Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

*What book are you reading? (part 2)

Angel's Chic by Arjuna Krishna-Das

Set in an alternate reality 1990s Liverpool, India, Tibet and the heavenly planet Chandraloka (also known as the Moon), Angels Chic is the gripping tale of two unusual individuals attempting to cope with contrasting lives of chaos and a high-tech high-octane career. Their discovery of a teleport machine sets them off on a trip of external and internal discovery, poses questions of ethics, conspiracy, mental health and philosophy, and puts them at odds with the modern Bavarian Illuminati as they seek an ancient and transcendental treasure without equal.
Click to expand...

Tun-Huang by Yasushi Inoue

Tun-Huang, in Central Asia, is a walled city along the Silk Road that historically connected China to the West. It is also the site of the Thousand Buddha cave where, in the early 1900s, Sir Aurel Stein discovered an extraordinary treasure trove of early Buddhist sutras and other scriptures. In Tun-Huang the novel, the great modern Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue imagines how the scriptures came to be hidden in the caves. Set in the eleventh century CE, this is the story of Chao Tsing-te, a young Chinese man whose accidental failure to take the test that would have qualified him for a career as a government bureaucrat leads to a chance encounter that takes him farther and farther into the wild and contested lands west of the Chinese Empire. There he finds love, distinguishes himself in battle, and finally devotes himself to the strange task that led to the rediscovery of the scriptures so many centuries later. A book of magically vivid scenes, fierce passions, and astonishing adventures to equal Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tun-Huang is also a profound and stirring meditation on the mystery of history and the hidden presence of the past.
Click to expand...

The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian,

'A long-time confidante of the rain and snow, I am ninety years old. The rain and snow have weathered me, and I too have weathered them'.

At the end of the twentieth-century an old woman sits among the birch trees and thinks back over her life, her loves, and the joys and tragedies that have befallen her family and her people. She is a member of the Evenki tribe who wander the remote forests of north-eastern China with their herds of reindeer, living in close sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel.

An idyllic childhood playing by the river ends with her father's death and the growing realisation that her mother's and uncle's relationship is not as simple as she thought. Then, in the 1930s, the intimate, secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese army invades China. The Evenki cannot avoid being pulled into the brutal conflict which marks the first step towards the end of their isolation.
Click to expand...

Natashas Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works by John Brockman
The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune by Kristin Ross
Greek Tragedy by HDF Kitto
The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe by Graham Robb
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme

And a load of poetry
 
On the second book in Asher's Owners trilogy. His politics are vile. Setting his heroes up against a vast murderous world government fails to disguise this.
 
Dillinger4 said:
Angel's Chic by Arjuna Krishna-Das



Tun-Huang by Yasushi Inoue



The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian,



Natashas Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works by John Brockman
The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune by Kristin Ross
Greek Tragedy by HDF Kitto
The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe by Graham Robb
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme

And a load of poetry
Click to expand...


That sounds like the syllabus from Human Puffery and Confabulation 101.
 
Kiddar's Luck by Jack Common

Just begun reading this which is the first of Common's two autobiographical novels that he wrote about growing up in Newcastle in the early 1900s. He was a great vivid writer and with a good sense of humour which really helps draws you in to his prose. Enjoying it quite a lot so far and I've also the follow up The Ampersand to read after.
 
inva said:
Kiddar's Luck by Jack Common

Just begun reading this which is the first of Common's two autobiographical novels that he wrote about growing up in Newcastle in the early 1900s. He was a great vivid writer and with a good sense of humour which really helps draws you in to his prose. Enjoying it quite a lot so far and I've also the follow up The Ampersand to read after.
Click to expand...

It would be good to get hold of collections of his articles and essays, some written when he was a young journalist in London, a time when he met and became lifelong friends with Orwell. I'm sure you could find a cheap copy of his Freedom of the Streets. One collection, Revolt Against an Age of Plenty, is here.
 
seventh bullet said:
It would be good to get hold of collections of his articles and essays, some written when he was a young journalist in London, a time when he met and became lifelong friends with Orwell. I'm sure you could find a cheap copy of his Freedom of the Streets. One collection, Revolt Against an Age of Plenty, is here.
Click to expand...
thanks. as it happens I have a copy of Revolt Against already though I've only read a few of the articles from it.
 
The State of the Art by Iain M Banks ... very very nice sci-fi. Actually just on the actual short story 'State of the Art' about the Culture - it's very nicely done.
 
Imperial Bedrooms - Bret Easton Ellis

A sequel to Less Than Zero, with Ellis' standard clinical vanity and violence. Its good, and the style is so polished its worth a read but he's done all this before and gives the impression he's as lazy and as keen to continue playing the same tricks and watch the money come rolling in as his characters. Perhaps that's his point and he's smarter than I'm giving him credit for, but I want to read something new from him because he could be so good.
 
Rifleman by Victor Gregg.
What an extraordinary man. His tales from the drop at Arnhem, his imprisonment at Dresden (shocking description of the lighting of the city).
The stories of his Communist Party days and subsequent hiring by the British Secret Service are spellbinding. On the verge of being picked for his country for cycling and the very real part he played in the downfall of the Berlin wall.

Astonishing story.
 
BoatieBird said:
I decided that A Tale of Two Cities probably wasn't the best introduction to Dickens (it's said to be one of his more serious works) so I thought I'd break myself in gently with some shorter stuff.
Just finished reading To be Read at Dusk and The Chimes. Absolutely agree with the above - touching and funny characterisation, beautiful use of language and a real sense of the outrage he felt at the lack of social justice in society at the time.
Will tackle one of his longer works soon.
Click to expand...
A Tale of Two Cities is my favourite Dickens:thumbs: - get back to it :mad:
 
Close Range Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx......fast becoming one of my favourite authors, stunning command of language.
 
ringo said:
Close Range Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx......fast becoming one of my favourite authors, stunning command of language.
Click to expand...
One of my all time favourite writers. I think she's a fucking GENIUS, especially with dialogue. Just the odd clip on a word here, there, and you can hear the fucking dialect! Read everything she's done, there's isn't a duff one out there. I'm quite jealous you're getting to just start on her :cool:
 
sojourner said:
One of my all time favourite writers. I think she's a fucking GENIUS, especially with dialogue. Just the odd clip on a word here, there, and you can hear the fucking dialect! Read everything she's done, there's isn't a duff one out there. I'm quite jealous you're getting to just start on her :cool:
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to ration myself so I don't read everything in one go :)
 
Currently nothing. And I don't have many unread books on my shelf either, nothing that I'm too keen on right now at least. Might have to pop into Bookmongers tomorrow.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

tommers
What (comics) are you reading right now?
2 3
Replies
62
Views
1K
tommers
tommers
Pickman's model
  • Poll
Dedication's what you need: the 2025 reading challenge thread
2 3 4 5
Replies
127
Views
3K
rubbershoes
rubbershoes
ska invita
Comfortable chairs you can read books in
2
Replies
35
Views
808
Hollis
Hollis
danny la rouge
Wolf Hall 1&2
2
Replies
49
Views
968
redsquirrel
R
Eivets Rednow
What gives you writing inspiration/energy?
Replies
4
Views
147
Eivets Rednow
Eivets Rednow
Back
Top Bottom