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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

Useful.

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Not a suggestion as I've not started reading it yet, but I've finally managed to get a copy of Les Dawson's 1986 novel A Time Before Genesis. After reading an interesting article about it in an old FT I decided I had to track it down. It's a fairly rare book and prices online are usually in the region of £100, but last week I found an almost mint condition copy for £16!! I will post a review when I've finished reading it. If you missed the article in FT here is a bit more info.


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The rare book shown above (try getting hold of a copy) is Les Dawson’s only serious work of fiction. It provides a disturbing insight into the mind of the late comedian. Its thesis is that the earth has, for millennia, been controlled by alien forces who have had a hand in everything from the Maya to the Miners’ Strike; in its magisterial sweep the book takes in the Spanish Inquisition, the rise of Hitler, the Kennedy assassination, Glastonbury, the Second Coming, cigarettes stubbed out on the eyeballs (twice), various scenes of sexual mutilation, the projected collapse of the EEC in 1989 and the Sino-Russian war of 1992. The following excerpt gives an idea of the inflated tone, which despite its resemblance to bits of Dawson’s stage act is, I must repeat, not meant to be funny

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2006/10/surprising-literary-ventures-10/
 
About the Simon Necronomicon (a hoax) :)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58973.The_Necronomicon?from_search=true

When I was a teenage wannabe Satanist, I shoplifted this and was very disappointed that this was all I got for my petty theft.

Dude, it would be alot easier to use this thing if winged, hooved monsters would quit STEALING it from my library every new moon. And those little black candles that it comes with - they don't even work. I couldn't resurrect anything larger than a cat. Seriously, what a rip-off.

And from another Necronomicon book comment :)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58972.Necronomicon?from_search=true

AND LO! did I See the paint dry in my hallway as it was painted georgian red. To see with mine own eyes the change from its glossy wetness to a satin finish, its heady vapours clouded my mind. EE-YAI the second coat is done.
 
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Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson. Looks as if it's part of his Future History series. We have murder on the Moon in the Chinese sector, an American technician set up to take the rap. The daughter of a member of CCP Standing Committee is also on the run on the Moon, she is a dissident. As well as the SF this is very much a political novel, not just dealing with unrest in China but also in the US with new forces using Crypto-Currencies to battle Wall Street (basically a middle class uprising).
 
Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson. Looks as if it's part of his Future History series. We have murder on the Moon in the Chinese sector, an American technician set up to take the rap. The daughter of a member of CCP Standing Committee is also on the run on the Moon, she is a dissident. As well as the SF this is very much a political novel, not just dealing with unrest in China but also in the US with new forces using Crypto-Currencies to battle Wall Street (basically a middle class uprising).

He's so hit and miss Robinson. Genius in some books, dull in others.
 
What would recommend to someone who hasn't read any Kim Stanley Robinson?
 
What would recommend to someone who hasn't read any Kim Stanley Robinson?

Try Aurora. A generation ship, finally approaching its destination. There are problems, shortage of trace elements, people not having a choice about which ship habitats they live/work in. The story is mostly told by the ship's AI who is asked to construct a narrative of the voyage. In doing so it may have achieved consciousness.
 
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What would recommend to someone who hasn't read any Kim Stanley Robinson?
I listerned to Aurora on Audible. Took me a little while to get used to the female narrator (Ali Ahn) but by the end of the book she was incredible.

New York 2140 bored me to death.
 
I listerned to Aurora on Audible. Took me a little while to get used to the female narrator (Ali Ahn) but by the end of the book she was incredible.

New York 2140 bored me to death.

NY 2140 has a lot of philosophical asides and info-dumps which I liked but I realise that style can put some people off.
 
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I read Robinson's Antarctica (IMO good, attention-engaging) and his Escape from Kathmandu novellas (relatively light, frothy stuff) -- then tried Red Mars, which I found stupefyingly dull; didn't get far into it. Have not touched anything by him since -- should perhaps try for greater patience and endurance, and have a shot at something else by him.
 
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Have lately read the prominent alternative-history author Harry Turtledove's A Different Flesh (been on my "to read" list for years, but only recently bestirred myself to obtain a copy). Seven short stories, in chronological order from 1610 to 1988, set in an alternative time-line in which the Americas, discovered from Europe from the late 15th century on -- as in "our time-line" -- are found to be inhabited not by Homo sapiens, but by Homo erectus (the latter called "sims" by the people in the stories). Still abundant at the time of discovery, are megafauna which the "sims" have had neither the brawn nor (unlike in OTL) the ingenuity to exterminate. The stories explore the ramifications of things being found thus, when Europeans reach the Americas. "Sims" being very considerably more intelligent than the brute beasts, but by a similar factor less so than Hom. sap. : predictably they are not, in the main, treated well by the colonising sapiens. The stories show this scenario unfolding, mostly in the nation which develops in median North America and which clearly corresponds overall to the author's native US, though with many detail differences -- including the culture's having, even in the 1980s, a rather charming eighteenth-century-ish feel to it.

On the whole, I'd reckon, fine stuff -- chief downside being to me, in more than one aspect "not enough of it". I'm a decidedly "qualified" fan of Turtledove: in my opinion, for a generally acclaimed "master of alternative history", his imagination-supply seems, frankly, somewhat limited -- he appears more prolific, and on easier ground, when writing with "real history" as a quite close template; making greater use of his imagination and coming up with more-original material -- as in these stories -- has him producing excellent stuff, but rather meagrely. In the main, the constituent stories in A Different Flesh strike me as excellent: one in particular, I find a gem -- involving Samuel Pepys acquiring as servants / slaves, a pair of "sims" (a trade develops, in shipping the creatures to the mother country). Observation of the ways of these two, and other items among America's biota brought to England, plays a part in Pepys's developing a theory of evolution, a couple of centuries in advance of Darwin in our world. My great wish was for Turtledove to have come up with more of these stories -- there's a chronological gap 1812 -- 1988, between the penultimate one and the very last; and, with his having established the survival of the megafauna, for him to have made more than he does, of this feature.
 
I've never seem the Kubrick adaptation, so the next free evening I get will be dedicated to a comparison.

I watched the film last night.

Lots to like, but the book wins hands down. The film is so infuriatingly vague in plot with its attempts at the metaphorical that I'm surprised anybody understood it. It's a fine balance that needs to be struck between the figurative and the literal and I'm not sure it didn't topple towards the former--notably at the end.

Great composition, amazing film-making, insane levels of visual detail, but ultimately a weak plot. And although the human dialogue was deliberately stilted and cliched, being every bit as dull as you set out to be is still an unrewarding achievement for the viewer.

I could watch the wormhole scene the once without my attention wandering too far, but I'm not sure about a second or third time.

Of course, I'll never know whether I would feel the same if I'd watched the film before reading the book.

Edit: What else can I see Leonard Rossiter in on the big screen (beside Barry Lyndon)? He's fantastic.
 
The Daybreak Trilogy by John Barnes: Directive 51, Daybreak Zero, The Last President. A vast conspiracy is hatched to bring down industrial civilisation, various groups are involved, their aims differing but united in their desire to destroy the world as it is. A nano plague is set loose which devours rubber, plastics, conductors, petroleum fuels, basically eating the heart out of the modern world. This is followed up by fusion bombs. There is also a mind virus or which forces people to go along with the aim of destroying civilisation, is this consciously controlled or is it an emergent, evolving meme?

Pretty good, Barnes has dealt with memes before especially in Kaleidoscope Century.
 
I watched the film last night.

Lots to like, but the book wins hands down. The film is so infuriatingly vague in plot with its attempts at the metaphorical that I'm surprised anybody understood it. It's a fine balance that needs to be struck between the figurative and the literal and I'm not sure it didn't topple towards the former--notably at the end.

Great composition, amazing film-making, insane levels of visual detail, but ultimately a weak plot. And although the human dialogue was deliberately stilted and cliched, being every bit as dull as you set out to be is still an unrewarding achievement for the viewer.

I could watch the wormhole scene the once without my attention wandering too far, but I'm not sure about a second or third time.

Of course, I'll never know whether I would feel the same if I'd watched the film before reading the book.

Edit: What else can I see Leonard Rossiter in on the big screen (beside Barry Lyndon)? He's fantastic.

At home or on the big screen as it were? Two very different experiences, more so than with most films I feel.
 
At home or on the big screen as it were? Two very different experiences, more so than with most films I feel.

Home on a (good) computer screen. I enjoyed the visuals even on a reduced scale, but--as I say--I found the narrative vagueness irritating in comparison with the book.
 
Home on a (good) computer screen. I enjoyed the visuals even on a reduced scale, but--as I say--I found the narrative vagueness irritating in comparison with the book.

That's understandable, I slightly prefer the book but only slightly. It's definitely worth watching at the flicks if you get the chance, I first saw it on DVD (the first DVD I ever saw) and found it mostly boring but was completely entranced at the cinema. Will try to watch the new 70mm soon(ish), they play it once a month at the Prince Charles Cinema.
 
Currently reading Viking Britain:A History by Thomas Williams.

I'm only a couple of chapters in, but am loving it so far. Packed with info but written in a very accessible, almost conversational style.

I bought it in waterstones before Xmas, but I've recently spotted it in The Works at less than half price- just a little heads-up for anyone who fancies reading it.
 
What else can I see Leonard Rossiter in on the big screen (beside Barry Lyndon)? He's fantastic.

I was going to recommend Britannia Hospital too, but was beaten to it. He's also great in Billy Liar and Oliver!
 
Just started this one. Feels very good:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28228605-haunted-by-books?from_search=true

In Haunted by Books Mark Valentine explores the more curious byways of literature. He presents the author who was always being told he had nearly written a masterpiece, and the genius of the short story who brewed his own cider and lived in a railway carriage.

I've got various anthologies edited by Valentine, not sure I've read any of his fiction. This sounds intriguing.
 
Just arrived, not started it yet...

Death Valley Superstars: Occasionally Fatal Adventures in Filmland by Duke Haney

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“If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle,” Marilyn Monroe once said of fame, an overriding theme in this collection of essays, profiles, and memoir by showbiz survivor Duke Haney. Fame proved faithful, of course, to Monroe, the book’s most iconic subject, while others, like Steve Cochran, a villain in movies and a “hard-drinking, bed-hopping cop magnet” in reality, were widely forgotten before their untimely, often mysterious deaths. Taking an experimental tack in some instances, Haney employs a psychic medium to conduct a séance at Jim Morrison’s former residence and an astrologer to interpret the birth chart of an astrology-crazed film star-turned-bank robber. He attends the funeral of the “next James Dean” who became a raggedy street person, performs a cringeworthy nude scene in a movie produced by “King of the Bs” Roger Corman, and searches for the camper van where funk trailblazer Sly Stone has been reduced to living.

Painstakingly researched and compulsively readable, Death Valley Superstars offers a kind of midnight tour of Los Angeles past and present, highlighting hidden corridors and seldom-heard anecdotes about a few of the many who, fooled by Hollywood’s mirages, found themselves caught in its quicksand.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43074886-death-valley-superstars
 
Just arrived, not started it yet...

Death Valley Superstars: Occasionally Fatal Adventures in Filmland by Duke Haney

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43074886-death-valley-superstars

I enjoy very much reading on the seedier side of Hollywood and the movie business. I have just got my hands on a copy of Kenneth Anger's classic ''Hollywood Babylon''. Whilst some of it has been debunked as bullshit and urban legend, the trials and tribulations and ultimate downfall of the high and mighty and those who found super stardom in their day is compulsive reading.
 
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but the Scarred For Life book about the darker side of 1970s pop culture is a massive tome well worth getting for Forteans:
Buy here

TV, films, books, comics, games, food, and most importantly, a lengthy section on public information films! Oh, and a section on the paranormal too. I've just started it and expect to be reading it for a while, but it's wholly redolent of that bygone age. There's an 80s one in the pipeline.
 
Must recommend Jenny Randles book Time Storms, enjoyed it and made me look at things a different way.
 
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