Those were the only two actually written by Hooker. All the others, with the city names in the titles, were ghostwritten and got increasingly silly. I can vouch for that because I read most of them.
A friend gave me *Flicker *to read - I didn’t buy into the premise (having already seen something along those lines as comedy on Max Headroom), but I’ll admit to feeling a bit squiffy about Shirley Temple movies.
In college, I took 2 classes called “20th Century European Fiction” and “Irrational Fiction” as my English requirements (being a Math major). They were taught by one fascinating professor. It was almost 20 years ago, but some of the books really impacted my views on life and affect me to this day. I’ll usually go back and read 1-2 a year. I have no idea how many of you have read these:
Kundera, Milan The Farewell Party
Gide, Andre The Immoralist
Zamiatin, Eugene We - Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 quite obviously were heavily influenced by this book
Kosinsky, Jerzy The Painted Bird
Frisch, Max Homo Faber
Silone, Ignazio Bread and Wine
plus a bunch by Hesse and Camus
Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge – a believable (in its own weird way), poetic and funny novel, narrated by a benny-popping young trucker who’s been hired to drive a Cadillac across the USA and deliver it – a Cadillac which was owned by the legendary Big Bopper until just recently, and which might or might not be haunted by his ghost…
Freaks Amour by Tom deHaven – it’s a tragedy about prejudice, family, loyalty vs betrayal and love vs jealousy – y’know, all the big tragedy themes – which is also a paranoid mindwrencher that goes off in amazing directions and is funny as hell besides: very very dark humor, true, but amazing. Takes place after a mysterious explosion in a residential part of Jersey City mucks around the genetic makeup of a lot of the citizenry, turning them into all sorts of picturesque monstrosities and causing their goldfish to start laying eggs that kill you for four hours if you eat them.
**The Tenants Of Moonbloom ** by Edgar Lewis Wallant – by the same guy who wrote The Pawnbroker – an excellent but depressing novel itself – this one’s nowhere near as well known, or so much of a downer either.
The Throne Of Bones by Brian McNaughten – a fantasy novel made up of several interconnected stories, that’s grim, gritty and hideous
on one hand, while it’s also touching and sad, beautifully written, and totally engrossing.
The Texts Of Festival by Mick Farren – I’ve mentioned this one on here before. It’s a post-Apocalyptic Western of sorts wherein, a century or so after the war that ended life as we know it, civilization has regressed (or pulled itself back up from the ashes?) to something like a Wild West level of technology and culture. Except they consider the rock music of the late 1960s’early 1970s to be Holy Scripture and a record of the past era And there are pillaging barbarian tribes who ride motorcycles they built by hand from scavenged salvage and snort cocaine.
Awesome book! I never thought I’d sympathize with ghouls, but I did. Your recommendation of this book means I’ll check out the others you recommended.
Its been a while since I’ve read this book but can you specify what was racist and sexist in it?
Thanks
btw agreed that it had some extremely powerful scenes such as the one you mentioned. Some of the imagery was memorable as well.
Is this a typo? Or does one come back to life after four hours?
The Nun’s Story, by Kathryn Hulme. The book that the Audrey Hepburn movie is based on, about a Belgian nun’s faith being tested in the Congo.
Mirabile, by Janet Kagan. This is a collection of related short stories that were first published in Asimov’s sci-fi magazine. Janet Kagan was a Hugo-winning author who died recently after a long illness that sadly kept her from being prolific. She’s best known for writing one of the better Star Trek novels, Uhura’s Song.
I’ve read The Nun’s Story - & I recommend it also. Powerful.
After seeing “The Forsyte Saga” and “The Jewel in the Crown” on PBS Masterpiece theatre, I went and read all the books in those series. Quality varied, but both were worth reading, and I haven’t met anyone else yet who has done so.
Add me to that list - particularly Moominsummer Madness.
Regards,
Shodan
What is this book? The title intrigues me…
thwartme
I have, also the Trollope novels that make up “The Pallisers” after watching that whole miniseries.
Me too (Forsyte Saga). Would you recommend the Pallisers novels? I love family sagas.
Has anyone ever “By Reason Of Insanity” by Shane Steven? For anyone who hasn’t, this is the Daddy of all serial killer books… if you like that sort of thing.
Let’s see … of those mentioned so far, I’ve read Faber’s Under The Skin, Pollack’s Unquenchable Fire, Sladek’s Tik-Tok; I’ve got (and read, and enjoyed) the NESFA reprints of Cordwainer Smith; I’ve read a fair chunk of Kornbluth’s short stories (including “The Marching Morons”); and I can knock off two weighty tetralogies, Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet” (The Jewel in the Crown and sequels) and Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet”, both of which I can heartily recommend.
Perhaps regrettably, I’m not the Stephen Wright who wrote Meditations in Green. (I say “perhaps”, because I’ve never read it, either.)
For my obscure book, I will nominate The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay, which is an interesting read in its own right, and also threw a lot of light (for me) on Lindsay’s better-known A Voyage To Arcturus, a book which always makes me feel a bit stupid.
I don’t think I know anyone who’s read Stand on Zanzibar. Yet it is an awesome book.
I know it’s not unknown to everyone… but it seems to be unknown to everyone I’ve ever had the occasion to ask.
-FrL-
Ooo I’ve read Tik-Tok.
Didn’t think it was that great, though, TBH. Can’t remember why.
-FrL-
Huge favorite of mine. We have a number of Brunner fans on the Dope. Including one named Shalmanese.
Hah! I just started reading the first Forsyte book. I’m not sure I’ll get through more than one, though. The characters strike me as a bit caricatured, and the author seems to hate them all.
Agreed, one of my favourite books. I recently finished ‘The Jagged Orbit’ by the same author and really enjoyed it, if not quite as much as ‘Stand on Zanzibar’.
Not sure how obscure some of these are but I’ll list them anyway in case someone finds them interesting.
I have an interest in the Cold War and one of the best fiction books of its type I’ve read is ‘Chieftans’ by Bob Forest-Webb depicting a British tank-crew in Germany during WW3. The ending is chilling and disturbingly plausible.
In a similar vein is ‘Ende: A Diary of the Third World War’ by Anton-Andreas Guha, this time a civilian perspective on the same scenario as in the above book.
‘The Fall of the Russian Empire’ by Donald James, written in 1983 it depicts the rise to power of a female Gorbachev like figure and the consequences of that.
‘Storming Intrepid’ by Payne Harrison, technothriller about the Soviets stealing an American space shuttle. It also has a semi-sequel featuring some of the same characters, ‘Thunder of Erebus’, not quite as good but still worth a read.
Again I’m not sure how obscure this one is but, ‘The Third World War’ and its semi-sequel ‘The Third World War: The Untold Story’ by General Sir John Hackett. Exactly what it says on the tin.
An interesting book I came across in a second hand store is, ‘Hitler Victorious: Eleven Stories of the German Victory in World War II’, a collection of short stories with the above premise. My favourite of the stories is, ‘Thor Meets Captain America’ by David Brin, sounds extraordinarily silly but its a great story.
‘The Aardvark is Ready for War’ by James Blinn, reminded me of Catch-22 in a lot of ways.
‘The Hermes Fall’ by John Baxter, asteroid impact disaster book but rises above its subject matter to provide some of the most extraordinary visual imagery and memorable moments I’ve come across in a book of its type depicting the sheer magnitude of effects such an event would entail.
‘Thin Air’ by George E. Simpson and Neal R. Burger, this is the book where I first came across the Philidelphia Experiment causing me to read up more on it. The authors did an excellent job of building an interesting story around the ‘facts’ of the case.
‘To Kill The Potemkim’ by Mark Joseph.
‘Total War 2006’ by Simon Pearson, released in 1999 its an interesting ‘future history’ book which still tells a good story.
‘Warday’ by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka. Its just a pity the proposed sequel from the Soviet perspective never made an appearance.