tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post3340305431193944680..comments2024-03-18T10:29:46.055+00:00Comments on Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff: Ten BooksKen Armstronghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-15792046726314831792014-09-07T11:31:43.521+01:002014-09-07T11:31:43.521+01:00Watership Down was going to be the next one on my ...<i>Watership Down</i> was going to be the next one on my list but then I realised I already had my 10. Oh well.Catherine @ Sharp Wordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12988193118089559894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-75800290146816383012014-09-01T08:25:24.890+01:002014-09-01T08:25:24.890+01:00Look at my list I can also admit shame that there ...Look at my list I can also admit shame that there are no women. If anyone it would be Sylvia Plath but I confess I have only recently read her books.Had I read them some time ago she would probably be in there. Marc Patersonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-63511792406757947912014-08-31T17:25:44.567+01:002014-08-31T17:25:44.567+01:00I have to do this now :)
This is straight off the...I have to do this now :)<br /><br />This is straight off the top of my head, live as it were.<br /><br />1. Fight Club<br />2. Survivor ( same author)<br />3. 1984<br />4. Popcorn (Ben Elton)<br />5. Pet Semetary<br />6. Trainspotting<br />7. Better Than Life ( Rob Grant and Doug Naylor)<br />8. The Well of Lost Plots (Jasper Fforde) This led me onto the rest of his books. Love that guy.<br />9. Fluke (James Herbert)<br />10. Lullaby. (Chuck Palahniuk again)Marc Patersonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-14269693222480821622014-08-31T13:14:11.907+01:002014-08-31T13:14:11.907+01:00I responded on Facebook just for the hell of it an...I responded on Facebook just for the hell of it and so people could see I’m still alive. Here were my ten: <i>Billy Liar</i> by Keith Waterhouse, <i>One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich</i> by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, <i>Catcher in the Rye</i> by J.D. Salinger, <i>The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966</i> by Richard Brautigan, <i>A Time of Changes</i> by Robert Silverberg, <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</i> by Ken Kesey, <i>Knots</i> by R.D. Laing, <i>The Body Artist</i> by Don DeLillo, <i>Puckoon</i> by Spike Milligan, <i>Naïve. Super</i> by Erland Loe. Of course, I added, the list will probably change tomorrow.<br /><br />Looking at it what’s interesting is that although I read a helluva lot more now that I used to—I expect to read more books this year that I did in the first twenty-odd years of my life (not counting kids’ books and comics)—like you the majority of the books on this list are ones I read in my teens or early twenties; I wonder what that says? I didn’t read a lot back then—it embarrasses the hell out of me—but I did read memorable books and I still have most of them in a cupboard because they’re a bit too tatty to display but I can’t bear to part with them. <br /><br />Of course as soon as you post a list like this you start to see the things you missed. Like <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> and it’s impossible not to mention Beckett but if I’m being honest his plays have always affected me more than his prose. Notable—and I see the same goes for you—there are no women on my list. This bothers me. I’ve been trying to make amends this year and’ve been reading a lot more women authors but none of them made the cut. Probably because it’s not been long enough for me to know which books’ll stick with me. I suspect <i>Hygiene and the Assassin</i> by Amélie Nothomb might since it’s written almost entirely in dialogue and I have a real fondness for books in dialogue. But I still much preferred <i>You & Me</i> by Padgett Powell and <i>Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?</i> by Dave Eggers. And I plan to read <i>Deception</i> by Philip Roth before the year’s out too.<br /><br />From your list I’ve read <i>Jaws</i>, <i>Watership Down</i> and all John le Carré’s ‘Smiley’ novels so that includes the three you mention. Most of the rest I know from TV and film adaptations; although I haven’t seen <i>Simon Birch</i> Carrie read the book and told me about it in some detail so I feel like I’ve read it. My first wife was very good that way. She was a voracious reader and every day or two I’d come home and she’d tell me about another book she’d read which is perhaps why I come across as better read than I really am and know more about Erma Bombeck than a man my age should.<br /><br />A part of me is curious to read <i>The Kenneth Williams Diaries</i> but I shy away because—and this is an odd thing for any writer to say—I don’t think I’d like the feeling of voyeurism that would go with the reading of them. Glad Larkin had the wit to have all his burned. I’ve never read anyone’s published diaries. Carrie did by me the first two volumes of Beckett’s letters but I think of them more as reference books than books to sit and read from beginning to end but maybe I will one day.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com