square_wave
Well-Known Member
Finished this one recently:
Steve toltz : A fraction of the whole
A really nice book !
Steve toltz : A fraction of the whole
A really nice book !
Reading
- Thread starter ajay124
- Start date
ajay124
Well-Known Member
The Booker prize has become one of the most prominent awards in international fiction. It is sponsored by the Man plc. investment management group. The prize is exclusively meant for full length novels, originally written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth countries. In financial terms the winner receives 50000 pounds. But in terms of building a long lasting literary reputation and creating a surge in book sales, it is perhaps second only to the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Booker longlist of 13 works is usually announced in July. It is whittled down to a shortlist of 6 works in September. The final winner is announced in October.
My wife has almost exclusively been reading Booker longlisted and shortlisted novels for the past many years. We have discovered many writers through these lists. Kazuo Ishiguro, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan, JM Coetzee, A.S.Byatt, Zoe Heller, Mohsin Hamid, Damien Galgut, Mark Haddon, Colm Toibin, Julian Barnes, John Banville, Hillary Mantel....
Some of the books we enjoyed reading by these authors:
Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas, Number 9 Dream/David Mitchell
Saturday, Atonement, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, On Chesil Beach, Solar/Ian McEwan
The Life Of Michael K, The Master Of St. Petersburg, Slowman, Elizabeth Costello, Diary Of A Bad Year/ J.M.Coetzee
Notes On A Scandal/Zoe Heller
The Reluctant Fundamentalist/Mohsin Hamid
The Remains Of The Day, Artist Of The Floating World, Never Let Me Go, Pale View Of The Hills/Kazuo Ishiguro
The Good Doctor/Damien Galgut
The Master/Colm Toibin
Wolf Hall/Hillary Mantel
Four writers of Indian origin have won the Booker Prize. Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga.
Yet like most awards the Booker all too frequently goes to a book which will be forgotten in a couple of years. And books which are destined to give infinite pleasure to future generation of readers, are deemed 'not good enough' by the judges. David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Ian McEwan's Atonement should have won easily, but they didn't.
The list of extraordinary writers who did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature is perhaps more luminous than the list of writers who did win the prize. Among the writers who did not win were Leo Tostoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Fernando Pessoa and Scott Fitgerald!
Amitav Ghosh made the Booker shortlist for Sea Of Poppies in 2008. The fact that it lost out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger seems incomprehensible to me. There are very few books in the entire pantheon of Commonwealth literature which can rival Sea Of Poppies. It is in the same league as Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. Its that good! And the River Of Smoke, which is equally good, has not even been longlisted for the 2011 Booker! Does that decrease my interest in River of Smoke? No. It decreases my interest in the Booker!
My wife has almost exclusively been reading Booker longlisted and shortlisted novels for the past many years. We have discovered many writers through these lists. Kazuo Ishiguro, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan, JM Coetzee, A.S.Byatt, Zoe Heller, Mohsin Hamid, Damien Galgut, Mark Haddon, Colm Toibin, Julian Barnes, John Banville, Hillary Mantel....
Some of the books we enjoyed reading by these authors:
Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas, Number 9 Dream/David Mitchell
Saturday, Atonement, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, On Chesil Beach, Solar/Ian McEwan
The Life Of Michael K, The Master Of St. Petersburg, Slowman, Elizabeth Costello, Diary Of A Bad Year/ J.M.Coetzee
Notes On A Scandal/Zoe Heller
The Reluctant Fundamentalist/Mohsin Hamid
The Remains Of The Day, Artist Of The Floating World, Never Let Me Go, Pale View Of The Hills/Kazuo Ishiguro
The Good Doctor/Damien Galgut
The Master/Colm Toibin
Wolf Hall/Hillary Mantel
Four writers of Indian origin have won the Booker Prize. Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga.
Yet like most awards the Booker all too frequently goes to a book which will be forgotten in a couple of years. And books which are destined to give infinite pleasure to future generation of readers, are deemed 'not good enough' by the judges. David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Ian McEwan's Atonement should have won easily, but they didn't.
The list of extraordinary writers who did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature is perhaps more luminous than the list of writers who did win the prize. Among the writers who did not win were Leo Tostoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Fernando Pessoa and Scott Fitgerald!
Amitav Ghosh made the Booker shortlist for Sea Of Poppies in 2008. The fact that it lost out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger seems incomprehensible to me. There are very few books in the entire pantheon of Commonwealth literature which can rival Sea Of Poppies. It is in the same league as Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. Its that good! And the River Of Smoke, which is equally good, has not even been longlisted for the 2011 Booker! Does that decrease my interest in River of Smoke? No. It decreases my interest in the Booker!
ajay124
Well-Known Member
The Hungry Tide is very well written. Great plot, characters and prose. The Sundarbans, with all the beauty and terror lurking within their mysterious realm, form an unforgettable backdrop to the riveting tale.
It is a pity that Indian cinema does not have the talent, inclination or funding to film books like The Hungry Tide, The Glass Palace and The Sea Of Poppies. Personally I have completely stopped following even the news about any film made in India, mainstream or any other stream.
square_wave
Well-Known Member
i am not a great fan of science fiction..though i have enjoyed an occasional Philip K Dick or William Gibson..
Embassytown by China Mieville in a sense is unique..while other SciFi books indulge in speculative physics, this one is more about Language...
in most works creatures that populate other worlds in the Universe, intriguingly speak and think in English...
the original denizens of Embassytown , an outpost in the edge of the Universe (whatever that means) called the Hosts or Ariekans speak a Language in which lying as a concept does not exist..Ariekans do not lie..forget for the time being the moral aspect of lying and think of similes and metaphors...for example, i may say, 'i am all ears' but take away the metaphoric and you have a lie...
now imagine having to communicate with such a race as humans..and imagine them getting influenced by our language, lies and all...(in fact in the book, Ariekans get addicted to listening to lies and will go to any lengths to get their fix of mendacity..)..their society is in chaos..until...
of course the book is infinitely more stimulating than what i make it out to be...
is definitely a great read, even though it gets a bit spaced out in places..
Embassytown by China Mieville in a sense is unique..while other SciFi books indulge in speculative physics, this one is more about Language...
in most works creatures that populate other worlds in the Universe, intriguingly speak and think in English...
the original denizens of Embassytown , an outpost in the edge of the Universe (whatever that means) called the Hosts or Ariekans speak a Language in which lying as a concept does not exist..Ariekans do not lie..forget for the time being the moral aspect of lying and think of similes and metaphors...for example, i may say, 'i am all ears' but take away the metaphoric and you have a lie...
now imagine having to communicate with such a race as humans..and imagine them getting influenced by our language, lies and all...(in fact in the book, Ariekans get addicted to listening to lies and will go to any lengths to get their fix of mendacity..)..their society is in chaos..until...
of course the book is infinitely more stimulating than what i make it out to be...
is definitely a great read, even though it gets a bit spaced out in places..
This book was a very ordinary read to me ! I too have wondered how it won the booker
Exactly that is my impression too. I have not completed it till now!!
Even "The Inheritance of Loss" was also the same
ajay124
Well-Known Member
Ah, nice thread ajay! I got hooked to reading probably around class 4 and started gobbling Hardy Boys one per day very soon. My affair with Alistair Maclean never ended...I have wished so many times for him to have written more of his classics. One of the most enjoyable authors for me. Ayn Rand, Robert Pirsig and Richard Bach took hold during IIT days, but I doubt I can go through them again with similar attention span issues these days - esp Rand. I do enjoy Sherlock Holmes even today during lunch hours on iphone kindle - they never seem to get old for me and are great for short reads. Read the famous three of Stieg Larsson few months back and these grew on me, again a pity why there are only those few.
Would love to hear recommendations on authors as similar to Maclean as possible. Have tried various - Archer, Ludlum, Jack Higgins, James Patterson (YUCKK!), Tom Clancy but none come even close to Maclean.
I also miss some of the series that were available so freely in India but not here in US. Wanted to get my 6 yr old some Noddy books that I grew up reading but just cant find them in libraries here. At least he still enjoys reading other books, the charms of Wii and iphone notwithstanding.
Would love to hear recommendations on authors as similar to Maclean as possible. Have tried various - Archer, Ludlum, Jack Higgins, James Patterson (YUCKK!), Tom Clancy but none come even close to Maclean.
I also miss some of the series that were available so freely in India but not here in US. Wanted to get my 6 yr old some Noddy books that I grew up reading but just cant find them in libraries here. At least he still enjoys reading other books, the charms of Wii and iphone notwithstanding.
ajay124
Well-Known Member
sarge_in
Alistair Maclean and Enid Blyton are the most precious memories of my childhood years. By the time I was ten years old I had read virtually every major series of Blyton, and there were so many of them! My elder brother was prescribed Where Eagles Dare as part of his Class 10th course. I was in Class 5 but I immediately began reading it. I did not understand it fully, but I fell in love with Maclean. Over the next 5 years I read all his books between 5-10 times each! Where Eagles Dare remained my favourite, but I was desperately fond of so many of them....Night Without End, Caravan To Vaccares, Puppet On A Chain, Fear Is The Key, The Golden Rendezvous, Bare Island, The Satan Bug, HMS Ulysses, Ice Station Zebra, The Guns Of Navarone, The Dark Crusader. Loved them all until....
The Way To Dusty Death marked a stylistic change which shattered my Maclean dream. The next one Breakheart Pass was even weaker. Circus, Golden Gate, Seawitch and Athabasca maintained the downhill trend. Somehow these books did not seem to have been written by the Alistair Maclean, I had treasured above all other human beings for five years. Therefore effectively HMS Ulysses(1955) to Bare Island (1971) is what I think of as ALISTAIR MACLEAN.
A few years ago I was on holiday in Inverness, and read in a guide book that the house in which Maclean had written his books was now a Bed & Breakfast. My wife and I set out with our back packs, with the intention of spending a couple of days in his house, reading his books. Unfortunately the weather turned really bad and we took a room in the first B&B we could find.
The two authors closest to Maclean's style were Desmond Bagley and Hammond Innes. I felt that Bagley was heavily influenced by Maclean. His books like High Citadel, The Vivero Letter, Landslide, The Spoilers, The Golden Keel etc. are almost as good as the best works of Maclean. Check out his books from the Golden Keel (1962) to The Tightrope Men (1971) if you have not read them. Hammond Innes' evocation of storm tossed seas and adventurous ships was as good as Alistair Maclean's.
Alistair Maclean and Enid Blyton are the most precious memories of my childhood years. By the time I was ten years old I had read virtually every major series of Blyton, and there were so many of them! My elder brother was prescribed Where Eagles Dare as part of his Class 10th course. I was in Class 5 but I immediately began reading it. I did not understand it fully, but I fell in love with Maclean. Over the next 5 years I read all his books between 5-10 times each! Where Eagles Dare remained my favourite, but I was desperately fond of so many of them....Night Without End, Caravan To Vaccares, Puppet On A Chain, Fear Is The Key, The Golden Rendezvous, Bare Island, The Satan Bug, HMS Ulysses, Ice Station Zebra, The Guns Of Navarone, The Dark Crusader. Loved them all until....
The Way To Dusty Death marked a stylistic change which shattered my Maclean dream. The next one Breakheart Pass was even weaker. Circus, Golden Gate, Seawitch and Athabasca maintained the downhill trend. Somehow these books did not seem to have been written by the Alistair Maclean, I had treasured above all other human beings for five years. Therefore effectively HMS Ulysses(1955) to Bare Island (1971) is what I think of as ALISTAIR MACLEAN.
A few years ago I was on holiday in Inverness, and read in a guide book that the house in which Maclean had written his books was now a Bed & Breakfast. My wife and I set out with our back packs, with the intention of spending a couple of days in his house, reading his books. Unfortunately the weather turned really bad and we took a room in the first B&B we could find.
The two authors closest to Maclean's style were Desmond Bagley and Hammond Innes. I felt that Bagley was heavily influenced by Maclean. His books like High Citadel, The Vivero Letter, Landslide, The Spoilers, The Golden Keel etc. are almost as good as the best works of Maclean. Check out his books from the Golden Keel (1962) to The Tightrope Men (1971) if you have not read them. Hammond Innes' evocation of storm tossed seas and adventurous ships was as good as Alistair Maclean's.
You are right about the later works not matching up to the previous ones, of course. One more in the 'good' category was Force 10 from Navarone - I seem to remember I enjoyed it even more than Guns..
Too bad about the trip - that would have been something!
Thanks for the suggestions - will surely check em out. Hopefully the libraries here will have few of them. No kindle versions available on Amazon for Bagley - that would have been nice. Actually, given how little I remember of Maclean's books, may not be a bad idea to reread them as well!
Too bad about the trip - that would have been something!
Thanks for the suggestions - will surely check em out. Hopefully the libraries here will have few of them. No kindle versions available on Amazon for Bagley - that would have been nice. Actually, given how little I remember of Maclean's books, may not be a bad idea to reread them as well!
ajay124
Well-Known Member
sarge_in
I found all the books written by AM until 1971 very good. I too enjoyed Force 10 from Navarone, more than Guns Of Navarone. Among the film based on AM books, Where Eagles Dare, Guns Of Navarone, Puppet On A Chain, Fear Is The Key and Ice Station Zebra were very good. But the other films failed to capture the atmosphere of the books.
I looked up the Kindle store on Amazon US. Most of the Desmond Bagley books are available. In fact you are getting two books for the price of one. 10$ for a pair. The best ones would be:
Running Blind/Freedom Trap
Golden Keel/Vivero Letter
High Citadel Landslide
Wyatt's Hurricane, Spoilers and The Tightrope Men are the other good ones. Hammond Innes is not available on Kindle. But there are a few paperbacks floating around on Amazon. Atlantic Fury, The Wreck Of Mary Deare, The Lonely Skier. You may find some of these titles in a public library. If there are any 40 year old public libraries which still function
I found all the books written by AM until 1971 very good. I too enjoyed Force 10 from Navarone, more than Guns Of Navarone. Among the film based on AM books, Where Eagles Dare, Guns Of Navarone, Puppet On A Chain, Fear Is The Key and Ice Station Zebra were very good. But the other films failed to capture the atmosphere of the books.
I looked up the Kindle store on Amazon US. Most of the Desmond Bagley books are available. In fact you are getting two books for the price of one. 10$ for a pair. The best ones would be:
Running Blind/Freedom Trap
Golden Keel/Vivero Letter
High Citadel Landslide
Wyatt's Hurricane, Spoilers and The Tightrope Men are the other good ones. Hammond Innes is not available on Kindle. But there are a few paperbacks floating around on Amazon. Atlantic Fury, The Wreck Of Mary Deare, The Lonely Skier. You may find some of these titles in a public library. If there are any 40 year old public libraries which still function
ajay124
Well-Known Member
Good Contemporary authors
David Mitchell
Flipkart.com: Cloud Atlas: Book: David Mitchell
Flipkart.com: Ghostwritten: Book: David Mitchell
Flipkart.com: Number 9 Dream: Book: David Mitchell
It is not often one comes across 'literature' which is as gripping, page turning and full of what-happened-next, as Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten. The first 4-5 pages of Cloud Atlas may be tough going, because the protagonist in the first chapter is a Victorian sea man who speaks in the dialect of those times. But once you enter the circular plot of the book, it is a wild roller coaster ride which you cannot abandon until you have finished the book. And when its over there is a sense of emptiness. You don't want to get of the roller coaster!
The mini book reviews on Flipkart:
GHOSTWRITTEN
"An apocalyptic cult member carries out a gas-attack on a rush-hour metro, but what connects him to a jazz-buff in Tokyo? A Mongolian gangster, a redundant English spy in Petersburg with a knack for forging masterpieces, a despondent "zookeeper", a nuclear scientist, a ghostwriter, a ghost, and a late night New York DJ whose hard-boiled scepticism has been his undoing all also have stories to tell. Add to this saxophones and causality, Buddha, cherry blossoms, island cities, a mind unhooked from memory, the Trans Siberian express, hidden narratives of the new world's order, circles and roulette in London, Baggins the Tarantula and a quantum computer born one century ahead of its time. All elements are interconnected and each character must play their part as they are caught up in the inescapable forces of cause and effect."
CLOUD ATLAS
"Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies ...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagans California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanitys dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us."
Seems interesting ???
David Mitchell
Flipkart.com: Cloud Atlas: Book: David Mitchell
Flipkart.com: Ghostwritten: Book: David Mitchell
Flipkart.com: Number 9 Dream: Book: David Mitchell
It is not often one comes across 'literature' which is as gripping, page turning and full of what-happened-next, as Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten. The first 4-5 pages of Cloud Atlas may be tough going, because the protagonist in the first chapter is a Victorian sea man who speaks in the dialect of those times. But once you enter the circular plot of the book, it is a wild roller coaster ride which you cannot abandon until you have finished the book. And when its over there is a sense of emptiness. You don't want to get of the roller coaster!
The mini book reviews on Flipkart:
GHOSTWRITTEN
"An apocalyptic cult member carries out a gas-attack on a rush-hour metro, but what connects him to a jazz-buff in Tokyo? A Mongolian gangster, a redundant English spy in Petersburg with a knack for forging masterpieces, a despondent "zookeeper", a nuclear scientist, a ghostwriter, a ghost, and a late night New York DJ whose hard-boiled scepticism has been his undoing all also have stories to tell. Add to this saxophones and causality, Buddha, cherry blossoms, island cities, a mind unhooked from memory, the Trans Siberian express, hidden narratives of the new world's order, circles and roulette in London, Baggins the Tarantula and a quantum computer born one century ahead of its time. All elements are interconnected and each character must play their part as they are caught up in the inescapable forces of cause and effect."
CLOUD ATLAS
"Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies ...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagans California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanitys dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us."
Seems interesting ???
i never read much Mclean..but i was raised up on a steady diet of Louis L'Amour ...especially The Sackett series...there were others too like Zane Grey, JT Edson's Sudden, if i recall correctly...but Louis L'Amour was what fired our boyish fantasies...
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ajay124
Well-Known Member
I used to read Zane Grey, Louis L' Amour, J.T. Edson, Luke Short and other 'westerns', but after Maclean my favourite author was Oliver Strange, the creator of the 'Sudden' series. After Oliver Strange died, there were a few Sudden's written by Frederick.H.Christian, which were also pretty good.
Some series I was very fond of from the age of 8-10. Those were the days
Biggles/ W.E. Johns
Billy Bunter/ Frank Richards
William/ Richmal Crompton
As a child I used to envy and admire the loony and rebellious childhood of William. He was impossibly, unrepentantly naughty! A natural born trouble maker. For adults he was pure, unadulterated danger. My daughter looks like him, behaves like him, says she's a boy, dresses like a boy, ignores girls, and is as 'dangerous' as William
Just William First Editions
sarge_in
I found all the books written by AM until 1971 very good. I too enjoyed Force 10 from Navarone, more than Guns Of Navarone. Among the film based on AM books, Where Eagles Dare, Guns Of Navarone, Puppet On A Chain, Fear Is The Key and Ice Station Zebra were very good. But the other films failed to capture the atmosphere of the books.
I looked up the Kindle store on Amazon US. Most of the Desmond Bagley books are available. In fact you are getting two books for the price of one. 10$ for a pair. The best ones would be:
Running Blind/Freedom Trap
Golden Keel/Vivero Letter
High Citadel Landslide
Wyatt's Hurricane, Spoilers and The Tightrope Men are the other good ones. Hammond Innes is not available on Kindle. But there are a few paperbacks floating around on Amazon. Atlantic Fury, The Wreck Of Mary Deare, The Lonely Skier. You may find some of these titles in a public library. If there are any 40 year old public libraries which still function
Awesome! Appreciate you taking the trouble! This should give me enough fodder for a while!
More similar suggestions - nice!
While we are on the subject of childhood reading, what are some of the favorite newspaper comic strips of folks here? My favorite of all was Beetle Bailey...in fact my screen-name is from the Sarge character from that strip - poor guy gave quite a few people many a laugh I am sure. I still subscribe to this one at arcamax. Hagar the Horrible is another good one!
While we are on the subject of childhood reading, what are some of the favorite newspaper comic strips of folks here? My favorite of all was Beetle Bailey...in fact my screen-name is from the Sarge character from that strip - poor guy gave quite a few people many a laugh I am sure. I still subscribe to this one at arcamax. Hagar the Horrible is another good one!
I used to read Zane Grey, Louis L' Amour, J.T. Edson, Luke Short and other 'westerns', but after Maclean my favourite author was Oliver Strange, the creator of the 'Sudden' series. After Oliver Strange died, there were a few Sudden's written by Frederick.H.Christian, which were also pretty good.
Some series I was very fond of from the age of 8-10. Those were the days
Biggles/ W.E. Johns
Billy Bunter/ Frank Richards
William/ Richmal Crompton
As a child I used to envy and admire the loony and rebellious childhood of William. He was impossibly, unrepentantly naughty! A natural born trouble maker. For adults he was pure, unadulterated danger. My daughter looks like him, behaves like him, says she's a boy, dresses like a boy, ignores girls, and is as 'dangerous' as William
Just William First Editions
thanks for the correction. yes, Sudden was Oliver Strange.....
by the way, i am kept in the loop with current publications from these three trusted 'friends'...
London Review of Books- to which i subscribe- the reviews are long, erudite and opinionated..the books covered are eclectic (though at times biased towards stuff too "English" for my concerns) and the politics , well a little left off centre.
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - a site that i visit often... and of course
flipkart which has made it so convenient to buy them ....
Ummm....I don't see any kindle editions available...just paperback:
Amazon.com: Desmond Bagley: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
If you see the kindle versions, mind posting a link?
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