RYWHM Book Club.
Is anyone interested in starting up a book club with me? I've just begun reading The Information by Martin Amis and figured it might be nice to open up a discussion about it with all you faceless critics.
Also I just finished Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis which SCARED THE LIVING HELL OUT OF ME and also I enjoyed very much.
Anyhow, if you want to read and dissect meet me back here in a month and we'll tear Amis a new one.
639 days til the next election.
Comments
*sighs*
Someone cleverer that I am, in the face of me bitching incessantly about Martin Amis, pointed out that the reason he doesn't get me in the heart like writers should is that he writes ugly, unsympathetic characters.
He does this in The Information, I think. But a good deal less than some of his others. Apparently it's about his rather savage falling out with Julian Barnes, so that's not entirely surprising. Fairly bitter man, sadly. I'll lend you his autobiography after if you want. (And write your name in my little book so you don't steal it. I mean it. I'm watching you.)
Enjoy The Information, though. There's a fucking awesome tennis scene.
Y Bret
Yes. Pity we don't get a degree at the end of it, though...it's pretty much how I got my first one.
Although I have a predilection for female authors, can we book club them to?
Sublime-ation said...
Yes. Pity we don't get a degree at the end of it, though...it's pretty much how I got my first one.
You had to read your books to get your degree? That must've been a fair while back...
BOOK BOOK CLUB CLUB!!!!
despite my enthusiasm for this idea, i will have to decline membership for now.
unfortunately, i am still rendered incapable of reading a book in less than a year. if at all.
stupid manifestations of grief.
Is it available on audio tape?
I jest. Badly.
I'm in.
I was only saying to Carly the other day that we should start a book club ... but let's not read fake books like Oprah's book club.
When I finish writing my book can I send it to the book club for critique?
Captain Oats: How do the kids absorb books these days? Is there some sort of implant chip?
Medusa: I think we should read fake books like Oprah's book club, but we'll be onto the hoaxes, and beat the New York Times to exposés of their homeless, drug-addicted, hiv-afflicted former male prostitute/Navajo travel writers and such.
[jumps up and down, clapping and squealing]
that's a yes from me!
Dammit. Everyone reads fiction in book clubs. Don't you want to read something real? I'm reading Einstein's Relativity , a book tracing human ancestry back to bacteria, and the Oxford Companion to Music .
Well, not really, mostly I'm writing crap on blogs pretending to finish my own non fiction work.
Sublime-ation: If only such a thing were possible. To get you up to speed on university education in its contemporary form -- well, at least as pertains to Arts degrees -- reading is no longer a prerequisite to graduation. It's enough to incurr a HECS debt or pay full fees and then turn up to classes.
Actually, you only need to turn up to classes if you do not already possess sufficient native intelligence to recognise and reproduce your own name. Turning up to classes means that if you fail it's your lecturer's fault for not being an "excellent" teacher.
Mate, if it was 1996, I'd be happy to read "The Information" with you. But it's not. Been there, done that.
Could you maybe pick a book published in this century?
Love your work.
Cap'n Oats: You mean I read Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf for nothing? It's about a thousand pages. It took me a year!
Although, can you get a degree in Art History without having to sit any slide tests? It'd be nice to actually be an Art Historian with some qualifications. I got kicked of Art History in first year.
In for it!
And to die laughing, read Amis's account of a demonic toddler in London Fields.
And then Saul Bellow's Herzog and Nabokov's Lolita to see what Amis is still striving towards. I avoided Bellow for too long - a mistake!
Sublime-ation said...
Cap'n Oats: You mean I read Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf for nothing?
I'm afraid to break it to you, but you could have saved yourself a great deal of time, effort and lonely nights if you'd just lifted a few choice passages from the wikipedia entry and supplemented those with a few references to whatever a quick google search threw up.
Why go to the trouble of doing the research yourself when someone else has already done a fine job on it? There's no need to reinvent the wheel, after all.
The Information kicks arse, if you ask me. And I liked Lunar park, but I didn't love it the way I thought.
So, I'm in!
Wikipedia and Google probably weren't invented when I did my arts degree.
Kids these days.
I feel old.
Sublime-ation: It's not too late to go back to school and improve your qualifications, you know. Masters degrees are all the rage, I've heard, and with so much competition in that market you should find that it would cost you hardly anything at all (in terms of effort required to complete the degree).
It's a buyer's market out there!
nice work - i'm in.
Can I get a grant to buy a Ph.D?
That'd be sweet.
Sublime-ation: Why would you waste your money on one of those?
Are you an academic?
You sound like an academic.
GREAT. JUST GREAT.
You've picked possibly the only Martin Amis book NOT available at the warehouse. Sigh.
However, for all my other Martin Amis needs, I choose to shop at Castlebooks where I get HALF OFF the retail price of all stock! When? EVERY DAY! Can you believe such a deal?
"NO I CANNOT. SURELY IT IS A LIE?"
I've been lied to before, Random Shouty One Liner, and it hurts. I WOULD NOT LIE TO YOU.
"YOU LOOK PRETTY TODAY!"
Thank you. It's just a little eye-liner but it's nice to make an eff... hey, let's not get dis
OH FOR FUCKS, BLOGGER!
It was me and I'd signed in and all but this posting thing appears to be frazzled. Wednesday arvo blues, I suspect. Here goes attempt two...
-----------------------------
GREAT. JUST GREAT.
You've picked possibly the only Martin Amis book NOT available at the warehouse. Sigh.
However, for all my other Martin Amis needs, I choose to shop at Castlebooks where I get HALF OFF the retail price of all stock! When? EVERY DAY! Can you believe such a deal?
"NO I CANNOT. SURELY IT IS A LIE?"
I've been lied to before, Random Shouty One Liner, and it hurts. I WOULD NOT LIE TO YOU.
"YOU LOOK PRETTY TODAY!"
Thank you. It's just a little eye-liner but it's nice to make an eff... hey, let's not get distracted. FROM THE BOOKS!
PS: I needed to do this free plug because I accidentally spilt metho over a box of new titles today and Booky will have me killed if I don't make up for it with frighteningly aggressive spam-like adverts.
PPS: Of course, I joke. But I have full permission from T-Bag to say that if the next RYWHM Book Club title of choice happens to be stocked by the charming and sexy folk at Castlebooks, RYWHM readers can turn up and get A WHOLE SHINY DOLLAR OFF ALREADY HUGELY DISCOUNTED BOOKS by declaring themselves to be a net nerd. We'll need your blogger login and you will of course need to pass our stringent word verification test.
*end spam*
No wait.
PPPS: I love the idea of a book club. I am in x
Well, that's more ayes than fuckoffs.
So we'll discuss The Information in exactly one month, and after that Anon may have his/her way with a book 'published in this century' (I am clearly so fucking out of touch).
p.s. Sublime-ation and Captain Oats - get a room.
p.p.s. and invite me.
If I've managed to finish the Bandini Quartet andthis Amil book of which you speak within a month, I'm in.
Yeah Ellis scared the fuck out of me with that book too. It wasn't the postmodern spear-tackle of his own life, it was the bit with the ghosts and demons and the Furby that crawls up his dog's ass and possessess it.
I wish I was rich and bored enough to write a book half that good. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
I'd be delighted to!
You have wonderful taste in books. I'm currently reading 'The Corrections' and it is really quite fantastic.
For those interested:
http://reasonsyouwillhateme.blogspot.com/2004/12/book-book.htmlng
but please, you can't mention tearing anyone anything , because of bret easton ellis and the furby scary thing. please? i'm trying to forget it!
oh, and hello.
just went to the link anna gave and am printing off, shamelessly, the list.
a few years ago i felt i had reached saturation point with fiction and started on non-fiction. but have rediscovered my joy.
my books are my loves. my babies. my precious gems.
does anyone else feel the same about libraries? ie can't use them because there's a time pressure to finish plus i want to keep the books. they have to be mine. i feel about books the way others feel about shoes, makeup, their penises etc.
Sublime-ation said...
Are you an academic?
You sound like an academic.
Ouch!
ms fits: the (stable) door is always open to you.
hmmm...i missed this month's book. what's up for march? i am so in.
Comments are closed.