderful (I never saw the film that was made of it but assume it was crap).

He's not easy to describe. Arc d'X is a Postmodern SF historical novel about Thomas Jefferson and his slave lover, part of which is set in some sort of future city. Making sense isn't his strongest point, but I think he's dazzling in a way that sort of combines Dick, Delany and Pynchon, but with more politics, and he's one of my all-time favourite writers. I love all his novels, and his sort of non-fiction reportage is terrific too.

Also, read more Patrick White - a mighty and hugely underknown writer (at least outside Australia). Voss is magnificent.

the Murakami is a good idea, & ditto the Richard Powers. Ned might be onto something - I think you'd dig Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan (Steerpike = k-rowr).

if you can find it, Edward/Eduard Limonov's Memoir Of A Russian Punk is great. in a similar boy-man etc doing stuff in an interesting time/place - Delaney's The Motion Of Light In Water. um on the offchance you haven't read it, The Outsider (aka The Stranger) by Camus is better than pills.

have you tried any Yukio Mishima? you can find his short story Patriotism as a stand-alone (or in an anthology) fairly readily - it's one of the most (disturbingly) erotic things ever written. Confessions Of A Mask could almost fit in with the Limonov & Delaney I mentioned earlier, except it covers an earlier period of his life.

Hi Tim -- Gogol's short stories are great fun. So are Wodehouse's.
But the last book that really grabbed me was not a comedy (though it does have a few comic moments)... The book is called "I'm Not Scared" and it is by Niccolo Ammaniti, a young Italian author (I read the English translation). It's a brief book -- you could start it on your morning break and finish it off by the end of your lunch hour -- but so much more complex than that small size would indicate.

In fact, I haven't read a more fully realized book (in terms of location, characters and plot) in ages! Nothing is missing. Nothing is misplaced. And the ending is AN ENDING, not just an ambiguous "well?"

Unfortunately, because the book is so concise, any review that you read of it (especially on unedited sites like Amazon) will give away too much of it, completely undermining the plot and plot twists. So please don't read any reviews beforehand -- just dive in, unknowing.

And if you do, let me know what you think. :)

Tim, that's some very depressing literature you've been reading. How about some light travel literature?

I prescribe a strong dose of J.R. Ackerley's "Hindoo Holiday", a delightful turn-of-the-century Raj travelogue by a close friend of Auden's. You may also enjoy "A Way of Life Like Any Other" by Darcy O'Brien, a fifties memoir about a luxurious Hollywood adolesence spent hiding from burn-out parents (think "Sunset Boulevard" meets "Breakfast at Tiffany's). Finally, Mavis Gallant's timeless postwar "Paris Stories", which combine the circumpsect zen of Murakami with the keen social eye and wicked humor of a Muriel Spark or Flannery O'Connor.

All three are published (internationally I think) by the New York Review of Books. (following publishing houses like record labels = under-appreciated classic).

Tracer, tell me more about Whittemore's books. There was recently a short essay in Harper's about him, which got me interested.

Tim - if you can handle non-fiction, I'd highly recommed Murakami's Underground about the Sarin gas attacks on the subway system - a series of interviews with victims and perps - amazing insight into the culture. And, also in terms of non-fiction, I just read an excellent book called Ravens in Winter which is basically the story of a researcher trying to figure-out some of the social structure in raven communities - funny and educational - and you'll never look at birds quite the same way. Oh, and I just read a book called, um, The Barbary Plague, I think - about a plague outbreak in San Francisco in the early 1900s. Interesting for the cultural stuff - and for the anger and infighting between the local, state, and federal authorities on how to address the situation.

As for fiction - heck - try Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. And I recently read The Russian Debutant's Handbook, which was good for several chuckles and some eye rolling, too - great writing, entertaining story. For light reading, try the Billy Chaka trilogy by Isaac Adamson Tokyo Suckperpunch, Hokkaido Popsicle, and, I think, Dreaming Pachenko. They're delightful and funny and excellent escapism (and I like the cover-art, too). Oh - and the new book by Chloe Hooper, A Child's Book of True Crime, was pretty darn good, too.

I just started Two Towns in Provence by MFK Fischer, and so far it's excellent. (It's 92 in Seattle, so it felt like Aix, I guess.)

Also very non-fiction: Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson, which has me feeling a bit sad that I have no time in my life to come even close to doing all the house cleaning & underwear ironing & pantry stocking that she advocates. But it's an interesting read anyway.

read the master & margarita by bulgakov, people kept telling me to read that for years so i didn't, but recently finally i did after reading another bk by him (heart of a dog, that's good too btw) & it is very good. also you should read no longer human by osamu dazai.

oh yeah, Master & Margarita is fucking ace - it has a lot of boosters in Dunedin (haha actually I think most of them have left - Dolan's in Moscow, & um what happened with the Thierry Jutel scandal?)