What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (5 Viewers)

[jonah]

I really love 13 going on 30, and I cannot understand why.

I've just begun reading this

 

[Lili Marlene]

You need help.



Saw the movie but never read the book. The first chapter of One Day pretty much described 21 year old me. Embarrassingly so. I was nearly offended. Highly entertaining thus far, imho.

The film was very good but it's all in how the main character thinks and they couldn't really get that across as well on 'the big screen'. But yeah, embarrassing is correct.

Right, anyway, maybe i'll pick it up at the weekend, I keep on meaning to read more by him.

I really love 13 going on 30, and I cannot understand why.

It's everything The Devil Wears Prada wishes it could have been. Plus it's got Burning Down the House in it

 

[IFF]

i finished yesterday which i found very good

currently reading

 

[Jill Hives]

I'm a few chapters in on this and it's making me laugh.

Finished this today and it provided a few genuine LOLs from me. I've never read anything by Nicholls before but now I think I'll investigate. He has a nice way of presenting characters so clearly that you know how they will react in a situation. To the point where I was cringing during sentences knowing full well what was going to happen next in conversation. I appreciated that detail in development. It spans about 20 years (graduation from college to 40+) during late 80's until now between two friends. Perhaps my enjoyment stemmed a bit from the similarities (even if embarrassing so) to myself. The first chapter pretty much summarized me at that age down to the books on my shelf. I can see this being chopped up and turned into a Bridget Jones/Love Actually type film sometime soon. It will be horrible but the book (even for a borderline romantic story) was entertaining for me. Brilliant = "Then she noticed the duvet had no cover and was the colour of mushroom soup. The room smelt like a charity shop, the odor of men that live alone."

 

[Lili Marlene]

Brilliant = "Then she noticed the duvet had no cover and was the colour of mushroom soup. The room smelt like a charity shop, the odor of men that live alone."

that's disgraceful! I'm going to find a bit where he's mean about women and post it in this thread.

Look out for the bit in Starter for Ten where the lead character gets drunk, I don't think I've ever the process of it written better.

anyway i'm reading Michael Scott's new one which is enjoyable nonsense.

The sheer ambition of taking ALL of the worlds mythologies and histories and putting them all together never fails to amuse.... like the unintentional buddy-film moment between Shakespeare, Palamedes and St. Germain , declaring their unyielding support to the righteous cause while driving down a motorway in a dingy taxi-cab

 

[Lili Marlene]

Today i'll be moving onto L’Étranger which I last read when I was about 18 and starting to realise that conspicuously posing while reading Orwell, Dostoyevsky and Kafka is in fact not going to make me any friends and is generally an overall waste of time.

Hoping i'll like it more this time.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

i think i liked it

 

[jonah]

I know I liked it.

I've begun reading Will Napier's 'Without Warning', and so far I am utterly enthralled. It's slowish, but really interesting so that doesn't bother me too much. He takes an awfully long time to get around to what he's trying to say, but apart from that - judging on the 80 pages or so I've read - I can't fault it.

 

[St. Fechin]

Recent days:

Disappointingly dull. Full of really stilted writing. Lots of:
"I did not think that my girlfriend/brother/father would not like it if I did not..." type sentences.

Great

Not so great. The final story redeems it a bit.

 

[jonah]

I've been meaning to read 'The Moronic Inferno' for quite some time. I'll take that as incentive.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Roxy : The band that invented an era , by Michael Bracewell.

this was a real drag, one of the most boring music biographies i've read. to be fair to it i have to admit to myself at last that i am not an appreciator of art but is the book about Roxy Music or is it about the fine arts departments at various UK colleges and the particular interests of the staff working there? ffs. also far to much stuff about fashion design and haircuts. theres one chapter about a clothes shop in newcastle that bryan ferry couldnt afford to shop in. the proprietor turns up from time to time afterwards to talk about what sort of clothes people were wearing to various gigs and dos. theres a few interesting bits about Brian Eno's time at art college, and some amusing quotes from his diaries and so on. then, the bit where they all move to london and start to put the band together is kinda promising but fails big time. i love reading about bands starting off but this was silly. the recording of the first album is dealt with in the following sentance fragment: "With their debut album recorded, Brian Ferry then turned his attention to its packaging" and thats fucking it! not a mention of the studio, no interesting technical anecdotes. the author is only interested in the packaging. im furious with this book. I should have known it'd be rubbish when i saw that Ian Penman of the Wire loved it.

 

[St. Fechin]

I've been meaning to read 'The Moronic Inferno' for quite some time. I'll take that as incentive.

Read 'The War Against Cliché' too, if you haven't already.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

I just started on Seize The Day by Saul Bellow. The Introduction alone is fantastic, I hope the actual book is as good.

 

[La La]

Though there are two protagonists, one has a particularly breathtaking story. Some really incredible prose, I will definitely be picking up Three Day Road and Born With a Tooth (Boyden's other books) soon.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Fairly interesting - not a huge amount of new information for me
and it tries a bit hard on the Geek front - the book is basically a reddit wet dream with added Adam Savage.

I'm busy rediscovering how much of this stuff I had forgotten
This is a good refresher though and it deliberatey sets out not to be cute which is a change from the "isn't this fuuuun...heres some clip art" brigade.

 

[Moods For Mallards]

Finished Death in the Afternoon by Hemmingway last week. It was thoroughly enjoyable and has left me with a blood lust that can only be sated by involvement in violence at all levels.

Then, after a break due to lack of free time, I started A Season with Verona by Tim Parks, which is a football book that comes highly recommended by 2 friends. It's good craic so far, he's on his travels with the madsers among the Veronese.

Thinking of reading this concurrently with The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, which will be my first foray into that territory.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Thinking of reading this concurrently with The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, which will be my first foray into that territory.

The only Pynchon I ever finished was the liner notes to the Lotion album Nobody's Cool!
I struggled through the first couple of chapters of Mason and Dixon...the whole time completely clueless as to what the fuck was happening.
Barring a spell in prision I think the copy of Gravity's Rainbow is goiong to stay unfininshed.

 

[Lili Marlene]

That stuff is for losers, just read Finnegan's Wake already

Was flicking through a copy yesterday, my favourite bit is the "NO INTRODUCTION, NO NOTES, YOU ARE OWN YOUR OWN WITH THIS"-ness of the whole thing

 

[IFF]

that's because nobody has understood enough of it to do an introduction or notes to it

[i know]

 

[Lili Marlene]

How is it going anyway IFF? What page you up to?