Old Prestonian
Striker
I'll add 'The Third Policeman' by Flann O'Brien. Allegorical bollocks.
Worst books you've ever read?
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Thurston
Winger
I think it’s brilliant. There’s only really the ‘Oxen of the Sun’ chapter which gets a bit difficult. It’s not even close to being Joyce’s most complex novel.
niknak_123
Striker
One of my favourite books of all time. Apologies if I was one of the people recommending it.
Nah this was years ago, might try it again sometime...usually the type of book I would enjoy.
Some Random Guy
Striker
I thought Cloud Atlas was pretty ...okay.
Not half as clever as it thought it was but some of the stories were decent. If it was presented as a book of short stories without being split through the middle I would have probably enjoyed it more.
THELORDRODWELL
Striker
OP gone down in my estimation having read ANYTHING by Littlejohn
D
Deleted member 14766
Guest
I'm working my way through all the Jack Reacher books. I find them very laughable too but in an entertaining way; I love the detailed descriptions of American workwear and I benefit greatly from an understanding of what happens to nose bone and flesh when it gets thumped at exactly 30mph at 32 degrees by a man who's just drunk 3 cups of excellent coffee and is standing at an angle that places the sun exactly 42.6 degrees above his left shoulder.
Son of Stan
Striker
Calling me thick here?
Cheers. I was doing it for an MA and managed to read Rushdie, Evelyn Waugh, Roth, Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut (hated Slaughterhouse 5 too) but admitted defeat with Joyce.
Boldoneye
Midfield
This. How that drivel had everone hooked when it first came out baffles me.
B
becs
Guest
I think it was James Patterson that my ex tried to get me to read but I didn't like him.
Well no wonder he's your ex
MooBaaOink
Striker
Readers Wives.
The pictures were shite.
The pictures were shite.
Thackeray
Striker
taipeisafc
Striker
One of my favourite books of all time. Apologies if I was one of the people recommending it.
I thought it was good too, read his follow up something snake related and didn't like that mind. I am trying to remember the name of ne book I read about an Indiana jones type bloke finding stuff in South America it was truly execrable (author was Matt something I think)
It's bad for Ian banks but his shopping list would read better than owt by dan brown
I liked it - thought it tried too hard to be clever but no a bad book all told
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Something by Terry Pratchett which will no doubt go down like a lead balloon on here
jedi_toaster
Striker
David Mitchell is my favourite author and as close to a perfect writer as I’ve ever found.
As for worst book.....difficult to say as I value my time far too highly to keep reading a book that I have decided is shit early on. ‘The Five people you meet in heaven’ sticks in my memory as bollocks.
That’s simply not true. I expect better from you.
I quite enjoyed it!
I came on this thread to post The Da Vinci Code but was beaten to it.
I finished Ulysses but it was bloody hard work!
I've never got into the Harry Potter books personally...just not my thing
jedi_toaster
Striker
And yet they’ll happily slate a masterpiece like Cloud Atlas.Something by Terry Pratchett which will no doubt go down like a lead balloon on here
Terry Pratchet sucks big willy. Puns. More puns. And another pun. Fuck off man.
The problem with Cloud Atlas is it's basically a collection of bang average short stories that Mitchell has nailed together, and marketed as some kind of work of impossibly complex and artistic genius. Not one of those stories stands out on its own as particularly good - the one set in the hi-tech dystopian future Korea is head and shoulders over the rest and still not that great. Every single one of them is at best pretty derivative, and the overarching narrative device is quite shit, it simply doesn't pay off when you wait half the book for the ending of stories that mostly didn't start all that well and mostly don't finish all that well. What it amounts to is some nice writing to recreate the diary of the 18th century character at sea and one reasonably compelling futuristic story, amid hundreds of pages of meh.
What really grates though is that this has been handed down from the ivory tower of the literary fiction genre as a "superior" piece of science fiction writing, as if actual writers and readers of science fiction are so unenlightened and not used to "proper" writing that they will just be blown away by the efforts of a "proper" writer having a dabble in this silly little genre. The reality is that real science fiction writers like Gibson, Stephenson, Vonnegut, Le Guin and Ray Bradbury will have literally thrown better stories in the bin than made it into Cloud Atlas. Most of them have also created narratives a good deal more complex and mind-expanding, and built and explored worlds in their writing that made you think a lot more about the future and the present. It also assumes a lot about the quality of the writing that it is automatically better than any genre fiction, when especially people like Gibson, Doris Lessing, Vonnegut and Bradbury stand up very well to that comparison.
It is everything that is pretentious and arrogant about literary fiction. Perhaps Mitchell's other stuff is really good but I was so put off by this that I'm really not interested in trying any of his other books
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