anybody reading anything good? (1 Viewer)

[MDR]

I've just started a HG Wells anthology that my friend got me for my bithday many moons ago.. five books in one so it's one of those impossible to carry around fuckers. It's great though.

I have sometimes fancifully played with the idea of buying and anthology and reading everything by an author, but for some reason it seems less special than buying five separate books and reading them at different times.

I think I'm doing that thing again where I share my thoughts indiscriminately. Ah well...

 

[mamul]

I've just started To Kill a Mocking Bird in the expectation that it will become one of my top 5 books.

Incidentally, my current fave top 5 - in no particular order - are (this is a 'favourite' list not a claim to be the best books of all time as there are many great books I've not read):

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
Tortilla Flat (Steinbeck)
The Plague (Camus)
Don Quixote (Cervantes)
Ham on Rye (Buckowski)

Having typed that list, I'm not sure how representative it is, as it's mostly books I've read over the last coupla years.

(Note: This is a tacit invitation to submit your own top 5)

cant make a top five so i'll just go with some of my fave books of the last year or so:
george saunders-civilwarland in bad decline
-pastoralia
daniel evan wiess-the roaches have no king
martin amis-success
woody allen-complete prose
phillip k dick-do androids dream of electric sheep
john fante-1933 was a bad year
dave eggers-you shall know our velocity

 

[MDR]

Following from recommendations on this thread I am now reading the Third Policeman. So far so deadly.

Who says i don't listen to other people?

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Following from recommendations on this thread I am now reading the Third Policeman. So far so deadly.

Who says i don't listen to other people?

You might know if you'd been listening...

 

[shidheat]

 

[ms.b.haven]

i was reading a good book, then my dog pissed all over it

 

[Audiodelic]

I'd recommend Kazuo Ishiguro's new one, 'Never Let Me Go'. It's quite a sinister book set in a boarding school where all is not what it seems. I don't want to give too much away but it's really good and deals with morality and mortality in an unexpected way. It's a million miles away from his classic, 'Remains of the Day'. Will have an interview with him and a review of the book in the next issue of sigla.

Am also reading George Orwell's 'Coming Up For Air'. I OD'd on Orwell in my teens when I first discovered him so it's a long time since I've read anything by him after hoovering up all his work in one go. It's about a man who feels he's a failure and assesses his life against the backdrop of the impending 2nd world war. It's a very meloncholic book but the characters, well, there's not many people who can make them jump off the page at you, but Orwell does it brilliantly.

 

[aoboa]

Reading 'Fortress of Solitude' at the mo - White kid growing up in predominantly black project in NY in the seventies.
Great book

 

[seanface]

i'm reading the motley crue book at the moment. it's so dumb it's funny. and it's way better than the stuff i should be reading for college. curse your eyes emily bronte!

 

[MDR]

Following from recommendations on this thread I am now reading the Third Policeman. So far so deadly.

Who says i don't listen to other people?

Finished this and The Poor Mouth, which is hilarious. Third Policeman was clever, but left me largely unchanged.

Am now reading JD Salinger: 'Raise high the roofbeams, carpenters' and 'Seymour: an introduction'. Typically snappy, bullseye writing from ol JD.

 

[hugh]

Reading 'Fortress of Solitude' at the mo - White kid growing up in predominantly black project in NY in the seventies.
Great book

Oh I picked this up, hummed and hawed, and then put it down again in Waterstones the other day. Looked pretty good all right.

Reading "A Sunday At The Pool in Kigali" which is pretty stunning so far. First fictional account of Rwandan genocide I've come across. Brilliantly written.

Just finished "Cloud Atlas" by David Fisher (is that his name?) which is great too. I read Ghostwritten because of what people were saying on one of these threads, liked it a lot, but wasn't crazy about Number9dream. I think Cloud Atlas is his best yet though. It's very like Ghostwritten in the tenously linked novellas kind of way ....

 

[Jim Daniels]

Just finished "Cloud Atlas" by David Fisher (is that his name?) which is great too. I read Ghostwritten because of what people were saying on one of these threads, liked it a lot, but wasn't crazy about Number9dream. I think Cloud Atlas is his best yet though. It's very like Ghostwritten in the tenously linked novellas kind of way ....

Number9Dream is one of my favourite novels ever! Thought it was very entertaining.
So is Ghostwritten, really like that sweet love story based around the guy working in the Jazz shop. I know this sounds plankish, but David Mitchell is a beautiful writer. Makes for great re-reading
I really liked parts of Cloud Atlas but it was verring just a bit too high brow for me. I like being able to read books without having to make too much of an effort. But yeah, David Mitchell

 

[krystal]

Just finished "Cloud Atlas" by David Fisher.

This is sitting on a shelf ready to be read. I have Kraftwerk, Ian Curtis and Jerry Lee Lewis biogs to get through first though.

 

[taubstumm]

Just finished "Cloud Atlas" by David Fisher (is that his name?) which is great too. I read Ghostwritten because of what people were saying on one of these threads, liked it a lot, but wasn't crazy about Number9dream. I think Cloud Atlas is his best yet though. It's very like Ghostwritten in the tenously linked novellas kind of way ....

This is sitting on a shelf ready to be read.

spoiler alert!

do not read if you haven't read cloud atlas!

i thought it was a bit disjointed, but then i suppose that's inevitable in a book with that kind of structure and ambition... i read it a few months ago now, and the only parts that seemed to stick in my mind were the young composer (1920s?) and the sea voyage dude (1700s?) - it would have been cool to have a book with just these two parts to it. i liked the book-within-a-book linking device thing with them, made a lot more sense than the whole post-apocalyptic/future dystopia thang he has going on in the rest of it. and the comic-novel thing of the guy getting trapped in the home for the elderly seemed kind of tacked-on, really. but yeah, top shizzle, everyone should read it.

edited to add: i am currently reading orientalism by edward w. said and feeling proud of myself for getting through it. heavy going. i'm also reading a collection of short stories by a.m. holmes called the safety of objects, which is scarily good. more on that soon!

 

[aoboa]

i'm reading the motley crue book at the moment. it's so dumb it's funny. and it's way better than the stuff i should be reading for college. curse your eyes emily bronte!

It's the most squalid account of rock and roll excess I've read. Makes Hammer of the Gods look like an episode of Neighbours.

 

[Eddie Gorilla]

Reading 'American Scream:The Bill Hicks Story' at the moment. Quite enjoyable so far. It's nice to finally read something actually about him rather than just more routines.

Also, recently finished 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times:Brian Wilson and the Making of Pet Sounds' which was thoroughly enjoyable especially since I had just rediscovered the album before I got the book.

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Also, recently finished 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times:Brian Wilson and the Making of Pet Sounds' which was thoroughly enjoyable especially since I had just rediscovered the album before I got the book.

Is that the buke with the Pet Sounds style cover, and that details the recording sessions and interviews Tony Asher about Wilson's working methods and so on? If so, I read it there last year, tis very good indeed - there really needs to be a Beach Boys analogue of Revolution in the Head

 

[egg_]

Here, just when did The Beach Boys become cool? Hmmph probably about the time I kinda lost interest in them I suppose ... when I used to go on about them in school (back in the 80s) everyone thought I was a feeb

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Here, just when did The Beach Boys become cool? Hmmph probably about the time I kinda lost interest in them I suppose ... when I used to go on about them in school (back in the 80s) everyone thought I was a feeb

Ah but you were probably into shite like Surfin' Safari and Barbara Ann, and so woulda missed the cool boat anyway.

 

[MDR]

Also, recently finished 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times:Brian Wilson and the Making of Pet Sounds' which was thoroughly enjoyable especially since I had just rediscovered the album before I got the book.

I just borrowed this from a guy (some guy, you don't know him) and plan to read it as part of my build up to the Brian Wilson gig in June.

Am reading Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald at the mo.

Egg, the beach boys became cool again in about 1998 as far as I can remember, although I don't recall what brought it about.