TSF Book Club

[NTA]

@tim just take some in your carry on luggage. It'll be fine.

[Paekakboyz]

@nta I tried to read the Baroque Cycle a few times. I love me some deep and realistic info, but fark he went waaaaay too far for me. Might try it again once I finish my degrees in every known science field!

[Salacious Crumb]

I finished the two-parter biography on Sinatra by James Kaplan, supposedly authoritative and critically praised.

The first part “The Voice” (2010) was about 500 pages and detailed his rise to fame, his downward trajectory, and then ended when he won an Academy Award for Best Support Actor in “From Here to Eternity.”

The second part “The Chairman” (2015) is 900 pages and continues with the Greatest Comeback In Show-Biz history until his death.

I’d recommend it for only two reasons: 1) It tells the story chronologically; and 2) it appears to support & confirm everything that Kitty Kelley wrote in her infamous and condemned bio from a couple decades ago.

And there’s the rub. If you want to know about his numerous connections to the mob and how he was scoring hookers for Jack Kennedy and how much of a raving bi-polar psychopathic lunatic Frank Sinatra was, I’d save a thousand pages and go straight to the Kitty Kelley version. It’s not chronological, but all the good dirt is there. Legend!

[Stockcar86]

@Mokey Is this writing as good as I think it is? Surely must be a finalist for the Man Booker prize

[Mokey]

@stockcar86 Lots of women have been having fun with this. The task was to describe themselves the way a male writer would, and male writers always have female characters thinking about their tits in the oddest of ways.

[antipodean]

@mokey said in TSF Book Club:

@stockcar86 Lots of women have been having fun with this. The task was to describe themselves the way a male writer would, and male writers always have female characters thinking about their tits in the oddest of ways.

That's why.

[Chris B.]

Seems like the Slow, Fat Bastard hasn't been completely sitting on his hands and he's going to have a book out before Christmas - it just won't be the one I'm waiting for.

Fire and Blood

He's going to be 70 later this year - "Witless is coming"!

[Nepia]

@chris-b I love the way the dirty old perve messes with the book fluffers.

[Machpants]

@chris-b said in TSF Book Club:

Seems like the Slow, Fat Bastard hasn't been completely sitting on his hands and he's going to have a book out before Christmas - it just won't be the one I'm waiting for.

Fire and Blood

He's going to be 70 later this year - "Witless is coming"!

It'll be another Robert Jordan, hopefully he had copious notes to hand over to his successor!

[Chris B.]

@machpants Having the TV series made and the story basically told is going to provide even less motivation for him to finish.

I'm sure he's got the best of intentions, but I'd say underlying that is that he basically can't be fucked finishing. And it's only going to get harder.

Since he's worth $65 million+ he should just hire a ghost-writing team to do the donkey-work and play around with a bit of editing himself at the end.

[SammyC]

Recently discovered Sven Hassel, bought 10 of his books off trade me for around $2 each.

Can anyone reccommend any similar stuff? I'm addicted.

[canefan]

@sammyc said in TSF Book Club:

Recently discovered Sven Hassel, bought 10 of his books off trade me for around $2 each.

Can anyone reccommend any similar stuff? I'm addicted.

I read those in my teen years back in the day. Easy to read, great stories

[jegga]

@sammyc said in TSF Book Club:

Recently discovered Sven Hassel, bought 10 of his books off trade me for around $2 each.

Can anyone reccommend any similar stuff? I'm addicted.

The forgotten soldier by Guy Sajer. Similar but more likely to be a true story than Sven Hassels books.. Btw they made a movie of one of his early books which is pretty decent. The legionnaire in particular was well cast.

[Tim]

Finally read C.K. Stead's Smiths Dream. Rather good!

Writes well and with effective style, without trying to sound like someone else. Enjoyed some of the Auckland region references, and Muldoon's Volkner's rant about "people who think they're too good for NZ wine".

Any recommendations from the rest of his work?

[jegga]

@tim I’ve read a couple and that’s the only one I remember enjoying. There’s this weirdness too

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/3570374/Widow-shocked-by-perceived-attack-on-dead-writer

[Tim]

@jegga He took a big shit on The Luminaries, and that was good enough for me.

A friend from grad school in California is an editor at a major publisher now. She emailed me a sample from it because she was so shocked by how bad it was.

[jegga]

@tim I imagined it was like a Lorde album in book form
Pass

[antipodean]

@tim said in TSF Book Club:

He took a big shit on The Luminaries, and that was good enough for me.

I had to look this up:

Each of the twelve men who comprise the council in the first chapter of the book is associated with one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The title of a chapter in which one of these men plays a major role invariably bears that man's sign.

[SammyC]

I quite enjoyed the luminaries, although the ending was a bit confused.

Well written historical novel, I’d compare it pretty favourably to James Clavell’s writing style (which doesn’t appeal to everyone I know)

[dogmeat]

@tim I’ve read some of his non fiction but that’s the only novel Read it when the movie came out as he was my English prof at the time

Decent guy. Very supportive of all his students even the drunken no hopers like me

Last bumped into him in the urinal at Nz house in London. He remembered me which was a shock and says something about the man given it was a good 5 years later and he must’ve had thousands of students