reading

Reading's a somewhat sporadic phenomenon for me, as you'll notice below in the lists of books I've read in various years. You can also find me on goodreads.com.

authors who matter

• William S. Burroughs - I think I first came across him via Laurie Anderson, and I'm still not quite sure how much I understand Naked Lunch, but I know that's not really the point. Imagery, humour and oddity, not to mention his fantastic voice.

• Douglas Coupland - My geek friends jumped up and down about Microserfs and claimed it as their own, but it was Generation X that I've always felt closer to.

• Murakami Haruki - Found completely by chance in a bookshop one day back in the mid-90's, his work seems to radiate a certain depth of feeling (profundity doesn't come to me that easily, I'm sorry), even after translation.

• Will Self - Some of his work seems a bit impenetrable at first, but it's interesting enough if you can persevere.

• Frank Moorhouse - I've never been particularly good at reading Australian authors, but I picked up The Electrical Experience on a whim somewhere in the mid-to-late 90's, and never looked back.

• Raymond Carver - Nobody chronicled the Great American Despair like Carver did, with his short stories of ordinary people, fighting with their ordinary existences.

what I've been reading

2008

• Hello America, by J.G. Ballard.
• Gentleman's Relish and other Culinary Oddities, by The National Trust.
• Hospital, by Toby Litt.

• A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire, by Anton Pavlovich Chekov.
• Burning Your Boats, by Angela Carter.
• The Unlimited Dream Company, by J.G. Ballard.
• The Crystal World, by J.G. Ballard.
• The Face of Another, by Kobo Abe.
• Gold, by Dan Rhodes.
• Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut.
• Here comes everybody, by Clay Shirky.
• Perfect from now on - how indie rock saved my life, by Peter Sellers.

2007

• Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by Murakami Haruki.
• If on a winter's night a traveller, by Italo Calvino.
• Japrocksampler: how the post-war Japanese blew their minds on rock 'n' roll, by Julian Cope.
• Women, by Charles Bukowski.
• Perverted by Language: fiction inspired by the Fall, edited by Peter Wild.
• The Call of Cthulhu, by H.P. Lovecraft.
• The Mosquito Coast, by Paul Theroux.
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick.
• Ubik, by Philip K. Dick.
• The Cloudspotter's Guide, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney.
• Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs.
• Tainted Love, by Stewart Home.
• Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton, by Stewart Home.
• Tales from Nowhere edited by Don George.
• Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut.
• The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux.
• Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux.
• The Haiku Anthology (3rd ed.) edited by Cor Van Den Heuvel.
• New Poems book 4 by Charles Bukowski.

2006

• Earthed / Nineveh / The Ephemeron, by Steve Kilbey.
• Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene.
• The Drowned World, by J.G. Ballard.
• Micro Nations - the Lonely Planet guide to Home-Made Nations, by John Ryan, George Dunford and Simon Sellars.
• J.G. Ballard - Quotations, edited by V. Vale and Mike Ryan.
• Lost for Words, by Hugh Lunn.
• Meanjin - on Rock 'n' Roll, edited by Mark Mordue.
• Tape Delay: Confessions from the Eighties Underground, by Charles Neal.
• J.G. Ballard: Conversations, edited by V. Vale.
• My Education - a Book of Dreams, by William S. Burroughs.
• The Burroughs File, by William S. Burroughs.
• Exotica: fabricated soundscapes in a real world, by David Toop.
• 100 Selected Poems, by e.e. cummings.
• Kingdom Come, by J.G. Ballard.
• New Poems book 3 by Charles Bukowski.
• jPod by Douglas Coupland.
• New Poems book 2 by Charles Bukowski.
• The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton.
• New Poems book 1 by Charles Bukowski.
• The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo.
• The Republic of Wine by Yan Mo.
• The Box Man by Abe Kobo.
• Kangaroo Notebook by Abe Kobo.
• Secret Rendezvous by Abe Kobo.
• The Place of Dead Roads by William S. Burroughs.
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.
• Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski.
• Black Monk Time by Thomas Edward Shaw and Anita Klemke.
• Cocaine Nights, by J.G. Ballard.
• London Orbital, by Iain Sinclair.
• Interzone, by William S. Burroughs.
• The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard.
• Rushing To Paradise, by J.G. Ballard.
• Factotum, by Charles Bukowski.
• The Day of Creation, by J.G. Ballard.
• On Photography, by Susan Sontag.
• Happy Birthday, Jack Nicholson, by Hunter S. Thompson.

2005

• Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville.
• Super-Cannes, by J.G. Ballard.
• The Drought, by J.G. Ballard.
• A burnt-out case, by Graham Greene.
• The mirror of ink, by Jorge Luis Borges.
• In the country of country, by Nicholas Dawidoff.
• Martini, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Atrocity Exhibition, by J.G. Ballard.
• Concrete Island, by J.G. Ballard.
• Road Movies, by Lee Ranaldo.
• Death Sentence: the decay of public language, by Don Watson.
• A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby.
• Rip It Up and Start Again, by Simon Reynolds.
• The Great Wall of China, by Franz Kafka.
• The State of Poetry, by Roger McGough.
• Letters From Four Seasons, by Alistair Cooke.
• The Unabridged Pocket Book of Lightning, by Jonathan Safran Foer.
• Borneo and the poet, by Redmond O'Hanlon.
• Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo, by Will Self.
• Dr Mukti and other Tales of Woe, by Will Self.
• Dining On Stones, by Iain Sinclair.
• The Last Summer, by Boris Pasternak.
• Modern Typography, by Robin Kinross.
• Destroy All Monsters, by Ken Hollings.
• Blink, by Malcom Gladwell.
• Superhero for Hire: True Stories from the Small Ads, by William Shaw.
• Pig Bites Baby! Stories from Australia's first newspaper, edited by Michael Connor.
• Hip Priest: the story of Mark E. Smith and The Fall, by Simon Ford.
• Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami.
• The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux.

2004

• Eleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland.
• Haunted Weather, by David Toop.
• 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life, by Roger-Pol Droit.
• Status Anxiety, by Alain de Botton.
• Exotica, by David Toop.
• The Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain de Botton.
• Ocean of Sound, by David Toop.
• The Go-Betweens (2003 reissue), by David Nichols.
• Faster, by James Gleick.
• Meat is Murder, by Joe Pernice.
• Transactions, by Neil Boyack.
• High-Rise, by J.G. Ballard.
• Lights Out For The Territory, by Iain Sinclair.

2003

• Outposts - Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire, by Simon Winchester.
• Do Android Crows Fly Over the Skies of an Electronic Tokyo? The Interactive Urban Landscape of Japan, by Akira Suzuki.
• Serge Gainsbourg - a fistful of Gitanes, by Sylvie Simmons.
• Ready, Steady, Go! - Swinging London and the invention of cool, by Shawn Levy.
• A User's Guide to The Fall, by Dave Thompson.
• The Fall, by Albert Camus.
• pinball, 1973, by Murakami Haruki.
• Journey to the end of the night, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
• Villa Incognito, by Tom Robbins.
• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner.
• Grand Days, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Ham on Rye, by Charles Bukowski.
• Here To Go - Brion Gysin, by Terry Wilson, Brion Gysin and a few extra bits by William S. Burroughs.
• Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.
• fa fa fa fa fa fa - The Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th Century, by David Bowman.
• Needle in the Groove, by Jeff Noon.
• Country - The twisted roots of Rock 'n' Roll, by Nick Tosches.
• Forbidden Colours, by Yukio Mishima.

2002

• Troublesome Words, by Bill Bryson.
• Our Band Could Be Your Life, scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, by Michael Azerrad.
• Go Tell the Mountain, by Jeffrey Lee Pierce.
• The Sharper Word, edited by Paolo Hewitt.
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
• Great Jones Street, by Don de Lillo.
• The reasons I won't be coming, by Elliot Perlman.
• After the Quake, by Murakami Haruki.
• The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton.
• The Box Man, by Abe Kobo.
• Essays in Love, by Alain de Botton.
• Mystery Train, by Greil Marcus.
• ways of hearing: a user's guide to the pop psyche, from elvis to eminem, by ben thompson.
• Lost in Music, by Giles Smith.
• Kangaroo Notebook, by Abe Kobo.
• Secret Rendezvous, by Abe Kobo.
• The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford.
• Where I'm Calling From, by Raymond Carver.
• Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon.
• Ocean of Sound, by David Toop.
• the Diary of a Nobody, by George and Weedon Grossmith.
• The Ultimate Good Luck, by Richard Ford.
• My Uncle Oswald, by Roald Dahl.
• Fierce invalids home from hot climates, by Tom Robbins.
• I was a robot, by Wolfgang Flür.
• The Raymond Chandler Papers - selected letters and non-fiction 1909-1959, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane.
• The Chap Manifesto, by Gustav Temple and Vic Darkwood.
• The Republic of Wine, by Mo Yan.
• The Woman in the Dunes, by Abe Kobo.
• The Inspector-General of Misconception, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The CEO of the sofa, by P. J. O'Rourke.

2001

• All families are pyschotic, by Douglas Coupland.
• Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse.
• Let it Blurt - the life and times of Lester Bangs, by Jim deRogatis.
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• Last Words, The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs.
• Christie Malry's own double-entry, by B.S. Johnson.
• Norwegian Wood, by Murakami Haruki.
• The Elephant Vanishes, by Murakami Haruki.
• Sputnik Sweetheart, by Murakami Haruki.
• Don't tell me the truth about love, by Dan Rhodes.
• Anthropology, by Dan Rhodes.
• Atomised, by Michel Houllebecq.
• Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.
• Cities of the red night, by William S. Burroughs.
• Midnight all day, by Hanif Kureishi.
• Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto.

2000

• Call if you need me - the uncollected fiction and prose, by Raymond Carver.
• Brief interviews with hideous men, by David Foster Wallace.
• Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk.

Yes, that's right. 3 books.

1999

• Cock and Bull, by Will Self.
• Tokyo : a certain style, by Kyoichi Tsuzuki.
• The Priest They Called Him - The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs, by Graham Caveney.
• South of the border, west of the sun, by Haruki Murakami.
• Night Train, by Martin Amis.
• Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland.
• Stay Away from Lightning Girl, by Stephen Cummings.
• Whatever, by Michel Houllebecq.
• Heavy Water and other stories, by Martin Amis.
• Identity, by Milan Kundera.
• Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys, by Will Self.
• Money : a suicide note, by Martin Amis.
• Amrita, by Banana Yoshimoto.
• Are you experienced ?, by William Sutcliffe.
• Great Apes, by Will Self.
• The Joke, by Milan Kundera.
• Into the heart of Borneo, by Redmond O'Hanlon.
• The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, by John Birmingham.
• About a boy, by Nick Hornby.
• A book about things that didn't happen / Hollow days, by Phil Doyle / Joel Spencer.
• Room Service, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Rum Diary, by Hunter S. Thompson.
• Forty-Seventeen, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Everlasting Secret Family, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Audrey Hepburn's Neck, by Alan Brown.
• Conferenceville, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Electrical Experience, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Americans, Baby, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Futility and Other Animals, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Adventures in Capitalism, by Toby Litt.

off-site

• William S. Burroughs :

  • bigtable.

  • InterWebZone.

  • Jamie Zawinski's Burroughs-inspired cut-up machines, DadaDodo and webcollage.

• Douglas Coupland.

• Craig Mitchell's boot.

• Geoff Ryman's 253.

• Haruki Murakami.

• Raymond Carver :

  • Phil Carson's site.

  • Tom Luce's site.