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*What book are you reading ?

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Philbc03 said:
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.
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Oh God, that book is so bloody depressing.

Don't like that book.
 
sojourner said:
Started Henry Rollins - Black Coffee Blues and swiftly realised it's one for the plane next week.
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Well, I've read most of this and have a few pages left, and I have to say, it's a lot better than I thought it would be. However, he does seem to dwell on death! Death by gunshot wounds, suicide, and stabbing, mainly! Oh, and he's rather partial to sons-with-crap-parents-who-turn-into-psychos, and misogynists too. I did actually like the structure of it, and the writing itself, but sometimes it turned into quite cringey material.

Anyone else read any of his stuff?
 
the burroughs paradox...

i've come to the conclusion that i loathe Burroughs as a writer (his novels: what a waste of time! sigh),
yet feel strangely fascinated by his ramblings when not in prose form... :confused:

i don't know what this might mean- that i regard him as a literary philosopher, more than a writer?
hmmm...
 
He's an interesting figure I guess, good for some "did he really do that?" anecdotes, but Naked Lunch made me doubt he has any value as a novelist. It's rubbish.
 
wiskey said:
currently reading I Have America Surrounded - the biog of Timothy Leary.
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so i finished this and i really enjoyed it :) i'm not all that keen on leary or his practices although i recognise he did a lot of influential things, and this book accepts that he was a bit of a fool. its nicely written.
 
Orang Utan said:
Does it mention catflaps?
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Sadly no....I hoped it might. Still, it's a library book...I would like to read a biography that says more about the man...he was pleasingly odd.
 
Dirty Martini said:
Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo
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wow! i read that when I was about 15 and really enjoyed it, without being sure I necessarily got it all. Is there a big point about not letting the truth getting in the way of a good story?
 
Dubversion said:
wow! i read that when I was about 15 and really enjoyed it, without being sure I necessarily got it all. Is there a big point about not letting the truth getting in the way of a good story?
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I'm only about 80 pages into it, but I guess it's shaping up to be a shaggy dog story of sorts. That Modernist preoccupation with how language and truth can't really connect, with the added thing that it's clearly about Svevo, but not an autobiography in the conventional sense.

There's a bit I've just read where he's trying to woo his future wife, who's one of four sisters, and he gets into the habit of regaling them with wacky stories of his life as a student. He learns years later that none of them thought the stories were true:

'And yet to a great extent those stories were true. I can't at this point say to what extent because, as I had told them to many other women before the Malfenti daughters, through no wish of my own, they had changed and become more expressive. They were true inasmuch as I could not have told them in any other version.'

I'm liking this book a lot because it's very funny, I'm trying to give up smoking, and I'm trying to write a novel set in Trieste (neither am I, etc.) :)

Did you read any of his others?
 
Just finished Louis Theroux's "The Call of the Weird"

anyone read it?

I loved it. Great portrayal of those lost souls in the States, who cling on to crazy things that give them purpose and identity.

Something always lacking, when you live in a cloneville wank fest of shopping malls and fast food chains.

Depressing yet interesting.
 
Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya.

I saw a tv interview with her last week in the wake of Litvinenko's assasination and was and was properly moved by her passion and dedication.

The book arrived this morning so I've only read the first beautifully written chapter.

A fierce critic of Putin's regime, the author was assasinated earlier this year in Moscow.
 
Dirty Martini said:
I'm only about 80 pages into it, but I guess it's shaping up to be a shaggy dog story of sorts. That Modernist preoccupation with how language and truth can't really connect, with the added thing that it's clearly about Svevo, but not an autobiography in the conventional sense.

There's a bit I've just read where he's trying to woo his future wife, who's one of four sisters, and he gets into the habit of regaling them with wacky stories of his life as a student. He learns years later that none of them thought the stories were true:

'And yet to a great extent those stories were true. I can't at this point say to what extent because, as I had told them to many other women before the Malfenti daughters, through no wish of my own, they had changed and become more expressive. They were true inasmuch as I could not have told them in any other version.'
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that's the fella. I might have to dig this out and give it another go :)

Dirty Martini said:
(neither am I, etc.) :)
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:D ;)

Dirty Martini said:
Did you read any of his others?
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never did. For a while I'm sure I thought he wrote If On A Winter's Night.. then realised that i was, in fact, a moron :)
 
:) ]I'm reading "By Myself" by Lauren Bacall ; it's very good than-you very much.:)

What about you ?[style, class, and genius:)
 
Well, I finished 'Life Before Man' and to be honest I thought it was a dreary waste of time. Miserable characters carry on being miserable, and that's about it. One of the reviewers quoted on the blurb said it was "wonderful" and "witty". They must have been reading a different book.

I've now taken to 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' by Mark Twain. I remember being a kid and having a very real aversion to the Huckleberry Finn series they used to show during the summer hols. I hope the books are a ton better.
 
0140287027S.jpg
:cool:
 
Well, I still haven't managed to acquire a copy of 'Pride and Prejudice', so have given up on that and am reading Sheri Tepper's 'The True Game' instead. It's pretty good so far, although if she doesn't go deeper into the whys and wherefores of the actual game itself I shall be disappointed.
 
The music of the spheres, Emma Redfern. Late 1700's spy story, with extra serial killer action. It's intriguing enough, some good characters, but I'm not that keen on her writing. It's got a lot of interesting historical detail about the science and politics of the time, which is useful as it's contemporary to the William Blake biography I'm also (still) reading.
 
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