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*What book are you reading ?

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I haven't posted for a while but I've read through and have again been impressed with the eclectic reading choices made by everyone here. When will aspects of the media realise there are many readers out here rahter than just saying that fewer people read anymore.

As for me I finished the somewhat dissappointing Booker Shortlist though I was impressed with Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry. I had great plesaure in reading The Moors Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie - I'll reccomend this right now if you like Rushdies style. I thought then a few shorter works would be good , The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge followed by Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome , both superb the latter being hilarious and as good today as it must have been in 1898.

At the moment I'm half way through The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge.
 
i just read fierce dancing by cj stone on a 16 hour flight.
really enjoyed it but mostly because his story criss crosses my own
ive been writing a book for years and i couldnt believe how close his story was to mine so thanks to my mate simon for realising that and lending it to me.
i lost faith in my own writing after spending years believing it was what i should do and the project nearly got shelved for good but ive sent it to someone to read through and am awaiting his feedback
 
So I resolved this year to read more and watch less telly, and last night I actually turned off the tv to finish a book. And it gave me really, really bad nightmares. AND it was a children's book (How I Live Now)

Harumph. Telly has never given me nightmares. :mad:

Anyway. I've jst started reading "Everything Is Illuminated". If that gives me nightmares, I'm never reading anything more complex than Miffy or Viz again.
 
Being unable to sleep last night (again) i read about 150 pages of Murakami's South Of The Border, which was excellent. (40 pages to go, when i go back to bed in a bit).

I'm confused by Murakami, a bit. I tried WInd Up Bird Chronicles but really lost patience with it about 1/2 way in and gave up.

But South Of The Border, whilst not as astonishing and heartbreaking (so far) as Norwegian Wood, has a similar mood and style (although Pie Eye is right about the translation being a bit shonky).

So of the remainder (ie not those 3) that i haven't read, which ones are closer in style to Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, and which more like Chronicles?
 
murakami for a nobel

i just re-read a wild sheep chase and it's in mold of wind up bird but it wasn't quite as great as i remember it.. but then my first encounter with it was my first encounter with him so it's newness had a great effect... think the 'sequel' dance dance dance might be better

iirc sputnik sweetheart is a lot like south of the border.. i like both of them a lot and thought in many ways they were a progression from norwegian wood.

the next thing to try in my view is either of his two collections of short stories An Elephant Vanishes or After the Quake

you can find his early out of print novella pinball 1974 on the web.

haven't read kafka on the shore yet
 
finished SOuth.. just now. It's a sad sad ending. And his wife's 'speech' is heartbreaking. Perhaps not as good as Norwegian Wood, and i didn't expect the fairly bleak, compromised ending. But it does make sense
 
Dubversion said:
finished SOuth.. just now. It's a sad sad ending. And his wife's 'speech' is heartbreaking. Perhaps not as good as Norwegian Wood, and i didn't expect the fairly bleak, compromised ending. But it does make sense
Click to expand...
- hey! :mad: - no spoilers! :mad:
 
Robert Silverberg(?)- The Book Of Skulls

1970's Sci-Fi, although actually verging more on fantasy imo- as it seems to be atypical/lacking any specific "science fiction" elements...

the writing's a bit dated (irritating how obsessed he's about Eli's self-loathing of his Jewishness, but as the author seems to come from the same background himself i don't think it was meant to be derogatory/racist in any way, more a kind of portait of teenage insecurities and angst, i suspect?)

anyway, a good trick is the way he switched between the four main characters and their respective worldview/use of language changes with who's telling the story, also it's good to get the same events more than once, told through the eyes of different people...

there's a more disturbing thing going on, much to do with the almost universal fear of death and desire for eternal life, the attractiveness of religious cults-
perhaps a criticism of the mechanisms which draws young "searching" people into the arms of authoritative leaders...

i still haven't come to the ending, but i'll just say it draws you in and you get curious about what direction it's going to take, what the (inevitable tragic/bleak) ending is going to be...
 
I'm reading a first-hand account of the first expedition across Antarctica (Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage), illustrated with the amazing photographs of Frank Hurley.
 
Brewer's Rogues, Villians and Eccentrics by William Donaldson (now sadly dead author of the Henry Root Letters). It is really achingly funny as well as informative...only gripe is that it has some glaring mistakes eg it's Jess Yates, not Jeff Yates and Harriette Wilson, not Harriet Wilson.
 
finished off the Peel book, Margrave of The Marshes.. there's a noticeable drop in interest at the point he died and his wife/kids picked up the story (circa 1965 or so) but all things considered, they did a decent job of maintaining the same mood and irreverence.

he was a curious character - a sentimental old twat in some ways (to the point of being a bit obsessive) - and it's a great read, especially the early part which he wrote which i found myself reading in his voice in my head, so ingrained is it in my brain...

Started reading Underground by Murakami, his series of interviews with the victims and perpetrators of the 1995 Tokyo sarin attacks. I'm afraid i found the long series of interviews with the victims rather repetitive and lacking in interest and i've skipped to the section interviewing Aum members. Which makes me feel guilty as all hell, because Murakami's stated intention was to give a voice to the victims and redress the balance that always follows such things where the attackers have a personality and the victims are just numbers.

ho hum
 
coming towards the end of mason and dixon and liking it a lot and lamenting the decreasing amount of thomas pynchon left unread
 
On Sunday I read Sputnik Sweetheart and today I'm reading After the Quake. I'm gonna have to take a small Murakami break after this, I think. I'm starting to interpret my world in the way one of his protagonists would. I reckon this could ultimately develop into schizophrenia so I should be careful.
 
siarc said:
lamenting the decreasing amount of thomas pynchon left unread
Click to expand...
What you got left?

Reading Tricksta as some relief from dense tomes- now finished. Liked it a lot.

Next up Norwegian Wood and some drab environmentalism.
 
I'd wholeheartedly recommend Motherless Brooklyn and especially Fortress of Solitude both by Jonathan Lethem.

I have another 2 of his books waiting to be started but I can't bear to yet as I am still recovering from FoS - it's so well written and I was so utterly absorbed that a shock tear nearly SPRANG from my eye across teh tube at one stage :D

There are some crappy meaningless reviews on this amazon page :rolleyes:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-6355258-5704623

Am currently reading various Sat and Sun supplements on the tube for my Lethem comedown
 
5t3IIa said:
and especially Fortress of Solitude both by Jonathan Lethem.
Click to expand...


i tried. God knows i tried. It is wonderfully written, but it's OVER-written. it was taking me so long to wade through all his wonderful descriptions. i... just.. kind.. of.. stopped.
 
Finished 'Trawl' by BS Johnson, the second in the omnibus. It gets stronger, but hasn't got the invention of 'Albert Angelo'. I did want to slap him hard at several points.

Now 50 pages into 'Stone Junction'. I liked 'Not Fade Away' a lot, and am enjoying this one too, I guess. The parade of impossibly interesting and kindly truckdrivers and modernday outlaw shamans with cool, hardbitten oneliners is getting a bit wearying tho, tbh.
 
Dubversion re:Murakami - are you not at all bothered by so many references to the Beatles? :D

Seriously now, I don't understand why people like Murakami so much. I have read the Wind-up Bird but I didn't think it was anything exceptional.
 
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