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    #76
    Current Reading - Books best thread

    .

    Hitting the Groove by Phil Hogan. Blokey kinda book, fun, and I associate with lots of stuff (especially the difficult relationships ...). The protagonist is a Beatles fan, and the angle is served with a trowel.

    .

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      #77
      Current Reading - Books best thread

      I have just finished Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake which was very enjoyable although one or two events occurred a bit unsatisfactorily.

      I'm now reading The Grapes of Wrath in which I'm stlll at the early stage where every time I pick it up I get an image of Nelson Muntz in the Simpsons, "There's the grapes, and here's the wrath." I expect to lose this habit early into the last third of the book.

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        #78
        Current Reading - Books best thread

        Ha! I finally finished Night of the Morningstar. It was pretty good all in all.

        Next on the list is Harry Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero

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          #79
          Current Reading - Books best thread

          Just started The Editor's Wife ( Clare Chambers )- written in the first person & the main character is a man. Impressed so far.

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            #80
            Current Reading - Books best thread

            Finished Twilight of the Idols, onto The Anti-Christ now...

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              #81
              Current Reading - Books best thread

              I'm reading Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. It's completely aces. It's so obviously what Susanna Clarke must have read before she wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Just the same sort of allegorical things. and because I am obsessed with bucolic landscapes in literature, perhaps even something I can actually get something out of for my work too...

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                #82
                Current Reading - Books best thread

                Guilty of Everything John ('Buck Cherry') Armstrong's memoir of the punk scene in Vancouver. As such I suppose it's of mostly local interest except Armstrong is a better than average writer with a wry sense of humour:

                "[The Windmill was] notable only in that it would book our band and that it had a steel-plate dance-floor. Why, no one ever found out, but it made for real excitement the night a guitar player who hadn't checked his amp's ground jumped into the audience. Beer on metal is not only slippery as hell but an excellent electrical conductor; when his guitar hit the floor the crowd looked like dancing chickens at a county fair."

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                  #83
                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                  That's made me want to see dancing chickens at a county fair.

                  [digression]
                  I once saw The Clash at the Hammersmith Palais. Leaping about on a proper sprung dancefloor was extremely enjoyable.
                  [/digression]

                  I'm currently reading Harry Pearson's Around The World By Mouse, which as high-level concept probably sounded great (man stays in bedroom and explores countries he's never visited using internet; writes humorous travel guide). But it's straining my interest.

                  I like all his other books, and he's always good for a chucklesome line and interesting fact, but you can't help feeling a lot of it would be funnier as captions to the photos or sites he's looking at. I may have to set it aside and mention it in a different thread.

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                    #84
                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                    I once saw The Clash at the Hammersmith Palais. Leaping about on a proper sprung dancefloor was extremely enjoyable.

                    Oh absolutely! I too saw the Clash (and many other bands) at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom which, among aficianados, rates as one of the top half-dozen dancefloors in the world. Being among a couple of hundred people bouncing up and down on it is an experience like no other, some find it terrifying, others as exhilarating as group bungee jumping. It was put down in the 1920s so no one knew what gave it its elasticity until ten years ago when it was relaid, under the boards they found hundreds of truck tyres packed with horsehair.

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                      #85
                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                      Hm...I wonder if my ex-wife makes an appearance in Armstrong's book...that was very definitely her scene...

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                        #86
                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                        A quick PM will satisfy your curiosity AG, I'll finish the book by the end of the day.

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                          #87
                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                          PM sent.

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                            #88
                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                            I've still not picked up a book. I'm beginning to wonder if I ever will...

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                              #89
                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                              AG: PM reply.

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                                #90
                                Current Reading - Books best thread



                                I'm currently working my way through John Foot's Calcio and very enjoyable it is too

                                After that I have Lukyanenko's Night Watchand Day Watch awaiting me.

                                I also have the last two volumes of Orwells Collected Essays, Journalism and General Musings sitting on the bookshelf (As I Please, 1943-1945 and In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950). Looking forward to them - Orwell is never anything less than readable and even his most mundane letters give some insight to wartime life.

                                Unfortunately I never seem to get time to read more than a couple of paragraphs a day these days, so they could well be sitting there for a fair while yet.

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                                  #91
                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                  Finished Michael Lewis' very entertaining Liar's Poker. Now reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics As A Guide To Morals which, since it bears no relation to the title, is superb, and the Cantos. Still.

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                                    #92
                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                    I'm about two thirds of the way through Paul Morley's 'Nothing', an account of his father's suicide. As you would expect from Morley it's exceptionally literate, heartfelt and compelling, and wanders quite formlessly all over the place. His life story often takes second stage as the book becomes a series of philosophical discourses on the reasons why a person might choose to extinguish their own existence, and the repurcussions of such a decision. At times Morley's garrulous style becomes overwhelming, but appropriately, his concern often seems to be with filling in the blanks left by a distant relationship with his father.

                                    Despite the subject matter it's a warm, rather than depressing, read.

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                                      #93
                                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                                      toro x4, that's weird, I'm re-reading Liar's Poker at the moment, having read it about 10 years ago.

                                      It's strangely in tune with the current state of investment banking isn't it.

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                                        #94
                                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                                        Tonight I'll end the fourth-month marathon that was Underworld. I suppose my low brow won't come as any surprise here, but I didn't like it. Any defenders who can make a case for it?

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                                          #95
                                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                                          I liked Underworld, but didn't love it, and don't consider it to be on the same level as, say, White Noise. In my experience, people who like Underworld tend to already have a well-developed mythic view of Bobby Thompson's home run, and are therefore captivated by the first 80 pages or so, which supply a momentum that gets one through the rest of the book (this was certainly the case for me). Those who don't come to the novel from that point of view seem to find it much heavier going.

                                          Liar's Poker is pretty close to being timeless; individuals change, institutions change and instruments change, but the underlying dynamics that Lewis captures so well are what make much of "The City" and its international counterparts tick.

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                                            #96
                                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                                            I've just finished "The Satanic Verses" (at age 54), and it was worth it! Now for some more lighthearted reading – "The Far Corner" by Harry Pearson. Great anecdotes and stories about North-east football. Has anyone else read this?

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                                              #97
                                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                                              Lots of us have, Meltdown (welcome, by the way).

                                              It is a genuinely great book, perhaps the best of the flood of books about the life of a football supporter that came out in the wake of Fever Pitch. You have much to look forward to.

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                                                #98
                                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                Just finishing Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History. It's excellent. I know next to nothing about this period, but for a long time there was a lack of readable general works on ancient and early medieval history (Robin Lane Fox perhaps excepted). In the last few weeks, though I've read this and Tom Holland's Rubicon, which is also excellent. Scholarly enough to be worth reading, but not overly burdened with footnotes, and the prose is very accessible.

                                                This book is very, very good at demystifying all the various "barbarian invasions", and showing which ones were important and which were not. His argument is that the Western Empire, even after repeated invasions and the sack of Rome in 410, was basically still solvent until the Vandals took Carthage, at which point the money started to run out. Even the Hunnic invasions were survivable - the collapse of the Hunnic empire did more strategic damage than its creation. The failure of the invasion to re-take North Africa in 468 was the real nail in the coffin because without Africa there was not enough money to pay off all the remaining enemies.

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                                                  #99
                                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                  Lots of people hate The Satanic Verses, but they're wrong, and they're grotesquely ugly freaks. It is a work of very rare genius.

                                                  Nothing new for me, still ploughing through Murdoch and Pound. I may take a break in the latter for Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.

                                                  Ursus and JTS - spot on about Liar's Poker. It reminds me very much of Rough Ride by Paul Kimmage in that respect - the means may change, but the underlying stuff stays exactly the same.

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                                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                    Congratulations Toro, you are the 100th poster.

                                                    (edit: or 100th replier, if anyone wants to get pedantic - and I'm sure they do.)

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