Brian’s Comments (group member since Mar 02, 2009)

Brian’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Happy Birthday Mr Adman!

http://improbable.com/ig/winners/

the 1995 prize for literature:

LITERATURE
David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison Wisconsin, for their deeply penetrating research report, "Rectal foreign bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature." The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.

a frozen pig's tail???

wonder if herta wrote about any of this... i'll have to find out.

pointy sticks have been averted. my chances are gooder that i will be able to attend. count me in... that's on the Dork '10, not the tv shows.

A couple of interesting links if you're into this kind of thing... if not... move along. There's a Nobel thread down there somewhere.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/books...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fairy...

I never knew there was such a thing...

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

If you need help writing that novel here's a link to the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000...

http://wondermark.com/554/

and a working model of the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000...

http://fictiongen.boxofjunk.ws/

thanks dan...

dan... you should take something for that cough. i'm undecided. that's next year. i can't understand time that far in advance. as of now i'd say 30%yes/70%no. it will depend on many things the main one being that i'm still alive what with pointy stick attacks and such in the near future. i know that's of no help for planning purposes... so just assume i won't be attending and if i do i'll bring sleeping equipment like closed eyes and prone positions.

Obama won the peace prize so now it's even... I think. And Jesse, thanks for the link. It was funny.

Jesse wrote: "
Romanian chick who moved to Germany to escape brutal communist repression and wrote about it"

that sounds kind of cliched :)

and though i'm no big roth fan, his father was an insurance salesman of austro-hungarian stock. I'm sure someone in his distant family past escaped something or another. hell my family escaped nova scotia before the brits killed us but i didn't win no stinking nobel... well, i didn't write anything about it either. maybe i should write about my oppression on pluto...

actually, i didn't realize that the americans were pissed off about this years choice (i thought health care was still the big issue). i'm looking forward to reading a book or two from dear ms herta. i have no qualms with the judges choice. i expect our bookstores to be flooded with her books in a couple of months... something new to look forward to. i did enjoy the le clezio. freaky guy, that frenchman.

Here's an excerpt from one of her books if you're interested in licking a taste of her work...

http://www.signandsight.com/features/...

i'll have to look up ol' herta. is she in print?

when i read camus' the stranger in high school i thought it was dark and gloomy and full of that existential stuff. i reread it last year and thought it was funny, actually kind of 'witty'. i compared it to a hal hartley movie. i think it's because i'm all grown up and beyond giving a shit about much. oh, and i liked it better the second time around. funny book that stranger.

wow... that was an excellent little choreographed tragedy. compact, yet heavy. thanks for that link kris.

amazon has some used at reasonable prices. i may have to get them sent to my parents home as a christmas gift to myself, though it might prove to be a depressing gift given what i've read about stig dagerman... still, i'm intrigued.

Hey Martyn... thanks for this recommendation. I concur... it is a great little book. There were a few moments in that house when I truly felt a little nervous. And I would love a dog like Spider.

Is there such a place in England as Eel Marsh? If there is, it sounds like a nice place to visit. The landscape was described beautifully.

7:20am: I read Martyn's review of The Woman in Black, above, message 1.

10:00am: I'm sitting in a meeting, downtown Kuala Lumpur, bored...

10:45am: I leave meeting, wander into bookstore and find the book that is the central topic of this thread.

11:00am: I begin reading about Monk's Piece and fall in love with the second paragraph of the book.

1:23pm: I chronicle the impulsive nature of myself on the site Goodreads and the dangers of being easily swayed by the internet, but second what Martyn says above, "the book is brilliant"... so far...

1:48pm: I find the movie posted on youtube in 11 parts... http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list...

This Earth of Mankind - Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Once There Was a War - John Steinbeck

I can't find JE's birthday listed anywhere but today sounds good to me.

Happy Birthday Jonathan and again congratulations on winning that Mr Washington State award.

And a big Happy Birthday to you Martyn. Even though it's tomorrow in GB it's almost today here. Saturday birthdays are great. You can get ripped and sleep it off on Sunday. I'll drink a beer(s) tomorrow in your honor. And I'm reading The Uncommon Reader by one of your countrymen. Kind of fitting.

good news... congratulations mr washington state man.

this guy david malouf sounds interesting. i'll put my money on him and buy one of his books win or lose. but he may be riding too close on the tails of coetzee, not australian, but living in australia.

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4550...

since amos oz is a cool name and nooteboom is fast becoming one of my favorite writers (this year) i'll throw down a couple of shillings on them too.