Why read, when you can watch Whats the Story Jackanory!

1984 has always been my fav book

"mmm" wrote:

Why read, when you can watch Whats the Story Jackanory!

Or The All New Scooby Doo, which is terribly shockingly awfully bad.

I can't easily point to a favourite book and I'm not terribly well read but I've always admired writers like Orwell, Burgess, Chesterton, Wodehouse, Waugh, Huxley, Graham Greene... traditional masters with an almost pre-modern respect for conventional English (notwithstanding Clockwork Orange). Dickens takes a little more patience. And then there are great American novels - Twain, Salinger and Steinbeck come to mind as does The Color Purple - with a more conversational approach to the medium. One novel that greatly impressed me is Norman Mailer's An American Dream. Really funky. And I love the poetry of e.e. cummings at his best:

"e.e. cummings" wrote:

kumrads die because they're told)
kumrads die before they're old
(kumrads aren't afraid to die
kumrads don't
and kumrads won't
believe in life)and death knows whie

(all good kumrads you can tell
by their altruistic smell
moscow pipes good kumrads dance)
kumrads enjoy
s.freud knows whoy
the hope that you may mess your pance

every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love

I recommend buying his Selected Poems 1932-1958, published by Faber and Faber.

Other poets I should recommend are Roger Mc Gough, for his finely crafted mix of hilarious and touching verse, and John Hegley, for simple amusement. And there's always Kipling for some really stirring stuff not to mention political controversy. Oscar Wilde wrote great plays and some surprisingly disappointing poetry - maybe I just don't like the ABBA thing with his metre. And I wouldn't bother with quite a lot of the more obscure poetry. To find some real gems on the current scene you have to sit through a lot of dross. (Drinking helps.)

Another book I recommend is the Ukrainian Andrey Kurkov's Death and the Penguin. Also available alongside Penguin Lost in a volume called The Penguin Novels, published by Vintage. The translator didn't manage quite as good a job with the sequel but either way it's a riveting and profound work of fiction.

And if you fancy a challenge, try The Yawning Heights by Aleksandr Zinovyev. Just reading the introduction makes anyone an intellectual.

So those are my recommendations.

Woah. You're into your books aren't you.

I only recognise a couple of authors from them.

In my English Language & Literature A-level exam one of the really high mark questions was: Write about a book you have read.
And boy did my mind go blank. I couldn't think of anything, it couldn't be one of the ten books we had studied and I didn't remember enough about anything else to really write what I needed to make it a good answer.

After thinking and thinking I wrote about John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men. We'd studied that for GCSE and I remembered it quite well, the topics it touched, the different characters representing the era it was written in, the descriptive style, etc. But ...I couldn't remember one of the main characters names. I knew Lenny, but couldn't remember George. I knew it was quite a standard/traditional name so after much thought decided to go with David. Lol!!! I knew it was wrong, but had to choose something! In that type of question though, I don't think they were really after character names, more about everything else... however it was a bad book to choose to forget one of the main characters names.

Dont really like reading books, just dont have the concentration span for them. I get distracted too easily. The last book i remember reading is slave which is based on a true story. It written by a women who was growing up during the Sudan and Arab war. Really good book defo recommend it.

Wheres Wally? (always a fav)

A Suitable Boy by Vikhram Seth

Misery by Stephen King (although I do find alot of his work to be slightly vulger)

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Remember Me ... i forget who its by.

There probably numerious others but i cant seem to think of them at the moment.

I read part of a book once.

An autobiography of sorts. Some (I think French) convert from around 191x, who decided to go on pilgrimage.

His journey involved going through occupied northern Africa. I never finished it. Can't remember what it is called. Thought that it was pretty good. (I don't think the author made it though)

"Imaani" wrote:

Woah. You're into your books aren't you.

Opinionated about good reading, but actually I'm a very occasional reader. Just thought I'd recommend some of the good stuff.