conundrum adventures wonderland disentangling

books:

48 reviews
Will Self

Grove Press, 1998

Hoooo'Graah
This is one of the funniest books I have ever read and I've been reading since 1964. What it lacks in profundity if makes up in snobery. I first stumbled across this author with an engaging story called "The Quantity Theory of Insanity" so I knew he had a sense of humor. But "Great Apes" is unequaled. If you have a scientific education or you enjoy a good vocabulary and convoluted parody I ...

How the Dead Live (Five Star Paperback)

2 reviews
Derek Raymond

Serpent's Tail, 2008

Excellent Factory Scotland Yard thriller
He knows the brass hates him as he is a British bulldog with no regard to his superiors, procedure, or the media when it comes to solving a case or for that matter keeping apolitically correct silence when some Home Office idiotic suit lectures. His boss can't fire him because he is so successful, but tries to exile him whenever a remote area asks for help. Thus for opening his mouth during a ...

Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place

1 review
Will Self

Bloomsbury USA, 2007

Modern Situationist
Psychogeography in its contemporary manifestation owes much to the 1950s situationists from the Left Bank of Paris believing (this was after several carafes of vin de table) that by traversing the city on foot they could bring down the micro climate structures of capitalism - the pod like enclaves of home, train and office and instigate the revolution. They failed. But Guy Debord, a founder ...

The Quantity Theory of Insanity

13 reviews
Will Self

Vintage, 1996

If such a theory exists then surely Mr. Self himself is hording quite a bit
The sheer volume of fantastic ideas contained in this collection of short fiction sets one's neural bulb a-boggle. The story on the theory of waiting alone, will have you pondering your very existence, to such a degree of mind-numbing scrutiny that a painstaker will think you're persnickty. Admittedly there are quite a few tangential stories that take you so far off the beaten path that ...

Pandora's Handbag (Five Star Paperback)

1 review
Elizabeth Young

Serpent's Tail, 2003

This book's a work of genius
Trust me on this: if you care about books, this is one you absolutely must read. Elizabeth Young has a stupendous prose style, a sinuous & interesting taste and a way of hooking you from page 1. I only heard about this because someone I know at Serpent's Tail gave me a copy, but it's a crime this book isn't better known in the USA. I am about to buy several copies so that I can give them away ...

The Book of Dave: A Novel

11 reviews
Will Self

Bloomsbury USA, 2007

Best book I've read this year
I'm a speed reader. When I encountered this book, I found myself forced to slow WAY down, even to read out loud, so I could understand the dialect in which the dystopian sections are written (kind of like a text-messaged cockney). As a Mormon, I found the treatment of revealed religion had a special resonance with me--the buried plates were such a clever twist. Overall, I felt like I left this ...

My Idea of Fun: A Novel

2 reviews
Will Self

Grove Press, 2005

Will Self is great. Period.
I will be honest: My Idea of Fun is an excellent book albeit confusing. The story of Ian Wharton, a taciturn eidetic, sometimes blurs the fine line of reality and the subconscious. Will Self fuses together elements of economics, psychology and capitalism into a satirical tour-de-force that can easily be overlooked because of its brilliance. Self's vocabulary is expansive; when reading MIOF (or ...

Cock and Bull

7 reviews
Will Self

Grove Press, 2005

CoCK
Didn't care for the bull. Kinda dug the C*ck. I thought that the story was insightful, funny, sexy, etc. Maybe that was a bit too much c#ck for some people. They should stick to reading John Grisham or the like.

Grey Area (Self, Will)

3 reviews
Will Self

Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997

praise for Will Self's Grey Area
Self is one of the most talented British contemporary writers and enjoys this celebrity for good reason. He writes Grey Area in an overwhelmingly cryptic tone saturated with insight in both human nature and the nature of our own surroundings in a surreal world. His observations are scientific anthropological jewels, while his writing mechanics are those of an artist. Grey Area is a book I'd ...

How the Dead Live

17 reviews
Will Self

Grove Press, 2001

interesting viewpoint
Blurb (or foreword, I can't exactly remember) of this book, presents it as a satire...In a certain way, it is right. But, in some other way it lacks few imortant imformation. When one think of a satire, one think at instant of political attacks towards rulling caste, towards media, and towards every aspect of life that you can think about. Here you will find only an old, overweight women, whose ...

My Idea of Fun

19 reviews
Will Self

Vintage, 1995

A classic
Will Self's "My Idea of Fun" is on par with Nabokov's "Lolita", "The Tin Drum" by Gunter Grass, and "London Fields" by Martin Amis. These books may be disturbing, but they are equally poetic, astute and humorous. I'll never tire of them.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

1 review
Lewis Carroll

Bloomsbury USA, 2001

Surprising Things in Here that Are Not in Other Alice Editions
The book is delightful, but I'm not talking about the story of Lewis Carrol itself. I'm talking, literally about the book -- its size, texture of pages, color of endpapers, texture of dustcover, that it has a built-in silky bookmark and so on. (This is one book in which it is the right thing to do to judge a book by its cover.) I'm also referring to the extra material, though. First are the ...

Junk Mail

1 review
Will Self

Grove Press, Black Cat, 2006

Self junkie
These pieces, generally longer than those anthologized in the second volume of Self's journalism, Feeding Frenzy, are an entertaining bag focusing on the themes that dominated Self's early writing career - drugs, Martin Amis, drugs, contemporary cult culture, drugs, Motorway driving, American Psycho, more drugs. You get the picture. The style isn't as clean and honed as in his more mature non ...

The Sweet Smell of Psychosis: A Novella (Self, Will)

7 reviews
Will Self

Grove Press, 1999

"chewing the cocaine cud of nothing..."
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis is classic Will Self. He has such a delightful and distinctive writing style. Sardonic, monstrously grotesque, twisted. And not without moments of cruelty. The story itself is almost irrelevant. I find myself reading and rereading certain passages, charmed by the sounds of the language yet nauseated by the sentiment. I end up looking up a lot of words, which ...

Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (Self, Will)

7 reviews
Will Self

Grove Press, 2000

Will Self is Certainly Different and brilliantly psychotic
Well, this book is .... worth reading. These short stories are brilliant. Not all of them. I think it depends on ones taste about which of them are worth or not but there is at least ONE story that can make you loose your breath, or at least make you think about losing it.. The self titled story is amazingly tough sensitive and unique, no writer ever experiments with matters like these (some ...

The Butt: A Novel
Will Self

Bloomsbury USA, 2008

One of contemporary fiction’s most “wickedly brilliant…endlessly talented” ( Publishers Weekly) satirists delivers a dystopian novel skewering global politics and Big Brother-style government post-9/11. When Tom Brodzinksi tries to give up smoking, he inadvertently sets off a chain of events that threaten to upset the tenuous balance of peace in a not-too-distant land. When he flips the butt of his final cigarette ...

Dorian

12 reviews
Will Self

Grove Press, 2004

Many people just don't like this sort of stuff...
...but I'd rather be one of the few who finds pleasure in Self's perversity than one of the many who see only perveristy in such pleasures (as those of the wanton that is Self's Henry Wotton). Perhaps you should skip this tale if you: ) rarely find reinterpretations as enjoyable -- note that this is not the same as 'good' -- as an original or 'classic' ) are offended by repeated ...

1982, Janine (Canongate Classics)

4 reviews
Alasdair Gray

Canongate U.S., 2003

Wonders and terrors
1982 Janine is set in the consciousness of a middle-aged inspector of security systems, holed up in a small Scottish hotel with a bottle of whisky, trying to have sexual fantasies. So far, so unpromising. The trouble is, his memories of his (far from satisfying) life keep getting in the way. And so the book continues, with Jock's baroque and teeth-gratingly embarrassing fantasies ...

We
Yevgeny Zamyatin

Vintage Classics, 2007

Riddley Walker

75 reviews
Russell Hoban

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2002

Gut-Punched
This book demands much of, and tantalizingly, obliquely vouchsafes much to, the reader. Its decayed futuristic pidgin English, filled with the author's puns, demands constant alertness. Its semi-opaque references to the old (present) times, with the old lost technological superiority, intrigue the puzzling-out reader. The author's skill in weaving together such disparate threads as an old saint's ...

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