*What book are you reading? (part 2)

[Orang Utan]

Wonder Boys is great too.
I didn't rate The Yiddish Policeman's Union much though others seem to rate it highly.

 

[weltweit]

Wonder Boys is great too.
I didn't rate The Yiddish Policeman's Union much though others seem to rate it highly.

Yiddish Policeman's Union was the first of his books I read, I enjoyed it but IIRC was not convinced by the ending.

 

[8115]

Just started reading "In the realm of hungry ghosts. Close encounters with addiction" by Gabor Mate. It's pretty good so far.

 

[campanula]

Wow. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Absolutely fucking brilliant, from beginning to end. Storyline, storytelling, syntax - poetic in parts. I haven't been this impressed since my last Ray Bradbury. Gutted I finished it last night. Started Jon McGregor's 'This Isn't The Sort of Thing That Happens to People Like You' but I fear it's too early to plough into something else. Not much would stand up after the Shriver book - I'm inwardly complaining already about how it's not as good.

mmm, came across it in local charity shop a day or so after reading your post.....got it, reading it and am trying not to race through the last 100 or so pages. Ascerbic, precise, fluent....a delight.

 

[sojourner]

mmm, came across it in local charity shop a day or so after reading your post.....got it, reading it and am trying not to race through the last 100 or so pages. Ascerbic, precise, fluent....a delight.

Glad you're enjoying it!

 

[DotCommunist]

for light relief- The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising


next some esays and then on to the final book in the Star wars Thrawn trilogy. I'll be interested to see what if any of the star wars book series makes it into the upcoming JJ Abrams film sequels

 

[Idris2002]

Yiddish Policeman's Union was the first of his books I read, I enjoyed it but IIRC was not convinced by the ending.

There was a point where I thought it was going to take off into full-scale Philip K. Dick insanity territory. . . but it didn't, which was disappointing.

Jonathan Lethem is better I find.

 

[Idris2002]

Read The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay instead - one of my favourite books ever

That one is very good, though.

 

[sojourner]

Just started Maggie and Me by Damian Barr. Promising. The writing is of a high standard.

Well the writing was of a high standard. Just a fucking shame the twat is a massive Thatcher fan DESPITE growing up gay throughout clause 28 years and his family falling apart thanks to job losses etc. What a fuckwit

 

[BoatieBird]

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.
Thanks for this one ringo, such a beautiful book, wonderful characterisation.

 

[ringo]

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.
Thanks for this one ringo, such a beautiful book, wonderful characterisation.

Great bit of writing, I loved it

 

[rubbershoes]

I've started 2666 by Robert Bolano. I'll report back when I've finished it in 2017

 

[sojourner]

Just started 'Ashes in my Mouth, Sand in my Shoes' by Per Petterson. Interesting start - very poignant second chapter. I nearly cried - it was very subtle.

 

[Dillinger4]

British Culture and the End of Empire (Studies in Imperialism) Paperback by Stuart Ward (Editor)

This book is the first major attempt to examine the cultural manifestations of the demise of imperialism as a social and political ideology in post-war Britain. Far from being a matter of indifference or resigned acceptance as is often suggested, the fall of the British Empire came as a profound shock to the British national imagination, and resonated widely in British popular culture. The sheer range of subjects discussed, from the satire boom of the 1960s to the worlds of sport and the arts, demonstrates how profoundly decolonisation was absorbed into the popular consciousness. Offers an extremely novel and provocative interpretation of post-war British cultural history, and opens up a whole new field of enquiry in the history of decolonisation.

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus: by Rick Perlstein

Acclaimed historian Rick Perlstein chronicles the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1960s. At the heart of the story is Barry Goldwater, the renegade Republican from Arizona who loathed federal government, despised liberals, and mocked "peaceful coexistence" with the USSR. Perlstein's narrative shines a light on a whole world of conservatives and their antagonists, including William F. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller, and Bill Moyers. Vividly written, Before the Storm is an essential book about the 1960s.

 

[moon]

I've been 'reading' Graceling by Kristin Cashore on audible, an amazing fantasy novel about people who are born with 'graces', special abilities which are also associated with the phenotype of having mismatched eye colours.
It centres around Katsa who is graced with survival, she is used as a thug to the bidding of others due to her exceptional fighting ability.
And Po, who is searching for his kidnapped grandfather...
Was totally drawn into this book...

 

[ringo]

Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks

Some great ideas and concepts and well written, but some of the names are annoying. Don't read that much of it, and probably the biggest issue I have with sci-fi is the silly character names. It must be just too tempting to invent new, weird sounding names for alien life forms.

Anyone else struggle with this? I can see it wouldn't quite work to have hairy monsters and three legged trolls called Dave and Paul either though so I'll have to put up with it.

This is so boring. Endless pages of clever and inventive scientific ideas but he seems to have forgotten all that great characterisation he put in his non-sci-fi work. Perhaps the lack of any emotional connection with the characters or the plot is a clever comment about the artificial intelligence of machines, but I doubt it.

 

[BoatieBird]

This is so boring. Endless pages of clever and inventive scientific ideas but he seems to have forgotten all that great characterisation he put in his non-sci-fi work. Perhaps the lack of any emotional connection with the characters or the plot is a clever comment about the artificial intelligence of machines, but I doubt it.

This is how I feel about Iain M Banks too.
I love his non-sci-fi, he's definitely amongst my top 10 favourite authors but I just can't get on with the 'M' stuff
I desperately want to like it, but I just can't

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Self-Criticism After the Defeat - Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm.

 

[Voley]

Just started 'American Interior' Gruff Rhys' book of the film of the album etc about his search for his somewhat eccentric ancestor's search for a lost tribe who "accidentally annexed a third of North America". Only a little bit in but I'm already enjoying his wry writing style. You know when you're only a few pages in but get the feeling that this'll be a book you rattle through in days? Feels like that.

 

[ringo]

This is how I feel about Iain M Banks too.
I love his non-sci-fi, he's definitely amongst my top 10 favourite authors but I just can't get on with the 'M' stuff
I desperately want to like it, but I just can't

I think that's why it's a disappointment, I was expecting to like it as much as what I've read of his other books. Anyway I got through another 20% of it last night and there was a bit more action to get stuck into so I'll finish it off.

 

[Obnoxiousness]

Tales Of A Traveller, by Geoffrey Crayon.

aka Washington Irving...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_a_Traveller

I suffer with a compulsive "must read everything by an author" syndrome. It all started quite innocently with Rip Van Winkle and The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, but then I dipped into some of the lesser known stuff and discovered the whole Diedrich Knickerbocker story... and now I'm hooked on Irving until I can exhaust what's available on the Kindle for £0.00.

Washington Irving wrote using a few pseudonyms, which I can relate to. He also put a series of hoax missing person adverts into the New York press seeking one of them, which generated a lot of interest in his work. One of the first ever examples of viral marketing!

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Islam: To Reform or Subvert, Mohammed Arkoun.

Seems to be about expanding the dialectical frontiers of the unthought and how 20th century politics I.E: sykes-picot agreement dishonoured the rational kernel of early Islamic thought. can't see any use for this type of hermeneutical analysis personally... Given that Islam can solely be deduced from praxis...

 

[ringo]

Yellow DOG - Martin Amis

Another of his slightly misjudged attempts to portray the working class, but some quite good writing keeping me involved. Loads of annoying names such as a woman called He, and an Andrew referred to as And etc are proving difficult as he uses them to intentionally tie the sentences up in baffling linguistic knots. Sometimes he spends so long reminding you he's clever he forgets to write the book. Having said that I've read nearly every bit of fiction he's written so I guess I must like it.

 

[Orang Utan]

Did you manage to get through Lionel Asbo?

 

[sojourner]

I have today started Pat Barker's 'Regeneration'.

I didn't mean for it to be synchronous, I just picked it up by chance in the library last time I was in. I didn't even know what it was about, just that I'd seen the name a few times on here and thought I'd give it a go.

I hadn't even read anything by Wilfred Owen, although I have now, in case it's relevant to the novel. Just made myself retch with Dulce et Decorum Est.

The PB book is starting brilliantly. Really looking forward to reading the rest of it.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Islam: To Reform or Subvert, Mohammed Arkoun.

Seems to be about expanding the dialectical frontiers of the unthought and how 20th century politics I.E: sykes-picot agreement dishonoured the rational kernel of early Islamic thought. can't see any use for this type of hermeneutical analysis personally... Given that Islam can solely be deduced from praxis...

But neither the reasoning of the Enlightenment, nor so-called post-modern reason have been able so far to propose new possibilities to go beyond the principles, categories, definitions and forms of reasoning inherited from theological reason on one side, and enlightened, scientific reason on the other. The inherited frontiers of the mind are displaced by the culture of disbelief (see Stephen Carter, Culture of disbelief: How American Law and Politics trivialize Religious devotion) and sustained by scientific discoveries; but, as Marc Augé puts it in the quotation at the start of this introduction, new frontiers have been drawn between the conqueror mentality, shaped by ‘hard’ sciences and computer sciences, and the fragile disputed evidence proposed by human and social sciences and the unreachable mysteries of the lived experiences of the individual; these mysteries are left without any relevant answer because they remain beyond the scope and the speculation of tele-techno-scientific reason.

Oh God... The ex-muslim in me is dying.

Why establish a dichotomy between enlightenment/postmodern reason and religious reason to begin with?

I'm going to have to persevere with this book, ostensibly...

 

[ViolentPanda]

Just finished (re)-reading Falling London, and reading The Severed Streets both by Paul Cornell, books one and two respectively of Cornell's "Shadow Police" saga. Book two has a nice cameo by Neil Gaiman as fantasy-author-cum-murderous-occultist.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I've been 'reading' Graceling by Kristin Cashore on audible, an amazing fantasy novel about people who are born with 'graces', special abilities which are also associated with the phenotype of having mismatched eye colours.
It centres around Katsa who is graced with survival, she is used as a thug to the bidding of others due to her exceptional fighting ability.
And Po, who is searching for his kidnapped grandfather...
Was totally drawn into this book...

The sequels, Fire and Bitterblue are both very good, too.
If you enjoyed them you'll probably (if you haven't already!) enjoy Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy.

 

[moon]

I recently finished Fire... I can't say I liked it to be honest, the writing felt weak and I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to get into the concept of neon coloured 'monsters' who live alongside normal coloured animals/people of the same species..

But I'm glad you liked Graceling.. that book is very very special.. am on my third listen through it at the moment..

 

[Orang Utan]

I have today started Pat Barker's 'Regeneration'.

I didn't mean for it to be synchronous, I just picked it up by chance in the library last time I was in. I didn't even know what it was about, just that I'd seen the name a few times on here and thought I'd give it a go.

I hadn't even read anything by Wilfred Owen, although I have now, in case it's relevant to the novel. Just made myself retch with Dulce et Decorum Est.

The PB book is starting brilliantly. Really looking forward to reading the rest of it.

Pat Barker is brilliant. The Regeneration trilogy and Border Crossing are just wonderful. Such compassion. She is such a decent human being.
Check out her earlier work - Union Street is great too.