Books
Following on from ChickenLady last week, I was talking to a friend about books and he recommended The Time Travellers Wife.

I was drunk when he was telling me, so aside from knowing it's about the wife of a time traveller, I know little else. It sounded good though.

Any other recommendations, drunken or otherwise?
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Mon 22 Sep 2008, 10:56, 12 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

I really liked
The Time Travellers wife.
It made my heart feel all puffy!

It's not very often a book makes me cry. The way the conversations flow are very well written.

I read We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver recently, it took a while to get into but once it got going I couldn't put it down. It's letters written from a woman to her husband about their son who killed loads of kids in his school.
( wanderlust, Mon 22 Sep 2008, 11:09, Reply)

Hmm
I've got the Time Travellers Wife at home, had it for months, never bothered to read it.

Tbh, if I'm going to recommend books, I always go with Pratchett, you can't go wrong!
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Mon 22 Sep 2008, 11:09, Reply)

I loved The Time Travellers Wife
also No Time For Goodbye is well worth a go. It should be cheap in WH Smiths.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 22 Sep 2008, 11:16, Reply)

time travellers wife is awesome
so is we need to talk about kevin. however, much as i do like lionel shriver's other books, they do take a long time to read and she has a real knack of creating characters that you really don't care about, yet you care what happens. willie from "double fault" is a right royal pain in the arse.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 22 Sep 2008, 11:18, Reply)

Time Travelers Wife
Is amazing and probably my favourite book. They are making a film version with Eric Bana as the main character (yummers) which should be out around christmas time.

It made me cry and I've re-read it more than a few times and due to the non-linear chronology of it I find every time I pick up a little bit more.

It's ace.
(Lucy Van Pelt embracing ginlovers, Mon 22 Sep 2008, 13:54, Reply)

Mr Bin
read Time Travellers Wife! That really says a lot.

I have to say I hate the thought of there being a film.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 22 Sep 2008, 14:49, Reply)

I agree
That Pratchett takes teh win.

Also winnable are the Dirk Gently books by Douglas Adams, and of course the HHG series but I'm assuming anyone who is into such things will have read them many times already.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is a great book, I read it in one sitting and cried, and then read it again.

Am currently struggling through Titus Groan. I read Ghormenghast years ago and suddenly had the urge to read the rest of the trilogy. I like it but I always read it when I am falling asleep, and it's not the best book for that.

Ooh and Gabriel Garcia Marquez! Got a ten book boxset ages ago and forgot about it, remembered about it and read the first book thinking "well... this is a fucking strange book"... And devoured the rest thinking the same thing for each book. His writing is fairly indescribable (although the millions of review excerpts on the covers do a compelling job of it) but absolutely addictive.
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Mon 22 Sep 2008, 18:36, Reply)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - I recently read My Melancholy Whores - beautifully crafted, wonderful literature, but...um...didn't care for it much. I do want to read Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude though...especially as his 'thing' is magical realism - I'm going through a magical realism phase at the moment, so Rushdie's latest is sitting waiting to be read (The Enchantress of Florence) and at the moment I'm reading King's latest - Duma Key.
I've always liked Stephen King but like the whole of the Literary Establishment I believed he just produced airport throwaway fiction. Reading his semi-autobiographical book 'On Writing' made me change my opinion...he's definitely up there with the literary greats and magical realism is his thing.

So that's it for this week - Duma Key by Stephen King. It's fairly easy reading, some quite nice themes running through it, some slightly scary parts (although to be fair I've been reading while in the grips of a nasty kidney infection so I've been suffering bad dreams anyway...reading Stephen King is probably not a good idea...).
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 22 Sep 2008, 19:32, Reply)

Peter Andre's autobiography
is shit, I believe.

ha, had you going
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Mon 22 Sep 2008, 22:31, Reply)

read it
read it NOW!

EDIT: After reading everyone else's replies, yeah, it made me cry too.

I am scared of the movie and will avoid it like the palgue.

Chuck Palahnuick (sp?) is fucking awesome. He wrote fightclub. The best thing of his I've read is Rant and I reccommend it to anyone on b3ta, I think it goes with the sense of humor we have here.
(misskitty reeks of sex and turpentine; laudanum afternoons, Tue 23 Sep 2008, 2:54, Reply)

I did enjoy The Time Traveller's Wife...
...but found the writing a touch overwrought.

I recommend anything by David Mitchell (no, not that one), especially Number9Dream.
(ThomsonsPier consumes, Tue 23 Sep 2008, 9:29, Reply)

Chickenlady
I read the Gabriel Garcia books in chronological order, so I read One Hundred Years of Solitude after quite a few of the others. I couldn't put it down, I absolutely loved how it wove together all the themes and characters from the previous books in one giant weird, magical, gruesome, clever, beautiful epic.

As I said, when I started the series I didn't really know what to make of them, but I'm glad I persevered because as I got further in I got more and more hooked. In fact now I've talked them up I might give up on Titus and give them another outing, lol.
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Tue 23 Sep 2008, 12:53, Reply)