September's Studious Search For Sonorous Snippets

[j. d. worthington]

Oddly, no, Mr. G. I haven't... and I really should....

About through with my reading of Bierce's fictional efforts. I must say that, despite his abilities with the form, I find his "tall tales" (as they are called in the Bison edition) to be the portion of his fiction I am the least taken with. There are some which are quite brilliant, but too many seem contrived. The tall tale itself is a difficult form enough, as it is essentially an extended joke, and it takes a certain amount of the fabulist to pull it off successfully; this Bierce more than does at times, but at others it strikes me that his interest in the absurdity itself (for the sake of its pointing up the absurdities of human beings in general) is so much Bierce's focus that it actually loses its impact; it becomes too much "all on one note" in such cases. There is some of this in even his supernatural fiction now and again, and these are his weakest entries in that field of endeavor, too; but here, when one takes these tales in a concentrated form, this sort of thing seems to predominate....

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

You're certainly covering many of the best writers. For contemporary American short fiction in particular may I suggest Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, William Trevor, Cynthia Orzick, Flannery O'Connor, Tobias Wolff, Donald Barthelme, Joyce Carol Oates and Dennis Johnson (esp. Jesus' Son collection).

For 'British Isles' short fiction also add to your list Frances Wyndham, Frank O'Connor, Julian Barnes, Kingsley Amis, Sylvia Townsend Warner, V.S. Pritchett, Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress), Katherine Mansfield and Arnold Bennet.

That should keep you busy for a little while at least...


Nelson Algren is a name not familiar to me, although I've since noted that The Man With The Golden Arm is an American classic.

Raymond Carver i know mostly thanks to Elmore Leonard who hailed him as important writer when interview asked him about fav authors.

Most of those american short fiction authors is old news to me but british isles you mentioned i know only Amis,Barnes,Mansfield.

My trouble is not only the lack of reading time thanks to ironicly reading lit classes that make me read more theory books than actual fiction literature. Also since im not born in western part of the world i feel a responsibility to give more focus to Asia,African classics and modern literature. I will read Rushdie for modern novel class but i want to read Aravind Adiga and nigerian hailed authors like Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Somali pride Nurudin Farah who is African great with many awards.

[Diggler]

Originally Posted by dask

I finally got around to reading it in 1983 for obvious reasons.

I was not old enough to have appreciated this book in 1983. It looks like it's going to have to be 2011 for me, which just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Originally Posted by Connavar

1984 is such a legendary book that i avoided for years but it is really a book you must read and you cant skip. Not because you are SF fan but because you are a fan of great books that say something real.

I must admit I have avoided it for quite a number of years. I really don't know why though? Anyway, you have given me the push I need to finally pick it up. So that will be my next book after I have finished The Stars My Destination.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Connavar

My trouble is not only the lack of reading time thanks to ironicly reading lit classes that make me read more theory books than actual fiction literature. Also since im not born in western part of the world i feel a responsibility to give more focus to Asia,African classics and modern literature. I will read Rushdie for modern novel class but i want to read Aravind Adiga and nigerian hailed authors like Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Somali pride Nurudin Farah who is African great with many awards.

I've read Aravind Adiga and wasn't that impressed. Well...OK better than average but not in the same league as other authors I know.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is certainly deserving of the tag modern classic Conn. Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is highly admired here and a book I really enjoyed. Farah I'm not familiar with I'm sorry.

Some of the controversial V,S Naipuls' work is quite good as is that of Rohin Mistry (esp. A Fine Balance), Rushdie certainly in particular the 'Booker of Booker's" Midnight's Children, in fact I have all of Rushdie's works translated into English. Anita Desai is another Indian of note and of course two of the greats inlcude Tagore and probably the best novelist that I am aware of to have come out of India in R. K Narayan. The South African Nardine Gordimer is a very fine writer and been acknowledged as such by being presented with the Nobel Prize in Literature (Yes I know this award does not always go to the best candidate but she is really good) and of course there's J.M. Coetze whose novel Disgrace I'll be reviewing at some stage. From Northern Africa we can't go past the superb Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, another recipient of 'that prize'. The Zimbabwean Patina Gappan whom Nesa introduced me to is another fine talent. Of course I can't not mention the Sudanese great Tayeb Salih, whose novel Season Of Migration To The North which I've read and was voted the 'most important Arabic novel of the 20th Century' a big call I know and I can't comment for that but I enjoyed the book greatly. OH and I simply cannot finish here without mentioning two of Turkey's greatest novelists in Orhan Pamuk and Yashar Kemal...world class the both of them. To close I strongly recommend the best Englsih anthology I know of featuring the works of 'modern Arabic writers' called The Anchor Book OF Modern Arabic Fiction. It features 79 authors of note ranging from Syria to Egypt to Lebanon to Iraq to Morocco to the Sudan and all places in between.

I could continue with more Arabic and African notables and I haven't even started on Asia (in terms of Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Japan etc. ) BUT in fairness to this thread we're probably going a little off-topic, so I'll continue posting items/recommendations to you via PM if that is OK?

Anyway, thank you for bringing up this topic of discussion as it's not that often I get to discuss works from these parts of the world.

P.S., You should also ask Nesacat about Asian authors, her knowledge in this area is extensive.

[Fried Egg]

Right, finished Hal Clement's incredibly dull "Mission of Gravity" and now I'm going to get started on my October month of horror reading early...

[Ian Whates]

Originally Posted by Fried Egg

Right, finished Hal Clement's incredibly dull "Mission of Gravity"

Can't agree with you there, FE. The book has dated, certainly (it originally appeared in serial form some 58 years ago), but this is one of those 'landmark' works that actually changed the way SF was written. This was the first time an author had taken the trouble to get the specifics of the world they were creating as scientifically accurate as possible, involving a huge amount of manual calculation (no computers or even calculators back then); yet none of that intrudes on the story, which is still portrayed as action adventure, merely set against an unusually plausible background.

[Fried Egg]

Originally Posted by Ian Whates

This was the first time an author had taken the trouble to get the specifics of the world they were creating as scientifically accurate as possible, involving a huge amount of manual calculation (no computers or even calculators back then)...

No doubt he used a slide rule like the protagonists in the story.

...yet none of that intrudes on the story, which is still portrayed as action adventure, merely set against an unusually plausible background.

I don't doubt the plausibility and the careful attention to detail the author obviously put into this book. No doubt he deserves some credit for bringing scientific rigour to a field in which this was often woefully lacking. Ultimately though, good science fiction must be more than this and, in my opinion, by every other measure, it as very poorly written.

[bluespider100]

I'm now reading VALIS by PKD... so far so good haven't been able to put the book down til halfway through. It's incredible how PKD keeps surprising me in each book that I've read.

Finished reading the Shoal Trilogy a while back it was a good read although the ending was kind of anticlimatic.

[antiloquax]

Listening to audiobook of "The Moon Pool".
a

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

I've read Aravind Adiga and wasn't that impressed. Well...OK better than average but not in the same league as other authors I know.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is certainly deserving of the tag modern classic Conn. Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is highly admired here and a book I really enjoyed. Farah I'm not familiar with I'm sorry.

Some of the controversial V,S Naipuls' work is quite good as is that of Rohin Mistry (esp. A Fine Balance), Rushdie certainly in particular the 'Booker of Booker's" Midnight's Children, in fact I have all of Rushdie's works translated into English. Anita Desai is another Indian of note and of course two of the greats inlcude Tagore and probably the best novelist that I am aware of to have come out of India in R. K Narayan. The South African Nardine Gordimer is a very fine writer and been acknowledged as such by being presented with the Nobel Prize in Literature (Yes I know this award does not always go to the best candidate but she is really good) and of course there's J.M. Coetze whose novel Disgrace I'll be reviewing at some stage. From Northern Africa we can't go past the superb Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, another recipient of 'that prize'. The Zimbabwean Patina Gappan whom Nesa introduced me to is another fine talent. Of course I can't not mention the Sudanese great Tayeb Salih, whose novel Season Of Migration To The North which I've read and was voted the 'most important Arabic novel of the 20th Century' a big call I know and I can't comment for that but I enjoyed the book greatly. OH and I simply cannot finish here without mentioning two of Turkey's greatest novelists in Orhan Pamuk and Yashar Kemal...world class the both of them. To close I strongly recommend the best Englsih anthology I know of featuring the works of 'modern Arabic writers' called The Anchor Book OF Modern Arabic Fiction. It features 79 authors of note ranging from Syria to Egypt to Lebanon to Iraq to Morocco to the Sudan and all places in between.

I could continue with more Arabic and African notables and I haven't even started on Asia (in terms of Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Japan etc. ) BUT in fairness to this thread we're probably going a little off-topic, so I'll continue posting items/recommendations to you via PM if that is OK?

Anyway, thank you for bringing up this topic of discussion as it's not that often I get to discuss works from these parts of the world.

P.S., You should also ask Nesacat about Asian authors, her knowledge in this area is extensive.

Nurudin Farah has won multi african,italian, english language awards. He is one of those one in million chance Nobel Prize potential winners from Africa. Anyway he comes from my own country and he tells stories that is personal to every modern Somali who knows anarchy, dictatorship, ancient traditions...

We have Nordic African library in town that has African lit experts who help me out with names less famous than Coatzee.

Can you me PM arabic writer names so we dont go too much off topic here ? I can find africa, western authors, central asia ones like Turkey but arabic literature outside Egypt is practically unknown to me.

Arab history,culture is close to my people where arabic is almost national language. I wish to learn arabic again so i can read arabic lit. Its is a singing, beautiful language of old.

As always im grateful to your input, i dont know many people who knows world literature as well as you offline or online. I borrow information gladly from readers like you

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Connavar

Nurudin Farah has won multi african,italian, english language awards. He is one of those one in million chance Nobel Prize potential winners from Africa. Anyway he comes from my own country and he tells stories that is personal to every modern Somali who knows anarchy, dictatorship, ancient traditions...

Can you me PM arabic writer names so we dont go too much off topic here ? I can find africa, western authors, central asia ones like Turkey but arabic literature outside Egypt is practically unknown to me.

Farah sounds like a fine person as much as a wonderful writer to me. Interesting as I don't really know any Somali writers.

I can certainly provide you with some Arabic authors I have read and others I am aware of by reputation. I can give you both modern Arabic and Ancient/Classic Arabic writers. The fact you can speak Arabic and have a deeper appreciation of the culture means you will be able to go a lot further than myself into this area as I rely more on word of mouth and English translations which will inevitably vary in quality.

As I alluded to earlier I can also ask Nesa who has a strong awareness of world culture including of course Literature to provide further details.

Cheers.

[antiloquax]

Just finished "Swan Song". Very enjoyable. Haven't decided what fiction to read next ...

[D_Davis]

Almost done with Ice Trilogy, about 100 pages to go. It has been an incredibly rewarding read, one of the best books I've read all year, perhaps of all time - will probably be making my top 50 list.

One thing I find remarkable is how much more I want to read and know about the world in the book. There are things that are only touched upon that could make amazing books on their own, and I would love to read those books.

The only other thing I can think of to compare it to is the Tet Corporation in the Dark Tower series. That whole sub-plot was among my favorites, and I loved the details in book six. However, I would love to read an entire series about the Tet Corporation, it's members, how it was formed, and what it did. The same thing can be said about Sorokin's book - I'd love to know more about the Ice corporation, www.icehammervictims.org, and all sorts of neat little things.

Sorokin has done something amazing with this book. I wish the books was non-fiction, so that I could read all about the people, places, and evens on wiki and other sources.

[HareBrain]

Recently bought two long-ish YA novels as part of a 3-for-2 deal. Oddly, both turned out to be written in first-person present tense, and feature Earth humans in unpleasant futures.

First was The Knife of Letting Go by Patrick Ness, which won the Guardian children's fiction award but which I tossed aside a hundred pages in, the second fifty being an epic battle with indifference. Nothing came alive for me -- the personality-bypass protagonist (who never narrates anything in twenty words where a hundred will do), the dog who says "poo", the setting, the language, the central mystery (which I flicked to the end to find the answer to, and which was barely worth the three minutes that took). I'm baffled by the reviews it's had.

Next, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which I haven't yet finished but have to tear myself away from every time I pick it up. I was a bit dubious about it in advance, thinking the premise horrible, unlikely and vaguely exploitative, but was won over almost at once by the incredibly engaging main character. And although Collins hasn't tried to do anything interesting with the first-person-present form, it isn't distracting either, unlike Ness's rather hamfisted (in my opinion) approach. I can see myself zipping through the rest of this and its sequels in a couple of weeks.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by D_Davis

Sorokin has done something amazing with this book. I wish the books was non-fiction, so that I could read all about the people, places, and evens on wiki and other sources.

Damn...having the Sorokin trilogy and being a fan of King's Dark Tower (books and graphic novels) I will need to push this towards the very apex of my TBR mountain.

Thanks for the reports....