To my shame, I did this thing earlier. I was The Crying of Lot 49 too.

I'm actually rather annoyed that they consider it an `awful' book. I love it. It's better than Mason & Dixon and Vineland.

I read Lot 49 so long ago that I can't remember anything about it except that I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I had V; on the other hand, I don't remember particularly disliking it, so I can't have thought it was an out-and-out stinker.

Haven't tried Vineland but, yup, Mason & Dixon, oh gawd, 25 pages and I was fetching the Drano out from its cupboard . . .

Yeah, V is good, isn't it? Lot 49 is a lot shorter and a lot more concentrated, but it's very accessible. Unlike Mason & Dixon, which like you I had to put down. I have his new book, but I'm wondering whether I can spare the six months it's going to take to read and try to make sense of it.

Going back to one of your posts, I had the same reaction to The Sot-Weed factor, which I couldn't get on with at all, though I loved Giles Goat-Boy.

Edited at 2008-02-01 11:07 pm (UTC)

"I had the same reaction to The Sot-Weed Factor, which I couldn't get on with at all, though I loved Giles Goat-Boy"

I romped through them both with joy and brio!

I romped through Giles Goat-Boy, but I couldn't make head nor tail of The Sot-Weed Factor. Mind you, I think I was about fourteen when I tried to read it so I may not have been its best audience. Bought it in a newsagents' in Prestwick - not often regarded as a hotbed of literary postmodernism.

"Mind you, I think I was about fourteen when I tried to read it so I may not have been its best audience."

That may have been the problem. I was about 17 or 18, which, by contrast, may have been exactly the right age to read it!

Yeah, I was about eighteen when I read Giles and just sailed happily through it. I've still got that old copy of The Sot-Weed Factor here somewhere; maybe I'll dust it off one day. But, you know, so many books, so little time...

Yes, and reading comments elsewhere from others who've tried it, The Hobbit pops up as well, which is not an awful book.