When I’m not busy writing, there’s nothing I like more than immersing myself in a good book. In fact, just as I’d describe myself as a compulsive writer, so I’d also describe myself as a compulsive reader. At times, it’s something that can prove to be something of a curse, as I’ll find myself distracted by any text within – or even just beyond – my range of focus. For his reason, rolling news channels can really test me, especially if the screen’s behind the head of someone who’s talking to me.
As a rule, I’m rather a ‘glass half empty’ sort of person, but this year, having found myself required to spend more time travelling to and from places of work (albeit for the same desultory pay-packet), I elected to make the best of a bad situation and use the time in transit to squeeze in a spot of light – and not so light – reading. Here’s a list of the texts I managed to plough through. A handful were re-reads, others were texts I’d stalled on previously and decided to attempt again (successfully this time) and others had been lurking on my shelf for some time. While I enjoyed some more than others, they all had their merits and enriched my life in some way during the last 12 months, and as such, I would happily recommend every last one of them.
Jarrett Kobek – HOE #999
Dennis Lehane – Shutter Island
JG Ballard – The Drowned World
Gary Cummiskey & Eva Kowalska (eds) – Who Was Sinclair Beiles?
James Wells – Hack
Alain Robbe-Grillet – The Erasers
Bill Drummond – $20,000
Chuck Palahniuk – Diary
Frank Kermode – Modern Essays
Mary Beach – Electric Banana
Carl Weissner – The Braille Film
Katrina Palmer – The Dark Object
JG Ballard – High Rise
Stewart Home – Memphis Underground
John Wyndham – The Day of the Triffids
Edward S. Robinson – Shift Linguals: Cut-Up Narratives from William S. Burroughs to the Present
Raymond Chandler – The High Window
Alain Robbe-Grillet – Jealousy
Ed McBain – Sadie When She Died
RG Johnson – American Scrap-Dragon
Mike Meraz – Black-Listed Thoughts
Mark Merlis – American Studies
JG Ballard – The Complete Short Stories Vol. 2
Plato – The Symposium
Roland Barthes – Mythologies
JG Ballard – The Day of Creation
Michel Foucault – Language, Counter-Memory, Practice
Kathy Acker – Bodies of Work
Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Michel Foucault – The Will To Knowledge 1: The History of Sexuality
JG Ballard – The Atrocity Exhibition
Robert Lort (ed) – Azimute: Critical Essays on Deleuze and Guattari
Chuck Palahniuk – Lullabye
Shakespeare – The Tempest
Stewart Home – Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie
Nick Kent – The Dark Stuff
Valerie Solanas – S.C.U.M. Manifesto
Ivor Southwood – Non-Stop Inertia
And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk
