What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (3 Viewers)

[Scientician 0.8]

Philip Roth - Indignation. This was recommended on this thread as one of the better short/late Roth novels and it really is. I enjoyed it a lot more than Everyman or Exit Ghost. The scene in the Dean's office where he ends up puking is hilarious. I actually read this in one evening.

I'm glad you liked it, just don't spoil it by reading The Humbling. Steaming pile of shite.

 

[Moods For Mallards]

Jonathan Wilson: Inverting the Pyramid - A History of Football Tactics. Oh yeah. High five, Red (Tape) Menace. This is the kind of thing that should be on the Junior Cert syllabus.
The only bad things about this book are the couple of times he quotes awful modern day English football journalists and the once he refers to them as "influential football writers". Kind of invalidates the whole thing.

 

[Lili Marlene]

reading this right now

it's a bit book clubbish. To be honest i'm worried i'll never be able to read another book without using this description

 

[rettucs]

reading this right now

it's a bit book clubbish. To be honest i'm worried i'll never be able to read another book without using this description

thats ok though. There are only 2 categories so its 50-50. All books are either book clubbish or cult classics

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

got through most of this last night,good but not great.

 

[Jim Daniels]

Nostalgic and contemporary, heartfelt and humourous. Like Douglas Coupland but with more sympathetic characters.
Will probably read it again.

 

[IFF]

i finished "invisible" by paul auster today

i thought it was a good read.

 

[Moods For Mallards]

Nostalgic and contemporary, heartfelt and humourous. Like Douglas Coupland but with more sympathetic characters.
Will probably read it again.

I really liked that book.

i finished "invisible" by paul auster today

i thought it was a good read.

Agreed.

 

[Lili Marlene]

It wasn't book clubbish..... er, a cult classic?


well anyway it was very good/moving/sad.

 

[Jim Daniels]

RE: What Was Lost

I really liked that book.

Yeah me too. Looking forward to her next one.

About to start this, as indirectly recommended by I Is John. They hadn't the one he mentioned, but I thought sure why not. The reviewer from the Times even "dreamt about it afterwards".

 

[Lili Marlene]

Wow, cool, let me know if it's good.

They should do something about her artwork though, it would completely turn you off her stuff. I, for one, regularly judge a book by it's cover.

 

[Jim Daniels]

Wow, cool, let me know if it's good.

They should do something about her artwork though, it would completely turn you off her stuff. I, for one, regularly judge a book by it's cover.

I know! I was thinking of buying a book on tanks or piping, along with it, just to combat the butterflies and petals..

 

[David Kronenbourg]

very funny spoof of the Great White American Male Writer.

after that it's

 

[Scientician 0.8]

I've been dipping into WWZ a couple of times of late again. Makes for easy late night reading. Some of it is very good, but certain sections are embarrassingly badly written and his attempts at satire are none too subtle.

 

[rettucs]

I'm giving the Stoltz book a go.

It had better be good thumped....

it is, but its about 200 pages too long. It doesn't half drag on in parts.

but its very clever. and witty. I think I'll recommend this

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

im reading "A Secular Age" by Charles Taylor (not the Liberian nutjob). it will probably take me months to finish it, if i ever do.

What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we--in the West, at least--largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean--of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.

Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in "Western Christendom" of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today's secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion--although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined--but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations.

What this means for the world--including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence--is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless.

anyone read it? ive read about 60 of its 700 or 800 large pages, all of which are filled with small type. its interesting but already im struggling. somehow it has become a challenge to me to finish it.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

I read call mother a lonely field by Liam Carson in work today. It is a memoir, focusing mainly on his years growing up in Belfast, his parents, and the family's relationship with the Irish language. It is brief, only a little over 100 pages long. I had read a sterling review of it in the Sunday Times Culture Section or elsewhere so ordered it in. This book has absolutely fucking blown me away. It is bittersweet, at times hilarious, other times profoundly sad. There were parts where I was literally laughing out loud and in other sections I had to read through tears. The author packs so much in. His style is deceptive. Using few words he conjurs a vivid lost world. His evocation of his father, a renowned Belfast amateur scholar of the Irish language and culture, and his mother are affectionate without ever becoming fawning. His account of his parents', especially his mother's physical and mental deterioration is just heart-rending. In the narrative he weaves in asides on multiple topics, comics, sci-fi, punk rock, childhood games, dementia, the Troubles, the Gaeltacht, Esperanto and other stuff. I'd be curious to see if others here enjoy it, I'm willing to give my copy to someone here if anyone wants to read it.

 

[St. Fechin]

Recently:

I read a short story collection by this guy last year and I wasn't particularly impressed, but all these are great.
Clearly influenced by the likes of Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne, Voltaire, Jonathan Swift blah blah and he's consistently laugh out loud funny.

Uh...I have my doubts...

Been dipping in and out of this for a while, I'd read most of the stories already but the novels are pretty good too. Religion usually seems to pwn reason in her stuff but I don't give a fuck about subject matter. She's just a great, great writer - very underrated as a stylist I think.


Up next:

Some young wan has told me to read it. Sounds promising.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I'm reading this drabbily titled biography

I have no idea who all the leading jazzmen that keep getting referred to are but it's pretty good so far, she tends to do more in a week than I do in 26 years.

 

[Kermit McDermott]

Started reading