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    Lazy Llama

*What book are you reading? (part 2)

The Brave Athlete - Calm the Fuck Down and Rise to the Occasion - Simon Marshall/ Lesley Peterson.

up to Chapter 9 - so far so good. This book is helping me cope with stupid internal (and peer) pressures immensely.
 
Bought Memento Mori by Muriel Spark this week, after being amused by AL Kennedy's remarks about it on the Muriel Spark prog on iplayer. The fella's away gigging all weekend so am gonna get right stuck into it :cool:
 
Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

A true life tale of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years for no discernible reason. During this time the only word he said was Hi on the single occasion when he bumped into a hiker.

A short but interesting read.
 
Just started 'Ruth And Martin's Album Club' where people are given a record of some repute that they've never heard and have to review it. JK Rowling on The Violent Femmes, Ian Rankin on Madonna's first album, that kind of thing. I bought it because it contains Tim Farron on 'Straight Outta Compton' which is one of the best accidental Partridge things I've seen in ages. ''Much as I admire Eazy E, Dr Dre and Ice Cube the Liberal Democrats take a rather different approach to them on law and order ...'' :D Very good so far.
 
Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson. As usual, I am scratching my head over all the new characters and trying to remember who was who from previous instalments. Luckily, also as usual, Erikson's writing is so engrossing that I'm being swept along by it all.
 
rubbershoes said:
Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

A true life tale of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years for no discernible reason. During this time the only word he said was Hi on the single occasion when he bumped into a hiker.

A short but interesting read.
Click to expand...

Not much dialogue, then?
 
sojourner said:
Bought Memento Mori by Muriel Spark this week, after being amused by AL Kennedy's remarks about it on the Muriel Spark prog on iplayer. The fella's away gigging all weekend so am gonna get right stuck into it :cool:
Click to expand...
This is excellent. Like much of her writing, it is dense as fuck, so I am taking my time to savour it and reading one chapter at a time
 
The Kenneth Williams Diaries.

Interesting to note he lived with the extremes of emotion, he either loves something or hates it.
He talks of suicide from his early 20s too. It's something that shadowed him his whole life until he finally went through with it
 
Riding the Iron Rooster by Louis Theroux's dad. Aka Paul Theroux. Might be 30 years out of date, but I doubt it's 30 years out of date to almost everyone here.

Nothing wrong with a travel book about riding a train around China with multiple references to the Cultural revolution.
 
Voley said:
Just started 'Ruth And Martin's Album Club' where people are given a record of some repute that they've never heard and have to review it. JK Rowling on The Violent Femmes, Ian Rankin on Madonna's first album, that kind of thing. I bought it because it contains Tim Farron on 'Straight Outta Compton' which is one of the best accidental Partridge things I've seen in ages. ''Much as I admire Eazy E, Dr Dre and Ice Cube the Liberal Democrats take a rather different approach to them on law and order ...'' :D Very good so far.
Click to expand...
Stewart Lee on Ziggy Stardust infuriated me :mad:
He didn't like it, but then not liking stuff is kind of his thing I suppose (unless it's that fucking guitarist who plays tuneless drivel who's name escapes me)
 
Listening to R4's you and yours at lunch time I rushed out and bought this. Only published today and struggling to put it down Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain - James Bloodworth; | Foyles Bookstore

9781786490148.jpg
 
Muriel Spark - Curriculum Vitae

It's her autobiog, up to a certain point, and is absolutely fascinating. Her work with the Foreign Office and as editor of the Poetry Society is illuminating, and I just love her economy with words.
 
gave in: heart of darkness.

A tedious, orientalist, anti-black dirge that tries to dazzle you with metaphors and long winding descriptions whilst decentring the real actors and reducing them to primitives. I feel no compassion for marlow and I doubt i will for kurtz either.

100% recommend people read Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih instead. a book that really should have attained classic status by now in the english world.
 
The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England 1640-1650 by Jon Rees

been meaning to read a book on the levellers for ages.

Voley I got that swearing book as well and read the roman chapter last night. Dead useful, I've known for ages that roman attitudes to sex were way way different to ours but I've never had explained through the medium of naughty epigrams
 
dialectician said:
gave in: heart of darkness.

A tedious, orientalist, anti-black dirge that tries to dazzle you with metaphors and long winding descriptions whilst decentring the real actors and reducing them to primitives. I feel no compassion for marlow and I doubt i will for kurtz either.

100% recommend people read Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih instead. a book that really should have attained classic status by now in the english world.
Click to expand...

Urghhh Heart of Darkness still makes me shudder from my uni days.
 
I loved Heart Of Darkness, but I was very young then (well, 21, so practically a child, and studying it in the first year at university).
I remember it being anti-racist and sort of anti-imperial, but I also remember studying Orientalism and Said pointing out that while Conrad does decry treating people different according to the colour of their skin, he never attempts to humanise the people of colour he writes about. They are all just sticks and angles, to recall (perhaps inaccurately) one scene in the books
 
Oh man, what happened to me? When I was young I thought nothing of wolfing down huge densely-written tomes. I even liked Middlemarch. Find it really tricky now! I wish Infinite Jest had come out when I was a youth. I would have ploughed through it in no time
 
Bit obsessed with Muriel Spark at the mo - SUCH a clever writer without being a smart arse.

Almost finished Loitering With Intent.
 
marty21 said:
East of Eden - John Steinbeck- haven't read any Steinbeck in years but they had a load of his novels on kindle for 99p so I bought a few:thumbs: really enjoying it , he is a beautiful writer.
Click to expand...
I read that last year, liked it a lot, very well written I thought.
 
I'm reading the wrong Nothing But The Night

I meant to read the one by John Williams, who wrote the excellent Butcher's Crossing and the over rated borefest Stoner. But I grabbed the Kindle book of the same name by John Blackburn.
It's a horror, featuring a wild murderess and a sinister evil entity. Or something. I don't like horror, but it's old school The Omen style horror so quite entertaining.

Was a movie too, featuring Cassandra from Only Fools And Horses and Papa Lazarou

nothingbutthenight.jpg
 
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