If you were stuck at a sleep lab with only one of these to read...

Me, well I cheated and had Romola with me, but looking now - I'd definitely go for the Guy Gavriel Kay. Boring mid-midlate 20thC spine, title and font, suggests potentially mildly rewarding dullness withinzzzzzzz.

Let's see if I can get that a bit bigger:

http://s1142.beta.photobucket.com/user/gamalielratsey/media/2012-12-11213347_zps3f0f5ee0.jpg.html

Balls.

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2012-12-11213347_zps3f0f5ee0.jpg

One of the shadowy ones - might get lucky

That's the cop out answer anyway..

i'm doing a week in detox in january and if i had to choose one of these i'd be mainlining Cuervo Gold by Tuesday

Jesus that is a hopeless collection.

Choices would be -

1) Guy Gavriel Kay - YA/Fantasy/Merlin ppl round here swear by this stuff iirc, might as well give it a go.
2) Jodi Picoult - Just curious as to what she's actually like, see if it matches idea in my head.
3) Atonement - srsly fuck a mcewan post about 90, but I guess it'd be argumentatively useful to have read this. I might enjoy it. Suspect not.

My heart leapt up when I thought far left might be a Lynne Perrie memoir.

Assuming I was not strapped to the bed I would lean forward to find out exactly what Great American Thing Irma Kurtz had written about, and discover exactly the kind of take it or leave it mildly diverting anecdotes about vaguely interesting thesis that would be engaging but not to the point of keeping the brain flywheels spinning.

"a vivid and highly entertaining portrait of America reflected in the hundreds of characters she observes from the close quarters of the bus" cmon this is gold

yeah that's amazing. reminds me I must finish Capital before Christmas.

When I was there my eyes kept getting drawn with horrible fascination to the Picoult - prob for the reasons you say, woof. Plus that collection releases something pathologically masochistic in my head - wd prefer to read JP than McEwan.

GGV sounds mildly interesting, perhaps too mildly interesting to be actually interesting tho.

"highly entertaining portrait" - a conjunction of words that has me calling bullshit every time I see it.

Amazon describes the Kurtz book...

This lucid introduction to the sociology of consumerism examines the relationship between production and consumption in late capitalist societies. The historical and theoretical discussion provides the student with the tools to examine key themes in the sociology of consumption.

...which sounds sorta fun, but think it's really just some Cosmo journalist going on buses isn't it?

yeah there is a bizarre mismatch between that summary and the blurb/reviews below.

The Water-Method Man

3) Atonement - srsly fuck a mcewan post about 90, but I guess it'd be argumentatively useful to have read this. I might enjoy it. Suspect not.

sounds about right

Me, well I cheated and had Romola with me, but looking now - I'd definitely go for the Guy Gavriel Kay. Boring mid-midlate 20thC spine, title and font, suggests potentially mildly rewarding dullness withinzzzzzzz.

― Fizzles, Wednesday, 19 December 2012 08:02 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

possibly lamp's favourite author ever iirc

-

yeah okay so i was born in 1985 and i'm always surprised that people have ever or ever bothered to read ian mcewan, should i actually do so i can take part in conversations about him other than nodding my head?

the john irving

i also automatically just tuned out the fact that there was a novel by john irving on that shelf as i have had to do so many hundreds of times before

Ha.

Would probably vote for Atonement with exactly same reasoning as prior poster.

possibly lamp's favourite author ever iirc

right. wd give it a shot then. whatever happened to lamp? Mais où son l'abat-jour d'antan?

Rubenfeld. It's a perfect calm of boring - beige cover; anonymous, featureless figure; Times New Romanesque font; historical detective; likely analytical rather than action; comfortable milieu lest things get too unpleasant.

The only risk is that the lack of friction gets me agitated.

yes, spot on. i occasionally get a vertiginous sense of fear when encountering that lack of friction - as if I had become Avicenna's floating man, in an ontological void, or as if the world, instead of holding rather more than is apparent or apprehendible, holds rather less.

and that might show up on the brain scan monitor thingy you're plugged into.

i'm always surprised that people have ever or ever bothered to read ian mcewan, should i actually do so i can take part in conversations about him other than nodding my head?

Atonement is excellent, I'd genuinely recommend giving it a go. The rest not - while I have enjoyed some of them very much, and he writes beautifully and can produce a marvellous setpiece on occasion, my overall feeling is that fiction is the wrong medium for the guy. What he really ought to do is just write the thinkpieces that he really believes are the heart of his books.

I haven't gone back before A Child In Time though; his earliest stuff might avoid the trap of believing ideas are more important than good stories.

A (very) mildly interesting thing about Jeb Rubenfeld is that he is husband to TIGER MOM.

I think of the early McEwan incest/sex ape/cock in a jar stories as being worth it, but haven't read them in a long time. Thinking about reading Comfort of Strangers one of these days. Found Child In Time & everything I've tried since either forgettable (Enduring Love) or terrible (Saturday). 'Well-crafted'.

Yeah, i'd rep for Atonement too.

I remember enjoying Robert Rankin's Armageddon: The Musical, though I was a kid at the time--suspect I'd find it too forcedly zany these days

Anne Perry - her own backstory is a million times more interesting than any bk she cld ever write
Peter Robinson - dour northern police/crime mystery/procedural, prob p easy reading
Jeb Rubenfeld - features Sigmund Freud as a crime-solving psychoanalyst, exactly as cretinous as that suggests
John Irving - must be The Water Method Man, one of his early ones, prob OK-ish?
Robert Rankin - sub-Douglas Adams/Pratchett comedy-fantasy, yes that horrendous

Enjoyed some Rankin in my youth tbh, like Pratchett written by a cynical drunk, also no bloody elves or whatever.

there's a trick with a life that i'm learing to do: the works of guy gavriel kay

related question: if you were stuck in a two-week flu study with only the books you could bring in to read, what would you, etc

how many books?

I've got a bunged up bose so it's a goob question.

I'd go for Willy Vlautin's 'Northline'. I havent read it but I did enjoy 'The Motel Life'. Steinbeck-ish stories about people on the margins of society.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i remain frozen in horror and unable to vote

Frozen in the Sleep Lab of Eternity.

Thanks for the GVK link, thomp. Will read Lions of al-Rassan in the new year.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

apathy wins the day

either apathy... or frozen horror