The Hit List

[Kirstypie]

Not really a literature hit list, but I really liked Rule of Four when I read it recently, and all the Elvis Cole books by Robert Crais are echellentay. Just please god not the Da Vinci Code.

[Fez]

i don't get the appeal of the da vinci code - i got a copy off my gran who liked it a lot (she's very into john grisham and the like), but i just couldn't stomach the writing style of this at all.

it's so dull and cheap, the literary version of a piss-poor made for tv movie. the idea of the story as far as i understand it sounds interesting (i gave up on trying to read this after the first five or six chapters in disgust), but the way dan brown writes is so uninspired.

[Mike]

I liked the story in the DaVinci Code. I wont comment on the writing other to say that it was an unclallenging read.

[Lizzie]

Sometimes an unchallenging but entertaing read is exactly what you need though!!

Think Jackie Collins- total trash yet I can't put them down !!!

[Claire]

I did very much enjoy the Da Vinci Code and am looking forward to the film. I read Angels and Demons after it and on my second Dan Brown read i did start to pick up on some formulaic characteristics, like knowing without doubt that their has to be a baddie on the inside - you just end up trying to second guess who it'll be (and not in a good way). And i totally agree with Lizzie - there is definitely a time and a place for trash lit like Marian Keyes etc. For more high brow, i'm generally a fan of the Man Booker prize winners - Disgrace by JM Coetzee is a great book, Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is good too. Really want to read Life of Pi but haven't got round to it yet. Anyone read it?

[Mike]

Really want to read Life of Pi but haven't got round to it yet. Anyone read it?

I know I have and I think mr_e has as well. I would rate it as one of the most interesting books I have ever read. I think I need to read it again to pick up the nuances of the story. It should deffo be on this hit list!

The Life of Pi - Yann Martel

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan . . . . and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

Well worth a read.

[mr_e]

The Life Of Pi is one freaky, wierd book. Surreal, beautiful, and it has some really heavy religious metaphors that aren't immediately obvious. Not to me, anyway.

Available on loan from your local mr_e.

[Kirstypie]

Life of Pi - reading m'freshly delivered Total Film this morning, it's being made into a movie. Hope it comes out cool.

[Andy]

Following a message from Fez on 'The Soundtrack to your life' about reviving this post, I have trolled through the archives and finally found it. I also found some slightly disturbing stuff from before I joined. What interesting imaginations we all have!

Anyway, lets get back on track. I've just recently read a few of Arthur Miller's plays and I thought they were fabulous.

A View from the Bridge

Eddie Carbone is a Brooklyn Longshoreman, a hard-working man whose life has been very predictable. He hasn't counted on the arrival of two of his wife's relatives, illegal immigrants from Italy. Nor, has he recognised his true feelings for his beautiful niece, Catherine. In due course, what Eddie doesn't know - about her, about life, about his own heart - has devestating consquences.

Also, this is currently on at the Bolton Octagon - my parents went to see it yesterday and gave it a great review.

Death of a Salesman
I found this to be a very good read. I felt that there was a good mix of characters and plot - very enjoyable.

Willy Loman, a sixty-year-old traveling salesman, is having trouble lately because he can't seem to keep his mind on the present. He keeps drifting back and forth between reality and memory, looking for exactly where his life went wrong. Having been demoted to a strictly commissions salesman, as he was in the beginning of his career, Willy begins to wonder what missed opportunity or wrong turn led his life to this dismal existence. Willy always believed that being well liked was the key to success -- it's not what you know, it's who you know. But now, as he nears the end of his life, he realizes that the only things you can count on are the things you can touch. You can't touch appointments and half-hearted sentiments. This was something that his brother, Ben, a man independently wealthy by the age of twenty-one, tried to tell him years ago. Despite this, Willy insisted that his success would come from being well liked.

Throughout his life, Willy attempted to show his sons the keys to success and to prepare them his oldest son, for excellence in the business world. Willy pretended to be an important, respected, and successful salesman to win the love and respect of his family (and himself in some ways). However, it is built on lives and he realiaes that he is a failure and he has wasted his life. Not only that, but he has taught his sons the wrong things. Willy taught his sons the wrong things, and now their lives are mediocre because of it.

The Crucible

A re-telling of the McCarthy era red scare that occurred in the United States after World War II. Based on historical accounts, the play is set during the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials when several young girls accuse innocent town members of witchcraft to avoid getting into trouble for entertaining ideas of witchery themselves. The husbands of some of the women involved try to convince the judges as to the girls' deceit, but find them unshakeable. Eventually even the most prominent members of the community find themselves indicted, and the tension mounts as the central protagonist, John Proctor, must confess an earlier adultery in order to save his own wife from being hanged based upon charges brought by his former lover.

I read this at school and had mixed reactions to it. However, I have read it again and understand it and appreciate it a great deal more.

Miller has written other good plays and those are also worth looking at.

[johnriley1uk]

A couple more that might excite the imagination, but they could be very difficuly to find:

Finger by Christopher Wilkins.
The Wind In The Snottygobble Tree by Jack Trevor Story

Very bizarre and clever books. The second one is also extremely funny.

And some classic SF to read:

Three To Conquer by Eric Frank Russell
The Evolution Man by Roy Lewis
The Drowned Word by J G Ballard
Gloriana by Michael Moorcock
Bill The Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

[Andy]

And some classic SF to read:

Three To Conquer by Eric Frank Russell
The Evolution Man by Roy Lewis
The Drowned Word by J G Ballard
Gloriana by Michael Moorcock
Bill The Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

I have 'The Evolution Man' and 'The Drowned World' and 'The Demolished Man'. I love Moorcock and seeing as he has said that he has finished writing his 'Eternal Champion' series I think the time is right to read them. One of my friends has read 95% (probably all now) of his books and he rates them very highly.

I particularly liked Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination'. Gully Foyle was a very good central character. I thought that the concept of 'space-jaunting' was a very interesting one that would be particularly useful!

[mr_e]

I really liked The Crucible when I read it at school, enjoyed being made to read sections of it as well. I'll re-read it at some stage and see how it goes (still got my school copy).

Also, on a slightly random note, one of my sister's friends actually writes comic book storylines, including some for Marvel and Warhammer. Nice chap, too.

[hazel]

The Dragonlance Chronicles By Tracey Hickman and Margaret Wies-Fabulous set of books, also The land of far beyond my dad introduced it too me years ago loved it since.

[Mike]

The Architect in Practice [8th Edition] is what I am reading at the moment. It has an interesting and well structured storyline but I feel it may be rather predicatable in the end. I will let you all know how it ends.

I now feel I should be inspired and go and get an exciting book to read. I also liked Next of Kin E F Russell. I think it might have been mentioned above but it is worth mentioning twice!

EDIT The Architect in Practice [9th Edition] is even more sintilating that the previous edition.

[Andy]

Whilst on holiday I was recommended this book by a very intelligent young lady called Hazel who is wanting to go to Sheffield University. I read it and discussed it with her at great lengths. It is sort of a modern Ulysses but nowhere near as exhaustive. I found it extremely relevant to the world that we live in today.

Saturday by Ian McEwan

Saturday is a novel set within a single day -- 15 February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children, who are young adults. What troubles him is the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne makes his way to his usual squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousand of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug called Baxter. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man. Baxter, in his turn, believes the surgeon has humiliated him, and visits the opulent Perowne home that evening, during a family reunion - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep this doomed figure alive.

I would give this a rating of 9 1/2 out of 10. It is one of my favourite modern novels and I will be definitely reading some more of his work soon.

She also recommended Attonement and First Love, Last Rites by the same author.