The Flashman books are fun, and it isn't necessary to have read Tom Brown's Schooldays to make sense of them, although it's helpful to have a rough knowledge of the major events in the C19th. The central conceit is great fun; Flashman is the cad's cad, a disgraceful lecher and a coward, yet he manages to be present at all of the key events of the late C19th and is lauded and decorated by royalty as a result.
Flashman and the Tiger is still my favourite (it's a novella - a much-maligned format - and there's a marvellously playful intertextuality), but the others are also good. Fraser will be much missed.
As for Far From the Madding Crowd, I first read it after Haydyn used the quote about Mark Clark to describe me ("a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for"). Yes, it's Victorian melodrama. ias thinks that I'm mad for rating Hardy, but thanks to that, I've read quite a few other pieces in a similar vein; I read some Emil Zola (Germinal is my favourite, with La Bete Humaine and La Debacle not too far behind), and then found Frank Norris's The Octopus (although in the latter case, it was partly a passing reference in Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne's Back in the USSA that made me curious to see what it was all about).
Yes, I think you'd like Murakami. Haruki Murakami was a chance find for me; the Waterstone's on Milsom Street in Bath had a copy of the US translation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World on their import table, which I flicked through and decided that I wanted to buy there and then. It's not a bad place to have started, in retrospect; the story reminded me quite a bit of Iain Bank's The Bridge, but substituting quirky Westernised Japanese sensibilities for the Scottishness. I prefer his novels to his short stories (surprisingly for me), and of those I'd probably rate Wind-Up Bird most highly, with Norwegian Wood, Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, Dance, Dance not far behind. My chief advice is not to do what I did; I read Dance, Dance, Dance before Wild Sheep Chase (of which it is the sequel) and went through much of the book with a dreadful feeling of deja vu.
On the other hand, I read the four novels in Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution series in reverse order, but I don't think that it marred my enjoyment of the books.
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zvi and
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Date: 2008-02-28 08:56 pm (UTC)Flashman and the Tiger is still my favourite (it's a novella - a much-maligned format - and there's a marvellously playful intertextuality), but the others are also good. Fraser will be much missed.
As for Far From the Madding Crowd, I first read it after Haydyn used the quote about Mark Clark to describe me ("a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for"). Yes, it's Victorian melodrama.
Yes, I think you'd like Murakami. Haruki Murakami was a chance find for me; the Waterstone's on Milsom Street in Bath had a copy of the US translation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World on their import table, which I flicked through and decided that I wanted to buy there and then. It's not a bad place to have started, in retrospect; the story reminded me quite a bit of Iain Bank's The Bridge, but substituting quirky Westernised Japanese sensibilities for the Scottishness. I prefer his novels to his short stories (surprisingly for me), and of those I'd probably rate Wind-Up Bird most highly, with Norwegian Wood, Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, Dance, Dance not far behind. My chief advice is not to do what I did; I read Dance, Dance, Dance before Wild Sheep Chase (of which it is the sequel) and went through much of the book with a dreadful feeling of deja vu.
On the other hand, I read the four novels in Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution series in reverse order, but I don't think that it marred my enjoyment of the books.