Read any good books lately?

[OldAsiaHand]

"Strangely enough if you go Amazon and read the reviews, they think he is great."

 

Chris probably writes most of that stuff himself. Almost every author I've ever known does it, posting the fulsome praise under various names.

 

They say anybody can post a review, but I've written a couple of unfavorable reviews for Amazon (not Moore's books, but I probably should have) and they have both 'disappeared' without being posted. On the whole, I gather they only let positive stuff go up there. Try posting a review that says Moore is unreadable (which I agree with) and see what happens.

 

[walletss]

" Chris probably writes most of that stuff himself. Almost every author I've ever known does it,"

I guess what you are saying makes sense. After all Amazon want you to order the book, Bottom line is that they are a business like any bookshop but in fairness I have seen mixed revues of other authors both from the editor and customers.

 

From what I remember of " Comfort Zone" he didn't seem to build a great deal of suspense in the novel.

[Guest]

>>>Needham writes primarily about the real world in which most of us here live most of the time, and that doesn't have a great deal to do with Potpong and Nana and Cowboy. <<<

 

>>>I see that ALL the alternatives you suggest are sex scene books ('The Scribe' ... 'Apshara Jet' ...'Patpong-Bangkok's Little Street'). You ought to broaden your horizons a bit.<<<

 

 

 

leaving out the commercial sex scene in a novel on thailand is rather unrealistic as it would cut off the experience of the largest part of the thai (and expat) population.

needham by the way touched in his first novel still the commercial sexscene although in a very unrealistic way (guys with machine guns in front of soi cowboy bars, and trink's description... LOL!)

 

many international first rate novels deal with social problems. unfortunatley though i am still waiting for a novel in of the epic quality of steinbeck's "grapes of wrath", the assorted books by dickens etc.

the topic is definately here in thailand, uinfortunately though writers seem to either understand only the sexscene and nothing on the thai social background or vica versa, understand a lot on traditional culture, but nothing of modern social problems, or give an unbearably PC slant to it.

 

opening horizonts means for me going beyond the obvious, but not excluding it. commercial sex is obvious reality here, but there is much more to it than some commercial crime thriller can give.

my problem with needham's novels is that they are very unresearched, for example he describes in one book a murderscene in which the corpse is packed into a orange bodybag. that could have easily be corrected by going to an actual murderscene. he would have seen that corpses are packed into white cotton sheets, body fluids soaked by white paper. these little details do make a fictional account believable, make it alive.

 

 

chris moore has a few problems with writing style (it makes me cringe that he has to use "yings" describing the girls here, no expat i know does that), but IMHO he goes deeper than most writers in his novels.

 

i do wonder why there has not yet a novel appeared which could win some serious international award. everything is here, tragedy, social problems, politcs it just needs an excellent writer to get that into the right form.

 

 

 

[walletss]

Your post made me think of another book I read. It is set in Malaysia but encompasses many of the points you mentioned.

 

THE FLAME TREE: author Yang-May OOi

 

It was a great read, emotional and suspenseful. Check this link

 

http://www.yangmayooi.co.uk/author.htm

[OldAsiaHand]

"...my problem with needham's novels is that they are very unresearched.."

 

That's certainly not my view after reading two of his books. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

 

Besides, since Needham has lived in Bangkok for something like fifteen years and written three novels and two movies set here that I know of, perhaps more, I can't imagine that he really needs to do very much research.

 

Perhaps your perception and his as to what might be 'true' about particular things may be different, but it seems rather arogant of you to insist that what you 'know' is correct and what he 'knows' is wrong, and therefore his books 'are very unresearched.'

 

For instance, the example you cite is just plain wrong. It depends on who collects the body. But your tone makes it clear that possibility never occurred to you. God save us from the 'experts' on Thailand who are constantly insisting that no one else could possibily know as much as they do.

 

 

[Guest]

>>>For instance, the example you cite is just plain wrong. It depends on who collects the body. But your tone makes it clear that possibility never occurred to you. God save us from the 'experts' on Thailand who are constantly insisting that no one else could possibily know as much as they do.<<<

 

out of hundreds of corpses i have seen here (no exageration) there was only one single one i have seen coming in a bodybag, and that was a silver colored bag issued to an AIDS victim from bang kwang prison by the prison authorities. neither ruamkantanyu nor poh teck tueng (the two foundations here in bangkok who pick up corpses) use orange body bags.

so, tell me please who uses orange colored body bags here?

 

before accusing someone of arrogance, please check your facts.

 

 

>>>Besides, since Needham has lived in Bangkok for something like fifteen years and written three novels and two movies set here that I know of, perhaps more, I can't imagine that he really needs to do very much research.<<<

 

i hope that needham himself does not think that way, because that would be utter arrogance.

one thing for example he could research a bit, and that would be the mysteries of the thai language, because, quoting from several interviews of him, he does not speak much thai.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

thanks. i'll have a look at it when i see it in a bookstore.

[markle]

"leaving out the commercial sex scene in a novel on thailand is rather unrealistic as it would cut off the experience of the largest part of the thai (and expat) population."

 

I disagree.

The commercial sex 'scene' is no more or less prevalent in the lives of the average Thai than it is to the average person back home.

Yet there are a great number of books written in the west in which the sex industry does not get a mention. And the same is true of Thai books written in Thai.

The expat scene however is another matter, and it seems that few Western books set in Thailand can escape the sex scene cliche.

 

"i am still waiting for a novel in of the epic quality of steinbeck's "grapes of wrath", the assorted books by dickens etc. " I'm also waiting for one about the West written by a Chinese author in Chinese. Which kind of illustrates the perposterousness of your statement. Why would the 'Great Thai novel" be written by a falang in English? Surely it would more likely come from a Thai writing in Thai. Here's a start- "Luk Issan" by Kampoon Boontawee (if you have trouble reading Thai the translation is called Child of the NortEast.

 

[Guest]

>>>Which kind of illustrates the perposterousness of your statement. Why would the 'Great Thai novel" be written by a falang in English? <<<

 

before getting impolite please go back to my post - where have i written that such a novel should be written by a westerner in english??? i don't care from which nationality such a writer comes, as long as such a book would be written some day. don't make assumptions - learn reading other people's posts first.

 

 

>>>I disagree.

The commercial sex 'scene' is no more or less prevalent in the lives of the average Thai than it is to the average person back home. <<<

 

maybe to the average middle and upper class thai, but not to the average villager or urban poor. and as those people form the vast majority of that country here, i do stand by that statement.

 

[anonymouse]

I'd agree with some of the other posters that there are few Thailand based authors of any worth. I'm an avid reader and must have read over a hundred S.E. Asian based books [ fiction and non- fiction] None of the fictional works come close to a Greene or a Conrad.

Christopher Moores ' A killing Smile' was a good read since then he has been a bit hit and miss. His latest 'Minor Wife' is a passable read.

David Youngs 'The Scribe' was a fun read.

Jack Needham - His first owed a lot to Graham Greene's The Third man' and wasn't badly written. His second was pretty poor.

The best I've read recently is Freedom Highway by Nigel Krauth. Set in 50's Bangkok it's a dark atmospheric novel well researched and well written.