*What book are you reading ?

[pk]

"Special Agent" by Candice DeLong.

An interesting insight into the FBI from a retired agent.

A lot of it's total flag worship bollocks but the accounts are real.

It's gripping stuff.

 

[Nina]

Just finished Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Phew. Totally booked out now.

Before that
Life of Pi...Yann Martell (Beautiful and very gentle)
Cheese Monkeys...Chip Kidd (weird ending)
To Kill a mocking bird...one of very few books that have A Good Ending.

will now decide wots next...

 

[J77]

Have been travelling for 28 hours today (and yesterday I guess), in which time I've nearly read...

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (sp?)

It's well good so far...

 

[RedDragon]

Today’s library books:

Jim Grimsley - Boulevard
Johnny Rogan - Morrissey & Marr
Jim Crace - Quarantine
Alexander Walker - Audrey

 

[jms]

World's end by Paul Theroux

will shortly be moving onto Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

i have my love hina colection sitting by the loo for my own and others viewing plesure

also got my Chobits V01 there

also found my old copy of Matilda (Roald Dahl) just the other day when looking for something to read in the bath ... was plesently supprised that i still found it a good read

movie kinda sucked pants though

 

[Clintons Cat]

Most current Top

Hi i am new to the forum here are some of the books i have read/reread in the last 18 months and would reccomend to others.-

"Them",Jon Ronson

"Eye Witness Bloody Sunday" by Don Mullen.

"Babi-Yar" By A Anatoli.

"Saddam's War" By John Bulloch and Harvey Morris

"One Palestine Complete",by Tom Sergev

"The Taliban" by Ahmed Rashid

"Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did" by Loren Baritz

"Revelation Space" By Alister Reynolds

"One Flew Over The Cookoos Nest" By Ken Kessy

"Ad Nauseum" (The Onion Year Book)

Hoping to get a copy of "stupid white men" by michael Moore soon

Huey P Newton's "Revolutionary Suicide"...

I'm at the bit after the trial, were he's been thrown in the slammer for manslaughter after being shot by a racist pig. Some great examples of collective initiative against the system..

" Let us go on outdoing ourselves; a revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolutionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves or more than we know we can do".

Can I most humbly suggest you also search out ?

"Soledad Brother" By George Jackson

and

"Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton" by Bobby Seale.

Both great books.

 

[Stupidfish]

I'm on three books at the moment, been reading Nick Hornby's 31 Songs for ages, and I bought Stupid white men on the weekend and I'm already about halfway through. Also re-reading Iain Bank's The Crow road, which I do yearly, as I'm strange like that.

 

[chazegee]

'Awaydays' by Kevin Sampson.

A good 'slice' of football violenve first thing in the morning.

 

[jayeola]

william borroughs - naked lunch. some of it's going waaaayy over my head.

The homo-erotic dreams of a strung-out junky?

What's actually real in this book? I think he has a medical background and he's gay. This much I can work out. The rest is gibberish.

 

[chegrimandi]

errr Dark Star Safari- Theroux-

about Africa- don't like his writing stlye-comes across as quite patronising and arrogant, but it's intersting because I'm learning stuff.

 

[haggy]

William Burroughs "gibberish" - how dare you? I've read most of Burrough's stuff and Nakd Lunch about half a dozen times. It can look difficult on the page, but if you ever to get to hear recordings of the great man reading - a wry, dry-as-a-bone voice like sandpaper - you start to realise how funny his stuff is. But he has serious stuff to say about authoritarianism, too.

Get Citiies of the Red Night if you like gay anarchist pirates, Place of Dead Roads if you like gay American gun-slingers, and The Westernlands if you like gay ancient Egyptians.

I could on about him for ever. Norman Mailer famously said Burrough's was conceivably possessed of genius. How right he was.

ATM, reading Q, by Luther Blissett - a kind of anarchist Name of the Rose set in Reformation Europe.

Biggest & best this year : Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace.

And for consistently having something profound and amusing to say about ordinary working life : Magnus Mills - The Scheme for Full Employment

Sadly, my favourite novel of all time is Gravity's Rainbow by T Pynchon. I'm just so sorry it could never be made into a film, and if it ever was I'm not sure I'd ever want to see it.

 

[jms]

21 stories by Graham Greene

it starts off with a really horrible one about a gang of boys who destroy someones house from the inside out..

wah

weird..but cool

 

[Elpenor]

Isn't that the one featured in Donnie Darko?

Chegrimandi - I find Theroux quite arrogant too.

 

[chegrimandi]

Originally posted by spooky fish
Isn't that the one featured in Donnie Darko?

Chegrimandi - I find Theroux quite arrogant too.

good! glad its not just me.....fair do's the guy has done a lot of travelling blah blah but he is pretty scathing about backpackers/other travellers and stuff, he also has a chip on his shoulder about being old etc. Dunno interesting guy but...not sure...Am enjoying the book though..I think once I've finished the book I will get stuck into some African history books as its fucking interesting, and this book has aroused my curiosity so not all bad I guess....

 

[Bond]

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

 

[mrkikiet]

i have just given up on microserfs. very very very dissapointing. and i was praising him (Coupland) to the heavens above ben elton the other week, now i'm not so sure.

Under the volcano again now.

 

[Orang Utan]

Oh please Elton is a talentless no mark.
Microserfs is an unfortunate blip but Coupland shits all over Elton.

 

[mrkikiet]

Oh please Elton is a talentless no mark.
Microserfs is an unfortunate blip but Coupland shits all over Elton.

that, my friend is almost exactly what i was saying. but i can't find the relevant thread, sorry.

Brighton Rock, by mr Greene. Pinky is a legend and good revision avoidance.

 

[Nina]

Hmmm, Microserfs is the only Coupland I have left to read. Generation X was the pinnacle IMO...nothing else seemed to reach those heights.

Just started The Autograph Man Zadie Smith....feeling I may need an Intro to Judaism book before I continue...

 

[Masseuse]

Microserfs is my favourite Coupland!

I'm reading Disgrace by Coetzee, and Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.

 

[foo]

Montaigne - Essays.

This is one of the few books from my college days that I still pick up every now and then. I find his work warm, honest and his tireless search for Truth is inspiring.

 

[Jangla]

Will Self - How the Dead Live

Very, very, very strange read indeed! Mildly depressing too as it starts by following the final days of a woman being ravaged by cancer as she contemplates her life and the lives of her two daughters (one's middle-class-wanna-be-higher-class and the other's a junky), before delving into an bizarre take on the after life. It's now lost me a little as I think it's taking up the subject of re-incarnation...but I can't be sure.

 

[J77]

back on the mcewans...

atonement

what a class book this is, am about to embark on part 3...

 

[Orang Utan]

Still reading The God Of Small Things - enchanting but tragic book.
I am going to take Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance and Adam Hothschild's King Leopold's Ghost on holiday with me.

 

[nuffsaid]

Just finished 'The Fermata' by Nicholson Baker - got it because someone mentioned here on these boards a while back. About a guy that can stop time, the perfect fantasy I thought. All he does for those who don't know it is go around and take womens clothes off, shouldn't laugh but, well.

Apart from being pretty pornographic in places it was extremely thoughtful, very funny, and at a deeper level a commentary on the stalling and confronting of death.

Need to start something else now.

 

[huey2]

Just finished Grahm Greene's The Honorary Consul, before tht The Comedians and before that The End of the Affair (not stuck in a rut or anything!)

Watching the Quiet American made me realise how spot on he was as a political commentator (he wasn't very welcome in the US), with his warnings against violently meddling in other states' affairs.

Also he shows an interesting relationship with religion. I think he was someone who didn't want to believe.

 

[Elpenor]

I recently read The Honorary Consul too, it was pretty good.

Agree with you about his political commentary, if America had known as much about South America as Greene did, well who knows eh?

He was a Catholic I believe, and I think he might have recieved some formal instruction in the faith but I can't remember. Greene is someone I'm keen to read a biography of him this summer, can anyone recommend one?

 

[foo]

Just finished Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker

again!

It's very Jung influenced but is an amazing story of an african girl called Tashi (who appears briefly in The Colour Purple). The wider story is that of cultural relativism & alienation surrounding the issue of female circumcision. It's a beautiful interesting and very sad book.

 

[Rollem]

maya angelou

i know why the caged bird sings

(again. )