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*What book are you reading? (part 2)

Just finished The Killing Season, by Mason Cross. I think it may be his only book (off to look in a mo) if you like fast paced thrillers this is for you. I really enjoyed it except that I read it through in a couple of days and had hoped it would last longer.

eta: The sequel, THE SAMARITAN, will be published in 2015.
You can find out more by visiting Mason Cross's website at www.carterblake.net
 
Finished China Mieville's first YA novel - Un Lun Dun - really really liked it - imaginative and subversive

Now reading Jo Walton's Among Others - about a teenage girl with a tragic family background finding solace in sci-fi books. there is magic and fairies. but don't let that put you off. loving it so far.
 
A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava.
I was expecting it to be a typically compelling-yet-not-too-provoking crime novel, so the interesting discussion about 'perfection' and the flimsy role of morality in an ambitious mind has been an excellent surprise.
 
Orang Utan said:
Finished China Mieville's first YA novel - Un Lun Dun - really really liked it - imaginative and subversive

Now reading Jo Walton's Among Others - about a teenage girl with a tragic family background finding solace in sci-fi books. there is magic and fairies. but don't let that put you off. loving it so far.
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I loved Among Others.
 
The Tall Dark Man by Anne Chamberlain
This is a 1950s suspense thriller with quite a conventional plot, which is that a socially isolated adolescent fantasist has witnessed a murder from out of the window of her school and the murderer knows it. What follows is an excellent tense piece of writing which really effectively draws the character of the lonely teenager who for once can't escape into her imagination. I'm right near the end of this and have been really impressed by it. I'll have to look out for more by the author but I don't think she wrote many novels.
 
Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange (The first English translation of a medieval Arab fantasy collection) by Coralie Bickford-smith, Malcolm C. Lyons and Robert Irwin. It's dated between the 10th and 16th century, with some academics leaning more to the former, and some to the latter.

Helped take my mind off shit for a while last night anyway. Some extraordinary stories in here, beautiful binding too. Lovely book.
 
I have been reading Dark Entries, by Robert Aickman. A collection of dark stories. They are very nicely written but I keep wondering where the plot is, and wishing there was one. The title is dark entries but the darkness of the stories is actually quite light and not really at all scary. I guess I just didn't gel with it, this will be the first time in three years I have started a book gotten 2/3 of the way though and not finished it, in fact the first time in that period that I didn't complete a book I started.
 
Orang Utan said:
Finished China Mieville's first YA novel - Un Lun Dun - really really liked it - imaginative and subversive

Now reading Jo Walton's Among Others - about a teenage girl with a tragic family background finding solace in sci-fi books. there is magic and fairies. but don't let that put you off. loving it so far.
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This was brilliant - DotCommunist - i think you'd like it.

Now onto The Windup Girl, by Paulo Bacigalupi - brilliant so far.
 
End of the World Running Club - To say its striking a chord is an understatement. Early 30's, becoming very aware I'm getting older and unfit and working in IT.
 
Orang Utan said:
It's a dreadful lack of courtesy to the writer. They spent a long time writing it and you don't bother crediting them. The book didn't write itself.
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that's not always entirely true. as everyone knows, aleister crowley merely took dictation when receiving liber al vel legis in cairo in 1904, while georgie yeats' receipt of automatick writing formed the basis of w.b. yeats' the vision (1925; 2nd ed. 1937)
 
ViolentPanda said:
Just finished "Getting By" by Liza MacKenzie, and "Dreams of G-ds and Monsters" by Laini Taylor, and have started "Strange Fruit" by Kenan Malik.
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Malik is really annoying. right wing anti-multiculturalism masquerading as left. Though he nails it on free speech against religion. There's a text of his on the MIA entitled 'some cultures are better than others'. What on earth is that even supposed to mean? An abstraction devoid of marxist sense if ever there was one.
 
dialectician said:
Malik is really annoying. right wing anti-multiculturalism masquerading as left. Though he nails it on free speech against religion. There's a text of his on the MIA entitled 'some cultures are better than others'. What on earth is that even supposed to mean? An abstraction devoid of marxist sense if ever there was one.
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Not everything is written to conform to a Marxist structure. :)
And of course he's "really annoying". He writes to stimulate debate, not to masturbate.

As for his writing being "right-wing", how much of his stuff have you read? To me his books and his journalism speaks pretty loudly of attempting to take perspective that favours neither side, but merely analyses.
 
Poseidon's wake by Alastair Reynolds (although I did not enjoy the middle book of this trilogy at all) and Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson, whose writing I do enjoy albeit slightly hectoring.
 
Just finished City of Lies - Love, Sex, Death and the Search for Truth in Tehran, by Ramita Navai.

A really interesting book, with each chapter based on one person's life, albeit with some deliberate fudging to protect people from the authorities. The characters include drug dealers, prostitutes, divorcees, gangsters, and so on.

The author was the Tehran correspondent for the Times.
 
John Doran's Jolly Lad and Andy Weir's The Martian
Their first is a memoir by a music writer about addiction and all sorts of other stuff. The second is a thriller about an astronaut stuck on Mars.
 
ViolentPanda said:
Not everything is written to conform to a Marxist structure. :)
And of course he's "really annoying". He writes to stimulate debate, not to masturbate.

As for his writing being "right-wing", how much of his stuff have you read? To me his books and his journalism speaks pretty loudly of attempting to take perspective that favours neither side, but merely analyses.
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Of course not. But he claims to be a marxist/post? He's still part of the RCP, or whatever mutation they've undergone now.

I read that moral compass book last year and I try to read everything I can on Pandemonium (CEMB are quite big on him, don't you know!) Like I said, he nails it on the liberal and far left's obsession with cultural relativism, but so do other right wingers. He's certainly worth reading, one should try to read everything they possibly can, if they have time. But I digress. This one's just a muslim who can get publicity for his remarkably uninteresting, banal and commonplace views.
 
dialectician said:
Malik is really annoying. right wing anti-multiculturalism masquerading as left. Though he nails it on free speech against religion. There's a text of his on the MIA entitled 'some cultures are better than others'. What on earth is that even supposed to mean? An abstraction devoid of marxist sense if ever there was one.
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Is there? Do you have a link?
 
butchersapron said:
Where is he wrong? That's an anti anti-imperialism piece btw. It's challenging the assumptions of anti-imperialism not arguing for it.
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He's right that emancipatory politics have existed in the European tradition and the multicultural left thinks that cultures are closed off boxes. But most of these third world anticolonial revolutions were bourgeois revolutions with red flags (as you well know.) It seems wrong to me to contrast an east vs. west binary (especially where subalterns and their making of history is concerned.) Granted, this is the major lacuna in third world (marxist) influenced post-colonial studies, where practitioners of the discipline are unable to fully dissect European history and see it as some kind of amorphous totality. But Malik does exactly the same for the East. Wait your time, not yet, good sir. In theory it's a nice intellectual construction but practically says little, if anything about the class struggle.
 
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Just finished David Pearce - 1974. I was hoping for something a bit more after seeing him compared to James Ellroy a few times. It was dark for sure and one of the better crime novels I've read, but I'll likely wait til I see his books in a charity shop rather then rush out and buy them now.

Currently John Bergers About Looking and Anthony Burgess Honey For the Bears
 
Just finished Let it Bleed, Ian Rankin. I like Rankin's books, read quite a few now, they usually deliver a plot with plenty of intrigue and hold my interest.
 
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