The FOF's Literature Week continues.

List from here.

It had to be a Bradbury or a Lodge.

I went for 'The History Man.'


The best book on the list is 'The Human Stain', I know why it is there I just don't consider it a 'Campus Novel'.

'The Men's Room' by Ann Oakley deserves a mention.

Why is Lucky Jim regarded as a classic? It seems hugely overrated to me.

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

The Secret History.

Of the comedy ones, I like the Lodge (Changing Places and Small World) and Amis best.

I really dislike campus novels, which seem to be just people writing about what they know, and pretending (small world) that they don't need to go further. Also, amongst some of them, who "write what they know," there is a great disdain for Fantasy, though they don't realise that to some people their stories of dons and fellows plooking each other is fantasy. Lewis Eliot's Cambridge (in The Masters) is no more fantastic to me than Lyra Belacqua's Oxford; they are both places I could never have visited.

But one of my favourite books is The Masters (CP Snow). I also really like Lucky Jim. I find it very funny, Stephen - not like Wodehouse, but with some great set pieces - and also very realistic, at least in its details. Also, Amis has a wonderfully precise style of writing that looks easy until you read it more carefully.

I am Charlotte Simmons.

I know Tom Wolfe's novels aren't terribly hip but I think they're great.

The Secret History was incredible.

Wasn't The Human Stain about a university professor, therefore a campus novel? Haven't read it, mind.

Pale Fire - Nabokov?

Am I right in thinking there's never been a film made of it? Isn't it supposed to be impossible to cast, or something?

The History Man for me.

To my shame i never completed Lucky Jim.

Never read any David Lodge either, but i used to work with someone who was a neighbour of his in Birmingham.

I read it when I was much younger. Maybe I missed the finer details.

I'm reading Changing Places at the moment. It's excellent, actually.

I read his Deaf Sentence recently and found it underwhelming.

I read it when I was young as well, and didn't quite get it, but I've since read in an anthology the bit where he wakes up in someone else's house with a terrible hangover and cigarette burns all over the bedding and it is horrifically brilliant, especially if you can relate to it :ohdear: (not that I've ever done exactly that, but that is more down to luck than judgement).

Much to my shame I haven't read a single one of the books listed, so I couldn't vote. I must read at least one very soon I feel illiterate now! :ohdear:

Unless the "Jennings" series counts?

I read it on a plane and nearly wet myself when he started phoneticising the man's laughter ("Meh-heh-heh", "Ba-hah-hah" etc).

Amis is really good but a completely incorrigible racist. There's a line in Jake's Thing where the narrator gets on the bus and can't sit in his usual seat because "somebody from Asia" is sitting in it.

I concur. A great book.

Anything by good old Nabokov

Some of his characters are racist. He wasn't. cf the chapter on the US in his memoirs - he was horrified by the attitude of some of the people he met.

In any case, isn't everyone annoyed when they can't sit in their usual seat on the bus? I know I am.

The Rachel Papers

Hangsaman - Shirley Jackson.

L'etranger

I voted for Straight Man. Very funny, but chillingly accurate portrait of mediocre American higher education.