*What book are you reading ?
- Thread starter ck
- Start date
- Status
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
sojourner said:
It started off slowly but I'm getting into it. He's got quite a singular style -- easy to enjoy but not so easy on the eye, iyswim. He's another one of those wisecracking American writers loved by all the American writers you love, but not really read very much. It's fun seeking them out. You read any of his stuff?
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
chooch said:
Pleasure's right, and there's some magic writing in the first half of Drop City.
han
love is the answer
SubZeroCat said:
It's called 'Your Life in Your Hands' by Professor Jane Plant. (about the link between Breast Cancer and dairy products, in case anyone else is interested...).
It's very good - she's a scientist (the head of the British Geological Survey), and so she has made sure that her theories have some basis in scientific truth.
It's interesting that in countries where few dairy products are eaten, the incidence of breast cancer is virtually nil....and in China they call it the 'rich woman's disease'.
On an even jollier note, now I'm reading 'I Escaped From Auschwitz', by Josef Vrba. One of the most unputdownable, unbelievable and amazing books I have ever read. He was one of the only people to have ever escaped from Aushwitz and document it - he spent 2 years there which was far longer than most managed to survive.....
May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
You're really bringing the fun in just now, han!
May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
Mind you, as someone who's been irresistably drawn to trash of late, I salute your seriousness. My intellectual rigour is only millimetres above Jeffrey Archer ATM 
Orang Utan
They cannot crucify you if your hand is in a fist
I'm reading something very middlebrow - The Time Traveller's Wife - it seems OK actually - it does have a title obviously dreamt up my the marketing department though
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
Give The Anarchist A Cigarrette by Mick Farren
i thought thora had reccommnended this but it turns out she didn't...
Its not very good unless you like the anecdotes about 60's 'underground' figures like Pink Floyd or writers at International times.
At about half way in, he most certainly is not an ancrhist - or even particularly concerened with politics. There was plenty going on @ the time which he doesn't mention. Most of the characters he describes in 'the underground' seem like m/c art school hippies not much different from hippies today.
Its written ok-ish, but he is a bit up himself and doesn't seem to realise what a name dropper he is.
I'm going to give up soon and read The Corrctions.
i thought thora had reccommnended this but it turns out she didn't...
Its not very good unless you like the anecdotes about 60's 'underground' figures like Pink Floyd or writers at International times.
At about half way in, he most certainly is not an ancrhist - or even particularly concerened with politics. There was plenty going on @ the time which he doesn't mention. Most of the characters he describes in 'the underground' seem like m/c art school hippies not much different from hippies today.
Its written ok-ish, but he is a bit up himself and doesn't seem to realise what a name dropper he is.
I'm going to give up soon and read The Corrctions.
mitochondria
full-on emptiness
Badgers said:
really enjoyable. when i read it i wished i had been there, on the bus.
and it is skillfully written.
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
Dirty Martini said:
Not finished it yet, but this is a genius book.
chooch said:
A McGuffin is something in a book which is there for no other reason than to drive the plot forward / bring something into being, usually quite blatantly so. Hitchcock loved 'em.
After a couple of false starts, now flying through Letham's Fortress of Solitude. The other times, the sheer weight of the writing - brilliantly descriptive but so much of it - defeated me. But when I accepted that yes, every bloody sentence was pure gold and there ya go, no point wallowing in it too much, I relaxed into it and it's absolutely brilliant, a stunning story of a young white kid growing up in mostly-black Brooklyn in the 70s. Just wonderful - I'm wondering if Letham might be one of the 3 or 4 best writers around these days.
I'm also dipping into Anglo-English Attitudes by Geoff Dyer, collection of his 80s/90s journalism, reviews and short pieces. Lovely stuff - he's funny and he's smart.
Taxamo Welf said:
that's half the fun with Farren though - he's such a self-important, "i was there mannnnnnn" dick that it's funny.
Taxamo Welf said:
One of the best books of the last few years.
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
chooch said:
What Dubversion said, only Elkin, or rather his main character, enlarges it to take in the paranoid plots he invents to make himself feel younger, to get his "force" back.
It's an almost perfect novel -- amazing verbal invention, beautiful structure, very clever, lots of ideas, howlingly funny.
"You've seen the confusion on him, his brow when it furrows like terrace farming in China".
I read Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy this week. Whilst intuitively I want to agree with her perspective, I do feel that she makes big anecdotal assertions, that looked at from an anthropological or even psychological perspective, could be explained quite differently. Worth reading though.
Now I'm reading Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner. Too early to give an opinion on this but certainly wild theories!
Now I'm reading Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner. Too early to give an opinion on this but certainly wild theories!
Wide Eyed Angel
Forgeddaboudit!
Alex Garland - Coma
Short and easy to read, no bad thing, it's alright but not inspiring and I'm not all that interested in the main character
Short and easy to read, no bad thing, it's alright but not inspiring and I'm not all that interested in the main character
elevendayempire
Registered Loofah
MR James's collected Ghost Stories. Spooky Victoriana for Christmas, woo! 
SG
SG
Dirty Martini
gets what he cant want
Finished The MacGuffin, a brilliant novel, unexpectedly moving at the end, I need to read more Stanley Elkin.
Now, maybe Happiness™ by Will Ferguson, but he used the word "scenario" on the first page so I'm not sure I want to.
Now, maybe Happiness™ by Will Ferguson, but he used the word "scenario" on the first page so I'm not sure I want to.
I've nearly finished 'Life Before Man' by Margaret Atwood. I've never read one of her non-scifi pieces before and I'm not sure what to make of it really. Just 3 characters in a sort of menage-a-trois who seem only to be happy when they're miserable or making the others miserable. Not a happy work by any means.
Dubversion said:
i can now confirm it's a work of bloody genius, this book, and I can't believe it defeated me first time out.
orang utan - give it another go!
Orang Utan
They cannot crucify you if your hand is in a fist
I'll try but I did find it rather dispiriting
Orang Utan said:
the initial bits - long langorous scenesetting, brilliant but thick sentences - does fade and the pace and narrative really picks up. The descriptions remain brilliant but he lays it on with a lighter touch. Honestly, it's wonderful
Augie March
blahem
Just over halfway through Life of Pi by Yann Martell and quite chuffing brilliant it is too.
- Status
Similar threads
- Poll
