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This is the place for book talk and general exchange of views.

You can start a new thread for every book or general discussion if you like, or stack them up in categories.

I'll start off by recommending 2 fiction books that I thought were exceptionally well written and constructed and that stayed with me for days afterwards. They're also only 99c on kindle. I've written reviews for both on amazon.

Mrs McGilvery A very creepy story about childhood fears in reality and in fantasy. Has a Pan's Labyrinth type sensibility.

Loisaida -- A New York Story Extremely well written and constructed story of low life characters in the Lower East Side.

Both of them very dark books.

Interesting, I've heard good things about Loisaida from someone else too. The fact two separate people rate it so highly means I'll almost certainly check it out...

Alina wrote: "I'll start off by recommending 2 fiction books that I thought were exceptionally well written and constructed and that stayed with me for days afterwards. "

Alina, I'm glad to see you have enough time to relax with fiction. A Melbourne cyclist wrote to me the other day about seeing green shoots on terrain that burned two years ago.

Yes, due to sampling I'n actually reading a lot more fiction on my kindle than usual. I usually only read fiction when someone pressed it on me or gave it to me as a present.

Apparently there's a rare and endangered gum species, the Buxton Silver Gum, that has sprouted all over the place following fire and then flood. About 6 months after the fires the grass trees flowered all over the place. I'd never seen one in flower and after the fires there were literally fields of them.

I'm about to steal that information and look like an expert...

In Alaska I saw the jack pine, which needs a forest fire before its seed germinates; it's encased in resin in the cone, and fire melts the resin so the cone pops out. Thirty years ago the government still paid people to fly around stopping the Indians burning patches of forests. Apparently they didn't believe the jack pine's regeneration required fire. My pilot was an Indian who a couple of times saved my life, so I was inclined to believe everything he said.

I'd have to echo the praise for Louisaida. I read it last week and thought it was just superb. I've written a review for this here and on Amazon too. It is so very well written. Reminded me a bit of Hubert Selby Jr.

Read The Nighmare of Reason-a Life of Franz Kafka by Pawel. I couldn't put it down. I was reading as I ate breakfast. Am now reading The Castle by Kafka. Anyone else into Kafka?

You have excellent taste, Sheila. If you can make the time, give me, for my blog, an overview of Kafka's life *and importance*, including remarks about the biography. About 800 words would be good, or two separate pieces if you need more space. And a review of The Castle too, separately, any length that works up to 800 words. My email again: andrejute at coolmainpress with the commercial extension.

"I was reading as I ate breakfast." In a sane world you should be able to charge for lines like that.

C1978 I was taking a biography of Canaris from my editor's shelves to read on the train on the way home to Cambridge, complaining about having to read serious stuff when I wanted to be entertained, "When will you guys have another Tom Sharpe? Don't you have any commercial sense?"

The editor came over and put this huge tome of the collected works of Kafka, nearly a thousand pages, on top of the Canaris. "Go educate yourself," he said. "A writer who hasn't read Kafka hasn't finished his education. A true original." Too right.

Is your translation the one by the Muirs in the 1920s or the recent one by Harman?

Like Kafka, getting paid for lines like that would be nice, but I write them anyway. I'll see what I can do about the pieces for your blog. My translation is by the muirs. I have had it since 1974. I have been cleaning out my library for the last 2 years (40 years worth of books). I'm very careful when tossing a book. I ran across The Castle and sat down to read a few pages. All of a sudden, a whole new world opened before me.

Sheila wrote: "Like Kafka, getting paid for lines like that would be nice, but I write them anyway. I'll see what I can do about the pieces for your blog.

I'll look forward to those pieces then. Bless you, dear Sheila.

Kafka is great, isn't he? I think I prefer the short fiction to the novels (but the novels are still good, obviously).

He's really good if you want a counter-example about someone making a trite but sweeping generalisation about books. For example 'all good books are character driven'. Wrong - Joseph K's fate wouldn't be any difference regardless of his psychology. (Calvino said this, not me.)

Just to weigh in on Kafka. Yes, his writing is wonderful and is now in danger of becoming undervalued.

UK comedians, when they want to depict someone who is way over the top in terms of disaffection are prone to say things like: "One morning he woke up and found that he was a giant bug." That usually gets a laff. (lol)

So it's getting to be a little dangerous to own up to admiring Kafka these days. But I do it. It was one of my key eye opening realisations as a sixteen year old to find that someone had so profoundly captured the loneliness and isolation of modern experience that I was not alone.

The ongoing question, say in 'The Trial' or 'The Castle', is Kafka capturing the alienation of stagnant East European societies now long gone or is he capturing something much more universal?

You can probably guess where I'm coming from on this.

Seb

That example that Seb gives about comedians and giant bugs illustrates how pervasive good literature is. Reminds me I must invite Bill Marantz to join us.

Just noticing this forum. First, thanks for the shout outs on my book! I am way behind on my reading, so don't have many of my own to add. I just started Moxie Mescal's Concrete Undergrand. I'm enjoying it's Punk/Noir goodness and will have more to say when I'm done. It seems to FREE on Kindle now. I'd also love it if more people would read Next by James Hynes because I need more people to talk to about this book. Seriously, read it. Also The Dead Beat by Cody James. It's so short you could read it in a night.

Welcome to ROBUST. It's a place for people like you.

Post reviews in the Reviews forum here on ROBUST of those three books so we can discover why we should read them, and have a space to discuss them.

Re the Kafka comments. The other day I was in a bookstore and noticed prominently displayed, Meowmorphosis -- from the same bright young things who brought us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's a book length version of Kafka's story where instead of being a giant bug, Samsa is transformed into an adorable kitten. This is not only WRONG on many levels, but it's the stuff of an SNL sketch, not a BOOK. The whole idea depressed me. People aren't reading Kafka, he's become a punchline.

Marion wrote: "People aren't reading Kafka, he's become a punchline."

Depressing. But then you run into someone like Sheila, who's discovering Kafka with fresh eyes. Thing about a book is that, good, bad or indifferent, it stands forever, to be rediscovered by new generations.

I've never read Kafka. I wouldn't dream of reading the latest craze in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as that just seems like a rape on paper. How could anyone think it would be ok to take the best part of a story and change it so fundamentally? It's insane. When I saw the Pride book I thought maybe it was a way of introducing the classics to the minds of kids, teens and YA, to classics with a twist. Perhaps tweeking their interest enough to read the original. Then I remembered that sometimes, as with any remake of a great song, the original always but ALWAYS gets lost in the new version. The new version replaces the old in the minds of the young.

Marion that Kafka thing is dreadful. Gahhh. I can't comment on that in anything like a rational way, it's just profoundly despressing.

I have to admit I'm feeling relieved to come to a place like this and meet like minded people filled with the same feeling of disgust toward Meowmorphosis that I have. Honestly, in my younger years I enjoyed the innovative East Village performance scene, and I could easily imagine a sketch on a similar premise. It might have lasted between 10 and 20 minutes, perhaps starred such then East Village stars as Steve Buscemi in the role of Gregor and Spalding Gray as his father. And it would have been both cute and funny. For one thing, almost all of the audience would have read the original. The same might be done inoffensively combining Austen and Zombies -- but actually writing BOOKS that parody the style and selling them for oodles of money is just too much and in the case of Kafka, it's just mortifying. Turning into a giant insect is a metaphor. Turning into a cute kitten, is just silly.

In addition to Loisaida, I really flipped for Super Sad True Love Story. It also presents a view into the seamier side of a NYC drunk on technology, and its protagonist is as isolated as Kafka's 'bug', he's just infinitely less aware.

(Sorry if the book is not quite 'new')

Super Sad True Love Story

During my amusing and occasionally drunken university years I took a half-course called "Supernatural Literature." I thought it would be a breeze because I'd already read some of the books. But it introduced me to the old Gothic stuff. I'd read Dracula and Frankenstein. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But I'd never read "The Monk" or "The Castle of Otranto" or "Mysteries of Udolpho." Of course they were over the top and a bit silly, but I liked them anyway. But many years later I came across the truly strange book called "Unclay" by T.F. Powys. It could only be described as English Rural Gothic. Goth in an English village! I think it's back in print (it was written many decades ago) by a small Brit publisher. Google if you think you might like this sort of thing.

Hmm.

I'm amazed that Ayn Rand isn't higher up that list; so many people who haven't read her hate her. Otherwise I agree with most of it, except that The Old Man and The Sea is the wrong Hemingway book to condemn, and the James Joyce that deserves condemnation is Finnegan's Wake, not Ulysses.

Andre Jute wrote: "I'm amazed that Ayn Rand isn't higher up that list; so many people who haven't read her hate her. Otherwise I agree with most of it, except that The Old Man and The Sea is the wrong Hemingway book ..."

Are you saying you like or hate Ayn Rand?

Claudine wrote: "I've never read Kafka. I wouldn't dream of reading the latest craze in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as that just seems like a rape on paper. How could anyone think it would be ok to take the b..."

Very true about music.

I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand.

She's certainly had a huge impact on a lot of people.

Ayn Rand showed a great many writers who came after her how to handle serious themes in fiction.

I could take her or leave her. Not a fan enough to be serious about her work.

All of the novels that made a huge, world-view changing with me are dead. Don Pendleton. Roger Zelazny. Edgar Poe.

If you read any of Don Pendleton's books, only pay attention to the first 39. The rest after that are imposter writers, and it's painfully obvious.

Then there is JRR Tolkien. Loved his novels, couldn't 'not' love Middle Earth.

i must confess, I love Tolkien on film but I've never been much into his books after I was in my early teens.

I first read LOTR when I was 8 or so. I've reread it quite a few times over the years. It's what got me into the whole fantasy sci fi genre in the first place. I suppose people see how successful a series is and want a slice of the pie enough to collaborate with the author or whoever holds the rights if the author is deceased. Loved Zelazny's earlier works myself.

Andre, you don't read much fantasy I take it?

No. I'm into hard sic-fi that respects the laws of physics, or, more specifically, I used to be. That said, like Daniel I was a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I like the original Conan the Barbarian stories. But these days my reading time is so very limited, I tend to reread old favorites when I get a chance to read for pleasure at all, because I might have to leave them halfway through, and then at least I know what happened. I've recently taken up sketching just to ensure I get a break, because I noticed that, with every good intention of reading something unrelated to my work over my meal in the middle of the night, I was reading one of the books I'm editing.

Andre Jute wrote: "But these days my reading time is so very limited..."

Isn't that a supreme truth! It took me a month to read Myersco, and not because it was a hard read. I only got to read a few chapter here, a few there, because I was too busy. I've gotten a lot of great books on my TBR list that grows all the time, but between getting my stuff done to meet my own imposed deadlines, I end up with not enough time on my hands for myself.

One day in the future, I'm going to consume all those books and start writing reviews left and right. In fact, I think I'll be doing that after I'm done with writing the Darya novels.

The original Conan was a bloody, brutal read that I've always enjoyed. Edgar R. Burroughs was a man with a wild imagination, which is how we like our literary heroes.

Thank you all for the trip down memory lane, it's a nice stroll I tend to forget to take now and again. Back to work for me. I never knew I'd be my own toughest boss.

You all clearly forget to take your reading material into the bathroom with you. Clearly your priorities are not where they should be ;)

Daniel wrote: "Andre Jute wrote: "But these days my reading time is so very limited..."

Isn't that a supreme truth! It took me a month to read Myersco, and not because it was a hard read.

Pretty thick book, though, if I remember correctly. The paperback we cut up to get the OCR scans was a real doorstopper.

Claudine wrote: "You all clearly forget to take your reading material into the bathroom with you. Clearly your priorities are not where they should be ;)"

Doesn't everybody read in the bath?

Not talking about the bath. Talking about the little throne room.

Forgive the imagery, but I don't spend that much time on the cold white throne. I shit and git, too much stuff to do. I even do the Pee and Flee routine.

I used to read all the time while going to bed, with a table lamp close by. These days, my eyes close before I can fully stretch out, it seems.

To give some type of relative idea while a month to read Myserco was too long for me, I usually consume a book of that size in an average day.

I do not envy the OCR work. Did it once for a library in Florida, volunteering to put some of the older texts on microfilm. Hard work all around.

OCR isn't any fun, but if your backlist is available only in hard copy, what can you do?

LOL @ Daniel! When my kids were babies I learned to take what time I could. It's become ingrained after 12 years of hiding from the little fu....er kids.

Kench!