Books Read by Rob
This list comprises of books that Rob has either said he has read during interviews or has been seen holding. Too many people to thank who have sleuthed the latter, but we do thank you!
2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano
Publishers Weekly review: Starred Review. Last year’s The Savage Detectives by the late Chilean-Mexican novelist Bolaño (1953–2003) garnered extraordinary sales and critical plaudits for a complex novel in translation, and quickly became the object of a literary cult. This brilliant behemoth is grander in scope, ambition and sheer page count, and translator Wimmer has again done a masterful job. The novel is divided into five parts (Bolaño originally imagined it being published as five books) and begins with the adventures and love affairs of a small group of scholars dedicated to the work of Benno von Archimboldi, a reclusive German novelist. They trace the writer to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa (read: Juarez), but there the trail runs dry, and it isn’t until the final section that readers learn about Benno and why he went to Santa Teresa. The heart of the novel comes in the three middle parts: in The Part About Amalfitano, a professor from Spain moves to Santa Teresa with his beautiful daughter, Rosa, and begins to hear voices. The Part About Fate, the novel’s weakest section, concerns Quincy Fate Williams, a black American reporter who is sent to Santa Teresa to cover a prizefight and ends up rescuing Rosa from her gun-toting ex-boyfriend. The Part About the Crimes, the longest and most haunting section, operates on a number of levels: it is a tormented catalogue of women murdered and raped in Santa Teresa; a panorama of the power system that is either covering up for the real criminals with its implausible story that the crimes were all connected to a German national, or too incompetent to find them (or maybe both); and it is a collection of the stories of journalists, cops, murderers, vengeful husbands, prisoners and tourists, among others, presided over by an old woman seer. It is safe to predict that no novel this year will have as powerful an effect on the reader as this one.
Anthology by Tom Waits
Amazon.com review: Complete piano/vocal arrangements with chord diagrams of over 20 of this poet/songwriter/ actor‘s greatest hits including: Ol’ 55, Jersey Girl, and Shiver Me Timbers.
Complete Poems by Charles Baudelaire
Amazon.com review: Including all poems published in the previous three editions, this comprehensive new translation of Baudelaire’s poetry is both vivid and authoritative. This dual-language volume presents both the original French poems as well as their translations.
Doomed Love (Penguin Great Loves) by Virgil
Amazon.com review: Love can be surprising. Love can be heartbreaking. Love can be an art. But love is the singular emotion that all humans rely on most . . . and crave endlessly, no matter what the cost. United by this theme of love, the nine titles in the Penguin Great Loves collection include tales of blissful and all-encompassing, doomed and tragic, erotic and absurd, seductive and adulterous, innocent and murderous love. A deeply moving addition to the Penguin Great Ideas and Great Journeys series, each gorgeously packaged book will challenge all expectations of love while celebrating the beauty of its existence.
E.M Forster’s - Collected Short Stories
Fantastic Fiction review: Dedicated to Hermes - messenger to the gods and conductor of souls to the afterworld - this collection is composed of masterpieces of fantasy. Written at various dates before World War I, these 12 stories contain themes that were to re-emerge in E.M. Forster’s later work, in particular the attempt to escape from the “respectable claim of reality”. “The Machine Stops” is an Orwellian reaction to the earlier heavens of H.G. Wells; “The Road From Colonus” sees the victory of a tedious family over an old man’s vision; and “The Celestial Omnibus” has innocence triumping over experience. Above all, Forster demonstrates his belief in freedom, self realization and a spiritual honesty that may be used to defeat the lies of repression.
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
Amazon.co.uk review: Bjartus is a sheep farmer hewing a living from a blighted patch of land in Iceland. After 18 years of servitude to a master he despises, all he wants is to raise his flocks unbeholden to anyone. Nothing, not inclement weather, not his wives, not his family will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. But she too wants to live independently - and when Bjartus throws her from the house on discovering she is pregnant, her more temperate determination is set against his stony will.
Kill Your Friends by John Niven
Amazon.com review: Meet Steven Stelfox. London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. Twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, a world where ‘no one knows anything’ and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public - ‘Yeah, those animals’. Fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine Stelfox, blithely criss-crosses the globe (’New York, Cologne, Texas, Miami, Cannes: you shout at waiters and sign credit card slips and all that really changes is the quality of the porn’) searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification.But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career. “Kill Your Friends” is a dark, satirical and hysterically funny evisceration of the record business, a place populated by frauds, charlatans and bluffers, where ambition is a higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be achieved - as long as you want it badly enough.
Money by Martin Amis. (Rob once said that this is his favourite book, although with the amount of books he reads, who knows if this is still no. 1.)
Fishpond.com.au review: This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Rolling around New York and London, he makes deals, spends wildly and does reckless movie-world business, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography, a mountain of junk food and more. Ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage, this is a tale of life lived without restraint; of money, the terrible things it can do and the disasters it can precipitate.
Ticket to Ride 
Barnes & Noble review: A man cut suddenly adrift from his memory and sanity, steered by nothing but a murderous impulsion toward a woman named Penny.
Dali’s Autobiographies including:
The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali by Ian Gibson
Amazon.co.uk Review: Ian Gibson’s fascinating portrait of Salvador Dali depicts an artist whose life is as fragmented as his paintings. Perhaps surprisingly, Gibson argues that an intense sense of shame was the driving force in the surrealist’s life and art, steering him between leaps of creative invention and personal ruin. With access to previously unknown biographical details, Gibson concludes that Dali’s shame centred around sexual conflict, particularly in his relationships with his muse Gala and his friend Garcia Lorca. In lieu of the sexual act, Dali cultivated a deeply exhibitionist persona and used his art as protection against the shame he associated with sex. As his fame grew so did his need to hide behind his extravagance; the sense of shame is directed outward rather than inward as a result. In the process, Dali betrayed his family, many of his artistic mentors, and in the end his own art.
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali by Salvador Dali
Amazon.com Review: This early autobiography, which takes Dalí through his late thirties, is as startling and unpredictable as his art. On its first publication, the reviewer of Books observed: “It is impossible not to admire this painter as writer … (Dalí) succeeds in doing exactly what he sets out to do … communicates the snobbishness, self-adoration, comedy, seriousness, fanaticism, in short the concept of life and the total picture of himself he sets out to portray.” Superbly illustrated with over eighty photographs of Dalí and his works, and scores of Dalí drawings and sketches.
Most books can be purchased at either amazon.co.uk, amazon.com or try your local bookstores.
Nine Stories by J D Salinger
Amazon.com Review: In the J.D. Salinger benchmark “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures’ tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it’s too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour’s wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry–Seymour hasn’t lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.
The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger’s children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances–some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be “The Laughing Man,” which starts out as a man’s recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief–a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include “a glib timber wolf” and “a lovable dwarf,” the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by “the internationally famous detective” Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, “an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite.” The masked hero’s luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. “A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief’s bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone’s poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed.” –This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.
Wikipedia: The Ballad of the Sad Café, by Carson McCullers (1951), opens on the set of a small town in Georgia. The reader is introduced to Miss Amelia, an independent, lonely woman who owns a small store. On this particular day she meets Cousin Lymon. Cousin Lymon, despite being a hunchback with rude mannerisms, is a rather kind man. The beginning reveals that Amelia has the ability to be a kind and gentle soul. He helps her discover love—and he becomes her beloved. While Cousin Lymon never returns Amelia’s feelings he instills a change in her. She opens a café, which serves as a meeting place for all of the townspeople. Through the café, the town develops a sense of community and pride. As per usual, though, all people have a troubling history. It turns out Amelia was once married to a man she did not love, albeit for 10 days. He comes back after his stint in the penitentiary to ruin Amelia’s life just like she ruined his. He steals Cousin Lymon’s devotion and, in turn, her ability to love. The novella ends just like it began, with a portrait of a sad town that has nothing to hope for.
*Rob said he loved this author and story on Oprah 13 May 2010.
