I just finished this:



Oh man was it good, the ending was awesome...kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time....it's like who was it? was it the bear? but then maybe it could have been the rabbit.....oh wait, there was the deer as well....could have been any of them!
man, I totally recommend this one

Nico Adie wrote:Salmon of Doubt, I think.

This is a great book for the articles, letters and whatnot. But don't hold your breath for the unfinished novel at the end. I read it expecting an almost finished Dirk Gently book but it's only a few chapters and clearly a first draft.

And if the other three books you bought include the two proper Dirk Gently novels then read them first. Although the first 2/3s of The Salmon of Doubt are collected writings so it's a great one to dip into whenever.

Earlier this week, I finished Paul Auster's Oracle Night. Not bad.

If pressed to rank the books of his that I've read, my list would go something like this:

Ghosts
City of Glass
The Locked Room
Oracle Night
Leviathan
Travels in the Scriptorium (didn't really care for this one)

Any suggestions on where to go next?

Marsupialized wrote:I just finished this:

Oh man was it good, the ending was awesome...kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time....it's like who was it? was it the bear? but then maybe it could have been the rabbit.....oh wait, there was the deer as well....could have been any of them!
man, I totally recommend this one

One of the best cookery books I've ever read.

I'm reading The System of Objects again before starting a new theory course and re-reading Madness and Civilization because my girlfriend bought a new copy and I like how the pages smell.

I've still got Light In August on the go. Heavy book, it takes a lot out of me.

Eating Noddemix wrote:Earlier this week, I finished Paul Auster's Oracle Night. Not bad.

If pressed to rank the books of his that I've read, my list would go something like this:

Ghosts
City of Glass
The Locked Room
Oracle Night
Leviathan
Travels in the Scriptorium (didn't really care for this one)

Any suggestions on where to go next?

My Auster list is similar to yours - except I liked Leviathan a lot more than Oracle Night and I haven't read ..Scriptorium.
The Book of Illusions is my favorite of his recent stuff, and The Invention of Solitude, early memoir/essay, is excellent and a good key to the rest of his books.

I'm about halfway through Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke - one of the few new books I'm excited enough to buy in hardback - and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Not as full blown nuts as his last big book, Already Dead, but more ambitious in scope, the Vietnam War, than anything he's written. In places it reminds me of his travel and war reporting as much as his earlier work. Fans of his first book, Angels, will enjoy the pre-history of the Houston brothers, the central characters in that book.

I'd second The Invention of Solitude -- one of my favorite books.

I liked the first 40 or so pages of The Book of Illusions when it was basically a one-character story, but the situation of the novel was much more credible than the characters.

I don't think he's been mentioned yet, but I love Daniel Woodrell's novels. They've been called "country noir," and many involve small-town crooks and law enforcement officials, so they could be classified as crime writing. But they're beautifully written, and the characters are thoroughly developed. His latest, Winter's Bone, just might be his best. Its protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl whose meth cook-father wrote a note on their house for bail and promptly disappeared. She has a month to find him before she, her insane mother, and her two little brothers are left homeless in the Ozarks winter. It's a great book.

Last night I was picking through the bookshelves and found a copy of 'Twelve chases on West Ninety-ninth Street' by Roy Bongartz which I'm now about halfway through.

Anybody know anything about this chap? The internet seems peculiarly devoid of information - the book is good!

Anyone on here read The Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin?

I've read it a few times, and I'm the only person I know who has. It's just sort of weird and surreal, a guy wandering around 15th century Cairo and encountering mad prostitutes, leprous knights, creatures from an alternate dream reality. It's good, and I highly recommend it. Be interested to see what other readers have thought.