Robert Rankin

[rune]

We I tried to read one of this authors books - The Garden of Unearthly Delights. It's probably the strangest book I've ever tried to read and got totally lost very quickly into the story

There seems to be a lot of his books around, is it worth trying something else? So are all his books wierd?

 

[Estelthea]

They are all very weird but I really enjoy them for a bit of silliness and some really individual ideas!

My favourites are Snuff Fiction and the Armageddon series.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I was somewhat under the impression that he was a Pratchett-wannabe, like Tom Holt (whose books I find inutterably silly in the bad sense). Am I wrong? Why?

 

[rune]

I didnt care much for Tom Holt, found his books to be slightly amusing, but more confusing rather than funny

I get the impression, from this first taste of Rankin, he's kinda the same. Or else thats how he makes me feel. Very confused......

 

[Cougar]

Robert Rankin describes himself as a teller of tall tales and by others as the zen master of zaniness.

I have read a few of his books and what I have read I have enjoyed. I haven't read the garden of unearthly delights yet but i have read some review about is. Normally Rankin books keep one foot on reality but in this book he seems to have focused more on the fantasy side. The reviews I have read say the book doesn't start off well but picks up after a hundred pages or so.

Yes I agree that at some points in his books you can get confused but any confusion is usually cleared up later in the story. Some of Rankins books are better read by Rankin enthusiasts who understand his writing style.

The garden of unearthly delights is his 12th book, but I dont think it is the best introduction for his work. Try one of the earlier books/series such as the antipope.

 

[rune]

I may go back and try another of his books, especially as the library as a few in. I couldnt finish The Garden of Earthly Delights - it was confusing and disjoined

Quite often I have found the funniest books aren't necessarily written solely to be funny.

 

[dwndrgn]

Don't know any of Rankin's work. If they are anything like Tom Holt's, I'll probably stay away. I found his books to be ok reading but not nearly as clever as they could have been. He stays with the obvious and doesn't delve deeper. Pratchett's humor is obvious as well but he seems much more clever about it and his style makes it even funnier than you'd think it would be. Think about it, when you describe, to someone who hasn't read the books, who CMOT is, do they think it is funny or do you find them sidling away, trying to look like they don't know you?

Spider Robinson once wrote that funny stories read much better out loud than serious ones, and when read out loud tend to be funnier than they may have seemed had you read them to yourself. I suppose it depends on your delivery and your audience.

Sorry about the tangent - didn't mean to derail the thread. Anyone else read Rankin have any suggestions?

 

[Trollkien]

I'm quite a collosal Rankin fan — among all I've read by him (9/28) there are only a couple of books that left me less than totally satisfied. While there are a lot of superficial similarities to Pratchett, Rankin is a generally more vicious writer — there's no guarantee that everything will work out right and he delights in forcing his protagonists through unpleasant, humiliating and horrific situations the likes of which I'm yet to find in Pratchett. In that sense, he's a lot like a prose version of Gary Larson — some of his jokes make absolutely no sense unless you are familiar with the rather obscure allusion they hinge upon. Also the main prerequisite to appreciate Robert Rankin is an immense tolerance for REALLY awful jokes (some of these appear in almost every single book I've read).
A great place to start is The Fandom of The Operator — it's got an incredibly twisted plot including but not limited to a serial killer, zombies, a phoneline to the land of the dead, and immense amounts of angst on what a deadbeat job can do to you — all leavened with infrequent appearances by Jeff Beck.
Apocalypso is another 'highly reccomended for beginners' book — it's got a mostly straightforward plot and not too much of the sillyness and repitition (which bring down an otherwise very promising book like the Hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse).
The Witches of Chiswick also made my A-list — Rankin has a bash at everything from the arrest of Jack the Ripper to the secret origins of the Elephant Man.

He just doesn't get enough love where I live — the bookshelves in my city are rotting and sagging under the weight of unsold Tom Holt omnibus editions while I'm thwarted time and again in my attempts to get my hands on everything Rankin's ever written.

 

[kyektulu]

I couldnt get into his stuff, personally, I didnt enjoy his books at all.

 

[polymath]

I appreciate all that, and he may be good, but I tend to steer away from something that appears to be written purely because a punning title occurs to the author. (For similar reasons, I've never bothered to actually write my story idea about a lad who gained uncanny powers during a thunderstorm, Lightning Rod. Fairly amusing title, let's just leave it there, is my opinion.)

 

[Trollkien]

Hm...be that as it may, I'd still reccomend you give those books a bash. Their title puns are probably the least enjoyable part. And hahahahaha @ Lightning Rod.

 

[ladyflorange]

We I tried to read one of this authors books - The Garden of Unearthly Delights. It's probably the strangest book I've ever tried to read and got totally lost very quickly into the story

There seems to be a lot of his books around, is it worth trying something else? So are all his books wierd?

Yeah... they're all weird. I've read a few, and to be quite honest couldn't really get into them at all... Someone recommended him to me because I like Terry Pratchett, but he's nowhere near as good... I just find his books kind of scary and disjointed.