The Dice Man .

[snouty warthog]

it's interesting that Cockcroft is now a firm advocate of Zen Buddhism...

 

[May Kasahara]

isn't a sort of rites of passage read? or would I still enjoy it at 35?

Dunno, but my sole brush with The Dice Man was when I was about 13 or so; I picked it up, flicked through a few pages, noticed he was deciding whether or not to subject some random woman to a senseless sexual assault based on an arbitrary determiner, and replaced it on the shelf in disgust.

Something tells me there isn't a great deal of well-informed expansion on this in the rest of the book.

 

[kyser_soze]

Good when you're 16 perhaps...

 

[girasol]

I read it when I was 23 and I enjoyed it.

More recently I read the sequel (The search for the dice man, where Luke's son goes looking for Luke) and it found it a bit mediocre and tedious, to be honest.

Having recently watched a program about scientology on Channel 4 the similarities between the cults were a bit striking, especially the role playing thing.

 

[Lysistrata]

This is one of the worst books I've ever read - badly written, dull, no characterisation, extremely mysoginistic, with one idea which would be okay in a short story teased out at great length. No wonder feminists were so angry in the 70s if this was the kind of book which was considered classic. My copy said on the cover: "Author of the Century" - Loaded. Tells you all you need to know.

L