on Books I Read in August.

I read a number of great books recently, some probably deserving their own posts but I will need to make notes just so I won’t forget these things. I don’t feel very smart lately.

I stole Ruby’s Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, Sue Townsend is always great fun. She borders on this almost-absurd world – not quite Will Self or Harry Potter but pseudo-normal mortals. Like Nick Hornby, Tony Parsons or Ben Elton, but funnier. It was the only Adrian Mole book I haven’t read and I finished it in one sitting. Only I didn’t manage to return it before she left. My bad.
I probably won’t ever return it unless she come and get it.

I found a misplaced copy of Snuff, a Chuck Palahniuk book that’s apparently forbidden in some places. It’s a 197 pages long story about an incestuous record breaking gangbang with 600 men and a dead porn star. Palahniuk was in his element and in its dark twisted world, Snuff is hilariously funny. NY Times calls it "onanism of a more dispiriting sort" compared to his other works.

I don’t always enjoy Palahniuk even if always inclined to give them a try. Fight Club was easy once I’ve seen the film. Rant was a little different, too and Snuff isn’t really for everyone – it deals with the most difficult of subjects - but if you can deal with them, then it’s truly a great work.

My late readings, Chuck Palahniuk, Will Self, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, David Foster Wallace and Douglas Copland often read a lot like the Beatniks, only these younger guys I find funnier.

Only the Beatniks too often show suicidal tendencies and that makes the works slightly less funny, almost lethal. Johnny Depp spent most of the last few days of Hunter S. Thompson in his room, I’d love to hear what he thought of it. Foster Wallace hung himself and he was only 46. That was really spooky. Nick Hornby wrote a book about suicide, which I like very much – but the suicide-candidates in the book were all normal people, not writers. May be they’re just the weird turning pro.

Away from the morbid theme, I picked up a Pablo Neruda copy in Singapore. Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon, a translated collection by Stephen Mitchell. It has the original text on the left and English on the right. Most beautiful lines, ever though the intensity of it is at times overwhelming.

I don’t have any other fiction to read for now so I’m going back to do Holden Caufield. There’s something in it I needed to go back to, I think.

note: this is another note on suicidal writers and depressed pandas. We will revisit the subject at a later time. Promise.