*What book are you reading ?

[Orang Utan]

Finished Things You Should Know, stories by AM Homes.

Themes recurring, worked to a point, shuffled round, reworked. A few of these stories are so-so, a couple of them are interesting and no more, four of them are extremely good and one, 'The Former First Lady and the Football Hero', about Ronald and Nancy Reagan, is brilliant.

Homes is my discovery of the year. Better late than never.

You should definitely give Jack a try.

 

[Dirty Martini]

You should definitely give Jack a try.

Cheers, I noted your recommendation a page back It'll be the next one of hers I'll read, I think. I don't want to get through them all too quickly, she hasn't written that much.

 

[Dirty Martini]

Now onto the urban-endorsed blockbuster, Middlesex.

I have become a reading machine.

 

[Dirty Martini]

How is Eugenides pronounced?

You gen eee deez

or

You genn a deez?

Or indeed Ay oo gen eee deez?

 

[Philbc03]

How is Eugenides pronounced?

You gen eee deez

That's the one.

I'm now in a quandry. I've started reading an edited collection on Pierre Bourdieu but I'm at a loss for my bus/ad break book. Do I go for Edmund White's 'A Boy's Own Story' or James W. Gerard's 'My Four Years in Germany' (he was the last US ambassador to Imperial Germany, apparently).

 

[mrkikiet]

boyd: restless.

once i got into it it was excellent.

 

[baldrick]

Sartre - Being and Nothingness.

Seriously, I don't know why i bothered. I wanted a book that would last me more than half a day, I think i've gone a bit too far

Anyone read it? Does it get any more comprehensible after the 21st page?

 

[jodal]

A brilliant brilliant book. I just couldn't put it down.

I've nearly finished reading this. Its fucking good.

 

[undercover]

have taken a gamble with the new Christopher Brookmyre one, 'A tale etched in blood and hard black pencil', as his last but one effort, 'Be my enemy' was crap, trying to make the likable main character of his first few books into an ultra cool hero and just made him annoying.

Enjoying it so far, and if impressed enough will pop back to the one I missed out, 'All fun and games until someone loses an eye'.

Still one of the best british writers around of the black humour variety IMO.

 

[belboid]

Sartre - Being and Nothingness.

Seriously, I don't know why i bothered. I wanted a book that would last me more than half a day, I think i've gone a bit too far

Anyone read it? Does it get any more comprehensible after the 21st page?

aye read it for my philosophy course. An entertaining read, if often ripped off from heidegger. It sorta gets more comprehensible as you go along, in that if you can get past the first fifty odd pages, it doesnt get any worse.

 

[Dirty Martini]

That's the one.

Ta

 

[baldrick]

aye read it for my philosophy course. An entertaining read, if often ripped off from heidegger. It sorta gets more comprehensible as you go along, in that if you can get past the first fifty odd pages, it doesnt get any worse.

right

tbh I was hoping it was going to turn into tolstoy... I knew i should have stayed away from waterstone's

 

[ICB]

LeGuin's Tombs of Atuan to my kids, such joy

King's The Waste Lands to myself, not bad

anything based on Heidegger should be pulped immediately

 

[Philbc03]

Do I go for Edmund White's 'A Boy's Own Story' or James W. Gerard's 'My Four Years in Germany' (he was the last US ambassador to Imperial Germany, apparently).

Well in the end I went for neither. Instead I picked up 'Why War?' by C.E.M. Joad, who I'm told by a specialist in Labour party history was a well known public intellectual in the inte-war period. This book, published on the eve of the war outlines the pacifist case against going to war with Germany. It reads very well so far, though the authorial voice sounds like something out of the Pathe news reels

 

[Orang Utan]

Cheers, I noted your recommendation a page back

oops I must have been drunk when I posted that - I tend to repeat myself.

It'll be the next one of hers I'll read, I think. I don't want to get through them all too quickly, she hasn't written that much.

Yeah, I'm like that with authors I like - I daren't read any more Dostoievsky or Dickens for fear of using them up before my later years.

 

[andy2002]

The Devil You Know – Mike Carey. It's a supernatural/crime thriller full of ghosts and demons. I'm not usually a fan of this kind of stuff but this isn't bad at all...

 

[mrkikiet]

Yeah, I'm like that with authors I like - I daren't read any more Dostoievsky or Dickens for fear of using them up before my later years.

what happens if you don't reach your later years?

Shakespeare's Liver by Francisco Lopez Serrano. short stories with some insights into what the Spanish think of the English. Fun.

 

[Dirty Martini]

Finished Middlesex -- I enjoyed it. It started strongly, sagged and stalled a bit in the middle, but the last 150 pages are fantastic, really strong. It's all about the great narrative voice. Everyone loves Cal.

 

[liberty]

Yes Man Danny Wallace.. Fantastic

 

[Philbc03]

I've not long finished Arthur C Clarke's '2001'. V good AND it makes tons more sense than the film (to be fair to Kubrick he would not have been able to have filmed the hyperspace sequence as Clarke envisaged it with the technology of the day).

Now I've bumped back to Earth with Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer'. First published in 1934 its jammed full of Parisian debauchery. I'm not surprised it got banned - it must have been 40 - 50 years ahead of its time.

 

[Rollem]

a piece of cake - cupcake brown

 

[ViolentPanda]

"The Old Contemptibles: The British Expeditionary Force, 1914" by Robin Neillands.

 

[madzone]

Detoxify or Die - Sherry Rogers

 

[Dirty Martini]

Look At The Harlequins! by Vladimir Nabokov

 

[Nina]

My friend Leonard

James Frey.

Have a feeling it won't be as good as A Million Little Things

 

[jms]

Picture of Dorian Gray

Which I notice Im not alone in reading on this thread



gonna read the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison next..

 

[Fledgling]

The Tree of Man by Patrick White

 

[tastebud]

Blind Willow Sleeping Woman - Murakami - his newest one. Very good, completely addictive book of short stories.

 

[MysteryGuest]

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole


It is !


I reckon there's a fair few posters on here who are Ignatius P Reilly IRL. (Not naming names, like )

 

[Dirty Martini]

Finished Look At The Harlequins!, a lot of fun. He always makes you snag up against the greatest sentences.

Now The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Enough people have recommended this, it's time I gave it another go.