*What book are you reading? (part 2)

[belboid]

i am currently reading my P45 - which is a damned site better written than the Mick Muddles book on MES/The Fall

 

[maya]

Michel Houellebecq & Bernard-Henri Levy: 'Ennemis Publics' (Public Enemies)

More or less incoherent satire from the old poseurs...

(Paraphrased: )

Houellebecq: 'The political leaders of France should stop trying to make the capital into a financial hub and rather focus on tourism... With these few lines, I've saved the French economy'
(later: ) 'My exema hurts'

 

[scifisam]

I'm reading 'Glue,' by Irvine Welsh right now. Good Lord, the language is hard work. I think I might return to my German short stories for a bit of light relief.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

I'm reading 'Glue,' by Irvine Welsh right now. Good Lord, the language is hard work. I think I might return to my German short stories for a bit of light relief.

Love a bit of Irv, meself. A pretty good one of his, as well. Not up there with the best, but a nice, charming story with some good "snapshots" of each era depicted. Stick with the scots for a while - it will become easy within 200 pages, second nature by the end of that (quite long, if memory serves...) book.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

I'm reading "Rant" by Chuck Palahnia-hahniahuk atm. Enjoying, so far (40 pages). Last CP book I liked was Survivor.

 

[Fictionist]

I managed to read Mohsin Hamid's 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' during some short distance travelling and I was quite impressed with the quality of stillness and calm which pervades the narrative. The writing style is spare, which might well be taken by some to be representative of intellectual depth, something which (ultimately) the novella lacks.

Back to Averroes

 

[scifisam]

Love a bit of Irv, meself. A pretty good one of his, as well. Not up there with the best, but a nice, charming story with some good "snapshots" of each era depicted. Stick with the scots for a while - it will become easy within 200 pages, second nature by the end of that (quite long, if memory serves...) book.

I am enjoying the story, with the Clockwork Orange style stories and all. But it is very, very long indeed. 469 hardback-size pages!

 

[Grub str. hack]

I'm reading, and loving "The Poison Wood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver. A very damning indietment of colonialism and christianity. Chirstians, (particualary black christians) will absolutley HATE this book but everyone need to read it, especially them.

 

[El Jefe]

i am currently reading my P45 - which is a damned site better written than the Mick Muddles book on MES/The Fall

In a bad way?

And yeh, the Middles book is AWFUL

 

[Kid_Eternity]

I'm about two thirds into Making Money by Terry Pratchett. Pretty good and well timed given the parallels with the banking crisis etc.

 

[sojourner]

I'm reading 'Glue,' by Irvine Welsh right now. Good Lord, the language is hard work. I think I might return to my German short stories for a bit of light relief.

How far are you into it sam? I love IW, and found I just slipped into the dialect mentally after 20 pages or so. An ex of mine couldn't handle it at all though

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm reading 'Glue,' by Irvine Welsh right now. Good Lord, the language is hard work. I think I might return to my German short stories for a bit of light relief.

just think in a glaswegian accent.

 

[scifisam]

How far are you into it sam? I love IW, and found I just slipped into the dialect mentally after 20 pages or so. An ex of mine couldn't handle it at all though

About 100 pages. I think I'm just not in the mood for it right now, really.

just think in a glaswegian accent.

The characters would nut you for saying that - it's Edinburgh.

 

[DotCommunist]

Oh did I compare them with weedgie scum? oops.

but, it's how I read welsch's vernacular stuff. In the style of begbie from the film

 

[trevhagl]

Mark Steel - Whats Going On.
Excellent.

 

[sojourner]

About 100 pages. I think I'm just not in the mood for it right now, really.

put it down, read it another time

dilly - doris lessing quote required please!

 

[madamv]

I always have to be in the right frame of mind for Irvine. Usually a bit pissed off and needing a fight

Just finished De Maupassant - Pierre and Jean. I really enjoyed it, it seemed to carry me akin to Crime and Punishment. All breathless and urgent page turning, although not similar in anyway other than the main characters desperations...

Excited to be continuing Armistead Maupins Tales of the City. I have read the first two, now received the next three , awaiting delivery of two more. Yey! The house will be a shit hole over the next few weeks

 

[Orang Utan]

The graphic novel? I thought i loved that when i read it ~20 years ago if so. What do you think about it now?

It's interesting but I'm not completely taken with it - we'll see

 

[scifisam]

put it down, read it another time

Yeah, I have. Maybe I'll wait till I'm feeling angry, like madamv says - I think that'd work!

Besides, I have another ten books on the go at the moment anyway. The Father Brown mysteries, Charlotte Bronte's the Professor, a Batman graphic novel, and three different books of sci-fi short stories.

 

[rollinder]

Demo: The Collection by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan

 

[marty21]

loving it

 

[Dillinger4]

I have just finished The Naked & the Dead by Norman Mailer, and I finished EEEEE EEE EEEEE by Tao Lin on the train the other day.

 

[May Kasahara]

i'm reading another Pelecanos crime novel, Drama City. it's good, and has the added advantage of being written in Baltimore-style dialogue so i am getting a little extra Wire hit

 

[Dirty Martini]

I seem to have given up reading for the moment, though I'm flicking through Earl Scruggs and the Five-String Banjo by, er, Earl Scruggs.

 

[Urbanblues]

'The Master and Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov

 

[Dillinger4]

put it down, read it another time

dilly - doris lessing quote required please!

heh.



I will find it in a second....

 

[Dillinger4]

heh.



I will find it in a second....

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

There are a whole bunch of other excellent quotes here:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing

I particularly like this one:

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how.

It is the one I have in my mind as I am applying for graduate training in various Libraries.

As for reading - I have run out of new books for the moment. So I am re-reading On Belief by Slavoj Zizek and The Fall by Albert Camus (one of my all time favourites)

 

[tastebud]

I'm reading 'The post birthday world' by Lionel Shriver.
It's a bit chick lit in a way but I'm quite enjoying it. And I'm reasonably interested to find out how it ends so pick it up often. I accidentally read a bit of the author's concluding remarks though, so I sort of know how the structure of the story concludes.
I am a silly head.

Quite keen to read 'We need to talk about Kevin' now though.

 

[DotCommunist]

About to start som Rushdie book. I liked SV, this one better be worth the effort

ooh wierd title thingy

 

[Fictionist]

Slaughterhouse 5

Read it on the train home and I consider it to be a very odd little book. Very odd indeed.