Now what are you reading?

Kelly - I love Snow Crash - some of the best belly laughs I've had in years.

In other words, change my entire personality.

I am also reading The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees, which is a fairly light and snappy popular history book about the transportation of women prisoners during the eighteenth century. It's written in the 'and here are some more public records I read from the library' style. It would be more interesting if I had never read any other books about the eighteenth century, but I am finding out lots of great stuff about the thickness of people. Who's going to be stupid enough to steal an enormous silver soup server with the family's crest on it and then pawn it round the corner? Housemaids, that's who.

This won the Newberry. Raskin is my favorite YA author. But I always give this book to anyone who asks for a good book but confesses they have never actually read one.

Picking up from the library tomorrow:

Alex Shakar, The Savage Girl
Stan Goff, Full Spectrum Disorder : The Military in the New American Century

I don't like to read fiction that much; I might not finish The Savage Girl at all. I had barely started in on William Gaddis's The Recognitions when I gave it back; life's too short for that stuff.

= wow!

Who says it needs to be someone's mum? Hands on hips, disapproving voice, you've got me to a T.

You guys all read so MUCH. I can't read that fast. I'm too busy catching up on the Metal vs. Punk debate on MTV2 and wondering what's going on in EastEnders, and playing Bookworm to really get into my reading properly.

I mean, I love books and all, but I'm unfaithful to them sometimes.

I'd gotten Jonathan Lethem's A Fortress of Solitude but just couldn't concentrate on it. It seemed well written though.

Recently finished The De Vinci Code. I should find that thread...

I'm listening to, after having read, "The Noonday Demon". Am still reading "Reading in Bed" and also moving nightly through my entire Ngaio Marsh collection of paperbacks which I haven't read in so long I've forgotten whodunnit.

I put all the Janet Frame books available in our library on hold today. Perhaps I should bag my head as I say this, but I'd never heard of her. Pepek, you're in good company. None of us have read everything.

I'm about to start Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe, which has been in my "To Read Next" pile for a while and then I saw on another thread that someone here was reading his The Tetherballs of Bouganville and enjoying it, so I decided to try something else by him.

Then it'll be: Penguin Lost by Andrey Kurkov.

I'm currently reading The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrall, which is interesting. For example, I didn't know you couldn't date documents that are written in pencil, because the composition of pencil lead hasn't changed in two hundred years.Just finished The Da Vinci Code (see other thread) and Donald Antrim's The Verificationist which I tried really hard to like and almost thought I would like, but then just didn't. It felt like a short story that had been stretched too far.

the mating season by pg wodehouse

I've just finished At Swim Two Birds, which I threaded somewhere on here. I mostly made this heroic effort because of ILB and the praise the book was getting on here. I still don't think it's all that great, although there are things about it I really like. Now I'm reading Speranza, an only barely satisfactory biography of Lady Wilde that was written in the nineteen fifties. It's a little sparse and extremely subjectively written. I think I'm going to have to get a better one, especially since I think there was a certain frisson between Lady Wilde (or Miss Elgee, as she was then) and Charles Gavan Duffy.

For contrast I'm now reading a history of West Ham United. More fantasy and rewritten history.

Next on the list: Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed history! by Joe Bob Briggs. I'm so pleased that he's still writing books, even though he doesn't do his Texan trailer trash schtick anymore.

so many books, so little time!

Unengaging.

I'm currently finishing my first James Lee Burke book, Purple Cane Road. I really like it. Luckily his books are widely available second-hand. Hooray!

In the midst of Terry Pratchett's Night Watch now and have Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book and Robertson Davies' Salterton Trilogy lined up. I've already read A Mixture of Frailties, not realizing it was the final book in this trilogy, and loved it.

I thought it was an Easter buik.

I've just finished Cecelia Ahern's million-dollar turd PS I Love You, which seems to have been translated from some other language by a robot and is full of women laughing like idiots at everything the others say. Honestly, it's like someone told her to write a book full of laughs, tears, singing and dancing, and she got a book she'd already written and stuck all of those things into it, taking care to put one of each on each page. Dreadful cack.

Then I read Vernon God Little, which I know a lot of people only kind of liked, but I thought was really excellent. It was funny and had the kind of sadness I haven't seen since Boxy an Star. And I will read more James Lee Burke soon, and I finished that biography of Lady Wilde, who was a very strange lady.

Now I am reading Cooke by Vanessa Collingridge. I already don't think I like it. She talks about herself too much, and if I'd wanted a book called Collingridge, I would have bought one, wouldn't I? Get to the exploring, I say.

In truth I am dubious about part one: it feels much too close to bad Irish writing c. McCourt for my... taste. And it doesn't have the easyreading virtue of earlier Doyle.

But the GPO stuff is more promising, though he really shouldn't have inserted 'Easter Monday, 1916' on the second page of it. A long way to go: you had better not spoil it for me.

Now I'm reading Patrick Neate's Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet, because I needed a good dose of non-fiction every once in a while. Good so far; I'm interested in seeing what conclusions he'll make at the end of his quest for hip-hop around the world.

And War and Peace is sitting dutifully at my bedside waiting for its turn.

I have just bought another Darren King book on Amazon. I'm almost afraid to read it in case it's not as good as Boxy An Star, which is truly one of my all-time favourites. Have you read any of his other stuff, Pinefox? Should I be afraid, or excited?

(I think the drugs done it.)

(O Big Man I am afraid.)

(Dont be silly you should be excited like what I am being excited.)

Plus a few school-related things (i.e. programming books)

Finished The Blind Assassin. Such hard work.

Jessa, you really have been reading that Bobby Fischer book for a long time, didn't you mention it in the last What Are You Reading thread?

I have temporarily abandoned Ms. Collingridge and her vision of Captain Cook and am reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It is quite funny. I do like the idea of having an inner Scooby-Doo.

Now I want to read the Bobby Fischer book as well. Gah.

He does the GPO OK, but I am very dubious about the way he... flags everything up, so. Surely he must know that most of his readerhip knows the... basic facts?

And heavens, the ForrestGump presentathistory'sunfolding trend: the moment when he, aged 14, tells Connolly to insert the clause on cherishing all the children of the nation equally is dismal. No?

See, I am only a few pp further in.

Perhaps he warms up?

I was amused years ago when an American friend of mine said that she had just been to see the Michael Collins movie. "I haven't seen it yet," I said. "In that case, I won't spoil it for you," she said.

I kind of thought that the presentattheunfoldingofhistory bits were pretty tongue in cheek, and could also be taken with a grain of salt. Remember that heart-of-the-rowl Dubliners just love making up lies to make themselves look more important.

On the other hand, maybe you just don't like the book. Hey ho.

The idea that Henry S might be lying and exaggerating is good. That makes more sense of it.

Also RightHo Jeeves for light relief, and Paris Trance by Geoff Dyer which frankly I expected to be much better.

I seem only to read it in the bath.

It has Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan on the cover.

He is a peot that some people, on ILB, like.

I bought this book cheap c. August 2001 having read a glowoff review of it over a cup of coffee at Stansted, which I seem never to have forgotten. It was the Guardian's special poetry reviews day and they also covered Heaney's Electric Light (hm - can this be right?) and Bernadine Evaristo's one about Ancient Rome.

I am not sure that the Heaney volume is very good, but that's another story, or, poem.

Anyway, I have still not made it to the end of Muldoon's New Weather. But I have skipped around the rest of the buik to see that he talks about sex too often and too explicitly for my liking.

A couple of chapters to go.

I think the milkwoman did it.

If you have an answer to this question, perhaps you should let me know.

I started reading it in January perhaps. I am less than 50% through it. But one day I will finish it. Some who have 'read' it say that it's meant to be skipped. But how can you know this, unless you ... read it?

It's worse than Nothing, but not, I suppose, worse than useless, which is useful, in a way, or two, as we might see, if we go, down the road, or up the garden path, with Bwian Eno.

I may have a vested interest in this recommendation however. (Even if I do--still good.)

Volume 3 of Proust is good. Last book = best book, actually. Plus it's got a pretty outrageous s/m bordello scene too.

Presently on a Turgenev bender. ("First Love," "Spring Torrents," "Fathers and Sons") are the last three things I've read. Why people don't read him more often--he's more elegant, arguably more affecting, and more economical (admittedly not difficult) than the other 19th c Russians--baffles me.

I am also reading bits of Pierre Reverdy - as an homage to Frank O'Hara - and some of Matthew Welton's debut collection, 'The Book of Matthew'. I also dashed - in the style of a Godardian bolt through a gallery - round the Edwin Morgan selected.

Furthermore, I have been revisiting Rorty's 'Contingency, Irony and Solidarity' (after coming up against a SWPer who maintained that RR was away with the faeries), Hughes's 'Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being' (trying to frame some thoughts on the new Morrissey single) and Stanley Cavell's 'Pursuits of Happiness' (thinking about screwball and the epic tennis rallies of falling in love).

Right now, I've just finished up my spring semester, and as such have been light on the reading. All I've got on the go is the super fun 'Vancouver - Secrets of the City', which is a fun insider geek trivia compendium of sorts about my city. I feel like starting something new tomorrow, but I'm just not sure what.

But wait! £2 discount brought it down to £10.99

Incidentally, you will soon be able to purchase my own publishing debut for the attractive sum of £3.95 ;)

That's numbers 1 and 4 in the series!

Not that you'll have too many problems picking up the storyline in the fourth one. I like this series, but it seems to be a love or hate thing among people I know.

Can you not just summarise it and stick it on the 25 words thread?

25 exactly.

I think that probably she has earned it.

I am not sure why we are now calling her Arkel, if we are (I think we are, for a moment).

The book is me and two other people. One of them is ASTOUNDINGLY good, her name is Ayala Kingsley - hopefully you'll hear it more.

[Wrong thread for this sort of talk obv, sorry.]

I am just sorry to hear that it's not your own book all to yourself. But probably that is around the corner, or on the next paving stone.

The person who designed the jacket for our book is also designing the 50th anniversary edition of Lord of the Flies, apparently.

And thanks!

(NB. Jerry is lying.)

??

Truly, I do not have a clue what goes on around here.

So, congratulations Archel. You rule.

As I mentioned on another thread, I'm suffering from Patrick O'Brian deprivation and I think that I'm just going to have to start reading the books again. Sigh. I wish I was an early nineteenth-century naturalist. There was so much more to discover then.

I am on p.196. He is riding the bicycle 60 miles through the dark.

Truly, I still don't get it.

But I actually skipped most of the seventeenth century.

I think I have read everything from 'The Ascendancy Mind' on. Perhaps I am kidding myself.

Anyway, I don't remember Foster explaining that historical anomaly.

He is quite ... strong on the idea that the War of Independence was a vicious series of terrorist attacks on Irish policemen.

Because it's a very long time since I looked at any Irish history other than the Famine, I'm not sure how much about the War of Independence I really know. I guess it needs to be further in the past before we can make entertaining cartoons about it that cement the basic facts in our heads at the age of five. I know more about the American War of Independence than I do about our own.

But not now.

Is Kee a Unionist?

The Royal Family - William Vollman
The only other Vollman I've read is The Rainbow Stories, which I liked very much. Royal Family is interesting thus far, seems to include many of the same elements of the Rainbow Stories (prostitutes, racists, and love for a Korean woman), though in a detective story context.

OBIT: Hubert Selby Jr.

I need to get back to that Roddy Doyle.

Also a book about the lost rivers of London written by the guy who did Is Shame McGowan Still Alive? And a Taschen photobook on Frank Lloyd Wright. I went a bit cash happy in Stoke Newington yesterday.

I can't believe I have only just realized that there is too much sex in it.

I might try and think further about this had I the time.

Roddy Doyle really is good on the War of Independence.

I've spent the last two days in Perth (no, not that one, the REAL one) and so needed something undemanding. I read Anne Patchett's Bel Canto, which was enjoyably ripping, and Charles Johnson's Midwest Passage, a hearty sea-faring adventure. However, I'm suspicious of Johnson. He's supposed to be so smart, with his Guggenheim-y carry on, but I'm sure that the book is riddled with anachronisms. For example, I have a gut feeling that American sailors in the 1830s wouldn't have talked about the missing link between man and the apes with such easy acceptance. In fact, a quick reference check claims that The Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859, so it does seem very unlikely. It's a bit annoying.

I quite enjoyed Bel Canto, it's got film written all over it.

But maybe that's just me.

One day, perhaps, I will actually talk to accentmonkey about this book, in person, if there is such a - person.

hm.

2. I am not sure how much I like Borges, in truth. Are you?

2. No. No I am not.

I love Borges and I will fight people who don't share my enthusiasm.

After I finished, I picked up Penguin's Sixties Reader and poked around through several selections. To suffer nostalgia for the sixties (I was born in 1954 and can recall the decade) is to suffer a delusion. It was a wretched time, redeemed only by a few hard-won extensions to personal freedom (often at a horrid cost in broken skulls). I can recall thinking many times in 1968, when I was 13 years old, that the world appeared to be mad drunk on anger and violence.

Incidentally, why does paint dry a different colour to the sample in Homebase?

Started reading a book about London's covered over rivers. The kind of book you need to read with an A to Z at hand. Plus, Us vs Them, the World's Greatest Football Derbies. Right up my street.

Also still reading The Time Traveler's Wife and it's still great. Read it!

I have read Atonement since I last saw this thread. That is quick work by my standards.

Accent Monkey is being bad. Very bad indeed.

I don't know what I'm gonna read next. Maybe William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow or Penelope Fitzgerald's The Book Shop. I just picked those two up at the dump. (yes, the dump. They have a lovely shack at the dump where people drop off old clothes, books, etc and it's a great place for free junk.)

I moved to London, he moved to California. Sucker. Oh, wait.

Interested to hear opintions on the book / author.

Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
Max Frisch - I'm Not Stiller
Bernard Malamud - The Stories Of... (It's always nice to have a short story collection around when not in the mood to delve back into a novel. Also picked up his "The Assistant" at the library at the same time as this)
Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo (second try, as the first time around I never got past page ten or so, yet my mind has kept going back to it ever since)

It is a little twee, I agree.

Talking of twee (well incestuous gothic twee), I've just started re-reading Flowers in the Attic. I think I last read it abround the age of sixteen. It's lost its sparkle, bless it.

Have now started The Mercy Boys by John Burnside.

I just finished Safire's Scandalmonger and it might have been good, but it took me so long to read the blasted thing that I was never able to sink into the story and so I feel kind of "blah" about the whole experience.

But now I've picked-up Vernon God Little after my S.O. read the first two chapters out-loud on Saturday night, in an attempt to put me to sleep. It's quite funny, but I find that I can't skim, else I miss so much of the humor and wit.