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    Current Reading - Books best thread

    Mat wrote:
    I saw the ending of '1984', 'Hangover Square' and 'Dracula' coming but I still thought they were bloody brilliant books.

    I always think the journey is more important than the destination, no.

    Give it a go anyway, Steve. It's good shit.
    I don't disagree about the journey. But when it's billed, right on the cover with a Jeffery Deaver quote, as a thriller, you want a thrill.

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      Current Reading - Books best thread

      Purves Grundy wrote:
      Not when you're going to Thorpe Park, it isn't.
      Heh, I asked for that.

      I do hope i'm not turning into a fucking Buddhist or something.

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        Current Reading - Books best thread

        Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
        I don't disagree about the journey. But when it's billed, right on the cover with a Jeffery Deaver quote, as a thriller, you want a thrill.
        Ah, well. This could go on forever really.

        I liked it. You didn't like it.

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          Current Reading - Books best thread

          True. The book was a big hit, so clearly I'm in the minority.

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            Current Reading - Books best thread

            Dunno, honestly.

            I liked what the writer was trying to do, thought the places he was trying to go in the book where original and interesting, and found the climax both terrifying and thought provoking.

            Can't really say anymore than that.

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              Current Reading - Books best thread

              Lucia Lanigan wrote:
              Clarice Lispector - The Hour of the Star

              Really good 80-pager: the life of a poor girl in Brazil being imagined before your eyes but grabbing you all the same. Lovely writing with a musical feel to its construction and language.
              Just finished this and it was lovely. Far more 'in the author's voice' than I'm used to, or usually a fan of, but wonderful. And just the perfect length.

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                Current Reading - Books best thread

                Just started "The Fermata" by Nicholson Baker because I fancy a soft-porn buzz on the train-ride into work.

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                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                  Just finished Andre Agassi's autobiography "Open", which was a fantastically compelling read. A bit self-serving in places and a bit OTT on the emotional front, but a fantastic story, superbly told (with the help of a professional writer, but very much in Agassi's real voice). I would never normally read a sportsman's autobio, I'm just not that interested in sportsmen, but this book was rightly promoted as very different from the usual.

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                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                    Glad you liked it, WOM.

                    I read Thomas Bernhard's Old Masters last week: 200 pages of ranting from an old (fictional) music critic who sits at the same seat at the same gallery at the same time every day to look at the same painting, which he doesn't like all that much. It rubbed me up the wrong way at first (looked as if it was going to be boringly nihilistic) but the rhythm of the language soon kicked in and I really enjoyed it.

                    He's a cantankerous old bastard, but a committed, intelligent one who it's difficult to disagree with. It's very funny in places, moving too (both at once when he starts talking about his wife's death and soon slips into ranting about the city of Vienna and people's inability to organise). Although I've since read that Austrians hear it in a more serious tone, which is difficult to imagine.

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                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                      Evariste Euler Gauss wrote:
                      Just finished Andre Agassi's autobiography "Open", which was a fantastically compelling read. A bit self-serving in places and a bit OTT on the emotional front, but a fantastic story, superbly told (with the help of a professional writer, but very much in Agassi's real voice). I would never normally read a sportsman's autobio, I'm just not that interested in sportsmen, but this book was rightly promoted as very different from the usual.
                      I read that recently and thought it was a fantastic insight into the mind of an obsessive personality. I wouldn't tell his dad to fuck off, either.

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                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                        Am currently working through "The Last Hundred Days". It's enjoyable, and reminds me a bit of a more erudite "Last King Of Scotland" (the privileged foreigner naively getting himself deeper into hot water in a repressive state).

                        Before that I wrapped up "Jamrach's Menagerie" - good, but the last third really dragged; for nautical/historical imagery I much preferred Harry Thompson's "This Thing Of Darkness" - and John Lewis-Stempel's "Six Weeks" (an affectionate Richard Holmes-lite study of the British junior officer in World War I). And before that it was Jon Ronson's "Psychopath Test"; enjoyable and very funny in places, but fluffy and insubstantial and sometimes disconcertingly lightweight, feeling like it could have used a bit less Dave Gorman-style storytelling and a bit more insight and analysis.

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                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                          Crusoe wrote:
                          Before that I wrapped up "Jamrach's Menagerie" - good, but the last third really dragged;
                          Yes, the last third is based almost solely on In The Heart of The Sea, the true story of the whaler Essex. It felt like I was reading the same book over again for quite a few pages. Mrs WOM just finished my copy of Jamrach's and hated it.

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                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                            I hate all of you for having time to read. y browsing is down to less than a book a month because of work hell. Also, I'm starting to think that too much reading on the internet has shot my concentration. I have trouble reding more than a few pages at a time, I find.

                            Anyways, David Graeber's Debt: The first 5,000 years. It's had a lot of plaudits, but I'm not sure all of them are deserved. His takedown of Adam Smith's account of the rise of money is pretty good, and parts of his thesis about how money is simply an accounting measure for debt are interesting - especially his chapters on the medieval period. However, an awful lot of his points rest on anthropological research conducted in some really obscure parts of the world. I'm not sure how well those observations really hold up elsewhere (and some of what he has to say about the 20th century seemed just flat out factually incorrect, which raised some suspicions as well). Good but not great.

                            Francis Fukuyama's The origins of political order. *Very* interesting thesis on how political order is a product of accountability (of which democracy is a form but not the only one), rule of law and state institutions, and a very interesting counterpoint to what he calls "whig history" which centres all of this in a re-telling of English constitutional history. By looking at China, India, Arabia, Turkey, Spain, Russia, Hungary and Denmark, he shows how you get different outcomes depending i) on how those three basic forces are balanced, and ii) on the relative balance of forces between state and society (if either is too strong, you tend not to get an optimal result).

                            Interesting take from a conservative, anyway. He's moved a long way from the neo-cons (or perhaps they've moved away from him).

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                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                              Antoine Gramcy wrote:
                              I hate all of you for having time to read. y browsing is down to less than a book a month because of work hell. Also, I'm starting to think that too much reading on the internet has shot my concentration. I have trouble reding more than a few pages at a time, I find.
                              I'm in the same boat. My list of books I've read on Goodreads this year is less than half of the previous year, I think. I blame work, child- and elder-care, house maintenance, the Internet, and feeling tired at night and just watching TV. I sense a new year's resolution coming on. (Any of you who are on Goodreads and want to "friend" me, feel free to PM me.)

                              Anyways, David Graeber's Debt: The first 5,000 years. It's had a lot of plaudits, but I'm not sure all of them are deserved. His takedown of Adam Smith's account of the rise of money is pretty good, and parts of his thesis about how money is simply an accounting measure for debt are interesting - especially his chapters on the medieval period. However, an awful lot of his points rest on anthropological research conducted in some really obscure parts of the world. I'm not sure how well those observations really hold up elsewhere (and some of what he has to say about the 20th century seemed just flat out factually incorrect, which raised some suspicions as well). Good but not great.
                              I saw him speak at the Texas Book Festival a few months ago and thought he was interesting. I put his book on my "to read" list, but it's long and a bit daunting. I think I might just get a copy from the library and dip in here and there using the index.

                              I'm reading Sarah Bakewell's book on Montaigne, How to Live, right now. It's pretty good, but I'm especially enjoying it as a way to revisit Montaigne, who is a fantastic, fascinating writer.

                              Also just finished Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, which was good, though I didn't like it quite as much as his previous novel, You Remind Me of Me. There's a massive plot twist/revelation at the very end of Await Your Reply, some of which I saw coming, but which I'm not sure is totally convincing. Still, a very interesting novel about shifting identities.

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                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                Antoine Gramcy wrote:
                                I hate all of you for having time to read. y browsing is down to less than a book a month because of work hell.
                                Which is odd, because you seem like you knock off a couple of big books a week. Me, I'm lucky if I can finish a book in under two weeks. I have the focus of a ....hey look at the squirrel....

                                Oddly, this forum has had me reading more fiction than I ever have, compared to my non-fiction intake.

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                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                  Used to knock off (almost) two books a week. Not this year. This year it's been about one book every two weeks. At best.

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                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                    Oh, and I'm half way through the Edugyan book. It's wonderful. Hopefully it keeps it up for the second half.

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                                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                                      Renart wrote:

                                      I'm in the same boat. My list of books I've read on Goodreads this year is less than half of the previous year, I think. I blame work, child- and elder-care, house maintenance, the Internet, and feeling tired at night and just watching TV. I sense a new year's resolution coming on. (Any of you who are on Goodreads and want to "friend" me, feel free to PM me.)
                                      I'd begun to give up on goodreads because I couldn't find any friends.

                                      I'm 2899178-stephen-burrows (I think) if you want to add me.

                                      In fact, ADD ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

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                                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                                        Done!

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                                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                                          brilliant, I'm up to 4 friends now!

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                                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                                            steveeeeeeeee wrote:
                                            brilliant, I'm up to 4 friends now!
                                            Five now!

                                            Recently finished Hector Tobar's novel The Barbarian Nurseries. Really enjoyed it, a big social novel about Southern California. Got pretty annoyed by the reviews that I had read beforehand that described it as a Los Angeles novel--most of it is set in Orange County.

                                            I tried to get into Swamplandia! but it wasn't grabbing me, and now it's due back at the library in a few days, and with all of the holiday stuff coming up I probably wouldn't get more into it if I renewed it.

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                                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                                              Friendship accepted inca!

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                                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                I finished the Ice Trilogy. What a very odd book. It's written from the perspective that the planet earth and its inhabitants are a kind of cancer cell in the body of the universe. With beings who do nothing more than breed, consume and destroy. Without them, and it, nothing would change, glorious cosmic stasis would reestablish itself. 23,000 Children of the Light, became trapped on the earth in mortal bodies eons ago. the Tunguska meteorite offers them the opportunity to re-bond as pure energy, liberate themselves and destroy the planet. Or, it's all just a story about a cult that believes all of the above is what's going on.

                                                At times it's a difficult read because, with a couple of exceptions, there are no fully realised human characters only a parade of beings with short guttural names. There's also the hypnotic almost biblical repetitiveness which occasionally made me want to give up altogether, but I never quite did. It was fascinating enough, in both structure and story, to pull me along and the conclusion certainly doesn't disappoint. There are moments in the Ice Trilogy that are bad pulp, good history, mediocre sci-fi and excellent storytelling — there's one quite terrifying sequence where Moscow construction crew turns into a destruction crew and begins randomly digging up roads and destroying buildings. What it all adds up to I'm not at all sure, but I know I'll be spending a lot of time over the next days and weeks thinking about it.

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                                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                  Okay, wrapped up The Last Hundred Days: excellent, a really engaging page-turner/social commentary; my only slightly churlish gripe is that sometimes the exposition of political philosophies worked, other times feeling a bit forced.

                                                  Next up was Colson Whitehead's Zone One - a World War Z-alike with a more measured, literary edge. Much more thoughtful and less visceral, and whilst a little hard going in places - mixing slow, wistful digressions in the middle of action sequences - a welcome break from the predictable and formulaic.

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                                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                    Bloody hell! I've just had to abandon The Magic Mountain. I'm about half way through and a conversation starts in French. I can just about cope with this I think and then turn the page.

                                                    The majority of the next 10 pages are in French, complicated French. A few lines I could have handled but this is too much to translate all the words I don't know.

                                                    I'm really annoyed, I was enjoying that. There should be warning on the cover "we've translated the German but not the French".

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