Books you are reading

The all-encompassing home of media discussion - including music, film, and television.

Moderators: Gnome, last.caress, Wilko1304, Rio, bristolhammerfc, the pink palermo, chalks

Post Reply
User avatar
vietnammer
Bucky the beaver
Posts: 31659
Joined: Sun Dec 08, 2002 2:31 am
Location: Those little golden birdies look at them
Has liked: 618 likes
Total likes: 578 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by vietnammer »

Re-discovered Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies after being distracted from it before. Eye-opening tale of India in the very early days of the Raj (British East India Company) centred mainly on Indian life and its near-complete mismatch with British authority. Problem with Kindle editions is they don't generally come with a glossary, and this book sure needs one. It's exercising the mind working stuff out though.
Glad to see there's a further two in a trilogy ahead.
User avatar
wolf359
Posts: 26769
Joined: Sun May 11, 2003 6:22 pm
Location: Wigan
Has liked: 1561 likes
Total likes: 1709 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by wolf359 »

I am a shameful reader, despite being well educated and spending hours reading technical stuff, forums, reddit etc. I rarely read fiction.

I have however recently read The Hobbit for the first time and am now unto Tom Bombadil in the Fellowship of the Ring.. If i make it to the next chapter it will be the furthest into the book I've ever been (this is my 3rd attempt into reading it -2nd was 20 years ago).

I should read more but find it hard work to be honest.
User avatar
szola
Posts: 16096
Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2005 8:33 am
Location: Bumblebee is back
Has liked: 586 likes
Total likes: 347 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by szola »

Image

A sad read. Good book. Plenty left unsaid in it.

Image

Recommended to anyone who votes Tory, or believes in the concept of the free marked.
Written in 1944, still relevant. Unfortunately for many, Hayek became more popular in the post-war years, not Polányi.

Image

You'll want to log off the news, and the internet after this one.
NotPetya was bad? Stealing documents before the US election 2016 and targeting voters by a foreign adversary frightening? Micro-targeting vaccine disinformation worrying?

It'll just get more messy in time....
User avatar
Korea Hammer
Posts: 11443
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:23 pm
Location: Shoreham-By-Sea
Has liked: 1315 likes
Total likes: 765 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Korea Hammer »

Winifred Holtby ~ South Riding

I absolutely loved this epic, sprawling story of the politicians and citizens of a fictitious version of Yorkshire in the early 1930s. Holtby wrote it in her 30s and knowing she only had a few years to live, and it's an ambitious and affecting novel about women and community.
irving boleyn
Posts: 4768
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 11:13 pm
Location: Woodford Green
Has liked: 61 likes
Total likes: 82 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by irving boleyn »

I have occasionally dipped into detective/thriller books and have never read one I could recommend.
As they become popular I'll try a new author.
But the endings invariably disappoint.
I know how hard it must be to provide a perfect unravelling, but.....I deserve one after reading 3 or 400 pages.
WCpete
Posts: 32733
Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2002 12:11 am
Location: San Francisco, CA
Has liked: 1404 likes
Total likes: 3070 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by WCpete »

The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. Only 30 pages in.
User avatar
SoulCircus
Posts: 3402
Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2007 2:27 pm
Location: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Has liked: 12 likes
Total likes: 87 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by SoulCircus »

Every so often I get an urge to read Cormac McCarthy, and on inspection realised I've never read Blood Meridian. So currently putting that right. Holy smokes it is violent.
User avatar
Korea Hammer
Posts: 11443
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:23 pm
Location: Shoreham-By-Sea
Has liked: 1315 likes
Total likes: 765 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Korea Hammer »

SoulCircus wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 9:27 am Every so often I get an urge to read Cormac McCarthy, and on inspection realised I've never read Blood Meridian. So currently putting that right. Holy smokes it is violent.
Have you read Suttree, SC? Apologies if we've had this conversation before, but that's by far my favourite. I started with the American Trilogy, and loved the slow pace (150 pages on a bloke tracking a wolf anyone?), then moved on to Suttree and thought it was stunning, an all-time top 10 book, and then moved on to Blood Meridian and The Road. You probably know, but he has two new novels due out later this year, telling the same story from the point of view of two different characters.
User avatar
SoulCircus
Posts: 3402
Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2007 2:27 pm
Location: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Has liked: 12 likes
Total likes: 87 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by SoulCircus »

Korea Hammer wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 5:13 pm Have you read Suttree, SC? Apologies if we've had this conversation before, but that's by far my favourite. I started with the American Trilogy, and loved the slow pace (150 pages on a bloke tracking a wolf anyone?), then moved on to Suttree and thought it was stunning, an all-time top 10 book, and then moved on to Blood Meridian and The Road. You probably know, but he has two new novels due out later this year, telling the same story from the point of view of two different characters.
I haven't read Suttree KH, I've heard a lot about it so will add to my TBR, thanks for the rec. Yes, I did see he had two books out, didn't realise they were linked in such a way though. He's pushing 90 now so they could well be his last.
User avatar
last.caress
Star Raid-er
Posts: 16725
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 11:38 pm
Location: Eyes that shine, burnin' red. Dreams of you all through my head.
Has liked: 1222 likes
Total likes: 1639 likes
Contact:

Re: Books you are reading

Post by last.caress »

SoulCircus wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 9:27 am Every so often I get an urge to read Cormac McCarthy, and on inspection realised I've never read Blood Meridian. So currently putting that right. Holy smokes it is violent.
One of my favourite books. Took me three goes to really get my head around the prose but, once I was into it, I couldn't get enough of it.

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

I mean, f***! That's up there with Melville. That's close to Shakespeare. Language like that, for me, is like heroin. If he only existed, I'd make a deal with the Devil just to be able to write like that.
User avatar
SoulCircus
Posts: 3402
Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2007 2:27 pm
Location: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Has liked: 12 likes
Total likes: 87 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by SoulCircus »

Yeah, that's quite a quote. McCarthy is very interesting stylistically as his books contain very little in the way of internalisation - I'm about a third of the way through Blood Meridian and know nothing more about the Kid than when I started. But those long sentences, lack of commas, and prose with those biblical undertones are really quite incredible.
User avatar
Cuenca 'ammer
ex 'ouston 'ammer
Posts: 40710
Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2002 4:19 pm
Location: Journey to the dead of night. High on a hill in Eldorado
Has liked: 1904 likes
Total likes: 1612 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Cuenca 'ammer »

can't remember and it's been literally years and years since I picked up a copy of A Clockwork Orange, but didn't that have the same or similar style ? no punctuation, no capitals, you couldn't figure out where one sentence finished and another started.

could be completely off base on this one.

was driving me mad so I had to google..not quite but not far off...

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter b*stard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg.Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.
User avatar
Korea Hammer
Posts: 11443
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:23 pm
Location: Shoreham-By-Sea
Has liked: 1315 likes
Total likes: 765 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Korea Hammer »

Sergei Dovlatov - The Zone

A short book by the dissident Russian writer, Dovlatov, alternating between sketches of life working as a guard in a Soviet prison camp and letters from the writer to his editor. Good, but felt incomplete and fragmented. Not quite as enjoyable as I was hoping it would be.
User avatar
Korea Hammer
Posts: 11443
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:23 pm
Location: Shoreham-By-Sea
Has liked: 1315 likes
Total likes: 765 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Korea Hammer »

David Szalay - All That Man Is

This is described as a novel but is really 9 short stories about men at different stages of life. There are some minor weaknesses, but overall I thought it was excellent.
User avatar
bonzosbeard
Posts: 13223
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:48 am
Location: somerset
Has liked: 2115 likes
Total likes: 1336 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by bonzosbeard »

A favourite for me was Le Carre 'A Delicate Truth'.

Talk about it being a film. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I've read some duller ones from him.
User avatar
Korea Hammer
Posts: 11443
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:23 pm
Location: Shoreham-By-Sea
Has liked: 1315 likes
Total likes: 765 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Korea Hammer »

Elizabeth Taylor ~ Angel

This was great. I have instantly ordered a couple more of Taylor's novels.
User avatar
Korea Hammer
Posts: 11443
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:23 pm
Location: Shoreham-By-Sea
Has liked: 1315 likes
Total likes: 765 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Korea Hammer »

Percival Everett - The Trees

Another winner from a very underrated writer. At times, hilariously funny and at times horrific and unsettling. His best, for me, is still Erasure, but all his books are worth reading.
User avatar
Korea Hammer
Posts: 11443
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:23 pm
Location: Shoreham-By-Sea
Has liked: 1315 likes
Total likes: 765 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Korea Hammer »

Abdulrazak Gurnah - Paradise

This might be the best book I've read this year. It's a 1994 novel set in early twentieth century East Africa and tells the story of a boy sold by his family to a rich Tanzanian trader. Beautifully written and mixing fables, traditions and religious allegory, I thought it was excellent.
Online
User avatar
smuts
Posts: 33747
Joined: Sun Jan 28, 2007 9:28 am
Location: East, East, East London
Has liked: 1498 likes
Total likes: 1440 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by smuts »

The Peter Guralnick Elvis books. Very good and in depth.

Richard Osman's new Thursday Murder club one The Bullet that missed. More of the same but still enjoyable.

Just started Fairy Tale, the new Stephen King.
User avatar
Tenbury
Posts: 9264
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 3:28 pm
Location: Too near Kidderminster
Has liked: 721 likes
Total likes: 1208 likes

Re: Books you are reading

Post by Tenbury »

Sorry to have missed the CMcC conversations, IMO one of the greatest writers ever. I buy and read Suttree every spring and then give it away.(The early novellas are astonishing but very bleak)
Currently reading Seneca (mostly on the shortness of life), him and Montaigne are the best antidote for the autumn blues.
Post Reply