Collected Poems - Roger McGough
The Three Musketeers (and several of the sequels) - Alexandre Dumas [in English, for the record]
The Complete MAUS - Art Spiegelman
Consider The Lobster: and other essays - David Foster Wallace
The Unquiet Grave - 'Palinurus' (Cyril Connolly)
Complete Works - Oscar Wilde [the poetry is mostly terrible, but I didn't know that then]
Whale (or any other) Adventure - Willard Price
Translations - Brian Friel
Regeneration / The Eye in the Door / The Ghost Road - Pat Barker
'Books v. cigarettes' - George Orwell
Showing posts with label Orwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orwell. Show all posts
Saturday, 20 September 2014
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
An April Fool(!)
Mae Dappersonne introduces Penguin Now!, a new range of classic novels grammatically updated for 2014.
Should Penguin Now! prove a success, the team are looking into replacing the traditional ? with a more contemporary :/[With thanks to Alexandra Coghlan]
Friday, 2 March 2012
12 out of 50 of the 'coolest' books (EVER!!)
Here, according to Shortlist.com are the 50 coolest books in existence.
By which they, of course, mean novels. All but two written in English (I include Trainspotting). All but one written after WW2.
Of which I have read approx. 12. To wit (and in Shortlist's order):
I make no apology for the remainder, nor any judgement on the issue of 'cool'. The caveats and small print one might apply to such a list, however (any list of this nature, but this one in particular), would/probably ought to include books I regret bothering with (Naked Lunch); books that have certainly deterred me from reading anything else by the same author (Lot 49) and/or books I have no intention of reading (Dice Man, Fear of Flying, Neuromancer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Wasp Factory, Morvern Callar, The Secret History); authors I have persevered with but whose books turn out all to be remarkably similar (Kerouac, Coupland); authors not represented here by their best work (Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, HST); authors by whom I have read other works (Hemingway, Calvino, Heller, Ballard, Amis, Bukowski, Murakami, Orwell, Capote, Wolfe, Franzen, Chabon, DeLillo); and books I have consumed, instead, as film (American Psycho, Clockwork Orange, Perfume, One Flew..., Nineteen Eighty-Four, and - if it can be counted - Howl).
By which they, of course, mean novels. All but two written in English (I include Trainspotting). All but one written after WW2.
Of which I have read approx. 12. To wit (and in Shortlist's order):
On The Roadand halves of Middlesex and The Crying of Lot 49.
Naked Lunch
Slaughter-House-Five
Generation X
A Confederacy of Dunces
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Trainspotting
Fight Club
Watchmen
The Great Gatsby
I make no apology for the remainder, nor any judgement on the issue of 'cool'. The caveats and small print one might apply to such a list, however (any list of this nature, but this one in particular), would/probably ought to include books I regret bothering with (Naked Lunch); books that have certainly deterred me from reading anything else by the same author (Lot 49) and/or books I have no intention of reading (Dice Man, Fear of Flying, Neuromancer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Wasp Factory, Morvern Callar, The Secret History); authors I have persevered with but whose books turn out all to be remarkably similar (Kerouac, Coupland); authors not represented here by their best work (Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, HST); authors by whom I have read other works (Hemingway, Calvino, Heller, Ballard, Amis, Bukowski, Murakami, Orwell, Capote, Wolfe, Franzen, Chabon, DeLillo); and books I have consumed, instead, as film (American Psycho, Clockwork Orange, Perfume, One Flew..., Nineteen Eighty-Four, and - if it can be counted - Howl).
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