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*What book are you reading ?

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A Liar's Autobiography by Graham Chapman, picked up in Camden Market for £3 yesterday.

An interesting account of promiscuous gay sex recalled through a havy haze of alcohol by a Monty Python.

Apparently Douglas Adams helped with the writing of this book.

Example:

"But I never felt happy about a place unless I scored...I had more to drink and decided to cross Sunderland off the map. ..On my way past the reception desk I said, "Good grief, there's no one to go to bed with...where are all the young men round here? This is absolutely dreadful. I went to bed and fell drunkenly onto the bed alone.

I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning to find the nightporter in bed with me, nude. He wasn't particularly my choice of person, but under the circumstances, he was welcome. He had let himself in with a pass key, and faithful to the hotelier's code, put customer satisfaction first."
 
Originally posted by newharper
I just found ' things can only get better' by Jon o' Farrell in a Charity shop this morning, already about half way through and it's laugh aloud funny as well as being a great diatribe against thatch.

If you enjoyed that I recommend Reasons to be Cheerful by Mark Steel, which is also about growing up as a lefty during the last Tory era. He is more left wing than O'Farrell and the book covers a longer period. I could really relate to it as he grew up in North Kent too. I never knew SWP members had such a great sense of humour!
 
Just posting to agree with 'Maggot' that Mark Steel's book is very much funnier and more politically rewarding than John O'Farrels book...
 
Got a few on the go, but these are the two I'm reading most atm...


French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour De France by Tim Moore

Panorama: Fifty Years of Pride and Paranoia by Richard Lindley
 
Originally posted by Maggot
If you enjoyed that I recommend Reasons to be Cheerful by Mark Steel, which is also about growing up as a lefty during the last Tory era. He is more left wing than O'Farrell and the book covers a longer period. I could really relate to it as he grew up in North Kent too. I never knew SWP members had such a great sense of humour!

Thanks, I'll look out for it.
I've heard him on thr radio quite a lot and can imagine, but are you sure about the SWP and humour?;)
 
right...

just finished Hey Nostradamus and before that Life After God

loved them both..awesome..

wot next for me by Mr Coupland??
 
generation x and girlfriend in a coma are the best of the rest.

shampoo planet and microserfs are very good, but not great.

miss wyoming is ok, and all families are psychotic is the only book of his i couldn't finish (i'm so glad he's back on form)
 
Originally posted by (empty)
i keep with samuel beckett - malone muert (malone is dying)
And Mother from Maximo Gorky.. heheh russian writers forever!

good choices empty! Couple of things, pseudonym Gorky means bitter......nice Grandad he had innit....if you like Mother you should tuck into the autobiographical trilogy (you may have allready done this I guess) of MY CHILDHOOD (1913-14) followed by MY APPRENTICESHIP (1916)and MY UNIVERSITIES (1922),

more misery, drudgery and potato gruel.....;) :eek: :D
 
i'm reading 'bring on the empty horses' - the 2nd of david niven's autobiographies, and top it is too!

at the risk of being a predictable old bag, i have to say - after reading about some of the exploits of the old hollywood set, sounds like film stars were a lot more fun in those days!
 
Have given up with 'The Hours' and taken it back to the library.

Gonna start Rohinton Mistry Family Matters today.

never read any of his stuff, so we'll see.
 
reading the december book group choice the corrections which i can't talk about cos it'll spoil the surprise of our get together.. ;)

also reading Faust, Part II by Goethe.. & fear i may have missed something along the way..

part I was a simple tale of boy meets devil, boy meets girl, devil helps boy seduce girl ruining several lives along the way..

part II is proving more confusing.. Faust barely figures in the first few scenes and the whole thing is in rhyming couplets reminscent of cinderella or mother goose.

Grace we bring as flower of living;
Let fair grace be in your giving.


still, it took him fifty years to write it so presumably it gets better.. :confused:
 
I just finished my rather excellent Paul Robeson biography...next up is 'Everything', a book about the Manic Street Preachers, and once I've finished that I've got 'Seabiscuit' to read.
 
just finished The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn

Imagine a drug that makes your brain function with perfect efficiency, tapping into your most fundamental resources of intelligence and drive, releasing all the passive knowledge you'd ever accumulated. A drug that made you focused, charming, fast, even attractive. Eddie Spinola is on such a drug. It's called MDT-48, and it's Viagra for the brain-a designer drug that's redesigning his life.:cool:
 
i've nearly finished "martin mcguiness: from guns to government" by liam clarke and kathryn johnston. very interesting: but the bibliography leaves a lot to be desired; the authors have a habit of saying something interesting and then moving on to something else without fully exploring what they've said; and their hostile attitude to macguiness colours much of the book. they seem to have come to their task with their conclusions already determined. maybe martin mcguiness isn't everyone's cup of tea, and clarke and johnston appear to have written the state approved version of events. the binding's crap too.
 
it's awful late and i've just finished His Dark Materials.. again.

and it's as moving and powerful and important the second time. and i have so much admiration for phillip pullman for trusting kids enough to give them such stuff to deal with, to not patronise them and to respect them enough to give them something to chew on.

and if the Telegraph or the the Mail or whoever did describe him as the most dangerous author in Britain, that's because they're scared of what a kid could take away from those books.

awestruck. again..
 
I've just started re-reading the big, 4 volume version of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy' after watching a thing about it on 'The Big Read'.

Really enjoying it, too. I was quite young when I read it the first time round and missed some of the subtler humour. Some of the more obvious jokes have had me laughing out loud, too.

'It hung in the air like a brick doesn't' :D
 
Just started reading Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski. About 6 chapters in and it is very very good indeed. I have to say that Mr B is the greatest writer of the 20th Century.
 
I'm reading Slapstick(Or Lonesome No More) by Kurt Vonnegut. I really do think the man is a genius!
Also I'm attempting Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees to get a better grasp on Quantum Physics because that is really exciting me right now, conversely it was Kurt Vonnegut who introduced me to the idea of string theory in his book Slaughterhouse 5(I recommend this highly, makes great comparative reading with Catch 22.) when I was just a wee lass, my poor mum couldn't comprehend the new questions of reality!
Yay! Reading is my greatest indulgence after ganja, glad other people do it too.:D
 
Originally posted by souljacker
Just started reading Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski. About 6 chapters in and it is very very good indeed. I have to say that Mr B is the greatest writer of the 20th Century.

That's a cracking book, souljacker. One of his best, imo. I read 'Run With The Hunted' - an anthology of all sorts of his stuff -in the Summer and came away thinking he was one of the world's greatest writers, too. :)
 
nearly finished Girlfriend In A Coma - Douglas Coupland

loved it so far..I feel like I could read his stuff forever!

anyway already lined up is...

Well - Matthew McIntosh

anybody read it? Huberty Selby Jr seems to love it according to the blurb...
 
Originally posted by Dubversion
it's awful late and i've just finished His Dark Materials.. again.

and it's as moving and powerful and important the second time. and i have so much admiration for phillip pullman for trusting kids enough to give them such stuff to deal with, to not patronise them and to respect them enough to give them something to chew on.

and if the Telegraph or the the Mail or whoever did describe him as the most dangerous author in Britain, that's because they're scared of what a kid could take away from those books.

awestruck. again..

Just bought these. Expecting good things... :)
 
Am reading 'Vanity Fair', Thackery at the mo. Possibly one of the wittiest books ever written. Anyone agree? Hope the soon-to-be-released film lives up to its greatness.
 
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