*What book are you reading? (part 2)

[llion]

Aha, didn't realise the tiltle referred to another Foucault! Sounds v interesting.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

Feersum Endjinn - I am back on Iain M. Banks - and am enjoying it

 

[Dirty Martini]

Elmore Leonard - The Hot Kid

Loving the dialogue, and the writing, although fairly simple, is massively effective

Must read some more of his stuff

I love Elmore Leonard

I'd recommend Swag as about the funniest crime novel ever written

 

[sojourner]

I love Elmore Leonard

I'd recommend Swag as about the funniest crime novel ever written

I'll look out for that. Wasn't expecting it to be so good tbh - just picked it up second hand thinking it would do for a lazy read, but am really impressed!

 

[Dirty Martini]

Leonard's an American classic

 

[Obnoxiousness]

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett

 

[Dirty Martini]

Finished The Discovery of France, which I enjoyed very much. A great story, great stories, witty. My only (slight) problem with it is that the claim made that somehow France was a particular case in the way it came together and 'discovered itself' isn't fully developed. I don't know, but it seems to me that similar processes would have gone on in Italy, for example. Some more comparisons with the development of Britain would have been instructive too. It's really a social history of the French provinces, but a very good one.

Now I'm halfway through Against Happiness by Eric G Wilson, about the benefits of melancholia

 

[DotCommunist]

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett

AND niel gaiman.


everyone always forgets niel

 

[belboid]

especially his brother, Neil.

 

[fogbat]

The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins.

I loved the Moonstone, and TWIW is going pretty well, too.

 

[Blagsta]

fuck yes! foucault's pendulum is pure joy

Really? I found it quite dull when I tried to read it several years ago.

 

[belboid]

The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins.

I loved the Moonstone, and TWIW is going pretty well, too.

I started that a week or two back, just haven't been able to get into it so far, tho mrs b insists I really really must.

I'll persevere.

 

[Lo Siento.]

Hernan Casciari, "España, Perdiste." Quite funny actually.

 

[belboid]

Really? I found it quite dull when I tried to read it several years ago.

well you are quite wrong! It's one of the most entertaining books I've ever read, hilarious in places. Probably my favouritest book, the load of old intellectual masturbation that it is.

 

[Blagsta]

well you are quite wrong! It's one of the most entertaining books I've ever read, hilarious in places. Probably my favouritest book, the load of old intellectual masturbation that it is.

Hmmmm, maybe I should try again, although I think I gave my copy to charity when I moved last.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'd rate it as the best book I read this year tbf.

Makes an excellent compare/contrast with Illuminatus!

 

[rubbershoes]

The fall of Constantinople -Stephen Runciman

not many laughs in it so far

 

[sojourner]

Really? I found it quite dull when I tried to read it several years ago.

So did I, threw it back on the bookshelves before I'd even got a third of the way through

Not throwing it out mind, will return to it at some point

 

[TruXta]

McMafia by Misha Glenny. It rather shines through that the authors is a journo (ie. not the best stylist), but the man does know what he's talking about. And what he is talking about is pretty fucked up. Highly recommended non-fic.

 

[Fictionist]

Manituana - Wu Ming

 

[Dirty Martini]

Finished Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy by Eric G Wilson, which was a good laugh but, though it's only a short book, it did go on a bit. It also tipped over into misanthropy on enough occasions. It's very much a polemic against 'American happiness', written for his students (he's an English professor) and arguing, in the end, for literature as a way out of the grind of late capitalism and the commercial imperatives of the university. In that, it's a bit like Why Read? by Mark Edmundson, which is the better book I think.

Anyway, now I'm reading The Film Explainer by Gert Hofmann.

 

[Voley]

Tom Wolfe - 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'

Gave up on this. Fucking hippy wankers.

Now reading 'Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets', David Simon's book that eventually got adapted into The Wire. Very very good so far.

 

[sojourner]

Now reading 'Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets', David Simon's book that eventually got adapted into The Wire. Very very good so far.

Brilliant book that - I absolutely loved it, was gutted when I finished it.

 

[ericjarvis]

AND niel gaiman.


everyone always forgets niel

Nobody forgets Neil. Half the population of the world know Neil Gaiman. There are tribes in deepest Amazonia that have had almost no contact with the rest of the world where several people regularly regale everyone with stories of the evening they spent on the piss with Neil Gaiman. When we finally make contact with an alien civilisation their second question will be "How's Neil? Haven't seen him in months." *

* Their first question will be "Is that Thatcher bitch dead yet?"

 

[no-no]

Just finished - Let the right one in. They left a lot of the nastier stuff out of the film and also some of the explanations of how the vampirism works and spreads which somehow makes it less believable.

The ending for the Hakan character is horrific in the film, hard to believe he has an even worse time in the book.

 

[Fictionist]

Gregor Von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

(Alongside the Wu Ming)

 

[5t3IIa]

Nothing. Not even bought the paper today

 

[Fictionist]

Nothing. Not even bought the paper today

Will this become permanent?!

 

[Dirty Martini]

The Film Explainer was good and kind of strange.

The Corrections by J Franzen

 

[belboid]

David Peace, GB84. Pretty good so far.