@bookluvvr.bsky.social
100+ pages an hour, 5+ hours a day = an expensive book habit to feed! Maximalist fiction championed by Steven Moore to popular novels hated by Harold Bloom. Top 3 = Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest.
Read Howard Jacobson's "Howl". Has never fully understood his arguments about the UK media coverage of Gaza/Palestine being anti-semitic and stoking blood libel, but after reading this I'm probably closer to grasping what it is he thinks than I've been before. Learnt plenty of Yiddish words, 1/3
Re-read Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger". Liked chorine and triptyque. It definitely has some 'of its time' attitudes, but the plot stands up. Plenty of memorable scenes and phrases.
Read Jessica Guess' "Cirque Beserk". Is still working my way through Stephen Graham Jones' list of favourite Slasher Books in the NY Times. This was a fun quick read, hitting all the right notes. Was surprised that by the final chapter I was rooting for the villains!
Liked @backlisted.bsky.social's Summer Reading 2026 special. Might re-read the Laurie Lee and Gwendoline Riley. Had already seen "The Gilt Kid" recommended on here, got a copy and am looking forward to it. But I instantly ordered "Gary Stewart: I Am From the Honky-Tonks" by Jimmy McDonough. The 1/2
Re-read Ian Fleming's "Dr No". This was quite nostalgic, as I remembered my teenage self's reaction to passages like the centipede or the ridiculously contrived pain test. Enjoyed 'jippa-jappa baseball caps', the mention of the Jamaican expression 'rarse' and a reference from 1958 to 'You have 1/2
Read @brookmyre.bsky.social's "Quite Ugly One Evening". Has fond memories of discovering this author and binging his wonderfully enjoyable novels about 12 years ago, then reading the new ones as they came out. The return of Jack Parlabane was long awaited, and I loved the occasional passing 1/5
Read Jason Ayres' "1986: A Year in the Life of Lucy Hart". This was as entertaining, comfortably nostalgic and compulsively readable as all its predecessors. Clara (and her ADHD child, diagnosed via an online questionnaire) were impressively awful. Getting to see the support act for Metallica 1/2
Read Christopher Howse's "Soho in the Eighties". This enjoyably filled in some of the background from reading Jeffrey Bernard's collections of 'Low Life' columns last month. Hypocoristic, faience, macedoine and briscola were all new words to me. Wonders how many readers today still know about 1/5
Read Ian Fleming's "From Russia With Love". That was very enjoyable (even better than the film). I enjoyed encountering the less common spelling 'yoghourt' and the words 'stockinet' and 'crambo'. I also liked learning the Russian 'peasant obscenity' 'Sookin Sin' [сукин сын] and the 'gross 1/4
Re-read Martin Amis' "The Pregnant Widow". Remembers being excited when this was announced, hoping it was better than "Yellow Dog", buying it, reading it... and very little else about it! Does remember recognising 'According to an English novel he had read, men understood why they liked women's 1/4
Re-read John Irving's "The World According To Garp". Wow... That was absolutely amazing. I binged Irving in 2007 and then read all his subsequent novels as they came out, except for the most recent which I struggled to get into. Returning to this one was a (nostalgic) experience. The vast 1/5
Read Ian Fleming's "Diamonds Are Forever". Although I'd seen the film several times, I'd not read this one before. A gripping quick read. Chatoyance and yegged were new words to me.
Read Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho". I bought this when the film came out, but was quickly defeated not by graphic descriptions of violence but by the fashion labels. In my memory there were far more sartorial descriptions than there actually were. Has read all his other books, absolutely 1/4
Eagerly bought "The Pregnant Widow" in hardback when it came out, read it and hasn't thought of it since. This episode makes me want to immediately re-read it, and get Leon Craig's "The Decadence" (which unaccountably passed me by, despite being a huge fan of her mum!)
My Martin Amis podcast@mymartinamis.bsky.social · 3mo ago🔊UP NEXT this summer ☀️ Novelist Leon Craig starts a long-awaited conversation about #MartinAmis's 2010 novel 📚The Pregnant Widow📚. She and @jackaldane.bsky.social discuss the story's anxieties around the fallout of the sexual revolution, the Cold War, male insecurities around height, and more.
Re-read Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita". On my first reading years ago I went in prejudiced against the subject matter, but was blown away by the gorgeous language. This time I read Alfred Appel Jr's amazing annotations after every couple of chapters and realized just how much I had missed. The 1/4
Read Ian Fleming's "Moonraker". Knows I started this a couple of times as a teenager, but not being a Bridge player never got past the lengthy description of the 'famous Culbertson hand' at the end of Chapter 7. This time I was gripped by the whole thing. The usual unbelievable action set 1/2
Read Jakob Kerr's "Dead Money". This was a fast moving, gripping, read-in-one-sitting novel. Due to the author's personal experience, the descriptions of start up culture were very convincing. (Liked the line 'Tech founders would sooner use Windows than be saddled with something as banal as a 1/4
Hadn't realized whilst reading those, that Norman Balon was alive until earlier this month... www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/norman-...
RIP Norman Balon, Soho's rudest man, at 99. By Christopher Howse - The Oldie
I asked Norman Balon whether he really had been London’s Rudest Landlord, as he’d declared in big letters painted on the corner of the Coach and Horses in Soho. It was his choice to meet there, which...
theoldie.co.uk
Read Jeffrey Bernard's "Reach for the Ground". Whilst this was still (very) funny in places, generally it bore the same relation to "Low Life" as the 1996 Channel 4 documentary on him did to the 1987 Arena one. The consequences of amputations and chronic pancreatitis take a lot of the fun out of 1/2
Re-read Ian Fleming's "Live and Let Die". Has seen the Roger Moore film many times, but was unsure if I'd read this one until I reached M's reaction to the skin graft 'Hm. Hairs'll grow a bit thick. Crooked too.' Remembered various other phrases like 'Bombs in alarm clocks go off when the hammer 1/4
After @drrachelclarke.com's review in The Guardian of Saul Justin Newman's "Morbid" described his Amazon author page as reading 'as though it was aiming for whimsy, but written on acid', I had to check it out. It's certainly something! I'll still be reading the book, if only to see the filleting 1/2
Read Jeffrey Bernard's "Low Life: A Kind of Autobiography". Although these columns were obviously not originally designed to be read consecutively, they worked very well. It was incredibly funny in places, and would have been even more so if I hadn't already heard all the best lines recently in 1/4
Re-read Ian Fleming's "Casino Royale". Remembers reading this as a teenager, the phrase 'mais n'enculons pas des mouches' and several specific scenes (not just THAT torture scene). Certain aspects have definitely dated (the car crash without seatbelts and phrases like 'the sweet tang of r*pe'), 1/2
Read Francis Spufford's "Nonesuch". Enjoyed that very much (even if the mention of London's 'twenty thousand streets' in the opening chapter momentarily made me want to put it down and re-read Patrick Hamilton!) Spotted the Doctor Manhattan allusion, and a few others. Liked the Keynes cameo. 1/2
Very rarely posts about anything except books, but last night I watched Keith Waterhouse's "Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell" (the 1999 version with the incomparable Peter O'Toole) and it was the funniest thing I've seen in ages... (Cat racing!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cY...
Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell (1990) | Peter O'Toole, Timothy Ackroyd - Comedy Drama Play
YouTube video by Budget VHS Bin
youtube.com
Read L J Shepherd's "One of Your Number". Despite the courtroom setting it was very different from "The Trials of Lila Dalton", but I still enjoyed it. Sniggered at the dogging joke (previously heard on "Jam and Jerusalem" as a phrase Sue and John made up when they were 'cottaging in Norfolk') 1/2
Read @annodracula.bsky.social's "Model Actress Whatever". As a longtime fan of the Anno Dracula series, Diogenes Club series (Swellhead was a blast from the past!) and especially "Angels of Music", this standalone was eagerly awaited. It more than lived up to my (very high) expectations. Whilst 1/5
Read Sally Rooney's "Beautiful World, Where Are You". Had read (and surprised myself by enjoying) "Conversations With Friends" and "Normal People" in June 2023, so I don't know why I took so long to get around to this one. Suspects it might be because I'd heard about the search terms Alice found 1/4
