I am currently reading: Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

30/1/10 - Yesterday, I finished Marabou Stork Nightmares. I don't really know what to make of it really. I don't think it's thought of as one of Welsh's better novels, perhaps I'm wrong there. I'd certainly give another of his books a go, but I'm not sure if any of his other work particularly appeals to me; the main pull for me about MSN was that it was narrated by a guy in a coma, and one of the storylines of the book followed him in his altered mental state. I find that kind of thing interesting, it gives the author a lot of licence for one thing, plus it allows for very clever imagery and metaphors to relate back to the character's 'real' life. My interest in stuff like that is pretty much centred on reading The Bridge by Iain Banks, which remains one of my favourite books. There are certainly a lot of subtleties in MSN that I know I missed out on, and I should probably go back and reread it at some point. But, the storyline itself wasn't that great. Plus, some of it was pretty nasty, particularly the ending, and Welsh doesn't half like to overuse particular words in it. At least one of which I won't mention, but you can use your imagination.

One other thing it has in common with The Bridge that I do like though, is the parts written in phonetic Scots dialect. I worry a little about how that must translate to others, particularly people who aren't familiar with Scottish slang terms or who have never heard it spoken like that. I guess in reality it's not too difficult to grasp what's being said, I mean stuff like "Ah'm gaunny pit this oan fir the laddie, the laddie's no wantin tae hear aboot fitba." is hardly difficult to translate. I think The Bridge is a bit worse for it really, there were some parts of that which I had to really take my time over the first time I read it because I just couldn't decipher it. Although that didn't detract from the book at all to me, oddly. Anyway, this is a weird tangent. I read MSN to give Irvine Welsh a chance. Having read it, sure I'd read another of his, but he's far from the best author I've ever read, and I don't really see why he's so popular either.

Next up I'm going to start reading through What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver. Which is a series of short stories, so I ought to get through that fast. After that I want to get started on Stone Junction.

29/12/09 - Haven't done a lot of reading recently, I got about half way through Naive. Super and I stopped because uni work started to pile up, then the holidays started and I've not had much time. Naive. Super has been excellent so far though, I'm probably gonna go and try to finish it over the next couple of days, while I'm sick with a cold and lounging around the house anyway since it's too bloody snowy to go out anywhere.
Bought a few books from work this weekend which I'm looking forward to getting into. Stone Junction by Jim Dodge, which i half-read when I worked in Borders after one of my managers recommended it to me, it was good but I didn't really take it in, I've fancied giving it a proper read for ages. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, on the recommendation of a guy I work with. No idea what to expect, but I'm willing to give it a try. I bought Wish I Was Here by Jackie Kay, I have it already somewhere, I had the hardback version which I ordered in for myself when I worked at Borders but I cannot for the life of me find it, so I just rebought it. Finally, and against my usual judgement, I bought Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh. I've never been a fan of Welsh, and I don't even really know why. Same with Chuck Palahniuk, both are very famous authors with large followings, I've read very little by either but I've had this notion that I just don't like them. However Marabou Stork Nightmares sounds good, and I reckon I ought to give Welsh a fair chance, after all he has to be popular for a reason.

Off to read!

6/12/09 - Finally finished The Road yesterday. It was a really good book, I have no idea why it took me so long to get through it. Every time I sat down and read for a while, about an hour would have passed and I'd have moved on about 10 pages. The style of the dialogue in the book isn't as distracting as I thought it would be, particularly when there's very very little extensive dialogue in it anyway. Quite looking forward to the film of it that's meant to be out in January, or at least I think it's January. If they've done it well it could be a very good 'un.
I was more surprised that I could quite happily visualise all that was going on in the book though. I don't know if that's a compliment towards McCarthy's writing style or whether his descriptions were just vague enough that it was easy to imagine it, but I've always found sci-fi/fantasy stuff hard to follow because of it, so that was quite pleasant. Anyway, it's certainly worth a read.

Currently working through The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Decided to read this on the basis of a few favourable reviews/recommendations, plus the basic premise of the book sounds really interesting, I find the whole post-apocalyptic thing quite fascinating, although I do have a bit of an issue with sci-fi/fantasy as a genre (in that it's mostly terrible). I'm only about 70 pages through it, but it's been very interesting so far, once you adjust to the writing style. Can be a wee bit hard to follow at time due to that, particularly the dialogue, although the dialogue is never very expansive anyway. It's keeping me interested though, which is always a plus!

At work today, we were trying to find 4 copies of a book which were meant to be in store, but we had no idea where they are. It's by a Scottish author called Jackie Kay. She's an author I've liked for quite a long time now, but I'd completely forgotten her surname and as such I've spent about 3 months lately trying to remember who she is, so today was awesome. I got into her back when I worked for Borders, and I picked up a short story of hers called Sonata, part of the Picador Shots series (which are an absolutely excellent idea, basically it's a short story by a random author, they cost £1 each, found many a good author through them, I highly recommend them). Now, if only I could find where the hell my copy of Wish I Was Here was, as I want to reread it. Although I've got Naive. Super by Erlend Loe to read once I finish The Road, and I've had a copy of Fahrenheit 451 sitting here for months too. Too many books to read!

Lets get started then.

Tao Lin - Shoplifting From American Apparel

This was the last book I read. I bought it on the basis of a couple of recommendations I'd seen online, and the concept of a short, humorous book seemed very very appealing to me after having finished reading Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin (perhaps a review of that another time) over the past few weeks - it was heavy going.
The book itself is written in a fairly peculiar style, there's little to no descriptions of characters or background information, the dialogue is very informal, but then the methods of dialogue are equally so; a fair amount of communication between the protagonist and another character is over the medium of Gmail Chat.
Very much a strange look at modern culture, where consumerism and technical convenience are part of every day life (as is iced coffee), it's a surprisingly good book. Lin manages to create humour from a mundane situation, and it's an interesting introspective on modern lifestyles. Certainly worth a read, and at only roughly 100 pages, it's good for killing an hour or so.