*What book are you reading? (part 2)

[DotCommunist]

Any good? I'm back at the Deadhouse Gates.

yeah, better than Stonewielder which felt like malazan by numbers

I'm on his 5th now 'bone and Blood' which is great, Segulah facing of Moranth, jungle shennanigans for disowned malazans in Jakaracu.

It's currently fighting for my attention with my non fic read 'The Brothers Vietnam War: Black Power, Manhood and the Military Experience'

 

[TruXta]

His prose does leave something to be desired, but I shall persevere.

 

[Idris2002]

Mende Government and Politics Under Colonial Rule: a Historical Study of Political Change in Sierra Leone 1890 - 1937.

Good stuff, though I'm not that convinced by his argument that local slavery and unfree labour wasn't that bad really. It definitely didn't involve the extremes of exploitation and degradation that slavery in the Americas and Caribbean involved, but I doubt if it was a walk in the park either. . .

 

[marty21]

What era is this? 'cause in the last Rebus book he's 65 if he's a day.

Published in 1977 , maybe Rebus' older brother

 

[Sprocket.]

What era is this? 'cause in the last Rebus book he's 65 if he's a day.

Talking of which I am just starting Standing in another man's shoes the return of Rebus. Rankin has linked Rebus up with Malcolm Fox from The Complaints and The Impossible dead.
Which were good reads if you like Rankin's work.

 

[Cheesypoof]

I started Ulysees by James Joyce and already I can tell it's a proper involving story, best read by candlelight at the window of a tower overlooking a moonlit bay....this is going to be one of those I come back to over the course of a few years whenever I'm in that sort of mood Cheesypoof.

Havent read it for a while, one third of the way through - it's so brilliant you want to cry. Episode four where Bloom is feeding the puddytat is the funniest thing ever !!!

I would avoid ruining the reading of Ulysses by stopping at every odd reference and looking up footnotes. You will understand it better by reading a chapter through at a time and the breakdown afterwards, say one chapter a week/ month/ season. Declan Kiberd's 'Ulysses and Us' is a great companion, and he is a straight talking Dubliner who doesnt bullshit

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/31/james-joyce-ulysses-and-us-declan-kiberd

 

[Orang Utan]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn - One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.
The prose is so dour but necessarily so.
Today I read this:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/23/pussy-riot-hunger-strike-nadezhda-tolokonnikova
Not an awful lot has changed in the Gulag

 

[sojourner]

Started reading Panopticon by Jenni Fagan instead. Verrrry different to everything else I've been reading for months now. It's what I would call an easy read, so far.

I did this such an injustice. I read most of it last night - couldn't put it down. Got the very definite feeling that the writer had been in care, and just looked it up - confirmed.

I reckon Edie would like this book. It reminded me very much of her, in lots of ways.

 

[DotCommunist]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn - One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.
The prose is so dour but necessarily so.

epic whiner

 

[Orang Utan]

epic whiner

with good reason

 

[seventh bullet]

He's just trying to be a Stalinist again.

Have you tried My Testimony by Anatoly Marchenko? It was written by a working class dissident about his experiences in the Soviet penal labour system in the 1950s and 60s. His writing is dry and matter-of-fact. You could find a copy for pennies.

 

[D'wards]

Reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Enjoying it so far - certainly teaching me a bit about Gods of the worls

 

[chasbo zelena]

India - V.S.Naipul.

He's a fantastic story teller.

 

[little_legs]

Have you tried My Testimony by Anatoly Marchenko? It was written by a working class dissident about his experiences in the Soviet penal labour system in the 1950s and 60s. His writing is dry and matter-of-fact. You could find a copy for pennies.

Thanks for posting this.

 

[Cheesypoof]

T
Will now start, 'Wild' by Cheryl Strayed. It's a sob memoir about a mother and daughters survival. Can't say i am massively looking forward to it, got it as a present.......will report back.

Bit meh. So this book is a memoir of a girl (whose Mam has died, marriage has broken down and has taken heroin for one month..... Oprah Winfey LOVES this book - ) who is walking a zillion miles from Canada to Mexico (the Pacific Crest Trail) and we are following her. While the fact that she is hiking is cool, and there are facinating scenes where she describes the landscape and cravings for food, the people she meets, etc there are so many times where she tells us that pretty much every single man she meets thinks she is 'hot'. Becomes a bit tiresome after a while....the book also drags on a bit. Its an awful thing to read a memoir and not connect with the narrator. I wasnt even rooting for her that much.

 

[Badgers]

The Pyrates - George MacDonald Fraser

 

[ringo]

The Crow Road - Iain Banks

Think I gave up on Banks when he wrote Canal Dreams, been meaning to go back to him ever since but never got round to it. So far so good.

 

[chasbo zelena]

A.N. Wilson's book on the Victorians is dense but enjoyable reading.

I didn't realise that there's a stuffed Bentham at UCL.

 

[magneze]

Dan Saffer - Microinteractions
Richard Morgan - Market Forces

 

[seventh bullet]

Thanks for posting this.

No problem. A prole's-eye view. A part of the labour camp experience was 'political education,' which included at least some acquaintance with the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin (as well as Stalin), something which Marchenko wryly observed he and some of his fellow 'political' convicts knew better than their would-be educators. He was from an ordinary family (in the spirit of Firky and Lustbather, PFWC) and educated himself in the camps and prisons, with the help of intelligentsia dissidents he associated with.

 

[Cheesypoof]

Have started 'I'm your man: the life of Leonard Cohen' by Sylvie Simmons. It's an authorised biography and brilliant so far, and very well written.

 

[colbhoy]

Have just started Sacred by Dennis Lehane.

 

[N_igma]

Just finished Ian Jones' Ned Kelly: A Short Life. Truly remarkable book that describes how the gang evolved from having local agrarian and family grievances against the authorities to gaining a political ideology and desire to form a new Republic in North East Victoria. You get a real sense of the character of Ned the Irish Australian and his fight against the Anglo aristocracy that he so hated. Any preconceived ideas you may have had about the Kelly gang will be blown apart by this book highly recommended.

 

[marty21]

Weapons of Choice: World War 2:1 - John Birmingham - alternate history/time travel nonsense - quite enjoying it

 

[rubbershoes]

A.N. Wilson's book on the Victorians is dense but enjoyable reading.

I didn't realise that there's a stuffed Bentham at UCL.

His head was stolen by students at KCL some years as a rag week stunt . That's probably apocryphal but is part of KCL lore

 

[Maurice Picarda]

AN Wilson's?

 

[Fez909]

I can't read any more. The internet has ruined my attention span. So I've banned the mobile in bed. If I want to read, it's books from now on.

Picked up Lullaby by Chuck Pahlaniak (sp?) which I got about a third of the way in months and months ago (perhaps over a year). I need to finish this to get back into the swing of things, I think.

 

[machine cat]

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Jose Saramago

 

[sojourner]

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Jose Saramago

What's that like, then?

I've just finished The Red Pony and The Pearl by Steinbeck. Absolutely LOVED The Red Pony, and thought The Pearl was an interesting allegory.

 

[krtek a houby]

Ordinary Thunderstorms - William Boyd.