Finished Word magazine his month the other day. It's still a good magazine, but nothing really jumped out at me this issue.
However, Louise was howling with laughter at the "20 Worst Cult Reads as Elected by Word"
She was absolutely insistent that they were all on my bloody bookcase.
But they aren't, well, not all of them.....
Just for the record here they are:
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis (Okay, guilty as charged, but I liked it)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - Robert Pirsig (never read it)
Man & Boy - Tony Parsons (Think I read it once, or some other piece of shit by him. Awful)
I am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe (nope)
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller (nope again)
The Possibility of an Island - Michel Houllebecq (nope here as well)
The Passion - Jeanette Winterson (read it years and years ago, never owned it, pretty good though as I recall)
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (read it years ago as well - over-rated)
The End of Alice - AM Homes (nope)
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (read it when I was 15 and thought it was amazing, read it again when I was 30 and thought it was exactly the sort of thing that a naive 15 year old with literary visions would love. Quickly removed from bookcase after this - which is pretty much what Word have to say about it as well)
Another City, Not My Own - Dominick Dunne (no)
And the Ass Saw The Angel - Nick Cave (no)
Prozac Nation - Rachel Wurtzel (no)
Underworld - Don Delillo (no, but always meant to look at it - not anymore methinks)
The Tesseract - Alex Garland (nope)
Generation Z - Douglas Coupland (okay, this is on the bookcase, got me)
Dead Babies - Martin Amis (no)
Naked Lunch - William Burroughs (no)
Mr Nice - Howard Marks (no)
but the thing that got Louise guffawing most of all was the inclusion of one of my favourite books of all time on the list of 20 worst cult reads:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
I loved this when I was a teen and still love it now. Maybe I'm too much of a stupid sentimental softie but it can still make me cry even now. I know it's full of slightly dodgy prose and positively reeks of early 70s American self-help, counter-culture sorts of things. But I can't help that. All I know is that it's on the bookcase because it makes me happy to read it.
Pah.
Does Underworld qualify as a "cult book"? It's not as if Delillo wasn't already an established literary figure when it came out, at least in America anyway. I think you should read it - which isn't something I would say lightly of any book, especially one so large. I thought it was ace. However, you may not be ready yet ...
ReplyDeleteMaybe, maybe not.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm still under a self imposed book buying embargo anyway to try to clear the 20 book backlog on the shelves.
But never say never ......