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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

The 2011-12 Graham Greene marathon resumes with my just finishing The Ministry of Fear ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_of_Fear ). The first part was very enjoyable and 'light' in a humorously shadowy way - despite making extensive use of the wonderful Blitz setting - and it reminded me a little of G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Was_Thursday ). There were shades of other Greene books, perhaps notably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_end_of_the_affair - with a WWII setting and a similarly comical private-detective, but some of the twists and conceits were fresh and original to my eyes. As the whole thing unfolded, it became less an 'entertainment' [as Greene has it] and more a guilt-ridden heavyweight, with the reciprocally-deceptive ending of the two main characters a perfect spin-kick-to-the-face ending. (Similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_heart_of_the_matter and, in a funny way, Mishima's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_Horses - a book that greatly affected me when I first read it).

Anyway, it's Howards End next: something I've read of but not read. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howards_End ). The only other E. M. Forster I've read is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Passage_to_India - which I liked but did not love; that fact notwithstanding, I'm hoping for great things and will hold-off watching the much-loved Merchant-Ivory production ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howards_End_%28film%29 ) I have until I manage to finish it.
 
Hi all

This is a bit shameless, but those with a kindle might enjoy my novel 'Black Moth', which has some strong fortean themes. Only one English pound:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0052YGXO6

The Aztecs called it the Lake of the Midnight Butterfly.

Hidden inside a cave in the Sierra Madre, the lake's secrets were known only to the high priests of Tezcatlipoca, the god of night and destiny. Those who entered its waters were said to be changed, their minds opened to a darker realm where strange, fluttering phantoms hinted at events yet to unfold. The Aztec priesthood foresaw their people’s fate even before the conquistadors’ ships made land. Determined to preserve the source of their powers they sealed the cave entrance, leaving behind only folklore and rumour.

Now a landslide has revealed the lake to a new world, and Solomon Hardy, ex-diver, must face his own demons to discover the secrets that fuelled the Aztec empire.

BLACK MOTH is a gripping supernatural thriller where the world of the dead collides with the world of the living.
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Ta!
 
I'm halfway through a delightful book that won't appeal to everyone on the boards but if you're in London or the Greater London area, or visiting, this one's for you.

"London's Strangest Tales" by Tom Quinn , a hardback, only £6.99 on Bamazon.

Extraordinary but true stories from over a thousand years of London's history.

From the medieval human lavatory to the one legged escalator tester, to the monarch who showed her breasts to a visiting ambassador, London's Strangest Tales is a unique collection of extraordinary stories dating back more than a thousand years. Within you will discover why part of London is built on Scottish soil, why the Bishop of Winchester owned a string of brothels and why freemen of the City of London can still drive sheep over London bridge and insist being hanged by a silken rope.
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Quite a few of these tales you'll have encountered before: the trains of the dead. London's old street names etc...but there are one or two gems in there and each is no more than two pages in length. No appendix but he does, in his brief introduction, talk about his research.

Not for everyone on the boards, more for those who enjoy the "Hidden London" thread, full of "I did not know that" stories to amuse, interest and ultimately annoy your friends.
 
Probably someone has mentioned this before but if you go to Amazon and look for the book: A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates [Paperback] by RAND Corporation you will find some nice nerdy comments like:

While the printed version is good, I would have expected the publisher to have an audiobook version as well. A perfect companion for one's Ipod.
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And under Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed there are a few strange items like:

The 2009-2014 Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats in Greater China [Download: PDF] [Digital] Icon Group International (Author)
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Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Somehow I've never read this before in spite of seeing countless Tarzan movies, but it was interesting to go back to the source. He could write a rattling good yarn, and even nearly a hundred years later it's a pageturner just as was intended. Some of it's dated badly (Esmerelda the maid would never be in a movie made now, hell she wasn't even in the Johnny Weissmuller ones), but it's entertaining.

Not sure about the ending, which is basically buy the next book to find out what happens next. Also, a Rynner-style coincidence in that the day I read the line about Jane's father ejaculating in the jungle there was a question on QI that night about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson ejaculating during their adventures.

Oh, and Tarzan's eating habits leave something to be desired. A chimp's arm? How tasty can that be?
 
Yes, Borroughs is a fine storyteller.

jungle tales of tarzan is the best, I think
 
I read all of the Tarzan books when I was a teenager; many of them had an SF and/or Fortean element.
 
I finished reading G. K. Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse late last night, having read about a 'book' of it per night for the last week or so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad ... hite_Horse

It's a long narrative poem that tells of Alfred the Great's comeback, centring on the battle of Ethandune against the Danes in the 9th Century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ethandun

My first reaction was one of surprise: why isn't this better known, quoted and studied today? It's painfully obvious that Chesterton's world-view is out of kilter with contemporary mores, and the Catholicism may have grated on some, but the verse here is stunning: beautiful, evocative and (most important of all) memorable. I'd say if you were to pick a stanza almost at random and read it aloud in the correct tone, a few combinations of words will stick in your head all afternoon (fabulous alliteration, satisfying rhyme, a love of paradox and inversion). It's both hugely traditional and strikingly modern in its directness. The reliance upon Saxon rather than Romance vocabulary also makes the whole thing feel unshakeably English. Like all the best writers, he manages to steal words and associations like a discerning magpie. One of my favourites was this evocation of Merrie England:

Tales that tumble and tales that trick,
Yet end not all in scorning-
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock gone wrong and the world right,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas Day in the morning.
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Or:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

He kept the Roman order,
He made the Christian sign;
But his eyes grew often blind and bright,
And the sea that rose in the rocks at night
Rose to his head like wine.
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(There's also a lot of rending, hacking spurting and slaying - if that's you cup of tea)

I'll always remember an aged philosophy professor's description how his blood pumped fast on reading the Iliad as a boy; well, I'm no child, but this struck a chord with me. It's magnificent - unexpectedly so - and all the better for it.
 
Yith, yours was response 666 to the thread.

Have to admit I like this:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
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Will give the epic a try.
 
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. Heard an interesting documentary about the writer on Radio 4 this week so thought it was about time I read this, which has been on my shelf for ages. Like they said in the programme, reading his work and knowing how he ended up does colour your perception, but this was technically his first novel and he's pretty cheerful in his meandering, offbeat way. Glad I read it, but what I should really try now is The Hawkline Monster, his horror western.
 
gncxx said:
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. Heard an interesting documentary about the writer on Radio 4 this week so thought it was about time I read this, which has been on my shelf for ages. Like they said in the programme, reading his work and knowing how he ended up does colour your perception, but this was technically his first novel and he's pretty cheerful in his meandering, offbeat way. Glad I read it, but what I should really try now is The Hawkline Monster, his horror western.
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I absolutely love Richard Brautigan's novels and poetry. He's not what you'd call...I don't know, 'sophisticated', I suppose, but there's something so raw and intensely personal in all of his work. And while so much of it is so absurd as to be nearly Dadaist, it's never got that annoying sort of overly self-conscious quality that I've found a lot of 'trippy' literature can have. The man had legitimately wonderfully strange ideas without giving the impression that he was just trying too hard at it.

'In Watermelon Sugar' is probably my favorite of his novels though. It's got a lot of horror elements without being outright horror. If you like his style, I'd definitely recommend that one as well.

But I feel like, for anyone else reading this, who might not have been exposed to his stuff yet, don't pick up 'The Hawkline Monster' and expect, you know, a standard horror novel. Like, not even a slightly weird one. The dude just did not write that way - his stories do not, as a rule, make any kind of concrete sense, and if you go into it expecting a typical spooky tale, you are going to get really frustrated really fast. If you like absolutely off-the-wall strangeness and aren't too concerned with it having any kind of sensible narrative structure though, then for sure, try him out.
 
I'm re-reading a book from my late childhood and early teens, Jess Stearne's The Door To The Future. It's about psychics and prophecies in late 50s/early 60s America. Stearne interviewed some of the 'psychics' themselves, such as Jean Dixon, and fills every page with easily-checkable prophecies and other yarns.

As you'd expect, all the old prophecies miraculously came true and the new ones are rubbish. He describes Edgar Cayce's 1940s predictions about great tracts of New York and California sinking into the sea around the millennium*, but nobody predicts the rise of Islamic fundamentalism or the WTC bombing.

There are lots of accounts of 'psychics' helping the police or predicting where bodies would be found. This subject particularly interests me as all police forces vehemently deny using psychics, yet psychics are always claiming to have solved cases for them. There're even TV series about it.

Anyway, if you come across this book it's a good read. :D

*I first read this book in the late 60s and waited agog for Atlantis to rise again in the next few years, as Cayce had claimed it would. Still waiting, in fact. :lol:
 
AtomicBadger said:
But I feel like, for anyone else reading this, who might not have been exposed to his stuff yet, don't pick up 'The Hawkline Monster' and expect, you know, a standard horror novel. Like, not even a slightly weird one. The dude just did not write that way - his stories do not, as a rule, make any kind of concrete sense, and if you go into it expecting a typical spooky tale, you are going to get really frustrated really fast. If you like absolutely off-the-wall strangeness and aren't too concerned with it having any kind of sensible narrative structure though, then for sure, try him out.
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Thanks for that, I wasn't really anticipating a "normal" chiller after reading Trout Fishing. Nice to see the poor fellow still has his fans. Haven't got THM yet, too many other books to read!
 
escargot1 said:
I'm re-reading a book from my late childhood and early teens, Jess Stearne's The Door To The Future. It's about psychics and prophecies in late 50s/early 60s America. Stearne interviewed some of the 'psychics' themselves, such as Jean Dixon, and fills every page with easily-checkable prophecies and other yarns.

As you'd expect, all the old prophecies miraculously came true and the new ones are rubbish. He describes Edgar Cayce's 1940s predictions about great tracts of New York and California sinking into the sea around the millennium*, but nobody predicts the rise of Islamic fundamentalism or the WTC bombing.
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I mentioned it here ages ago, but I have 1980's The Book of Predictions by the same people who did The Book of Lists and its offshoots, and it's interesting to leaf through it and see that hardly any of the predictions commissioned for the book came true. The professional psychics were the worst.
 
That sounds a laugh! :lol:

Tell us some of the failed predictions, then?
 
Two of the Opies' books on childhood turned up in a library sale today. Hurrah!

"The Lore & Language of Schoolchildren" (1959) is not too hard to find. I read it years ago. But, "Children's Games in Street & Playground" from ten years later is a bit of a rarity, I think.

Here one can learn of such innocent delights as "Hi Jimmy Knacker," "Split the Kipper," and "Knifing!"

" . . . we see who can get the other's throat first. But there are certain rules, which are, no kicking, and keep your free hand behind you."

So that's OK then! :shock:

edit: "innoncent" put right.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Here one can learn of such innocent delights as "Hi Jimmy Knacker," "Split the Kipper," and "Knifing!"
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We used to play split the kipper and another knife throwing game back in the seventies.
 
escargot1 said:
That sounds a laugh! :lol:

Tell us some of the failed predictions, then?
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There's loads, it's a really extensive book, but leafing through the celebrity predictions I find Fidel Castro has his own chat show, Bob Dylan has founded his own religious cult, Billy Graham is a New Age guru and Muhammad Ali is a hugely successful actor on Broadway!
 
Jeremy Dyson's The Haunted Book looks interesting...

What unspeakable horror glimpsed in the basement of a private library in West Yorkshire drove a man to madness and an early grave? * What led to an underground echo chamber in a Manchester recording studio being sealed up for good? * What creature walks the endless sands of Lancashire's Fleetwood Bay, and what connects it to an unmanned craft washed ashore in Port Elizabeth, nearly six thousand miles away? In 2009 Jeremy Dyson was contacted by a journalist wanting help bringing together accounts of true life ghost stories from across the British Isles. The Haunted Book chronicles the journey Dyson, formerly a hardened sceptic, went on to uncover the truth behind these tales.

Jeremy Dyson is best known as the co-creator of the BAFTA award-winning comedy series The League of Gentlemen. He is the author of three works of fiction. His book The Cranes that Build the Cranes won the Edge Hill Award for short fiction. He is also the co-writer of the hit West-End show Ghost Stories.
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Haunted-Boo ... 479&sr=8-1

Article:

League of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson on the truth about ghosts

Why do so many of us, against all reason, choose to believe in the supernatural asks The League of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson....
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9631 ... hosts.html
 
If you enjoy reading well crafted and thought provoking short stories, I can recommend Michael Moorcock's, London Bone. It's not in print at the moment, but second-hand copies can still be had. One of which I recently bought.

It serves as a sort of companion volume to Mike's other London based works of fiction, particularly, Mother London and King of the City. Recommended as first rate, non-SF, novels of the Great Wen. By an indigenous Londoner, in exile, who still has a deep love-hate relationship with the City.

It's not set entirely in London and characters from Mike's other works sometimes make fleeting appearances, it's not even what you'd call SF, but this collection stands on its own as some rather fine, good old fashioned, stand alone, short stories.
 
The trouble with a good read is that the next book you read may seem rubbish by comparison! This has just happened to me, although often I'm lucky and the next book will be be just as interesting, but in a different way.

My good read was "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest", by Stieg Larsson. This Swedish crime novel/thriller is in fact the third volume of a trilogy, and although I hadn't read the first two books it stands up well on its own. Despite having a huge number of characters (with foreign names), they're never all together at once, so it's easy to follow the story. And it's a good long book, so even a fast reader should get the pleasure of picking it up several times for a few more chapters!

But that was followed by another crime/thriller story based on a sailing boat. But I know a lot about sailing, and it just doesn't ring true to me. A family go sailing for the first time in several years, but there's no mention of seasickness or precautions. At sea a girl goes overboard, so the skipper goes in after her! That's a big no-no! And when night comes the family all turn in, apart from the skipper, presumably, without any discussion of watch rotas, etc. There's no mention of wind speed or direction, or the course they're sailing... I could go on and on!

Not recommended by rynner! I'll give it one more try tonight, and unless it picks up a lot it'll be back to the library tomorrow! I won't give the book's title, to avoid embarassing a famous internationally printed author...
 
tonylovell said:
Not Arthur Ransome then.
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The Swallows and Amazons, got two thumbs up from me, when I first read it. Great tips on boating and camping, too. :lol:
 
tonylovell said:
Not Arthur Ransome then.
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No, AR's plots weren't about disfunctional families, extra-marital affairs, drug-taking teenagers, assassins, or drug smugglers, IIRC! ;)

But the sailing bits were good! :D
 
You wait seven years for a new Will Storr book, then two come along at once...

Hello - this is Will Storr.

I'm writing to you because, at some point or other, you've contacted me via my website. I just wanted to let you know about a couple of new books that I have coming out over the next few weeks. (I'm truly sorry if this is of no interest - no need to unsubscribe, this is the only email I'm sending!).

In February, The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science

The book begins with a simple question: why don't facts work? Why, that is, do otherwise intelligent people believe in sometimes irrational things?

The journey takes me from Warsaw to Texas to Las Vegas to the Outer Hebrides, where I spend time with creationists, UFO spotters, ESP experimenters and people who believe they have alien worms living in their skin. I meet the controversial 'Skeptic' James Randi, the famous climate change sceptic Lord Monckton, and go on a holiday of World War II sites with the notorious right wing historian David Irving.

Michael Deacon gave it a 5* review in the Telegraph and said it's 'funny, personal and richly vivid . . . Read this book.' Read the review in full. The book will be available here from 14th February 2013.

In March my debut novel comes out. The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone is a kind of adult fairy tale. Set in the 1980s restaurant scene, it's about a talented young cook who discovers long-lost herbs with magical properties and uses them to become the most famous chef in the world. (There's a bit of a ghost story underlying the whole thing too). If you liked Roald Dahl books as a child, I'm hoping you'll like this.

You can find more information on my website www.willstorr.com or on picador.com.

Thanks very much, and I hope you enjoy what I've been working on.

Will
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Charles Nicholl - Traces Remain - Essays and Explorations.

Kind of random collection - being a selection of essays, reviews and articles from the last twenty years or so - but there's plenty of interest both for those who like history, and those who like mystery.

Unless, like me, you consider all human life and the history thereof to be utterly bizarre then you would probably not describe this as a specifically Fortean read - but included is a life of John Aubrey, an account of the rise and fall of Edward Kelley, an essay about the Shakespeare authorship question, accounts of the disappearences of Jim Thompson, Colonel Fawcett and Arthur Cravan, and an essay about Charles van Onselen's The Fox and the Flies, which suggested a new Ripper suspect (tenuously, I think, but that doesn't stop Nicholl's review being interesting), so there's plenty that does fit the bill.

Nicholl is a fantastic writer and a thorough historian - I'd also hugely recommend, The Reckoning - The Murder of Christopher Marlowe and The Creature in the Map - Sir Walter Raleigh's Quest for El Dorado. And, to be honest, everything else he's written.

sherbetbizarre said:
You wait seven years for a new Will Storr book, then two come along at once...
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Great, looking forward to those - I thoroughly enjoyed Will Storr Vs The Supernatural.
 
William Roughead - Classic Crimes.

Caught bookless on a job in Scotland I bought this in a rush and on a whim, not really expecting an awful lot of it - turned out to be one of the most enjoyable reads I've had for a long while.

Roughead - a lawyer and amateur criminologist - was a pioneer of that much self-abused area of literature known as True Crime (a definite candidate for the strict application of Sturgeon's Law). He was a friend of Henry James and worked with Arthur Conan Doyle in fighting the notorious Oscar Slater conviction. Notable fans of his work include Luc Sante, Dorothy L Sayers, Joyce Carol Oates, Henry James, John Buchan and FDR

The writing won't be to everyone's taste. Luc Sante, in the introduction to the new edition, describes Roughead's prose style as 'resolutely unmodern...not that it is in any way stiff, cold, musty or particularly quaint' - and I'd agree; these days I really don't get on with old-school prose, but I find Roughead incredibly readable. A keen observer - wry, critical and occasionally very funny - Roughead was not a mere narrator of proceedings, happy to simply relate the decisions of legal process. He has the gift of the great essay writer - which is to be entertaining without undermining your subject.

Most of the cases are Scottish (as was Roughead), some are historical (as in the cases of Katharine Nairn, Deacon Brodie and the West Port murders), some are viewed at a distance, and others have been observed literally from the sidelines - a product of Roughead's having attended (by his own account) every notable murder trial which took place at the High Court of Edinburgh over a period of sixty years.
 
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