Heh, it was written to be intentionally provocative, and at the time it must have been strong stuff indeed. The version of The Wasp Factory I had, had the usual critic’s blurbs on the back - and they were all negative. 
Stuff like “This is purile garbage that would only appeal to the depraved - TIME” (Not an actual quote, but they were all of that sort). I thought that was clever.
Heh, we were forced to read that in HS for class, and I don’t remember a thing about it - except that, ever after, it became a byword for tortuous unpleasant reading experience. “Oh man, look at all the homework today … well, at least it isn’t a chapter of “A House for Mr. Biswas” …”
Wow, I didn’t know that. What you posted made me interested in “negative blurbing” and I found this NYTimes article from 1997 that mentions “The Wasp Factory”:
I think this is my favorite:
''It is a sick, sick world when the confidence and investment of an astute firm of publishers is justified by a work of unparalleled depravity." I hope Iain chose that for his headstone.
Heh, the reissue mentioned in that article must be the exact issue of the book I have.
Great find. I had no idea there were other examples out there, and that “negative blurbing” was, well, a thing.
Ebert knew how to do it:
It’s how I explain my devotion to Charles Bukowski’s work. “I hated Ham on Rye so much, I couldn’t stop reading.”
I’m reading Arcadia, by Lauren Groff. It’s a novel about hippies and pretty well imagined for an author too young to have been there. It’s kind of giving me the heebie-jebbies, though. Sometimes you can’t go home and sometimes you’d just rather not.
Best cover design of all times.
Finished I.N.J. Culbard’s graphic novel of Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow. The four stories within kinda-sorta fit together, but even making allowances for its subject, the book was too cryptic and disjointed. Could have been much better.
Still enjoying Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes. Meena, the heroine, is about to leave for Sierra Leone to help establish a post-American Revolution colony of freed slaves there, and I suspect things won’t go well…
A long time since I read it, but Chambers’ original set of stories was a bit disjointed and cryptic, so it may not be Culbard’s fault! I ordered a copy after your first mention of it, so I’ll probably read it soon.
Currently reading Hard to be a God by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. I didn’t take to it at all years ago when I first tried to read it, but this is a new translation and so far it’s going fairly well. I was spurred on to read it by having seen the almost 3 hour long Russian b&w film of it that was released recently. The film was baffling, so I thought I’d read the book to what it was about!
I’m reading The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan. Apparently it was made into a movie ten years ago, I had no idea. From the blurb, it sounded like a story about a mother writing rhymes, and I wasn’t sure how you could make a whole book out of it. But it’s also the story of growing up as one of ten kids, and there are some anecdotes in the story funny enough that I laughed out loud and read the passage to my husband.
I’m also reading Something Borrowed, which was also made into a movie. I’ve had half a mind to read it for a while. My friend who doesn’t like reading swore up and down that this was an amazing book, her absolute favorite book ever, and the endorsement from a non-reader combined with its light pink cover made me wonder if this was nothing but trashy chick lit. So far, I’m enjoying the book, and while it may be chick lit, it’s not the trashy variety. I find it well-written and terribly engaging.
I really liked “Roadside Picnic” but I read it with another Strgatsky novella which was supposed to be a satire or something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t accessible to me without some context. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on “Hard to Be a God.”
I’m currently reading a recently reissued “cosmic horror” novella by William Sloane called “To Walk the Night.” So far it’s just mood setting but I like it. I like Lovecraft in moderation and this seems to be very much in the same vein.
That would have been Tale of the Troika, which is often included with Roadside Picnic. I liked it when I first read it and have enjoyed the first half or so a couple of times since but I’ve ended up moving on to something else before finishing it.
Sometimes the Strugatskys are very readable, other times not so much. I’m sure that this is down to the translation in some cases at least.
I’ve read Roadside Picnic a couple of times ages ago and now there’s a new translation (3 or 4 years ago, I guess) I’m aiming to read that as well in due course.
If you find a copy, you might like The Snail on the Slope…
Yep, Tale of the Troika was the one I was thinking of. It didn’t make much of an impression on me, positive or negative, I just got the feeling I was missing something important that would have let me appreciate it more.
That mass market paperback cover art is insane. Hey, snail, leave that naked lady alone!
I had the same feeling after Night Wach by Sergei Lukyanenko. I was missing something that hadn’t come through the translation.
We’re getting towards the end of the month and I should probably just wait until next month but…I’m getting sort of bored with The Paying Guests. I’m about 200 pages into a 500+ page book and it still hasn’t grabbed me. I’ll finish it, but in the mean time I just got Requiem For A Dream and I’m going to start that one and get back to the other one when I’m done. (and yes, I’ve seen the move, probably 3 times, it never disturbed me the way I know it gets to other people).
I finished The Trolley to Yesterday by John Bellairs yesterday. Oddly enough I enjoyed it more this time than the other times I read it. I think because it was crowded into a couple days time for the most of the book and wasn’t a ghost revenge story but an action adventure.
I started Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch yesterday. As usual, it is like chasing a runaway rollercoaster 
I finished William Sloane’s 1937 novella To Walk the Night. It was not nearly as pulpy as Lovecraft, no vegetable-headed elder gods with radial symmetry. It was more psychological suspense that takes its sweet time to get going. I liked it, but it was definitely a bit slight. It hasn’t aged too badly, despite going a bit slow and a bit predictably for modern tastes. A nice mood piece for Halloween.
I’ve been upcountry since Tuesday, just got back a few hours ago. Not much time for reading but I did manage to finish The Secret Speech, by Tom Rob Smith, his sequel to Child 44 and the second of a trilogy. The first book was a murder mystery set in early 1950s Soviet Union. This one dealt with the protagonist’s past catching up with him. Leo Davidoff was an MGB agent assigned to head the secret Homicide Department after catching the serial killer in the first book. (It’s secret because the Soviet Union dare not admit that common crime exists in their workers’ paradise.) The title refers to Khrushchev’s 1956 address to the 20th Soviet Congress admitting Stalin’s crimes. Society is shaken by this speech, which was not published but widely disseminated, and Leo’s first political arrest in 1949 comes back to haunt him. I thought this was going to be set in 1965, because on the back cover in big, bold letters it says MOSCOW 1965, and that’s quite a typo. The publisher accidentally transposed the five and the six. One premise in the book is the 1956 Hungarian revolution was actually engineered by the Soviets so they could march in and show the world they were still capable of controlling their satellite countries. The book was good but not as good as the first one. This one wasn’t a crime procedural per se, and there was too much soul-searching by the protagonist. I’ll still hunt up the third and final part of the trilogy though.
But sometime this weekend or Monday at the latest, I’ll start The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx.
I finished and really enjoyed Emma Thompson’s The “Sense and Sensibility” Screenplay and Diaries (1996). It’s interesting to see how much the movie (a favorite Austen adaptation of mine) changed from “final” screenplay to finished movie. Thompson’s warts-and-all production diary, and her Golden Globe acceptance speech (written as if by a slightly scandalized J.A. herself), are also both a lot of fun.