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*What book are you reading? (part 2)

What do you think, jeff_leigh ?

I had the misfortune to read that as my intro to Bukowski, and it scarred me for life. The misogyny dripping from each and every page made me want to smash his stupid fucking face in with a cricket bat.

So many of my poetry friends think the sun shines out of his arse but I just cannot get my head round my loathing of him.
Yeah I know what you mean, He does come across like a throwback from the 1970's, Maybe if he was still around he'd be in the dock with Max Clifford and Stuart Hall
 
What do you think, jeff_leigh ?

I had the misfortune to read that as my intro to Bukowski, and it scarred me for life. The misogyny dripping from each and every page made me want to smash his stupid fucking face in with a cricket bat.

So many of my poetry friends think the sun shines out of his arse but I just cannot get my head round my loathing of him.
he's a superb writer, who writes really horrible things. I haven't read any for years, because I don't particularly want to engorge myself in that level of misogyny again, but if, for any reason, you really want to get into the head of a man who hates women (as well as manyother things), Bukowski really is the way to go.
 
I'm on Tom Sharpe 'Ancestral Vices'

I thought I'd read all his stuff but must have missed this one. a lefty history lecturer is asked to do the family history of some absolute slaver scum aristo family.

farce will no doubt ensue
 
I'm reading The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. Enjoyably silly so far!
 
I'm on Tom Sharpe 'Ancestral Vices'

I thought I'd read all his stuff but must have missed this one. a lefty history lecturer is asked to do the family history of some absolute slaver scum aristo family.

farce will no doubt ensue

If that is the one he wrote just a couple of years back where the kids are teenagers, I am afraid that it does not end in farce just disappointment.

Maybe I am thinking of another book. I hope for your sake that I am!

I always enjoyed his other books & the latter one was like seeing a band you used to love as a kid....

Edit to add I am thinking of The Wilt Inheritance so you should be okay.;)
 
Just finished Ender's Game - superb.

A real must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in sci-fi.

The end is great too
 
have you read the other 2 Shadow and Exile ? Just asking as I've got all 3 on my Kindle to read list
No, I have them to read. Speaker for the Dead is the next one I think, meant to be very good but not quite up to Ender's Game standards. Next two just average apparently.
 
The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a lost imagination by Sarah Schulman.

Blurb:

In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981-1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation's imagination and the consequences of that loss.

Totally devastating.
 
Is it any good? I wanted to buy it when True Detective was on. I really liked the sound of it. But then my interest faded a bit.

So far its worth picking up. Essentially its about a middle aged sick weary bag man and a young woman who has tried to be a prostitute but doesn't like it and spend their time running away from troubles only to run into other troubles. The two main characters are very sympathetic and the area where I think Pizzolatto really does well is his evocation of heat in Loiusana and East Texas. There is also a sense of sunblind colour that you also get in True Detective.
 
Have just finished reading...

Keeping Mum an autobiography by Brian Thompson

Reading it I laughed and cried along with Brian as he recounted his bizarre childhood ...and bizarre is the word,believe me.

What's it like to be the man of the house when you're still a boy?

Mum and Dad - Squibs and Bert- were a complete mystery to Brian Thompson as he grew up in Cambridge and London during the forties.His mother danced with the Yanks all night and slept under a fake fur coat all day and when his father bothered to come home he resolutely discouraged Brian in everything. Whilst other children were evacuated out of the big cities, Brian found himself travelling into London and spent much of the Blitz with an eccentric swarm of indolent,ribald relations.
 
Surface Detail, Iain M. Banks

I was a bit daunted by it because it is massive (600 pages), but I just knocked off the first 10% in one sitting so it won't be as bad as I thought.
 
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