Grotesque
Natsuo Kirino Harvill (2007) After I recently moaned about the commercial fetishization of Haruki Murakami’s work, I can see this happening again with Natsuo Kirino. Kirino apparently has a back catalogue of well over twenty books at the time of writing and what Harvill pulled off with Murakami they must be feeling capable of repeating here. Fortunately, Kirino’s [...] More about Grotesque
The Templars
Piers Paul Read Phoenix (2003 edition) Piers Paul Read has written fiction, biography and journalism. He brought us the now-famous story of the Andes flight disaster of 1972, told from the perspective of the survivors in his book Alive. This work of popular history concerns the Knights Templar, an military-monastic Order whose precise history remains rather obscure. The [...] More about The Templars
After Dark
Haruki Murakami Vintage (2008) I’ve been a devoted Murakami fan for years, mainly because he has always echoed and expanded my own thoughts and feelings. I came to him after a number of “classic” Japanese writers. When I was at university and Harvill released one translation after another, I hardly read anything else, including my study texts. [...] More about After Dark
The Yellow Cross
René Weis Penguin (first published 2001) The Inquisition weighs heavily in our modern impressions of an era in which cruelty, intolerance and ignorance reigned supreme for several centuries. Yet a growing body of academic research into the Catholic suppression of the “heretical” Cathar faith now demonstrates with no small irony the sophistication of a highly developed subculture [...] More about The Yellow Cross
The Gospel According To Jesus Christ
José Saramago Harvill (first published 1999) You can imagine the sort of outraged comments this book will have provoked from many zealous Christians. If online bookseller Amazon certainly intended customer reviews to help sell books, there’s a danger here of their pages turning into a forum for religious debate. “The Bible storyline is flagrantly ignored, replaced, changed, [...] More about The Gospel According To Jesus Christ
Death at Intervals
José Saramago Harvill Secker (2008) Author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 As translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Saramago is the sort of wise old gent we’d want present if we could still demand bedtime stories in adulthood. Death at Intervals has all of the charm, quietly controlled meanderings and simple sagacity of a writer who’s [...] More about Death at Intervals
Rant
Chuck Palahniuk Vintage (first published 2007) With Rant, the endlessly inventive Palahniuk may have finally run out of ideas. The author’s formidable back-catalogue, which includes Fight Club, Survivor and Lullaby, illustrates his original, if extreme, prognosis for American society. What makes reading Palahniuk such a thrilling experience, that his characters’ realities are so close to ours, is [...] More about Rant
Back to books
After a spell reading work-related stuff and watching screens for entertainment, I recently returned to my beloved literature. Here’s my current list (and ignore the cheapo deals if you’re a latecomer): Natsuo Kirino “Out” Haruki Murakami “Kafka On The Shore” David Mitchell “Cloud Atlas” Kazuo Ishiguro “Never Let Me Go” At the time of writing, I’ve read Mitchell. Now on to Ms Kirino. Saving [...] More about Back to books
