recommend me a book....

Have you ever read The Selfish Gene?

Or The Selfish Giant?

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My girlfriend is so pretty that I can't get over it. Every week I celebrate the alignment of her features by parading a giant photograph of her lovely face around the town centre. I've written the words "pretty face" on the picture's border, and drawn an arrow to direct people's attention toward it. It's not bragging, because it's her that's the pretty one, not me. I'm going to parade every week for as long as she lets me be her boyfriend, and probably even longer. Nothing's going to put me off, not even the shouts of "Had her" or "Been there."

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My girlfriend was lost in space, and I was at my wits' end. Eventually her spaceship was located and brought down to Earth. I was euphoric. She was full of stories of how frightened she was when her circuit died, and how incredible it was to be in orbit. It was wonderful to hear, but she has been back for some time now and I wish she would change the subject. This morning she told me again how the Earth was about the size of a tennis ball, and the moon seemed much bigger and brighter than it ever had before.

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Running Water left me. She told me she was very fond of me, but that she needed some time to herself. Six weeks later I saw her outside the local church, wearing her very best ceremonial head-dress and clinging to the arm of an unusually handsome man. I rushed through the confetti, and glared at her. "So how did you enjoy all that time to yourself?" I hissed.

"It was great, thanks," she answered, smiling for the cameras, and looking even prettier than I remembered. "I had two cups of coffee and a croissant, and then I read a magazine."

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I'm hopelessly in love with a bland girl. She has never said or done anything interesting. I spend hours trying to work out why I'm so deeply attached to her. I can't find the answer. Her hair is boring, her face is boring and her body is boring. Every time I come home from work to find her slumped on the sofa, surrounded by used yogurt cups, my heart explodes and I feel giddy, like I'm walking on air. I take her lifeless hand, kiss her pale cheek and say, "They broke the mould when they made you." She rarely responds.

It is hard to recommend non-fiction without really knowing what you are interested in. I haven't met anyone who didn't like The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks.

You can get all these off Amazon second hand for under £3, but I don't know about bookshops.

Get well soon!

That Bill Bryson book about science, A Brief History of Almost Everything, is really ggod too. He seems particularly annoyed by scientists that discover things first, but can't write in a non-boring manner to save their lives, so their discovery ends up being named after something else.

On no account pick up The Da Vinci Code, even under cover of "just a bit of fun".

Are you not worried, by this stage, of people 100 years in the future being diagnosed with Romo Syndrome?

I was there when Andrew F. confessed his purchase of Da Vinci Code to me and expounded on its horrors. His sorrow made the bright sky of London gloomy.

Try Eco's Foucault's Pendulum instead. It will take a while and that is the point.

Tsk, so jealous. You can always read the phone book yourself, you know.

David Baddiel considers it of a par with Dickens (possibly on the same 'reasoning' as MikeyG) and seems to think it will be taught in school in 100 years time. Which might be right, but over my dead body. Oh, right..

I'm currently reading The Historian (about dracula) which is being compared to the Da Vinci Code (but well written and better researched).

Andrew, it's TRASH, you can't take the DVC seriously! :-)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

I'm probably the only person who disliked this book.

OK, you can.

--

Is Mike Hanle y the living incarnation of Ignatius J Reilly?

If so, who is his Myrna Minkoff? Ally or Emma?

-- Nick (nickdastoo...), August 9th, 2001.

fiction:
x. de maistre, "a voyage across my room"

also:
the quick and the dead by joy williams
chilly scenes of winter by ann beattie
homeland by sam lipsyte

Yeah yeah yeah.Rub it in that I have zero taste. ;-)

I was just going to suggest "Home Land" by Sam Lipsyte, which i've recommended to everyone for the last 5 months or so.

Also very, very good is Tom Bissell's "God Lives in St Petersburg".

For Joe Public, easily digestible conspiracy theories that you feel clever for for "getting", plus it moves along at a comforting, movie-like pace - it's very easy to picture the images and characters. And that's it.

As someone once said of Jeffrey Archer novels, they're books for people who don't read books. Is that such a bad thing?

I'm still otherwise avoiding fiction in favor of nonfiction these days, though -- most of the time I feel like I should be concentrating on my own rather than trying to be obsessively au courant. Bad enough with music as it is!

"The selfish gene" is scarily accurate about everyday life, or at least, that´s how it made me feel when reading it.

I am currently engaged with "War and Peace": as thick as the yellow pages! And with as many names listed in it at least!

Confederacy is great

x-post

I heartily, and that's HEARTILY recommend Mary Renault's Alexandriad - Fire from the Heavens, The Persian Boy, and Funeral Games - they are all brilliant.

haven't you been to the bookshop yet? or even better, the library?

Actually, if you're not feeling very well and you want something engrossing to read, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is a real treat. I read it over a day and a half on holidays once and it was great.

I love that book.

Damn, too late.

David Berman's "Actual Air". It'll change the way you think about everything.

Hunter S Thompson's "The Rum Diary". Its romantic with no actual romance included.

Elizabeth Wurtzel's "More, Now, Again. A Memoir of Addiction". Ritalin snorting in Florida, cocaine scoring in NYC and rehab rehab rehab. This is a laugh riot, smart and cute as can be. The only female author I can stand to read.

Also, any biography of a decent serial killer (gacy, dahmer etc) is gold.

John Banville-Frames (which is 3 books of his in one volume)
Don DeLillo-Cosmopolis (my friend who works in the shop recommended it)

I also got a book about the Simpsons I read a review of a long time ago, Planet Simpson, it was 6 euro and may be crap but I took a gamble.

was nice to see you again, of course!

hope it gets sorted out, ASAP!

At this stage I'd settle for that, even if it is a really horrible thing to have, at least I'd know that's what was wrong.

No snogging for you!

can someone recommend a good book about the CIA? pref autobiographical (i've got the new adam curtis thing on the brain)

also a good readable book about therapy for mental illness, specifically ECT - the hows and whys of the way it works

It's not strictly about the CIA but it's the only book I've read that had anything to do with the organization:

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In the Time of Tyrants: Panama 1968-1990
by Koster and Sanchez.

Came to it because of Koster's novels.

i just picked up a book called "My Father The Spy: An Investigative memoir" that looks great, although I have not read it. by a guy named John Richardson. the guy's dad was a CIA spy, and when his dad was dying in 1998(?), the son researched exactly what his dad did by looking through documents, interviewing officials, etc.

legacy of ashes?