| Author |
Message |
    
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 08:57 pm: | |
There's a Bear in There (and he wants Swedish) - Merridy Eastman
"This behind-the-scenes look at life in a brothel is told with a lively sense of the absurd and an understanding of human frailty. "
Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk Through Portland, Oregon - by Chuck Palahniuk
No other travel guide will give you this kind of access to "a little history, a little legend, and a lot of friendly sincere, fascinating people who maybe should've kept their mouths shut." Here are strange personal museums, wierd annual events and ghost stories. Tour the tunnels under downtown Portland. Visit swingers' sex clubs, gay and straight. See Frances Gabe's famous 1940's Self-cleaning house. Look into strange local customs like the I-Tit-a-Rod Race and the Santa rampage. Learn how to talk like a local in a quick vocabulary lesson. Get to know, I mean really get to know, the animals at the Portland Zoo.
Amazingly from the author of Fight Club. |
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 09:14 pm: | |
There's a Bear in There (and he wants Swedish) - Merridy Eastman
How my brilliant career went from Playschool presenter to brothel receptionist.
Well worth a read, very funny and touching. |
Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.93.30.31
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 01:47 am: | |
Chuck Palahniuk is great. I always pick up his latest book. Rant is in my TBR pile. His grim sense of humour is strangely uplifting I find. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.131.242
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 09:46 am: | |
That book is no surprise, really; I've read interviews where he's been interested in community and the regeneration of such, blaming a lot of the worlds ills on its disintegration. A thing he said that pleased me was he'd like to see families gathered round the local pub telling ghost stories. A lovely image and idea that's never left me. |
Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 12:31 pm: | |
I find Palahniuk a tad jokey and weird.
I hate people like that.
Books that make me go ooh? Yellowing chapbooks on local topography found in dentist waiting rooms.
Basically books that only exist in the mind.
The Yellow books. |
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 03:11 pm: | |
"Books that make me go ooh? Yellowing chapbooks on local topography found in dentist waiting rooms."
Nice. |
Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 03:56 pm: | |
The only Palahniuk story I read reminded me of the worst stuff you used to get in publications like Peeping Tom. A bit puerile and merely written to shock. However, I have friends who really like him so I may check him out properly at some point.
I must admit I'm one of the only people in the world who thought that Fight Club was utter shit. Mind you, I was in a very bad mood when I went to see it. |
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 04:18 pm: | |
Check this out, Johnathan:
There's a Bear in There (and he wants Swedish) - Merridy Eastman
It really is very good. |
Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.93.30.31
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 10:50 pm: | |
Palahniuk is always a fresh breath of air I find. I can see how some people might not like some of his work. His collection of interconnected horror tales from 'Haunted' didn't always work, but an interesting collection none the less. The story with the kid and the pool (can't remember the name) made people faint at readings. It's nasty. He has the ability to create images that are impossible to forget IMHO. |
Chris_morris (Chris_morris)
Username: Chris_morris
Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 98.220.71.248
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 05:22 am: | |
In Chuck's Choke, the protagonist is Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout who is a sex addict and who pays for the care of his sick mother by (a) working in a colonial-era theme park and (b) pretending to choke in restaurants and then collecting the sympathy checks of the people who "save" him.
This is why I have such a hard time with Palahniuk's work: The plots of Ed Wood movies are more plausible than that. I understand why some people like him, but I also recognize that those people must have greater resources for suspension of disbelief than I have. |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.249.146
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 08:43 am: | |
Palanhuik's work is social satire, Chris, so the absurd plots kind of work in the context of what he's doing.
I find him an interesting writer. Some of his early stuff (especially Fight Club, which is incredible), is terrific, but I'm not as enamoured with him as I once was. |
Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.131.242
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 10:51 am: | |
I sort of got interested in him when I heard the quote about ghosts stories, people gathering locally in pubs to tell stories. Bu then I tried to read Haunted and found it too shiny and clever. I've never been able to warm to obvious satire. |
Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 12:38 pm: | |
I don't see the point in writing a story about a boy who has his arse sucked out by a pool vent.
For the very same reason I never plan to write a story about a man urinating blood into his own mouth. |
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 12:52 pm: | |
WTF, Albie!
I think this should spark a thread about Urban Myths. |
Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 12:58 pm: | |
Well that is the story he wrote.
Don't know if it happened.
Mine I just made up. |
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 01:16 pm: | |
There have been incidents involving toilets in planes and in submarines. |
Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.244.67
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 01:21 pm: | |
I have heard of a japanese old lady having guff tubes yanked out by a sci fi vacuum bog machine.
But being old she probably thought she'd finally shifted that brick she'd been fermenting since Hiroshima. |
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 01:24 pm: | |
Terrible story.
"guff tubes" (c)
You're priceless. |
Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.244.67
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 01:28 pm: | |
Have you ever heard about rosebuds in the fisting community?
Go and google it.
Some actually do it on purpose! |
Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 01:38 pm: | |
Don't mess with my reality, Albie. |
Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.244.67
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 01:39 pm: | |
Seriously. I've seen pictures. SHEESH! |
Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.244.67
| | Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 01:42 pm: | |
Did you find the sweet shop in the snowy wood on the hillside?
You never heard jangling like that before... |
Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
| | Posted on Monday, June 02, 2008 - 06:18 pm: | |
I'm most of the way through Haunted now. I'm pretty glad there's been nothing quite as nasty as the pool pump/smelly carrot/wax down the japs eye story.
It's the first of his books where I can't honestly say I'm loving it. It's good, but I'm think the format is a bit meh. It just doesn't quite do it for me. |