What are you reading?

Not sure what I ought to read next. Suggestions?

At home I'm reading Uncle by J P Martin aloud to my wife, and I'm reading Greenmantle by John Buchan, a first-world-war set (and written) thriller, lots of hearty Bosch-basching.

There are probably other things as well. I'm not good at finishing books.

quincie, try Waiting Period by Hubert Selby,Jr. It is all those things. not that you are necessarily looking for something that is similar, but if you are...

good out-loud-laughing-
on-the-plane-to-Raleigh stuff
to annoy others!

plus Max Beerbohm's prose
is a thing of steely grace
like a murderer

I just started Homebody by Orson Scott Card which I borrowed from a guy at work. I interviewed him earlier this year for a video game project he is working on and wanted to actually read a book by him. He was a pretty nice guy, at least on the phone...

anthony - did you like His Dark Materials - I really loved those books, kinda like an atheist CS Lewis Narnia thang.

just finished life a users manual by george perec,which i loved...

Before that I read Milan Kundera's Immortality which was simply amazing. Probably the best book I've ever read.

@ home: "The Crystal World" JG Ballard. Trying to get through all his pre-Empire stuff. I've read 11 of his novels and most of the short stories but i'm still finding this one a bit hard to get into.

go haikunym! great book. but don't you think it's more toilet reading? i mean, i can't imagine reading straight through. i've been dipping into it at random for awhile now.

i, too, am working on "gangs of new york".

- a Muddy Waters bio by Sandra Tooze
- "Globalization and Its Discontents" by Joseph Stiglitz
- "Leaves of Grass" (1855 edition) by Walt Whitman
- "Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson"

when Ms Coulter and Lord Asriel died, I had no idea it had happened, or really what the hell was going on, or where they were, or what. Her character also changed entirely too many times to keep track of. Final problem: there is no sense of how much time has passed. At some point when Mary is with the mulefa I realized it had been months or maybe even over a year, but by the rest of the story, it seemed like three days or something.

Overall, good though.

Written in the 19th century a wry comment on out of towners visiting the capital and what they should be aware of. "Watch for street urchins who may mistake your pocket for their own and forget to return your wallet"

It's very interesting to read them side by side like that, linguistics overdose perhaps, but despite the overlap, one book is (fairly) chronological, and the other goes in alphabetical order, so it's fascinating to see the development side by side in two slightly different ways.

(And I want the letter Thorn back)

Just finished 'English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale - fabulous, big, bold historical novel - and now I'm dipping into 'The Essential Spike Miligan'

Am also trying to get through "Straw Dogs" by John Gray but i keep putting it down cos it's depressing me a bit.

Since the book is tells the history of WWII from actual documents from people from all parts of the conflict in chronological order, it makes for a very interesting read as the narriator is constantly shifting along with point of view. I find this aspect of the book as fascinating as the historical information.

Currently trying to finally finish the first volume of the Cambridge History of Japan, which I keep neglecting and then coming back to after I've managed to forget most of what's going on. It's pretty dense with unfamiliar names and concepts, which makes it hard going, but I'm very interested in the period, and there's some neat points worth following up in there. Even if I'm reliably informed that the history in it's now dated, despite being published, what, twenty years ago? Damn historiographers.

As for the others... hm. Adorno's "The Stars Down To Earth", which is surprisingly readable, even if I get the sense that it's all floating out of my brain as I read it. My 'light reading' (ha!) is Hill's "The world turned upside down" - I've read it before and can make silly pencil comments in the margin about his fanboy crush on Gerrard Winstanley - and a gorgeous simultaneous translation of Catullus' poems that's virtually my comfort blanket by now.

my friend's reading 'straw dogs', colin, i can't stop ribbing him fr doing so though i'm not really sure why ha

charles portis!!!! have you read any of his other books, scott? i've read most of 'the dog of the south' (i'm rubbish at finishing books) and a lot of 'master of atlantis'. so funny! haha why *do* we need everything to just make sense?!

right now, i'm reading 'the faber book of... pop' (working my way through it in the toilet), 'the cutting room' (i'll probably finish this one soon, but yeah, colin, as you said, BLOODY HELL!!!) & 'ulysses' (ha! ha! ha!) (note: it's amazing). i just finished reading jean rhys' 'good morning, midnight' which was just about... well, perhaps one of the best books i ever read & lorrie moore's 'who will run the frog hospital?'

You can read it free online. It was Serge Gainsbourg's favourite book, and also one of the sources of 'The Wicker Man'. You get this brilliant sense of Britain as a foreign country:

The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself: the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgae for the purpose of plunder and making war... They do not regard it lawful to eat the hare, and the cock, and the goose; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure. The climate is more temperate than in Gaul, the colds being less severe.

'The island is triangular in its form, and one of its sides is opposite to Gaul... The most civilized of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the Gallic customs. Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins. All the Britains, indeed, dye themselves with wood, which occasions a bluish color, and thereby have a more terrible appearance in fight. They wear their hair long, and have every part of their body shaved except their head and upper lip. Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers, and parents among their children; but if there be any issue by these wives, they are reputed to be the children of those by whom respectively each was first espoused when a virgin.'

Also reading the biography of e.e.cummings, Dreams in the Mirror by Richard S. Kennedy. And The Vice Book of Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, bien sur!

Has anyone read "Under The Skin" by Michael Faber?

i'm really enjoying lights out for the territory by iain sinclair,which i started the other day...
i was kind of worried that it would be a really tough read,and while i am reading it fairly slowly its not "difficult" as such,so far,and he writes beautifully...

has anyone else read it?

I have leapfrogged over the second half of Straw Dogs and am now reading (and thorougly enjoying) "You Shall Know Our Velocity". I can't inderstand why Dave Eggers is so hated.

i don't have perec to hand, julio, and since i'm out here in the sticks over christmas (can you believe they shut down the local book shop?!) i'm going to have to read something from my stack.

there are some good threads on eggers i think, colin, i don't understand why i dislike eggers beyond irrational knee-jerk anti-smugness and distrust of the stretch for and at the great american social novel (underworld, the corrections) - is their some ingrained prediliction of american authors of a certain age / career-standing that they must just try write one of these all-encompassing social panominonic novels ("there are no terra incognitae")? wht does it say about someone that they'd sit down and write these books?

and i think i got my flann o'brien associations ass-backwards.

not same novel

yeah, i never thought it was, well that's the point actually all i did was think, i didn't actually go and read some of his stuff. i probably never will; i just have this 'set' in my mind of 'ambitious american authors' and it's the 'ambitious' that puts me off.

Curly hair is a curse.

The Brothers Karamazov
Herzog on Herzog
Foundations Edge

I'm currently on Kitchen Venom by Phillip Henscher.

Just started "The Grotesque", Patrick McGrath. I didn't know Patrick could be funny!

Lindsey Davis. "A Dying Light in Corduba"
Michael Pollan. "The Botany of Desire"
Simon Winchester. "Krakatoa"

Just finished Catcher in the Rye, reread it because my daughter was assigned to read it in school. Better than I remembered.

Currently reading 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson and 'To The Nines' by Janet Evanovich. I know, but I love those lady detective stories.

Val

To me it's the kind of book that could only depreciate as you get older. Interesting that it was better than you remember.