Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith is my favourite book ever. I was up to late last night reading it, after buying it for what must be the third or fourth time. I give them away ... it's that good, I don't mind buying it again and again and sharing it with people I like. Love. Whatver. Shut up.
It's sci-fi, in the sense that that's where Borders will keep it*.
But it's not.
If Isaac Asimov, Nick Hornby and Robert Smith got together to write a novel, that's MMS.
Oh, and remind me to tell you about Olaf Stapledon.
* Yeah, yeah, I know I should say Readings, but they can get utterly FUCKED. I mean, whatever. Absolutely the worst collection of stuff I like. And I know I shouldn't rate a bookstore by the collection of Philip K Dick books they carry but the man is a GENIUS who predicted the human condition in the 21st century which is why Hollywood, looking for myths for the modern era, is busily pilfering his work. It's not my fault that Readings is run by myopic literati with no respect for the where the real intellectual action is. I'll be quite now.
17 comments:
I too would love to be able to buy books from Readings, but find they just don't have enough variety. What I love about Borders is that you can find almost everything you were looking for, and many other things you weren't. Down with the multi-national chain stores, except when they're the ones that provide the best selection.
I read that ages ago and adored it, particularly the part where the street changed colours to match the protagonist's funky pants and then wrote him a letter afterwards to tell him so. Sadly, my copy has gone AWOL and I'm not willing to ask the co-op to order me in a new one. Shame, really, I'd love to read it again.
Ha! Nice pants. I love the nuance of all the tech stuff, it's not laboured or overt, but the walls talk to you, as a matter of course.
And you can borrow mine. I know this one will be let out into the wild sooner rather than later ...
I may take you up on that, although it would mean I'd have to take a break in my months long Agatha Christie bender. Oh, Agatha, is there anyone better than you? No, no there is not.
We can swap. I don't think I've ever read Agatha.
Oooh ... we can start a book club! Swap books with other blog crew. That would be cool. Need a way to keep track of who has what, but that's fine, I can write some code.
Ah yes, sign of nerdness
Phase 1: Hare-brained scheme
Phase 2: Write database-backed website to manage it
Phase 3: Profit
I just had a third coffee. Error.
error error... hair-brained schemes ahoy!
Nerdiness is a sign of radness. I personally arange my books by colour and height and spend far, far too long contemplating the colour and shape of each purchase so I can figure out where it could go.
A book club would be heaps cool, but I'm writing my honours thesis at the moment so all my contributions would be on Foucauldian biopolitics, and I would be unpopular and no one would talk to me.
Radness? Excellent.
I haven't even unpacked my books since moving two months ago, so no organisation at all.
Impressed with your radly nerdiness though.
Haven't read Foucalt in ages, could be an excelletn blast from the past.
Rach height and colour are the only way to organise books.
Alphabetically? Puh.
P.S. I would very much like to be part of TBBSC (Toby's Blog Book Swap Club).
count me in. though i don't have too much in the way of science fiction. i can offer these for starters if anyone is interested:
perfume - patrick suskind
the women's room - marilyn french
the age of uncertainty - john kenneth galbraith
degrassi junior high: exit stage left - william pasnak
still life with woodpecker - tom robbins
they're some of my favourites [ok, so degrassi is just awesome and weird and has stephanie kaye looking suggestive on the cover]. i probably need to translate my love of sci-fi shows and films into the book-reading kind, if anyone wants the job of advising me.
All the way with Stephanie Kaye!
It is really frightening that the first loves of my life were both not real people.
OK, I think that's a quorum. I'll set something up.
And I have been meaning to read Perfume.
Off the top of my head I'd suggest:
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 'cause it's so totally rad and I wish I had a whole bunch of silk shirts.
Gould's Book of Fish by.. uhm, the author's name escapes me right now, but I like it heaps.
Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson, for pure brain sex value.
okay, tobytoby, you have first dibs on degrassi and perfume. perfume is the book that i have bought countless copies of because i keep giving them away. my current copy has the most inappropriate cover imaginable, given the beauty and horror contained within, but i am nothing if not impressed by the inappropriate. which is why the degrassi cover tickles me so.
can i have a sci-fi book that will set me on fire and change my life? i've read the dispossessed, do androids dream of electric sheep, and enough orwell, huxley and kafka for now. so something other than those, please.
i'll await details of the swap.
oh, and rach, i have a beautiful copy of the great gatsby with a foreword by anthony burgess! i can't for the life of me imagine why he was chosen to introduce it, but i'm glad he did because it's wonderful.
and i'd also like to offer up the complete scripts of monty python's flying circus to any interested parties...
mskp - Neal Stephenson is a golden god if you can overlook the hideous abortions that are his endings. I'd also really recommend 'Only Forward.' And anything ever written by Kurt Vonnegut, although he's only very technically sci fi.
Actually, I mentally inhaled 'Blood Music' by Greg Bear in one sitting, so you might want to think about that, too.
Rach is right, Neal Stephenson is an inspired choice for the sci-fi initiate. Dragged several people kicking and screaming to the dark side with the Diamond Age.
And Only Forward, of course.
Gatsby I haven't read since school. I loved it then.
Right we're nearly sorted ...
I need to put my list up.
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