Keri Hulme has had a second book in the pipeline for absolutely yonks - a couple of years ago, there was even a title and publication date announced, but they've gone by the wayside. I know she's been busy fighting developers - she's pretty reclusive, lives in one of the more remote parts of NZ (I'll be going past the front door in a few days - maybe I should pop in and say hi, but she'd probably pull a shotgun on me).

I'm reading Hulme's The Bone People at the moment - I'm loving every sentence of it. She spent 12 years writing the thing and the intricacy is astounding. It is NZ's only Booker Prize winner - which drew me to it in the first place. It's a very idiosyncratic novel stylistically, and because of this, as well as its striong subject matter (as mentioned above), it's not to everyone's tastes. Still, if you want a meaty, challenging read - get your paws on it.

Only $20? I think mines like $180. Apparently I still have books that I got out when I was 8.

[ http://www.jaysbeanbag.cjb.net ]

Judith White - "Across the Dreaming Night" (I think that's what it is called). Read it.

yes velocity she was.
I'm so behind on my reading. The last book I read was the new Terry Prachett one, "Night Watch". It was ok.

Douglas Adams? author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? That would be the one though it is more correct to say Prachett is similar to him as Adams wrote first.

what else has douglas adams written? i have just finished reading hitchhikers guide to the galaxy...very odd, but good.
i also love geroge orwell books, he's great

Re douglas Adams question
the Hitch Hikers was a trilogy.... of 4 books...
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and thanks for all the Fish
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
The long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
that was the list as of 1989 it is probably a bit longer now but I started to get a bit bored and stopped looking out for his stuff.

the hitchhikers guide eventually became a 5 part trilogy, the final part being "Mostly Harmless"

I've probably bought 11 copies of Good Omens because I keep lending them to people and they never give them back. No one else ever thought it was quite as fantastic as I did, but I've been known to have a huge girly crush on the apocalypse. I swear, I'm putting Neil Gaiman's kids through college.

I just finished American Gods. I liked it very much.

Of course I've heard of Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. I even read a quarter of it once (blush) but I don't think that was it Stefan... Can you think of any other author?

I don't really talk about my stuff in specifics, though to be honest, most people don't ask. I guess I'm just superstitious enough to think I might jynx it, and I have a pretty fair momentum going with this one that for the first time in my life I might actually _finish_ something.

The book takes place mostly in Hell, and I guess my basic dogma is that, regardless of the life we live we end up in Hell if we think we ought to. Or heaven, for that matter; chapter 11 has a mass murderer going to heaven because he feels perfectly justified in killing people. Okay, I think I've said too much.

It's actually become much more of an ethical story, gained much more depth, than I ever thought it would. It's probably a reaction to the country around me deciding to go completely insane.

I've read Gunter Grass - My Century and I'm slowly getting through Mein Jahrhundert (same thing in the original German). A really stunning piece of writing. He wrote 100 short short stories, each about a different year in the 20th century.

I've read parts of Tin Drum in German, haven't gotten around to it in English yet. I lived in Germany for a while and took some literature classes at the University of Bonn. I think the best thing I read there was Heinrich Boll's The Clown. So incredibly beautiful and poignant.

I heard it's out Jan 16th.

And Happy New Year to you too, myshkin!

Tuwhare's quite good. So is James K. Baxter - one of my all time favourite poets, regardless of nationality. Anyone here read Baxter? I seriously think that had he lived another 20 years or so, he may have had a serious look in overseas, provided that he'd sustain the prolific streak he was on before his early death (he was in his 40's). *Sigh*, cruel fate.