Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I've only read one story and his introduction, soj
*What book are you reading? (part 2)
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heinous seamus
Perfect in an empty room
Started "RD Laing - The Divided Self" this morning.
I've just put a hold on it on the library system so will hopefully get my mitts on it soon
BoatieBird
Well-Known Member
I'm nearly at the end of Killing for Company, by Brian Masters. The story of Dennis Nilsen.
An interesting, fascinating but certainly harrowing read.
I'm looking forward to reading something light and entertaining next.
An interesting, fascinating but certainly harrowing read.
I'm looking forward to reading something light and entertaining next.
ringo
Macaroni cheese controller
How's it going? I'm 75% through Humboldt's Gift. It's dense, heavy stuff.
He bombards and beats the reader with literary and philosophical ideas, quotes and references until your head swims but at the same time keeps you reading ferociously. One of those hard work but worth it authors.
The long pages of philosophy use a similar trick to Easton-Ellis in American Psycho when he describes the rules for sartorial elegance for 5 pages at a time. I imagine you literature grads will know the name of this technique? You could skip it and miss none of the plot but by following the characters' obsessive analytical mind you get a deep incite into their deranged personality.
mentalchik
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit."
Dr Sleep - Stephen King
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
patrick joyce "the state of freedom: a social history of the british state since 1800" (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2013)
flypanam
Sausage to fortune
Agree, Though I think Augie is slightly easier in that it is an everyman type of novel with identity at the heart of it. Terrific so far, I'm about 40% through it. Augie is complex but malleable. Bellow's chrarcterisation of family life is very rich. A writer to savour.
ringo
Macaroni cheese controller
Cheers, I have a feeling I've just read one of his most difficult going novels, would love to read something by him that's a little lighter so I'll give that a go at some point.
Finished the Oliver Sacks one, was okay. Started and finished 'A Country Doctor's Notebook' by Mikhail Bulgakov. Loved that! Short stories based on real life experiences when he was a young doctor, and sent to the back of beyond for a year. Excellent stuff.
Will have to go the library and stock up, but I do have 'Empire of the Sun' with me in work to start (Ballard).
Will have to go the library and stock up, but I do have 'Empire of the Sun' with me in work to start (Ballard).
Buddy Bradley
Pantheistic solipsist
Picked up 'Stoner' by John Williams in the airport lounge last week since I finished the Mantel book I'd been reading. It's full of "the best book you've never read" style quotes by famous authors - and it's actually pretty good, found myself really feeling for the character as he drifts through life.
rubbershoes
not the only raver in the village
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
maya
timewasting fool (in every universe)
The local library sale turned up some real gems lately- a whole stack of books seemingly donated from an ambassador all about Nigerian history, politics and culture- I'm now the proud owner of several complicated treatises on Hausa dance, art and legends of theatrical culture- plus a propaganda book on the dangers of drug use, lovely illustrated by Nigerian primary school children... who also tell fairy tale style stories about the subject in a pretty flowery, surrealistic way (they've got a special way with language and I haven't read english being used in this way before, reminds me a bit of the language in Amos Tutuola's "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts"... very strange, yet familiar.)
Buddy Bradley
Pantheistic solipsist
Brief review: http://thisreviewerslife.tumblr.com/post/68393585127/stoner-john-williams (spoiler - it's brilliant, read it)
rubbershoes
not the only raver in the village
Capital - John Lanchester.
ringo
Macaroni cheese controller
Diary Of Anne Frank. Bloody hell, this is strong stuff. Avoided it for years because my family were Amsterdam Jews and I have in my family tree a whole list of young girls from the same area who were murdered at Auschwitz etc. May have to stop reading it because things are shit enough at home without something else to cause upset.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
JimW
支那暗杀团
I've got a tonne of stuff by him from a friend on the kindle to read but not started in on it yet. He's well respected and what I have read (his one on Chinese anarchism and a few articles) has been good - be interested to hear your take on this. One of the ones I have to go is on history of Chinese marxism IIRC,should have the one you're on too but not got the ebook handy to check.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
It's really good so far on anarchist thought, which had a good decade or so of significant influence before the arrival of Marxism (and later on, Bolshevism for that matter) and the early ways in which it was interpreted.
The last book I read along these lines (and which Dirlik co-authored) was Schools into Fields and Factories: Anarchists, the Guomindang, and the National Labor University in Shanghai, 1927–1932.
One thing though, and which I acknowledge isn't the focus of the study, is that it's a pity we don't get to know the thoughts and hear the voices of newly proletarianised workers and poorer peasants themselves. Mind you, I'm only half-way through. Dirlik does point out that divide and the wrong assumptions made by the anarchists and later Marxists.
Dirlik seeks to challenge Meisner's Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism. Have you read it?
I'd be interested in any PDFs you might have, by Meisner as well.
The last book I read along these lines (and which Dirlik co-authored) was Schools into Fields and Factories: Anarchists, the Guomindang, and the National Labor University in Shanghai, 1927–1932.
One thing though, and which I acknowledge isn't the focus of the study, is that it's a pity we don't get to know the thoughts and hear the voices of newly proletarianised workers and poorer peasants themselves. Mind you, I'm only half-way through. Dirlik does point out that divide and the wrong assumptions made by the anarchists and later Marxists.
Dirlik seeks to challenge Meisner's Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism. Have you read it?
I'd be interested in any PDFs you might have, by Meisner as well.
JimW
支那暗杀团
No,though got but again not yet read Meisner's Marx Maoism and Utopianism. Will upload what I have somewhere and PM you a link if I manage to work it out.
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