*What book are you reading ?

[bezzer]

chemical_girl__


Well it’s been a few years since I have read it, but reading your description I would probably agree. But there is something which goes beyond the nature and nurture debate, its more involved than an open question on morality. Burgess understood fear from adolescent group violents too the unempowering feeling of being under the surgeons knife, and he used that fear to paint a future of terrifying consequence. It’s a very dark book that falls heavily on the side of human nature.

Even though it does this, it still asks the all the nurture questions, look at the kind of society that Alex lives in? Look at his peer group? Their values and Completely destructive aspirations? The book deliberately does not answer any of these questions; it’s not a very political book… and because of this, I think it outlines something a little bit more sinister? Or prejudicial?

 

[rednblack]

Originally posted by wiskey
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett.

Its light reading. and nothing more, its humerous in places and light enough to miss a page and it really not matter.

so shuddup all of you

the day it becomes a sign of a good book if you miss a page without it mattering is the day literature will have died.

 

[onemonkey]

call me fishmeal.

Originally posted by Klaatu
Like most of you, I'm probably reading more than one thing at a time, but my latest passion is Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.

First thing I noticed is what fine sentences this man wrote! If I were a teacher of English...Melville's name would be rolling off my lips.

Some months ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse and nothing to interest me in contempory fiction, i thought i would take up a one pound wordsworth classic edition of moby dick...

and to cut a long story short, i was swallowed up by it.

great book, great whales!

 

[onemonkey]

Required reading

Originally posted by Klaatu
How many of you are like me, and have found that so many of the things (no, not just the "classics" they made you read in school) that some folks say you must read are utter tripe?

For example, as much as I love his other stuff (Midnight's Children, Imaginary Homelands--by all means, read this one), I just cannot get very far into Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, which earned him a fatwa, and is probably what he's best known for! Has anyone actually read this?

And what about writers like Pynchon, where you need a guidebook just to read the goddamned book?

Tell me I'm not alone, please!

sure it's a common experience, people have varying tastes.. look at the Great books that were a disappointment thread

as if to illustrate the point i disagree completely with your examples!!

i really enjoyed satanic verses, i thought it was much lighter than midnight's children or shame.. lighter in the sense of levity, although grantedly lighter in the sense of gravity too. mc & shame are both more 'serious' in topic and tone.
& at least you attempted to read satanic verses before criticising it which is a lot more than any of the ayatollas ever did

and only yesterday i started re-reading Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.. i picked it up to compare and contrast it to this months book club choice White Noise by Don DeLillo.. (the two authors are often compared, especially for these two books.)
I wasn't overly enraptured by DeLillo but Vineland is as delightful as i remember it from way back when.. but then it also happens to be a fair bit more accessible than gravity's rainbow and about a billion times clearer than V !

if you were prepared to give TP a 2nd chance i'd recommend Vineland as a way back in.

personally, I hate LOTR & Dickens.. & i never got more than a few pages into jane austen the first few times i attempted to read her but now (having seen the tv adaptations) i 'get' the jokes & can cope with the style.

oh and the bonfire of the vanities ought to be burnt

 

[liampreston]

Don Quixote - tried to read it, really tried, but got bogged down and gave up....

 

[Orangesanlemons]

As far as Rushdie goes I thought 'The Satanic Verses' was over-rated. 'Shame' is still my favourite by a long way, and I'd say the tone was lighter and more playful than TSV, despite the historical subject matter.
I'm thinking about tackling 'Gravity's Rainbow' again. I kept getting migranes a quarter of the way in last time; it was like reading Richard Toll's unreadable novel in Amis's 'The Information'. I enjoyed 'V' and 'Lot 49', but jaysus GR's a dense, inpenetrable work.
Oy onemonkey! 'Bonfire Of the Vanities' is magnificent!

'A Man in Full' is probably worthy of burning tho'

 

[lyra_k]

'A Man in Full' is probably worthy of burning tho' [/B]

Oi!

I loved 'A Man in Full'...especially the fantastically improbable ending.

 

[lyra_k]

Originally posted by Orang Utan
Tell us what you think about it afterward but everyone I know who read it was disappointed by it - the heroine is so pathetic - Birdsong was so impressive, it was quite a shock to read something so mediocre. Sorry to put you off but I didn't want you to waste any of your precious time!

I suppose I was fortunate in a way...I read Charlotte Gray first, and loved it, then Birdsong, which naturally blew me away.

I'd definitely say CG is worth the time it takes to read it, even if it isn't quite as stunning as Birdsong.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

i have just read most of the love hina series ... i was supprised at how good it was ... i always know it would be good after watching the tv adaptation but the origanal books had much better plot and humor ... and far far more adult in places

can't wait for the last two

 

[haggy]

i re-read pynchon's V again a few weeks ago. its one of those i re-read every few years - like Gravity's Rainbow - because its a new experience every time. i picked up some reader's notes guides to Pynchon's stuff a while back and they're great reading all of their own and very useful to getting you into the many threads woven into the text. easily the best author of the c20 IMO. Mason & Dixon has seen him hitting form again after the disappointing Vineland.

currently reading Gimme Danger - a biog of Iggy Pop - and Treasure Island (which i never read as a kid).

incidentally, there's a new edition of Orwell's 1984 in Waterstones atm which has an introduction by Pynchon. The fact this yank knows so much about british politics is remarkable, i think. but then viz GR for a bizarre knowledge of english candy!

 

[Fledgling]

I finshed "The Moon is Down" but I'm not ure if I want to read "East of Eden", it's long. Started it, good so far.

 

[Orangesanlemons]

Originally posted by lyra_kitten
Oi!

I loved 'A Man in Full'...especially the fantastically improbable ending.

'fantastically improbable ending' = 'shit, I'm 700 pages in with no end in sight. Kill it!'

To be fair I enjoyed the background stuff and character portraits. It's just that after 'Bonfire' everyone expected something a little bit special, and I think Wolfe's plotting let him down a bit. AMIF seemed to be more research-based than story-based, and AS FOR THAT ENDING!!!!

 

[onemonkey]

Originally posted by haggy
incidentally, there's a new edition of Orwell's 1984 in Waterstones atm which has an introduction by Pynchon. The fact this yank knows so much about british politics is remarkable, i think. but then viz GR for a bizarre knowledge of english candy!

i've found a few excellent author's on the basis of a thomas pychon preface, recommendation or introduction..

steve erickson who seems to have slidden into obscurity. (yes, it is a real word.. and a real ugly one.)

and the awesome jim dodge. see here (pynchon did an intro to Fup)

if you like pynchon, jim dodge will almost certainly poach your apricots.
they are often accused of being the same person..

 

[haggy]

yeah, he also did the liner notes for the lotion lp full isaac.

never heard he was mistaken for jim dodge b4, though

 

[Cloo]

Yes, I have finally embarked on War and Peace! And by 'eck, it's a damn good read, I must say.

 

[Elpenor]

Whilst on holiday I read Homage to Catalonia, which was excellent, and Fire In The Blood, an account of modern Spain by Ian Gibson also good.

I also found that the previous tenants of where I was staying had left a number of books, including You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers, which I absolutely loved, and Border Crossing by Pat Barker, which was good if a little predictable, almost reading as if it was written for TV. Maybe its been/being/to be filmed.

Finally I found The Memory Box by Margaret Forster which I'm still reading and looks OK, I also brought back Oxygen by Andrew Miller.

 

[ck]

NVP : Just started 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey' by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton. Only just started it but so far it's a right load of old crap.

The writers reckon that DJ's fulfill the role of modern-day shaman's; amazing beings capable of inducing transcendence in their devotees. Hmmm. They're not just blokes that play records, then.

I'm reading that at the moment and must be up to where you were when you wrote this , but I'm really enjoying the read. It's very informative , and a lot of research has gone into it.

Although you are obviously right in pointing out that a DJ is someone who just plays records , but the point behind the book is that it shows how we have come to where we are now ; where DJ's are rock stars in their own right.
This argument has come up time and time again , and although I'm never one to momentously stroke a DJ's ego , I know fine well the power of mixing certain records together can have , and as is pointed out in the book itself , the DJ is no new thing as is often the mentality which exists now.
The book is trying to show the instigators of the DJ culture and although you may be against someone being thought of as the be all and end all of tune selection , you can't deny the power of dance music culture which now exists.

 

[Power]

Originally posted by Cloo
Yes, I have finally embarked on War and Peace! And by 'eck, it's a damn good read, I must say.

lipsmackingly so.

 

[umi]

the conquest of bread, its quality anarchist thought

 

[Dubversion]

just finished Simon Armitage's Little Green Man

excellent book - quite a light read, but moving in places, very evocative both of growing up in the 70s and the kind of mid-30 something mind-set, and very dark too.


about to start Jonathan Coe's What A Carve Up OR Dosteovsky's Crime & Punishment depending on which one i put in my bag this morning (randomly. i do this sometimes if i can't make my mind up ) and i;m still skipping through Shakey

 

[mr_eko]

Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything about halfway through this excellent book. I think this is the book everyone thought Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time would be.

 

[Nina]

Just started Jonathan Franzen The Corrections after many hearty recommendations.

Hope I'm not disappointed.

 

[Dubversion]

you won't be.

"hold onto your hat, it's going to be a bumpy ride"

 

[Elpenor]

Laurie Lee - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.

Enjoying it so far.

 

[Soft as Shite]

Dubversion- go with What a Carve Up!

One of my favourite books- poignant, black humour for anyone who wants to see the ruthless rich and powerful get their cumuppence (sp?)

 

[Lady Muck]

I'm reading Sleepy Head by Mark Billingham. It's his first novel, but I did it the wrong way round and read the second one - Scaredy Cat - first. Anyway, they're both excellent and I can highly recommend them to anyone who likes a good edge-of-the-seat thriller.

 

[Dubversion]

Originally posted by Soft as Shite
Dubversion- go with What a Carve Up!

One of my favourite books- poignant, black humour for anyone who wants to see the ruthless rich and powerful get their cumuppence (sp?)

just finished it (two days in bed with a bug can certainly speed up your reading ) and enjoyed it but found it a bit uneven, sometimes frustratingly so. the stuff with michael was beautifully written, the stuff with the Winshaws sometimes childishly farcical (i know that farce was a background to it and all, but sometimes it was just too OTT) and it just all felt a bit unbalanced, especially when everyone meets at the end and Coe is trying to maintain the two styles...

but still a very good book.

 

[ebony4]

How many of you write or underline in books you read? [/B][/QUOTE] Not me! Why do people insist on writing in books, it can make it very hard to read. Just use a sheet of paper.

 

[Voley]

I'm reading 'Let's Get Lost' by Craig Nelson at the moment.

It's pretty good: a well-written, funny book all about his travels around the world. He describes the feeling of total awe you get at places like the Taj Mahal really well.

He hates other travellers, too, so I like him a lot.

ck - No, I don't deny any of those things but I think they overplay it a lot in that book. So much so that it's totally bored the arse off me and I'm now reading something else.

 

[Hierlekin]

Read "The Picture of Dorian Grey" and came to the conclusion it really should've been called "The Portrait of Dorian Grey"
Oh well. No half bad.